Whose job is poverty? the problems of therapeutic intervention with children who are sexually violent

Children who commit sexually violent acts have been identified in increasing numbers since the 1980s. Professionals who practise therapeutic intervention with this group have struggled to find explanations for their client's deviant behaviour. Current explanations for, and discourses on, the occurrence of sexual violence minimize the effect of poverty in the therapeutic arena. The most difficult and worrisome child clients for participants of this research are the poor ones, yet the practice of counselling is unable to address structural disadvantage. This leads to a poverty culture explanation for sexual violence and child abuse which recognizes poverty yet pathologizes the individual. The identification of a new problem—children's sexual violence—the individualized case‐based approach to intervention and current social policy minimize the continuing and persistent problem of poverty. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Span of Collective Efficacy: Extending Social Disorganization Theory to Partner Violence

This research applies the social disorganization perspective on the neighborhood‐level determinants of crime to partner violence. The analysis brings data from the 1990 Decennial Census together with data from the 1994–1995 Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods Community Survey, the 1994–1995 Chicago homicide data, and data from the 1995–1997 Chicago Health and Social Life Survey. The findings of this study indicate that collective efficacy—neighborhood cohesion and informal social control capacity—is negatively associated with both intimate homicide rates and nonlethal partner violence. Collective efficacy exerts a more powerful regulatory effect on nonlethal violence in neighborhoods where tolerance of intimate violence is low. Collective efficacy also increases the likelihood that women will disclose conflict in their relationships to various potential sources of support.     

Violence,Networks, and International Migration from Colombia

Although Colombia is a major country of emigration, little is known about its citizens' motivations for migration. Social and economic conditions have been studied as determinants of migration, but violence has received less attention. We examine how social networks and violence function to promote emigration from Colombia by linking event‐history data from the Latin American Migration Project to external data on violence and economic conditions. We show that emigration is more likely to be initiated by those with higher education, those with network connections to migrants, and during periods of greater violence and increased police presence. Although violence acts powerfully to determine when people migrate, the geographic distribution of social capital determines where they go. Not surprisingly, migrants go to locations where people in their social networks are currently living or have been earlier.     

Law,campus policy,social movements,and sexual violence: Where do we stand in the #MeToo movement?

In the last 8 years, activist pressure has increased attention to sexual violence at universities. Most recently, the #MeToo movement has widened the conversation about sexual violence. This increased public attention has coincided with changes in federal guidelines, state laws, and campus policies on sexual violence as well as social movement activity by survivor‐activists and emerging counter‐movements. I argue that sociologists—specifically researchers who study gender and/or law and society—are uniquely situated to contribute to the study of sexual violence on campus. I synthesize a growing sociological and interdisciplinary literature on sexual violence—legal changes, policy effects, and social movement struggles—in order to advocate that sociologists study laws, campus policies, and social movements simultaneously.     

Language,Violence, and Queer People

Summary

The lives of queer people are too frequently filled with violence—physical attacks, social discrimination, and hate-filled verbal assaults. Language serves multiple purposes in the violence that is directed at queers. While the words themselves become instruments of psychological harm, they, in turn, are used to rationalize or justify acts of physical violence and social discrimination (Pierce, 1990). To analyze the issues regarding queer people, social discourse, and violence, this essay addresses: communication rules about queers and a formula for change in the discourse; the history of changing labels and meaning; enforcers of the dominant discourse and its rules of communication; and the role social workers should play in challenging and shaping the discourse.     

La calidad de vida. Juicios de satisfacción y felicidad como indicadores actitudinales de bienestar

Abstract

This article argues that institutional apologies are rituals that can be conceived from a neo-Durkheimian viewpoint as external social tools of collective emotion, which allow people to assume collective guilt and shame, increase agreement with reparatory behaviors, and reinforce social cohesion. The review of studies presented in this monograph shows that an apology reactivates and intensifies collective emotions, mainly of shame and guilt, above and beyond merely reminding people of past misdeeds, and increases support for reparation. Shame and sorrow fuel and support reparative tendencies. Finally, salience of past collective violence together with an apology improves social climate to some extent, enhances intergroup reconciliation by decreasing prejudice and improving intergroup contact, and helps to reconstruct in-group collective memory in a more critical way. Changes in collective emotions and representations of the past mediate the positive effects of apologies on reparation and social cohesion.     

A game of three monkeys: Kadazan Dusun villagers and violence against women

Based on detailed and long-term anthropological research among rural Kadazans, the paper sets out the social history of domestic violence in one Sabah village. In more than 30 per cent of the households, there is a woman who has experienced repeated spousal abuse during her life. Adding those men who abused earlier spouses, and adults who lived through the abuse of their mothers in childhood, it is clear that violence is and has long been part of everyday — yet secret — village experience. For various reasons, researchers appear to have colluded in ignoring the issue. To help those women and their children whose lives are blighted by fear and fearful memories, it would be wise to assume domestic violence is as present in rural as in urban settings.     

