Revisiting the Work Ethic in America

Starting with a reflection on the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center and the corporate fraud and bankruptcies of 2002, the authors provide an overview of the professional literature concerning the origins, evolution, practice, and future implications of the work ethic in the United States. Discussion focuses on the American work ethic from both a historical and a modern‐day perspective, highlighting the formation of what is now considered a major paradigm of work; views on the changing nature of the work ethic, especially for women and members of minority groups; and implications for career counselors.     

Schooling in Capitalist America Twenty-Five Years Later

Sociological Forum -     

World Guide to Social Work Education

This paper is concerned with those who are screened out and who must struggle to overcome various inequality barriers. In essence, it is about institutionalized inequality and the three basic “isms”—racism, sexism, and ageism. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to conduct a comparative analysis of the three major “isms” and attempt to specify their similarities and differences.     

William Blake and America: Freedom and Violence in the Atlantic World

Abstract

In this article, I consider the absence of a general readership of William Blake's poetry in nineteenth-century Britain and compare that neglect to the American Transcendentalists' reading of Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794) in the 1840s. The American interest in Blake's poetry is complemented by his fascination with the events in the Atlantic World in the years culminating in the American War of Independence. I will offer a reading of Blake's America: a Prophecy (1793) showing that the Civil War fulfilled his prophecy of inevitable future conflict. This is developed first by considering Ralph Waldo Emerson's changing responses to slavery and race during the turbulent middle decades of the century, and then by addressing Walt Whitman's attempt to negotiate postbellum America. This negotiation, I argue, results in the emergence of those two powerfully conflicting strains in his mature poetry: emancipatory fervour and simultaneous despair at the violence intrinsic in liberty.     

Reframing the Discourse on Social Work in the Arab World: Considerations for the Accreditation of Social Work in the UAE

Drawing on the author's experience of teaching social work in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), this paper will interrogate the pervasive question, significant within academic circles and the wider public discourse, on the issue of values and how they are framed or not by their relevant cultural contexts. This is a critical period in the history of the development of social work in the UAE where the International Association of Schools of Social Work subjected the first professional social work education and training programme offered to the rigour of a review process. Currently most social work programmes are evaluated against Western social work accreditation frameworks and quality assurance processes. While this practice may be appropriate in certain contexts, in others, such as in the Arab world, a more authentic frame of reference is required. To this end, the frame of reference lies in the Islamic prophetic traditions and culture, uniquely characteristic of the Arab world in the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC). It not only provides the backdrop to the ideological context for practice and education but also for quality assurance purposes as in the case of accreditation. A quick perusal of global accreditations of social work programmes reveals intense scholarly debates about what should constitute a dynamic curricula, necessary resources, ideology, administrative needs, processes and structure of social work programmes. Given that all of these criteria satisfy the conditions for accreditation, there is still ample opportunity within the different socio-cultural contexts for variations in the curricula of social work programmes being offered universally.

There is little doubt, despite the recent debates on the accreditation processes, that the primary goal is to ensure quality programmes and competent preparation for social work practice. In this paper the author will argue that while subscribing to this academic rigour, a paradigm shift is imperative to understand what constitutes culturally sensitive social work education and training. This paper will demonstrate that the values and ethics rooted in the ideology of the Arab world should determine and influence academic and practice paradigms.     

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.     

Future of Work in the Digital World: Preparing for Instability and Opportunity

Despite conflicting forecasts about the pace and extent of technological changes that lie ahead, it is difficult to dispute the impact that advances in automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence have already had on work in the United States and globally. Hirschi ( 2018 ) provided an excellent discussion of these developments and what they may mean for career clients, practitioners, and researchers. The author aims to complement Hirschi's contribution by (a) amplifying the nature of the challenges faced by workers, both currently and in the foreseeable future, and (b) considering steps that may be taken by career development experts, both individually and collectively, to meet these challenges. These steps include advocacy for displaced workers, participation in dialogues to transform educational institutions, and efforts to extend the range of counseling interventions to prepare clients for a career future that may be far less stable for increasing numbers of workers.     

Kiva's Flat,Flat World: Ten Years of Microcredit in Cyberspace

While microcredit has been widely praised as a new, powerful tool for enabling development and empowering the poor, this form of ‘development from below’ does not exist in a vacuum. Rather, microcredit programs are inseperable from a host of neoliberal political, cultural, and economic practices and projects. These contexts are, however, systematically missing from Kiva.org, the largest and most popular peer-to-peer microlending portal. Instead, Kiva.org presents a placeless perspective on development and poverty, where borrowers’ skin color, native dress, and picturesque backgrounds seem to vary, but the ‘fix’ of microcredit remains universal. This ‘flat’ approach is problematic for two reasons. First, Kiva.org naturalizes the financialization of poor people's disadvantage in the coercive form of debt. Second, lenders are encouraged to channel their desire to help alleviate poverty through Kiva.org's lending portal based on an illusory sense of connection, transparency and beneficence in lending, thus potentially displacing other forms of less problematic development aid and intervention.     

Multidimensional poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean: new evidence from the Gallup World Poll

This paper studies poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean from a multidimensional perspective, exploiting the Gallup World Poll, a survey that provides a unique opportunity to perform intercountry comparisons. By applying factor analysis we find that welfare can be appropriately summarized by three dimensions: income, subjective welfare and “basic needs”. Another finding is that the US$ 1 line appears to be a reasonable cut-off value to measure food deprivation.     

上海世博会机遇与社区共青团工作

2010年上海世博会即将举办,此次世博会的主题和关注焦点是城市,社区是城市的细胞,社区共青团工作依托的大环境也是城市。所以,上海世博会将为上海社区共青团工作的发展带来千载难逢的机遇,同时也会使社区共青团工作面临种种挑战。社区团组织要善于利用这种机遇并敢于迎接这种挑战,以迎世博、服务世博为行动目标,积极配合社区党政部门搞好文明世博、绿色世博和平安世博的创建工作,实现青年奉献世博,世博发展青年的双赢关系。