Revisiting the Client-Worker Relationship: Biestek Through a Gramscian Gaze

Felix P. Biestek's book The Casework Relationship has an exalted location in the literature and practice of social work. The diversity of the lived reality as well as practice notwithstanding, it remains one of the most visited reference points in social work literature. The present article aims to review, understand, and question the client-worker relationship, which has remained as common sense to social work teaching and practice. The naturalness of this relationship is questioned through the Gramscian framework of hegemony.     

The Dilemma of Social Work Education: Restructuring the Curriculum

The roles of social work libraries are reexamined in light of recent trends in library information science The implementation of special services is advocated in the following areas: Information Retrieval and Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI) programs, computer-produced subject bibliographies, regional and national union catalogues in book format, cooperative acquisition plans, and improved interlibrary loan services. Local, regional, and national consortia social work libraries are seen as a possible approach, utilizing existing and future data bank networks.     

Science as a Strategy for Social Work

For more than one hundred years, various forms of science have been promoted to boost social work’s status as a profession. Evidence-based practice and talk about the science of social work are only the most recent manifestations of this pattern. Counter to this trend, this article argues that the latest upsurge of interest in scientific social work is no more likely than any of its predecessors to address the problems of the profession. Beginning with a linguistic analysis of the words science and scientific as positive signifiers, the article traces social work’s long history of science talk as a means of reassuring funding agencies and bolstering the profession’s status. Drawing on a critique of this discourse as the latest example of abstracted empiricism, it then contends that while scientific social work can only rarely capture what occurs in the field, its attempt to do so actually undercuts practitioners’ professional judgment and discretion. Last, after rejecting science talk as counterproductive, the article concludes with recommendations for an alternative strategy that might better position social work to reconcile its advocacy of social justice with its concerns about its professional status.     

The political economy of sociology: An interview with William V. D’Antonio,American Sociological Association

The Executive Director of the American Sociological Association discusses the many uses of sociology as a practical and knowledge-producing discipline, as well as a profession with many constituencies. While hailing gains in sociology’s relations with Congress, the media, and other social science disciplines, he laments that too few talented students elect to pursue social science degrees. D’Antonio concludes with thoughts on the certification of sociologists. His research has centered on the social and political dimensions of science and technology, especially research evaluation, public understanding of science, misconduct in research, and career patterns of scientists and engineers. His latest book (co-edited) isInterdisciplinary Analysis and Research (Lomond 1986).     

Courage to Teach for Social Work Educators

Teaching social work is a science, an art form and a passion. Within that context, the purpose of this article is to explore teaching as a science/art, and to integrate the work of Parker Palmer into the scholarship of teaching and learning for social work education. Using the narratives of two ‘still learning’ social work educators, Palmer's work will be described and its application experiences shared. The article concludes by making a link between Palmer's ideas and social work education.     

Sociological contributions to the study of social innovation: A critical review

Sociology has long been interested in innovating solutions to social problems. However, this desire has also been a source of controversy as it can conflict with the discipline's ambition also to be recognized as a hard science. This paper critically reviews sociological contributions to the study of social innovation. It first contextualizes these contributions by discussing the origins of sociology's interest in transforming society, the growing tension between that interest and sociology's other aspiration to create objective knowledge about the social world, and how more sociologists have relocated to business schools where most research on social innovation is now being conducted. Next, it summarizes sociologists' contributions, which emphasize how social innovation is organized by institutions, networks, social movements, and organizations themselves. It then discusses criticisms of this work and responses to these critiques. It concludes by asking whether sociologists' research on social innovation has advanced their discipline's dual mission of reforming and explaining society and what additional studies are needed.     

