From Silos to Scaffolding: Engaging and Effective Social Work Practice

In this final article of the special issue Beyond the Manual: Using Data and Judgment in Clinical Social Work Practice, we extend the discussion regarding the use of data and judgment. We discuss the multiple sources of data used in practice, including research evidence, client perspectives and experience, moment-by-moment process observation, and client feedback regarding progress towards specific, desired outcomes. We move beyond current debates purporting one framework over another to propose a synthesizing framework that situates evidence-based practice, empirically supported interventions and common elements/mapping and adapting practice within a common factors scaffolding framework. This framework provides a way for social workers to effectively make sound judgments using research and client data within the demands of contemporary practice. The article provides a brief overview of the four practice approaches followed by the proposed scaffolding framework and rationale, and concludes with implications for practice, professional education, and research.     

Transitional Objects and Social Work: Some Objections to McCluskey

Abstract

Horror, repulsion slowly creeping sensations of cold and shock reverberated around the room, pinning all three of us to our chairs in solemn silence. The pain felt intolerable and one sensed a desire all round to flee the torture of remembrance and recall. Finally it proved too much for the mother, who dashed out in tears. A little later the father gently helped her to return and they sat clinging together in tears as they struggled to return to their story their vividly detailed recall of their experience 8 years before of their second miscarriage. It was the first time they had talked about it together. (Case Study 1 -Mr &; Mrs C. see Section II)     

Interactional Past and Potential: The Social Construction of Place Attachment

This article presents an interactionist-based theory of place attachment, the emotional bond formed by an individual to a physical site due to the meaning given to the site through interactional processes, and suggests that such attachment is comprised of two interwoven components: (1) interactional past, or the memories of interactions associated with a site, and (2) interactional potential, or the future experiences perceived as likely or possible to occur in a site. To discuss these components, I use the case of an organization that moved to a new location, thereby disrupting its employees’ place attachment to the original site. Data collection involved questionnaires, participant observation, and interviews.     

Sexual Politics in the Workplace: The Interactional World of Policewomen

This paper examines the dynamics of male-female interaction in one work setting—the backstage region of a police department—and explores the variety of ways that policewomen are pressured to “stay in their place” by male coworkers. Policewomen face interpersonal dilemmas because as police officers they are expected to behave like colleagues (i.e. as status equals); as women they are expected to behave as status subordinates. This paper investigates a number of the techniques by which female officers' gender is made salient and male officers assert dominance over female officers. The verbal techniques employed include the use of euphemisms, affectionate terms of address, cursing, joking and putdowns, and gossip. Non-verbal messages are transmitted by the use of personal space, touch, and chivalrous ceremonies. In addition the problems posed by sexuality and sexual harassment in the workplace are discussed. Data are based on nine months of participant observation and 55 interviews with officers in one police district in Washington, D.C.     

The Interactional Community: Emergent Fields of Collective Agency*

Social interaction is generally regarded as elemental to the notion of community. Within the broader discourse on community, the field‐interactional perspective is distinctive in its explicit focus on emergent social processes and community change dynamics. Wilkinson (1970) extended Kaufman’s (1959) early work on the interactional approach through an application of the social field concept to community action. In doing so, Wilkinson (1991) outlined several key linkages between social–symbolic interaction and community agency. Despite these promising beginnings, only a modicum of research has examined the theoretical or philosophical underpinnings of the interactional conception of community. This article explores the symbolic‐interactionist tenets undergirding the field‐interactional approach, most notably Mead’s (1934, 1938) discussion of generalized social attitudes and Blumer’s (1969a, 1969b) work on joint or collective action.     

Foreign Direct Investment,Services Trade Negotiations and Development: The Case of Tourism in the Caribbean

This article examines whether and how developing countries can use services trade negotiations to increase the amount of inward FDI conducive to development. It reviews how services trade rules can affect inward FDI, and employs panel data analysis with innovative use of instrumental variables in the tourism sectors of 9 Caribbean countries during 1997–2003. It argues that Caribbean countries may want to signal openness to inward FDI in GATS, while maintaining a degree of flexibility in the use of policy measures; in the current negotiations with the EU on Economic Partnership Agreements, the focus could be on emphasising the development dimension.     

Becoming/Being a Cosmetic Surgery Patient: Semantic Instability and the Intersubjective Self

Against approaches that center the subject—the cosmetic surgery patient—as the primary site of inquiry regarding the “truth” of cosmetic surgery, I argue that we must rethink the positioning of the subject in considering cosmetic surgery's meanings. Here I offer a brief discussion of various feminist theories of the cosmetic surgery patient, as well as an account of my own experience of cosmetic surgery, to explore how the cosmetic surgery patient is semantically unstable, named and identified through a variety of discourses and social relations. This semantic instability suggests a need to examine the ongoing processes by which cosmetic surgery comes to have meaning and by which the subjectivity of the cosmetic surgery patient is produced.     

