Teaching Note—Circle of Insight: A Paradigm and Pedagogy for Liberation Social Justice Social Work Education

The Circle of Insight is a dialectical, open, purposeful, and enlightening process that moves those engaged toward deeper, liberating insight. It is a pedagogical construct I created over the past 15 years that I have used in teaching and developing my social justice social work classes. It integrates a see, reflect, act cyclical process that is at once personal and social. In this article, I present the Circle of Insight as a teaching tool, a creative, transformative pedagogical process for explicitly advancing Competency 3, Advance Human Rights and Social, Economic, and Environmental Justice, of the Council on Social Work Education’s Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards for baccalaureate and master’s social work programs.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Murdock, Steve H. An America Challenged: Population Change and the Future of the United States. Boulder Ugalde, Antonio and Gilberto Cardenas. Health and Social Services Among International Labor Migrants: A Comparative Perspective. Wells, Miriam J. Strawberry Fields: Politics, Class, and Work in California Agriculture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press     

Is labor-management climate important? some Canadian evidence

I investigate the relationship between labor-management climate and perceptions of productivity, product!service quality, and customer!client satisfaction using a regional and national sample of Canadian organizations and a regional sample of local unions. Overall, the ordered probit results reveal a strong relationship between labor-management climate and measures of organizational performance with a more positive labor-management climate associated with more favorable scores on the performance variables. This study was funded by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada/Saint Mary’s University Matching Grants Fund.     

Interview with Howard E. Gruber

Howard E. Gruber is currently Adjunct Visiting Professor of Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. He is one of the world's foremost experts on the creative process. Gruber was educated at Brooklyn College and at Cornell University, Ithaca, USA, where he received a Ph.D. in 1950 in psychology. His interest in the history of science, particularly in the work of Charles Darwin, led to several important discoveries about the creative process and to additional study of developmental psychology in Geneva, Switzerland with Jean Piaget.Gruber taught at Queens University (Canada) and at the University of Colorado, USA. He was Chair of the Psychology Department in the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, New York and Co-director at the Institute for Cognitive Studies of Rutgers University, USA. From 1983 to 1988 he was Professor of Genetic Psychology at the University of Geneva. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow of the Ford Foundation for Higher Education.Gruber's book, Darwin on Man: A Psychological Study of Scientific Creativity (2nd ed.) (1981) received the Phi Beta Kappa Award for books in science, was recognized by the New York Times Book Review as one of the seven best books of the year, and was nominated for the National Book Award. The Essential Piaget (1977/1995) (written and edited with Jacques Vonèche) is considered the most authoritative anthology of Piaget's work. Gruber's most recent book, co-authored and co-edited with Doris B. Wallace, is Creative People at Work: Twelve Cognitive Case Studies (1989).     

Technology and institutions: living in a material world

This article addresses the relationship between technology and institutions and asks whether technology itself is an institution. The argument is that social theorists need to attend better to materiality: the world of things and objects of which technical things form an important class. It criticizes the new institutionalism in sociology for its failure to sufficiently open up the black box of technology. Recent work in science and technology studies (S&TS) and in particular the sociology of technology is reviewed as another route into dealing with technology and materiality. The recent ideas in sociology of technology are exemplified with the author’s study of the development of the electronic music synthesizer.

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Keynes, legacies, and inquiry

As President Nixon once observed, “we are all Keynesians.” And we do indeed live in a macroeconomic world, essentially, as defined and elucidated by Keynes. But Keynes himself is underrepresented in both political science and in mainstream economics. This is a costly intellectual error. Keynes’ prodigious writings, as well as his actions, offer a treasure trove of inspiration, analysis, and insight. This article considers four themes in Keynes’ oeuvre that are especially worthy of revisiting: the importance of economic inequality, the potentially fragile underpinnings of international economic order, the inherent dysfunctions of the international monetary economy, and, perhaps most important, Keynes’ philosophy and its relationship to economic inquiry.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

In each issue, THE PUBLIC OPINION QUARTERLY publishes a continuationof an annotated bibliography which appeared in 1935 in bookform (Harold D. Lasswell, Ralph D. Casey, and Bruce Lannes Smith,Propaganda and Promotional Activities: An Annotated Bibliography.Minneapolis: Published for the Social Science Research Councilby University of Minnesota Press, 1935. 450 pp.).     

