History,'Los Pastores', and the Shifting Poetics of Dislocation

Abstract The history of 'Los Pastores' in Texas, a nativity play from medieval Spain used by the early missionaries to teach Christian doctrine, is embedded in the larger social arena of political change and social subordination of mexicanos in this region. Any effort to understand the historical practice and contemporary meaning of Los Pastores cannot be separated from the way both performers and event have been narratively inscribed through various selective discourses, or cultural poetics, that form one aspect of the social marginalization of the mexicano population in Texas.
In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it.—Walter Benjamin, Illuminations .     

FROM OBEDIENCE TO AUTONOMY CHANGES IN TRAITS DESIRED IN CHILDREN, 1924-1978

This paper presents results from a comparison of data on thetraits desired in children from the Lynds' studies of Muncie(Middletown), Indiana, in the 1920s with similar data collectedin a 1978 replication of the Lynds' work by Caplow et al. (1982).These results indicate that major changes have occurred in themost preferred qualities of children over this century, providingrelatively strong evidence of changes in parent-child relationsover this period. These patterns suggest that adult preferencesfor child qualities in contemporary society give more emphasisto qualities linked to the autonomy of children, whereas earlierdesiderata stressed greater obedience to institutional and adultauthority. These trends are interpreted in terms of changingrelationships in the family and in the context of the responseof the family to social, economic, and demographic changes duringthe twentieth century.     

THE USE OF COLLATERAL TO ENFORCE DEBT: PROFIT MAXIMIZATION

Collateral lowers the probability of default. This paper modifies the work of Benjamin (1978) by characterizing the competitive lender as a price-taking profit maximizer rather than a profit eliminator. Most of Benjamin's results disappear when profit maximization is assumed; the results are corrected and extended. It is also suggested that the value of the collateral required for a standard loan is a variable that the loan market will adjust until long-run expected profits from secured loans is driven to zero.     

A qualitative analysis of African American fathers’ struggle with reentry,recidivism, and reunification after participation in re-entry programs

The experiences of African American fathers with reentry, recidivism, and reunification after a period of incarceration and after participation in a re-entry program. Results of the thematic analysis yielded the following major themes: unaddressed childhood trauma, self-identification, reentry; self-esteem and self-worth; reentry; family reunification after incarceration; and recidivism. Unaddressed childhood trauma and post-release stress emerged as the major barriers to successful transition from incarceration. Implications for social work policy, research, practice, and education are provided.     

In the sovereign machine: sovereignty,governmentality, automaticity

Abstract

This essay explores a series of sovereign ‘machines’ – slaves, puppets, automata – in political theory from Benjamin to Agamben. It is now well-documented that the philosophical question of ‘the machine’ – of whether a complex system requires a human operator or whether it can function autonomously – is also a crucial political question that haunts every discussion of sovereignty from Hobbes onwards. However, my wager in what follows is that this machine is not just a metaphor for a metaphysical situation – whether it be rationality (Hobbes), bureaucratization (Weber), neutralization (Schmitt), historicism (Benjamin) or governmentality (Foucault) – but a material phenomenon that carries transformative political promise and threat. To summarize the argument of this essay, I contend that ‘sovereign machines’ like slavery (Aristotle, Hegel, Kojève, Agamben), puppets, automata or clockwork (Descartes, Hobbes, Schmitt, Benjamin, Derrida), lens, optics and mirrors (Hobbes, Kantorowicz, Benjamin, Lacan, Foucault) and so on do not merely reflect but change our understanding of the causal relationship between sovereignty and governmentality, decision and norm, exception and rule. If the self-appointed task of the modern political theorist has so often been to obtain or regain sovereignty of, or over, the machine – to jam its gears – I seek to expose what the later Derrida calls the ‘machine’ of sovereignty itself. In conclusion, I argue that political theory’s attempt to reveal or retroactively invent the sovereign person at the heart of the machine only ends up revealing the sovereign machine at the heart of the person. What – if anything – is really inside the machine of sovereignty?     

Place,power, and possibility: Remaking social work with children and youth

This article introduces the work of an interdisciplinary group of scholars and activists who critically examine the nature and boundaries of social work with children and youth. Their works explore the institutional and social spaces shaping young people's lives; deconstruct discourses, policies, and practices that shape meanings and experiences of childhood; and consider challenges for social work and possibilities for transformative action. In this essay the editors address the social construction of childhood; outline a framework for analysis informed by an understanding of the cultural politics of childhood; consider the relationship between neoliberal globalization and contemporary thought and practice regarding children and youth; and introduce cutting-edge scholarship addressing place, power, and possibility and the remaking of social work with children and youth.     