Responsibility,Mobility, and Power: Translocal Carework Negotiations of Nicaraguan Families

Recently, carework has emerged as a key area for exploring the gendered connections between migrants and their families “home,” providing insight into family‐level consequences of migration. However, the way carework shapes migration itself has not received due attention. Based on field research among Nicaraguan migrant families, this article explores the links between translocal carework and family migration decision‐making by connecting the concepts of transnational caregiving and power‐geometry of mobility to interpret fathers’ and female relatives’ carework involvement. In conclusion, the article highlights how translocal carework shapes family members’ access to mobility through ongoing negotiations of a wide range of responsibilities, indicating a possible direction for future explorations of migration.     

Articulating the Scaffolding of White Supremacy: The Act of Naming in Liberation

Liberatory practices require that social workers think about categorical social stratification in terms of power hierarchies brought about through practices of individuals, cultures, and institutions. Our focus is on how scaffoldings of white supremacy impact organizational, structural, and professional interactions in social work. We provide examples and stories to illustrate operations of white supremacy and offer alternatives through a counter story. The counter-story reveals how transparency, accountability, and caucusing (with structured safeguards) support alliances that build transformative restructuring. We emphasize the importance of interrupting structures and translations of white supremacy on an ongoing basis.     

Environmental Controversies,Interactional Resources,and Rural Communities: Siting Versus Exposure Disputes1

Abstract Differences in the types of social conflict occuring in facility siting disputes and toxic contamination cases are compared. An ecological-symbolic perspective and the concept of strong and weak ties are used to interpret the nature of social conflict in two rural Pennsylvania communities and in cases in the literature. Overall, community solidarity appears likely to be enhanced in siting disputes and undermined in exposure situations. To explain this, two conflict paths are developed that move from the presence or absence of the hazard agent to individual perceptions, the generation of collective threat beliefs and the formation of strong ties, the emergence of alternative leadership and its relationship to official authorities, and finally the formation of weak ties. In each case, the type of community conflict results from the nature of the perceived environmental threat and the social process that threat sets in motion. Practical implications for rural community development are discussed.     

Effort on Display: Unemployment and the Interactional Management of Moral Accountability

In this study of moral accountability in vocational guidance conversations at a public employment office in Sweden, I adopt a combination of approaches to explore implicit accounts as intrinsic to institutional activities. In this setting, participants managed moral accountability by normalizing a person's conduct, preempting potential critique, and marking transgression. Clients were never held accountable for lack of competence, knowledge, or skill or for failing to get a job. A critical element in sustaining oneself as a morally accountable client in this setting is to successfully display one's efforts properly in situ as well as through the institutional record.     

Producing Evaluative Knowledge: The Interactional Bases of Social Science Findings*

This paper examines the interactional underpinnings of social scientific research. Based on a detailed examination of a two-hour research interview, it describes aspects of the conversational practices through which social scientific knowledge is generated. Past critiques of interview research have been somewhat unilateral in their focus, typically examining how researchers impose understandings on their subjects' reports. This paper moves beyond the unilateral focus to describe how researcher and subjects interact to mutually develop procedures for doing the actual research and collaboratively assemble their product. The analysis treats evaluative knowledge as a locally managed, interactional achievement. It stresses the practical, in situ character of how knowledge is co-produced.     

Gender Labor,Assimilationism, and Transformative Practices: The Relational Negotiations of Cisgender Women and their Transgender Men Partners

Despite the rise in research on the experiences of transgender men (female‐to‐male, FTM) in recent years, little academic attention has been paid to the partners of these individuals. The experiences of a large portion of this population, cisgender women whose partners transition from female to male, provide a unique perspective on how individuals negotiate performances of normative gender ideals and heteronormative practices in transitioning non‐normative relationships. Research has shown that when these cisgender women find themselves in relationships that are socially defined as heterosexual, they often begin questioning their sexual orientation in relation to their partner's gender identity as well as the role and applicability of their beliefs regarding gender equality and anti‐heteronormative practices. This article provides an overview of the current literature that addresses the enactment of gender labor, the practice of reaffirming another person's gender through physical, emotional, and sexual care, by cisgender women whose partners transition from female to male. Specific focus is given to how, in some situations, the performance of gender labor manifests in assimilationist ways that adhere to typically heteronormative frameworks as well as how, in others, the performance of gender labor manifests in potentially transformative and destabilizing ways that serve to challenge normative structures. Gaps in the existing literature as well as directions for future research are also explored.     

The Relevance of Interactional and Institutional Contexts for the Study of Gender Differences: A Demonstrative Case Study

Previous studies of gender differences in language and interaction have made inadequate use of the context of the language behavior being studied. In this paper, I use a single-case method to demonstrate how a conversation analytic approach to the interactional and institutional context of a mediation hearing can be informative in the search for gender differences. In the mediation hearing studied, an apparent gender difference in the mediator's address of disputants is first identified and then shown to disappear when the interactional and institutional context of the utterances are taken into account.