Globalization,social work,and social welfare

This paper presents a critical review of globalization as explicated in the social work literature. It argues that writers about globalization and social work have so far accepted an unprolematized and undifferentiated construction of the theory of globalization which does not engage with the significant differences that exist between different accounts of globalization. In doing so they implicitly reproduce neo-liberal assumptions about the role of the state and its relationship to global forces. This results in a reductionist and pessimistic analysis of the fragmentation and deprofessionalization of welfare and social work which is often at variance with empirical evidence. Specifically, the acceptance of a narrow and economically over-deterministic reading of globalization unwittingly depoliticizes debates about social work and undermines resistance to the challenges to welfare.     

Social europe,social citizenship,and social services

The article begins by considering moves to establish Social Europe, alongside the European Unions single market, and the emphasis within the formulation of Social Europe on an employment-based model of social citizenship. This employment-based model is considered to be too limited for application to the social services. Accordingly, two other models are placed within the context of continuing European debate. These models are termed state clienthood and state-sponsored consumerism. The social democratic model of state cli-enthood is considered to be flawed by its neglect of the power exercised by the state over users of social services and by its lack of concern with individual needs. The potential of state-sponsored consumerism to open up questions concerning the rights of users of social services and responsiveness to their individual needs is explored and the conclusion is reached that, despite its inauspicious beginnings as part of the New Rights reform programme, this model has possibilities for enhancing social citizenship. Procedural rights offered by state-sponsored consumerism not only can extend social citizenship within existing social services provision but also can serve as a precursor to the wider participation of citizens in the social services, as the site of a continuing struggle around their rights.     

Medical malpractice,social structure,and social control

The origin and handling of doctor-patient conflict can be understood with reference to the sociological aspects of professional health care. This premise is explored by applying Black's theory of social control to the empirical evidence concerning malpractice litigation in the United States. The vertical, organizational, and relational distances between the health care provider and the patient are particularly relevant for predicting when malpractice claims will be made and how they will be resolved. These social-structural variables help explain several patterns in the American malpractice experience, including the aggregate increase in claim rates over the past four decades; the persistence of toleration as the modal response to medical injury; why poorer patients are less suit-prone than higher income patients; why surgical specialties have higher claim rates than general practice and psychiatry; why hospitals are sued disproportionately less often than individual doctors; and the relatively high frequency of prodefendant decisions when lawsuits are decided by a judge or jury.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, August 1992.     

Neoliberalisation,the social investment state and social work

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the challenges to social work evolving from two major discourses contributing to the common sense contextualising social work within the new spirit of capitalism and the governing of the soul. Beside neo-liberal ideas and values challenging social work values and the welfare state, the question is also about managerialism. To what extent is the social worker able to contribute to liberating, reflexive critique, or exert pastoral power? I have chosen to see how the idea of the social investment state may be linked to Rose’s and Foucault’s ideas about expanding governmentality and end my discussion by relating to some of the early writing on social work’s challenges in confronting ideas and practices interpreted as neoliberalisation moves.     

Gender,rank, and social networks on an enterprise social media platform

In this paper, we harness server-side data—540,000 messages generated by 2085 users on TamTamy, an Enterprise Social Media (ESM) platform—to examine how gender and rank shaped “homophily” (the tendency to connect with similar others) and centrality in an ESM network. Drawing on the logic of “distinctiveness theory,” which argues that the numeric rarity of a category in a given setting promotes the use of that category as a basis for connecting with others, we hypothesized and found: (a) the tendency to connect with same-gender others was stronger among women than among men; (b) the tendency to connect with same-rank others was stronger among high-ranking employees than among low-ranking employees; (c) for high-ranking men, rank was more important than gender as a basis for connecting with others; and (d) for low-ranking women, gender was more important than rank as a basis for connecting with others. We also found that whereas higher ranking individuals were more likely to be in central (bridging) positions in the overall network, gender was unrelated to network centrality. Our study suggests that the affordances of ESM for open and distributed communications notwithstanding, the social networks that emerge on ESM platforms may reinforce social stratification on some dimensions while diminishing it on others.     

