Power and Role-Taking

Abstract

Power and role-taking theory argues that social structural arrangements influence face-to-face communication processes. Specifically, powerful and powerless interactants tend to differ in their motivation to take the other's role and in the accuracy of their interpersonal understandings. Basic concepts of the theory and its interrelated propositions are identified. A comprehensive literature review gauged its empirical support. With some qualifications, a set of 26 quantitative studies supported propositions regarding the relationship of unequal power to role-taking propensity, accuracy, and empathy. Examination of 8 qualitative studies offered fruitful directions for theoretical refinements. A set of 15 practice effectiveness studies suggest that role-taking processes in asymmetrical relationships can be changed. Practice implications for social workers committed to challenging the power imbalances typical to crossgender, interracial, interclass, and crossposition relationships are suggested.     

Theories of Aging and Social Work Practice with Sensitivity to Diversity

Abstract

Aging experiences are multidimensional, and social workers need to know theoretical perspectives on aging which are useful in understanding the diversity of experiences of individuals in later adulthood. This article describes and discusses four theoretical perspectives on aging which are not usually presented in Human Behavior and the Social Environment textbooks but which contribute to understanding of diversity in later adulthood: Atchley's continuity theory; Fisher's age-independent periods; Stoller and Gibson's perspectives on gender, race and ethnicity, class, and the life course; and Friend's theory of successful aging of gay men and lesbian women.     

Succession or Subversion: Professional Strategies of Soviet Cultural Revolution. The Case of Nikolai Marr

Abstract

Nikolai Marr's controversial New Teaching on Language was officially recognized as Marxism in Soviet linguistics and gained the position of the dominant scientific authority and social power in the early 1930s. Although the phenomenon of Marrism is frequently analysed from different points of view, its sociological dimension remains under-researched. Specifically, it is the role of the institutional environment and social dynamics within the discipline of linguistics that deserves particular attention. Making use of Pierre Bourdieu's theory of the scientific field and professional strategies, this paper examines the ascent of Marr's doctrine with regard to the institutional incentives and bureaucratic mechanisms employed for its promotion. Taking into account Marr's social and professional status, the article examines the ideological struggle in Soviet linguistics between Marrists and their opponents in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and argues that the succession and subversion strategies employed by the younger practitioners in the scientific field played a significant role in determining its outcome and securing the intellectual and social victory of Marrism, facilitated by the general socio-political atmosphere of Soviet Cultural Revolution.     

Foster care in South Australia

In 1969, a book titled “The semi-professions and their organisation: teachers, nurses, social workers” was published in the U.S.A.¹ Edited by sociologist Amitai Etzioni, the book's stated aim was “to increase sociological knowledge about the professions by focusing on a group of new professions whose claim to the status of doctors and lawyers is neither fully established nor fully desired”.² While the relegation of social workers to “semi-professional” status must have annoyed some American social workers, the same year saw a heartening step forward for social workers in Australia. On 3rd December, 1969, the Deputy Public Service Arbitrator (Mr. W. B. Wilson, B.A., Dip.Ed.) handed down Determination No. 386 of 1969, which substantially increased salaries of social workers in the Commonwealth Public Service.     

Researching religion: The vocation of the sociologist of religion

This paper reflects on the vocation or 'calling' of the researcher in the sociology of religion in the light of his experiences of researching transformations in English Catholicism in the last quarter of the twentieth century. It takes as its starting point Weber's two essays. A consideration of religious perspectives on the lay vocation leads to an evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of insider research. The paper reflects on research mistakes, threats and attempts to co-opt the researcher, unexpected surprises and serendipity, and the need for the social scientist to retain control of his/her research. It concludes with inspiration from Havel that the calling of the sociological researcher is socially important and urges renewed commitment to seeking with integrity the extension of certified knowledge and the demystification of powerful institutional structures.     

Contact Reduces Transprejudice: A Study on Attitudes towards Transgenderism and Transgender Civil Rights in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the relationship between Hong Kong Chinese people's contact with transgender/transsexual (TG/TS) people and attitudes toward transgenderism and transgender civil rights, based on Allport's Contact Hypothesis. The term transprejudice is introduced to refer to the negative valuing, stereotyping and discriminatory treatment of TG/TS people. Data are presented from a population-based survey with a random sample of 856 Hong Kong Chinese persons aged between 15 and 64, using the Chinese Attitudes towards Transgenderism and Transgender Civil Rights Scale (CATTCRS). Attitudes, assessed on both personal and institutional dimensions, are examined in relation to participants’ gender, age, educational level, religiosity, and previous contact with transpeople. Results suggest that previous contact with transpeople was significantly associated with attitudes reflected in the scale; decreased social distance, decreased social discrimination, and decreased transprejudice, increased awareness of discrimination against transpeople, increased support for equal opportunities, increased support for post-operative transsexual civil rights, and increased support for anti-discrimination legislation. Our findings support the contact hypothesis, that contact has a positive effect on attitudes towards TG/TS persons. We discuss the implications of these findings for public education interventions and public policy, as well as for research.     

