The Corporate University and social work academic roles

Abstract

Universities have undergone significant changes in the last decade. Universities have become ‘corporate’, integrating the values, assumptions and ethics of corporate economic capitalism. Within universities, social work practice expertise is negated as a criterion of valued ‘technological role expertise’ of social work academics. The paper describes and analyses the compounding impact of changes in the role of universities upon the historically problematic relationship between social work practice and social work education, The paper suggests a means to integrate both roles in the roles of practitioner-academic and academic-practitioner A typology is developed which identifies the knowledge and skill basis of social work practitioners and academics. The typology enables an identification of the cross fertilisation of each role on the practice expertise of the other. Through such a typology an alternative valued criterion of ‘technological role expertise’ can be established by the profession itself for utilisation in both academic and practice appointments and promotion assessment.     

Manaagement practices and employee attitudes: a longitudinal study spanning fifty years

This paper reports findings from a third consecutive study to re‐visit a steelworks that provided a classic elaboration of the industrial enterprise as a social system. The social system of the works in the 1950s (Scott et al., 1956) was used to explain the positive orientation of steelworkers to change. A later study of the plant in 1991 uncovered a remarkably similar positive orientation to change in the plant indicating a number of continuities (Blyton et al., 1996). Despite massive changes affecting the plant between the 1950s and the early 1990s, the social system of the works‐occupational structures and identities and management‐union relations‐were seen as having a continuing bearing on steelworkers’ attitudes to work in general, and their positive orientation to work change in particular. A third study of employee attitudes in the same plant in 1999 revealed important changes had occurred during the 1990s.     

Wind,coal, and copper: the politics of land grabbing,counterinsurgency, and the social engineering of extraction

ABSTRACT

The multiplicity of violent techniques employed to impose land control and extraction remains under acknowledged. This article reviews research conducted between the years 2014 and 2018 and draws on three case studies: wind energy development in Mexico, coal mining in Germany, and copper mining in Peru. The idea of 'engineering extraction' is advanced through counterinsurgency to acknowledge the extent of extractive violence, arguing that the term ‘land grabbing’ is indeed a more appropriate term than ‘land deals’. Engaging with the land grabbing literature, the three cases seek to advance discussions around ‘the political reactions “from below”’ by emphasizing ‘insurrectionary’ positions with resistance movements fighting land deals and extractive projects. This is followed by offering a typology of ‘hard’ coercive techniques and ‘soft’ technologies of social pacification that surfaced in each case. The conclusion reflects on the social technologies of resource extraction, recognizing how social discord, ecological and climate crises are engineered and enforced.     

Life skills training and the politics of personal effectiveness

In recent years social and life skills curriculum has emerged to occupy an important place in new training initiatives, particularly those associated with YTS and pre-vocational courses such as TVEI, CPVE and City and Guids 365.* one level the attraction of‘life skills’training is that it is relevant and address, in ways that traditional Liberal and General Studies could not, the practical problems likely to affect young people as adults, as parents and as employees. another, ambiguity surrounds the criteria upon which such skills for living are constructed and appraised, not least because of their close behavioural connection with altering young peoples’attitudes toward authority, industry and society. Despite recent concern about the dangers of bias and indoctrination elsewhere in mainstream education, this controversial aspect of government intervention in vocational training (DEP 1981; MSC 1981; DEP 1984) has escaped the critical attention of those who currently express concern about standards in education (Scrution et al 1985). For this reason the paper seeks to examine the kind of‘official’thinking which lies behind life skills training, and the skills which are thought necessary to enhance the‘personal effectiveness’of young people. This would seem all the more important in view of the government's contention that technical and vocational education (14-18) now constitutes a viable alternative for those who fail to succeed in mainstream education. (DEP 1981, 1984; MSC 1981, 1982a).     

