Nondeliberative Crisis Intervention in Disaster Zones: Social Group Work Using Guided Artwork with Child Survivors

ABSTRACT

Sudden disasters cause devastating loss and trauma. Social groupwork can help heal and empower survivors through the use of nondeliberative practice forms. The authors describe a social group work model using guided artwork activities with child survivors of disasters such as the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 and the 2014 Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. The authors also examine the features of nondeliberative theory exemplified through work with artful media in this groupwork context. Features include the use of analogs, representational problem solving, and feedback that takes place in a lived, experiential dimension.     

What does wellbeing do? An approach to defamiliarize keywords in youth studies

Wellbeing has become a keyword in youth and social policy, a construct deployed as a measure of a good life. Often associated with physical and mental health, wellbeing encompasses numerous indicators, from subjective experiences of happiness and satisfaction to markers of economic prosperity and basic human needs of security. This article examines wellbeing as an organizing concept in discourses on young people and argues for defamiliarizing its truth claims and cultural authority by investigating what wellbeing does. We begin by examining the rise of wellbeing, drawing attention to its conceptual muddiness and ambiguity. Framed by the Foucauldian notion of problematization, the analysis proceeds along two routes: first, through an historical consideration of wellbeing as a relational concept with antecedents, focusing on ‘self-esteem’; and second, through a reading of wellbeing in contemporary educational policy. Informed by Somers' historical sociology of concept formation and Bacchi's critical policy analysis, we illuminate the mixed dimensions of wellbeing's reach, placing it within longer traditions of youth studies and psy-knowledges and showing its transformative promise as well as its individualizing effects. In doing so, we elaborate a methodological approach that can be adapted to examine other keywords in youth studies and social policy discourse.     

Travelling concepts and crossing paths: a conceptual history of identity

The concept of identity is ubiquitous in public discourse even though its meaning is often imprecise or nebulous – it is maybe because of this that its contents can be taken for granted. One speaks of individual, personal, group, social, collective and political identity; of identity formation, crisis, diffusion, conflict and politics; a multiple identity may be pathological or a component of an integrated identity; culture and ideology but also knowledge and experience supposedly enrich identity; identity may be rigid or open to development and growth – and so on. Against this background the present paper explores the argumentative uses of the concept of identity in psychoanalysis and in social psychology and sociology.     

The Role of Lumber Networks in Forest Devastation: Economic Sociology of Rural Forest Household Business in Japan

In this article, I utilize the perspectives of economic sociology to examine the structural background of forest devastation in Japan. First, I explore the factors behind cited problems for the forestry industry and demonstrate that expanded imports of inexpensively priced foreign-sourced logs do not sufficiently explain those issues. On that basis, I then demonstrate that the concepts and analytical tools offered by economic sociology are essential to a full understanding of relevant problems. Next, to understand how the current crisis differs from that experienced by forestry households in the 1980s, I turn my focus to changes in the social networks that supported the trade in wood products. The crisis witnessed a transformation that involved disembedding sawmills from the traditional wood trading networks that had relied on cooperative ties with forestry households. Eventually, social relationships between forestry households and sawmills were severed and these households became unable to address their economic difficulties through their existing practices. Given that context, I then examine the contrasting economic behavior of sawmills and forestry households and demonstrate that exposure to global price competition forced forestry households into uncontrolled over-cutting. Finally, I assert that economic sociology is better able to provide a more precise understanding of the true nature of the problems facing forestry in modern-day Japan than conventional economics with its adherence to the useful but insufficient principles of market competition and economic efficiency.     

