A Feminist Response to Rothman's 'The Interweaving of Community Intervention Approaches'

This paper critiques Jack Rothman's ''The Interweaving of Community Intervention Approaches'' (this volume) from a feminist perspective. A feminist version of his intervention typology, using a wide range of exemplars, is constructed. It suggests the scope of feminism not recognized in his account. Discussion centers on the construction of this feminist typology, which illuminates problems inherent in a categorical approach to community practice, such as Rothman's. It is argued that much would be gained by recognizing the dimensions of ideology, longitudinal development, and commitment within community intervention and incorporating social movement literature into practice analyses.     

The Response of Social Work to the Depression,by Jacob Fisher. Schenkman Publishing Co., Cambridge,Mass., and G. K. Hall and Co., Boston, 1980. $23.95.266 Pp.

Abstract

This article presents an innovative refinement in the use of group process records for educational purposes, reviews the history of Rothman's Committee for the Preparation of Teaching Materials, and discusses the Committee's development of a comprehensive framework for teaching records. The teaching record fosters student attentiveness to practice context and complexities, regard for ongoing self-evaluation, and interest in cooperative learning. Teaching records also provide a structure for integrative learning through the identification, elucidation, linkage, and illustration of practice concepts and principles. The five key parts of the teaching record—major teaching themes, overview of group characteristics, group process record, teaching points, and teaching strategies—are described, and excerpts from an illustrative teaching record of a session with nursing home residents are presented.     

Social work and therapy: Reclaiming a generic therapeutic space in child and family work

This paper reflects upon some mixed messages found in recent consultation and framework documents that have been issued as part of the debate surrounding the Government's emphasis upon education and training within its 'modernisation' agenda. It identifies the long-standing arguments about 'testing' versus 'learning' or 'contextual' paradigms and suggests that, perhaps, there is still scope to influence the future direction of social work. The author has drawn upon his research with social workers and their team managers in current post-qualification award programmes to argue for a renewed emphasis upon the inter-personal and relationship aspects of educational processes within more broadly conceived socio-cultural contexts. A focus upon reflexively defined concepts of 'engagement' and 'assessment' is used to explore constructivist arguments that locate individuals within an interplay of potential and constraints. It is argued that constructive engagements within revised conceptions of assessment can form the basis of a framework of continuing professional development that starts from and develops the unique realities of social work practice. This requires the committed involvement of more people, in the negotiation of a professional practice agenda for knowledge creation through relationships, rather than the imposition of more measures.     

Urban Political Theory and the Symmetrical Model of Community Power in Singapore

Modernity's concern within metropolitan regimes includes the revival of community power through 'growth machines' and 'urban regime' theory. This paper introduces the symmetrical model of community power for the creation of civil society in urban centres like Singapore which, apodictically, represents a 'First World' city-state in a 'Third World' region. Singapore's urban growth engines falls within a variety of state-sanction and quasi-private metropolitan urban regimes that have contributed to innovative uses of human and material resource allocation. But can the people creatively empower themselves? The model is premised on liberal democratic ideals of community empowerment, and represents a plausible alternative to paternalism in preparation for the uncertainties of modernity in the twenty-first century.     

Community Work:

This article presents a typology of models of community work currently extant in the United Kingdom. It focuses on clarifying theoretical points through analysis of the currently most widely accepted contemporary models in use throughout the UK: community care; community organization; community development; social/community planning; community education; and community action, and developing models of feminist community work, and black and anti-racist community work. The typology presented is organized on a continuum from models focused on ''care'' to those focusing on ''action.'' Each model is analyzed in relation to the following characteristics: strategy; workers' main roles; and typical agencies and examples of work. Selected critical key texts treating each model are documented. Discussion highlights similarities and differences among the models particularly with regard to techniques and skills and ideological traditions to provide a framework to understand community work practice.     

