Defending the city

Abstract

In ‘Defending the City’ George Pattison seeks to defend the modern city against the charge — made, for example, by Graham Ward — that it is a merely secular phenomenon. Instead, he argues that, in its essence, it is multi‐dimensional and pluralistic, representing a range of diverse possibilities, creative as well as destructive. Also, the modern city is shown to anticipate the essential features of the postmodern city. The argument is illustrated by references to Pugin's critique of architectural eclecticism, to Dostoevsky's invocation of the fantastical reality of St. Petersburg, to Kierkegaard and to Murnau's film Sunrise. It is claimed that the best Christian response to the city is to defend, not to subvert, its pluralism.     

Austerity and the Demise of Social Europe: The Baltic Model versus the European Social Model

This article draws on the experience of the imposition of radical austerity measures in the Baltic states. It challenges the myth that austerity can be achieved in a socially and economically ‘costless’ manner. Baltic-style austerity has now become a template of ‘successful adjustment’ and a recipe for recovery of the Eurozone. The authors argue contra such ‘myth-making’ that austerity is compromising the longer run sustainability of societies that follow this path, while simultaneously ending prospects of the adhesion of a European ‘Social Model’ in the post-communist periphery. The article is a contribution to an emerging debate in academic and policy circles concerning the viability and future of Europe's ‘Social Model’ in an age of austerity.     

Defending White Scientific Masculinity

While many feminist and postcolonial scholars have analyzed the post-9/11 politic in the United States, few have focused on the anthrax “attacks” that followed the 11 September 2001 World Trade Center disaster. The FBI search for the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax mailings was an important node in US national security discourse making – it culminated in the fingering of a white male government biodefense scientist and cast doubt on the role of scientific expertise in provisioning national security. This article argues that while “white scientific masculinity” was put into question, it was simultaneously shored up as a nationalist symbol of protection against bioterrorism. This article traces shifts across the three FBI-led profiles of the anthrax perpetrator, along with concomitant news media coverage: the white male “loner” nonscientist, the white male “loner” amateur scientist and finally the white male biodefense scientist. Using a cultural studies approach, this article details how at each successive investigatory stage profilers mobilized hegemonic discourses to re-instantiate the authoritative status of white scientific masculinity in US national security. This analysis offers an important dimension to feminist and postcolonial critiques of the symbolic and institutional investment in white masculinity during the War on Terror.     

Leadership in Social Work Education and the Social Change Model of Leadership

Leadership is a topic of international debate in both social work education and practice. Questions remain, however, regarding what specific models of leadership should be emphasized and how leadership content should be infused within the social work curriculum. This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion about the infusion of leadership within social work education. Specifically, this paper shares the design and development of a graduate-level social work course in program evaluation that infused education around the social change model of leadership (SCM) and then explores qualitatively how 39 graduate students interpreted and applied this model of leadership through an experiential community-based evaluation project. Findings of this study suggest that students utilized the values identified in the SCM in a range of ways to understand and interpret their leadership experience both in their collaborative groups and in their partnerships with community-based organizations. Community organizations also reported benefiting from the experience in partnership with the students. Implications are discussed in relation to the potential value and impact of this model for social work education.     

Defending illusions: the institution's struggle for survival

Based on participant observation and other qualitative data collected at 15 institutions for the mentally retarded, this study is directed to determining how institutional officials deal with outside criticism of their facilities. Over the past decade and a half, the legitimacy of institutions for the retarded has been challenged by professionals, courts, parent groups, and the media. Officials have reacted to outside criticism by developing new legitimating myths, increasingly sophisticated impression-management techniques, and detailed rationales for the all-too-visible discrepancy between goals and practices. Thus, this paper is concerned with the symbolic nature of the institution's struggle for survival.     

青年社工工作模式探究

本研究从实践研究和理论探索两条路径出发,探究社区青少年社会支持工作模式。研究通过访谈法、问卷法、资料分析法研究了上海市社区青少年心理健康服务的工作现状,验证了从社会支持出发,开展社会工作的意义,并结合理论分析和研究结果,提出社会支持工作模式的建议。     

城市社会管理及其新模式探讨

随着城市化进程的加速,城市社会结构发生了深刻的变化,利益关系日趋多元,收入差距逐渐拉大,社会矛盾不断凸显,全新的城市社会发展格局对传统的城市社会管理提出了挑战,加强和创新城市社会管理也随之成为学术界关注的热点。在对社会管理的基本认识基础上,简要回顾了城市社会管理的历史进程,分析了当下我国城市社会管理所面临的新社会逻辑,结合对政府所提倡的社会管理新格局的理解,继而对城市社会管理新模式进行了探讨,并提出这个新模式所面临的可能困境与其应对方式。     

Public Accounts: Defending Contested Practices

Little attention has been paid to how actors account for controversial institutional conduct or contested practices. Relying on a content analysis of letters to the editor, I explore how actors operating in the Habermasian “public sphere” justify the contested practice of linking Native American symbols with sports teams, and suggest that in their rejection of challengers to their definitions of the situation, authors create public accounts. Consisting primarily of justifications rather than excuses, these accounts are of four types: “denial of injury,” “assertion of benefit,” “claim of authority,” and “rejection of challenge.” For those who wish to conduct comparative analyses of contested practices, these concepts may prove useful.     