The theoretical costs of ignoring childhood: rethinking independence, insecurity, and inequality

Childhood scholars have found that age inequality can be as profound an axis of meaningful difference as race, gender, or class, and yet the impact of this understanding has not permeated the discipline of sociology as a whole. This is one particularly stark example of the central argument of this article: despite decades of empirical and theoretical work by scholars in “the social studies of childhood,” sociologists in general have not incorporated the central contributions of this subfield: that children are active social agents (not passive), knowing actors strategizing within their constraints (not innocent), with their capacities and challenges shaped by their contexts (not universally the same). I contend that mainstream sociology’s relative imperviousness has led to theoretical costs for both childhood scholars—who must re-assert and re-prove the core insights of the field—and sociologists in general. Using three core theoretical debates in the larger discipline—about independence, insecurity, and inequality—I argue that children’s perspectives can help scholars ask new questions, render the invisible visible, and break through theoretical logjams. Thus would further research utilizing children’s perspectives and the dynamics of age extend the explanatory power of social theory.     

Citing history

ABSTRACT

Although rarely considered within the existing scholarship on social movements, even a cursory analysis of protest activity suggests that movements regularly invoke historical citations (whether consciously or not) while working to clarify aims and mobilize constituencies. In order to make sense of this process, and to account for the variations that arise among the different citation modalities favored by movements on opposite ends of the political spectrum, I draw upon the theoretical contributions of Marxist cultural critic Walter Benjamin and, in particular, on his exploration of ‘wish images’ and ‘dialectical images,’ their attributes, and their interrelationship. According to Benjamin, such images summoned the past either to project visions of future happiness (as with the wish image) or to deposit the witness before a moment of decisive, present-tense reckoning. After outlining the role of historical citation in social movements and in the broader cultural field through which these movements find expression, I analyze two recent protest events – the ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville, VA, in which wish images were actively deployed, and the 2017 Women’s Strike in New York City, where a dialectical image arose from the constellated nodes of the march’s route – to consider the relationship between citation modality and protest outcome. Following from this analysis, and in keeping with the unapologetically partisan nature of my investigation, I conclude by advancing some strategic recommendations for movements seeking – as Benjamin once enjoined – to ‘improve our position in the struggle against Fascism.’     

Pathways from origins to destinations: Stability and change in the roles of cognition,private schools and educational attainment

While much attention has been devoted to measuring levels of social mobility over time, less attention has been given to the possibility of changing pathways to social mobility. This paper examines pathways from social origins to socio-economic destinations in midlife for two British cohorts, born in 1958 and 1970 respectively, using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). We address the roles of cognitive attainment, private schooling and educational attainment in mediating the link between social origins and destinations. Have these mechanisms become more or less important over time, in a context of structural change in the state schooling system and educational expansion? We find that private schools displayed greater academic selectivity and an increased link to high levels of educational attainment for the younger cohort. Essentially, private schools adapted to changing circumstances, becoming more academically selective and less socially selective, and more focused on educational credentials. Childhood social origins were less strongly linked to childhood cognitive scores in the younger cohort, but cognitive scores were also more weakly linked to educational attainment for this cohort. We also find a decreased association between social origins and educational attainment for the younger cohort. While the finding that educational inequalities weakened over this time period is positive, the lack of a corresponding reduction in the overall link between social origins and destinations suggests that reducing educational inequalities was not sufficient to increase social mobility when accompanied by countervailing changes in the role of private schools.     

Adverse Childhood Experiences and Healthcare Costs in Adult Life

ABSTRACT

The current study aims to present the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences and examine the healthcare costs associated with primary, allied, and specialist healthcare services. The Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health is a general health survey of four nationally representative age cohorts. The current study uses 20 years of survey and administrative data (1996–2015) from the cohort born 1973–1978. Overall, 41% of women indicated at least one category of childhood adversity. The most commonly reported type of childhood adversity was having a household member with a mental illness (16%), with the most commonly reported ACES category being psychological abuse (17%). Women who had experienced adversity in childhood had higher healthcare costs than women who had not experienced adversity. The healthcare costs associated with experiences of adversity in childhood fully justify a comprehensive policy and practice review.     

ALAIN TOURAINE, MANUEL CASTELLS AND SOCIAL MOVEMENT THEORY: A CRITICAL APPRAISAL

The "action theory" of Alain Touraine and Manuel Castells' theory of urban movements together constitute a social movement paradigm which differs significantly from both the traditional collective behavior explanation and the newer resource mobilization model. In this paper, the Touraine-Castells perspective is contrasted to the existing approaches with reiation to social movement causes, characteristics, and outcomes. It is argued that the work of this "French School" represents a partial realization of Traugott's (1978) attempt to reconceptualize social movements as distinct phenomena integrally linked to the analysis of social change outside institutional channels.     

Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Aging into the Twenty-First Century: An Overview and Introduction

This paper provides an introduction and overview for the papers in the special issue of this Journal devoted to the latter half of life among gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals. Key issues are highlighted in terms of their impact on gay, lesbian, and bisexual cultural communities: the impact of the large aging population of baby boomers; the significance of age as a social organizer; and the areas of research included in this special issue (intimacy and relationships, HIV and AIDS among elders, and the identities and needs of those growing into middle and later life).     

Childhood poverty, early motherhood and adult social exclusion

Childhood poverty and early parenthood are both high on the current political agenda. The key new issue that this research addresses is the relative importance of childhood poverty and of early motherhood as correlates of outcomes later in life. How far are the ‘effects’ of early motherhood on later outcomes due to childhood precursors, especially experience of childhood poverty? Subsidiary questions relate to the magnitude of these associations, the particular levels of childhood poverty that prove most critical, and whether, as often assumed, only teenage mothers are subsequently disadvantaged, or are those who have their first birth in their early twenties similarly disadvantaged? The source of data for this study is the National Child Development Study. We examine outcomes at age 33 for several domains of adult social exclusion: welfare, socio‐economic, physical health, emotional well‐being and demographic behaviour. We control for a wide range of childhood factors: poverty; social class of origin and of father; mother's and father's school leaving age; family structure; housing tenure; mother's and father's interest in education; personality attributes; performance on educational tests; and contact with the police by age 16. There are clear associations for the adult outcomes with age at first birth, even after controlling for childhood poverty and the other childhood background factors. Moreover, we demonstrate that the widest gulf in adult outcomes occurs for those who enter motherhood early (before age 23), though further rein‐forced by teenage motherhood for most adult outcomes. We also show that any experience of childhood poverty is clearly associated with adverse outcomes in adulthood, with reinforcement for higher levels of childhood poverty for a few outcomes.     

Towards an immature sociology

Sociological theory displays a tendency to depict the social world in terms of completed ‘beings’. The social, thus depicted, is a world of powers to ‘finish’(such as the power granted to convention to provide for social order), and finished products (such as agents and ethical points-of-view). As sociologists of childhood have attempted to bring children into sociological focus in their own right, the disciplinary concern with the ‘complete’ has required that children be attributed the properties assumed more normally to belong to adults. The sociology of childhood has thus preserved the privilege of the complete and the mature over the incomplete and the immature. In this paper the key sociological issues of convention, agency and ethics are given a theoretical interpretation that makes them fit for understanding childhood. The ability of convention to complete social order is questioned. Agency is portrayed as the emergent property of networks of dependency rather than the possession of individuals. An alternative to the ethics of ‘positions’ is offered in the form of an ethics of ‘motion’. Where extant sociologies of childhood have brought children into the ‘finished’ world of sociological theory, this paper uses childhood's ontological ambiguity to open the door onto an unfinished social world.     

Social support as a mediator of revictimization of low-income African American women

Mediating effects of social support on the link between childhood maltreatment and adult intimate partner violence (IPV) were explored in a sample of 362 low-income, African American women. We examined relations between childhood maltreatment experiences (total maltreatment, sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, emotional neglect, and physical neglect) and adult maltreatment (physical IPV and nonphysical IPV). Results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed small, but significant, effects. Further, social support mediated revictimization. Social support fully mediated relations in which the form of childhood maltreatment was different than the form of adult IPV (e.g., the relation between childhood sexual abuse and adult nonphysical IPV), but only partially mediated the relations in which the form of childhood maltreatment was similar to adult IPV (e.g., the relation between childhood emotional abuse and adult nonphysical IPV). Implications for clinical interventions for women with intimate partner violence experiences are discussed.     

Examining risk and protective factors on progression of romantic relational aggression among young adults: Parental control,parental care,and peer social support

Abstract

Romantic relational aggression is related to numerous mental health consequences but risk and protective factors of perpetrating this type of aggression, historically, have been unclear. This study fills in the research gap by evaluating the impact of parental control, parental care, and peer social support on later perpetration in romantic relational aggression among 84 predominately Chinese college students. Results revealed the positive association between parental control and perpetration in romantic relational aggression, however, this association diminished in the presence of high peer social support (HSS). Despite insignificance in the main effect, parental care was negatively correlated with later perpetration in romantic relationship in the HSS group while a positive association was found in the low peer social support (LSS) group. These highlights provided evidences how parental control and parental care during childhood could be risk factors for later romantic relational aggression as well as how current social support from peer could serve as a protective factor on the negative influence from parent–child relationships.     