Traversing the swampy terrain of postmodern communities: Towards theoretical revisionings of community development

This paper engages with recent theoretical explorations of 'community' and situates community development within a futures framework which emphasizes creative possibilities for traversing the often contested, paradoxical terrain of postmodernism. Such an engagement is posited as important given that practice traditions such as community development have continued to rely predominantly on modernist reference points, which are increasingly showing signs of inadequacy in relation to contemporary issues and contexts. Some recent arguments have suggested that the material base of 'community' (and therefore of 'community practice') is under attack from both political and ideological processes such as globalization and postmodernism. Paradoxically, in social theory more generally, there is a simultaneous renewed interest in notions of 'community', and potentials for the development of new local sites of resistance in relation to these very same processes. Primarily a theoretical contribution to the creation of possibilities for re-visioning community development under conditions of globalization and postmodernity, this paper presents and explores three signposts which signal a range of challenges for the futures of community development: interpreting 'community' as a VERB--not a NOUN--and thereby bringing meaning, context and relationality to the centre; integrating the personal, the local and the global and thereby placing community development in a wholistic framework; and, accepting different ways of knowing, doing and being in community development, and thereby opening spaces for difference and mystery in praxis.     

'Gemeinschaft' skills versus 'Gesellschaft' skills in social work education and practice. Applying To¨nnies' dichotomy for a model of intercultural communication

F. Tönnies's 'Gemeinschaft'/'Gesellschaft' dichotomy is discussed as an analytical and explanatory framework for identifying individual social work education modules' relevance to immigrant- and migration-related problems in social work practice. It is claimed that 'Gemeinschaft' (community) skills are especially needed in these practice contexts, as opposed to the more scientific, legal or administrative 'Gesellschaft' (state, society) skills. Two empirical studies from Germany dealing with the necessary competencies for social workers advising immigrants are drawn upon. A variety of other case study material is included to make the point that social workers need 'Gemeinschaft' skills more than has traditionally been assumed.     

Leaving Alinsu: Towards a Transformative Community of Practice

Wenger's portrait of Alinsu insurance claims processors as elaborated in Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity remains closely associated with the community of practice model. The enduring metaphor of Alinsu has limited the scope of Wenger's theory to relatively simplistic, closed, and reproductive systems. The model has both reproductive and transformative potential, and it is the latter that has been less widely taken up and developed. In this article I consider ways in which analyzing a different instantiation, the No Outsiders participatory action research project, can reinvigorate and broaden our understandings of the community of practice model and point the way toward the possibility of learning and practice communities that are more transformative and less reproductive.     

System Stress and the Persistence* of Emergent Organizations

A model facilitating the prediction of organizational persistence or dissolution is presented through a series of propositions. Environmental change, community demands for service, organizational capacity, formalization, and task orientations are identified as important dimensions in determining the probability of organizational emergence, maintenance, or demise. The emergence and development of Neighbors in Need (NIN); a Seattle, Washington based welfare organization, is described to illustrate the viability of the model. NIN's career pattern shows a persistence beyond the period of environmental disruption because of the long-term progressive nature of the system's stress, NIN's formalization, and its task specificity. But a reduction in system stress, the adoption of a more diffuse goal, and the organization's failure to promote interorganizational relations with the local agencies indicates the probable demise of the NIN.     

Community characteristics and out-migration from Canadian Indian reserves

Path models, at two levels of complexity, examine the effects of community characteristics upon levels of off-reserve residence among 500 Canadian Indian communities. The presentation of a concise model followed by a more complex one allows a simpler causal chain to be elaborated, illustrating the importance of several variables that do not directly affect off-reserve residence levels. The more complex model supports various hypotheses under multiple controls, expands our understanding of native communities, and clears up a few misconceptions and spurious interpretations. It is clear that certain community characteristics (e.g., institutional completeness) encourage the retention of members, thereby enhancing the viability of reserve-based communities: other characteristics encourage boundary breakdown and out-migration. Des trajectoires modéles, à double niveaux de complexité, étudient les effets des caracté-ristiques de la communauté sur les niveaux de résidence hors de la réserve parmi cinq cents communautés indiennes canadiennes. La présentation d'un modèle concis, suivie d'un plus complexe, permet l'élaboration de la plus simple chaine causale, illustrant l'importance de plusieurs variables qui n'affectent pas directement les niveaux de résidence hors des réserves. Le modèle plus complexe appuie plusieurs hypothèses, sous de multiples contrôles, développe notre compréhension des communautés aborigènes, et éclaircit quelques fausses idées et interprétations. Il est clair que certaines caractéristiques de la communauté (e.g. état institutionnel complet) encouragent les membres à rester, rehaussant ainsi la viabilité des communautés dans les réserves: d'autres caractéristiques encouragent l'écroulement des frontières et l'émigration à l'extèrieur.     

