“Queer Eye” for Social Work: Rethinking Pedagogy and Practice with Same-sex Attracted Young People

Abstract

Dominant discourses on sexualities construct limited representations and understanding of same-sex attracted young people, often resulting in material and detrimental effects for young people who do not fit the heterosexual mould. Traditionally, social work theory and practice with same-sex attracted young people has relied on ethnic and essentialised models for understanding sexual difference. In the present article, the author reviews current literature on same-sex attracted young people and sexualities, arguing that key elements from queer theory invite social workers to rethink pedagogy and practice with sexually diverse groups. With its critical eye for deconstructing dominant models of sexuality, queer theory provides an alternative framework for informing social work practice. Implications for working in narrative ways with same-sex attracted young people through co-authorship are discussed.     

Public Sociology on Twitter: a Space for Public Pedagogy?

Research has examined various elements of Twitter; however, no scholarship has explored how sociologists currently use the platform. This empirically driven paper explores how individuals that self-identify as sociologists on Twitter use the popular micro-blogging social media site. A total of 152,977 tweets from Twitter profiles of 130 sociologists were collected and examined using qualitative media analysis. The potential use of Twitter allows the sociologist to become both the generator and interlocutor of dialogue with publics. We frame our data analysis and discussion around the core theme of expertise - namely, the role that expertise plays in the use of Twitter by sociologists. Our findings indicate that when sociologists used Twitter as sociologists (i.e., drawing upon their stated research expertise) little direct engagement with publics occurred. Thus, while sociologists appear to be using Twitter as a space for public sociology, the use of this interactive platform is mostly limited to the generation of content, a finding consistent with Burawoy’s traditional form of public sociology. Suggestions for future research are noted.     

Expert Companions? Constructing a Pedagogy for Supervising Honours Students

There is a substantial body of knowledge that describes and analyses supervision of higher degree research students. However, the literature is relatively silent on the question of appropriate pedagogy for the supervision of honours students. Using a sample of social work students who completed their studies during the period 2005–2010, the authors set out to gain some preliminary knowledge of the appropriate pedagogy for the supervision of honours students. The findings reveal that most honours students constructed their supervisors as being expert companions, and provide some support for a social work model of academic supervision.     

“That Model is Sooooo Last Millennium!” Residential Long-Term Care as a System,Not a Place

The current quandary with the design of existing long-term care settings results from focus on structures (“institutions”) instead of on a system of supports and services that transcends physical and traditional boundaries across settings, including nursing homes, assisted living residences, and the home. Supported by analyses of the commonalities, socio-historical and political contexts, core values, and fallacies of social and medical models in existing and emerging long-term care options, a holistic model is proposed based on new core values that facilitate community and family integration and that asserts dignity and personhood as universal attributes in an array of settings.     

The Act of Reading as a Rite of Passage: Iurii Andrukhovych’s Rekreatsii

The paper uses the massive records of the Russian imperial consulates in Canada (known as the Li-Ra-Ma Collection) as well as other Russian and Canadian sources to demonstrate the role played by the tsarist diplomats in early twentieth-century immigration from the Russian Empire to Canada. It argues that while the functions of administrative and political surveillance were always a priority for the consuls, they also served as intermediaries between the immigrants and Canadian authorities and a medium of maintaining their links with the homeland. The majority of the consuls’ clientele were temporary labour migrants of Slavic origin, who resorted to the authority of the old state in resolving their problems in the host country, usually after alternative methods such as appeal to Canadian law or private agents did not bring results. Viewing all immigrants from Russia as subject to the tsar and Russian law, the consuls assumed the dual role of guardians of the immigrants’ interests and monitors of their political orientations.     

Is There a Place for Biopsychosocial Formulation in a Systemic Practice?

There is a long history of literature concerning integrative practice and how a systemic practice can fit with other models of therapy Much of this literature has focused on establishing a space for systemic therapy within the dominant medical paradigm, and exploring how the medical model can be enhanced by systemic ideas. The outcome has been better practice, especially in child and adolescent mental health. Interestingly, however, there has been less discussion of the converse: the family therapy literature has rarely considered whether or not systemic practice itself can be enhanced by ideas from the dominant medical model. This article proposes that a biopsychosocial formulation can enhance systemic practice by: (I) holding clinicians accountable for their thinking; (2) facilitating a rigour and attention to detail that may prove useful when therapy falters; (3) opening up other possibilities for intervention; and (4) providing a way to engage with the dominant medical paradigm and support clients in negotiating their way through this system. Potential problems nevertheless arise when integrating a biopsychosocial formulation into a systemic framework. This article identifies these problems and presents ideas for how they can be managed in practice.     

