Environmental Justice Is a Social Justice Issue: Incorporating Environmental Justice Into Social Work Practice Curricula

Social justice education for social work practice is concerned with addressing issues of power and oppression as they impact intersections of identity, experience, and the social environment. However, little focus is directed toward the physical and natural environment despite overwhelming evidence that traditionally marginalized groups bear the burden of environmental problems. In this article, we discuss environmental disaster impacts on marginalized communities, presence of environmental justice in social work literature, and opportunities for integrating environmental justice into social work’s mandated disciplinary competencies. We conclude with an example of a module implemented in a foundation Social Justice for Social Work Practice course using place-based education principles as an illustration of concrete strategies for incorporating environmental justice into social justice curricula.     

Environmental Justice and Social Work Education: Social Workers' Professional Perspectives

Environmental injustice is a growing human rights issue as climate change and environmental degradation rapidly increases. As a social justice problem, it is relevant to the social work profession, yet not integrated into our curricula. This study of 373 social work professionals found that environmental justice is a significant practice issue across broad client populations and that professionals felt unprepared to address it. Qualitative and quantitative data revealed high levels of client exposure to environmental hazards with little power to change it. Respondents reported dissatisfaction with their education to help them understand environmental issues. Moreover, they indicated that they would like to see environmental justice integrated into social work education and better-prepared graduates entering the profession. Implications for practice and education are discussed.     

Social Exclusion,Social Identity and Social Work: Analysing Social Exclusion from a Material Discursive Perspective

Within this article I explore the concept of social exclusion, considering how it has been defined and the implications of this for social exclusion policy. It is suggested that the current use of the concept focuses on material definitions of exclusion, obscures the discursive origins of exclusion and tends to individualise the problem. I argue that we need to adopt a broader approach to defining and analysing social exclusion which understands social exclusion as a process which is influenced by both material and discursive factors. The connections between discourse, identity and marginalisation are discussed and these arguments are illustrated using examples related to different aspects of social identity. Finally the article presents a framework for analysing social exclusion from a material discursive perspective and suggests that adopting this perspective clarifies the role of social work in working with people who experience exclusionary processes.     

Sustainable Social Work: An Environmental Justice Framework for Social Work Education

Environmental degradation is not experienced by all populations equally; hazardous and toxic waste sites, resource contamination (e.g., exposure to pesticides), air pollution, and numerous other forms of environmental degradation disproportionately affect low income and minority communities. The communities most affected by environmental injustices are often the same communities where social workers are entrenched in service provision at the individual, family, and community level. In this article, we use a global social work paradigm to describe practical ways in which environmental justice content can be infused in the training and education of social workers across contexts in order to prepare professionals with the skills to respond to ever-increasing global environmental degradation. We discuss ways for social work educators to integrate and frame environmental concerns and their consequences for vulnerable populations using existing social work models and perspectives to improve the social work profession's ability to respond to environmental injustices. There are significant social work implications; social workers need to adapt and respond to contexts that shape our practice, including environmental concerns that impact the vulnerable and oppressed populations that we serve.     

Social Justice and Social Work,A Fierce Urgency: Recommendations for Social Work Social Justice Pedagogy

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the challenge of understanding the meaning and pedagogical application of social justice in social work by presenting and applying the circle of insight framework I created and proposing a social work definition of social justice. In particular, the circle of insight is presented as a tool and a process for critically examining learnings from social justice courses, transforming social justice social work pedagogy, and defining social justice in social work. In the fierce urgency of now, consistent with research findings and the social work profession’s ethical codes and statements, social workers are invited to use the circle of insight process and proposed definition of social justice to engage in social justice–infused social work curricular transformation.     

Social Justice,Social Policy,and Social Work

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that the models underlying the conceptualization of social work functions affect the costs of integrating policy issues into practice, and, therefore, the probability that social justice goals will be pursued. An inclusive approach to policy design is seen as lowering those costs. The nature of the costs and how they vary between the models is discussed.     

Pesticides,Migrant Farm Workers,and Corporate Agriculture: How Social Work Can Promote Environmental Justice

Since Rachel Carson’s exposé on harmful pesticides in the 1960s, the use of these contaminants has multiplied. In a neoliberal system of agriculture, corporate agriculture dominates the cultivation and production of most foods available for purchase and consumption. With profit being the primary goal, environmental and human concerns are not priorities. This article discusses the consequences of pesticide use, both for the environment and for migrant farm workers who cultivate most crops in the United States. Social work concerns are discussed in relation to social and environmental justice, and alternative approaches are considered that are consistent with ecological social work principles.     

Social Exclusion and Psychosis

SUMMARY

This article considers aspects of the possible impact of social exclusion upon psychosis and the implications of this for mental health social work practice. Against a background of calls for evidence based practice, and increasing recognition of the significance of theories and understandings as the foundations of practice, the article will first explore current and historical ways of viewing and intervening with the relationship between social adversity and mental health. Then, alternative understandings of this relationship, supported by recent research regarding the impact of trauma and extreme social adversity upon physiological and physical processes implicated in mental ill-health, will be discussed. These approaches have major implications for social work practice with psychosis, suggesting that experiences of trauma and disadvantage, and interventions seeking to alleviate the inner and outer effects of these experiences-tasks central to the social work remit-can make a significant difference to mental health outcomes. However, this is not to advocate a simple (albeit under-resourced) 'social solution'! On the contrary, the understandings underpinning these approaches recognise biological processes play a role in mental and physical ill-health: importantly, however, they can be shown to question the stigma traditionally attached to the concept of biological disorder in mental health, thus pointing to the value of a truly biopsychosocial approach with psychosis, involving fully holistic interventions that differ from those currently dominant, and which carry implications for more egalitarian worker-user relationships.     