Community‐oriented Social Work in Cuba: Government Response to Emerging Social Problems

Cuba developed a unique community‐oriented social work approach in the 1990s that transformed social work education and practice. This paper describes that approach and why it emerged when it did. A review of the literature on social change in Cuba in the 1990s, and 31 open‐ended interviews conducted in Havana, Cuba, showed that social work changed in response to economic crisis, emerging social problems and the need for social workers for community practice. Social workers' participation in neighborhood development projects and Cuba's post‐Revolutionary communal ethos also shaped a community‐oriented social work approach in Cuba. This approach contrasts with an individually oriented model in the US and in Britain. Social workers in Cuba and in these countries can learn from one another, despite the differences that exist among them.     

Mental health social work in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland: challenges and opportunities for developing practice

Drawing on their experience of mental health social work in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, the authors examine the impact of current legislative and policy change in both jurisdictions. The paper applies Lorenz's theoretical framework to develop a comparative analysis of how global and country specific variables have interacted in shaping mental health social work. The analysis identifies linkages between factors and indicates similarities and differences in mental health social work practice. The paper highlights emerging discourses in this field and explores the impact on practice of developments such as de-institutionalisation, community care, and ‘user rights’ versus ‘public protection’. The article concludes with a review of key challenges facing social workers in both jurisdictions and identifies opportunities for developing mental health social work in ways that can positively respond to change and effectively address the needs of mental health service users and their carers. The analysis provides an opportunity to evaluate Lorenz's theoretical framework and the paper includes a brief critical commentary on its utility as a conceptual tool in comparative social work.     

The impossibility of loving: blanchot,community, sexual difference

This paper aims to clarify Blanchot's notion of community and his practice of communism through, first, an account of his involvement in the Events of May 1968 and, second, an exploration of The Unavowable Community, in which Blanchot reads a short novel by Marguerite Duras, which recounts the tropisms of a brief relationship between a young woman and a homosexual man. As I show, Blanchot's affirmation of what he calls “the impossibility of loving”, which emerges from his reading of Duras, is linked to what he calls “worklessness [désoeuvrement]”; that is, the active process of loosening or undoing that contests any attempt to establish a community around a shared essence. I will claim that it is by attending to the relationship to worklessness that one might attend to what Blanchot calls the “spaces of freedom” that open around us: to those happenings which are not enclosed by prevailing determinations of the social space. A further aim of this paper is to address the concerns of Jacques Derrida, for whom Blanchot's writings on community betray what he calls in Politics of Friendship a “schematic of filiation”, in which the relation to the brother is the privileged model for the relation to the Other. I also provide an account of Blanchot's negotiation of Levinas's account of the relationship between ethics and eros as it is presented in Totality and Infinity.     

Racial/Ethnic Minority Community College Students' Critical Consciousness and Social Cognitive Career Outcomes

A need exists to better understand how racial/ethnic minority students' critical consciousness development in response to marginalization may be involved in their educational and career development. We therefore examined the link between critical consciousness development and career decision self-efficacy and career outcome expectations among racial/ethnic minority community college students. Following social cognitive career theory's conceptual pillars, we developed a testable model integrating critical consciousness and social cognitive variables. This model was tested with 135 racially and ethnically diverse community college students. Data analysis included path analyses and tests of model fit using structural equation modeling. Results suggested that (a) higher critical agency is linked to higher career decision self-efficacy and outcome expectations and (b) critical action and reflection have a bidirectional link and predict higher critical agency. Implications for research and practice aiming to close educational and career gaps among racial/ethnic minorities are discussed.     

