Body of knowledge: Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery and the blind imagination

ABSTRACT

This article examines the cultural and philosophical intersection between visual and tactile knowledge and the emergent aesthetics of modernism. In the September 1913 edition of The Museums Journal, J. A. Charlton Deas published a paper entitled “The Showing of Museums and Art Galleries to the Blind.” The text, exceptional in its historical context, complicated prevailing assumptions about acts of “visual” art and blindness. Deas details a series of experiments undertaken at Sunderland Museum and Art Gallery from 1906 to 1913 that consisted of making accessible exhibits, specimens and paintings for blind children to touch. Unprecedented at the time, these experiments recast the persistent Western belief that the eye has privileged access to knowledge, instead asserting that knowledge is embedded within material corporeality. The physical, creative and intellectual inclusion of blind people into the formerly inaccessible space of the museum was unique in its reach and offers a refreshing new perspective of what those (authoritatively visual) spaces could be. Sunderland, a region which tends to be discursively separated from the ambitions and experiments of modernism, was at the center of modernist discussions about knowledge, sight and touch; and, disrupts modernism’s silence with respect to acknowledging unprecedented regional developments such as those detailed in “Showing.”     

Entangling the social: Comments on Alexander Wendt,Quantum Mind and Social Science

Alexander Wendt suggests that an emerging field of research on quantum consciousness may have important implications for our understanding of the social world as well. He wants us to consider that the operations of the brain are not “classical” but rather quantum‐mechanical, and that this sheds light on the social worker as well. This article casts doubt on these claims. First, the idea of panpsychism (all physical things possess features of consciousness) is implausible on its face. Second, the findings of “quantum decision theory” are much more limited than Wendt recognizes. Third, the biological quantum effects currently subject to investigation are limited in their application to brains and persons by unavoidable limits of time and space scale on quantum effects. The “brain as quantum computer” or “brain as wave function” theory is very implausible given current knowledge.     

Access to social services as a rite of integration: Power,rights, and identity

Access to social services is a multifaceted and multifactorial process, involving social policy lines, services organization, and professional front line practices. It appears to have a crucial role in how personal social services work: depending on the way the process is handled, access to social services could provide a bridge to an inclusive and solidarizing community or worsen discrimination and marginalization. Many underline how studying the actual encounters between citizens and practitioners can provide a privileged site to highlight the interconnections between the abovementioned factors. This is the focus of our research that explored access in a specific Italian region using a case study strategy. After a pilot study, the main points of access to social services were identified, and three units were selected as best examples of different approaches. The three units were explored using mainly qualitative methods inspired by ethnography. We were able to gain in depth understanding of three cultural approaches to access, defined as the “ethical duty,” the “good organization,” and the “professional approach” and reach an in‐depth understanding of their impact on access. There is a vast literature on the power of street‐level bureaucrats, seen as similar to gatekeepers. However, our research suggests that specific organizational cultures also play an important part: different organizational cultures may impact the implementation of local social policy, the organizational procedures, and social workers' practices.     

Institutions and structures as barriers? A comparison of native‐born and immigrant unemployment durations across 12 European countries

This study investigated the effect of institutions on the unemployment duration gap between non‐EU immigrants and native‐born in 12 European countries. Going further than the existing literature, our study encompassed unemployment duration, distinguishing between exits to inactivity, primary and secondary employment. Additionally, we have provided a stronger micro‐foundation to the comparative literature by introducing institutional measures for unemployment‐related benefits at the individual level rather than merely using aggregate proxies. Our analysis found no disincentive effects of benefits for immigrants. Furthermore, the employment prospects of immigrants were better when the demand for low‐skilled labour was high, and immigration policy was labour market‐oriented. In contrast, employment protection legislation did not affect the unemployment duration of immigrants.     

