Imagining the ecosocial within social work

Aiming to explore how the ecosocial is imagined within social work research, this article engages with understandings of the relationship between the social and ecological realms when responding to the call for sustainability. A theoretical framework offering five possible imaginations of the ecosocial was developed: the holistic; the anthropocentric conflictual; the anthropocentric compatible; the ‘ecocentric’ conflictual; and the ‘ecocentric’ compatible. The material consists of international peer-reviewed articles referring to the ecosocial. The result reveals that the imagination of the ecosocial is heterogeneous. However, the holistic and anthropocentric compatible imaginations are common, while ‘ecocentric’ and conflictual understandings are rare, which confirms that nurturing social and ecological sustainability does not entail conflicting interests or rivalry but rather the opposite. This implies not only an ongoing widening of the notion of sustainability, in which the idea of limitations is re-installed, but also a possible re-definition of ‘the social’ so as to include the non-human.     

Profust reliability of linear and circular type F and G systems having two failure criteria under Markov dependency

In this study, the profust reliabilities of (n, f, k): F(G) and < n, f, k > : F(G) systems for Markov dependent components are investigated. Having two failure criteria are the common features of these four systems. The usage of both fuzzy approach and two failure criteria in the same system provides us more realistic approach to evaluate the reliability of more complex systems. The component configurations are examined for both linear and circular sequences and the working principle of systems are studied for both F and G systems. Under all these assumptions, the profust reliabilities of (n, f, k): F(G) and < n, f, k > : F(G) systems are obtained using the distribution of run statistics. Also a new membership function different from the linear membership function which is generally used in the literature is proposed. Some numerical results which allow the comparison of the systems from various perspectives and various figures for both linear and circular type systems are presented. Some special cases (between Markov – iid assumption, conventional – profust reliability) are also considered.     

The Merry-Go-Round of Meetings: Embracing Meetings in a Swedish Youth Care Project

Modern society has been called “a society of organizations,” and meetings are considered indispensable. However, a recurring cultural theme in contemporary working life is complaints about excessive and time-consuming meetings. The present article analyzes a contrasting case concerning a Swedish youth care project that employed a set of “coordinators” to maintain close contact with young people and their parents. Over time, these coordinators adopted an exceedingly administrative approach in which meetings with other professionals became more and more central. This article explores how an expanding meeting culture with strong social commitments can be generated from within interorganizational contexts, such as “projects,” and successfully competes with other concerns. Thus, the administrative orientation represents an example of the type of social interaction process that Simmel discerned as Eigendynamik or autonomous processes of social interaction.     

Public response to welfare policy retrenchment: The importance of trust in implementing agencies. The case of early retirement in Sweden 1999–2010

There is a long-standing argument that citizensapos; trust in the state needs to be recurrently reproduced for policies to endure and that this also includes trust in its separate policy agencies. Such trust is likely to be more important for costlier policies, as, for example, social insurance schemes. The article explores whether short-term changes in welfare programme generosity affect peopleapos;s trust in the agency implementing the programme. Using the example of early retirement in the encompassing welfare state of Sweden, we study a decade of significant reform (1999–2010), during which the inflow to early retirement diminished greatly, as did citizensapos; trust in the implementing Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SSIA). We conclude that citizensapos; trust is higher when implementation is more generous. Indeed, a third of the drop in citizensapos; trust in the SSIA over the period can be explained by declining levels of generosity in early retirement, with people politically to the left responding with lower trust. Theoretically, we suggest, first, that trust in implementing institutions can function as feedback to policy and, second, that there is a basic relationship between more generous policy outcome and higher trust in encompassing welfare states such as Sweden.     

Value orientations and social attitudes in the holistic milieu

Based on a representative population survey for Germany this article investigates whether engagement in holistic activities is associated with privatized lifestyles and lack of social responsibility or with countercultural orientations and base‐democratic political commitment. To analyse this question, respondents who are engaged in holistic activities are divided into three groups that are compared with each other as well as with Christians and non‐religious people. The findings show that the three holistic groups are characterized by clearly different attitudinal patterns: Respondents engaged in body‐mind‐spirit activities have an affinity to self‐directed ways of life, post‐materialism and environmentalism. Holistic Christians try to combine the Christian ideal of altruism and post‐materialist orientations. Those who are attracted only to magical‐occult practices are primarily concerned with individualistic self‐improvement and correspond more to the image of the hedonist consumer at the esoteric marketplace.     

The construction of communicative (in)competence in autism: a focus on methodological decisions

Research on people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (henceforth autism) is often based upon biomedical understanding. Such understanding tends to view the characteristics related to autism diagnosis, such as the lack of or atypical use of speech, as a sign of incompetence that can be reduced as an underlying pathology of an individual. However, little research has explicitly investigated how methodological decisions in research might influence the perception of these characteristics. This paper draws on two separate research cases involving minimally verbal children with autism to examine how methodological decisions in research design, data collection, data analysis, and data interpretation influence the construction of communicative (in)competence in these children. The paper encourages researchers to carefully consider and reflect on the methodological decisions they make throughout the research process.     

Conflict and Curiosity: The Legacy of Naoki Ueno

ABSTRACT

This commentary explores conflicts and dissonances between my own views, based on cultural-historical activity theory, and three key ideas presented in the articles of this special issue, namely (a) technology as partner, (b) agency as hybridization, and (c) historicity without contradictions. I hope that the dissonances I put forward will evoke curiosity and further exploration. In his work, Naoki Ueno drew on multiple theoretical traditions. This diversity, combined with his curiosity and love of life, allowed him to be involved in the building and analysis of future-making “wildfire” alternatives to capitalism. This is a legacy that must and will gain momentum.     

Training research-minded social workers: experience from Estonia*

ABSTRACT

Social work education in its modern sense started to develop after Estonia regained independence from the collapsing Soviet Union. The aim of this article is to introduce good practices of teaching research-mindedness, this being one of the main principles in teaching social workers-to-be in the University of Tartu in Estonia. We have been inspired by the academic tradition of university teaching in general, the new international definition of social work and, not least, the realisation of social workers in practice of not being able to apply academic knowledge to everyday social work practices. This article revisits the term research-mindedness and examines how it has been integrated into the university level teaching process. Our purpose is to discuss the methods students of bachelor’s and master’s programmes can learn to ‘translate’ social issues into research questions, critically appraise the findings and ‘translate’ them back as new research evidence for social work practice.