Adoption Issues in Perspective: An Introduction to the Special Issue

The process and dynamics of adoption have changed considerably in the last 50 years, assisted by both social change and new knowledge of human development. The current status of 3 important aspects of adoption is reviewed: 1) the general effects of relinquishment and adoption, 2) the effects of secrecy in adoption, and 3) the need to add information on the dynamics of adoption to the training of therapists. The articles contained in this special adoption issue of the Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless are summarized and are placed in context of the 3 aspects reviewed.     

Introduction to the Special Issue

To commemorate the 90th anniversary of the National Career Development Association and to anticipate its centennial, this special issue presents 9 analyses of the career counseling profession's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). On the basis of SWOT analyses and using the methodology explained in this introductory article, the authors present objectives and strategies for advancing the profession in the next decade. The special issue concludes with an “analysis of the analyses” that reviews and integrates the authors' recommendations and suggestions for constructing the future of the profession.     

Introduction to the Special Issue

Organizational innovation is now widely seen tobe a major source of competitive advantage for firms,along with product and process innovation. One of themajor intellectual sources for the upheavals, in which firms strive for some formof international best practice, is thesociotechnical systems tradition, which traces its rootsback to innovations such as semi-autonomous work teamsin manufacturing in the 1960s, associated with the work of theTavistock Institute. An international Colloquium wasstaged in Melbourne, Australia, in May 1995, to explorethe current relevance and contributs to organizational innovation.     

Introduction to the Special Issue

The articles published in this special TAS issue, Racial Diversity In Becoming a Sociologist, offer sobering insights into the marginal status of people of color in the profession of sociology. This essay provides introductory commentary on the various ways in which the marginality of sociologists of color represents a form of ethnocultural deviance in a historically persistent ethnocentric profession. He is Chair-Elect of the Status of Racial Minorities Committee of the American Sociological Association.     

Introduction to the Special Issue

Qualitative Sociology -     

Introduction to the Special Issue: Under Pressure

This article introduces this special issue on the theme “Under Pressure.” It uses an analysis of experimental lesbian filmmaker Su Friedrich's Seeing Red (2005) to frame the issue's focus on the ways that the category “lesbian” is placed under pressure and/or the pressure “lesbian” places on twentieth- and twenty-first-century cultural production. After this overview, the introduction summarizes all seven articles in the order that they appear in the issue. These summaries also show the connections between the articles and suggest possibilities for future critical dialogues on the theme.     

Autobiographical Occasions: Introduction to the Special Issue

Qualitative Sociology -     

Contemporary Social Work Practice with Veterans: An Introduction to the Special Issue

This special issue is a historical marker for contemporary social work practice with veteran populations. The editors requested papers from private, public, and academic settings that illustrate the special needs of veterans. The articles in this issue address the impact of military culture and the veteran identity, diversity, eras of service, access to care, and different stages psycho-social development on clinical practice. This introduction places the articles submitted in the context of historical and current trends in veterans’ research concluding with a call to recognize resilience inherent in this population. It is hoped that this issue will serve as a tool for clinicians, researchers, and educators to improve upon their work as well as bring a new generation to serve and support those who served.     

Reorienting Gender and Globalization: Introduction to the Special Issue

The scholarship on gender and globalization has contributed a far more complex picture of the impact of global processes as well as added a crucial gendered perspective on such processes. It has shown us how global processes may reinscribe, alter, and challenge sex/gender orders, which are not necessarily coherent or hegemonic. Yet, we think there is more that gender and globalization scholarship can do to enhance understandings of global processes. We argue that to do so, the literature needs to develop further by overcoming several limitations: (1) an understanding of gender that still tends to reflect the binary sex/gender arrangements common to Western societies, while failing to address the influence of colonial histories and postcolonial states (Roberts and Connell, Feminist Theory 17(2): 135–140, 2016; Sinha 2012); (2) a gender asymmetry, i.e., a disproportionate focus on women; (3) a narrow set of issues that come under its analytical lens; (4) a primary focus outside the US; and finally (5) a gender division of intellectual labor in which primarily feminists who identify as women study gender and globalization while those who identify as men, feminist or otherwise, tend to study a gender blind globalization. In this introduction, we examine the development of the gender and globalization literature, discuss how the articles in this special issue expand on it, and conclude with future directions for this burgeoning field.     

Editorial: Introduction to the Special Issue on Race and Ethnicity

Introduction

Editorial: Introduction to the Special Issue on Race and Ethnicity     

Clinical Social Work and Psychoanalysis: Introduction to the Special Issue

As clinical social work developed in America it was highly influenced by the concepts and techniques of psychoanalysis and many of its practitioners became interested in seeking psychoanalytic training. More and more psychoanalysts are now coming from a background in clinical social work due to the development of a network of interdisciplinary training institutes and the opening of the Institutes of the American Psychoanalytic Association to non-medical candidates. This special issue considers how psychoanalysis may be affected as more of its practitioners and contributors come from a background in clinical social work. This introduction reviews the history of the development of clinical social work and outlines the issues related to “lay analysis” in this country.