Ninety Years in the World of Work in America

Parsons's tripartite model suggests that gaining information about the world of work is a critical factor in vocational decision making. This article compares and contrasts data from around 1909, when F. Parsons's Choosing a Vocation was published, with contemporary data on the workplace and the American worker. Data on other contextual factors, such as demographic trends, are also presented. There are surprising similarities between Parsons's time and the present, and also obvious differences. The author suggests that having information about occupations is still an essential component of career counseling, and ideas are presented for updating knowledge about the increasingly complex world of work.     

Social Care Work in the Recent Past: Revisiting the Professional/Amateur Dichotomy

Abstract

The present article challenges the received wisdom of the distinctiveness of professional social work in Australia and its dichotomous juxtapositioning against work undertaken by those without formal social work qualifications. Findings are presented from a qualitative study of Australian Catholic sisters’ experiences of social care work in the recent past, based on indepth interviews with sisters who collectively worked in a variety of fields from the 1950s to the time of writing. Sisters’ accounts of work with marginalised people reveal many similarities with the values and principles of social work. This suggests a blurred line between “professional” social work and “amateur” social care work. In an era of reconsideration of many certainties, Australian social work could profitably reflect on its commonalities with, and differences from, practice domains outside professional social work.     

The Love Ethic: A Radical Theory for Social Work Practice

Love is marginalised in professional social work codes of ethics in Australia and internationally. Yet, reflecting the emancipatory imperative of social work, feminist bell hooks promotes love as a political process to transform systems of injustice such as capitalism, patriarchy, and racism. Analysing the works of hooks and other relevant literature, this article discusses “the love ethic”, a model of relationship-oriented activism encompassing dialogue, nonviolence, interconnectedness between people and between people and nature, reflexivity, shared power, and solidarity. It provides some practical suggestions for love-based social work practice, such as self-forgiveness, pursuing gender-equal relationships, upholding fair workplace conditions, honouring Indigenous peoples, supporting oppressed people to assert their rights, connecting local and global action, nurturing symbiotic relationships with nature, and supporting empowering spiritualities. The love ethic supports radical social workers to engage in activism, and necessitates further exploration within academia and practice.     

Double Jeopardy: Work Ethic Differences in Youth at Risk of School Failure

The purpose of this study was to determine if work ethic differed for a sample of 152 selected 9th-grade students categorized by risk of school failure and by gender. Work ethic attributes were measured using the Occupational Work Ethic Inventory (Petty, 1993). Results of a two-way multivariate analysis of variance indicated significant work ethic differences in main effects of at-risk classification and gender for dependent variables of interpersonal skills, initiative, and being dependable. Interaction effects were not significant. Underlying constructs indicated that adolescents with greater degrees of risk were less dependable and that girls in the study were more dependable than boys.     

Changing Linkages Between Work and Poverty in Rural America1

Abstract The changing relationship between work and poverty in non-metropolitan (nonmetro) America is documented using data from the 1980 and 1990 March supplements of the Current Population Survey. Specifically, this paper assesses changing differentials in the proportion of poor people who are working; documents the rapid rise in poverty among nonmetro and metropolitan (metro) workers during the 1979—1989 period, especially among young adults and females; and provides evidence of growing inequality between metro and nonmetro workers, a pattern that cannot be explained by differences in work attachment, human capital, or job characteristics. The results imply that poverty is a persistent if not increasingly harsh reality for workers in rural America.     

