Social Work,Spirituality, and Diasporic Communities

Abstract

The discourse surrounding the role of spirituality in social work practice has been expanding exponentially in recent years. Similarly, the discourse surrounding the role of spirituality among diasporic communities has expanded in recent times as well. In this paper, we will consider the linkages between social work, spirituality, and diaspora. We will focus our discussion on a particular diasporic spiritual community, the Sathya Sai Baba movement and its social service activities. We will then consider the implications of such spiritual movements for the social work profession. Among the key issues explored in this paper are the change in the social construction of populations that have moved between two countries as 'immigrant communities' to 'diasporic communities' and the implications of these changes for social work. Another critical issue we discuss is how working with spiritual movements may help address the 'spiritual deficit' concern that some social work academics have referred to, and indirectly at least, we begin to address 'the social work crisis' issue that has negatively affected the social work profession over the last few years.     

Satori in Paris: Deconstructing the French Connection or the Legend’s Satori

Abstract

The deconstruction of Kerouac’s trip to France in search of his family name and lineage as described in Satori in Paris, published in 1966, is examined, and consideration is also given to the very process of redefining French connections. The novel — a voyage to the end of the night trying to decipher, redefine, and blur the French signs that Kerouac had scattered his Duluoz Legend with — is riddled with many deconstructing elements, which allow for better insight into both the quest Kerouac had set for himself and the meaning of French connections throughout the Legend. ‘What’s in a name’ could precisely be the question and possibly the answer. The deconstructing process initiated in Big Sur is now reaching its ultimate step, jeopardizing the stability of the creation of Duluoz’s and Kerouac’s legend altogether.     

French Friends,American Allies: Ethnic Dynamics in the Writing of Jack Kerouac

Abstract

The way the scroll text of Kerouac’s On the Road creatively manifests the writer’s unconscious concerns about his dichotomous hybrid French– Canadian–American heritage is analysed. The characters of Gabrielle Kerouac, Henri Cru and Neal Cassady are shown to operate metaphorically to symbolize Kerouac’s tumultuous relationship with the various elements of his genealogy. How the writer’s depiction of, and the protagonist’s allegiances with, these characters, who, respectively, represent French– Canadian maternity, European respectability and American unreliability, betray Kerouac’s covert attempts to reconcile his autobiographical feelings about the dualities implicit in his identity and mirror his efforts to navigate disparate cultural ideologies is examined.     

Respect for persons

Abstract

The notion of ‘respect for persons’ is a key notion in moral philosophy as well as in social work ethics. The Kantian notion of a person has, together with individualism, liberalism and positivism, given rise to a strange ideological mixture which ‘guided’ social work theory and practice for some time. Gaita's concept of respect for human beings, examined in this paper, contrasts with the poverty of this ideological mixture. Concepts such as ‘goodness’, ‘remorse' and 'sensibility’ explain why Gaita sees the ethical as something that is both sui generis and of the utmost practical importance. They clarify the irreplaceability of human beings, emphasise the need for moral agents to have ‘historical integrity’, and in general show that a moral agent is much more substantial than a res cogitans. This paper attempts to indicate the relevance of these considerations for social work.     

Problems of participation: The limits of action research

Alvin Gouldner (1979) suggests knowledge is both culture and capital. Knowledge enables meaningful action. Capital is culture privatized. Culture is capital generalized. This raises the question of ownership in social research. Detachment in social research is praised as a virtue but also viewed as a source of difficulties epistemologically and ethically. Participatory action research offers a critique of detachment and advocates its opposite, 'commitment'. This may not necessarily involve 'political' advocacy. However, commitment to involve participants, and to further their goals through the conduct of research, does become a form of 'advocacy'. This paper draws on problematic experiences as a 'participatory action researcher' in social movement and evaluation research. Drawing on the recent work of Fuller, this paper suggests, rather bluntly, that when asked 'whose side are we on', academics might be more bold and suggest 'we are on our own side'.     

Stumbling towards oblivion or discovering new horizons? Observations on the relationship between social work education and practice

What should social work education be training students for? What should the relationship be between social work education and practice? The first half of this article cautions that social work education, as currently constituted, may 'unfit' people. Principally, this is because social work practice, as envisaged by employer interests, has not been subject to the same critical scrutiny as social work education and has come to dominate perceptions of the training task. The dangers that follow from this position are outlined. The second half of the article proceeds to explore the contribution that practice teachers and tutors can make to enable practitioners to remain confident, credible, critical and creative in this practice environment. The article concludes with some observations on the future as envisaged in the proposals to modernise social services and to create a General Social Care Council.     

