Institutional Fads and the Medicalization of Drug Addiction

The purpose of this article is to historically review biologically based explanations of drug addiction to demonstrate the increased utility of the institutional fads approach in understanding modern medicalization. Our examination reveals that the medicalization of drug addiction has been long in the making, traveling through numerous fads that have attributed drug addiction to various biological matter, including body type or constitution, genetics, psychopathology, and neuroscience or brain imaging. These explanations follow a common trajectory (emerging, surging, and purging) in institutional fad research. Moreover, our analysis indicates that while scientific and technological developments have shaped these approaches’ influence and pathways, so too have political actors and institutional agendas. We begin by discussing how an institutional fads approach enables an improved understanding of the medicalization of drug addiction – a form of deviance – followed by a critique of four main biological explanations: body constitution, genetics, psychopathology, and brain chemistry/imaging. Our review pinpoints the specific narratives advanced and the academic and political interests at work. In doing so, it exposes the limitations of medicalizing one of the nation’s oldest social problems.     

Spiritual Competence: What It Is,Why It Is Necessary,and How to Develop It

Various professional standards underscore the importance of providing effective services to all people, including those from diverse religious backgrounds. Yet despite these standards, studies have repeatedly found that most social workers receive little training in navigating this aspect of diversity during their graduate educations. To address this lack of training, the present article discusses a concept that is foundational for effective service provision with spiritual clients from diverse religious backgrounds—spiritual competence. More specifically, this article outlines what spiritual competence is and why it is important in therapeutic work, and then offers a number of strategies for developing spiritual competence. As such, this article helps equip practitioners to provide more ethical, effective services in a nation characterized by increasing religious diversity.     

Not Just a Matter of Criminal Justice: States,Institutions, and North American Drug Policy

This article proposes a theoretical approach to illicit-drug policy that emphasizes politics and institutions, as an alternative to dominant perspectives emphasizing social control. After revealing conceptual links between drug-control policies and those of social provision, I describe a typology of drug policies based on the division of labor among the institutions responsible for implementing the legislated agenda. I then develop a theoretical argument that approaches drug policy as social policy, employing concepts of institutional reach and policy linkages. In the concluding section I use this approach to compare drug policies in the United States and Canada after 1980.     

We Did Not Realize about the Gender Issues. So,We Thought It Was a Good Idea

This article explores the link between nationalism, as expressed by the Burman state and ethnic and student opposition movements, and the emergence of a multiethnic women's movement engaged in resistance activities. In focusing on women's involvement in oppositional nation-making projects, this article aims to broaden our understanding of gender and conflict by highlighting women's agency in war. Drawing on interviews carried out with founding members of the women's movement, non-state armed groups and others active in civil society, the article investigates how a gendered political consciousness arose out of dissatisfaction with women's secondary position in armed opposition groups, leading to women forming a movement, not in opposition to conflict per se but in opposition to the rejection of their militarism, in the process redefining notions of political involvement and agency. By invoking solidarity based on a gendered positioning, rather than on an ethnic identity, the women's movement resisted the dominant nation-making projects, and created a nationalism inclusive of multiethnic differences. Burmese women's multiple wartime roles thus serve to upset supposed dichotomies between militancy and peace and victim and combatant, in the process redefining the relationship between gender, nationalism and militancy.     

Intergenerational Programs Review: Study Design and Characteristics of Intervention,Outcomes, and Effectiveness

There is a growing interest in intergenerational connectivity through intergenerational programs. In this work, a review of intergenerational programs was performed, with focus on the program design and objectives as well as in their outcomes.

We used a systematic review method in which we screened 3,796 articles. After analyzing titles, abstracts, and full paper analysis, 16 articles were retained. Each study was reviewed, and data were extracted related to target population, study design, characteristics of intervention, outcomes, and effectiveness.

Intergenerational programs included educational programs and art, Information technology development, cultural heritage, health education, and therapeutic activities. Most of the programs collected both quantitative and/or qualitative data. Seven studies collected data in the beginning and at the end of the program. Significant diversity in sample size and intervention length was found. Measurement of outcomes was performed in both young and/or elderly group of participants. Programs impact evaluation varied between studies, including validated scales, interviews, observation, focus groups, and conversation analysis, narratives, videotaped sessions, and field notes.

Our study highlighted the diversity in the design of studies and in the program’s effectiveness evaluation. More randomized design studies are required to support researchers and practitioners in the development of future intergenerational programs.     

Far Away So Close: Race,Whiteness, and German Identity

Race and nation have been difficult concepts in Germany since the Holocaust. Although race has seemingly disappeared from public discourse, the concept is very present in the narrative construction of white German national identities. In fact in Germany, race, and more specifically whiteness, disappears into a national naming. On the basis of a qualitative study on women activists, I examine to what extent the research participants struggle with the racialized discourse on German identity and what this struggle looks like. Using John Hartigan's (2000 Hartigan, John Jr. 2000. Object lessons in whiteness: Antiracism and the study of white folks. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 7(3): 373–406. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) approach to analyzing ethnographic accounts of whiteness, I show how a racialization of German identity plays out in complex and complicated ways. On the one hand, the narratives are complicit with a racialized Germanness, yet on the other hand, the idea of a unified, white, cultural community is being challenged. To move toward a postcolonial narrative of Germanness that includes Germany's history of colonialism as well as fascism, we need to move away from race, but we also need to move toward race. A starting point would be provided by focusing on racism, not as a fringe issue of German society but rather as an urgent matter that is located at the centre of German politics and is actively shaping its history.     

