Nature and social work pedagogy: How U.S. social work educators are integrating issues of the natural environment into their teaching

ABSTRACT

The article presents a study of how U.S. social work educators are including discussion, exercises, readings, and other pedagogical approaches to the natural environment into their classrooms. The findings are part of a larger, naturalistic study that gathered data using a semi-structured interview format. The three major themes that emerged were human behavior theory, ecological and environmental justice, and environmental sustainability. The participants are introducing issues of the natural environment using varied pedagogical techniques including readings, in-class discussions and exercises, service learning, assignments, including written and practical work, research, self-awareness exercises, and class facilitation. Questions for further investigation of social work and the natural environment are included.     

法之来源探究：以霍布斯对柯克的批判为视角

在霍布斯死后发表的著作《一位哲学家与英格兰普通法学者的对话》中，霍布斯站在哲学家的立场与以柯克爵士为代表的普通法学家展开了激烈的交锋，在他们的交锋中有关法律来源的问题无疑是全书的重心。法律来源于对正义的追求和捍卫，这是两者共同认可并遵循的，但是柯克认为，正义应该服从亚里士多德的定义，即正义就是“给每个人属于他自己的一份”，而霍布斯则批判柯克的正义观趋于抽象，容易导致实际上的不正义；针对法律最高权威来源问题，柯克认为法律最高权威来源于法学者，而霍布斯则认为国王才是最高法律权威；关于习俗是否具有等同于法律的效力，柯克本人持肯定态度，霍布斯则持否定意见。     

A Grounded Theory of Sexual Minority Women and Transgender Individuals’ Social Justice Activism

Psychosocial benefits of activism include increased empowerment, social connectedness, and resilience. Yet sexual minority women (SMW) and transgender individuals with multiple oppressed statuses and identities are especially prone to oppression-based experiences, even within minority activist communities. This study sought to develop an empirical model to explain the diverse meanings of social justice activism situated in SMW and transgender individuals’ social identities, values, and experiences of oppression and privilege. Using a grounded theory design, 20 SMW and transgender individuals participated in initial, follow-up, and feedback interviews. The most frequent demographic identities were queer or bisexual, White, middle-class women with advanced degrees. The results indicated that social justice activism was intensely relational, replete with multiple benefits, yet rife with experiences of oppression from within and outside of activist communities. The empirically derived model shows the complexity of SMW and transgender individuals’ experiences, meanings, and benefits of social justice activism.     

Reconciling care and justice in contesting social harm through performance and arts practice with looked after children and care leavers

The proportion of young people taken into the care of the state has increased recently and there is evidence that this social group suffer negative long‐term outcomes that might be conceptualised by the emergent criminological category of ‘social harm’. Debates in social work around an ethics of care and justice offer different ways of thinking about responding to social harm. This paper reports findings from an innovative arts‐based intervention with Looked After Children and young people and concludes that holding these competing value sets in creative tension is central to the success of the programme in helping young people to cope with and contest social harm.     

Fiddling while the planet burns? COP25 in perspective

ABSTRACT

With fires, storms, social protests, and climate strikes sweeping the world, 2019 should have been a tipping point in how the world responds to global heating. This was the backdrop to the COP25 climate change summit which took place in Madrid in December 2019. This paper assesses the outcomes of the meeting and the path towards the critically important meeting in Glasgow at the end of 2020. It analyses and explains the key points of contention over levels of ambition, the rules which should govern global carbon markets and sensitive issues such as loss and damage associated with the impacts of climate change. The analysis is situated within a broader geopolitical and economic context of right-wing populism, deepening forms of marketization and financialization of responses to climate change and against a background of a world increasingly feeling the effects of the climate crisis.     

Adolescents in residential treatment: The prevalence of ACEs,substance use and justice involvement

Abstract

Although associations between developmental trauma, juvenile justice involvement and youth substance use have been previously reported in the published literature, the interconnection among these three factors has not been adequately studied. This article describes the interconnection among these three factors and calls for greater attention to the role of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in the diagnosis and treatment of youth who present with histories of substance use and/or offending behavior. Pilot data are presented that show high rates of self-reported trauma exposure, substance use history, justice involvement, and mental health problems in a sample of adolescents in residential treatment. The data point to the need for residential treatment centers to consider trauma histories in developing treatment plans for youth with current and prior substance use and offending behavior.     