From “State and Society” to “Institutions and Life”: A Shift in the Study of Social Change in China

Abstract

The term “institutions and life” is proposed as an alternative perspective to “state and society.” Here, “institutions” refers to formal institutions set up in the name of the state and supporting its agents at various levels and in different departments in the exercise of their functions. “Life” refers to the everyday activities of social beings, involving not only the interests, powers and rights-based claims of expedient production and life strategies and techniques, but also relatively routine popular mores and informal institutions. The purpose of constructing and applying this perspective is to probe the complex mechanism of the interaction between living subjects and the agents of formal institutions in institutional practice and thereby analyze the actual logic and changing direction of China’s formal institutions and explore the mechanisms behind changes in mores so as to grasp the main thread running through China’s modern nation building.     

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.     

Global Topographies: The Spiritual, the Social and the Geographical in the Missionary Movement from the West

The modern missionary movement has contributed profoundly not only to changing the religious topography of this globe—approximately one-third of the world's population is Christian now—but also, often enough, it has changed the social topography as well. Missionary activity is still one of the major agents of global transformation in the twentieth century. This paper looks at some of the driving machines of transformation, namely the images, visions, and concepts of time, space and global social change that were produced within the missionary movement as part of its spiritual topography. Three motivational trends are identified, each of which represents a fundamentally different way of approaching non-western space and time and thus leads to different models of missionary social intervention: the emancipative-integrationist approach, the racist-imperialistic attitude, and the egalitarian-inversionist trend. The overall findings of this paper are, perhaps, more or less ambivalent: visions of human salvation and global social change, missionary or other, are historically powerful. Necessary as they are for the life of humankind, global visions ought to be handled with care. They need to be tested and discussed, particularly with those who are targeted.     

品牌意识与高校人文社科学报的发展

高校人文社科学报要取得质量和特色的双重效应 ,必须多层次、多角度地培植自己的品牌栏目 ,要强化区域文化的人文意识 ,要具备创立品牌栏目的学科意识 ,要有捕捉高新视点的前瞻意识。     

Progress of the social service professions in South Africa's developmental social welfare system: Social work,and child and youth care work

This paper examines the progress of the social service professions delivering developmental social welfare in South Africa, a subject we have followed closely over the last 20 years. Being policy-driven, developmental social welfare stemmed from expert social analyses that resulted in technically oriented solutions, including the broadening of social service professions. Twenty years on, it is hard to see developmental social welfare, as envisaged in government policy, in action, since the practice reality does not differ drastically from the prior apartheid system with the government's heavy reliance on social security as a poverty-alleviation measure. The expanded social security budget has led to underfunded services and a crisis for social service professionals. This paper focuses on the regulated professions of social workers, and child and youth care workers. Our examination of critical issues for these occupational groups revealed that South Africa still has a long way to go in building a strong social service workforce.     

Network centrality and performance of social enterprises: Government certified social enterprises in Seoul,South Korea

Social enterprises, which have been dramatically increasing all over the world for several decades, are facing the challenge of how best to develop strategies to improve performance and achieve sustainable growth. In South Korea, the government has supported active networking among social enterprises as a tactic for overcoming insufficient material and human resources. However, it is unclear whether active networking activities among social enterprises are associated with higher performance. In this study, a network survey of certified social enterprises (n = 78) in Seoul, South Korea was conducted. Multivariate regression models examined whether degree centrality, closeness centrality, and betweenness centrality were associated with the economic and social performance of social enterprises after controlling for organizational factors. The results revealed that a social enterprise with higher degree centrality in the network of regular meetings achieved higher social and economic performance.     

Challenges in Rural Social Work Practice: When Support Groups Contain Your Neighbors,Church Members,and the PTA

Rural social work occurs in unique practice environments with challenges and rare opportunities. Strong social ties, commonly found in rural communities and often missing in urban areas, can serve as sources of resilience for group members facing adverse life circumstances. Therapeutic formal and informal support groups, bolstered by this support and led by social workers in rural communities, can face numerous challenges due to locale, lack of transportation, and potential worker burnout. This article highlights ethical considerations rooted in a theme of rural group work while providing helpful hints based on the IASWG Standards for Social Work Practice with Groups.     