Four Months to System Change

Abstract

This paper discusses the process through which students in a Community Intervention class brought about change in university policy to recognize Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday as a university holiday. It includes tactics and strategies used to influence decision makers, to educate the community, and to empower the minority community on the campus. It discusses important lessons for students including the political nature of system change, issues of power and stratification, and the impact of successful tactics on the opposition. This project was able to bring about change in a system that was unwilling to change. In today's social climate, that is often what social workers must do. Experiencing the process of system change during the educational process allows for the lessons of one class to be applied to larger systems of service delivery in professional practice.     

“Recycling”: The Economic Implications of Obtaining Additional Post‐secondary Credentials at Lower or Equivalent Levels*

Cet article explore les revenus des diplômés des collèges communautaires et des programmes universitaires de premier cycle. Le premier but de cette étude est de déterminer si les programmes des collèges communautaires en formation technique et appliquée procurent à leurs finissants de meilleurs revenus que ceux des arts libéraux, soi‐disant « plus mous ». Le second but est d'examiner les répercussions économiques de L'obtention d'un nouveau titre scolaire de niveau postsecondaire qui n'a pas été conçu dans le but d'être une continuation du premier titre, une pratique connue sous le nom de « recyclage ». Des comparaisons par champ d'étude sont aussi étudiées. This paper explores the earnings of graduates of community college and university undergraduate programs of different fields of study. There are two goals of this study. The first goal is to determine whether technical and applied community college programs provide their graduates with better earnings outcomes than do the so‐called “softer” liberal arts programs. The second goal is to examine the economic implications of obtaining an additional post‐secondary credential that is not designed to be a continuation of the first credential, a practice known as “recycling.” Comparisons by field of study are also investigated.     

Book Review

This article is concerned with current understandings of the relevance of urban community studies within sociology. It starts by revisiting some of the major critiques made of community studies in the 1960s and 1970s, and briefly reviews whether network analysis, and in particular a focus on ‘personal communities’, provided a satisfactory alternative approach. The main part of the article argues that despite the criticisms there have been there is still much to be gained from a focus on people's attachments to locality, including the networks to which they are linked. Taking processes of globalization and migration as its major themes, the article explores how research has demonstrated the continuing relevance of ‘locality’ and ‘community’ for understanding the ways that contemporary social and economic transformations shape people's experiences. As well as considering different aspects of social exclusion, the article reviews how recent studies have explored the increasingly complex interplay of locality and identity.     

The persistence of variation in individual grammars: Copula absence in ‘urban sojourners’ and their stay‐at‐home peers,Bequia (St Vincent and the Grenadines)1

Recent work on phonological variation largely supports the apparent‐time construct, though some change across an individual's lifespan is possible. But how much change is possible in an individual's grammar? How much is grammar affected by extended absence in a new, urban speech community? Social dialect surveys traditionally exclude individuals who have left their community for an extended period of time, under the assumption that dialect contact causes levelling or restructuring of the linguistic system. However, our ongoing work in a Caribbean speech community suggests that the kinds of changes that can affect grammatical variables are more constrained than we might think. Raw frequencies of vernacular variants may fluctuate, but language‐internal constraints persist. Drawing on recordings from Bequia we compare the group norms for absence of copula/auxiliary be in three villages. We show that ‘urban sojourners’– Bequians who have spent an extended period overseas – may sound very different from their stay‐at‐home peers, but close examination shows only superficial restructuring of their grammars. Overall frequencies of be absence may be dramatically reduced but the ranking of language‐internal constraints remains largely unchanged. These results reaffirm the validity of modelling variable rules in a community grammar, rather than as an aggregation of idiolectal norms.     

