Ultimate concerns in late modernity: Archer,Bourdieu and reflexivity

Through a critique of Margaret Archer's theory of reflexivity, this paper explores the theoretical contribution of a Bourdieusian sociology of the subject for understanding social change. Archer's theory of reflexivity holds that conscious ‘internal conversations’ are the motor of society, central both to human subjectivity and to the ‘reflexive imperative’ of late modernity. This is established through critiques of Bourdieu, who is held to erase creativity and meaningful personal investments from subjectivity, and late modernity is depicted as a time when a ‘situational logic of opportunity’ renders embodied dispositions and the reproduction of symbolic advantages obsolete. Maintaining Archer's focus on ‘ultimate concerns’ in a context of social change, this paper argues that her theory of reflexivity is established through a narrow misreading and rejection of Bourdieu's work, which ultimately creates problems for her own approach. Archer's rejection of any pre‐reflexive dimensions to subjectivity and social action leaves her unable to sociologically explain the genesis of ‘ultimate concerns’, and creates an empirically dubious narrative of the consequences of social change. Through a focus on Archer's concept of ‘fractured reflexivity’, the paper explores the theoretical necessity of habitus and illusio for understanding the social changes that Archer is grappling with. In late modernity, reflexivity is valorized just as the conditions for its successful operation are increasingly foreclosed, creating ‘fractured reflexivity’ emblematic of the complex contemporary interaction between habitus, illusio, and accelerating social change.     

Teaching Students the Task Force Approach: A Policy-Practice Course

Abstract

In contemporary society, task forces are commonly used to deal with community-based social problems. Task forces develop, change, and implement policies at all levels of government, and within all types of organizations, including the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Unfortunately, social work educators have not been involved in teaching the policy-practice skills of working on a task force. This article discusses existing literature on task forces. Gersick's (1988) model of task group development is used to structure the teaching of the task force approach. An advanced policy course on homelessness is used as an illustration, and a recommendation is made for adjusting educational requirements to cross-reference courses in the social work curriculum that teach substantive topics and, at the same time, use innovative methods to teach group skills.     

Mirroring,Mentalizing, and the Social Neuroscience of Listening

Listening to another speak is a basic process in social cognition. In the social neurosciences, there are relatively few studies that directly bear on listening; however, numerous studies have investigated the neural bases of some of the likely constituents of successful listening. In this article, I review some of this work as it relates to listening, with a focus on two auxiliary processes in the comprehension of speech: perceiving the nonverbal behaviors, such as facial expression, that accompany an utterance (i.e., how it is being said); and interpreting an utterance and the nonverbal behaviors that accompany it in terms of the speaker's state of mind (i.e., why it is being said). The review indicates the presence of two large-scale systems in the human brain that play a major role in successful listening: the putative mirror neuron system, which likely facilitates the relatively automatic perception of the how of speech; and the so-called mentalizing system, which likely underlies our ability to actively reach conclusions about the why of speech behavior. I conclude by considering the possibility that the dynamic interaction of mirroring and mentalizing processes may be pivotal for successful listening and social interaction more generally.     

An Ontological Turn for Childhood Studies?

The so‐called ‘ontological turn’ in the social sciences has brought with it yet another layer of theoretical concerns, except that this time the interest is in ontology rather than epistemology. New materialist thinking which has emerged in recent years promises to rethink the task of social theory in ways that circumvent modernist dualisms. In this paper, I explore what this might entail for childhood studies. What might such an ontological shift which emphasises among others relationality, connectedness and materiality mean for the further development of childhood studies? How would a decentring of children and the field's overpowering concerns for studying children's perspectives/voices/standpoints help rethink childhood studies and its remit? How, in short, would a shift from the child as an independent unit of analysis and of childhood as a categorical identity to a new ontology of emerging phenomena which implicate children, adults and non‐human forces affect the field's direction in the future?     

Children's Emotional Regulation and Social Competence in Middle Childhood

SUMMARY

Associations among parental behaviors, children's emotional reactivity, and dimensions of children's social competence were examined. Fourth grade children (N = 103) and their parents participated in a laboratory discussion task. Parent-child relationship qualities, parental emotion socialization behaviors, measures of children's emotional regulatory abilities, and social competence (assessed by teachers and peers) were obtained. Results indicated that parents' behaviors in the discussion task were related to both children's emotional and social competence. Both mothers' and fathers' behaviors were linked to children's emotional regulatory abilities and social competence. In addition, children's emotional regulation was related to children's social competence. Only limited evidence of the mediating role of emotion regulation was found. Implications for relative roles of mothers and fathers in the emergence of emotional and social competence were noted.     

