A Whiff of Nothing: The Atmospheric Absence of Smell

Abstract

This article uses the figure of “presence of absence” to consider the phenomenological significance of dimensions of smell that easily slip out of apprehension. The discussion highlights how not only loud smell but also absence of smell manages to exert an influence over the way people feel. Smells linked to emotions and bodily sensations are addressed as atmospheric, and facets of an atmospheric absence of smell are unfurled within the framework of “the smell of the hospital.” The case demonstrates how the atmospheric presence of absence of smell becomes of significance in the hospital as it is acted and reacted upon as a sense of (1) longing, (2) avoidance, (3) care and (4) cleanliness.     

Social Workers and Policy- Practice: The Role of Social and Professional Values

ABSTRACT

Although policy practice is regarded as an essential component of social work, the actual involvement of social workers in policy practice is apparently very limited. This article presents the findings of a study that seeks to explore the role of social and professional values in support by social workers in Israel for engagement in policy practice and their actual involvement in this type of practice. The findings indicate that socioeconomic orientations and professional values have an impact on social worker's perception of policy practice and the degree to which they are actually involved in the social welfare policy process. In particular, it was found that attitudes toward social justice played a major role in the social worker's perceptions of, and involvement in, policy practice.     

Home-Based Practice with Older Adults

Abstract

Social work with older adults frequently occurs in the client's home. Although practitioners and the professional literature acknowledge the existence of differences between agency-based and home-based practice, little attention has been given to the way the home environment impacts on the intervention process. This exploratory study examined practitioner-identified events that impact on the intervention process in home-based practice. The events elicited two general categories, the context and the process of interventions. Factors subsumed under intervention context are situational and geographic factors, such as practitioner and client comfort, and differences in urban and rural environments. Examples of intervention process categories include setting up home visits, assessment, boundaries, common distractions, and termination in home-based practice.     

Identity and Gender Roles of Orthodox Jewish Women

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine how ultra-Orthodox women's unique religious beliefs and values affect their gender roles and everyday life. The ultra-Orthodox community is one of several sub-groups within the Orthodox community that, overall, has a range of attitudes towards the women's roles. To date, little research has been conducted with this community. This study, therefore, aims to examine these women's roles as mothers, wives and community members, and to discuss the implications of those roles for clinical practice.     

Retrospective Book Review: Teaching a Methods Course in Social Work with Groups

SUMMARY

Eight years after its publication, Teaching a Methods Course in Social Work with Groups serves as a reminder to social workers of group work's historic roots and its value as a method of practice with diverse populations. The author shares her experiences in utilizing the teaching text in her work with MSW students and students of the arts who facilitate activity-based groups in community settings. Citing examples of students' experiences in group work facilitation, the author touches on the constraints emerging group workers face in translating social work skills and values to practice. The author's retrospective review of the teaching text underscores its continued importance in the field of social group work instruction.     

Developing Practice Tools for Social Workers in End-of-Life Care

Abstract

This article describes the National Association of Social Workers' (NASW) strategies for providing social workers with important practice and policy information about palliative and end-of-life care. With funding from a Soros Foundation's Project on Death in America grant, NASW developed practice standards, a Web-based continuing education course, and drafted a new policy statement to guide social workers in end-of-life care practice. The article provides an in-depth view of the development and scope of these resources for professional social workers.     

Witnesses’ Appearance in Court and Guarantees for the Defendant's Right to Confrontation

刑事证人出庭作证的主要意义在于保障被告人的对质权。因此，刑事证人出庭问 题基本上可替换为以被告人对质权为核心的必要证人出庭问题。由于中国的刑事诉讼 法及其司法解释并未赋予被告人对质权，实践中必要证人出庭率仅为25%左右。这种 无对质权语境下的刑事审判，通常表现为积极的实体真实主义、定罪量刑的非精细化 操作和裁判正当性来源的单一化。为改变这一局面，有必要确立对质权制度及相应的 保障机制。

关键词: 证人出庭?必要证人出庭率?对质权?裁判正当性

The main significance of witnesses’ appearing in court to testify in criminal trials is that this practice guarantees the defendant's right to confrontation. The issue can thus be framed in another way, as the issue of the appearance in court of the necessary witnesses. Here, the defendant's right to confront is the key point. Since neither China's criminal procedural law nor corresponding judicial interpretations have granted the defendant the right to confront, the rate of appearance of the necessary witnesses amounts in practice to only about twenty‐ five percent. Criminal trials conducted in the absence of the right to confrontation usually conform to the doctrine of positive substantive truth and manifest a lack of care in conviction and sentencing as well as reliance on a single source of legitimacy in reaching judgments. To correct this state of affairs, it is necessary to institute the right to confront and corresponding safeguards.     