Work,Performance, and the Social Ethic of Global Capitalism: Understanding Religious Practice in Contemporary India

This ethnographic essay focuses on the relationship between religious performances and the “strong discourse” of contemporary global capitalism. It explores the subjective meaning and social significance of religious practice in the context of a rapidly expanding mass religious phenomenon in India. The narrative draws on Weber's insights on the intersections between religion and economy, phenomenological theory, performance studies, and Indian philosophy and popular culture. It shows that religion here is primarily a means of performing to and preparing for an informal economy. It gives the chance to live meaningful social lives while challenging the inequities and symbolic violence of an imposing global capitalist social ethic. Unlike exclusive formal institutions that are increasingly governed by neoliberal rationalities, the religious event provides an open and freely accessible yet challenging stage for participants to practice and prove their resolve, gifts, and sincerity. In contrast to the focus on social anomie and the reactionary characterization of contemporary religion in identity‐based arguments, this essay demonstrates that religious practice here is simultaneously a way of performing to and performing against a totalizing capitalist social order.     

Revisiting the identity issue in anorexia

Anorexia nervosa is considered an enigmatic disease with a multitude of predisposing factors and no empirically confirmed effective treatment. However, all people with the disease relentlessly pursue a common idealized goal--the state of severe emaciation. In this article, the perspective that this condition epitomizes a life-time struggle for self-acceptance and self-definition is reexamined. People afflicted with anorexia come to define themselves through their emaciated form, and maintenance of this form becomes their major focus and primary means of fulfillment. Therapy must address the identity issue, which is fundamental to the onset and perpetuation of the disease. Use of interpersonal techniques is advocated as most appropriate in serving this purpose.     

Revisiting 'communities in Britain'

In this article I re‐examine Frankenberg’s Communities in Britain (1966) and his use of a ‘morphological continuum’ within his analysis. This analysis is itself a re‐assessment of some influential community studies conducted within the British Isles. I look at some particular ideas within the more theoretical part of this book, especially the ideas of ‘social redundancy’ and the distinction between ‘complex’ and ‘complicated’. I then consider some themes arising from some more recent studies. These themes include identity, networks and social capital and time and I argue that Frankenberg's analysis can still provide the reader with useful tools to think through the ideas and practices of community.     

Revisiting the Creating of Settings

I begin by briefly indicating the personal experiences that stimulated me to write the book. I do so because I have come to believe that crucial to the creation of a setting is the range and substance of the leaders' personal and cognitive past experiences in and with complicated settings, and I would also include the length of time of past experience. The shorter the time span of past experience, the more difficult the process will appear, independent of outcome judged by criteria of success or failure. If I had to bet, I would have to say that the shorter that time span, the quicker the criteria for failure will be recognized and the higher the frequency of the death of the setting. I say that not because a longer time span of past experience necessarily indicates that appropriate conclusions have been drawn or that increased age means increased wisdom. What it does mean is that the chances that conclusions appropriate to the creation of a setting have been learned are somewhat higher. Overall, however, the rate of failure is very high. The setting may remain in existence, but its initial purpose may have been long discarded or drastically changed. One could argue that there are instances when these changed purposes should have been discarded. The fact is that we do not know and probably will never know because, as I later indicate, the creation of settings is not likely to be an area of investigation.     

故地重游--再回安曼

约旦地处西亚的阿拉伯半岛,与巴勒斯坦、以色列、叙利亚、伊拉克和沙特阿拉伯为邻,首都安曼市郊区的死海,举世闻名,南端的亚喀巴湾是它唯一的出海口.这个深藏于沙漠之中的小国,已有5000年的历史,且战略地位重要,是古往今来的兵家必争之地.早在青铜器时代晚期,安曼及其周围地区便是国际商贸中心,历经沧桑后,留下了不同时期的大量文物、古迹,成为人类文明史上的一颗璀璨明珠.     

Revisiting the Prediction of Financial Vulnerability

Whether or not a nonprofit organization is vulnerable to financial problems is a concern of all stakeholders of the organization. Recently, Greenlee and Trussel (2000) and Trussel and Greenlee (2001) expanded Tuckman and Chang's work (1991) to predict which organizations are financially vulnerable. This article extends the work of these authors by developing a model of financial vulnerability that includes four financial indicators, controls for the sector to which an organization belongs, and is based on a sample of over ninety‐four thousand organizations. The model is useful as a screening, monitoring, and attention‐getting device.