Analyzing the impact of indirect tax reforms on rank-dependent social welfare functions: a positional dominance approach

A new approach is developed to identify marginal tax reforms for pairs of commodities and to test for the robustness of their impacts on Yaari’s dual social welfare functions. The rank-dependent social evaluation approach gives rise to a new device, the s-concentration curve, which is a generalization of the standard concentration curve. The s-concentration curves are provided for every order of positional dominance and an illustration is performed using Canadian data. We thank Jean-Yves Duclos, Peter Lambert, and an anonymous referee for insightful comments and suggestions. This paper was funded through the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of the Government of Canada and the Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Société et la Culture of the Government of Quebec.     

From social change organizations to social movements

From the Ground Up: Grassroots Organizations Making Social Change, by Carol Chetkovich and Frances Kunreuther. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006. 216 pp., $49.95 cloth.     

Parsons' Economic Sociology: A Failure of Will*

In the Marshall Lectures and in Economy and Society Parsons endeavored to demonstrate that economic theory was a special case in the general theory of social systems. He then attempted to show that the parameters of macroeconomic theory could be analyzed as variables within a general social systems theory. But Parsons’economic sociology failed to redeem its promise. He did not succeed in using macro-economic theory as the basis for the formulation of a propositional macrosociology; nor did he sociologically reconstruct the logic of utilitarian, neoclassical economic theory.     

Sacrificing sacrifice

This is a review essay on Jesse Goldhammer, The Headless Republic: Sacrificial Violence in Modern French Thought. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005; and Dennis King Keenan, The Question of Sacrifice. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2005.     

Squashed dreams and rare breeds: ableism and the arbiters of life and death

The week beginning 29 June 2015 is not just historic for the closure of the Independent Living Fund in the United Kingdom, but for me was the week they decided that my life is not worth investing in; they being NHS England, NICE and, with them, the Department of Health. They chose not to support the enzyme replacement therapy that has been not only keeping me alive, but giving me a quality of life – enabling me to return to finish my Disability Studies PhD exploring how Christian leaders explain disability, where ethics have become the main topic, and to rebuild my career – or so I thought.     

Book Reviews

Families at Work: Expanding the Bounds, Naomi Gerstel, Dan Clawson, & Robert Zussman (Eds.). Nashville, TN: The Package Deal: Marriage, Work, and Fatherhood in Men's Lives. Nicholas W. Townsend. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Inside the American Couple: New Thinking, New Challenges. Marilyn Yalom & Laura L. Carstensen (Eds.); Estelle Freedman & Barbara Gelpi (Consulting Eds.). My Baby's Father: Unmarried Parents and Paternal Responsibility. Maureen R. Waller. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2002. Invisible Caregivers: Older Adults Raising Children in the Wake of HIV/AIDS. Daphne Joslin (Ed.). Perfectly Japanese: Making Families in an Era of Upheaval. Merry Isaacs White. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2000. The Decline of Substance Use in Young Adulthood: Changes in Social Activities, Roles, and Beliefs. Jerald G. Bachman, Patrick M. O'Malley, John E. Schulenberg, Lloyd D. Johnston, Alison L. Bryant, & Alicia C. Merline. Mahwah, NJ: Remaking Chinese America: Immigration, Family and Community, 1940–1965. Xiaojian Zhao. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.     

Dual-careerism and the conjoint-career couple

This article introduces and defines the concept of conjoint-career couples, marital partners that work in the same field or profession. Drawing on the narratives of three couples with structurally varied experiences (older man/younger woman, older woman/younger man, peers), we describe and analyze some of the problems and issues confronting a growing number of academics in the current labor pool. We conclude by discussing some of the overarching patterns common to this situation and the advantages and disadvantages associated with it. Finally, we propose a variety of social policies which academic institutions may want to consider to help meet the challenge of these changing market demographics. Currently she is writing and teaching in the areas of deviance, social theory, and the sociology of children. She is the author ofWheeling and Dealing (Columbia University Press, 1985) and coeditor (with Peter Adler) ofThe Social Dynamics of Financial Markets (JAI Press, 1984). He is the author ofMomentum (Sage, 1981),Membership Roles in Field Research (co-authored with Patricia A. Adler, Sage, 1987), and the editor, along with Patricia A. Adler, ofJournal of Contemporary Ethnography andSociological Studies of Child Development. Her special interests are divorce and remarriage and she is the author (with R.H. Rodgers) ofDivorced Families (W.W. Norton, 1987). His areas of interest are family dynamics with a focus on myth and ritual formation in families. His interests are in social control and political economy. He is the author ofCastles of Our Conscience: Social Control and the American State, 1800–1985, Polity Press, forthcoming. She is the author of books and articles on deviance and social control, qualitative methods, and gender, includingGender Issues in Field Research (Sage, 1988),Madwives: Schizophrenic Women in the 1950s (Rutgers University Press, 1987),The Court of Last Resort: Mental Illness and the Law (University of Chicago Press, 1982).     