Purpose: A Misunderstood and Misused Keystone of Group Work Practice

SUMMARY

This paper examines the use of Purpose in social group work practice. It identifies and discusses six common mistakes that practitioners often make in regard to this central concept. A group example is used to illustrate the paper's content. The paper's intent is to enhance workers' understanding of and ability to use Purpose skillfully in their work with groups.     

The Sensory Dimensions of Gardening

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the multiple sensory dimensions of gardening and their synesthetic significance in an ethnographic study of gardens and gardening in England and Sweden. It challenges the notion that the different senses (vision, smell, sound, touch and taste) can be considered in hierarchical terms i.e. some as being more important than others in an assessment of the meaning and significance of gardening as an everyday practice. It argues that there is a significant difference between what people say and what they actually do and that when we study the latter the significance of all the senses in relation to each other is highlighted.     

Guinea Pigs on the payroll: The ethics of paying research subjects

Regulatory bodies and scholars have traditionally conceptualized biomedical research on healthy subjects in the same way as research on patients. Guidelines and regulations have portrayed payment to a healthy subject as a potential constraint, or “undue influence,”; on the subject's free consent. In this essay we suggest an alternative way of conceptualizing research on healthy subjects, which sees the basic issue not as one of undue influence but as one of justice. Healthy subjects generally enroll in research protocols not for humanitarian reasons but for the money they will receive. Many of these protocols are conducted by profit‐driven corporations. Yet current guidelines and regulations prohibit subjects from negotiating for fair payment for the risks, discomforts and inconveniences they undergo, and IRBs are not staffed adequately to monitor the subject's safety. We propose to remedy the situation by regulating payment to healthy subjects as a labor relation.     

The Essential Power of Group Work

SUMMARY

For almost two decades, leaders in the field of social group work have been warning that the foundational principles and practice of group work as a modality are in danger of being absorbed into generalist social work practice. This paper expands upon the appeal of leaders in the social group work field to generate an environment in which group work is recognized as an integral method in social work practice and education. This paper examines group work as a powerful methodology in social work practice with a specific theoretical framework and skill base that is fundamental to the social work profession. The characteristics of group work's strengths are explored with a comprehensive overview that inspires renewed commitment to preserving, practicing and promoting social group work as a viable and integral part of social work practice.     

Boholano Olfaction

ABSTRACT

This article explores the domain of odors and olfaction on the island of Bohol, The Philippines. It recounts how my research interests were drawn to this domain by local preoccupations with smell as an aspect of everyday sociality, expressed in speech, modes of interaction and evaluation, and the discursive construction of ethnicities and other social kinds. Bohol's long and complex history and its place in the contemporary world entail a complex, differentiated sociocultural present, which is also reflected in the domain of odors and Boholanos' experiences thereof. Accordingly, the article makes a case for an approach to this domain that flexibly deploys basic ethnographic procedures and more formal techniques, specifically, domain and cultural consensus analysis. This dual methodology, it is argued, is sensitive to the differences between differentially positioned agents, but also demonstrates the degree of sharedness—of experience, categorical schemes, and historicity—that jointly characterize this domain. I use a partial set of results, pertaining to human body odors, to exemplify the approach and to depict a key dimension of Boholano social experience; one that speaks to the place of individuals in the local setting and to the position of the population generally in the commodified world of cosmetics.     

A Commentary on David Drucker's “Ask a Silly Question,Get a Silly Answer

ABSTRACT

This commentary views Drucker's paper as an example of practitioner research aimed both at developing a stronger evidence base for the profession, and promoting a form of thinking useful to Western social work practice. Links are also drawn between the ideas expressed in “Ask a Silly Question” and participatory social work in several non-Western parts of the world.     

Badiou and the philosophy of social work: a reply to Stephen Webb

Imre R. Badiou and the philosophy of social work: a reply to Stephen Webb Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 253–258 © 2010 The Author, Journal compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. Stephen Webb's recent article ‘Against diversity and difference in social work’ claims that the work of Alain Badiou has the potential to be of great use in social work practice. Webb is faced with the problem of a discourse that has eroded any practical meaning attached to notions of diversity and difference, he laments the ‘ethical turn’ in social work practice and blames post‐modernism. Webb views the work of Badiou as a way to reinvigorate social work practice. I claim that Badiou's Being and Event is exclusive to ontology. Connections between Being and Event and possible ‘uses’ of Badiou's subtractive ontology, as an instrumentalisation, are not worthwhile. Critiquing Badiou's non‐ontological philosophies and political polemics is a better way to assess the practicality of his thought outside of his ontology. Webb's conflation of post‐modernism, neoliberalism and the difference, diversity and ethics discourse is also problematic and is critiqued here.     