Different while being similar: The dual institutional process and differential organizational status

Connecting the neoinstitutional theory with Bourdieu's field theory, we develop a framework on the dual institutional process of integration and differentiation in a field. While the neoinstitutional theory has focused on similar organizational structures, we shift the research focus to offer an institutional explanation of differential organizational status. Drawing insights from Bourdieu's theory and key concepts, we highlight that the very institutional mechanisms causing isomorphism—regulative forces, normative pressures, and cognitive processes—also generate systematic status differentiation among organizations via their different levels of capital, homologous structures, and various habitus in a field. Our extended framework has theoretical significance in advancing the neoinstitutional theory, the research of status in organizational and economic sociology, and the Bourdieusian perspective. By theorizing status differentiation among organizations, it also adds an important dimension to enrich our understanding of multilevel status and social hierarchies.     

Men and infertility: Insights from the sociology of gender

This review explores the framing of men and infertility in recent interdisciplinary social science research. I illustrate how men's diverse institutional roles surrounding medicalized experiences of infertility are critical for understanding inequality in reproduction. Situating research on men and infertility in the theoretical framework of gender as social structure shows how men's secondary position in reproduction can be seen across institutional roles, which include men as patients, men as partners, men as sperm donors, and men as doctors. Men's experiences with reproductive medicine often reinforce men's marginal position in reproductive medicine through institutionalized arrangements; yet, men are intimately and structurally involved in reproductive decisions. I argue that bringing gender to the center of research on infertility could make clear the many structural ways women and women's bodies are controlled, regulated, and treated by reproductive medicine.     

Current Manifestations of Racism: An Exploratory Study of Social Distance and White Racial Identity

Abstract

White racial identity theory postulates that White individuals differ in their psychological orientation to race. However, the racial attitudes research has not examined how these differences impact the degree of social contact an individual is likely to have with members from other racial groups. The authors assessed participants' White racial identity and social distance towards White, Asian, Black, Native, and Latino Americans. The nature of the relationship was examined with a canonical correlation analysis. The analysis revealed a significant canonical variate, which indicated that more developed White racial identity status attitudes were related to less social distance towards members of other racial groups, while less developed racial identity status attitudes were related to greater social distance preference. The authors discuss the results in terms of the implications for psychology and offer recommendations for future research     

Perceptions of Drinking and Related Findings From the Nationwide Campuses Study

Abstract

Proponents of social norms approaches maintain that correcting misperceptions of alcohol use among college students may reduce drinking and its consequences. The author used aggregate campus-level data from the Nationwide Campuses Study to test this hypothesis. He defined the misperceptions ratio as the ratio of the frequency of the “average student's” perceived alcohol use to the frequency of self-use at each campus. Each of the 57 colleges reported misperceptions ratios greater than unity. At campuses where students had more accurate perceptions of alcohol use, students were more likely to desire alcohol availability at campus events and to drink on more days throughout the year than at campuses where students had greater misperceptions of alcohol use. The author found no data to support the preferential use of social norms programming on campuses with high levels of self-reported alcohol use or binge drinking. These findings raise questions about potentially unexpected and unintended effects of social norms approaches.     

'Will the real Niklas Luhmann stand up, please'. A reply to John Mingers

This article is a critical response to John Minger's recently published piece ‘Can social systems be autopoietic?’. It draws attention to instances in this piece where Mingers has misconstrued Luhmann's theory—especially in the central concepts of openness and closure, system‐environment relation, interaction, and functionality, but also in the interpretation of the role which Luhmann ascribes to the political system—and it attempts to give a more accurate analysis of these terms, and of their place in Luhmann's overall sociology. The article also asserts, more generally, that to criticize Luhmann from the perspective of action‐centred theory, as Mingers has done, fails to reflect on and integrate Luhmann's direct challenge to perspectives of this kind. The article concludes with the argument that legitimate criticism of Luhmann should set out a more immanent account of his sociology, and should not simply have recourse to the more traditional sociological perspectives, which Luhmann has already effectively called into question.     

