From Pavement to Piazza: Grassroots Social Work to Counteract the Globalization of Marginality

This paper—inspired by the experience of grassroots social work in Naples begun by M. Borrelli in the 1950s—emphasizes that “consciousness‐raising” and “community development” can be useful processes to stimulate responsible social participation on the part of the most marginal individuals and groups. To overcome a bureaucratic and pietistic model of the welfare state which serves in the long run to increase their dependence and socio‐cultural subordination, there is a need for alternative social policies, capable of improving people's empowerment and social citizenship. Giving more resources and decision‐making power to the most marginal could amount to changing an unfair and oppressive society from the roots up. This goal remains a moral imperative for both professional and voluntary social workers who believe in a fair, non‐violent and ecological model of development. Unfortunately, in Italy as elsewhere, neo‐liberal reforms of welfare states are tending in the opposite direction, partly as a result of out‐of‐date functionalist theories and by means of a worrying process of welfare marketization and globalization that actually increases the exclusion and marginality of the lower classes. This paper takes issue with current neo‐liberal trends by returning to a territory‐based and resident‐focused image of social work. This way, non‐profit agencies can play a more active and stimulating role in support of communitarian networks and help avoid the risk of the Third Sector's alternative spur being compromised by the otherwise “commodification” of welfare. Only in this way might one stop the transformation of non‐profit organizations into mere private providers for a buyer/controller state, more business‐minded than really concerned with freeing the poor and the marginal “underclass” from subordination and exclusion.     

Group Work and Social Justice: Designing Pedagogy for Social Change

In this article the authors explore the gap between education and action in putting the social work core value of social justice into practice. Describing how their School of Social Work has taken up this challenge, the authors analyze how a new social action course helps bridge this gap and draw on student reflection on their experiences and assignments in the course to show how students concretize and interiorize the meaning of social action and social justice. Learning by doing social action through a case study, group work becomes the vehicle through which students act on social issues and work for social change.     

Participatory Action Research: Psychology and Social Change

Participatory Action Research provides psychologists with a way of putting their skills and training to work in support of positive social change while still contributing to the important work of knowledge generation within the field. This article summarizes the development of Participatory Action Research and reviews the theoretical justification for this practice as a valid form of social research. The basic tenets and practices of this approach are discussed and the potential role of Participatory Action Research in psychology is considered.     

社会工作与积极性社会救助制度的建构

积极性社会救助制度伴随着积极性社会保障制度的提出,具有了新的内涵。本文从社会工作与社会救助的关系着手,首先分析了社会工作的基本价值理念对积极性社会救助制度的影响,即尊重人的尊严和价值、重视人与环境的良性互动、助人自助。其次,本文从宏观与微观两个层面对社会工作的工作方法与积极性社会救助制度的关系进行了详细的阐述。     

Social Change and Citizen Action

This paper explores the import of two selected philosophical/ theological perspectives, feminist theory and liberation theology, for social group work practice with citizen groups. Its purposes are to focus on the power of social beliefs and theoretical perspectives to shape the meaning of life circumstances and situations for populations, and either to provide support for group action, or engender resignation or cynical indifference. Social group work's philosophy of democratic participation and religious commitment to social justice produced a unity of purpose for practitioners. The identification and incorporation of facets of liberation theology and feminist theory offer more current and perhaps sophisticated frames for integrated practice. Both perspectives highlight the centrality of the participant's thinking, knowing and doing both for personal becoming and community renewal.     

社会变迁与青少年孤独感

近年来,我国青少年孤独感问题日益引起了相关研究者的关注。在已有的研究中,往往重视从心理学的角度对青少年孤独感与其活动和交往的直接环境如家庭、学校等微系统之间的关系进行研究,而较少关注宏观社会环境变化对青少年孤独感的影响。当前我国社会急剧变迁,对青少年及其成长的微系统都产生了深刻影响,导致引发青少年孤独感的因素增多、可能性增大,应加以重视。     

Dialogue and Social Change: An Interdisciplinary and Transformative History

Intergroup dialogue is an interdisciplinary field of practice that seeks to improve intergroup relations and effect social change. The use of dialogue as a method is growing within numerous social science professions including social work, and an understanding of the origins of dialogue will allow current practitioners to place their work within a larger context. This article provides a historical overview of the application of dialogue theory and methods, an analysis of the relationship between social constructionism and intergroup dialogue, and provides important directions for social workers who can utilize intergroup dialogue to promote social justice.     

社会根本矛盾及其积极意义浅说

“需要和生产的矛盾”是“社会的根本矛盾”，正视这一社会根本矛盾的存在，并加以科学的界定，有许多积极的意义，可以深化我们对科学发展观的理解。     

Materiality and Change in Social Fields

As field change is often explained by recourse to agentic efforts of a few or revolutionary turbulence of many, this paper provides a complementary explanation of change grounded in the quotidian dynamics of physical objects and settings. Using the culinary and mountaineering fields, we demonstrate how attending to the materiality of objects and settings offers analytical leverage into the ways fields conflict and change. More specifically, we argue field instability is normal because, at the level of social action, mass and energy are inherently finite. As a result, actors responding to effects from distal fields may nevertheless collide over the objects and settings in which they are compelled to act.     