Zelda Foster and Her Contributions to Social Work in End-of-Life Care

ABSTRACT

This article is both a memoir of one social worker's professional collaboration with Zelda Foster and a tribute to Zelda's legacy in the form of an educational resource on end-of-life care. It reviews achievements of Zelda Foster in social work practice and teaching related to death and dying. Resources presented in this article were supported by the Soros Foundation's Project on Death in America, a funded grant project to which Zelda contributed. The end-of-life care education, training and informational tools discussed in this article are examples of ongoing efforts in the social work profession to improve the lives of the dying and bereaved.     

An Exploratory Study of Social Work with Older Persons in Cuba

Abstract

Assuring a satisfactory quality of life for Cuba's large and fast growing older population is a national challenge. Social work plays an important part in addressing this challenge through its role in Cuba's National Program for the Care of Older Persons. This article explores the role of social work in Cuba's programs for the elderly and its implications for social work practice in the US. The information was obtained from 25 qualitative interviews with policy makers, social work practitioners, and community members in Havana, Cuba in 2003. The community oriented and interdisciplinary nature of Cuban social work with older persons distinguishes it from social work in the US and has implications for social work in this country. Despite the differences between Cuba and the US, the Cuban social work model provides important insights for social work in this country.     

Vinayak & me: Hindutva and the politics of naming

This article examines political and intellectual influences of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar's Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? (published in 1923) on the development of nationalism in India. The article argues that contemporary political concerns about national identity raised in India have historical links that go back to Savarkar's text, especially the discourses on the politics of naming. The article considers the implications of these writings on one of Savarkar's disciples: Dr Dattatrey Parchure, an individual who had acquired notoriety for his role in Mohandas K. Gandhi's assassination in 1948. By examining Dr Parchure's life-story, the article shows how transformations in the family, the medical profession, masculinity and religion were directly intertwined with an emergent Hindu nationalism. But more specifically, the article examines Dr Parchure's decision to name children Vinayak as a way of evoking a mental image of Savarkar as an icon in everyday life and to propagate the ideals of Hindutva . The article posits that the politics of figures like Dr Parchure and Savarkar reflect a conjuncture in the development of nationalism in India during the colonial period, and their legacies continue to influence the making of today's post-colonial nationalism.     

Mouthing Disgust and Pleasure in Eating Disorders

ABSTRACT

This article explores the complex sensorial encounters that people with eating disorders have in response to their mouths, food, eating, and embodiment. We argue that relationships to food, perceived primarily in clinical and psychological terms of control and discipline, ignore sensorial and generative dimensions of embodiment and the associated affective agency of hungers, pleasures, and disgust. Through analysis of the filmed performance of Untitled (The Party), we examine how the mouth for people with eating disorders embodies a metaphorical space of disgust, but also pleasure. As a soft, moist bodily opening, the mouth presents a symbolic space that can be filled with sensorial engagements of touch, disgust, pleasure, and taste. It is through the materiality of cream as used in the performance, and Irigaray's morphological mediation of bodily dimensions and language via the mucous touch, that we present new sensorial engagements with eating disorders.     

Six-Month Follow-Up Changes for TANF-Eligible Clients Involved in Kentucky's Targeted Assessment Program

ABSTRACT

Welfare reform has been successful in helping clients achieve self-sufficiency. However, some individuals experience problems associated with basic needs, physical health, mental health, substance abuse, and intimate partner violence (IPV) that can impede transitioning from welfare to work and/or interfere with parental responsibilities. The Targeted Assessment Program (TAP) was created more than a decade ago to identify and address these problems and help clients move off the welfare rolls in Kentucky. Self-reported interview data were used to examine changes and effect sizes between baseline assessment and 6-month follow-up from a sample (n = 322) of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families-eligible clients participating in Kentucky's TAP. Using McNemar's test for correlated proportions, paired-sample t-tests, and measures of effect size, significant changes with varied effect sizes were found for selected basic needs, as well as physical health, mental health, substance use, and IPV barriers. Findings suggest that social service practitioners could incorporate strengths-based case management and motivational interviewing into their practice. Further research is suggested utilizing longitudinal and controlled studies on evidence-based practice that address pretreatment and assessment strategies involving case management and motivational interviewing.     

On Being Bold,Valuing Process,and Cultivating Collegiality

SUMMARY

Professor Roselle Kurland's use of self was exemplary; she was bold, valued process, and cultivated collegiality. In this paper, the authors examine these qualities, which they seek to emulate, and which contribute to excellence in social work practice. Examples from Roselle and the authors' practice are used to illustrate these behaviors.