From concept to data: sleuthing social change-oriented youth voices on YouTube

The idea of youth voice has become commonplace in youth studies and advocacy, although its meaning is more often assumed than explicitly defined and critically analyzed. This article engages with the concept of youth voice through a discussion of how we designed and implemented a pilot study on social change-oriented videos produced and circulated by Canadian teens on YouTube. We discuss the challenges and issues we encountered while attempting to constitute our research sample of youth-produced videos. In our sleuthing process, we grappled with the limitations of online search engines for our research purposes, and as a result developed a purposeful, tactical and adaptive approach. Throughout this process, we found that technical and practical issues evoked ethical concerns regarding youth voice as well, which thus required constant decision-making. As we report on how we dealt with these issues, we contribute to ongoing discussions and debates on youth voice occurring at the intersection of critical youth studies, social media, and online research ethics.     

Migrant voices addressing social work: listening to Italian women in Germany

The research presented here aimed to give voice to Italian women who emigrated to Germany in the 1960s by giving an authentic account of their experiences and their coping abilities through participatory research approaches and the analysis of in-depth biographic interviews conducted 2012/2013 in the South of Germany. This type of interviewing itself often enabled the women, for the first time to reflect on their migration story, on their attachment to ‘Italy’, on their relationship with the host country, its language and culture. They usually realised late in life that an originally provisional project had become permanent. Their thinking in ‘habitual patterns’ is not to be taken as a sign of failed integration but reveals a differentiated strategy of managing the ‘in-between situation’. The higher quality of services in the host country is invariably a key factor in the decision to stay. The results indicate the benefits of recognising individual strengths in personal modes of adapting to multiple and often conflicting demands in the negotiation of multi-layered value structures. Differentiated listening skills to such voices and sensitive support strategies have far-reaching implications for both research and intervention methods in social work, and not just with migrants.     

Physical and social barriers to social relationships: voices of rural disabled women in the USA

Through exploring the lived experiences of disabled women, this study investigates how physical and social barriers affect their social relationships. In‐depth tape‐recorded interviews investigating a variety of social and interpersonal issues were conducted with 24 women with physical or visual impairments who lived in a rural region of the midwestern USA. Using content analysis, the researchers examined interview data for common themes and patterns relating to social relationships. The findings indicate that physical barriers, related to the physical environment and personal physicality, along with social barriers, involving preconceptions of others about impairment and restrictions in personal networks, hamper the initiation and maintenance of social relationships. Further, the experiences of this group of disabled women corresponded most closely with the premises of a social relational understanding of disability.     

Teaching without being taught how: social work practice faculty voices

ABSTRACT

Social work practice faculty have an important role in socializing MSW students to the field and practice of social work. This study, based on interviews with 15 faculty teaching an advanced clinical practice course in the United States, examines how faculty conceptualize teaching and learning. Faculty were asked about the theories or frameworks that guided their teaching, their own journeys to teaching and the resources that support their teaching. The study found that participants drew largely on their own experiences as student learners and social work practitioners and did not have much formal training in teaching and student learning. Furthermore, while half of the participants were able to identify a learning theory that guided their teaching, the other half were not. Finally, while participants articulated the need for support regarding their own teaching, many of the schools did not have formal faculty development opportunities. The paper ends with recommendations for supporting current and new faculty regarding teaching and student learning.     

Energy and social change: an introduction

The majority of the papers collected in this section have been selected from those presented at the first international conference held in Italy on the social implications of energy issues.

The introduction to this special issue pursues two aims: on the one hand, to emphasize the importance of the energy question for the study of social change; and on the other, to show the potential importance of the social sciences, and in particular of sociological research, in regard to the energy issue.

To this end, the introduction considers a large part of the literature on the role of the social sciences in analysis of the energy issue, but also the changes in the social and political institutions, and therefore in social organization, consequent upon the ‘energy revolutions’. It finally concentrates on certain areas of inquiry in which the social sciences are the main players: the analysis of public opinion and environmental conflict. This concerns the acceptability of technologies for the production of energy from different sources, especially the alternatives to fossils, and how this affects the development of new technologies and future scenarios in regard to energy and the environment.     