From the social to the symbolic equation: the progress of idealism in contemporary anthropological representations of kinship, marriage, and the family

This is the second paper of a trilogy, in which I investigate the development of anthropological definitions of kinship, marriage and the family, assess their limitations for the comparative study of social organization, and suggest an alternative. The analysis is predicated on the assumption that these definitions are derived from an underlying representation of groups and society, and that they will fail to be ‘universal’ as long as we do not define groups as phenomena sui generis. In a first paper (Verdon, 1980a), I studied the manner in which the evolutionists, studying groups through their ideological reflections, rooted kinship, marriage and the family in biology, and also asserted the historical and logical priority of ‘group ties’ over ‘individual ties.’ Malinowski rescued groups from ‘nature,’ only to reduce them in turn to interaction and the sentiments it generates, positing in the process the ontological and analytical primacy of ‘individual ties’ over ‘group ties’ in the analysis of ‘primitive’ society. Against this background (and studied in this paper), Rivers, Radcliffe-Brown and Fortes (1) argued that groups transcended both biology and psychology because of their ‘social’ dimension, and (2) tried to reconcile the two levels of corporate groups (group ties) and interpersonal relationships (individual ties). Despite their remarkable efforts, however, I argue that they fell short of achieving both. With Lévi-Strauss and Schneider, finally, groups are further removed from ‘society’ itself as social relations come to be perceived as ‘symbolic’ or ‘cultural’. The process of ‘idealization’ is therefore complete, from ‘practical reason’ (with the evolutionists) to ‘cultural transcendentalism’ (with the structuralists), and our conceptual tools (such as kinship, marriage and the family) are increasingly less ‘universal’ in their applicability. If the comparative study of social organization is to become more rigorous and systematic, it may have to call for an ‘operational’ solution. Cet article s'insère dans le cadre d'une trilogie, dans laquelle j'ai cherchéà dessiner l'évolution des définitions anthropologiques de la parenté, du mariage et de la famille, àévaluer leur potentiel analytique, et à suggérer une alternative. Pour ce faire, j'ai dû postuler que ces définitions sont dérivées d'une conceptualisation sousjacente de ce que sont groupes et société, et qu'elles ne seront ‘universelles’ que lorsque nous saurons dèfinir les groupes en tant que phénomènes sui generis. Dans un premier essai (Verdon, 1980a), j'ai étudiC la manière dont les évolutionistes, en étudiant les groupes à travers leurs reflets idéologiques, ont inscnt la parenté, le mariage et la famille dans le donné biologique, et ont aussi affirmé la priorité historique et logique des ‘liens de groupes’ (ou liens ‘tribaux’) sur les ‘liens individuels.’ Malinowski a réussi à arracher les groupes de ce substrat biologique, mais seulement pour les réduire à son tour au statut d'épiphénomène du comportement (donc de la psychologie), tout en postulant le primat ontologique et analytique des ‘liens individuels’ sur les ‘liens de groupes’ dans l'analyse des sociétés dites ‘primitives.’ Dans cette perspective (et formant le sujet de cet article), Rivers, Radcliffe-Brown et Fortes (1) ont Ctabli que les groupes transcendent à la fois biologie et psychologie par leur caractère ‘social’, et (2) ont essayé de reconcilier analytiquement le niveau des ‘groupes corporatifs’ (les liens tribaux d'antan) avec celui des rapports interpersonnels (les liens individuels). Malgré leurs efforts remarquables, je crois qu'ils n'ont pas tout-à-fait réussi dans leur double entreprise. Au terme de cette histoire, Uvi-Strauss et Schneider ont finalement coupé les groupes de leur support social, en considérant les rapports sociaux en tant que ‘symboliques’ ou ‘culturels’ et, ce faisant, ont achevé un processus d'idéalisation de nos concepts, de ce que Sahlins a appelé la ‘raison pratique’ (et qu'on retrouve chez les évolutionistes) à ce que j'appellerais du Rev. canad. SOC. & AnthJCanad. Rev. Soc. & Anth. 17(4) 1980 ‘transcendantalisme culturel’ (chez les structuralistes). Ceci a eu pour résultat de diminuer l'universalité de nos concepts et, si l'on tient encore à rendre l'étude comparative de l'organisation sociale plus rigoureuse et systématique, à rendre de plus en plus urgent le recours possible à une solution ‘opérationnelle.’     

