Evaluating a Measure of ‘Social Orientation’ of Chinese Students in Social Work: Developing its Reliability and Validity

This study examines the reliability and validity of a measure of ‘social orientation’ indigenously developed from Chinese students of social work in Hong Kong. By administering two tests with Chinese social work students (n = 293 and n = 304) at associate degree level, the measure achieves strong internal consistency with r>0.75 and test–retest consistency with r>0.63. The instrument also has strong validity by attempting factor analysis of items generated from qualitative data in in‐depth interviews. The development of this indigenous measure of ‘social orientation’ will contribute to an understanding of the authoritarian, relationship and ‘other’ orientation of Chinese social work students. The authors propose that this will be a crucial factor in influencing the response of Chinese students towards different teaching and learning approaches in social work education.     

Unofficial Hanoians: Migration,Native Place and Urban Citizenship in Vietnam

Independent migration to Hanoi has surged dramatically over two decades of deepening market reforms, blurring the distinctions between urban and rural lives once maintained so carefully by the Communist Party of Vietnam. However many urban migrants face ongoing legal and social obstacles in Hanoi, tied to an outmoded system of household registration (ho khau), and widespread anxieties about the ‘floating population’ threatening to overwhelm the city. This article shows how one group of ‘unofficial Hanoians’—migrant motorbike taxi drivers from Nam Dinh Province—navigate a system of differentiated urban citizenship by forging communities and mutual assistance networks around shared ‘native places’ (que huong) to find employment, housing and social support in the city. It also reveals how Hanoi's marginal urban spaces—home to entrenched migrant communities of ambiguous legality—emerge as key arenas in the negotiation of Vietnamese citizenship, forcing national leaders, city officials, landlords and residents to grapple with questions of free movement and the rights of rural citizens to transgress urban space.     

Cultural Studies and its local resources: discourse and practice in the Rural Reconstruction Movement

ABSTRACT

Emphasis on ‘context’ and ‘practice’ has been the tradition of Cultural Studies. Now Cultural Studies in Mainland China are facing the following difficulties: lack of attention to local issues and thoughts, lack of holistic horizon and sense of history. How can Cultural Studies in Mainland China search out more potential recourse and forces for critique and resistance from modern China and urban–rural China and confront Chinese problems and experiences which are of great complexity, by returning to its unique historical and social context and taking local resources into consideration? We try to return to the long-term engagement in ‘action-writing’ practice in the Rural Reconstruction Movement. Under the unique perspective of ‘practitioner-researcher’, they hope to explore plural spaces veiled by the mainstream and search out, in the historical context of China, local resources for Cultural Studies and possibilities for its advancement.     

Personality in those entering social work training in England: comparing women and men

The ‘person of the social worker’ has long been considered a crucial aspect of social work. Such terms as ‘the person of the worker’ are complemented by an emphasis on both client/service user and worker as conscious subjects, the ‘use of self’, and the overarching importance ascribed by many to the relationship. Surprisingly, in view of this emphasis, there has been little attempt to look at the personality of those entering social work, or social work education. This is further emphasised by the gender imbalance internationally characteristic of social work and social care, in which women predominate. This study, carried out in two diverse English Universities, whose provision nevertheless reflected the undergraduate and postgraduate expectations of the Bologna Declaration, compares systematically the personality of men and women recruited to their social work programmes. Considerable differences between the sexes are found in certain key areas, with a tendency towards what is termed ‘robustness’ in men and ‘responsiveness’ in women. While the characteristics associated with both tendencies have appropriateness for social work, and results are highly nuanced, this does raise issues about characteristics, selection and possible gender biases. These are discussed.     

Women and the rural idyll

The existence of a ‘rural idyll’ has been widely accepted by social scientists working within the rural field. Yet the term itself has received relatively little critical attention. In particular, the variable characteristics and impacts of the rural idyll amongst different groups within the rural population has been largely overlooked. The cultural turn in rural geography and the emphasis which has recently been placed on identifying and studying the rural ‘other’ provides an important opportunity for the notion of a rural idyll to be unpacked from the perspective of different rural dwellers. This paper investigates the role of the rural idyll in maintaining rural gender relations. It examines women's attitudes towards and experiences of two key elements of the rural idyll; the family and the community. Drawing on material from interviews with women in rural Avon in the south west of England, the paper shows how women's identity as ‘rural women’ is closely tied in to their images and understanding of rural society. It is argued, in particular, that the opportunities available and acceptable to women are built on very strong assumptions and expectations about motherhood and belonging within a rural community. Some of the more practical implications of these expectations are explored in the context of women's involvement in the community and in the labour market.     

