Ideological Language and Social Movement Mobilization: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Segregationists' Ideologies

The current "cultural turn" in the study of social movements has produced a number of concepts formulating the cultural–symbolic dimension of collective actions. This proliferation, however, has resulted in some confusion about which cultural–symbolic concept is best applied to understanding cultural processes involved in social movements. We articulate a new definition of ideology that makes it an empirically useful concept to the study of social–movement mobilization. It is also formulated as autonomous of concepts such as culture and hegemony and of other cultural–symbolic concepts presently used in the movement literature to explain participant mobilization. We demonstrate the usefulness of our ideology concept by analyzing letters written to Martin Luther King, Jr. from segregationists opposed to the integration of American society. The analysis indicates that the letter writers particularized segregationist culture, creating ideologies that fit their structural, cultural, and immediate circumstances, and that the ideologies they constructed thereby acted to mobilize their countermovement participation. The particularizing resulted in four differentiated ideological versions of segregationist culture. The empirically acquired variety of ideological versions is inconsistent with the role attributed to cultural–symbolic concepts in the social–movement literature and requires theoretical clarification. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical implications for social–movement theory of the variety of segregationist ideologies.     

Policy-Practice in Social Work: Models and Issues

Abstract

The emergence of policy—practice is a recent development in social work. In this article, policy—practice is defined as a direct social work practice mode with the potential to strengthen the social work profession's abilities to meet its century-long commitments of providing policy-informed services to those in need of them. At the same time, policy—practice advocates for and participates in policy implementation and change. This article examines policy—practice and places it within the context of the profession's historic cause—function debate and identifies several barriers that have complicated development. Most important, the article reviews five policy-practice models found in the literature: (1) social worker as policy expert, (2) social worker as change agent in external work environments, (3) social worker as change agent in internal work environments, (4) social worker as policy conduit, and (5) social worker as policy itself.     

Memory's Pillar and the Experience of Sexual Trauma Commentary on Janice Haaken's Pillar of Salt

In Pillar of Salt, Janice Haaken questions the claims of the advocates of recovered memory by exploring memory through a psychoanalytic lens as a process of reconfiguring the past in the light of present needs and desires. Resisting reductive formulations, she examines contemporary stories of abuse and concludes that, whether factual or not, the recovered-memory syndrome that has so starkly emerged in the past 20 years is true to women's experience of oppression within an abusive patriarchal culture. Read within the framework of subjectivity and meaning, recovered memories provide women with dramatic self-representations that give narrative structure to the truths of their lives.     

Exposure to Client Trauma,Secondary Traumatic Stress,and the Health of Clinical Social Workers: A Mediation Analysis

While it is widely acknowledged that providing services to traumatized populations may negatively impact the mental health of clinicians, little is known about the impact of exposure to traumatized clients and secondary traumatic stress on the physical health status of clinicians. As such, the twofold purpose of this study was to: (1) document the prevalence of STS in a national (US) sample of clinical social workers, and (2) to examine the relationships between exposure to client trauma, STS, and perceived health of clinical social workers. Specifically, we sought to determine if STS mediates the relationship between exposure to client traumas and perceived health. Results indicate clinicians experience intrusion symptoms most frequently, and a significant portion report arousal and avoidance symptoms. Mediation analyses revealed that exposure to traumatized client populations indirectly influenced clinical social workers’ physical health perceptions by way of secondary traumatic stress. Findings call for increased attention toward prevention and amelioration of secondary traumatic stress symptomology among direct service providers, given both its prevalence and potential impact on physical health. Directions for future research are discussed.     

