Gender and social conformity: Do men and women respond differently to social pressure to vote?

In this paper, we re-analyze data from a large-scale field experiment (N = 344,084) on voter turnout in order to determine whether men and women respond differently to social pressure aimed at voter mobilization. To date, there have been mixed results regarding the interaction between a person’s gender and receptivity to social influence. On the whole, our analyses confirm prior findings that social pressure increases voter turnout but uncover little to no evidence of gender differences in receptivity to social pressure cues in the context of political participation.     

Time to look in/at anger: considerations on the position and policing of young people’s anger

Mental and emotional well-being is steadily overtaking physical difficulty as the biggest health challenge facing young people. As a result, young people’s emotional well-being and needs are a significant concern within contemporary youth studies. However, the intricacies of ‘managing emotion’ have been somewhat neglected in the context of youth studies. In particular, the role of discourses of emotional well-being to produce ‘feeling rules’ [Boler, M. 1999. Feeling Power: Emotions and Education. Florence, KY: Routledge], to discipline, and to restrict expressions of emotion has been unconsidered. This article explores this problematic further with the intention of provoking a larger concentration on relationship between the policing of emotion and youth well-being discourses. Specifically, it focuses on anger as one of the emotions that young people are encouraged to move away from. It outlines how young people’s right to be angry is policed through the construction of angry subjectivities as characterised by incompleteness. It focuses on two – the unresolved subject and the unreasoned subject. Young people, who are already constructed as incomplete, are particularly vulnerable to this policing. Drawing on a range of theoretical interjections on the disciplining of ‘adult’ anger, the article explores the political importance of anger, how it is limited for young people, and the complexities of engaging with anger in the context of youth studies. Given the limited attention anger has attracted in youth studies literature, the article is intentionally provocative. However, as the article notes, this is a complex debate with many challenges and a much more detailed investigation is necessary.     

A feminist look at social psychology / Una mirada feminista a la psicología social

This theoretical revision starts from the consideration that the gender perspective constitutes a critical, explanatory and alternative vision that comes from feminism and generates an analysis framework that takes into consideration and pays attention to the differences and inequalities between women and men in any activity or area of social development, research or public policies. The objective of this revision is to provide clues to understanding what gender or feminist social psychology is. To this end, firstly, we briefly describe feminist theoretical assumptions and the gender or feminist perspective, which constitute its starting point, and secondly, we analyse what it means to integrate these principles into psychology.     

The influence of parents’ social capital on their children’s transition to vocational training in Germany

This study investigates the up-to-now strongly underexplored role of parents’ social capital in the school-to-work transition of adolescents. We base our empirical analyses on unique longitudinal largescale data from the German National Educational Panel Study. Parents’ social capital is measured with a position generator. Results show that adolescents with lower secondary education have better chances of finding an apprenticeship in a company if their parents know many persons with lower-status occupations for which vocational training is sufficient. This is especially the case for parents’ social contacts that have occupations in which many adolescents with lower secondary education are being trained in a company. The contrary is true for adolescents whose parents know many persons with higher-status occupations. Parents’ social networks do not show any effects on the quality of these apprenticeships or on the probability of entering school-based vocational training. Overall, our results indicate that parents’ social networks are important for a smooth school-to-work transition of their children. Moreover, our analyses confirm the idea that social capital is goal and labour market segment specific.     

A field experiment on the impact of a prior donor’s social status on subsequent charitable giving

We study the effect of a prior donor on subsequent charitable giving in a natural field experiment and investigate in particular whether his social status matters for subsequent giving. To do so, we trailed a person asking for donations in Cologne’s streetcar network while (1) either implementing an initial donor or not and (2) varying the apparent social status of the initial donor. We find that other passengers are more prone to give when there is an initial donor, with this effect being amplified when he seems to have a high social status. Further analyses reveal that women tend to react stronger than men to the prior donor’s status.     

A systematic approach to an organization’s sustainability

This article integrates the concepts of sustainability and quality improvement into a systematic approach to an organization’s sustainability. The article: (a) presents a literature-based model that incorporates the factors that drive an organization’s sustainability; (b) describes how sustainability is operationalized through a systematic approach to quality improvement; (c) discusses the advantages of a systematic approach to sustainability; and (d) shares with the reader literature and experientially-based lessons learned about the approach.     