Psychological Gender Issues in Computing

This paper builds on the implication from Rosen et al.'s (1987) work that the variation in findings with respect to gender differences in attitudes towards computers and anxiety caused by computers (i.e. ‘computerphobia’), may be due in part to differences of psychological gender (regardless of biological gender) within subjects. Sandra Bem's (1974, 1981) theory of psychological gender is incorporated into the research, identifying subjects as ‘sex typed’ or ‘androgynous’. A student population of under/post graduates (N=282; 50.7% of which were male and 49.3% were female) is presented with the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI), a computer anxiety questionnaire (Heinssen et al. 1987) and a computer attitude questionnaire (Dambrot et al. 1985). The latter questionnaire has positive and negative subscales. The results indicate that masculinity correlates with positive attitudes towards computers for both sexes. In addition masculinity was correlated with less anxiety and less negative attitudes towards computers for females, lending support to a sex by gender interaction (i.e. that masculinity has a different effect on each sex). Femininity correlated negatively with programming experience in females. This is discussed in relation to computing being seen as a ‘male activity’, and the subsequent educational and organizational implications identified.     

Top girls navigating austere times: interrogating youth transitions since the ‘crisis’

Since the 1990s, young women in the West have been addressed as ‘Top Girls’, symbols of social progress and emblems of a new meritocracy. The 2008 financial crash and subsequent implementation of austerity measures have further called into question the realisation of such promise and potential as evidence suggests that the young and women have suffered disproportionately within the post-crash landscape in the UK and beyond. This paper draws on longitudinal data to interrogate the promises and failures of neoliberal and post-feminist articulations of aspiration and meritocracy as these are lived and negotiated by young women making transitions in the midst of the ‘crisis’. Attending to the biographical accounts of two participants occupying different class locations, I explore their transitions and perceptions of the uncertainties and risks characterising ‘austere times’. I demonstrate how, despite similarities in their experiences of a stunted graduate labour market, social class shaped how they responded to and made sense of the pressures and predicaments they encountered.     

Quite an encumbrance? Work-related obstacles to Finnish fathers’ take-up of parental leave

ABSTRACT

An ideal of involved fatherhood has become popular in the developed countries, but even countries like Finland that have introduced an individual father’s quota to parental leave are far from gender equality in parents’ leave practices. Lack of support and negative attitudes at workplaces or pressure at work are among the obstacles to fathers’ leave take-up. The study used survey data from fathers and interviews at workplaces to explore the role of work and workplaces among the many aspects related to fathers’ possibilities of taking leave. The results showed that fathers’ income and workplace characteristics were associated with taking leave. Few fathers mentioned employers’ objection as a hinder. Father’s recent unemployment and anticipated difficulty of taking a long time off played a more important role. At workplaces, the obstacles to taking long leave were related to fathers’ ideals about a committed worker and to the nature and organizing of work. Additionally, the leave exceeding fathers’ quota might not be understood as ‘for fathers’. The spouse’s situation and fathers’ gendered perceptions about parental responsibilities were also important for leave practices. The findings suggest that policy development towards a longer father’s quota could make fathers’ care responsibilities visible also at workplaces.     

Siblingship And Continuity Of The Family In The Balinese Houseyard

This article investigates yafuni (‘witchcraft’ or female sorcery) accusations among the Maisin people living in Collingwood Bay, Oro Province, Papua New Guinea. It takes as its primary case a public meeting at which two women were accused of killing a man. During the meeting, reasons for the victim's unexpected death and why he was subjected to ‘witchcraft’ were questioned and explored. While sorcery and witchcraft accusations might have violent outcomes, I argue that among Maisin they can be understood as performative rituals in which tensions and frustrations are vented in controlled ways, effectively preventing aggression and violence towards those accused. Accusations must be understood in the context of local identity politics that entail the questioning and redefining of relations and boundaries between gender, clans and cultural groups. In the case examined in this paper, the meeting provided a forum for the predominantly male accusers to re-establish gender hierarchies and social boundaries in order to restore social balance, albeit at the cost of victimising two women.     