The Social Construction of Self Knowledge: A Commentary on the Legacy of Melvin Pollner

Like other approaches in the social sciences, social constructionist studies have too often construed the self as some manner of mental image, or representation, we privately carry of our own identity. While socially shaped, this image is understood as an essentially personal possession about which its possessor can legitimately claim a categorically privileged form of knowledge. This residual commitment to theoretically privileging the first person perspective on the self inhibits our appreciation for the extent to which the validity of self-knowledge is a dynamic and ongoing collective accomplishment rather than a strictly private personal assessment. This essay briefly reviews a selection of canonical contributions to the social constructionist literature on the self, demonstrating specifically how they theoretically privilege the first person perspective. It then demonstrates how the work of Melvin Pollner provides conceptual resources for effectively overcoming this unfortunate tendency.     

Introducing Asset-Based Models of Social Justice into Service Learning: A Social Work Approach

Increased attention is being given to university–community partnerships. Among such partnerships is service learning, a pedagogical model that integrates experiential community service activities and academic learning. Traditional service learning models often diverge from social work methods that embrace strengths, empowerment, antioppressive principles, and citizen-driven approaches. This article presents the integration of a progressive service learning model into a graduate-level social work macro practice course. The model gives explicit attention to respecting the dignity and worth of the individual by sharing power and developing collaborative relationships between students and community residents where both are serving and learning together.     

Essential Enactments: Commentary on Paper by Taras Babiak

Enactments are ubiquitous and are fruitful ways of examining minipsychodramas that possess our patients' lives. Addressed improvisationally, they set the stage for a different story to be written. Impasses, by contrast, do not readily yield to such examination. They often come in the form of “crunches,” “double binds,” and “relational (k)nots,” wherein the needed and repeated dimensions of the transference disqualify one another, leading to such circumstances as “To feel sane, I must forgo love; and to feel loved, I must forgo my sanity.” A discussion of Babiak's treatment of Bart illustrates how he narrowly escapes having powerfully urgent enactments devolve into impenetrable impasses.     

关于高校思想政治理论课社会实践教学的思考

高校思想政治理论课应从实际出发,采用课堂教学与社会实践教学相辅相成的方式。社会实践教学对增强思想政治理论课实效性具有重要的作用,但同时也存在一些问题,需要进行积极探索。     

Service Delivery Models for Social Work Practice: Organizing the Content of Human Behavior and Social Environment Courses

The ever-increasing breadth in the conceptual base of current social work practice requires a schema for organizing the diverse needed knowledge for use by practitioners. This paper describes five models of social work practice: social functioning or social competency; social change; medical-clinical; ecological; and learning or education. The basic commonalities and dimensions within each model are reviewed with emphasis on the varying theoretical bases from the social and behavioral sciences as well as social work; the belief systems inherent in each model; assumptions made relative to the target population, the change process, and social work roles; and the authority patterns existing within each model.     

教育断层与道德失衡——社会行业风气对大学生思想教育的影响

本文对作为在社会行业风气中处于核心地位的医德医风现状．及其对医科大学生所产生的影响进行分析的基础上进一步就如何加强医科大学生思想道德教育提出了一些针对性措施。     

The Phallus and the Person: Commentary on Paper by Taras Babiak

This discussion of Babiak's clinical account traces the macrotrajectory of Bart's therapeutic process toward broadly competent personhood rather than narrowly phallic compensation. The steps toward accomplishing this complex macrotransition are delineated in the microtrajectory of the “crunch” session between Babiak and Bart, during which Babiak traverses shock and challenge by introducing between them empathic recognition, evidence of mentalization, survival of boundaries and containing limits, down-regulation of raw affective urgency, “paternal” improvisation and a metaphorization of concrete action imperatives, interpretive linking, and a negotiation process that widened potential space for an eventual approach to intersubjectivity.     

A Commentary on the Admission and Retention of Students with Disabilities in Social Work Programs

Abstract

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 is the federal law upon which the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) is built. Both laws are designed to prevent discrimination against students with disabilities. This commentary offers a comparison of section 504 with the ADA. An analysis of the case law under Section 504 is also presented; this analysis provides guidelines that universities and colleges will have to follow under the ADA. The implications of the ADA are offered for social work programs in the areas of admission and retention of students with disabilities.