人际语法隐喻的多维考察——以《唐顿庄园》为例

人际语法隐喻作为语法隐喻的重要组成部分，是人际意义在语气和情态方面的非一致式表达。语言形式不同，则其传达的语言意义也不尽相同。从语用学、社会学、语篇分析等多个维度综合考察人际语法隐喻非常规表达的语言学意义，挖掘其折射出的特殊人际意义，从而探求人际语法隐喻使用的语言学理据。     

Standing up to complexity: researching moral panics in social work

Moral panics are central to social work policy and practice. Voluntary agencies and statutory bodies (including governments) create and sustain moral panics in order to raise awareness of, and win support for, their own understandings of social issues and problems. This is not a neutral enterprise; on the contrary, moral panics often have consequences that are negative, whether intended or unintended. Far from leading to greater social justice and a more equal society, they may reinforce stereotypes and lead to fearful, risk-averse practice. This paper discusses one such moral panic in 2013 that centred on the story of ‘Maria’, a Bulgarian Roma child living in Greece. The paper explores the meaning and use of the concept of moral panic before unpacking this case-study example in more detail. We argue that the moral panic over ‘Maria’ has much to tell us about ideas of welfare and protection, institutional racism and children and childhood, as well as the connections between ‘private troubles’ and ‘public issues’. We conclude that social work as a profession must stand up to complexity, and in doing so, be aware of its own role in relation to moral panics.     

Suicide,Religion, and Latinos: A Macrolevel Study of U.S. Latino Suicide Rates

Since the publication of Durkheim's Suicide more than a century ago, researchers have been examining the relationship between religion and suicide, and race/ethnicity and suicide. However, no study has examined how religion influences U.S. Latino suicide rates. This study fills a gap in the literature by applying three competing theses to the study of Latino suicide. Results show that (1) religious contextual variables significantly affect Latino suicide rates, (2) U.S.‐born Latinos benefit from religious communities, regardless of denomination or measurement used, and (3) foreign‐born Latinos only benefit from Catholic adherents and homogeneity.     

The role of events in ICT adoption: same-sex marriage and Twitter

ICT adoption is predominantly considered as a process conditioned by social structures, social situations of adopters, and attributes and features of technologies. What is often overlooked are the cultural forces that shape adoption experiences and processes. This paper focuses on events and event narratives as vehicles through which the efficacy of culture unfolds in technological change processes. Cultural sociology has shown how influential events can be for forming public opinions and facilitating collective action. This article considers the power of one event on a much smaller scale: the passage of same-sex marriage (SSM) law in New York in June 2011 was not only significant for marriage equality in the US but also for the operating logic of the news ecosystem in which the political decision was made ? the state house in Albany. For the journalists who covered this event on the ground, the SSM decision was the catalyst to fully embrace Twitter. Years later, the event still served as an exemplar for the potentials of Twitter and as a basis of legitimacy of associated tweeting practices reporters incorporated. This contribution is based on ethnographic research at the state house in Albany, analysis of tweets and legacy news coverage published during that period, and in-depth interviews with reporters.     

Bittersweet and Paradoxical

The American Red Cross is the most active nonprofit organization involved in disaster planning and response in the United States. The organization deployed nearly 50,000 volunteers to provide essential support to victims of some 125,000 domestic disasters, including home fires, hurricanes, wildfires, and floods, in a recent two‐year period. This study asks how American Red Cross disaster response volunteer experiences function to cultivate satisfaction and, at the other end of the spectrum, the kind of dissatisfaction that leads people to quit; it pays particular attention to ways in which volunteer management shapes dissatisfaction and fatigue because of implications for volunteer retention. Paradoxically, the Red Cross facilitates the highly satisfying act of helping victims, but volunteers feel dissatisfied when management practices get in the way of helping. The study suggests voluntary organizations that rely on skilled, long‐term volunteers to deliver services should evaluate and strengthen their communication strategies, recognition practices, and support systems for volunteers in distress.     

后现代视野与文学经典问题域的新问题

本文以我国文学经典问题域业已形成为基本判断,全面和历史性地梳理了其形成原因和过程,分析了问题域中诸问题之间的逻辑关系,目前面临的研究困境等。籍此提出文学经典重读的问题,旨在从文学经典现象和重读主体实践活动角度,从该问题的界定、研究目的和重读对象的确定等基本方面做了交代。最后,提出文学经典重读问题需要置于现代与后现代相互交融的"思考和感觉方式"中。