Frank O'Hara in New York Race relations,poetic situations,postcolonial space

Abstract

Frank O'Hara's 1958 poem 'Ode: Salute to the French Negro Poets' cites 'race' as 'the poetic ground on which we rear our smiles', a phrase that points to both domestic and international contexts for reading this New York poet. At the same time, 'race' has a history of specific valences in O'Hara's work – as a focus of exoticized images of desire, aesthetic fulfillment, and social energy. Further, race, inflected through various colonial screens, becomes the central avenue leading toward O'Hara's project of rewriting the parameters of social space in poetry, a radical aestheticization not just of landscape but of social relations, with a consequent socialization of the act of writing. This article explores O'Hara's spatial poetics through the terms of Situationist theory, in which the techniques of dérive and détournement are applied to a reading of the poet's active suspension of the 'rules' of a gridded and hierarchical social order.     

Racialising emotional labour and emotionalising racialised labour: Anger,fear and shame in social welfare

This paper brings together the empirical work of Yasmin Gunaratnam with hospice social workers and that of Gail Lewis with local authority social workers. It uses a conceptually expanded notion of 'emotional labour' to explore and theorise links between different forms of emotion management and racialised subject positions and practices in social care for both those categorised as 'ethnic minorities' and as 'white'. The analytic framework draws upon the political scholarship of Audre Lorde and Thandeka and the psychoanalytic work of Melanie Klein to explore talk about the production of anger, fear and shame. A common focus in the writing of these different authors is the self/other relation and the attention given to personal, interpersonal, inter-group and intra-group dynamics. The paper argues that the irrational and unconscious aspects of racial dynamics cannot simply be countered by appeals to the rational. There is a need to recognise and integrate rather than 'split' positive and negative emotions about the self and 'others'. Such integration is seen as a source of internal strength and psychic health making for the possibility of caring and constructive relationships in social care organisations through which the complexities of difference can be recognised and valued.     

'The look of hope or the look of sadness': Robert Frank's dialogical vision

Abstract

This article examines the work of Robert Frank with reference to his seminal photographic work, The Americans, and its relationships to his later post-1970s images. It argues that the 'outside eye' he brought to the US post-war consensus offered him a new comparative critical position and represented a fundamental, counter-cultural shift in the tradition of documentary photography. This vision formed around Frank's multiple 'dialogues', with the US social landscape, with earlier traditions of documentary and 'street' photography in Europe and the USA, and with the Beat generation's radical challenges to dominant post-war values. This 'moment' of overlapping and interconnected relations forms the basis for this discussion of Frank's importance as a 'political' commentator whose work has influenced generations of photographers and shares much with those writers who emerged as the Beats.     

Minute Particulars of the Counter- Culture: Time,Life, and the Photo-poetics of Allen Ginsberg

Abstract

Recent exhibitions of Allen Ginsberg’s photographs, which feature 1950s snapshots of his fellow-Beats Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, have been dismissed by some as marketing exercises for the Beat myth that promote their biocentric image. Ginsberg himself invited comparisons between his work and Robert Frank’s The Americans. However, a detailed material analysis of his work as a poet-photographer, paying close attention to his handwritten captions, recognises it as a complex hybrid that extends his prophetic poetics. In particular, contextualising his work in relation to the 1950s photojournalism of Life and Time establishes the ways in which Ginsberg, and Burroughs, responded to the attacks made on the Beats in those magazines on behalf of Henry Luce’s ‘American Century’.     

Experience of undertaking infant observation as part of the Post-Qualifying Award in Child Care

Enquiries into child deaths have pointed to the difficulty that social workers seem to have of 'holding the child in mind'. Undertaking 'child observation' can be a powerful way of understanding what these difficulties are about and how to work in a way that is child focused, whilst being attentive to adult considerations crucial to children's positive development. This is an account of an experience of undertaking a 10-week child observational study as part of the Post Qualifying Award in Child Care from a student's perspective. It suggests that developing observational skills and an understanding of psychotherapeutic ideas enhanced the practitioner's ability to work with uncertainty and make accurate assessments.     

Alternative approaches to researching social capital: A comment on van Deth's measuring social capital

This paper responds to van Deth's overview of empirical research on social capital and the difficulties of measuring the concept. We entirely agree with many of the problems that he identifies with the dominant mode of enquiry to date: namely survey and polling methods of attitudinal data. We are sure there are ways of improving on such quantitative methods although we are of the view that qualitative research is especially helpful for exploring the processes of social capital formation and the relationship between networks and norms so crucial to Putnam's use of the concept. Briefly, we discuss our own qualititive work involving intensive interviews with 120 activists drawn from a Citizens Audit of Britain. We address the importance of pre-existing trust and informal processes of mobilization, the significance of experiences of group involvement for generating norms of trust as well as distrust and the extent to which evaluations of such experiences influence wider views of participation and democracy in Britain. In sum, we totally endorse van Deth's call for the greater use of 'multi-methods and multi-level srategies' in empirical research by extending his plea to consider the valuable role of qualitative methods in the study of social capital.     

