实习平台：当今教学中的‘‘软肋’’

社会工作实习在社会工作专业教育中具有特别重要的地位，因为社会工作专业是一门十分注重直接为人们提供服务的专业。学生必须亲自参加社会工作的实践活动，增进专业意识、专业价值观和应变与成长的能力，才能成为合格的社会工作专业人才。然而，在当前中国社工教育的现实情境中，实习却是一大“软肋”。     

Writing ‘Conflict’: Whispers as a ‘Restorative’ Narrative

Abstract

This paper examines contemporary Kenyan popular fiction as a site of cultural production, where the contradictions of African modernity are played out. The paper focuses on one of Kenya's oldest popular fiction columns, Whispers, published in local newspapers since 1983. Constructed around a Kenyan family, which is deployed as an allegorical trope to read modern Kenya, the paper explores how the column introduces us to the anxieties that define life in contemporary Kenya. Although the narrative comprises many thematic concerns, reference is particularly made to the restive masculinity threatened by social change. The paper also provides a discussion of the constant ‘backward glance’, an attempt to look for stability in the past, part of the society's relentless search for models that could help Kenyans make sense of an uncertain present, and an even more doubtful future. The paper also engages with the narrative mode of this fiction, examining how humour, satire and parody deceptively make light of what are important issues affecting society.     

Contested Concepts in Violence Against Women: ‘Intimate’, ‘Domestic’ or ‘Torture’?

Abstract

Ritualistic, overwhelmingly violent bikie gang or cult-inflicted abuse of women, entrenched by co-opting third party cult or gang members, has been referred to as ‘domestic violence’, ‘intimate violence’ or ‘intimate partner violence’. The present article questions the aptitude of these terms to convey the realities of this violence, in light of the experiences of women attending a South Australian domestic violence service, all of whom were escaping violent partners who were members or associates of bikie gangs and cults. The paper asks, ‘is torture an appropriate term for such violence?’ and discusses the impact of social, legal, organisational and human rights parallel states that collaborate to make it almost impossible for these women to escape this violence and make it difficult for social workers to work effectively with them. The paper concludes that the State needs to adopt a human rights rather than legal focus when addressing the issue of violence against women.     

‘Indigenous Rights’ or ‘Racial Privileges’: The Rhetoric of ‘Race’ in New Zealand Politics

The New Zealand parliamentary election campaign of 2005 was marked by a significant break in the consensus between the two major political parties, Labour and National, in the area of Maori affairs: a consensus that had previously been articulated in terms of a shared commitment to ‘biculturalism’ and the Treaty of Waitangi. In January 2004, the National Party launched an attack on government policies, describing them as giving unfair privileges to Maori based purely on ‘race’. The present paper examines the National Party's adoption of the rhetoric of ‘race’ and the conceptual, political and ideological considerations behind it. It also examines attitudinal, social policy and socioeconomic factors to explain the widespread acceptability of this rhetoric among the New Zealand public. These events are considered within the context of a growing academic and political critique of ‘culturalism’ in New Zealand social policy and social science.     

Managing ‘American Islam’

Focusing on the case of Islam in post-9/11 United States, this article highlights the particularity of how US secularism is enacted by the state. In much sociological theory, the United States has been understood to be a neutral and non-interfering state with regard to religion, thereby fostering a pluralist religious context of free consumer choice. Some Muslim reformists have argued that this context makes the US highly fertile ground upon which to reform Islam and to improve women's status in Islam. This article argues that, in the context of the US-led ‘war on terror’, the government has drawn on and amplified this discourse in the service of producing a representation of the US as tolerant, while also seeking to promote a concept of ‘true’ Islam and produce patriotic Muslim citizens. At the center of this discourse are contested portrayals of Muslim women as symbolic of a modern and liberated Islam that is uniquely ‘American’ and opposed to other presumably oppressive Islams. While this context may in fact promote the reform of Islam, it does so with state involvement rather than as a result of state neutrality.     