Prestige in social dilemmas: A network analytic approach to cooperation among Bogotá’s art organizations

What brings about cooperation in social dilemmas? The literature has proposed motivational and strategic solutions to social dilemmas. In motivational solutions, actors cooperate because they care about fairness. In strategic solutions actors cooperate because their chances to exploit others are reduced. This paper argues that actors also cooperate in order to gain prestige. The effect of prestige on cooperation is examined relying on a unique set of network and covariate data on art organizations (museums, independent art spaces, galleries and art foundations) in Bogotá, the capital of Colombia. Bogotá is a not a very likely environment for cooperation, since distrust is still widespread after a long civil war. The temporal exponential random graph models predict dyadic cooperation (i.e., between two actors) based on past and present cooperation in the network as well as of the organizations’ characteristics. The analysis thus controls for the effect of actors’ past and present interaction on the present cooperation dilemma. The paper shows that prestige affects cooperation in social dilemmas independent of past and present interactions.     

What makes it so hard to look and to listen? Exploring the use of the Cognitive and Affective Supervisory Approach with children’s social work managers

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on the findings of an ESRC-funded Knowledge Exchange project designed to explore the contribution of an innovative approach to supervision to social work practitioners’ assessment and decision-making practices. The Cognitive and Affective Supervisory Approach (CASA) is informed by cognitive interviewing techniques originally designed to elicit best evidence from witnesses and victims of crime. Adapted here for use in childcare social work supervision contexts, this model is designed to enhance the quantity and quality of information available for decision-making. Facilitating the reporting of both ‘event information’ and ‘emotion information’, it allows a more detailed picture to emerge of events, as recalled by the individual involved, and the meaning they give to them. Practice supervisors from Children’s Services in two local authorities undertook to introduce the CASA into supervision sessions and were supported in this through the provision of regular reflective group discussions. The project findings highlight the challenges for practitioners of ‘detailed looking’ and for supervisors of ‘active listening’. The paper concludes by acknowledging that the CASA’s successful contribution to decision-making is contingent on both the motivation and confidence of supervisors to develop their skills and an organisational commitment to, and resourcing of, reflective supervisory practices and spaces.     

What’s not to Like?: A Qualitative Study of Young Women Politicians’ Self-Framing on Twitter

ABSTRACT

Twitter provides women politicians with a platform for practising political public relations and the opportunity to circumvent traditional barriers to their visibility. To explore how young women use Twitter to frame themselves during election campaigns, this study undertook a thematic analysis of tweets sent by politicians Nikki Kaye and Jacinda Ardern during New Zealand’s 2014 general election campaign. A likability frame dominated their messaging, supported by subsidiary frames of the busy local MP and the relational politician. Choices of interpersonal and intimized situations showcased these attributes. Although the messaging was arguably effective, there are longer-term consequences for women with respect to the likability/competence double bind. Further and systematic incorporation of gender into the field of political public relations would strengthen this emerging discipline and add value to existing research around women’s electoral viability.     

Developing education on problematic substance use in Norwegian social work bachelor’s degree

This commentary article is based on a mapping of education on problematic substance use (PSU) in the Norwegian social work bachelor’s degree (SWBD). The results show that national discussions are necessary to ensure that Norwegian SWBD students are provided with consistent and adequate education in preparation for work with PSU issues in social work practice. A practical starting point for development is presented. A discussion concerning social work’s role in future theoretical, practical, and research developments in the field of PSU is paramount.     

A Qualitative Study of Parents’ and Children’s Views on Mediation

This qualitative study examined the benefits to children of family mediation for divorcing couples and the limitations of such mediation. To capture the perspectives of parents and their children, we invited 40 parents and 10 children to participate in the study. The parent informants reported that mediation improved the efficacy of their parenting and alleviated their children’s stress about their divorce. In contrast, the child informants felt they were powerless when involved in the mediation process and that they received limited support from the mediators. Strategies are proposed for improving the cultural applicability of mediation services for children in a Chinese society.     