Advancing careers through ‘merit’: a rationalized-sensemaking narrative in hierarchical organizations

ABSTRACT

This contribution provides an in-context exploration of how middle-managers make sense of their career progress, and particularly focuses on ‘merit’ to understand how careers are driven in a hierarchical organization. The study exposes ‘merit’ as a fragmented and individualized construction that links back to the participants’ broader life ambitions and identity footprint. It also shows a tendency for maintaining trust in ‘merit’ above other circumstantial and opportunity factors, even in face of events which undermine the application of the merit-based principle. ‘Merit’ is hence portrayed to be a rationalized narrative in careers’ trajectory; a marker used by participants to make sense of events in a coherent manner, consequently experiencing self-efficacy and reducing uncertainty. The findings add complexity to the ‘meritocracy’ debate, calling for new critiques which address its underlying inequality dimension while also contemplating the individual psychological purpose driving ‘merit’ beliefs.     

Growing Down Like a Banana: Solomon Islands Village Women Changing Gender Norms

This article presents Solomon Islands village women’s opinions about gender norms. It explores their perceptions of their ability to be involved in leadership roles and decision-making, and their analysis of how they conceive of their abilities changing. It attempts to unravel the ‘push-pull’ experience for Solomon Islands rural women—a push towards modernity equated with gender equity and development, and the pull of traditional gender roles for women embedded in notions of what it means to be a good Solomon Islander woman. It concludes that women’s empowerment must be viewed as a journey that encompasses women’s strategic and practical interests relating to agency in a variety of locations. This article contributes to understanding some aspects to women’s empowerment and how international NGOs and other development entities may have a role in creating space for women’s self-reflection, public commentary and visibility in secular social space.     

Women's fear of crime: A rural perspective

This paper examines women's experience of fear of crime in rural areas. It argues that much existing research on issues of gender, fear and safety have focused on urban areas and that as a result we know relatively little about women's experience of fear in a rural context. As well as arguing that we need to redress the balance and respond to the dearth of knowledge about rural women's fear, the paper asserts the importance of a rural perspective in understanding the relationship between fear and the social and cultural construction of place. The rural in particular provides an important site for such an understanding since, as is argued here, the notion of safety is central to constructions of rurality. The paper presents data on rural women's experience of fear and crime from research carried out in New Zealand and the UK. It draws on work undertaken in four rural communities and begins to identify the extent and nature of women's fears and how these relate to their experience of rurality. The paper shows how while popular constructions of the rural as friendly, safe and largely crime free endure, there is a recognition amongst rural women of the growing problems surrounding personal safety. It also demonstrates the importance of social constructions of the rural community in identifying the relevance of the ‘stranger’ and the marginalised ‘other’ to women's feelings of fear.     

Counting the cost of difference: a reply to Sullivan

ABSTRACT

Counting the Cost of Difference’ replies to Alice Sullivan’s piece on gender auditing in the UK Census. While Sullivan argues that the proposed changes to audit gender identity will dilute the meaning of ‘sex’ and thus the needs of women, I suggest that auditing on self-declared gender in Census 2021 signals a move towards the further recognition that gender is fluidly and diversely experienced and practiced in contemporary society. This should, I suggest, be welcomed rather than feared by feminist thinkers.     

Social work students’ perspective on environmental justice: Gaps and challenges for preparing students

ABSTRACT

The integration of environmental justice into social work education, research, and practice has grown substantially in the past decade. However, social workers still report feeling unprepared to address these challenges with their clients and communities. To understand the disconnect between education about and application of environmental justice principles, semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with graduate social work students (n = 14). Findings suggest this disconnect is catalyzed, in part, by the environment’s meta nature and a lack of facilitated education on the dynamic feedbacks between the physical environment and social justice issues. Implications for social work educators are discussed.     

