The Contribution of Macro-intervention Social Workers to the Success of Volunteer Community Activists

The study examined the contribution of macro-intervention social workers to volunteer activists from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. Volunteer activists who were supervised by macro-intervention social workers were compared with those who were not supervised. The comparisons related to internal variables (leadership competence and client participation), as well as to external variables (community activity, and representation), and to support from rabbis for community activity. The sample consisted of 62 activists who were supervised by macro-intervention social workers, and 101 activists who were not. The findings revealed differences between the supervised and non-supervised activists with regard to levels of community activity and representation. With regard to leadership competence and client participation, no significant differences were found. Analysis of the study findings aimed to provide new perspectives on the contribution of professional supervision, as reflected in the differences found between the activists who were supervised versus those who were not.     

ASSERTING THE POLITICAL SELF: Community Activism Among Black Women Who Relocate to the Rural South

In this article, I address the collective process of politicization in a group of urban working-class black women who have departed from large cities in the northeast United States and resettled in small towns and scattered, isolated rural communities in the Southeast. The study examines how newcomes became politically involved in their new environment and particularly, how social constraints and opportunities embedded within local political culture influenced their experiences of becoming activists. I employ a critical feminist approach in which an understanding of political agency is grounded in culturally and geographically specific social relations. I argue that activist politics of returnees are framed and formed by unequal gender, race, and class relations resonant in the political culture of the rural South. Localized social conventions define and normalize allowable political roles, discourses, and actions for working-class black women. As newcomers and outsiders, women activists and their actions become politicized in the process of encountering, questioning, and ultimately, subverting these conventions. As the women returnees engaged local political culture, their practices were interpreted as a violation of established paternalist norms of community activism by both white power holders and local working-class black women. This transgression influenced the formation of their identities as political agents and may potentially disrupt the power relations in the surrounding community as well. The study's findings demonstrate the importance of situating race, class, and gender relations in the analysis of activist politics in general and among black working-class women in particular. The study is based on participant observation and interviews with working-class black women activists in three counties in southeastern North Carolina.     

Politicians and Social Movements: The Impact of Electoral Victory on Local,National, and Transnational Activism by Hmong Americans in Minneapolis–St. Paul

Political opportunity theory predicts that increased access to the political system benefits social movements by disadvantaged groups. To test this prediction, this paper evaluates the impact of two elected Hmong American officials on social movement campaigns in their community during their time in office. Content analysis of newspaper reports is used to (i) create a sample of nine local, national, and transnational social movement campaigns in the community; and (ii) determine in which of four possible ways the elected officials supported the campaigns: favorable media interviews, speeches at events, event organization, and legislation initiation. Only the two transnational campaigns which mobilized the entire community received all four types of support. The paper concludes that elected officials, even former activists from an ethnic minority community, carefully select the causes they will fully support. After electoral victory, social movements must still actively engage sympathetic politicians in order to turn an opening in the political system into actual access to power.     

Sariling Gawa Youth Council as a Case Study of Youth Leadership Development in Hawai'i

SUMMARY

This article describes Sariling Gawa Youth Council as a case study of youth leadership development in Hawai'i. Since 1980, thousands of young people-primarily Filipino youth-have participated in Sariling Gawa activities which have developed their leadership skills. Many of them have continued to lead the organization and utilize what they learned with numerous local organizations and state agencies. The authors examine Sariling Gawa's growth, structure, and other factors that contribute to its longevity. The model includes (1) youth empowerment through building their leadership skills, (2) fostering and strengthening peer social support and social networks, (3) promotion of positive ethnic identity, and (4) community capacity building by involving youth in civic and community affairs.     