A figurational approach to understanding school climate and peer harassment: Possibilities from Norbert Elias’s work

Although psychological approaches have been the mainstay of scholarly research on school climate, offering state-of-the-art measurements and methodologies, sociological perspectives remain essential perspectives because violence is essentially a social phenomenon. This paper offers a theoretical consideration of contributions to this field, focusing specifically on those that provide a critical historical lens. I suggest that while Foucault's approach to the disciplining of docile bodies and self-restraint offers crucial conceptual tools, Norbert Elias's work—which is scarce in scholarly research on school climate—provides a complementary but necessary framework for understanding emotional and relational aspects of peer harassment.     

Social Workers and Fortune-tellers

Today, it is not uncommon for people in difficult situations to consult fortune-tellers but they do not necessarily tell their social worker — who also may not ask. Past predictions can be a powerful unspoken influence affecting current behaviour.     

Reference Groups,Mob Mentality,and Bystander Intervention: A Sociological Analysis of the Lara Logan Case1

Despite that it involves mobs, bystanders, and political theater—three classic concepts in social psychology—academics have neglected analyzing the Lara Logan sexual assault case through these lenses. I explore how the case has been discussed in the media and suggest that analysis of the mob and bystanders has been, oddly, lacking. I argue that the best reference group to use when discussing this case is not other journalists or even other women who have survived assaults, but is instead enemy women who have survived politically motivated wartime gang sexual assaults. Most observers have overlooked the relevant reference group due to focusing on the traits of the victim, rather than on the context of the event itself. I argue that the case conforms to important dimensions: (1) the sociological norm that gang violence involves premeditation, (2) an agreement of values among perpetrators, and (3) that the violence itself lacked cultural and social legitimacy. Logan was likely targeted because she was a “stranger”; she was saved, in part, for the same reason. The case illustrates known patterns of mob mentalities and bystander intervention, yet it is unlike most cases of both nonwartime gender violence and violence against journalists.     

Getting by with a Little Help from Workplace Friends: Workplace Culture,Social Support,and Family Cohesion

Studies have shown a negative association between certain aspects of workplace culture and family functioning. Using a neo-institutional framework, we examine whether workplace social support moderates the influence of three features of workplace culture—time demands, work pressure, and work strain—on family cohesion. Analyzing survey data from 312 individuals in dual-earner relationships, we control for number of children, education, income, employment status, and occupational status. We find that workplace social support is directly associated with family cohesion but does not serve as a buffer between dimensions of workplace culture and family cohesion.     

The role of social work in the context of social disintegration and violence

Violence and the violence discourse are very similar from country to country: focus on youth, preponderance of males among perpetrators and victims, disproportionate involvement of migrants and indigenous people, greater prevalence with socioeconomic disadvantage and low education, and the impact of underlying factors such as political disintegration, exclusion from the consumer lifestyle, and inadequacies of social institutions. In social disintegration theory, the basic explanatory backdrop is the dynamic relationship of integration and disintegration between and within the different spheres: individual and functional system integration, integration into society, and integration into the community. (Relative) exclusion from work, consumption, and democratic processes combined with experience of socioemotional deficits seem to give a particularly strong boost to socially unacceptable forms of particularist integration and to favor collective and individual acceptance of violence. When subjects draw balances of personal recognition and of the achieved and achievable scope to organize their life, the latter orientations appear subjectively more likely to meet their expectations than socially (more) accepted modes of behavior.The central conclusion on social reactions to violence in general and professional social work in particular is that rather than relying on admonishment, punishment, or curative measures, or some combination of these, to combat violence, there is a need for wide-ranging long-term options for those acutely affected and at risk to have the long-term scope to organize their own lives-to experience life control, recognized integration, and development of competences. Those who experience being the organizer of their own life have no need of violence as a form of self-assertion.     

The necessity of an attention to Eurocentrism and colonial technologies: an addition to critical mental health literature

Critical perspectives in mental health and the highly influential contributions of those who identify with and/or ally with the psychiatric-survivor, consumer-survivor, ex-patient, or mad movements have provoked an appreciation of the many exposed epistemological, methodological, and ethical issues that (re)produce violence within biomedical psychiatry. What is often left uninterrogated is the reliance on a Eurocentric conceptualization of history within articulations of struggle and when attending to the political and social contexts of critique. The effect of this enduring Eurocentrism is often an inattention to the complicit influences of colonial and imperial projects on the practices and technologies of dehumanization, taxonomization, and the establishment of human hierarchies to rationalize violence through the implementation of racial and eugenic rationale. The imperative of this attention to Eurocentrism is suggested from a synthesis of contributions from critical mental health, postcolonial, and critical race literature.     

