Changing Wales: Social, Economic and Political Perspectives WISERD Summer Conference 28 & 29 June 2011 Sketty Hall, Swansea Abstracts Changing Wales: Social, Economic and Political Perspectives Keynote Speaker Professor Charlotte Williams OBE Professor Charlotte Williams OBE, Professor of Social Justice, Keele University “Rethinking the parameters of social research for a multicultural Wales” Post devolution Wales has witnessed a concerted effort to build and coordinate a strong research community with a view to responding to the need for best evidence to underpin policy planning and policy making. WISERD is but one manifestation of this, as is, the Clinical Research Collaboration Cymru (CRC) established in 2006 to provide an R&D infrastructure for health and social care. Drawing on the example of one infrastructural network within the CRC, this paper explores the issues associated with attempts to mainstream one specific area of equalities – namely race and ethnicity – into the research agenda for Wales. It considers the justification for rethinking the parameters of social research in this way, explores some of the issues and difficulties of embedding this agenda in policy relevant research in Wales and argues that all social research should consider whether, when and how ethnicity and minority ethnic population groups be considered in commissioning and in the development of research programmes and projects. In a political context in which issues of race and minority concerns are increasingly hard to publicly articulate, this paper questions the relationship between research and policy making, between government and the academy and points to the complexities of their relationships to wider publics, social and political movements. 1 Changing Wales: Social, Economic and Political Perspectives Session 1a An Anatomy of Inequality in Wales Discussion of the Report Commissioned by Equality and Human Rights Commission. “An anatomy of economic inequality in Wales” The National Equality Panel‟s report An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK (Hills et al. 2010) provided a milestone in our understanding of relationships between people‟s characteristics and their financial position. Through detailed analysis of complex datasets, some newly available, it charted in depth how „inequalities in people‟s economic outcomes - such as earnings, income and wealth - are related to their characteristics and circumstances - such as gender, age or ethnicity.‟ While the UK NEP report has had a significant role in providing evidence for debate on issues surrounding inequality, the report provided only limited information of the nature of economic inequality at a sub-national level. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (Wales) sought to address this information gap by commissioning WISERD to produce an „NEP-style‟ report for Wales. In this session, contributors to the report present findings from this first systematic examination of economic inequality within Wales. Participants: Rhys Davies, WISERD Cardiff; Dr Catherine Robinson, WISERD Swansea; Professor Gerry Makepeace, Cardiff; Dr Victoria Wass, Cardiff Session 1b Localities Resiliences “Relational resilience?: Considering older people‟s connected rural lives” Dr Jesse Heley, Dr Laura Jones and Dr Suzie Watkin, WISERD Aberystwyth Rural space is increasingly understood as being implicated in globalisation, and, accordingly, countryside places are constituted through relational networks of local- global interconnections. On this basis, researchers are becoming ever more attentive to the everyday multi-scalar relations, practises and connections (e.g. business linkages, travel, communications) through which rural communities are constituted and change through time. The manner in which these processes unfold is clearly specific to particular places and communities, and constitutive of difference, but at the same time there are also similarities borne out of corresponding social, economic and political relations at work spatially and temporally. As a means of exploring specific and shared local contexts of everyday life, the theoretical and methodological model of „countertopography‟ put forward by Katz (2001) holds much promise, and we are currently using this framework as a means through which to explore the connections inherent in the lives and practices of older people within a specific rural community. More specifically, we are using countertopography as a means of challenging assumptions regarding older people‟s lives in mid-Wales that emerged in a study of local government and shadow state sector stakeholders. These assumptions present older people as being predominately „static‟, „passive‟ and „less‟ implicated in wider social and economic networks, and they also show the tendency to define older people in terms of their needs, as opposed to their contributions. Contra, and in keeping with the current zeitgeist in gerontology, we suggest there is much value in going beyond this narrative and for more fully considering multiple interactions of older people through rural space, and over time. 2 Changing Wales: Social, Economic and Political Perspectives While older people‟s experiences may offer insights into the changing historical shape of communities, it is also vital to understand how older residents are and can shape communities both in the present and future. Through better understanding the differentiated role of older residents in this way, the assumption that older residents do not, cannot, or will not contribute to sustainability agendas (environmentally, socially, economically and otherwise) can be put to the test, and will be considered in this paper and in reference to our ongoing research programme. “Making sense of resilience” Dr Marc Welsh, Aberystwyth In a world of risk, relationality, flows and mutability, theoretical frameworks, particularly „scientific‟ ones that promise a means of capturing that complexity are seductive. „Resilience theory‟ is one such theory that has recently come to prominence - a ubiquitous term deployed within a variety of epistemic communities as a means for understanding and managing „complex adaptive systems‟ and change. Resilience straddles an intersection between popular discourse (on economic crisis and sporting triumph), academic discourse of the „social‟ and the „ecological‟ sciences, and national and local political discourse on responding to or managing the „event‟ – whether this be terrorist attack, an unruly nature or the consequences of late capitalism. In this paper I situate resilience as an organising principle of British governmental rationality where it serves to secure the primacy of the state as locus of authority and paradoxically is enrolled into Coalition government neoliberal discourses of responsibilisation and localisation. Tracing a genealogy of resilience theories as both academic discourses and as mediated structuring discourses of governmental practice I illustrate that in Britain and Wales an equilibrium heavy form of the concept structures government planning for disaster and risk management. However, significantly at sub-national scales the term is also finding utility, as a means of conceptualising and operationalising imaginaries of „the region‟, and locally in the transitioning of communities from oil dependency to carbon neutral futures. “Glastir - the Neoliberalisation of Nature?” Dr. Sophie Wynne-Jones, Wales Rural Obeservatory, Aberystwyth In this paper I reflect upon the merits of assessing the new Welsh agri-environment scheme, Glastir, through the analytical lens of the „neoliberal natures‟ literature. Here-in, Glastir is discussed as a form of neoliberalisation, where-in former environmental externalities are constructed as saleable commodities, to be regulated through market- proxies and the techniques of neoliberal governmentality. However, these mechanisms and seeming archetypes of neoliberalisation are also seen to fit with pre-existing frameworks of State regulation. Similarly, in terms of the drivers behind this development, Glastir is presented as a compromise between drivers for liberalisation and the constraints of the Welsh context. As such, the paper supports wider readings of neoliberal governance as necessarily hybrid, with the notion of neoliberalisation therefore coming under scrutiny for the heterogeneity of possible outcomes. Session 1c Generational Change in Wales “Children Chapel, Kitchen: Gender and Generation in Y Fro Gymraeg” Dr Sally Baker, Bangor and Dr B.J. Brown, De Montfort 3 Changing Wales: Social, Economic and Political Perspectives Using the substantial database of biographical narratives (collected by Baker et al.) from Welsh speakers aged between 55 and 90 years who spent their formative years in Y Fro Gymraeg, this paper explores the ways in which women breached traditional gender roles in communities usually considered to be highly conservative with regard to gender, the circumstances in which they did this and the social practices that enabled them to do so. “Burghers or Spiralists? Parental Choice and Welsh-medium Education in South Wales. The story so far. .” Dr. Rhian Siân Hodges et al., Bangor This paper explores generational change in attitudes of non-Welsh speaking parents in south Wales towards Welsh medium education. It reviews present day parental incentives for choosing Welsh medium education and the implications for language planning strategies in the context of shifting attitudes over the past five decades. “The Jewish Diaspora in Wales: Welsh Jews