Discourse, social theory, and social research: The discourse ofwelfare reform

Recent social theory includes important insights into language which constitute a so far underdeveloped resource for sociolinguistics. But much of this theory stops short – theoretical frameworks and categories which socially locate language are not pushed in the direction of a theorisation of language itself, which limits their operational value in research. Sociolinguistics can draw upon social theory to produce more sophisticated theorisations of language which at the same time constitute contributions to social theory. My aim in this paper is to explore what it means to work in a 'transdisciplinary' way. I argue in particular for a transdisciplinary engagement with social theory in which the logic of one theory is put to work in the elaboration of another without the latter being simply reduced to the former. My focus is upon critical discourse analysis (CDA) which I here take to be a part of a broadly conceived sociolinguistics. I shall link this theoretical exploration to a concrete research focus by referring to a discourse analytical study of the current British ('New') Labour Government, with particular reference to its 'reform' of social welfare. I shall be drawing upon the theoretical framework developed in Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999). I have referred to some of the social theory which I find it particularly fruitful to work with, but the paper is intended to suggest a way of working and is in no sense a closed list of theorists – on the contrary, I believe that we should be open to a wide range of theory.     

Europe,social exclusion and the identity of social work

This paper argues that the identity of social work as a form of professional practice within Europe is a timely matter for contemporary debate. Economic and political moves in Europe towards integration have created the possibility of establishing an identity which could both incorporate a range of diverse activities and also create a form of practice that is distinct. This article will address the emerging concept of social exclusion as a potential focus for social work professional practice in a changing global setting. It will be argued that the concept is one that can incorporate the broad range of practice in social work in a manner that could have similar meaning for all the different practitioners involved.     

Responsibilisation,social work and inclusive social security in Finland

ABSTRACT

In this article responsibilisation in social work is studied by analysing two Finnish state-level policy documents (called final report and research report) which concern a current activation initiative called inclusive social security (ISS). It is asked how social workers and clients are constructed as responsible subjects in these documents. Responsibilisation refers to the advanced liberal mode of governmentality, which aims to strengthen citizens’ abilities to self-governance through various techniques that include the intertwined elements of surveillance and empowerment. It is demonstrated that the policy documents construct the social workers’ and the clients’ responsibilities partly in different ways. The final report leads activation to be based on shared responsibility and social work to be more community-based, whereas the research report strengthens more individual-based responsibility of clients and social workers. For the clients, the interpretation of ISS based on shared responsibility would probably be less stigmatising and paternalistic than the one based on individual responsibilities, i.e. approaching long-term unemployed citizens as being personally ‘at risk’ and thus a justified target group of individualised techniques for activation. For social workers and clients, future activation appears to be a wide mix of different techniques, moral expectations and possible ways of being a responsible subject.     

Apoyo social,integración social y salud mental

Resumen

El apoyo social se ha convertido en un concepto cada vez más popular y en una herramienta de trabajo muy útil para el estudio de los factores psicosociales relacionados con la salud mental. A pesar de la existencia de una amplia bibliografía demostrando la relación positiva entre apoyo social y bienestar psicológico, existen importantes problemas en torno al concepto de apoyo social. En primer lugar, un desacuerdo definicional. En segundo lugar, una polémica en torno a los mecanismos a través de los cuales se da la asociación entre apoyo social y salud mental. Estos debates pueden resumirse en dos hipótesis rivales: el modelo de efectos directos y el modelo de efectos protectors.

El presente artículo intenta clarificar este debate introduciendo el concepto de integración social. Para ello, se elabora dicho concepto a partir de la obra de Emile Durkheim, enfatizando el posible papel de la anomia en el deterioro psicológico. Finalmente, se discuten las implicaciones de este análisis para las teorías sobre apoyo social y la relación entre el apoyo social y la salud mental.     

Network domains in social networking sites: expectations,meanings, and social capital

This paper examines why the use of social networking sites (SNSs) leads to different results in cultivating bridging and bonding social capital for different groups of people. Based on in-depth interviews of 45 university students in Hong Kong, I find that Mainland Chinese students studying in Hong Kong actively use SNSs for seeking practical information about offline matters, and they obtain substantial enacted support from other Mainland students of the same university through SNS use. As a result, they accumulate both bridging and bonding social capital. Local Hong Kong students, however, use SNSs mainly for social information seeking and are only able to accrue limited bridging social capital through SNS use. Drawing on the theory of network domains, I argue that the different offline network structures in which students are located – namely, homogeneous and closed networks versus heterogeneous and open networks – explain this difference. Students with closed offline networks have defined expectations of online ties; they think of their online activities as practical and leading to real changes in their status among peers. Those with open networks have indefinite expectations of their online audience; thus, they interpret online activities differently, thinking of them as recreational, and they are playful in their online behaviour. These different outcomes of online activities consequently lead to diverse results in social capital accrual.     