Trajectories of Prosocial Behavior and Physical Aggression in Middle Childhood: Links to Adolescent School Dropout and Physical Violence

Trajectories of prosocial behavior and physical aggression between 6 and 12 years of age were identified for a sample (N=1,025) of males. The trajectories were then used to predict school dropout and physical violence at age 17. Using a group‐based semi‐parametric method, two trajectories of prosociality (low and moderate declining) and three trajectories of physical aggression (low, moderate, and high declining) were obtained. Only a small minority (3.4%) of the boys were characterized by both high aggression and moderate prosociality. Physical aggression predicted both school dropout and physical violence, but contrary to expectations, prosocial behavior did not have additive or protective effects.     

Resistance as Sacrifice: Toward an Ascetic Antiracism

Often described as an outcome, inequality is better understood as a social process—a function of how institutions are structured and reproduced, and the ways people act and interact within them across time. Racialized inequality persists because it is enacted moment to moment, context to context—and it can be ended should those who currently perpetuate it commit themselves to playing a different role instead. This essay makes three core contributions. First, it highlights a disturbing parity between the people who are most rhetorically committed to ending racialized inequality and those who are most responsible for its persistence. Next, it explores the origin of this paradox—how it is that ostensibly antiracist intentions are transmuted into “benevolently racist” actions. Finally, it presents an alternative approach to mitigating racialized inequality, one that more effectively challenges the self‐oriented and extractive logics undergirding systemic racism, rather than expropriating blame to others, or else adopting introspective and psychologized approaches to fundamentally social problems, those sincerely committed to antiracism can take concrete steps in the real world—actions that require no legislation or coercion of naysayers, just a willingness to personally make sacrifices for the sake of racial justice.     

Associations Between Psychological,Physical, and Sexual Intimate Partner Violence and Health Outcomes Among Women Veteran VA Patients

Women veterans experience high rates of lifetime intimate partner violence (IPV) and suffer a variety of trauma-related health conditions. The purpose of this study was to identify health status and health risk behaviors associated with experiences of psychological, physical, or sexual IPV among women veterans receiving care at a Veterans Affairs (VA) medical center. We conducted surveys with 249 women veteran patients and examined health factors associated with each form of violence. Sexual IPV victimization had the most pronounced associations with adverse health. In multivariate analysis, controlling for age, race, and income, women veterans who experienced sexual violence victimization were close to or more than three times as likely as those who experienced no IPV to report poor or fair overall health, a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, bipolar disorder, or anxiety, difficulty sleeping, cigarette smoking, and problem drinking. Those who reported psychological violence only (without physical or sexual violence) also reported greater odds of self-rated poor or fair health. These findings are consistent with findings from studies with non-veteran populations and serve to further identify the unique contributions of sexual IPV to health outcomes. The integrated VA health care system offers opportunities for IPV identification and response including a coordinated team-based care model with social work integrated within primary care.     

Old battles,new frontiers: A study of television violence and social work with children

This article describes the place of television violence in social work practice with children. It is based on interviews with twenty-one social workers who work primarily with children in schools, in community mental health agencies and in private practices. Although the influence of television violence on children has been well documented by other disciplines, there has been a general lack of attention by social work. Because television is so much a part of children's social environment and because the social environment is so much a part of social work practice this study seeks to address that lack. Grounded theory methodology was utilized to analyze the interviews.This paper is adapted from her dissertation in partial fulfillment of a doctorate at Simmons College School of Social Work, Boston, Massachusetts. The author wishes to thank the dissertation committee members, carol Swenson (Chairperson), Deanna Brooks and Margaret Rhodes for their contributions.     

Sticks and Stones Can Break Your Bones

Summary

Utilizing the narratives of 54 youths and 88 child welfare professionals, this article explores the experiences and lives of gay and lesbian youths in child welfare agencies in three cities—New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto—who have been subject to verbal harassment and physical violence within those systems. The author additionally explores the multiple layers of verbal harassment and violence in both the youths' families and in the foster care system, offering recommendations to social work practitioners interested in creating gay and lesbian affirming environments.     

A Social Constructivist Perspective on the Potential Relevance of Selected DSM‐5 Disorders for South African Children and Youth

In South Africa, careless implementation of child psychiatry's biomedical model of ‘mental disorder’ could stigmatise children and youth who have been made vulnerable by the lingering effects of apartheid — poverty and malnutrition, violence and abuse, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. A focus on DSM‐5 category changes — regarding post‐traumatic stress disorder and ADHD — demonstrates that these psychiatric labels are impracticable and irrelevant in a post‐colonial developing country, where mental health care is delivered in the context of scarce services and unequal access. A social constructivist perspective enables us to broaden policy decisions and suggest directions for research.