Multiple social contexts in qualitative bereavement research

Little research focuses on the ways that bereaved family members react to and make meaning of their experience of the death of an elderly father and husband. In a qualitative, ethnographic study of 34 bereaved families we examined how family members respond to two inter-related social contexts: 1. social-cultural values and attitudes such as attitudes toward grieving for old persons, and 2. the inter-personal dyadic relationship between interviewer and interviewee. An underlying theme of uncertainty pervades the study participants' views of what is normal and expected in their own process of bereavement. Implications for future bereavement research are suggested.     

An introduction to exponential random graph (p) models for social networks

This article provides an introductory summary to the formulation and application of exponential random graph models for social networks. The possible ties among nodes of a network are regarded as random variables, and assumptions about dependencies among these random tie variables determine the general form of the exponential random graph model for the network. Examples of different dependence assumptions and their associated models are given, including Bernoulli, dyad-independent and Markov random graph models. The incorporation of actor attributes in social selection models is also reviewed. Newer, more complex dependence assumptions are briefly outlined. Estimation procedures are discussed, including new methods for Monte Carlo maximum likelihood estimation. We foreshadow the discussion taken up in other papers in this special edition: that the homogeneous Markov random graph models of Frank and Strauss [Frank, O., Strauss, D., 1986. Markov graphs. Journal of the American Statistical Association 81, 832–842] are not appropriate for many observed networks, whereas the new model specifications of Snijders et al. [Snijders, T.A.B., Pattison, P., Robins, G.L., Handock, M. New specifications for exponential random graph models. Sociological Methodology, in press] offer substantial improvement.     

Founder's background as a catalyst for social entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneurship has a long history of practice worldwide. However, the concept has become widely popular among researchers over the last two decades. Despite this popularity, less is known about the process, which leads to becoming a social entrepreneur. Barendsen and Gardner's study shows that many social entrepreneurs have traumatic experience in their early lives; however, there are no supporting studies investigating the impact of the background of founders on the founding decision of their entities. Because of that we utilized the models of theory of planned behavior as well as the concept of imprinting to explain the process that leads to entrepreneurial behavior. The purpose of our study is to investigate the life stories of some Turkish social entrepreneurs, and to explore which factors in these people's backgrounds may have contributed to their decisions to establish their foundations.     

Venture philanthropy and social entrepreneurship in community redevelopment

This article provides a case study of Tom Cousins, a social entrepreneur who used his own venture philanthropic investments and leveraged additional resources through extensive public‐private partnerships for the sole intent of redeveloping an area of disinvestment and poverty. In the process, Cousins also provided the visionary, strategic, and operational leadership often associated with the actions and responsibilities of a social entrepreneur. The limited research to date has investigated social entrepreneurship and venture philanthropy as separate and often unrelated concepts. In this study, we analyze the sustained and intensive involvement by Cousins and his foundations and the continued leadership provided in the creation of public‐private partnerships focused on the redevelopment of the East Lake area in Atlanta.     

Sociogenomics in the 21st century: An introduction to the history and potential of genetically informed social science

This article reviews research at the intersection of genetics and sociology and provides an introduction to the current data, methods, and theories used in sociogenomic research. To accomplish this, I review behavioral genetics models, candidate gene analysis, genome‐wide complex trait analysis, and the use of polygenic scores (sometimes referred to as polygenic risk scores) in the study of complex human behaviors and traits. The information provided is meant to equip readers with the necessary tools to (a) understand the methodology employed by each type of analysis, (b) intelligently interpret findings from sociogenomic research, and (c) understand the importance of sociologists in the ever‐growing field of sociogenomics. To unify these three tasks, I rely on various examples from recent sociogenomic analyses of educational attainment focusing on social stratification and inequality.