Horses and baseball: social work’s cultivation of one’s ‘third eye’

Active self-reflection is a sophisticated and subtle, multi-layered process that requires learning the capacity to constantly self-monitor. These fundamental interactive skills, the core of a competent social worker, are important to work in any context. Using two distinct metaphors, one relating to horses, the other to baseball, the article will explore the importance of developing competency skills and utilize a ‘third eye.’ In current social work education curricula the use of self may not be prioritized, practiced, or well understood. Evidence from human and veterinary medicine as well as social work, are discussed. An example of an undergraduate BSW course using simulated clients and standardized measures is discussed. The paper includes a brief review of the preliminary findings for a small pilot study and the relevance to future research is considered.     

Women’s and men’s work,housework and childcare,before and during COVID-19

Review of Economics of the Household - Evidence from past economic crises indicates that recessions often affect men’s and women’s employment differently, with a greater impact on...     

‘At home,he’s a pet,at work he’s a colleague and my right arm’: police dogs and the emerging posthumanist agenda

ABSTRACT

Increased attention is being paid to non-human animals, inspired in part by Human-Animal Studies and theoretical frameworks which reveal the fragility of human/animal dualism. Via the application of posthumanist performativity, we explore the recruitment and careers of police dogs via organisational analysis. It reveals a complex process of a dog becoming a police dog. Police dogs are placed within a speciesist hierarchy where they hold a position of ‘good’ non-human animals, rather than instrumental tools of the organisation. However, this position is tenuous, with dogs’ retirement often resulting in death. The paper concludes by arguing that posthumanist frameworks can be used to decentre the human subject. Contributions of our work include empirical insights on the use of non-human animals in policing coupled with the theoretical application of posthumanism to intersubjectivity in organisations.     

“Gone to work to America”: Irish step-migration through south Wales in the 1860s and 1870s

Why did the Irish-born population of Wales decline so sharply in the decade 1861–1870? This paper argues that during the 1850s and 1860s, large numbers of Irish men and women travelled to south Wales in order to finance emigration to the USA. Using the US Federal Census, this paper shows how Irish step-migration through Wales led principally to the Pennsylvania coalfields. This type of migration is termed the Knight’s-move: a sideways move from agriculture into heavy industry, in order to advance forward across the Atlantic. The Knight’s-move challenges previous assumptions about immigration into the south Wales coalfield during the nineteenth century.     

Pushkin’s America: A Survey of the Sources

A. S. Pouchkine, comme la plupart des russes éduqués à l’époque, avait certaines préconceptions de la vie en Amérique du Nord. Dans ses écrits de jeunesse on peut trouver certains stéréotypes empruntés soit à des sources littéraires soit à certaines opérettes. Cependant la vérité sur les conditions de vie dans les colonies françaises, espagnoles et anglaises du Nouveau Monde, l’intéressait non moins que leur écho romantique. Il est possible de déterminer assez exactement ce que Pouchkine savait au sujet de l’Amérique et de suivre à travers ses écrits, ses changements d’attitude.

Sa bibliothèque personnelle, cataloguée par Modzalevsky en 1909, nous montre qu’il avait de nombreux ouvrages sur l’histoire, la géographie et les coutumes des Amériques, surtout du nord. On peut aussi tenter d’évaluer ses contacts personnels avec certains officiers de marine et diplomates ayant séjourné au Nouveau Monde. Seule une évaluation solide de l’état exact des connaissances de Pouchkine peut nous permettre de juger correctement ses opinions sur la vie et la littérature des Amériques, que l’on trouve dans ses articles et sa poésie. Ses connaissances des conditions de vie, du commerce, de l’histoire et de la littérature américaines, basées sur les ouvrages de Cooper et de Washington Irving, étaient solides.     

Synmemory: civil war victimhood and the balance of tales in Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun and Habila’s Measuring Time

This paper proposes the concept of synmemory as a response to the implication of what Edward Said describes as “theoretical closure” for mainstream memory studies that privilege victimhood exclusively from the perspective of the vanquished. Synmemory is defined here as the synthesisation of antagonistic memories to form a traumatic whole. The paper argues that because victory, especially in war and other violent conflicts, is not absolute, synmemory invites us to consider in comparative terms the fusion of victimhood from both ends of a hostile divide in order to affirm the inherence of victimhood in instances of victory. The paper reads Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) and Habila’s Measuring Time (2007) as a set of twin narratives against the recollection of victimhood in the Nigerian Civil War. It contends that, rather than seeing such comparison as insurrectionary about the reception of Igbo and Biafra suffering in the war, the approach facilitates an understanding of Habila’s tragic vision about the parallel suffering and loss in Northern Nigeria. The paper also shows how constant violent irruptions in Northern Nigeria continue to underscore the region’s continual victimhood in the wake of the war and illustrate how aggressor victimhood can linger longer than is ordinarily envisaged.     