A test among models of nonverbal immediacy reactions: Arousal-labeling,discrepancy-arousal,and social cognition

Individuals may respond to an increase in nonverbal immediacy by either increasing or decreasing the immediacy of their own behavior. To account for this, a number of models have been proposed, including arousal-labeling (Patterson, 1976), discrepancy-arousal (Cappella & Greene, 1982), and social cognition (e.g., Ellsworth, 1978). An experiment was designed to test the social cognition approach and, when combined with findings of previous studies, to serve as a test among three models. Individual male subjects discussed a moral dilemma with a male confederate at a seating distance of either 1.1 m (control group) or 0.3 m in two experimental groups (confederate intentional-close and confederate forced-close). Subjects in both experimental conditions showed less immediate nonverbal behavior, but only subjects in the intentional-close condition evaluated the confederate more negatively than subjects in the control group. These results, when combined with past research findings, suggest that social cognition alone may determine whether nonverbal compensation or reciprocation will occur, and that arousal-based explanations may be unnecessary. Other self-report findings of the study, however, create difficulties for all three models of nonverbal exchange.We thank Paul Baker, Larry Coutts, David Gartrell, Leslie Hayduk, Ron Hoppe, Eric Knowles, G. Alexander Milton, and an anonymous reviewer for their comments on earlier drafts.     

Poor,powerless and poisoned: The social injustice of childhood lead poisoning

Poverty is fertile ground for the health and educational deprivation that diminishes the prospects of poor children. Restated, the tragedy of the income gap between the rich and poor is that economic deprivation and its attendant health consequences are disproportionately experienced by the most vulnerable of citizens, children. Over 12 million children (17% of all American children) live in poverty and 39% live in or near poverty (National Center for Children in Poverty, 2001). This examination of the distribution and consequences of childhood lead poisoning reveals much about poverty policy interventions and the ongoing plight of America's powerless poor children. Since social injustice in the context of this article is construed as the failure of institutions and society to intervene on behalf of suffering populations when the resources and know how to do so exist, childhood lead poisoning provides a clear example of injustice. While the subject of this article is childhood lead poisoning, the precursors to toxicity--substandard housing, poor nutrition, restricted access to health care and polluted environments--are all representative of the dilemmas that characterize the lives of poor children.     

Profane illuminations and the everyday

The historical movement of surrealism continues to influence contemporary theories of everyday life even if its project of bourgeois self-transformation proved to be an epochal failure. The melancholic subjectivity associated with surrealist experiments is often regarded as a form of resistance against objective conditions of capitalist domination. This essay looks at Walter Benjamin’s and Theodor Adorno’s arguments about surrealism’s radical attempts to transform the everyday. It reflects on the similarities and differences between the views of these two Frankfurt School thinkers, showing how Benjamin found surrealism to be ultimately inadequate to the purpose of social critique, while Adorno still located in its vision a source of possibility for overcoming the alienation of subject and object. Both Benjamin and Adorno took surrealism to be the site of an epistemological and political crisis, but they had differing interpretations of its critique of commodity culture. Benjamin emphasized surrealism’s ‘montage-like’ strategies of estranging the familiarity of the everyday world but concluded that the ‘profane illuminations’ of surrealism never managed to transcend the realm of the imagination, or to serve as a call to action. Adorno, by contrast, saw in surrealism the potential to mobilize subjective aesthetic experience against the rationalizing imperatives of daily life, although he did not think the lessons of surrealism could be duplicated or reduced to a dogma about the efficacy of the unconscious. For Benjamin, particularly, the limitations of surrealism as a political and aesthetic movement revealed the ongoing necessity of organized political struggle, even as he understood its ‘intoxicating’ appeal. In this, he remains distant from contemporary modes of criticism that celebrate the ineffability of cultural margins and the oppositionality of subjective modes of being.     

The Resilient Survivor—A Student Social Worker's Journey on Placement

This paper represents the continuation of my ‘personal and professional journey’ from social work student to social work practitioner focusing on my first Practice Learning Opportunity (PLO). Recognising the potential impact of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) in a classroom environment is as important as the potential impact on actual practice learning and practice. This is salient in the real world of social work practice as the potential misuse of a painful childhood experience has greater ramifications. Utilising the ideas and assumptions of social constructionism (including context and multivocality) the significance of silence from social work educators shall be examined in relation to self-disclosure as a means of aiding PLO learning and practice. This paper will also focus on the concept of critical reflection and its significance in exploring the transferability of a childhood experience such as CSA and personal and professional dilemmas regarding self-disclosure. This paper concludes by highlighting areas for consideration for both students and social work educators and conveys an important message regarding the importance of communication between students and social work educators.