Looking at Smelser’s Theory of Collective Behavior After Almost 50 Years: A Review and Appreciation

A half century has gone by since the publication of Neil Smelser’s classic book on the Theory of Collective Behavior. The re-issue of the book triggered these observations in which I reflect on the fate of old books; trace a bit of the book’s genealogy; note changes in the field; and argue that Smelser’s book is really four books in one with varying impact over the decades and likely to be of varying interest to current scholars—an application of Parsonian theory to conflict and change; an elaboration of key concepts found with collective behavior which involves “uninstitutionalized mobilization to reconstitute components of social action on the basis of a generalized belief”; an elaboration of variables such as objective conditions of the social order, perceptions and belief systems required to understand the topic; and a comprehensive summary and critique of relevant empirical and theoretical work on collective behavior through the 1950s. Based on criticisms of the book, I suggest some areas that should be addressed were the book to be revised.     

The Collective Artistry of Activism: A Review of Making Trouble: Life and Politics

Lynne Segal's autobiography upholds the feminist tradition of writing about women's marginalized experiences but she does so without creating the traditional unitary isolated subject. Consciously or not, she has written an autobiography that is psychosocial, often focusing on the social in favor of the psyche. This review discusses this unique book, which writes a life always within a rich cultural context. We are taken from her childhood life in Australia to her days as a single mother in the political and cultural maelstrom of 1960s London. Here her book becomes not just autobiography but also a cultural history of radical movements and the change they created. Written clearly with personal stories from other women, Segal's book is a timely reminder of how simply complicated social activism can be.     

Vygotsky's Stage Theory: The Psychology of Art and the Actor under the Direction of Perezhivanie

This article reviews Vygotsky's writings on arts (particularly logocentric art including the theater) and emotions, drawing on his initial exploration in The Psychology of Art and his final considerations set forth in a set of essays, treatises, and lectures produced in the last years of his life. The review of The Psychology of Art includes attention to the limits of his analysis, the mixed Marxist legacy that is evident in the book, the cultural blinders that affect his vision of the relative value of different artistic productions, the content of what he elsewhere refers to his “tedious investigations” into extant views, and the gist of what he considers to be the essence of art. Attention to his late work falls into two areas: Emotion in formal drama and emotion in everyday drama, each of which involves perezhivanie, roughly but incompletely characterized as emotional experience. The article concludes with an effort to situate Vygotsky's writing on art and emotion both within his broader effort to articulate a comprehensive developmental psychology of socially, culturally, and historically grounded individuals and social groups, and within scholarship that has extended and questioned his work as his influence has expanded beyond the clinics of Soviet Moscow.     

Star wars: aspects of the social construction of citations in Anglo-Canadian sociology*

Il ressort clairement de la lecture des textes en sociologie de la connaissance et de la science que les savants élaborent leurs interprcctations de la réalité en tant que membres de groupes et de réseaux sociaux. Autrement dit, les savants ne réagissent pas uniquement en fonction de la problématique à l'étude ou de normes scientifiques largement diffusées. D'où l'hypothèse selon laquelle les sociologues canadiens citeront les études de leurs collègues en fonction de l'emplacement géographique des universités de ces derniers et des contacts sociaux qui en découlent. L'auteur analyse les citations de deux livres, From Culture to Power de Brym et Fox et Sociology de Stebbins. L'analyse révèle que les auteurs de l'Ouest sont sous-représentés dans les références de From Culture to Power, qui surreprésentent ceux des grandes universités ontariennes, tandis que Sociology accorde une plus grande attention aux ouvrages d'auteurs des Prairies et de 1'Ouest. Writing in the sociologies of knowledge and science makes it clear that scientists construct their interpretations of reality as part of social groups and social networks. That is, scientists do not react solely to the research problem at hand or to widely diffused scientific norms. This view leads to the hypothesis that, in Canadian sociology, authors will cite others' studies as a function of the geographical location of their universities and resulting social contacts, emphasizing the latter. Analyses are conducted for citations in Brym and Fox's From Culture to Power and Stebbins' Sociology. Results show that references in From Culture to Power underrepresent scholars in the West and overrepresent scholars from Core universities in Ontario, while Stebbins' book gives greater attention to works from the Prairies and the West.     