FOOLING MYSELF OR FOOLING OBSERVERS? AVOIDING SOCIAL PRESSURES BY MANIPULATING PERCEPTIONS OF DESERVINGNESS OF OTHERS

We present a novel experiment demonstrating strategies selfish individuals utilize to avoid social pressure to be altruistic. Subjects participate in a trust game, after which they have an opportunity to state their beliefs about their opponent's actions. Subsequently, subjects participate in a task designed to “reveal” their true beliefs. Subjects who initially made selfish choices falsely state their beliefs about their opponent's kindness. Their “revealed” beliefs were significantly more accurate, which exposed subjects' knowledge that their selfishness was unjustifiable by their opponent's behavior. The initial false statements complied with social norms, suggesting subjects' attempts to project a more favorable social image. (JEL C9, D03, D83)     

Michael,part one: A boy of twelve in conflict with the school authorities

A single case, brought to a seminar led by the author, is presented here to illustrate a dual focus inherent in the social work task. The core of the social work task is the process by which, in the course of an ongoing dialogue, the social worker's independent point of view is brought into relation to the immediate preoccupations and point of view of the client(s). In the case illustration, that of a boy with school behaviour problems, the family presented itself implicitly, but with a persuasive sense of closure, as a mother-and-son two-person family. The social worker thought beyond this to the question of a father (and a father's authority) as a significant line of enquiry. A detailed account is given of the process, calling for tact and a finely tuned sense of relevance, by which she bridged the two points of view.     

The contribution of the intervention in social networks and community social work at the local level to social and human development

ABSTRACT

The primary task of community social work is building social networks by reinforcing people's resources and those of the different environmental and social contexts from three dimensions: personal development, social development and organisational development. The new information technologies today establish a relationship of communication with local communities and citizens that promotes proximity to social networks. Social intervention is supported by a set of methods from human geography that can be used as tools to create maps of the territory and the networks for planning, diagnosing and classifying the management of community network intervention. In this discussion we set out to analyse the contribution of the intervention in social networks as a means of achieving a new configuration of social networks at the local level. This information is obtained from semi-structured interviews with social workers and other professionals in the social sphere in municipalities with over 100,000 inhabitants in the Madrid region (Spain). The research results show that intervention in social networks locally multiplies the opportunities to enhance the quality of people's social relationships, thus expanding their social support by strengthening their bonds, their personal network and support systems; secondly, it increases empowerment to facilitate a type of intervention to strengthen human potential and to gain autonomy and full citizenship.     

Is Vygotsky Relevant? Vygotsky's Marxist Psychology

This article explores the connections between Vygotsky's psychology and Marxism, arguing that his was a “Marxist psychology” in its “historical foundation”: a specific conception of history. This conception of history is evident in Vygotsky's analysis and diagnosis of the crisis in psychology. The creation of a Marxist, general psychology was the historical task that was defined by this crisis, and his developmental psychology was the historical project of such a psychology. In his practice of the methodology of this general psychology, Vygotsky recounted “child history”: the history of the genesis of mind. The conception of history evident in Crisis throws new light on Vygotsky's texts on child development: They tell a history of the objective tendencies of consciousness, of the dialectical processes of sublation, and of self-mastery. As Vygotsky interpreted the higher mental functions, they are manifestations of the child's ability to master himself or herself as a consequence of the “social moment” of consciousness. In fostering these functions, one shaped a human consciousness capable of free and deliberate choice.     

Afrocentric Intervention Paradigm: An Overview of Successful Application by a Grassroots Organization

A grassroots social service organization's successful use of Afrocentric ideas, theories, and frameworks in its programs and services illustrates that many African Americans respond more readily to human and social services interventions that value and understand their historical experiences and include their cultural influences as “protective factors” in social service interventions. This article describes how the Community Empowerment Association's programs and services are designed to be culturally proficient by holding African customs, ethos, history, mores, society, and traditions in high esteem.     