Spivak’s Fantasy of Silence: A Secular Look at Suicide

Gayatri Spivak’s response to the attack of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2011, the event otherwise known as 9/11, was one of many responses that denote the event’s traumatic impact. In psychoanalytic terms, the psychic condition of trauma, identified by Lacan as the encounter with the real, is a shock which the subject initially misses; as such, the subject is compelled to make intelligible what was missed through what Lacan calls ‘fantasy.’ According to Zizek in Welcome to the Desert of the Real, the cinematic quality of the planes crashing into the towers, iterating the fantasies of Hollywood disaster films (16), pointed to a haunting in America of some historical trauma that returned in the real of 9/11 (17). Zizek’s reflection on 9/11 as a haunting in cinematic terms, pointing to a confluence of his scholarship and the event, sets a precedent for this paper’s focus on seeing in Spivak’s response to the suicide acts of 9/11 a haunting of the suicide rite of Sati in her earlier scholarship. This paper reviews Spivak’s representation of suicide in “Can the subaltern speak?” (1988) and “Terror: A Speech After 9/11” (2004), noting the non-coincidental echoes between these projects with respect to secularism and silence, affirming this paper’s proposal that in Spivak’s work, a trauma shared by western secular society is evident as a fantasy of silence.     

A note on the stability of Chen’s Lindahl mechanism

There are no general theoretical results on the stability of the Lindahl mechanism introduced by Chen (Econ Theory 19:773–790, 2002). We show that despite not fitting the requirements of the Milgrom and Roberts 1990 stability result for supermodular games, if the Chen mechanism induces a supermodular game, then the best reply map is a contraction. This gives us an easy to identify sufficient condition for dynamic stability of equilibrium.     

A Life-Span Approach to Children-In-Law’s Perceptions of Parent-In-Law Communication

Relationships between children-in-law (CIL) and parents-in-law (PIL) can be enduring sources of delight or distress that influence the quality of spousal relationships and grandparent-grandchild ties. Little research, however, examines CIL perceptions of in-law relationships (ILRs) beyond the newlywed years. Drawing on the life course perspective and socioemotional selectivity theory, we hypothesized that marital duration would predict how frequently CIL encountered positive and negative PIL behaviors, and account for the degree to which these behaviors were appraised favorably or as problematic. A total of 179 individuals rated how often a target PIL provided informational support, instrumental support, emotional support, and companionship, and how frequently the target PIL was intrusive, rejecting, insensitive, and failed to help. The frequency with which both positive and negative in-law behaviors were experienced was predicted by marital duration (but not CIL age or PIL age), although quadratic and cubic marital duration terms were better predictors than the linear term.     

What adult worker model? A critical look at recent social policy reform in Europe from a gender and family perspective

Analyses regularly feature claims that European welfare states are in the process of creating an adult worker model. The theoretical and empirical basis of this argument is examined here by looking first at the conceptual foundations of the adult worker model formulation and then at the extent to which social policy reform in western Europe fits with the argument. It is suggested that the adult worker formulation is under-specified. A framework incorporating four dimensions—the treatment of individuals vis-à-vis their family role and status for the purposes of social rights, the treatment of care, the treatment of the family as a social institution, and the extent to which gender inequality is problematized—is developed and then applied. The empirical analysis reveals a strong move towards individualization as social policy promotes and valorizes individual agency and self-sufficiency and shifts some childcare from the family. Yet evidence is also found of continued (albeit changed) familism. Rather than an unequivocal move to an individualized worker model then, a dual earner, gender-specialized, family arrangement is being promoted. The latter is the middle way between the old dependencies and the new “independence.” This makes for complexity and even ambiguity in policy, a manifestation of which is that reform within countries involves concurrent moves in several directions.     

A comment on ‘Reconstructing and re-conceptualising social work in the emerging milieu’

Abstract

The article by McDonald and Jones raises some very important issues for Australian social work, and identifies some of the key decisions that social workers in Australia will be required to make if their practice is to maintain some degree of relevance in the changing context of the early twenty-first century.