Gamblers can discriminate ‘tight’ from ‘loose’ electronic gambling machines

All slot machines make money over time, but the payouts to the players can differ. ‘Loose’ machines pay out more than ‘tight’ machines. Gamblers (n = 1402) at Ontario slots venues were assessed using the Problem Gambling Severity Index. Their beliefs about slots were polled using the Informational Biases Scale. Problem gamblers were more likely than non-problem and at-risk gamblers to endorse the belief that ‘some slot machines keep me from winning because they are programmed to produce fewer wins than normal’. We then showed that after extensive play (60 hours), 9 out of 10 gamblers were able to correctly discriminate a ‘loose’ machine (98% payback) from a ‘tight’ machine (85% payback). Problem gamblers' assertions that there are ‘loose’ and ‘tight’ machines demonstrate a belief rooted in reality. The ability to distinguish ‘loose’ from ‘tight’ machines may be interpreted as a skill by players. Such skill, when overestimated, may lead to erroneous cognitions.     

敢露‘庐山真面目’

苏东坡曾有诗云：“不识庐山真面目，只缘身在此山中。”照此意推论，一个人是很难看到自己的缺点与不足的。笔者反其意而论之，入为什么不能主动暴露自己的“庐山真面目”，而让别人了解一下真实的“我”呢？最近，笔者读过一位日本学者写的交际心理学方面的书，颇受启发。书中日：让人家看到自己的缺点或弱点，人家才会觉得你真实可信，不存虚假，从而产生亲近感。反之，如果人们不了解你的真实个性，即没有看到一个包含有缺点与弱点的你，反而会对你放心不下，对你产生戒备和警惕，从而不敢亲近你。这真是洞察人心的至理名言。我想，现实…     

‘DWELLING IN DISPLACEMENT’

This paper is a successor to an earlier one (Malone, Community, Work & Family, 4(2), 195–213, 2001) which described the development of a ‘community saved’ among first-generation Irish immigrants in North-West London, UK. A distinct and health-enhancing ‘sense’ of community founded on mutual helping networks, a belief in family ties, the importance of paid work and the Roman Catholic Church was identified within this Irish immigrant group. For the second generation or London Irish, upon whom this paper focuses, ‘community’ and ‘sense’ of community have meanings which differ significantly from those of their first-generation forebears. The London Irish describe the anonymity they experience within their contemporary urban ‘home’ and yearn, instead, for an idyllic but mythical ‘homeland’ — the rural Ireland of long ago. Disparities between the two groups yield insights into those elements which truly shape experience of ‘community’ and ‘sense’ of community and which can only be understood within the conceptual, geographical and intellectual boundaries of what has been called the ‘diasporic space’.

Ce papier suit à un précédent (Malone, Community, Work & Family, 4(2), 195–213, 2001) qui a dépeint le développement d'une ‘communauté sauvé’ parmi les immigrants irlandais de la première génération au nord-ouest de Londres. Un ‘sentiment de communauté’, à la fois marqué et assanisant, et fondé sur des résaux d'assistance réciproque, le croyance dans les liens familiaux, l'importance du travail salarié, et l'Eglise Catholique, a été identifié parmi ce groupe immigrant irlandais. Pour les immigrants de la deuzième génération, ainsi nommé les ‘London Irish’, et sujet de ce papier-ci, ‘la communauté’ et ‘le sentiment de communauté’ ont des significations très différentes de la première génération. Les London Irish parle de l'anonyme de leur expérience dans le domicile urbain, ils brûlent de revoir le ‘terre patrie’, idylle mythique d'un Irlande rural du bon vieux temps. Ces différences fournissent des aperçus des éléments qui forment l'expérience de ‘la communauté’ et du ‘sentiment de communauté’, éléments qui ne sont compris que dans les bornes de la conception, de la géographie et de l'intellect, bornes de ce qui a été désigné ‘l'espace diasporique’.     