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.     

Doing collaborative research: doing what feels right and makes sense

Drawing on current doctoral research in the UK, this paper discusses the benefits, challenges and dilemmas associated with adopting a collaborative approach to exploring the experiences of women offenders as consumers of community-based health and social care services. The initial focus is on the rationale for setting up an advisory group of 'expert advisers/knowers', as a means of collaborating with women with direct and personal experience of the criminal justice system. In addition, the group's role in supporting, advising and guiding the research process is explored with particular emphasis on examining the practice of building long-term relationships with 'vulnerable' groups of women. Both short and long-term ethical issues are considered, for example, the implications of adopting an approach based on reciprocity, mutual disclosure and 'friendship' and the impact of 'role reversal' where it is the researcher who ultimately feels powerless and abandoned in the relationship. A key theme that underpins the work is the notion that in this context, 'doing' collaborative research essentially embraced 'doing' what fundamentally 'felt right' and 'made sense' thus ensuring that the study was meaningful to all involved.     

From pillar to post: Women and social work studies in the 21st century

Abstract

A decade or so after the acknowledgement and inclusion of women's issues in mainstream social work courses, we find the circumstances in which such education occurs have changed. The 'third wave' of feminism has revisited the feminist agenda of the 1960s and 1970s; there has been a paradigm shift in what tertiary education is perceived to offer; and global theories have been replaced by post modern interpretations. This article discusses the impact of these changes for social work education drawing on the authors' experiences with the 'Women and Social Work' elective subject in the Bachelor of Social Work Degree at the University of New South Wales, Australia. This elective was popular until the mid 1990s when it failed to attract students. The authors reflect on their experience of teaching the subject and their understanding of current feminism to identify a way forward in the attempt to rekindle student enthusiasm for feminist understandings and provide education which will further the emancipatory project of social work.     

Effective relationship-based practice: A theoretical exploration

This paper looks at the importance of a relationship-based approach within social work. It explores past writings on the social worker-client relationship, why the relationship was seen to be central to effectiveness and good practice, and why this perspective fell out of favour. It revisits the importance of a relationship-based approach, within a psychosocial perspective, in relation to eight areas of practice. These include the assessment task and process; relationship difficulties; people who are vulnerable or reliant on others for their well-being; situations that require practitioners to be able to hold and contain anxiety; the relationship as a foundation for capacity building, empowerment and developing people's potential; and in relation to disadvantaged and marginalised sectors of the population, how social workers can use the 'front-line' knowledge they have gained through the relationships they have created in political ways--to bear witness and report on 'social ills' as they impact on the lives of service users. A final section looks briefly at how the service user-social worker relationship is perceived and described in the Benchmarking Statement, National Occupational Standards and the General Social Care Council's Rules and Requirements and their implications in terms of the new social work degree.     

Drug Addiction and Families

Abstract

Australia is experiencing a period of immense cultural change predicated on the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). New devices such as smartphones, tablet computers, and the social iterations of the internet are impacting on communication patterns and contributing to the merging of people's online and offline lives. Using Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells's theory of the Network Society as a theoretical foundation, this issues paper posits that social work must overcome its historical reluctance to embrace ICT if it is to remain relevant in the era of the network society. In particular, we argue that social work professionals need to begin a dialogue with IT developers, social service managers, and funding bodies about the need for practice-led ICT systems. This paper examines the turbulent history social work has had with technological change, and concludes that the adoption of a practice-led approach to ICT use in education, practice, and research provides a strong foundation for reimagining the relationship between social work and ICT.     

Creating a Space for Reflection on Teaching: The 1997-99 Department of Human Relations work discussion groups

This article presents an overview of three staff development projects whose aim was to provide university staff with a reflective space in which to share their experiences of teaching psychosocial studies and social work to a large, heterogeneous body of students. Aspects of the staff-student relationship are discussed. The author aims to show how staff and students could have similar expectations and experiences in these subject areas in a 'new' university; but also widely divergent ones. It is argued that 'quality' resides in the staff-student relationship, and in the goodwill and commitment of each to articulate together their understanding of the material to be learnt. On the basis of the success of the projects, a case is made for the value of a self-reflexive 'work discussion' space for teaching practitioners.     

Student Advising in Social Work Education

Abstract

It is likely that social workers' involvement with rehabilitation services for the handicapped will increase. An understanding of the philosophical foundation of such services may be especially relevant now as social work education appears to renew its commitment to the study of ethics and values in society.