Dilemmas of 'community' in post-emergency Rwanda

This paper examines social relations and social support in communities in Rwanda in the aftermath of genocide. Communities in Rwanda have experienced unprecedented fragmentation and reconstitution as a result of death, exile and the massive repatriation of refugees. A social education methodology was used to examine the feasibility of mobilising communities to support vulnerable children. This prompted questions about what is ‘community’ and the need to describe community rather than working from an aspirational model of what community ‘should be’. In workshops, chronic poverty and reconstituted family structures emerged as significant barriers to collective responsibility. The paper explores fundamental issues of the impact of violence on social identity in communities. Rwandan communities are struggling in their reconstruction efforts where the overwhelming concern is ‘to get on with it’. This paper raises the tension that is experienced in the development of community-based initiatives in which the voicing of ‘difference’ in communities is politically and psychologically threatening yet where such differences are fundamentally embedded in social relations and practice. La présente étude considère les relations sociales et les appuis sociaux au Rwanda parmi les séquelles du génocide. Les communautés du Rwanda ont expérimenté une fragmentation et une reconstitution sans précédent à cause du nombre des morts, du départ en exil et du retour en masse des réfugiés. Une méthodologie puisée dans l'éducation sociale a été employée pour examiner les possibilités de la mobilisation des communautés afin de soutenir des enfants en situation vulnérable. Elle a suscité des débats au sujet de la définition d'une ‘communauté’ et du besoin de la décrire au lieu de partir d'un modèle basé sur des aspirations orientées vers ce que ‘doit être’ une communauté. Pendant les ateliers réunis la pauvreté chronique et les structures familiales reconstituées ont été identifées comme des barrières d'importance contre la responsabilité collective. La présente étude explore les questions de base au sujet de l'influence de la violence sur l'identité sociale dans une communauté. Les communautés rwandaises poursuivent à grand-peine leurs luttes pour achever la reconstruction, et leur préoccupation principale est d'en finir aussi vite que possible. La présente étude souligne les tensions senties quand il s'agit de développer des initiatives basées dans la communauté là où l'expression de ‘différence’ dans les commaunautés constitue une menace sur le plan politique et psychologique, mais dans lesquelles de telles différences se trouvent néanmoins au coeur des relations et des pratiques sociales.     

Class Position,Class Ideology and Class Voting: Mobilization of Support for the New Democratic Party in the Canadian Election of 1984*

La recherche canadienne sur le vote des classes a surtout fait ressortir l'importance des forces structurelles qui contribuent à faire naître l'appui au Nouveau Parti démocratique (NPD) en insistant moins sur l'idéologie des classes. Le présent article contient un modèle LISREL faisant état des relations entre les positions des classes, leur idéologic et le vote en faveur du NPD selon la base de données provenant de l'étude des élections nationales du Canada de 1984. Les observations soulignent l'importance que revêtent, en tant que sources des suffrages des classes, trois dimensions de l'idéologie des classes qui repré-sentent en partie le résultat de la position de ces dernières. L'idéologie égalitaire et l'appui au maintien des syndicate forts ont des effete directs et prononcés sur le vote en faveur du NPD alors que l'identifi-cation à une classe exerce un effet indirect par le biais de deux autres variables. Même si la position objective des classes agit indépendam-ment sur les suffrages accordés au NPD, ses répercussions semblent limitées comparativement à celles que produisent les trois variables liées à l'étude. En modélisant les effete de la position et de l'idéologie des classes, les auteurs ont employé trois variables non encore utili-sées dans les analyses précédentes des suffrages des classes, soit l'appui des père et mère au NPD, la présence d'un syndiqué (autre que le répondant) dans le ménage et l'appartenance à une «classe nouvelle». Chacune de ces variables a un effet majeur sur le soutien donné au NPD. Quant aux répercussions attribuables à la région, elles semblent assez limitées une fois que l'on a tenu compte du vote des père et mère en faveur du NPD et de l'appui accordéà ce dernier à l'occasion des élections de 1980. Canadian research on class voting has primarily emphasized structural forces that produce support for the NDP, with less attention to class ideology. This paper presents a LISREL model of relationships among class position, class ideology, and voting for the NDP, based on data from the Canadian National Election Study of 1984. The findings point to the importance of three dimensions of class ideology, produced in part by class position, as sources of class voting. Egalitarian ideology and support for union strength have strong direct effects on NDP voting, and class identification exerts an indirect effect through the other two variables. Although objective class position has an independent effect on NDP voting, its impact appears to be modest in relation to that of the three attitudinal variables. In modelling the effects of class position and ideology, three variables not used in previous Canadian analyses of class voting have been employed: parental support for the NDP, presence of a union member (other than the respondent) in the household, and membership in a “New Class.” Each has a solid effect on NDP support. The effects of region appear as quite modest, after controlling for parental support for the NDP and for NDP support in the 1980 election.