Linking maternal psychopathology to children's excessive crying and sleeping problems in a large representative German sample—The mediating role of social isolation and bonding difficulties

Attaining self-regulation is a major developmental task in infancy, in which many children show transient difficulties. Persistent, clinically relevant difficulties in self-regulation include excessive crying or sleeping disorders. Many families with affected children are burdened with multiple psychosocial risk. This suggests that regulatory problems are best conceptualized as the maladaptive interplay of overly burdened parents and a dysfunctional parent–child interaction. The current study examines whether social isolation and bonding difficulties function as mediating mechanisms linking maternal psychopathology to (1) children's excessive crying and (2) sleeping problems. The sample comprised N = 6598 mothers (M = 31.51 years) of children between zero to three years of age (M = 14.08 months, 50.1% girls). In addition to socio demographic data, the written questionnaire included information on maternal depression/anxiety, isolation, bonding, and children's regulatory problems. Hypotheses were tested with a mediation model controlling for psychosocial risk and child characteristics. As expected, maternal symptoms of depression/anxiety were linked to infants‘ excessive crying and sleeping problems. Social isolation and bonding difficulties mediated this association for excessive crying as well as for sleeping problems, but social isolation was a single mediator for sleeping problems only. The findings provide important insights in the mediating pathways linking maternal psychopathology to children's regulatory problems.     

Gendered Dimensions of the HIV Pandemic: A Cross‐National Investigation of Women's International Nongovernmental Organizations,Contraceptive Use,and HIV Prevalence in Less‐Developed Nations

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) pandemic has a profound impact on women as a result of social and biological vulnerabilities to the infection. In this article, we explore the influence of democracy, women's international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), and contraceptive use on female HIV rates, using indirect‐effect modeling techniques to properly test the interrelationships among key variables. Structural equation models reveal that democracy and women's INGOs work to reduce female HIV rates indirectly, by promoting the use of contraceptives among women in less‐developed nations. Despite these promising findings, the analyses also reveal that INGOs are negatively associated with sociohealth dimensions of female empowerment, which thus serves to promote HIV rates. The results suggest that interventions undertaken by INGOs may not be as successful as government programs in addressing inequalities in health and social resources for women in poor nations.     

Designing an Ageless Social Community: Adapting a New Urbanist Social Core to Suit Baby Boomers in Later Life

ABSTRACT

Since 90% of older adults prefer aging in place (Wang, Shepley, & Rodiek, 2012), it is important that neighborhood design supports successful aging. Beyond basic needs, research indicates quality interaction is associated with positive health and well-being benefits, particularly for older adults. In this, design supporting social relationships plays an essential role. This study's purpose was to identify New Urbanist neighborhood and social space design attributes supporting older residents' physiological and social needs. This case study used keyword-in-context analysis with focus group interview data to identify domains supporting social interaction for residents aging in place including: location factors, social factors, design factors, and programmatic factors.     

Participation for children exposed to domestic violence? Social workers' approaches and children's strategies

This article explores social workers' approaches to children exposed to domestic violence and children's strategies in encounters with these professionals in the context of family law proceedings. Investigator approaches as well as child strategies are reconstructed from children's narratives. Furthermore, possible links between the social worker's approach described by a particular child, and the child's own strategies are outlined. Participation can offer children validation of their experiences and support their recovery after exposure to violence. However, it is suggested that it seems to be a challenging task for social workers to both validate children's experiences of violence and simultaneously offer them participation in the investigation process.     

"Active" and "Passive" Resettlement: The Influence of Support Services and Refugees' own Resources on Resettlement Style

This paper explores the process of resettlement among recent refugees in Perth, Western Australia. We propose four refugee resettlement styles created through the interaction of a number of factors. These factors can be clustered as: (1) the social features of refugees (their human, social, and cultural capital), and (2) the host society's responses to refugee settlers (Australia's resettlement policy and services and the broader influence of the host society's responses to refugees). We propose that refugees approach their resettlement in predominantly active (“achievers” and “consumers”) or passive (“endurers” and “victims”) ways and that these are differentially successful strategies. Medicalization of the refugee experience in Australia is a factor that may influence refugees to adopt a passive “victim role”, so we propose that a greater emphasis during early resettlement should be placed on refugees' own culturally defined priorities such as employment and stable housing. The argument developed in this paper is supported by data from two qualitative research projects conducted in Western Australia. The fieldwork consisted of interviews, focus groups, and participant observation, and targeted refugees from the former Yugoslavia and the Horn of Africa who arrived in Australia during the 1990s and 2000s, as well as resettlement service providers.     