Evaluating New Zealand’s restorative promise: the impact of legislative design on the practice of restorative justice

ABSTRACT

Restorative justice is regarded in modern criminal justice systems as one approach to address inadequacies in the conventional justice model. New Zealand has become a leader in implementing legislatively mandated restorative procedures. This reputation is due in part to a handful of supportive statutes: the Sentencing Act 2002, the Victims’ Rights Act 2002, the Parole Act 2002, the Corrections Act 2004 and subsequent amendments to those acts. In this article, I evaluate the practices bolstered by these acts and how effectively they operate, accounting for how legislative design may contribute to achievements and shortcomings in New Zealand's restorative justice programmes. I supplement the results by comparing New Zealand's efforts to those in Vermont, a U.S. state similarly well-regarded for its restorative policies. The evaluation of each jurisdiction's restorative justice programme is based on metrics for restorative success from Bazemore and Schiff (2005. Juvenile justice reform and restorative justice: building theory and policy from practice. Cullompton: Willan Publishing). I employ qualitative and quantitative data, surveying existing evaluations of restorative justice in New Zealand and Vermont, collecting longitudinal statistics, and conducting interviews with restorative justice practitioners. Overall, this analysis reveals that the design of restorative justice programmes requires negotiation; it is difficult to balance the dimensions of effective restorative justice with the needs of modern justice systems.     

How to Perform an Ethical Risk Analysis (eRA)

Ethical analysis is often needed in the preparation of policy decisions on risk. A three‐step method is proposed for performing an ethical risk analysis (eRA). In the first step, the people concerned are identified and categorized in terms of the distinct but compatible roles of being risk‐exposed, a beneficiary, or a decisionmaker. In the second step, a more detailed classification of roles and role combinations is performed, and ethically problematic role combinations are identified. In the third step, further ethical deliberation takes place, with an emphasis on individual risk‐benefit weighing, distributional analysis, rights analysis, and power analysis. Ethical issues pertaining to subsidiary risk roles, such as those of experts and journalists, are also treated in this phase. An eRA should supplement, not replace, a traditional risk analysis that puts emphasis on the probabilities and severities of undesirable events but does not cover ethical issues such as agency, interpersonal relationships, and justice.     

The social movement for reproductive justice: Emergence,intersectional strategies,and theory building

This article reviews the literature on the reproductive justice social movement and provides an overview of its main theorical and empirical foundations and contributions. It begins by tracing the emergence of reproductive justice, grounding it in longstanding histories of resistance and Black feminist theorizing. It highlights intersectionality as a social movement strategy and tactic embraced by reproductive justice activists, and highlights reproductive justice organizing and scholarship that contributes to our theoretical understandings of the racial politics of reproduction and abolition. In so doing, this piece makes two interrelated contributions. First, it argues reproductive justice generates material and theoretical contributions beyond the scope of what is possible for reproductive health and rights frameworks. Second, it demonstrates that bringing reproductive justice into the focus of sociological inquiry is important for advancing social science scholarship.     

Climate justice and sustained transnational mobilization

ABSTRACT

Samir Amin’s final essay called for the creation of a new international organization of progressive social forces. Here I review evidence from twenty-first century transnational movements germane for understanding the likelihood of the emergence of such an international organization and the issues and sectors most likely to facilitate coalitional unity. More specifically, the ecological crises identified by Amin in the form of global warming and climate change have created an unprecedented global environmental threat capable of unifying diverse social strata across the planet. The climate justice movement has already established a global infrastructure and template to coordinate a new international organization for confronting neoliberal forms of globalization. Pre-existing movement organizing around environmental racism, climate justice in the global South, and recent intersectional mobilizations serve as promising models for building an enduring international organization that will represent subaltern groups and have a substantial impact on world politics.