Go and Say, “We're Shutting”: Ju Jutsu as a Metaphor for Analyzing Resistance

While it is well known that employees inorganizations may successfully resist managerialimpositions, relatively little is understood about howresistance operates. The present study utilizes amartial arts metaphor known as ju jutsu to generateinsights for understanding how resistance is exercised.The ju jutsu metaphor was chosen because it is adefensive technique whereby a physically weaker person may resist a much stronger one. Ju jutsu asmetaphor suggests resistance can be exercised bysystematically employing bodily movements which disturban opponent's balance and/or strike at physiological weak points. By exploring a case study of asuccessful example of organizational resistance, the jujutsu metaphor is utilized to generate new perspectivesfor conceptualizing and analyzing the dynamics of resistance.     

Student transitions into drug supply: exploring the university as a ‘risk environment’

Drug use, like much criminality, is often explored in relation to the journey into adulthood. Though young people are understood to commonly ‘grow out’ of crime, protracted transitions from adolescence into adulthood have brought about a new developmental phase where many young people are freer to engage in drug-related leisure and other forms of subterranean play in a period of extended adolescence. In this article, we look to this phase with focus upon those engaged in full time higher education and explore the extent to which entry into university and ‘studenthood’ enables particular changes in levels of involvement in recreational drug use and supply. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews undertaken with mainly ‘traditional’ undergraduate university students in South West England, this article seeks to explore the ways in which the structural circumstances of the university environment can produce favourable conditions for ‘turning points’, where university students transition into regular drug use and ‘social supply’. It is argued that the university can be understood as a specific ‘risk environment’ where certain cultural and environmental attributes including distance from guardians, the interconnected nature of the student populace, and financial insecurity can ultimately provide facilitative conditions for transitions into drug supply.     

“Status! Yes!”: Tom Wolfe as a sociological thinker

The journalist Tom Wolfe draws heavily upon sociology in his works, yet sociologists have largely ignored his writings. This article argues that Wolfe’s journalism presents a coherent vision of contemporary society which emphasizes the importance of what has become a neglected sociological concept—status. Wolfe argues that economic expansion after World War II fostered the emergence of new “statusspheres,” and encouraged status competition. Wolfe treats issues of religion, character, and politics within the framework of status. His work should remind sociologists of the importance of status and the role of irony as a stance for sociological analysis. The author thanks Anne Bowler, Kathleen Lowney, and Lawrence T. Nichols for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.     

Putting the “Team” into Teamwork: Alternative Theoretical Contributions for Contemporary Management Practice

This paper establishes that teamwork is afunction of how team members perceive the team and theirrole in it. Social identity theory (Hogg & Abrams,1993; Tajfel & Turner, 1986) and self-categorization theory (Turner, 1987) offer explanations forthe cognitive, evaluative, and emotional processes whichmotivate individuals to join a social group and enhancetheir ability to contribute to the maximum of their ability, which would be desirable formany team tasks. Social identity theory posits that themotivation for thinking, feeling, and thus working as acohesive unit is socially constructed. Highly productive teamwork requires that team membersrecognize the team as a unit and as an attractive workarrangement. Fundamental assumptions of contemporarymanagement, and management research, are challenged to integrate social identityfindings.     

Shame and Cognitive Strikes: What Would it “Really” Mean for Queer Psychoanalysis to Enter the Perverse?

Clinical psychoanalysis and queer theory have at their core a deep exploration of sexuality. Although the link between shame and sex has generated a strong theoretical reflection (Butler, 1993; Dimen, 2013; Saketopoulou, 2013, 2014; Sedgwick, 1993; Stein, 1997, 2012; Straker, 2007), shame is in this literature primarily a threatening affect in need of psychic elaboration. In contrast, I look at shame as a critical and surprising intervention provoked by the analyst. I argue that analysts perform in their work not only psychic labor but also “excessive” nonverbal states which challenge the established boundaries of the analytic relationship. I show that such moments function as “cognitive strikes,” which can be productively deployed by analysts to reap their benefits.

