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Diagnosis of autism in the UK is generally made within a multidisciplinary team setting and is primarily based on observation and clinical interview. We examined how clinicians diagnose autism in practice by observing post‐assessment meetings in specialist autism teams. Eighteen meetings across four teams based in the south of England and covering 88 cases were audio‐recorded, transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. We drew out two themes, related to the way in which clinicians expressed their specialist disciplinary knowledge to come to diagnostic consensus: Feeling Autism in the Encounter; and Evaluating Testimonies of Non‐present Actors. We show how clinicians produce objective accounts through their situated practices and perform diagnosis as an act of interpretation, affect and evaluation to meet the institutional demands of the diagnostic setting. Our study contributes to our understanding of how diagnosis is accomplished in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the interactional functions of racism discourse in mobilizing support for right‐wing populism. The analysis focuses on the controversy surrounding UKIP's "Breaking Point" poster campaign, which launched days before the historic British EU referendum. We focus on the development of "tripolar relations" between the UKIP party leadership, mainstream political elites, and ordinary citizens. Using thematic discourse analysis, we show how the poster was depicted as racist and the UKIP leader Nigel Farage was accused of scaremongering and stoking racism by means of propaganda. This criticism becomes the grounds for mobilization as Farage defended the campaign against the charge of racism and his supporters rose to his side. We conclude by showing how arguments about the nature of racism are identity performances that can reproduce or challenge existing social relations. This article thus identifies the rhetorical "collaboration" that exists between critics and defenders of racism and the inadvertent political outcome of this interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rhetorically contextualised against a history of poor outcomes and negative attitudes, New Labour's mental health policy introduced recovery as a turn towards optimism, control and choice for those who provide and use mental health services. Recovery continues to occupy a key role within contemporary policy and practice. Despite such privilege, recovery remains a contested concept, not least because it means different things to different people. This article reports empirical work conducted during 2010–11 and explores two interpretive repertoires (traditional and responsibilised-progressive) that mental health practitioners draw upon in their accounts of recovery. Grounded in constructionist theory, the findings suggest that practitioner accounts of recovery are diverse and produce many different subject positions from which recovery may be experienced. Developing Webber and Joubert's (2016) editorial comments on the challenge for social work, it is argued that professional social work must practise in a manner compatible with its own value base and any model of recovery must be held up for scrutiny. A knowledgeable position for the practitioner is advocated—one that is capable of working multiple paradigms in order to better understand and meet service user need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]