Mental health, social relations, and social selection: a longitudinal analysis.

A wide body of literature documents the effect of social networks and social supports on mental health. Fewer studies, however, have examined the reciprocal effect of mental health on social relationships. This problem is examined using data from a national panel survey of adults aged 20-64. For the sample as a whole, support was found for a social selection process, since psychological distress predicted decreases in primary, but not secondary, social relationships. The extent of primary relationships also were found to be associated with subsequent distress, providing evidence that the relationship between mental health and social environment may be transactional. When examined separately by gender, males but not females were found to be vulnerable to the process of social selection, supporting the hypothesis that the expression of distress is less role-appropriate for men and therefore more likely to invite social sanctions. Social causation effects also were observed only among males.     

Property,wealth, and social change: Piketty as a social science engineer

This paper applauds the vision and originality of Piketty's Capital and Ideology. We draw attention to the distinctive methodological perspective which he adopts, which we liken to call “social science engineering.” This allows a problem oriented perspective on long‐term global social change which sidesteps siloed disciplinary debates in social science and history about the meaning of modernity, the rise of capitalism, the formation of social groups, and the primacy of nations. We bring out how his theory of property permits him to take forward his overarching insight that economic growth leads to wealth accumulation. This, therefore, challenges long standing sociological perspectives by insisting that modernity is a conservative, rather than a revolutionary and transformative process. We build on this essential contribution by noting some areas where his work can push forward even further, notably that his focus on shifting relativities obscures qualitative historical changes, and more particularly means his analysis of the 20th century is not as provocative as that of the 19th century.     

Fertility,education, and social change

Level of education in India affects the age at marriage, the role of women, the desire to maintain and raise the standard of living, mobility , and cultural values all of which contribute to a couple's motivation to practice birth control. A review of differential fertility studies carried out in different parts of India indicates that generally the level of education and fertility are inversely related. However, the conclusions showing mean fertility at different levels of education are not uniform and this suggests that there is a critical level of education above which self-motivation, the conscious effort at family limitation on the part of the couple, determines the fertility level. Couples with less education may be inspired to practice birth control after reaching a certain parity. In India, level of education, by raising the age of marriage, widening the non-familial role of women, raising the desired standard of living, increasing geographical mobility and inculcating the small family norm, either directly affects fertility or induces the need for a small family. These variables are a direct result of education and operate most effectively upon couples educated at the level of professional and post-graduate degrees. The small family norm can also be instilled in couples with secondary and college levels of education and family planning will be practiced after the desired number of children is reached. Both self-motivation and sustained motivation are almost absent in couples with only primary or less education. Studies indicate that this section of the population will practice birth control only at high parity levels with outside encouragement.     

Quasi-decisiveness, quasi-ultrafilter, and social quasi-orderings

The aim of the present paper is to provide an axiomatic analysis of incomplete social judgments. In particular, we clarify the underlying power structure of Arrovian collective choice rules when social preferences are allowed to be incomplete. We propose the concept of quasi-decisiveness and investigate the properties of the collection of quasi-decisive sets associated with an Arrovian collective choice rule. In the course of this, we offer a series of applications.     

Essentialism, social constructionism, and beyond

Anti-essentialism has criticised a range of targets, from cultural essentialism and biological reductionism to causal explanation and foundationalism, and concerning topics ranging from markets to ‘race’, identity and sexuality. The paper assesses these diverse lines of critique. Some social phenomena, like identities, clearly do not have essences, but it does not follow from this that other phenomena we study do not have essences or something like them. While a strong, or deterministic essentialism is always wrong and often dangerously misleading, a moderate, non-deterministic essentialism is necessary for explanation and for a social science that claims to be critical and have emancipatory potential. The concept of essence is problematic, but not for some of the epistemological and ontological reasons put forward by anti-essentialism. Strong variants of social constructionism are liable to invert rather than resolve the problems of strong essentialism, including those of its biological reductionist guises. While it may be best to avoid concepts of essences which assume that the distinguishing and generative properties of objects must coincide, we still need to distinguish classes of objects and identify causal powers which enable and constrain what those objects can do.