Only one pair of hands: Ways that single mothers stretch work and family resources

Based on in-depth interviews with 50 women in the eastern part of Massachusetts in the United States between the ages of 22 and 50 who have chosen to be single mothers, this article presents a typology demonstrating the factors leading to, and consequences of, differing combinations of economic and social support for childrearing marshaled by the mothers. Ensuring middle class lives for their children is a central goal for the mothers. This goal determines how and why the mothers construct specific strategies to complement their ‘one pair of hands’ based on resources they develop: some have both financial resources and a deep network of support (‘good jobs/good friends’), others have either one or the other (‘tapping the networks’ and ‘looking to the market’), and a fourth group have neither (‘going it alone’). Despite variation in resources all the women seek ways to tip the balance of work and family in favor of mother-time, and in the process of developing individual solutions activate broad kin and community networks.     

Microbusiness, household and class dynamics: the embedding of minority ethnic petty commerce

Microbusinesses are embedded in wider social processes, and it is the nature of this social embeddedness that is the principal focus of the article. In particular,‘domestic embedding’ of petty commerce is crucial, and involves a mixture of competition, domination, negotiation, and custom (Wheelock and Mariussen, 1997). Furthermore, as a socio‐economic group, petty traders and producers occupy an ambivalent position in the class structure, as they are vulnerable both to upward and downward social mobility. While the petty capital class has the advantage of possessing property assets, many members lack significant symbolic and cultural assets. Nonetheless, property assets offer the most robust bases for class formation (Savage et al., 1992). In addition, the embedding of petty commerce can be both ‘identity‐sensitive’ and ‘identity‐neutral’(Sayer, 1995; 2000; Fraser, 1995). Extra‐ethnic factors are significant in this process. The research uses formal interviews and ‘quasi‐ethnographic’ methodology to explore the different contexts in which restaurateurs and market traders operated in Birmingham, UK. The article draws critically on several literatures on industrial organisation, economic sociology, family businesses and minority ethnic businesses. One aim is to give the rather indifferent concept of ‘embedding’ substantive content, and in this way to make an empirically informed contribution to ‘new economic sociology’.     

Ultimate concerns in late modernity: Archer,Bourdieu and reflexivity

Through a critique of Margaret Archer's theory of reflexivity, this paper explores the theoretical contribution of a Bourdieusian sociology of the subject for understanding social change. Archer's theory of reflexivity holds that conscious ‘internal conversations’ are the motor of society, central both to human subjectivity and to the ‘reflexive imperative’ of late modernity. This is established through critiques of Bourdieu, who is held to erase creativity and meaningful personal investments from subjectivity, and late modernity is depicted as a time when a ‘situational logic of opportunity’ renders embodied dispositions and the reproduction of symbolic advantages obsolete. Maintaining Archer's focus on ‘ultimate concerns’ in a context of social change, this paper argues that her theory of reflexivity is established through a narrow misreading and rejection of Bourdieu's work, which ultimately creates problems for her own approach. Archer's rejection of any pre‐reflexive dimensions to subjectivity and social action leaves her unable to sociologically explain the genesis of ‘ultimate concerns’, and creates an empirically dubious narrative of the consequences of social change. Through a focus on Archer's concept of ‘fractured reflexivity’, the paper explores the theoretical necessity of habitus and illusio for understanding the social changes that Archer is grappling with. In late modernity, reflexivity is valorized just as the conditions for its successful operation are increasingly foreclosed, creating ‘fractured reflexivity’ emblematic of the complex contemporary interaction between habitus, illusio, and accelerating social change.     

