Book Review: Transforming Social Inquiry,Transforming Social Action: New Paradigms for Crossing the Theory/Practice Divide in Universities and Communities. Edited by Francine T. Sherman and William R. Torbert. Kluwer Academic Publishers,Boston, 2000, 301 pp., $125 (hardback)

Sociological Practice -     

Social Theory and Self-Organization: Toward a Sociology of Postmodernism

Abstract Significant changes which represent a linguistic and semantic turn in social theory occurred between in the mid 1970's and the early 1980's. This turn indicates the importance of the social and public dimensions of symbolic meaning that has been distorted functionally by orthodox modernization theory. Modern society is characterized as penetrating the idea of functional primacy into various areas of social life, but in the 1980's skepticism about modernity increased markedly and fluctuation of modernity was resulted. In this paper I discuss the problem of symbolic meaning and fluctuation of modernity from the viewpoint of self-organization paradigm which emphasizes ‘order from fluctuation’ and self-reference, and review the possibility of a postmodern sociology through claiming the necessity to ask how anti-control systems can be built.     

Cross-Cultural Perspectives in Social Work Practice and Education,Edited by Marta Sotomayor. Graduate School of Social Work,University of Houston,Houston, Texas, 1976. Price Unavailable. 177 Pp.

There is a growing imperative to prepare MSW social work students for trauma-informed evidence-based practice. Given strong recommendations and promising developments within social work education and practice in this regard, a clinical elective for the advanced-year MSW student that combines the guiding principles of trauma theory and problem-based learning was created. This article describes the course objectives, structure, and format and reports on an evaluation based on 7 (total) offerings of the course by 4 different schools of social work. The course methodology was found to be effective in all schools in significantly increasing students’ self-confidence in working with traumatized children, adolescents, and their families. Implications for social work education are discussed.