Relationships,Reconciliation and Children: Giving Young People a Say

I have realised how central my therapy background and skills have been in my current job. Without being conscious of it, I use much of my background as a therapist in my role as Commissioner for Children and Young People. I probably spend more of my time advocating for children and young people as a group because they are excluded or disregarded on the basis of their status as children.     

Dutch Drug Policy and the Role of Social Workers

SUMMARY

Dutch drug policy has been renowned because of its pragmatic and liberal approach, and its positive effects on the health status and mortality rate of hard drug addicts. This policy, however, has had some negative consequences, especially with respect to crime and safety in big cities. As a result, the government took measures to redress these problems. This article presents an overview of recent measures in health care and criminal justice in the Netherlands and discusses the role of social work in drug addiction.     

Migration, Return, and Development: An Institutional Perspective

The development community has been rather reluctant in the past to integrate migration as a parameter for development policies, as often advocated by politicians and the migration community. The following analysis demonstrates that the position of development institutions on this matter has evolved, e.g., in the direction of increased interest among development practitioners to look at remittances as a tool for development. The article discusses the importance of brain drain and possibilities for using return migration as a brain gain. It introduces the concept "migration band" as an aggregate expression of Martin's "migration hump" for individual countries. Furthermore, it suggests policy options for a foreign input policy mix to developing countries composed of foreign direct investment, trade liberalizations, aid, remittances, return migration, and improved governance.     

Institutional Pluralism,Organizations, and Actors: A Review

The institutional logics perspective holds the promise of delivering where neo‐institutionalist theory has disappointed – the ability to address key societal problems such as inequality, social discrimination, and economic insecurity – a promise that, as of yet, has been unrealized. In this review, I provide an overview of the body of work within the institutional logics perspective that addresses the co‐existence of multiple institutional logics influencing identities, values, cognitive frameworks, and practices – institutional pluralism. I demonstrate how pluralism diverges from conventional neo‐institutionalist theory in its view of institutional fields as heterogeneous spaces. I then review the implications for organizations and social actors responding to multiple logics in the institutional environment. In the discussion section, I argue that the study of pluralism, in acknowledging human agency, politics, and collective mobilization, opens the door for creative resolutions to societal problems hitherto overlooked in neo‐institutional theory. Despite the promise, I address key research areas that remain unresolved or under‐addressed in the institutional pluralism perspective.     

形势政策报告会的育人实效性

2004年11月《中共中央宣传部、教育部关于进一步加强高等学校学生形势与政策教育的通知》指出：“形势政策教育是思想政治教育的重要内容和途径。要建立大学生形势政策报告会制度……不断增强形势政策教育的针对性和实效性。”为深人了解形势政策报告会制度的执行情况和形势政策报告会的育人实效性,本课题组以浙江省为例,     

The Imperative of Male Inclusion: How Institutional Context Influences World Bank Gender Policy

This article examines the role of institutional context in shaping policy agendas through a case study of the World Bank's gender lending in Ecuador. Using interviews with employees and analysis of policy texts I explore the complex institutional location of Bank gender policymakers, identifying two key constraints on their policy output: (1) the pressure to frame gender policy as increasing productivity and efficiency; and (2) the pressure to frame gender policy as producing complementary sharing between men and women. Given that the efficiency constraint has been much debated in feminist Bank scholarship I explicate the complementarity constraint in more detail. Specifically, I argue that the institutional pressure to define gender policy through a complementary focus on couples led poor men to become hyper-visible as irresponsible partners, and as the crux of the gender policy problem. In turn Bank gender policy was focused on efforts to change them, by encouraging their loving attachment to family and willingness to do domestic labor. I see cause for concern in the dominance of these policy preferences, and I consider how to facilitate their contestation in closing.     

So Many Theories,So Little Time: An Examination of Theories on the Intergenerational Transmission of Relationship Instability

To examine theoretical perspectives on the intergenerational transmission of relationship instability 945 college students from intact and divorced homes participated. Participants were examined simultaneously and separately based on racial and ethnic background. Regression analyses tested evolutionary, social learning, life-course adversity, and father-absent theory. Evolutionary theory proved to be the best explanation as it was able to explain relationship behaviors when examining all participants simultaneously, and some behaviors when examining participants separately. Life-course adversity and father-absent theory were able to explain early reproductive behaviors among White participants. For Black participants, age at first boy/girlfriend could be explained by social-learning, life-course adversity, and father-absent theory. None of the remaining theories were able to explain the relationship behaviors of Hispanic participants.