From state-bound subjects to global subjects: notes toward an Althusserian theory of globalized subjectivity

ABSTRACT

This article puts Louis Althusser's conception of subjective production via ideological interpellation in dialogue with contemporary Global theories – especially those of Saskia Sassen and Manfred Steger. It does this to offer a more robust framework for understanding subjective production that captures subjective transformations in the age of globalization. The article looks at how Sassen's work captures transformations of social and institutional structures in globalization and then looks at Steger's account of subjective transformations. It then turns to the ways in which Althusser's understanding of the intertwining of subjectivity with institutions and social practices can help bridge the gap between Sassen and Steger and can also help us understand the rise of what I call ‘global subjects’ and a ‘global subjectivity’ that can be in conflict with more traditional ‘state-bound’ subjects. I use the example of globalized regimes of care work in order to help make sense of these distinctions.     

Building Cultural Competence for Work with Diverse Families

Abstract

This paper proposes a postmodern approach to social work practice that links the perspectives of cultural competence, diversity, social constructionism, and a generalist strengths-based orientation for work with families. The profession's early work with diverse families is put into the context of privilege and contrasted with more contemporary models built on affirmation of diversity and the strengths of families. The component theoretical perspectives are reviewed and followed by a flexible pedagogical model that includes four steps and representative teaching strategies for implementation.     

The Estimation of Task Performance and Reward Recommendations as a Function of Status Ranks

Abstract

A recurrent concern among social psychologists is to determine how individuals react to status ranks of others. This study presented 144 college students with a hypothetical situation and asked them to recommend an reward allocation to a person in the situation and to estimate that person's future task performance. Subjects were presented with information about either a diffuse status characteristic (educational level), or specific status characteristic with task relevance (performance on a related task), or both for an individual in comparison to a standard comparison other. When information was available on only one status rank, rewards were allocated and task performance estimated consistent with the single status rank. When information about both status ranks were available, specific status significantly affected both the reward distribution and performance expectations, while diffuse status significantly affected the reward distribution and had a marginally significant effect on performance expectations. The results are discussed in terms of status expectancy theory (Berger et al.), Kimberly's modification and extension of that approach, and equity theory (Adams).     

Researching others: epistemology,experience, standpoints and participation

This paper discusses a longitudinal, interview-based study of Australian secondary school students that explores the interaction between school ethos and forms of subjectivity. The study was designed to enable prospective and retrospective understandings of identity over time. It is suggested that this methodology encourages a reflexive self-positioning for both participants and researchers and, in the accumulation of an archive of perspectives, responds to poststructuralist critiques of contingency and construction in research interviews. Second, it is argued that the richness of longitudinal research invites more than one kind of analysis, and that working with and across conventionally divergent theoretical approaches can be fruitful. This is discussed with reference to Bourdieu's account of social field and habitus, and Hollway and Jefferson's notion of the 'defended subject'.     

Effects of sociodemographic factors,stage of illness,and perceived stigma on the identification of a support person among women with HIV infection

Addressing the lack of research on the social distribution of social support and research on the social experience of women with HIV infection, this article examines how sociodemographic factors, stage of illness, and perceived stigma affected the identification of a supportive social relationship among HIV‐infected women. Data were collected from women with HIV disease living in the state of Georgia. Logistic regression analysis indicates that after taking account of other factors, marital status, rural‐urban residency, stage of illness, and stigmatization were significant predictors of whether the women identified a support person. Single status and rural residency had negative effects on the outcome. Those who were at the advanced stage of illness were less likely than those at the asymptomatic stage to identify a supportive relationship. Contrary to our expectation, stigmatization had positive effects on the outcome. Implications and limitations of the analysis are discussed, followed by directions for future research.     

Psychodynamic theory within the politics of social work theory

Abstract

It is argued that social work theory has a politics in which supporters of theoretical perspectives are in discourse. The political position of psychodynamic theory has varied in each of three phases of social work theoretical development: the pre-influence, dominance and alternatives phases. In the dominance phase social work theories usually derived from psychoanalysis, psychodynamic ideas permeated basic social work practices and non-psychodynamic perspectives were influenced by it. In the alternatives phase, these influences continued, psychodynamic theory became a player in a wider discourse, was incorporated into or incorporated other perspectives and continued its dominance in specific settings. However, intensity of criticism of it, non-therapeutic approaches in much of social work, restricted training programmes, poor media of professional communication, the novelty of newer perspectives and poor transfer of new developments in psychodynamic theory have implied an insecure position for psychodynamic theory. But many of these problems are shared by alternative perspectives and its historical strength, strength in related occupations its adaptiveness and inclusiveness and the development of post-qualifying training offer continuing avenues to strengthen its political position within social work theory