Calling for accounts: numbers, monsters and membership1

This article questions how accounts are marked. In asking why some accounts ‘pass muster’ and others fail, the analysis brings into focus the extent to which membership work helps hold the social and the technical apart. The analysis contrasts a long insistence on narrative forms of interaction as defining conditions of co‐presence with numerical regimes in which there is an implicit deletion of social contact under fashionable slogans like ‘action at a distance’. Taking numbers to act as ‘bearers of culture’, the paper contests the idea that numerical forms of accountability delete the membership work traditionally associated with narrative forms of account. Attending closely to ‘occasions’ in which it is appropriate for members to deploy numerical accounts rather than verbal accounts, the argument challenges the idea that a face to face negotiation of social order has been superceded by a pervasive use of perfonnance targets. The article begins by exploring how ‘calls to account’ are created by a reporting of adverse budget variatices within organizations. Using an extended example to consider how such ‘gaps’ affect a manager's conduct towards a spouse who is sick, the analysis shows how the use of numbers becomes crucial to sustaining one's affiliation across a range of memberships. As illustrated, the rehabilitation of numerical artefacts into conceptions of the social greatly expands possibilities for interaction beyond that anticipated by the sociological ideal of ‘co‐presence’.     

The centrality of scientists and the translation of interests in the U.S. acid rain controversy

Les études societies traitant les controverses et problèmes de l'environnement concentrent davantage leur attention sur les activités d'entrepreneur des hommes de science. Cet exposé sur le problème de la pluie acide aux États-Unis analyse des activités ‘réclamatrices’ et de ‘traduction’ des premiers chercheurs-universitaires concernant la pluie acide. Il explique aussi comment ceci permit aux hommes de science et chercheurs scientifiques de se situer au coeur de la controverse. L'article se concentre sur plusieurs points de la controverse concernant les pluies acides aux États-Unis: la compréhension au cours des années 70 que les pluies acides étaient un problème scientifique et aussi un problème d'environnement, la création du National Atmospheric Deposition Program et le National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program, et la construction des limites entre la science de la pluie acide et la vie politique. La position centrale de la recherche scientifique dans la controverse américaine sur les pluies acides sera ensuite comparée avec le rôle de la science dans le contexte canadien. Bien que la recherche scientifique soit placée au coeur dans les deux contextes, la politique en matière de la recherche scientifique concernant les pluies acides a étéélaborée par des institutions différentes, et pour des buts et des intérêts tout aussi différents. Social studies of environmental problems and controversies are focusing more attention on the entrepreneurial activities of scientists. This case study of the U.S. acid rain problem analyses the ‘claimsmaking’ and ‘translation’ activities of early, university-affiliated, acid rain scientists and how they enabled scientists and scientific research to be situated in a central position in the controversy. The paper focuses on several areas of the U.S. acid rain controversy: the construction of acid rain as a scientific and environmental problem in the 1970s, the formation of the National Atmospheric Deposition Program and the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program, and the construction of boundaries between acid rain science and politics. The centrality of science in the U.S. acid rain controversy is then compared with the role of science in the Canadian context. Even though science was centrally placed in each context, acid rain science policies were shaped by different institutional actors and for different goals and interests.     

The pull of the fruit machine: a sociological typology of young players

This paper seeks to provide a sociological account of how children and young people orient to fruit machine gambling. The account is based upon the findings of an ethnographic study and is presented in the form of a typology. Arcade Kings and their Apprentices, Machine Beaters, Escape Artists, Action Seekers and Rent-a-Spacers comprise a classification which includes ‘addicts’ as well as ‘social gamblers’. The typology reveals the multi-dimensional nature of fruit machine gambling as a leisure pursuit. It thus provides a theoretical contribution to the sociology of gambling as well as an ‘ethnographic road map’ for researchers and counsellors in the field.     

Neoliberalism and social work identity

This article considers the relationship between the identity of social work and the neoliberal political project. Reference is made to a small but carefully structured quantitative research study in Auckland, New Zealand which examined the knowledge applied and produced in the practice of social work. This study found evidence consistent with Philp’s [(1979). Notes on the form of knowledge in social work. Sociological Review, 27(1), 83–111] theorisation of a specific ‘form of knowledge’ for social work which is produced and reproduced as a function of relational engagement between social workers and those who are constructed as ‘clients’ in an unequal society. This discourse casts the ‘failing subject’ as socially located and inherently redeemable in direct contrast to populist neoliberal constructions of personal responsibility and moral deficit. With reference to dialectical theory it is suggested that this resilient discourse, embedded in ‘every-day’ practice, is inevitably a source of resistance to the imposition of neoliberal practice and policy design. This resistance provides hope for the progressive voice of social work in the current contest of ideas in relation to the future development of social work.     