Little naked pangs of the self: the real performance of the self and the function of trust in Goffman's action theory

The aim of this article is to discuss some of the leading features of Erving Goffman's action theory as an alternative to the ‘orthodox’ paradigms of sociology, viewed as a structuralist and functionalist science that defines social constructs by their shared rules and values, and as a drifting of action, in the sense of intention, toward an individualistic version. The author examines Goffman's shift of the focus of attention from the boundaries of a social sense of action to the social dialectic of ‘defining a situation’ (W. Thomas) as conducted by the social actors in a renewal of Simmel's ‘empowering covenants’ (wechselwirkung) in the multiple casual social connections that make up the ‘social buzz’ in a society. The author moreover discusses Goffman's action as a kind of playacting regulating cognitive and expressive face-to-face ‘traffic’ between the social actors. This relational dynamic creates an interactive play based on encounters – in which one's opening to another is fraught with risks of deception – regulated by trust as a central resource for social interactions. Trust, in its interpersonal and systemic variants, constitutes a universal social datum and an elementary precondition for social exchanges and the cooperation between individuals. Trust, thus, functions as comparer between reciprocal expectations and a regulator of freedom tending to the stability of the social system.     

But Where Are “The People”? Unfinished Agendas in The People of Puerto Rico

The People of Puerto Rico is a comprehensive ethnography of major types of rural communities in pre-1950 Puerto Rico but was less successful in reconnecting those localities in a coherent portrayal of the island's social formation. A reexamination of this work's best-known subcultures, Santa Isabel (Sidney Mintz' “Cañamelar”) and Ciales (Eric Wolf's “San José”), offers entry points to these communities, as well as to the key concepts that Mintz and Wolf constructed reciprocally through their research: rural proletarian and peasant, plantation and hacienda. Also present are the too-implicit spatial referents of these concepts—lowland and highland, foreland and hinterland—and their associated crop types, sugar and coffee. In this article, the historical space of Santa Isabel and Ciales will be reconsidered, in part with reference to often-overlooked nuances and caveats in Mintz' and Wolf's chapters. Foregrounding the spatial/ecological referent in “Cañamelar” and “San José” opens our sights to counterpoints between sugar and livestock, and to patterns of highland-lowland migration, kin networks, and social interaction. Familiar concepts take on new meanings as we discern supra-municipal, sub-insular, and intermediate island regions and move closer to specifying historical situations (Mintz) while renewing our theorization (Wolf).     

Longitudinal assessment of social attention in preterm and term infants: Its relation to social communication and language outcome

Preterm birth has been reported to be associated with an increased risk of social communication and language problems. Recently, we found that preterm infants showed atypical patterns of social attention compared with term infants. However, it is still unknown how social attention develops and whether the individual differences are associated with developmental outcomes for social communication and language in preterm infants. The social attention of preterm and term infants at 6, 12, and 18 months was investigated using two types of social attention tasks (human-geometric preference task and gaze-following task). The Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (M-CHAT) and the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory adapted for Japanese were measured at 18 months. We found that compared with term infants, preterm infants spent less time looking toward dynamic human images and followed another's gaze directions less frequently through 6, 12, and 18 months. Moreover, hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that less preference for dynamic human images and gaze-following abilities was associated with high M-CHAT and low language scores in preterm and term infants, respectively. These findings suggest that birth status affects development of social attention through 18 months and individual differences in social attention reflect differences in social communication and language outcomes.     

Respect for persons

Abstract

The notion of ‘respect for persons’ is a key notion in moral philosophy as well as in social work ethics. The Kantian notion of a person has, together with individualism, liberalism and positivism, given rise to a strange ideological mixture which ‘guided’ social work theory and practice for some time. Gaita's concept of respect for human beings, examined in this paper, contrasts with the poverty of this ideological mixture. Concepts such as ‘goodness’, ‘remorse' and 'sensibility’ explain why Gaita sees the ethical as something that is both sui generis and of the utmost practical importance. They clarify the irreplaceability of human beings, emphasise the need for moral agents to have ‘historical integrity’, and in general show that a moral agent is much more substantial than a res cogitans. This paper attempts to indicate the relevance of these considerations for social work.