Building communities: The postmodern CSR practitioner as a dialectical activist-agent in India

This study examined the conceptualization of the postmodern public relations practitioner as an organizational activist who contributes to democratic processes in the context of community relations and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in India. Elite, in-depth conversations with 19 senior executives at 16 companies in India well known for their CSR initiatives revealed that practitioners appeared to be both organizational activists and agents. As organizational activists, they acknowledged the existence of diverse voices in local communities, interjected these voices into management discourse, situated decision-making in local contexts, identified tensors in the relationship between the corporation and its publics, and negotiated new meanings through dissensus. Paradoxically, as organizational agents, they used these participatory, open processes of dialogic communication to shape public opinion in favour of the organization, feeding modern organizations’ proclivity for consensus. While the findings of the study support the postmodern conceptualization of the public relations practitioner as an organizational activist in the context of CSR and community relations, the agent aspect of the activist-agent dialectic problematizes and complicates this conceptualization thus enhancing understandings of the postmodern practitioner who enacts CSR within a modernist framework and navigates the intricacies of the activist-agent dialectic in their daily performance of building community relations and enabling democratic processes.     

COMMUNITY INFORMATICS AND THE LOCAL STATE IN THE UK: Facilitating or assimilating an agenda for change?

The emerging discipline of community informatics (CI) has begun to trace out a distinct agenda for change in the social uses of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Focusing upon the appropriation of ICTs by local communities who have been disenfranchised by technological development, this agenda foregrounds uses of the Internet in the pursuit of distinctly community-related objectives. However, the role that the local state ought to play within this agenda for change remains marked by a degree of controversy and ambiguity. Assertions of the need for community autonomy coexist uneasily with a recognition that the local state can help develop and sustain CI. Much current work therefore focuses upon exploring notions of 'partnership' between the local state and local groups in developing CI. Against this background, this paper draws on a case study of Birmingham City Council (BCC) in order to explore a series of significant organizational changes to local government, which have seen BCC adopt a fundamentally new 'community leadership' role. This shift to community leadership is being expedited by innovative uses of Internet technology. It is argued that, rather than straightforwardly re-creating BCC as a better partner to community groups in developing CI, such changes are deeply paradoxical. In the first instance shifts to community leadership have enabled BCC to develop valuable web resources that enhance their role as a partner facilitating citizen-led CI. Conversely, however, these changes are bound up in a broader attempt by BCC to reassert managerial control at a time when its legitimacy as a social institution is being questioned. Faced with a series of external challenges, BCC has replicated important CI activities in the pursuit of its own interests. Ultimately it is argued that this assimilation of CI could eventually undermine the broader CI agenda for change.     

Combating Racial Inequity Through Local Historical Analysis: A Community-Informed Social Studies Unit

One way for teachers to use engaging and relevant social studies curriculum is by delving into local history to help students understand the influence that community activists have had on national policies and events. In this article, we provide teachers an approach to incorporate topics of racial inequity in their classrooms by showcasing a dynamic social studies unit that reveals the role of local history and community activists during the national Civil Rights Movement. As an example within the unit, we present a local, historical narrative that describes the activism of three local Black teachers in Palm Beach County, Florida, whose efforts in the 1940s significantly impacted the foundations of what was to become the Civil Rights Movement. We then present a multicultural social studies unit developed from this local history and guidelines for teachers to enact their own locally informed social studies unit. This content will help teachers expose students to the rich history of their community’s past by sharing ways that teachers can incorporate culturally relevant instruction of racially charged topics into the classroom.     

Social media teams as digital vanguards: the question of leadership in the management of key Facebook and Twitter accounts of Occupy Wall Street,Indignados and UK Uncut

Recent protest movements such as Occupy Wall Street in the US, the indignados/15M movement in Spain, and UK Uncut have witnessed the rise of social media teams, small activist groups responsible for managing high-visibility and collective activist social media accounts. Going against dominant assertions about the leaderless character of contemporary digital movements, the article conceptualises social media teams as ‘digital vanguards’, collective and informal leadership structures that perform a role of direction of collective action through the use of digital communication. Various aspects of the internal functioning of vanguards are discussed: (a) their formation and composition; (b) processes of internal coordination; (c) struggles over the control of social media accounts. The article reveals the profound contradiction between the leadership role exercised by social media teams and the adherence of digital activists to techno-libertarian values of openness, horizontality, and leaderlessness. The espousal of these principles has run against the persistence of power and leadership dynamics leading to bitter conflicts within these teams that have hastened the decline of the movements they served. These problems call for a new conceptual framework to better render the nature of leadership in digital movements and for new political practices to better regulate the management of social media assets.     