LITTLE BROTHER BREAKS THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT

In 1976 Antonio Negri wrote an introduction to the Italian translation of Jerry Rubin's Growing (Up) at Thirty-Seven, the book that followed his iconic Yippie manifesto ‘Do it’ (Fallo! In Italian). Out of print for some time, the former (with Negri's introduction) was reprinted in 2009. Negri appears to be interested in the transformation of a culture that had flourished with the Yippies, advocating, and coagulating into, new forms of actions, notions of labour, sexuality and production of subjectivity through technological resistance (online and offline hacking), and later morphed into those young upwardly-mobile professionals known as Yuppies. What is the Italian equivalent of the American Yippies? Many participants in the Movement of 77 like the Metropolitan Indians engaged in a myriad of small illegalities quite similar to those technically described in Yippie newsletters (offline hacks). The new publication of this book, along with Negri's introduction, does not come as a surprise. In fact, it appears to establish a connection between those early years of struggles and social unrest and the global identity and political molecularization and dissipation that characterizes the later years. This text is comprised of two parts: the first is a translation of Negri's introduction to Rubin's book. The second critically examines that introduction, relocating it into the semiocapitalist context described by Franco Berardi (Bifo). We believe that this operation helps identify continuities between the underground movements that swept Italy in the mid-1970s, the rise and fall of the Yippies, and a number of dynamics that characterize today's social and political articulations. In particular, Negri's apparent interest in the Yippies and their transient passage tightening up a number of elements that characterize the current hybrid status of labour, the dispersed multiplicity of the political, and the formation of heterogeneous alliances among unlikely bedfellows. Finally, rereading Negri's Introduction allows us to reassess the relationship between himself and Bifo.     

An Interpretation of the Occult Symbolism in Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita

Abstract

Much of the extensive scholarly criticism on The Master and Margarita has focused on Bulgakov's 'cosmology' and how the events of the novel can be seen as a mirror of his world view. In particular, The Master and Margarita is often seen as a literary exposition of a Gnostic outlook. The overwhelming tendency of many studies is to look for a 'key' which can unlock the riddles in the novel and answer some of the more difficult questions pertaining to developments in the plot. This often means that the book is approached from the outside. In contrast, I have tried to look at it from the inside out, and ask how the imagery and symbolism in the book can help answer some of these questions and reveal clues as to Bulgakov's intentions and world view. The fact that much of the symbolism in the book is drawn from Goethe, witchcraft and black magic has been noted — but not that this occult symbolism runs much deeper to include, for example, Masonic and alchemical motifs. As well as exposing this particular layer of symbolism, I have examined how it points to Bulgakov's belief in the importance and need of a spiritual 're-birth' both for individuals and for Russia itself; and that the secret to regeneration lies in the power of such an inner journey.     

Brahmin Left versus Merchant Right? Education,class, multiparty competition,and redistribution in Western Europe

In this article, we revisit the main claims of Part Four of Thomas Piketty's Capital and Ideology and especially the changing support coalitions for parties of the left. Piketty's core argument in this part of the book is that the left now represents the highly educated and that, as a result, the redistributive preferences of the working class do not find representation in today's party systems. We address these claims building on existing political science research that has investigated the transformation of politics in advanced capitalist societies. We argue, first, that the educational divide cannot be adequately analyzed by looking at a left and a right bloc, but crucially needs to pay attention to the rise of green/left‐libertarian and radical right parties. Second, we contend that the new middle classes that support parties of the left are largely in favor of economic redistribution. Analyzing data from the European Social Survey in 11 West European countries from 2002 to 2018, we show that the effect of education on voting left or right is indeed largely driven by green/left‐libertarian and radical right parties, while there is little empirical evidence that social democratic parties represent the educational elite. We also find that redistributive preferences remain at the heart of voting behavior and that, especially for educated voters, these preferences determine whether someone votes for a party of the left rather than the right.     

Status of women on faculty and status of women's studies in Israeli schools of social work

Although social work is a profession consisting mainly of women, social work education is dominated by men. In Israel, 75% of professional social workers are women, but women constitute less than half of the faculties of schools of social work, and are found chiefly in the middle level of academic rank. None holds a rank higher than senior lecturer, although there has been one professor who was a woman. This paper discusses the problems of social work as a women's profession from the point of view of women's developmental theory, and discusses the limitations of the curriculum in the area of women's studies.     

