Professional and Functional Alternative Social Workers: A Case Study of Malaysia

The objective of this study was to compare “professional” (PW) and “functional alternative” (FA) social workers. The findings suggested that there were no significant differences between PWs and FAs in intervention, evaluation methods, work ethics, and values. The PWs, in clients' eyes, were better at delivering services, while FAs' services were more satisfactory to the clients. While PWs were supposed to be “professional,” FAs were more “professional” than PWs in their performance despite their lack of recognition as “professional social workers”. These critical findings should encourage academics and practitioners for further discussion on conceptual implications of both practices and expand future research.     

Alternative Rural Communities: A Solution to Urban Unemployment?

The quest for solutions to urban unemployment prompted the federal government to give serious consideration to providing support and encouragement to alternative rural communities. It hoped that residents in these communities would withdraw from the formal labour market and establish alternatives to conventional employment. A study of 20 rural land sharing communities in New South Wales indicates that at the present time these communities do not provide a supply-side ameliorator of unemployment and that their future economic viability would depend on substantial government support for local employment initiatives. What the lifestyle in these communities clearly offers, however, is a quality of life denied to those on the dole.     

无奈中的选择——浅析《海关》的作用

《海关》是一篇与《红字》相关的文章 ,应该被视为《红字》的引言 ,它有助于我们避免仅仅从《红字》本身解读作品的偏颇 ,使人们对《红字》的深刻性和警示性有更加全面的了解。     

Alternative institutional responses to asbestos

The level of asbestos risk varies widely, with insulation workers facing risks many orders of magnitude greater than other groups, such as school children. After a period of regulatory neglect, asbestos risks are now among the mos stringently regulated risks, with costs per case of cancer prevented on the order of $100 million. Asbestos litigation triggered much of the public action against asbestos, as asbestos cases constituted the majority of all product liability cases in the federal courts from 1988 to 1991. The litigation costs have, however, been substantial, almost three times as great as the amounts transferred to asbestos disease victims. Risk communication potentially could promote efficient risk levels and victim compensation.     

A Statewide Parenting Alternative Sentencing Program: Description and Preliminary Outcomes

ABSTRACT

The Washington State Legislature created the Parenting Sentencing Alternative in 2010, authorizing a substitute to total confinement for parents of minor children. The Alternative is designed to strengthen family bonds and improve parenting skills to encourage successful reintegration. An overview of the Alternative’s history, design, and implementation is presented, followed by preliminary results from an impact evaluation. A case study of a successful participant is presented, and implications for the findings are discussed.     

Leading Article: Community Care as an Alternative to State Welfare

This paper challenges prevailing notions of community and community care. It exposes some of the confusions associated with current thinking and offers a more realistic interpretation, drawing upon the roots of the idea of community. By this standard, genuine community care is to be regarded as an alternative to state welfare, which it might serve to replace or complement.     

Conflict Resolution as the Alternative to Terrorism

We distinguish between the typical sort of short-range conflict management, in which governments must engage, and the long-term processes of conflict resolution, which must include the involvement of entire societies and the replacement of adversarial relations with cooperative ones. How can third parties facilitate conflict resolution? This article discusses five principles that have evolved from attempts to facilitate conflict resolution in the Mideast: enhancement of each adversary's identity , creation of new symbols, enfranchisement of elements within each of the conflict groups, enhancement of indigenous development , and use of indigenous third parties . We argue that this nongovernmental facilitation of conflict resolution (with governmental tacit cooperation) is the real alternative to terrorism.     

Questioning Consilience and Autonomy in Self-Determination Theory: A Critique and Hermeneutic-Phenomenological Alternative

This paper offers a theoretical analysis of Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and its claims regarding human autonomy. Self-determination theorists have advanced a form of self-regulated, engaged behavior (i.e., autonomy), founded upon on a consilient account of human motivation that assumes multiple, hierarchical levels of organization and causation (e.g., biological, psychological, and social). Autonomy, from this perspective, is taken to emerge from underlying biological mechanisms, but also able to exert its own causal effects in the world as a unique psychological phenomenon. We contend that in theorizing this way, self-determination theorists have invoked a mixed discourse of mechanism and autonomy that leaves important questions unanswered, perhaps most importantly those concerning how autonomy as a kind of volition can fit coherently in the mechanistic account of world that they advocate. We then offer an alternative perspective based upon the work of various hermeneutic-phenomenological thinkers in philosophy and psychology. This alternative perspective conceptualizes human phenomena such as autonomy and motivation in agentic terms, emphasizing meaningful participation in possibility-laden contexts of everyday practices.     

中国死刑替代措施要论

死刑替代措施是指在立法上替代具体犯罪法定刑中的死刑的刑罚措施.其价值和意义体现为:在立法上废止具体犯罪死刑的情况下,使对该犯罪的刑事制裁仍维持在相当严厉的程度,以贯彻罪责刑相适应原则的内在要求,并在客观上适应削减死刑罪名乃至逐步废止死刑的实际需要.未来在立法上替代死刑的刑罚措施,主要是无期徒刑(终身监禁)和长期自由刑.应从立法上革新和完善现行刑法典所规定的无期徒刑、有期徒刑以及数罪并罚、减刑、假释等制度,建构合理的死刑替代措施,以适应未来大幅度削减死刑罪名并逐步全面废止死刑的趋势.     

Shared Housing: Making Alternative Lifestyles Work

Changing lifestyles mean that fewer people are living in traditional families and that demands for innovative styles of housing are increasing. Many young people live in shared houses. Such housing offers relatively cheap and flexible accommodation and also has the potential to make a positive contribution to individuals' quality of life. This paper considers the factors that contribute to the success of these households: successful conflict management, the personality and expectations of sharers, the social interaction within the house and its physical design. It concludes with a consideration of ways in which sharing could be encouraged as a housing option.     

Commensurate Security: An Alternative Defense Paradigm

Commensurate security is proposed as a national defense paradigm that will compete increasingly with those of nuclear deterrence and arms control for the attention of the peoples and governments of Europe. The paradigm includes the concepts of threat assessment, unprovocative armaments, territorial defense, civilian resistance, and restructuring of military forces to provide better utilization of a nation's defense resources. It addresses the common weakness of deterrence and arms control, their reliance on nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. Nations' adoption of commensurate security will stimulate the emergence of a composite paradigm integrating aspects of current models but increasingly focused on defense of homeland and avoidance of offensive threat.