Community Economic Development Strategies in Rural Washington: Toward a Synthesis of Natural and Social Capital*

Abstract Routes to economic development attract considerable attention in community and rural sociology. Social scientists draw increasingly on studies of social capital and environmental surroundings as they examine the factors that facilitate and inhibit economic development. However, few empirical analyses exist that analyze the impact of the combination of social infrastructure and natural capital on different forms of economic development such as on industrial recruitment and self‐development. Using data collected from six communities in Washington State, the interaction of a community's social infrastructure and natural capital on industrial recruitment and self‐development efforts is examined. Results suggest that while natural capital positively impacts a community's successful recruitment of outside industries, it is not significant for a community's level of self‐development. However, a community's social infrastructure, measured by the existence of active civic organizations, local businesses that support local community projects, community‐wide fund‐raising capacity, and extra‐local linkages to nearby communities, state, and national agencies, positively affects both industrial recruitment and self‐development. These findings illustrate the need for communities and local activists to carefully weigh their advantages and potential shortcomings when deciding on an economic development strategy.     

Passing a Mental Health Levy

ABSTRACT

The “devolution revolution” has decreased federal and state roles in the funding of social services and increased the burden on local sources, both public and private. This article describes how a community passed an initially unpopular property tax levy earmarked to support local drug, alcohol and mental health services. The article illustrates how social workers employing specific community practice knowledge provided leadership to the successful campaign. This example of community practice leadership includes building and maintaining coalitions, managing group tension and conflict and demonstrating fundamental social work values.     

THE IMPACT OF SUPPORT RESOURCES ON LOCAL CHAPTER OPERATIONS IN THE ANTIDRUNK-DRIVING MOVEMENT

Resource mobilization is critical for the development of social movement organizations. This study evaluates the differential impact of membership support and community organization support on the goals and operations of local chapters of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). It was found that membership support is associated with the programming goals of local chapters, that is, public awareness, victim assistance, and promoting antidrunk-driving legislation. Community organization support was only associated with youth education as a programming emphasis. In terms of organizational operations, membership support was associated with more central office contacts and increased contacts with other MADD chapters and more cooperative programming with the national central office of MADD. In contrast community organization support was associated with less contact and more disagreement with the central office on policies and less cooperation on programs.     

Event Coalitions in the Pittsburgh G20 Protests

Protests at events such as the 2009 Group of Twenty (G20) Summit in Pittsburgh frequently require activists to engage in some type of coalition work. This article examines two event coalitions created to organize the Pittsburgh G20 protests: the Pittsburgh G20 Resistance Project (PGRP), consisting of local anti‐authoritarians, and a loose alliance of individuals and organizations brought together by the Thomas Merton Center (TMC), a local peace and justice movement center. I show how the organizational structure and early decisions of the PGRP made it more effective than the TMC alliance and how those choices were affected by preexisting network structures, social movement organizations, ideological alignments, and relationships in the local movement community. The experiences of activists in event coalitions, both positive and negative, then affect the shape of the movement community and subsequent coalitions and campaigns.     

Social Activists: Lessons for Community Psychology

In a graduate class in community psychology, each student studied the lives and achievements of social activists. This article integrates the work and accomplishments of 5 social activists into a conceptual and methodological framework for social change within community psychology. These activists worked on issues including national liberation, women's suffrage, the rights of migrant workers, and community development. The methods used by these activists are particularly relevant to the field of community psychology. The article discusses the implications of the work and accomplishments of these social change agents.     