Social Workers' Postgraduate Use of the IFD Interpersonal Communication Model

Interpersonal communication assessment models have become very popular as a means of quickly establishing rapport in many settings across the United States. Despite their popularity and possible utility, there has been minimal research into the impact of these models, especially over time and in educational settings (more than 6 months after the training is over). In the master's of social work (MSW) program at Brigham Young University (BYU), the interpersonal family dynamics (IFD) model is used as a tool to better understand human behavior and strengthen relationships in the social work practice environment. This training is provided to first-year students in the foundation human behavior in the social environment course and to field supervisors in their field training conferences. BYU's MSW program graduates were surveyed to find out their perceptions of the utility of IFD. With a relatively high level of accuracy, the graduates reported IFD was a useful approach to better understanding human behavior in their daily practice. Graduates used the model as much in their personal lives as in their professional lives.     

创新福利模式 优化社会管理

创造适合国情的福利模式,是社会管理成功的基础和奥妙所在。一个好的福利模式要能保持四个基本均衡:经济发展与福利支出的均衡,福利支出中的基础部分与非基础部分的均衡,福利机制中的刚性与柔性的均衡,福利责任结构中的政府与市场、家庭、个人之间的均衡。中国一些富裕农村所搞的集体福利为实现这些均衡提供了实践经验,而这些经验与底线公平理论非常契合。底线公平福利模式具有四个特点和优势:教育为基,劳动为本,服务为重,健康为要。它充分发挥中国优秀文化和社会结构优势,把发展性要素内置于福利模式之中,可以实现社会福利的内外平衡,为社会安全奠定基础。     

A Model Curriculum for Occupational Social Work

This paper reports the results of a survey experiment in which a national sample of NASW members was presented with systematically altered versions of a summary of a hypothetical study of casework effectiveness and asked to make judgments about the quality of the research, its importance to social work, and its significance for their own practice. It was found that although respondents distinguished between studies with good and bad research designs, their judgments of the quality of the research and its implications for their own practice were significantly influenced by whether the findings were positive or negative.     

Families with Children with Disabilities - Inequalities and the Social Model

This article suggests that families with children with disabilities experience a range of inequalities that families with children without disabilities do not suffer. It draws on a recent qualitative study to illustrate the way in which it is not just disabled people, but in the case of disabled children, whole families that suffer from unequal opportunities and outcomes. We draw on the social model of disability to show that the lives of these families are often characterised by financial hardship, stress and anxiety as a result of social barriers, prejudices and poorly conceived service provision. The social model of disability is usually drawn upon to illustrate the way in which social organisation disables people with impairments. In this instance, we illustrate the way in which social organisation disables not just the family member who has an impairment but the whole family unit. By applying this model of disability, new ways of creating practices and policies for these families can be developed which incorporate their views into the heart of the policy-making process.     

Education in Gerontological Social Work: Application of the Task-Centered Model

There is an increasing need both for effective interventions with the elderly and for social workers trained in clinical gerontology. This paper discusses an attempt to integrate gerontological knowledge, clinical knowledge, and clinical experience in a master's-level curriculum and to develop the task-centered model as an effective base for social work with the elderly.     

Five-Way Experiential Learning Model for Social Work Education

Social workers exercise their practice skills by helping clients find strengths and solutions. In order to comprehensively practice skills for diverse client situations, it is crucial to practice and fine-tune the applications of various therapeutic approaches through clinical drills. This paper presents an experiential learning model, expanded from Kolb's Learning Cycle, which fits the dynamic pedagogical needs of the social work profession. It examines the implementation of the use of the ‘Five-Way Experiential Learning Model’ based on practice learning through personal reflections and professional evaluations. This practice learning study helped 79 MSW students define their ‘five-way learning’ and to analyze its impact on their acquisition of social work skills and clinical practice competencies. This process demonstrates the importance of the transtheoretical connection to achieve a better understanding of clients' situations through the process of change and peer input. Discussions will focus on the model elements, results on experiential learning, and ethical considerations.     

Social Model Theory: the story so far …

Social model theory has been developing in Britain since the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) published their Fundamental Principles of Disability (1976), followed shortly afterwards by Finkelstein's seminal exposition of the oppression that disabled people face (1980). Since then, various competing positions have been elaborated from this original starting point. Through a review of the literature, this paper outlines the course of those developments to date, in order to show the full range and potential of social model theory. In recording some of the commentaries on each of the various theoretical strands which have emerged, it also highlights some areas in which further theorisation may be desirable in order to make more explicit the links between social model theory and disability movement practice.     

Settings in Social Networks: A Measurement Model

A class of statistical models is proposed that aims to recover latent settings structures in social networks. Settings may be regarded as clusters of vertices. The measurement model is based on two assumptions. (1) The observed network is generated by hierarchically nested latent transitive structures, expressed by ultrametrics, and (2) the expected tie strength decreases with ultrametric distance. The approach could be described as model–based clustering with an ultrametric space as the underlying metric to capture the dependence in the observations. Bayesian methods as well as maximum–likelihood methods are applied for statistical inference. Both approaches are implemented using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods.     

A Model for Social Work in Private Practice

These Practice Notes explore some of the consultant services a social worker in private practice can offer to voluntary organisations and community groups. Some of the advantages and disadvantages of private practice are shared.     

Defending the American Dream: Coverage of the Jonathan Pollard Spy Case

This article contemplates the journalistic coverage of American espionage as an attempt to maintain consonance with broader cultural discourses about what it means to be an American. Tracking the American press coverage of the Jonathan Pollard spy case, the article demonstrates that the press turns espionage into a phenomenon upholding fundamental American beliefs in openness, sincerity, and straightforwardness. It shows that, rather than represent espionage as a phenomenon embodying deceit, secrecy, and immoral action, the press turns espionage into a phenomenon that communicates that one is what one says one is and that one's self presentation reflects one's insides. Ultimately, however, this representation of espionage undermines a full understanding of how—and why—spying works in culture.