Universal ideals and particular constraints of social citizenship: the Chinese experience of unifying rights and responsibilities

This study looks at the perceptions of citizens in a modern Chinese society and explores whether social rights and responsibilities are unified at both ideal and practice levels. It finds that the conception that the Chinese have a weak image of social rights is no longer true. The Chinese are generally 'right-deficit' at the practice level. It is also found that there are wide gaps between ideal rights and practice rights, and between ideal responsibilities and practice responsibilities, except in components affected by cultural, contextual and institutional factors. The findings suggest that, for a full understanding of social citizenship, it is necessary to look at both ideal and practice levels of social citizenship. Cultural, contextual and institutional factors are identified as moderating people's behaviour and preferences in regard to social citizenship.     

Social investments in the knowledge economy: The politics of inclusive,stratified, and targeted reforms across the globe

As countries transition from industrial to post-industrial knowledge economies, education and skills are crucial. Consequently, policy-makers around the globe have increasingly focused on social investment, that is, policies aiming to create, mobilize, or preserve skills. Yet, countries around the globe have developed social investments to different degrees and in highly different forms. Our goal is twofold: First, we introduce a new typology of social investment policies, distinguishing nine types along two dimensions: three distributive profiles (inclusive, stratified, targeted) and three functions (skill creation, preservation, mobilization). This differentiation allows fine-grained analyses of the causes and consequences of different kinds of social investments, thus offering a perspective to study the relationship between efficiency and inclusiveness in a way that goes beyond the mere discussion how social investment policies grosso modo affect inequalities (‘equalizing’ versus ‘Matthew Effects’). Second, we theorize on the politics of social investment. We argue that the interaction of policy legacies and socioeconomic factors is the main explanation for which functions of social investment policies are introduced, whereas their distributive profiles are crucially shaped by political coalitions. We illustrate with empirical material from democracies around the globe.     

妇女问题:历史、现状与未来

妇女观是指社会对妇女的看法.人类的妇女观经历了从"文化人"、"经济人"、"政治人"到普遍人权及可持续发展观的演变;考察妇女问题有三个维度,即分别以男人、人和妇女自身作为参照系,并对应于平等、博爱、自由三层面内涵;从总体上看,妇女问题的症结在于生理基础-分工选择-环境强化综合因素的作用,其解决需从生产力、生产关系与社会文明三个层次着手.妇女问题的实质是社会分工所导致的人类异化生产的结果,其解决在于社会文明的全面进步与社会总异化的彻底消除.     

Work,welfare, and wellbeing: The impacts of welfare conditionality on people with mental health impairments in the UK

The personal, economic, and social costs of mental ill health are increasingly acknowledged by many governments and international organisations. Simultaneously, in high-income nations, the reach of welfare conditionality has extended to encompass many people with mental health impairments as part of on-going welfare reforms. This is particularly the case in the UK where, especially since the introduction of Employment and Support Allowance in 2008, the rights and responsibilities of disabled people have been subject to contestation and redefinition. Following a review of the emergent international evidence on mental health and welfare conditionality, this paper explores two specific issues. First, the impacts of the application of welfare conditionality on benefit claimants with mental health impairments. Second, the effectiveness of welfare conditionality in supporting people with experience of mental ill health into paid work. In considering these questions, this paper presents original analysis of data generated in qualitative longitudinal interviews with 207 UK social security benefit recipients with experience of a range of mental health issues. The evidence suggests that welfare conditionality is largely ineffective in moving people with mental health impairments into, or closer to, paid work. Indeed, in many cases, it triggers negative health outcomes that make future employment less likely. It is concluded that the application of conditionality for people with mental health issues is inappropriate and should cease.     