Leadership and local development: Dimensions of leadership in four Central Queensland towns

Effective community leadership is increasingly recognised in Australia, as elsewhere, as an important contributor to local economic and social development. This article examines the nature of community leadership in four Central Queensland towns as part of a wider project to test the links between it and the pace and form of local development. Empirical data on leadership questions were collected from in-depth interviews with prominent local individuals. The resulting information enables a comparison of the quality and depth of leadership present in each of the towns. The capabilities of key leaders are assessed on the basis of four leadership functions and eight variables representing personal attributes. In addition, the authors develop, and in turn evaluate, a set of a priori propositions about the exercise of leadership in small Australian country towns. The information provided and its subsequent analysis reveal that leaders' backgrounds, styles and abilities vary substantially between the four towns studied and are changing for a variety of reasons.     

Studying the particular, illuminating the general: community studies and community in Wales

This article is inspired by Frankenberg's (1990 ) claim that the best way to understand general social processes is through the study of their manifestation in the details of social life. We look at how studies of community that have been carried out in Wales, particularly Village on the Border and The Family and Social Change (Rosser and Harris, 1965), have accomplished this link between the particular and the general. We then consider the findings of our own research, which is a restudy of Rosser and Harris, showing how they provide a counterbalance to grand theoretical claims about the transformations that are affecting community and family life. We find that although factors such as increasing geographical mobility and women's greater participation in paid work affect people's experiences of community, people continue to place a high value on what they call communities. Such communities are spoken about and defined in different ways but all are based on local social networks of kin, neighbours and friends and/or locally‐based associations. They are also gendered, with women playing a key role at both informal and formal levels of community. We suggest that the apparent resilience of local social relations evident in our research may help to explain the continued cultural and political resonance of community in Wales.     

Community Organizing and the Detroit Water Struggle: Report from the Front Lines

At this moment in history, both the need for macro social work approaches and interest in macro social practice among social workers are growing. One macro approach that is particularly well-suited to confronting current political and economic conditions is grassroots community organizing. Some authors have suggested that most successful efforts at community organizing are those which can link the lived experiences of grassroots community members to larger movements for social justice. The struggle for access to affordable water in Detroit is a prime example of such an effort. In 2014, indignation at the announcement that the city would be shutting off the water of all those who could not afford to pay their water bills, combined with resistance to the imposition of emergency management on the city, galvanized a movement that brought together a wide variety of community members, activists, and organizers. As a participant-observer in this struggle, I conducted videotaped interviews with 15 organizers and activists concerning their views on the successes and challenges they have witnessed and the crucial “next steps” for community activists in Detroit. This article reports on these interviews and examines the lessons for community organizers that emerged from them.     

Radical Normals: The Moral Career of Straight Parents as Public Advocates for Their Gay Children

Sociological research has examined straight parents in “traditional” family arrangements who become gay rights activists, but pays insufficient attention to how this puzzling identity comes into being. Drawn from observations and interviews of parents participating in a local chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) (2009 to 2010), this paper analyzes the parenting activities undertaken by straight parents of gay children as a moral career, involving stages of acceptance that can lead to eventual public advocacy. Paradoxically, these parents become radical normals through these stages; that is to say, they “do” the work of parenting by becoming gay rights advocates, motivated by commitments to conventional imperatives of loving and supporting a child. Using the conceptual scaffolding of the moral career, this paper identifies the mechanisms that move parents through these different career stages.     

Accounting for Victimization: Social Constructionist Perspectives

This paper reviews research and theory on the social construction of victims and victimization. There are four areas of inquiry: victims’ self‐processes, the collaborative accomplishment of victimization, social problems claims‐making, and social movement framing. Scholars in each area take a symbolic interactionist perspective. Because victimization is potentially stigmatizing, much of this research and analysis draws on the literature on vocabularies of motive, aligning activities, and accounts. Literature on self‐processes examines how victims come to see themselves as victims and their situations as deviant. Often, when they try to establish their victim identities with others, they can be discredited or blamed if they do not meet expectations of typical victims. When people want to show that a social problem exists, they use images of victims to evoke sympathy and other emotions. Sometimes, collective identities may not be sympathetic, and also need to be managed, through the framing work of activists.