The aim of my argument is to show that the analysts “enter the perverse” when they momentarily stop processing difficult mental states. According to the professional ideal of “mentalization” (Fonagy & Target, 1996), psychoanalysts are put in the position to permanently do cognitive work. Yet refusing this demand offers the analyst the freedom to shift the relationship between a paid laborer and a beneficiary of therapeutic work. I theorize these noncognitive acts of “excessive shame” to expand on and criticize theories of queer performativity such as Judith Butler’s and Eve Sedgwick’s. The first contribution of this article is to draw the attention of clinicians to queer work that theorizes the emergent materiality of affects. The second contribution is to ask queer psychoanalytic theorists to take seriously the potential of surprising interventions which interrupt the demand to incessantly perform mental labor for their clients.     

“Marrying off” children as a developmental stage

Conclusion Marrying off the children is an important developmental stage in adulthood. Part of the very long and complex stage described by Erik Erikson as Generativity vs. Stagnation, this stage, like many earlier life stages, can be understood to give rise to a normative adult crisis that is destabilizing and anxiety-provoking. The marriage of one's offspring requires an ongoing transformation of parental narcissism, part of a developmental process that is intrinsic to parenthood. Issues of selfesteem are revived and reworked during this period. Traditional theory looks to oedipal rivalry or drive conflict of some kind to explain the anxiety at this time. An expanded understanding of narcissism, provided by Kohut and Elson has given us a broader view of these phenomena.The experience of hurt and sadness at a time when there is reason to celebrate can be a profoundly lonely and bewildering experience. As informed clinicians we can alleviate some of the loneliness and guilt about these feelings by understanding the challenge to the self that the marriage of adult children may represent.     

Integration and the struggle to turn space into “our” place: Homemaking as a way beyond the stalemate of assimilationism vs transnationalism

This article investigates homemaking as a set of practices and a perspective on migrants’ ways of local incorporation, with its own material, emotional and relational underpinnings. Homemaking has the potential to emerge as an original category of analysis in immigrant integration, moving beyond the contraposition between assimilationism and transnationalism. Based also on our ongoing research, both in the United States and in Europe, we argue for the significance of migrants’ interactions with specific local structures of opportunities, including people and institutions as much as the built and natural environment. The latter is a critical site where the meanings, opportunities and contents of integration are negotiated between immigrant newcomers and their local and transnational counterparts. Migrants’ stratified rights, opportunities and aspirations to make themselves at home open a promising research perspective on group relations, as embedded in everyday materialities. While integration is a multi-dimensional and multi-scalar effort, it still rests on place-bound fields of inequalities and interaction within and between groups, and on underlying differences in views, emotions and practices of home. These are both a mirror of larger asymmetries of power and of the opportunities available to challenge them.     

“I've never seen a client say: ‘Tell the influencer not to label this as sponsored’”: An exploration into influencer industry ethics

Previous research on influencer industry ethics has focused on three issues: transparency of collaborations, payments to influencers, and influencer authenticity. In this exploratory study, we demonstrate that influencer industry ethics is more complex. We interviewed 28 representatives from different actor groups in the German influencer industry (influencers, client organizations, and intermediaries such as influencer marketing agencies) to systematically identify ethical issues and the moral expectations underlying these issues. In analyzing the interview data in a qualitative content analysis, we identify ten ethical issues: autonomy, transparency, sincerity, truthfulness, caring, professionalism, reciprocity, respect, loyalty, and social responsibility. Our study adds to the body of knowledge by further substantiating the discussion on transparency, payments, and authenticity; by introducing previously neglected ethical issues; by organizing the field of influencer industry ethics; and by explaining how the specific constellation of ethical issues in the influencer industry levels out the distinction between sponsored and organic content. In doing so, we argue for a broad perspective on influencer industry ethics that positions influencer communication at the intersection between Public Relations, advertising, and journalism.     

Interorganizational Partnerships as a Strategy for Lobbying: Nonprofit Administrators’ Perspectives on Collaborating for Systems-Level Change

Participation in coalitions has been identified as a policy advocacy behavior for nonprofit organizations, although few studies have examined nonprofit leaders’ perceptions of coalition building as a strategy for lobbying. This study conducted focus groups and in-person interviews with nonprofit administrators to explore how interorganizational collaboration is utilized to address their organizations’ policy advocacy goals. The findings indicate that nonprofit administrators view their participation in coalitions as a means of achieving several policy advocacy goals, including increasing their capacity to lobby and protecting them from exposure as lobbyists. Implications for practice and research are provided.