What about biodiversity? Redefining urban sustainable management to incorporate endemic fauna with particular reference to Australia

An estimated 50 % of the world’s population live in urban areas and this is expected to rise to 70 % by 2050. Urban developments will thus continue to encroach on non-urban landscapes and native biodiversity (flora and fauna). Although much has been written on sustainable urban development, the biodiversity component has been largely ignored. Consequently, sustainable development of biodiversity is poorly understood within urban confines by planners and designers, community developers and social planners, activists and social movements, and even academics and consultants. When native flora and fauna are incorporated deliberately or ad hoc, for example due to landscaping fashions, the outcome may create on-going issues for authorities which could be minimised with sustainable management. For example, green urban infrastructure including parks and gardens, ‘backyards’, remnant bushland and even wastelands can be more effectively developed to sustainably support biodiversity, typically at reduced on-going cost. However, due to the lack of understanding of this aspect of sustainable development and on-going issues of ‘pest management’, the focus has been on only a small sub-set of the overall biodiversity. In addition, these changes in species’ dynamics often lead to the decline of local amenity for humans, and endemic species (e.g., small-bodied birds). Other taxa are typically neglected because they are cryptic, innocuous, dangerous, a nuisance, feral, or just not ‘sexy’.     

Cultural production and the politics of identity: On the strategic use of ‘multiculturalism’ in two Austrian cities

This article is a résumé of the findings of an empirical study carried out by the ICCR Vienna between July 1993 and July 1994. The study investigated the images of ‘foreigners’ as members of immigrant minorities that emerge out of the interaction between the cultural administration, organizers of cultural events, cultural agents and ‘ethnic minority’ artists, and how these images and the discourse on ‘foreigners’ relates to practices of inclusion and exclusion. Specifically examined were artistic productions and initiatives of the low‐profit and non‐profit sector of theatrical and musical performances in Vienna and Graz. Qualitative interviews with the main actors were supported and enriched through non‐standardized participant observation, action research and a modest social experiment. The article argues that the Austrian variant of the discourse on ‘multiculturalism’ serves as a tool to formulate social order, whereby social inequality is transformed into cultural difference. The emancipatory dimension of culture as a way of life is used to construct homogeneous cultural ( = ’ethnic') collectives. In this construction immigrant artists serve as the representatives of the collective culture of the ‘others’.     

Political Economy of Immigration in Germany: Attitudes and Citizenship Aspirations1

This paper examines resident foreigners’ interest in German citizenship. We use a unique data set from a survey of foreign residents in the German states to study the roles played by factors such as attitudes towards foreigners and political interest of foreigners. We find that negative attitudes towards foreigners and generational conflict within foreigner families are significant negative factors. While interest in political participation is among the important positive factors, hostile attitudes, lack of voting rights, or uncertainty about staying in Germany mainly discourage foreigners who actively participate in the labor market, have more years of schooling, and are younger.     

Coping with the COVID‐19 crisis: force majeure and gender performativity

This article examines the coping strategies of individuals during the confinement in France using a sensemaking lens. We draw on two studies consisting of 85 qualitative surveys followed by a diary in which 20 individuals wrote about their experiences during the first three weeks of the confinement. We employ an interpretative phenomenological approach to analyse the data. The findings reveal two patterns in the ways men and women cope with their experiences during the COVID‐19 pandemic. The first pattern shows intensification of gender performativity manifested in the reproduction of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ reactions to the crisis. The second pattern detects a tendency towards a gradual deflection from gender performances through mental improvisations that foster new awareness of the crisis presenting an opportunity to transcend traditional gender roles. Our study highlights some potential emancipatory implications the COVID‐19 crisis may have for the practices of ‘doing gender’ and perceptions of work–life balance therefore instigating a transition towards more egalitarian households.     

Theorising fatherhood,welfare and the decline of patriarchy in Japan

This paper investigates social policies concerning men's transitions to fatherhood and the changing role of fathers in Japan. A review of fathering research reveals a predominantly agency-level emphasis on role-strain between work and paternal identities with a specific discourse of weakened Japanese fatherhood. Previous research suggested Japanese gender equality and work-life balance initiatives stalled due to an absence of women's influence within Japan's corporate culture. This study offers a historical perspective to show modern family policies were essentially rooted in gender-equality campaigns led by women's organisations dating back to post-WWII era. The findings situate Japanese social policy and epistemology in the international vanguard of a ‘Nordic turn’ towards structural-level research and improved social citizenship rights to support men's transitions to fatherhood.