Self-Esteem,Self-Efficacy,and Social Connectedness as Mediators of the Relationship Between Volunteering and Well-Being

ABSTRACT

This study examines the potentially mediated relationship between volunteering and well-being. Using survey data from a random sample (N = 2,990) of the population of the state of Victoria, Australia, three hypotheses were tested: Volunteers will report higher well-being than nonvolunteers; volunteers will report higher self-esteem, self-efficacy, and social connectedness than nonvolunteers; self-esteem, self-efficacy, and social connectedness will mediate the relationship between volunteer status and well-being. Results supported the hypotheses and showed that self-esteem, self-efficacy, and social connectedness were all significant mediators of the volunteering–well-being relationship. Increased social connectedness associated with volunteering was found to be the strongest first step in these pathways. This points to the importance of social connection for well-being, but future research using longitudinal designs is required to further test these relationships and provide the capacity for evidence of causality.     

Broadening the Conceptual Lens on Language in Social Work: Difference, Diversity and English as a Global Language

Language is infused in multiple dimensions of human behaviour,and social work is essentially a language-centred activity.Yet, despite the pivotal position of language to many socialwork activities, its significance has rarely been explored interms of difference. Moreover, the linguistic diversity thatcharacterizes the local and global contexts in which many practitionersoperate has been given minimal attention in the social workliterature. In this paper, I contend that how language is conceptualizedin social work both shapes and constrains the way that practitionersperceive issues relating to linguistic diversity. The papermaps out the limitations of some of the existing conceptuallens used for viewing language in relation to the multilingualmilieu in which social work takes place. It also draws attentionto the global pre-eminence of English, the significance of bilingualismand the limitations of a monolingual frame of reference forsocial work. A case is made for augmenting the existing knowledgebase on language with a multidisciplinary approach to languagethat incorporates bilingual perspectives. Rather than providinga definitive model for understanding language, I suggest thatsuch an approach expands the conceptual landscape for exploringlanguage and difference in social work.     

Time,history and the making of the industrial middle class: the story of Samuel Smith

This article uses the politics of time to explore the making of the industrial middle class. It argues that anxieties about the decline of industry and the future of liberalism at the end of the nineteenth century fuelled a small explosion in life writing, prosopography and popular history. Accounts combined anecdotes about everyday life and reminiscences of the great civic age in a network of texts that attempted to recreate the associational life of the industrial middle class and present it as the foundation of national progress. However, slips in time between retrospection, nostalgia, memory and history reveal the complexity of late-Victorian anti-industrialism and the tensions in liberalism between a political culture that was inclusive and open and a social world that was not. The article combines a deep reading of the autobiography of the cotton magnate and liberal politician Samuel Smith alongside popular local history and collective biography. In so doing it shows how life stories were consciously composed as history, intent on shaping the provincial middle class as a historical force at a time of uncertainty about the future of industry and of liberalism.     

Early intervention and holistic,relationship‐based practice with fathers: evidence from the work of the Family Nurse Partnership

This paper seeks to add to the literature on working with fathers by focusing on early intervention. It draws on research into fathers involved in a home visitation service delivered by the Family Nurse Partnership in England and evaluates the men's experiences of the intervention. The vulnerability of fathers was striking and many were helped to develop their practical skills and confidence in caring for their babies. The intervention was effective because of the quality time that was invested in developing relationships with fathers (as well as mothers), the focus on their strengths as well as areas for improvement and the skilled, therapeutically oriented, holistic approach through which the service was delivered. The ‘early’ nature of the help was crucial to its success because of how it so effectively tapped into the men's redefinition of themselves as caring fathers during pregnancy and following the birth. We argue that there is important learning here for social care and health services in general about how to engage men and promote fathers' capacities to care for their children.     

Recognising the face of the other: Difference,identity and community

Social work's role in creating social solidarity requires an engagement with identity politics through careful negotiation of the boundary between the private and the public spheres and hence ensuring a balance between personal freedom to define one's specific identity and the public entitlement to belong to a political community as citizens. Current political and cultural trends, reflected also in social policies, impact severely on that boundary maintenance task inasmuch as privatisation encroaches on formerly public domains while simultaneously details of private concerns receive public attention through their commercialisation by the new media. It is suggested that social work's political role be asserted more explicitly in terms of the application of the Global Agenda which needs to penetrate to the level of person‐to‐person interaction.