Respect for persons

Abstract

The notion of ‘respect for persons’ is a key notion in moral philosophy as well as in social work ethics. The Kantian notion of a person has, together with individualism, liberalism and positivism, given rise to a strange ideological mixture which ‘guided’ social work theory and practice for some time. Gaita's concept of respect for human beings, examined in this paper, contrasts with the poverty of this ideological mixture. Concepts such as ‘goodness’, ‘remorse' and 'sensibility’ explain why Gaita sees the ethical as something that is both sui generis and of the utmost practical importance. They clarify the irreplaceability of human beings, emphasise the need for moral agents to have ‘historical integrity’, and in general show that a moral agent is much more substantial than a res cogitans. This paper attempts to indicate the relevance of these considerations for social work.     

The work to make an experiment work

ABSTRACT

Contrary to its typical presentation in scientific publications as a certain and linear process, in reality, the experimental method, not least the design aspect of it, requires a great deal of trial-and-error and ad hoc decision-making on the part of the researchers. This uncertain and contingent aspect of research, although little known outside of the circle of experts, has important implications for our understanding of the nature of science and scientific findings.

This paper offers a backstage perspective to experiment design, where the uncertain and contingent nature of experimental research is at its starkest. It draws on insights from the sociological perspective of ethnomethodology through the auto-ethnographic first-hand experience of the first author's own social psychology experiments. Based on detailed lab notes and planning documents on how and why design changes were made, the analysis focuses on the evolution of the experiment design, particularly the researcher’s in situ practical reasoning for how to make the experiment work. From this, we show how ethno-methods shape experiment results and highlight the inseparability of social science experimentation from in situ practical reasoning.     

Media art and the resurrection of an image: motion and sculpturing

The last decades' increase in the visual methods in social science has not been reflected in the study of religion. There is a rather perplexing absence of such methods in the study of religion, given the importance of visual symbolism in many religious traditions. This article is about photo-elicitation among young Christians, Muslims and non-religious people in the multicultural Grønland area in inner-city Oslo, Norway. We focus on two images of holy books: a Bible with a pair of aged hands folded on top, and a Qur'an with a prayer bead. Four narratives that these two images elicited form the basis of the article: (1) ‘Everyday life sociologists of religion’; (2) ‘Cousin Religion's holy book: tool for everyday cosmopolitanism’; (3) ‘Translating holy books’; and (4) ‘The image becomes sacred’. From these narratives, we discuss how photo-elicitation can work in the study of religion. We outline which participants provided which narratives. We discuss the potential of images for tapping silent knowledge about different religious life-worlds, and for bridging different social and cultural worlds.     

Reading social work

Abstract

This paper offers a brief preliminary report on our attempts to apply “close reading” a technique drawn from contemporary literary criticism to social work writing. Reading turns out to be very difficult -something we have had to re-learn but reveals ideological formations deeply embedded in social work texts. Hugh England's “Social Work as Art” is taken as a working example and a case is made saying that it is deeply androcentric. However, it is important to distinguish between text and author and to note that the book shares its androcentricism with many other social work texts and arguably with social work culture in general. (England 1986).     

Identity and the Definition of the Situation in a Mass‐Mediated Context

The importance of identity and the definition of the situation for symbolic interactionist theory and research are discussed. These two concepts have been separated in much research since the 1970s, with identity being used in a variety of ways. This separation is partly attributed to paradigm shifts in social science, as well as to popular culture treatments of identity. Popular culture's emphasis on “collective” and “personal” identities is processed through entertainment formats that emphasize emotional and vicarious involvement, drama and action. Materials illustrate the presence of a mass‐mediated generalized other, media communities, and the significance this has for realist and postrealist ethnography. Suggestions are offered for a reintegration of identity and the definition of the situation in ethnographic work. Sex videos are total fantasy. But people have to realize that even in a fantasy you have to deal with reality. —Pornographic film actress