‘The Girl About Town’: discussions of modernity and female youth in Drum magazine, 1951–1970

This article examines the trope of the ‘modern miss’ in Drum magazine 1951–1970 as a locus for debate over South African urban modernity. At the centre of Drum’s African urbanity was a debate between a progressive, positively ‘modern’ existence and an attendant fear of moral and social ‘breakdown’ in the apartheid city. The trope of the ‘modern miss’ drew upon both discourses. Drum’s fascination with the ‘modern miss’ reached a peak in the years 1957–1963, during which time she appeared prominently in the magazine as a symbolic pioneer of changing gender and generational relationships. However, this portrayal continued to coexist alongside the image of young women as the victims of moral degeneration. The ‘modern miss’ was increasingly differentiated from adult women within Drum’s pages, which distanced her from the new space won by political activists. By examining constructions of young womanhood, this article points to the gendering of ‘youth’ at the intersection of commercial print culture and shifting social relations in mid‐twentieth‐century South Africa. It is also suggested that understanding the social configurations of Drum’s modernity illuminates the gendered and generational responses of formal political movements as they conducted their own concurrent debates.     

Resources of origin,investments and expectations of rewards in the militancy of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST)

The problem studied consists of the relations between the interests and militancy and the differences in expectations of rewards in an agrarian reform settlement linked to the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST). In this settlement, many ‘leaders’ gathered the ‘socialisation of production’. The situation arising from these circumstances produced the different reasons for engagement and different relations with the militancy. In the transition from the encampment to the settlement, it becomes important for the leaders to reinforce their positions both of ‘leadership’ and as mediators of policies and public resources, while it becomes difficult for those settled to maintain their previous investments in strong engagement. Consequently, these new conditions tend to increase the differences between the expectations of rewards from the militancy. These expectations can be pragmatic, such as viability as a farmer, or have a more symbolic character, which is associated with the struggle to create social organisation models.     

A big hole with the wind blowing through it: Aboriginal women's experiences of trauma and problem gambling

Although studies have shown a link between social trauma and problem gambling (PG), there is little research involving Aboriginal women in this area, despite Aboriginal women being potentially at higher risk for both social trauma and problem gambling. This article describes the results of a qualitative phenomenology study asking seven Aboriginal women living in Western Canada to describe their experiences of social trauma and gambling problems. Results suggest four main themes, describing: (1) the Aboriginal women's experiences of social trauma (‘the three tigers’); (2) their use of gambling to cope with these experiences (‘a big hole with the wind blowing through it’); (3) their experience of problem gambling (‘I'm somebody today’); and (4) their process of healing from social trauma and gambling problems (‘a letter to John’). Participants described what they felt was a clear link between social trauma and problems with gambling, and how gambling helped to change their mood and block out the past. The results raise the possibility that Aboriginal women with gambling problems may need support to heal from social trauma – including racism and colonization – and that upstream initiatives to reduce the incidence of social traumas may be an important response to problem gambling among Aboriginal women.     

KI: The ‘Fervor of Vitality’ and the Subjective Self

Curiously, in the word ki, we find that the Japanese have internalized physical energy into a felt-feeling (e.g., a sense of vital potency and aliveness), thereby significantly expanding the substance of the T phase of the self. Of conceptual interest here is that in the word ki—used as a root word to indicate and connect elementary feelings and thought processes—the Japanese have reified ‘energy’ into a subjective entity that moves the individual to become both activator and respondent of interactional processes. The general awareness of ki by the people themselves is evidenced in various facets of their personal consensual life—from socialization practices to formal presentation. In closing, the author attempts to link ki to Mead's ‘impulse’ concludes that (a) ki is more substantive and active than ‘impulse’ in the movement of the social act; and (b) in contrast to that of Mead, the Japanese model provides an explicit conceptual demonstration of the substantive role of the ‘I’ as well as affective elements in social interaction.