Advocacy by Proxy: The Children's Lobby in American Politics

This essay considers the organizational and political activity of the children's lobby in the United States with reference to four issues: how advocacy groups emerge and are sustained, how various groups are legitimated, how advocates participate in constructing a children's agenda, and how advocates respond to changes in this agenda. The essay argues that this group sector has mobilized and become stagnant in response to various structures of opportunity. Second, it suggests that children's representation evolves over time, with various facets of the issue gaining currency in turn. Attuned to these changes, advocates shift their collective focus to emerging concerns, or fail to remain viable. Third, public interest groups scramble to differentiate their programmatic foci, sources of revenue, ana services offered to members. Fourth, the essay considers how their ability to navigate these organizational concerns determines the ability of children's advocates, and of public interest groups more generally, to provide representation for otherwise marginalized groups in American politics.     

Trends in Education for Social Work Practice with Groups

A survey study of groupwork educators in graduate schools of social work indicated that group process and group-work methods courses continue to attract large numbers of students despite movement by schools away from single-method concentrations. Experiential learning groups, groupwork process records, and videotape instruction are the most widely used teaching tools of groupwork faculty. Critical problems facing groupwork educators include lack of methodological specificity in groupwork, the knowledge explosion in the group methods, and poorly developed group-work courses in schools of social work. The problem exists of determining what to teach and how to teach group methods.     

Social Work Education for Leadership Roles in State Government

Educating for social work leadership is vitally important. Recent trends in state government point to an increasing need for social work personnel capable of assuming leadership positions. This article looks at state government leadership roles, major trends in state government, and the mutuality of interests of state governments and social work education. Implications for the profession are examined through discussion of curriculum building and curriculum content.     

Shaping the Political Arena: A Comparative Approach Between American Lobby and Euro-Groups

Nowadays, interest groups are regarded as the efficient alternative to political parties, due to the pejorative image acquired through the process of ‘politicization’ of the latter. However, the efficacy of these representative institutions depends on the political system in which they activate. Therefore, a comprehensive difference should be noticed between the European pressure groups and the American ones. The most significant distinction is given both by the influencing environment and the strategic pathways followed in the lobby process. This article also analyses the similarities between the two political actors, focusing on the legitimacy in the name of which the interest groups formulate and implement their lobbying strategies.      

美国通识教育的渗透性对我国的启示

美国高校通识教育的源起及其发展至今有一百多年的历史,其教育理念和实践充分体现了美国的思想政治教育特色,以渗透的形式发挥着思想政治教育的功能。充分认识美国通识教育中渗透性思想政治教育的广度与深度,对于我国在新形势下加强和改进思想政治工作具有一定的借鉴和启发作用。     

Transformative Complicity and Cultural Humility: De- and Re-Constructing Higher Education Mentorship for Under-represented Groups

The American Sociological Association, academic administrators, and underrepresented faculty have voiced serious concerns about higher education exclusionary practices for more than a decade. A perspective called “home ethnography” is introduced as a methodological tool for understanding the situation of under-represented faculty. This home ethnographic study discusses doctoral trajectories in elite American university social science and social service programs. Varied mentorship sources and reactive/pro-active strategies of under-represented academics are analyzed through the lens of the social work codes of ethics and the alignment between the explicit and the implicit curriculum. The counterpoints and contradictions arising in mentor/mentee relationships, even within presumed similarities of ethnic identity, are addressed from critical feminist, race, and postcolonial theories. Emancipatory confluences that create potential advancement, despite almost insurmountable odds, are revealed through the paradigms of “transformative complicity,” “cultural humility,” and “empowerment.” In order to generate systemic change, managed risk-sharing and multi-sector inter-institutional mentorship are strongly recommended. These actions are more likely to trigger humanizing generative processes that lead to true inclusive diversity in higher education.     

通识教育与“90后”大学生社会主义核心价值观培养

通识教育作为一种全人教育,在理念、目标和内涵上与社会主义核心价值观教育存在着高度一致性,为"90后"大学生培育和践行社会主义核心价值观提供了一种新的教育理念和实践形态。为此,发挥两者的耦合效应,从课堂教学、校园文化、社会实践三个维度来深入探索促进社会主义核心价值观教育融入通识教育的途径,并着力构建培育和践行社会主义核心价值观的长效机制。     

未成年人群体与成年人群体道德状况比较

本文通过实证调查,在道德认知、道德情感、道德意志、道德行为等方面,对未成年人群体和成年人群体的道德状况进行比较,从生活环境可控度、自我意识发展、学校道德教育等向度分析道德差异的成因,提出要切实改进道德教育,加强学校道德教育的衔接,以及要针对未成年人群体的特殊性进行道德教育。     

Stratification and Ethnic Groups

Ethnic stratification is compared with other forms of stratification, particularly those based on economic class. Using "ethnic" in its broadest sense, it is clear that such groups are most likely to move toward creation of their own separate nation-state. As a consequence, there are certain outcomes of ethnic stratification that cannot be accounted for in a general theory of stratification or one based solely on economic dimensions. An ethnic stratification system will also affect other forms of stratification in the society. For example, class alliances will be weaker if a given economic level is occupied by different ethnic strata. The added proliferation of statuses in a society with ethnic stratification compounds the political process. Other ways are also considered in which the presence of an ethnic hierarchy in the nation interacts with and affects age, sex, and economic stratification.     

地方政府开展基层妇女职后教育工作对策研究

基层妇女的职后教育是妇女提升综合竞争能力,提升社会地位的重要途径。各级政府特别是地方政府对本辖区基层妇女开展职后教育工作重要而必要。结合职后教育的育人功能,以中山妇联与电子科技大学联合开设的网络教育妇女学员为样本,就基层妇女开展职后教育的影响因素进行了分析,并着重针对地方政府在基层妇女的职后教育工作的对策进行了深入分析。     

Strategic Groups and Rent Dissipation

We consider a rent-seeking contest in which players can form strategic groups before expending their outlays. We examine the profitability of endogenous group formation and the effect of such group formation on rent dissipation. We show the following: When just one strategic group is formed in equilibrium, group formation is beneficial both to the group members and to the nonmembers, and rent dissipation is smaller than with usual individual rent seeking. However, when more than two strategic groups are formed in equilibrium, group formation is never profitable to any players, and rent dissipation is greater than with individual rent seeking.     

Government Organization and Power

We develop a theoretical framework to examine how government organization affects its power and size. The framework abstracts from distortions that arise from the means of government finance and separates government power into two dimensions—pure coercive power and pure pricing power. A government can exert its coercive power to shift the demand for its services outward and grow too large. It can simultaneously exert its pricing power to restrict output along a given demand curve to earn rents. Consequently, neither size nor rents alone are reliable indicators of the extent to which government provision of services is nonoptimal.     

社会资本、政府绩效与城市居民对政府的信任

目前有关中国政治信任的研究多是在中国农村地区进行的,还没有对城市居民的相关研究。我们根据对厦门市居民的问卷调查考察了我国城市居民对政府的信任程度,并进一步分析了影响城市居民政府信任的各种因素。我们将社会资本和政府绩效作为主要的预测变量,探讨了社会资本各个因素及政府绩效对居民政府信任的影响情况。回归分析的结果表明,从总体上看,社会资本和政府绩效对城市居民政府信任的影响是积极正面的。改进政府工作和建构社会资本可以在很大程度上增加城市居民对各级政府的信任度。     

Missing Class: Strengthening Social Movement Groups by Seeing Class Cultures

No abstract available for this article.