Social Justice,Research, and Adolescence

In what ways might research on adolescence contribute to social justice? My 2014 Presidential Address identified strategies for social justice in our field. First, we need research that is conscious of biases, power, and privilege in science, as well as in our roles as scholars. Second, we need research that attends to inequities in lives of adolescents, and as scholars we need to question the ways that our research may unwittingly reinforce those inequalities. Third, we need research that attends to urgencies, that is, issues or conditions that influence adolescents’ well‐being which demand attention and action. I draw from a range of concepts and theoretical perspectives to make the case for a framework of social justice in research on adolescence.     

Social Exclusion and Social Work: Questions for the Future

This paper describes the experiences of students and service users and carers participating in the Staffordshire University Skills Lab Programme. Two focus groups were held: one with first year social work students and one with service users and carers to explore their views. Qualitative analysis identified key themes that were part of the students' and the service users and carers' experience of the skills lab. The skills lab was very positively rated overall. Several recommendations for improvement will be addressed for future years.     

Social Work and Social Justice

This study evaluated 99 baccalaureate social work students' reactions to simulation kits that replicated visual impairments common with the aging process. Through qualitative research methods, students' preconceived notions and reported incidents of ageism were assessed in light of their reactions to increased understanding of visual changes. The outcome was greater self-awareness and critical reflection of ageism and discrimination. Students reported enhanced awareness of personal, social, and professional implications. This research supports previous data which suggest that increased exposure to activities that simulate the disabilities and experiences of oppression in older adults provide an opportunity to reduce ageism.     

Socially Diverse Polis: Social and School Exclusion

This paper addresses the questions of citizenship in socially diverse polities. Such issues are presently not dealt with adequately because social scientists, parliamentarians and policy makers do not have an informed view which is relevant for the governance of stable democratic systems which embody cultural diversities. The role of social policy systems in ensuring equity in the delivery of services is important in ensuring the citizenship rights of all groups in society.

At the present time economic policies have created a culture of winners and losers which makes the efforts of schools more difficult.

The schools and the educational systems face the challenge of creating a common and shared values orientation on the diversities in the polity. Such communities also present the schools with immense possibilities, if teacher education, school policies and practice, curriculum and classroom organisation can be optimised. Such measures may help obviate the school exclusion of specific groups.     

A Social Innovation: Addressing Relative Food Insecurity and Social Exclusion

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Food insecurity manifests itself on a continuum, and we note that it can range from absolute food insecurity to relative...     

Homelessness and Social Exclusion: A Foucauldian Perspective for Social Workers

Abstract

The present article considers the malleability of the concept of social exclusion as a tool of policy analysis and intervention in relation to homelessness. The article uses Foucauldian concepts of discourse, power/knowledge and surveillance to pose a challenge to the construction of homelessness as a social exclusion, while alluding to the need for researchers, policy and service provision to be more inclusive of the voices of homeless people in the development of both policy and services. The author argues that the concept of social exclusion, which informs major policy initiatives of the Rann Labor Government in South Australia and the Blair Labour Government in Britain, has a primarily rhetorical purpose and obscures both structural contexts and the subjectivities and lived experience of those labelled homeless.     

Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion: Implications for Social Work Education

This article considers the importance of understanding poverty for social workers and the ways it is delivered on social work programmes. It reviews the context in which poverty is experienced by service users and social workers. It then goes on to consider the ways in which teaching about poverty has been approached in social work education. Drawing on the experiences of the authors of designing and delivering a module on social work, poverty and social exclusion on a postgraduate DipSW programme it considers an approach to developing poverty aware social work practice for social workers in training. Finally it discusses ways in which the new three year qualification for social work training might develop this subject more fully in ways that seek to combat poverty and social exclusion amongst social work service users.     

Fields,Logics, and Social Movements: Prison Abolition and the Social Justice Field*

This essay argues that field analyses of social movements can be improved by incorporating more insights from Pierre Bourdieu. In particular, Bourdieu’s concepts of logic, symbolic capital, illusio, and doxa can enrich social movement scholarship by enabling scholars to identify new objects of study, connect organizational‐ and individual‐level effects, and shed new light on a variety of familiar features of social movements. I demonstrate this claim by delineating the contours of one such field, the “social justice field” (SJF). I argue that the SJF is a delimited, trans‐movement arena of contentious politics united by the logic of the pursuit of radical social justice. Drawing upon existing scholarship, as well as my own research on the prison abolition movement, I argue that the competitive demands of the field produce characteristic effects on organizations and individual activists within the field. I conclude by considering how a Bourdieuian approach can provide fresh insights into familiar problematics within the social movements literature.