Fieldwork in forbidden terrain: the state,privatization and human subjects regulations

In this paper we explore the intersection of the modern-state and fieldwork practices within the social sciences. Our contention is that during the past decade or so there has been an expansion in forbidden or restricted research terrain that threatens the present and future conduct of social research. We argue that this restriction has been engendered by two related developments: privatization and human subjects regulations. The social and political implications of these trends are considered. Her most recent books areMadwives: Schizophrenic Women in the 1950s (Rutgers University Press, 1987) andGender Issues in Field Research (Sage, 1988). He is the author ofCastles of Our Conscience: Social Control and the American State, 1800–1985 (Forthcoming, Polity Press, Cambridge, U.K.)     

BOOK REVIEWS

Abstract

THE DISABILITY RIGHTS MOVEMENT: FROM CHARITY TO CONFRONTATION. Doris Zames Fleischer and Frieda Zames. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2001. Reviewed by Roland Meinert.

From Good Will to Civil Rights: Transforming Federal Disability Policy (2nd Ed.). Richard K. Scotch. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2001. Reviewed by John T. Pardeck.

INTEGRATING DISABILITY CONTENT IN SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION: A CURRICULUM RESOURCE. Stephen French Gilson (Senior Editor) and Elizabeth DePoy, Heather MacDuffie, and Katherine Meyershon (Contributing Editors). Washington, D.C.: The Council on Social Work Education, Inc., 2002. Reviewed by John T. Pardeck.     

A Canadian rejoinder: Sociology north and south of the border

In response to the recent The American Sociologist special issue on Canadian sociology, this rejoinder dialogues with some of the perspectives offered there on the discipline north of the border with an eye towards lessons that American sociologists might learn from the Canadian experience. My reflections build on a larger analytic piece entitled “Canada’s Impossible Science: The Historical and Institutional Origins of the Coming Crisis of Anglo-Canadian Sociology” to be published soon in The Canadian Journal Sociology. Particular attention is paid to the different institutional arrangements of higher education in Canada and the United States, Anglo-Canadian reliance on the particularly English “weakness as strength” strategy for sociology, tensions between the cultural values of populism, egalitarianism, and excellence, and the trade-offs between professional and public intellectual work. A critique is offered of the “origin myth” of Canadian sociology as a particularly vibrant “critical sociology,” with discussion of Dorothy Smith's influence on sociology in Canada. His research interests are in sociological theory, the sociology of culture, and the study of intellectuals from the perspective of the sociology of organisations and professions. He is studying Edward Said as a “global public intellectual” as part of a Canadian government-funded interdisciplinary grant on “Globalization and Autonomy” at McMaster University. He is also working “Canadian professors as public intellectuals,” a project also funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.     

Local union leaders’ satisfaction with grievance procedures

We develop a model of local union leaders’ satisfaction with their grievance proce-dures drawing from the job characteristics model and agency theory. The model is tested with OLS regression and LISREL estimates based on a survey of local union leaders in British Columbia. Results show that local union leaders are more satisfied with their grievance procedures when local officials have more autonomy in decision making; their local size is smaller; the grievance filing rate is low; grievance issues are perceived as important; the grievance resolution rate is high; a greater propor-tion of grievances are settled in the early steps; and the union success rate is high. In addition, grievance procedure satisfaction is multifaceted and each facet has its own unique variance and a different combination of significant predictors. This research was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We thank Dev Jennings for his helpful comments on an earlier version.     

The Impacts of State Surveillance on Political Assembly and Association: A Socio-Legal Analysis

Based on group interviews conducted in 2006 that included 71 social justice organizations, this paper analyzes the impact of surveillance on the exercise of assembly and association rights. We link these protected legal activities with analytic frameworks from social movements scholarship in order to further a socio-legal conception of political violence against social movements.