社会和谐与政府转型

构建和谐社会背景下的政府转型,一是科学地调整政府职能结构,实现公共服务提供方式的转变,树立政府“大服务”理念,培育和发展公民社会;二是转变政府职能,健全宏观调控体系,建设法治政府,强化政府的社会管理和公共服务职能。     

Marginality amidst plenty: Pathways into homelessness for older Australians

In this paper, drawing on in‐depth interviews, we illustrate that despite the significant overall increase in the wealth of older Australians over the last two decades, a sizeable proportion of older Australians (65 and over) are in a vulnerable accommodation situation and many face the possibility of finding themselves homeless. This is especially so for those older Australians who are dependent on government for their income and are living in private rented accommodation. We show that the changing nature of the housing market means that often our informants were not able to find affordable, adequate and secure accommodation. The death of a spouse, rent increases and eviction are common precipitators of a slide into a situation of imminent homelessness. The restructuring of the welfare state and the virtual freeze on the building of social housing means that older private renters who face eviction often have nowhere to turn. Besides not being able to rely on the market or government, many have minimal or no family and social networks.     

Social Work Experience and Client Behavioral Change

This study examines the effects of social work experience upon client behavioral change. A 2 x 3 x 3 factorial design was implemented in order to ascertain the interaction between two levels of social work experience (experienced, inexperienced), three methods of group treatment (social learning, traditional group work, minimal treatment), and three modes of treatment group composition (referred groups, nonreferred groups, mixed groups). Throughout an 8-month period nonparticipant observers reported the mean proportionate incidences of prosocial, nonsocial, and antisocial behavior exhibited by 452 male adolescents. Longitudinal time-sampling data clearly indicate that experienced practitioners are more effective than are inexperienced ones at fostering positive behavioral changes. Nonetheless, the differential effects of leader experience are significantly influenced by contextual variable and, especially, by the compositional nature of the treatment group.     

Inside the Interdisciplinary Team Experiences of Hospice Social Workers

Abstract

Interdisciplinary teamwork is the foundation for the delivery of hospice care. This project interviewed 23 hospice social workers by telephone to explore their experiences with hospice team collaboration. Two research questions were explored: (1) What do social workers perceive as the strengths of interdisciplinary collaboration and (2) What are the challenges for social workers on interdisciplinary hospice teams? Participants identified issues related to team process, administrative processes, and barriers to effective team collaboration. Collaboration was said to be fostered by good communication, trust, roles, joint visitation, respect, team building activities, and administrative interest and support. Challenges to collaboration included large caseloads, a focus on the medical model, limited visits, personality and team conflict. Opportunities for improved collaboration between social workers and hospice team members exist through active evaluation of collaboration and strategic initiatives aimed at improving collaboration.     

The Relationship Between Psychological Understanding and Positive Social Behaviors

This research investigates the relationship between psychological understanding and positive social behavior in preschool children. A sample of 67 children were given measures of mental state understanding and emotion understanding. Positive social behavior was measured by classroom observation, teacher report and peer ratings. Both mental state understanding and emotion understanding were positively related to teacher ratings of social skills, behavioral observers’ global ratings of social skills and peer popularity. When language ability was partialled out of these relationships, many of the significant correlations disappeared; however, for variables related to peers’ perceptions, psychological understanding continued to predict unique variance. The results are discussed in terms of the multiple determinacy of positive social behaviors and the potential role of language in these processes.     

Marginality,differential marginality,and the Banzhaf value

We revisit the Nowak (Int J Game Theory 26:137–141, 1997) characterization of the Banzhaf value via 2-efficiency, the Dummy player axiom, symmetry, and marginality. In particular, we provide a brief proof that also works within the classes of superadditive games and of simple games. Within the intersection of these classes, one even can drop marginality. Further, we show that marginality and symmetry can be replaced by van den Brink fairness/differential marginality. For this axiomatization, 2-efficiency can be relaxed into superadditivity on the full domain of games.     

Juvenile Justice, Social Work and Social Control. The Need for Positive Thinking

Summary This paper has a two-fold purpose. Firstly, it suggests thatan examination of current trends in the juvenile justice systemof England and Wales sustains the viewpoint that there has been,during the last decade, a considerable increase in the degreeof surveillance and coercion of large sections of the youthpopulation. Secondly, it attempts to outline a positive rolefor social work professionals working in the juvenile justicesystem which may help to counter these tendencies and reconceptualisegeneral thinking on problems of youth crime and juvenile justicepenology.