‘An Unstable Amalgam’

Christopher Herbert. Culture and anomie: ethnographic imagination in the nineteenth century. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press. 1991. x, 364pp., references, index, notes. ISBN 0 226 32738 8 (hard); ISBN 0 226 32739 6 (paper).     

Mastering ‘Lady Credit’

This article politicizes current understandings of financial crises. It is argued that financial discourse, and specifically the discourse that locates financial crises in the realm of madness and delusion, is founded upon a distinctively masculine conception of agency. This argument is made by looking at early eighteenth-century debates concerning the emergence of credit and paper money. The article examines Daniel Defoe's satirical personification, Lady Credit. Lady Credit embodies all the irrational, inconstant and effeminate aspects that had to be purged from financial discourse before it was able to gain respectability as a rational, disinterested and scientific sphere of action. Lady Credit is not unlike ancient goddess, Fortuna, who ruled capriciously over the affairs of men. The financial discourse under examination implies that it is in times of crisis that financial man loses self-control and is prevented from seeing economic reality by the delusions that Lady Credit generates in him. Through the virile mastering of Lady Credit, it is implied, the smooth and neutral workings of the financial sphere are guaranteed. The article contends that this inherently gendered manner of understanding financial crises informs debates on financial crisis today, as can be exemplified by the public discussion on the recent crisis in Asia.     

‘Heteroglossic’ Discourses on Globalization: A View from the ‘East’

Abstract

In view of the broad scope of literature on globalization, this paper provides a synoptic reading of some of the globalization literatures, organized as ‘discourses’. The analysis of the discourses on globalization is confined to three overlapping discourses, namely, regional, ideological and economic discourses. Specific references and examples of local uptake of globalization will be drawn from Singapore and the wider Asia pacific region, as Beck (2002) has reminded us that we cannot even think about globalization or discuss it effectively without the reference to specific locations and places. Hence the subtitle of this paper, ‘A View from the East’, is deliberate to signal the often forgotten fact that Singapore, as well as the wider Asia Pacific region, is ‘part of the “global” sphere that the West has dispersed itself into’.     

‘You Are a Girl’

Feminist scholarship has shown how gender is integral to understanding war, and that the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was partly legitimated through a reference to Afghan women's ‘liberation’. Recognizing this, the article analyses how gender is crucial also to understanding the practice of ‘population-centric’ counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Because this type of warfare aims at ‘winning hearts and minds’, it is in engaging the population that a notable gendered addition to the US military strategy surfaces, Female Engagement Teams (FETs). Citing ‘cultural sensitivity’ as a key justification, the US deploys all-female teams to engage with and access a previously untapped source of intelligence and information, namely Afghan women. Beyond this being seen as necessary to complete the task of population-centric counterinsurgency, it is also hailed as a progressive step that contributes to Afghan women's broader empowerment. Subjecting population-centric counterinsurgency to feminist analysis, this article finds that in constructing women both as ‘practitioners’ and ‘targets’, this type of warfare constitutes another chapter in the various ways that their bodies have been relied upon for its ‘success’.     

‘Bad Mum Guilt’: the representation of ‘work-life balance’ in UK women’s magazines

The social policy climate, labour market trends and gendered arrangements for paid and family work mean that ‘work-life balance’ remains a key social issue in the UK. Media representations of ‘work-life balance’ are a key source for the construction of gender and working motherhood. Despite evidence of gendered representations in media coverage of other social issues, little attention has been paid to the construction of work-life balance in UK women's magazines. Articles from the highest circulating UK women's magazines are analysed using a discursive approach to explicate constructions of work-life balance and working motherhood. The analysis reveals that multiple roles are constructed as a problematic choice leading to stress and guilt. Problems associated with multiple roles are constructed as individual problems, in a way that decontextualises and depoliticises them and normalises gendered assumptions and a gendered division of labour. Parallels can be drawn between this and wider discourses about women's daily lives and to the UK social policy context.