‘A great job and a family’: work narratives and the work and family interaction

This article investigated how work narratives of dual-earner families are materially and symbolically configured in discourses of reconciliation of work and home life. Following critical studies of the work–family interaction, this research takes into consideration symbolic and social structures and tries to look into the interrelation of factors such as job resources, job satisfaction, levels of autonomy with the self-esteem and sense of ‘self’ which parents derive from their paid work. Hochschild's concept of ‘emotional culture’ is used to explore how parents' experience of work is intertwined to their occupational groups and how it is associated with different narratives of work–family interaction. This study is conducted through qualitative methods, using in-depth semi-structured interviews on a sample of 27 dual-earner families. The data collected are composed of in-depth accounts that are then examined through the method of narrative analysis. The data indicate that, for divergent occupational levels, work generates different material and symbolic resources, which account for divergent narratives of work and home. The sociological analysis of occupational levels with the associated emotional culture of work and family then provides an exploratory model for understanding the links between social class and work–family interaction.     

The use of digital media: To support and enhance vulnerable children’s perspectives,voices and choices

The article reports findings from a study that explored the potential of digital media to create new possibilities for professional caregivers to encounter 10 vulnerable children (7–17 years old) as subjects (rather than objects) and participants in their own lives. Five professionals received training in media pedagogy and experimented with new ways to communicate with children. Digital communication was found to expand the children's ability to engage in dialogue. Professionals need to find the courage to engage in digital communication on a child's terms as it helps generate a relationship that offers children new opportunities for raising their voices.     

Affective networks: how WeChat enhances Tencent’s digital business governance

An emerging body of literature has revealed that social media enhance digital business governance to facilitate Internet companies in generating profit throughout regulating the everyday lives of users. However, although existing debates are often contextualized in the West, little attention has been paid to China, where social media are widely used. To fill this knowledge gap, this article investigates the digital business governance practiced by Chinese Internet companies such as Tencent. Specifically, I employ an affective lens to analyze how WeChat, the most popular social media application launched by Tencent, allows this Internet company to influence users for its own business purposes. Chinese college students, which constitute a representative group of young people, were early adopters of WeChat, and they have led the trend of social media use in China. Based on a yearlong netnographic study of Chinese college students, the results reveal that the affective design of WeChat captured their attention and influenced their everyday practices. These results provide insight into how digital business governance operates in the Chinese context, in which authoritarianism and capitalism work closely together.     

‘America’ in Indian Advertising: Change and Impact

The aims of this article are threefold: One, to focus on the advertising and marketing communications situating the presence of the USA in India. Two, to address three issues concerning the where, how, and impact dimensions of marking the US presence in Indian advertising. In that process an attempt will be made to integrate three aspects of advertising, namely: marketing, media, and linguistics. Three, to account for US corporate culture as it manifests itself in advertising. Central to our discussion are two product types: consumer products (e.g. Coke, Pepsi, Kellogg’s cereals, or Cadbury’s chocolates) and socially-sensitive, or ‘taboo’, products (e.g. condoms, alcohol, and breath fresheners).     

Piloting a social work doctoral programme: Ukraine’s vignette

In Ukraine the last decade was marked by significant changes in social work education development that evidence its academization and professionalization. International cooperation was a useful catalyst in these processes. The above has specific implications for developing the three cycles of social work education in Ukraine – Bachelor, Master and PhD programmes. Implemented in 2009–2012, an international project involving six European countries supported piloting of the first PhD programme in social work in Ukraine. This programme encountered a set of challenges that originated from the particularities of social work education in Ukraine and the broader academic context. Participatory observations and reflections demonstrate the challenges evident in Global North–Global South professional relations. Ukrainian social work education history evidences permanent localization of the international standards and experiences that have had various effects on social work academization.     

Paternal Incarceration and Children’s Social-Emotional Functioning at Age Nine: Why Fathers’ Violence Matters

Research documents the consequences of parental incarceration for children’s well-being, and studies have begun to explore heterogeneity in parental incarceration’s influence on child outcomes. This study investigates the effect of paternal incarceration on children’s social competence. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal study of new parents in urban areas, I examine (1) the effect of recent paternal incarceration on multiple measures of children’s social-emotional functioning, including children’s social competence, and (2) whether fathers’ violence against mothers and children weakens the effect of recent paternal incarceration on children’s social-emotional functioning. The results from propensity score and multivariate regression analyses show that recent paternal incarceration is detrimental to children’s social-emotional functioning, in general. However, for some indicators of children’s social-emotional functioning, the effects of recent paternal incarceration depend on whether fathers are abusive.