Family Capital: Implications for Interventions with Families

Social capital has been extensively discussed in the literature as building blocks that individuals and communities utilize to leverage system resources. Similarly, some families also create capital, which can enable members of the family, such as children, to successfully negotiate the outside world. Families in poverty confront serious challenges in developing positive family capital, because of lack of resources. For those families that are successful in developing positive family capital, family capital can help to create positive outcomes for family interactions. Thus, family capital can provide information about opportunities, exert influence on agents who make decisions involving the actor, provide social credentials that indicate a connection to a social network, and reinforce the actor's identity and recognition, which maintains access and entitlement to these social resources.     

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

This article suggests that the principle of object-relatedness, introduced by Vygotsky and expanded by A. N. Leontiev, can be used to conceptualize human subjectivity within a profoundly social view of human development. This is achieved by reformulating the premises of cultural-historical activity theory to include the notion that material production, intersubjective exchanges, and human subjectivity form a unified three-fold dialectical system. Focusing on the constant manifold transitions among components of this system as its modus vivendi reveals (a) individual and collective processes as being interrelated and co-evolving levels of activity, and (b) the practical relevance of human subjectivity alongside the human relevance of material practices. Such an expanded view posits human subjectivity on a continuum of regulatory mechanisms of social practice, to which both individual and social processes belong. It is further conceptualized as a form of practical transformative pursuits in the world, and as a lawful and necessary moment of human life endowed with the capacity to generate new activity cycles. The co-evolution of collective motives and personal goals, as well as the practical relevance of theoretical constructions, are used as illustrations.     

Representing enterprise: The texts of recruitment and change in the UK banking sector

Particularly from the early 1990s onwards, the UK banking sector has seen dramatic and rapid transformation. The logic of enterprise (Du Gay, 1996) with all its various contradictory connotations—the drive for more entrepreneurial forms of work performance particularly from managers, the valorisation of the market leading to tighter cost control, job loss—captures much of the logic of what has been taking place. Work influenced by the thought of Michel Foucault has helped to shed fresh light on recent changes in the management of the employment relationship. A particular achievement has been to highlight and to call into question, as techniques of power (Townley, 1994), an array of everyday human resource practices—from the selection interview to the performance review—and to demonstrate the part these play in sustaining the rationalities or regimes of truth which have come to underpin the organisation of work. To date, little consideration has been given to the role of recruitment practices in this connection and the aim of the paper is to begin to address this gap. Paraphrasing Foucault, the discussion elaborates an expertise of the sign associated with recruitment, further exploring the possibilities of variants of post‐structuralist thought for the analysis of a particular aspect of HRM.     

Understanding human ambivalence about sex: The effects of stripping sex of meaning

We offer a theoretical perspective to provide insight into why people are ambivalent about sex and why cultures regulate sex and attach symbolic meaning to it. Building on terror management theory, we propose that sex is problematic for humankind in part because it reminds us of our creaturely mortal nature. Two experiments investigated the effects of reminding people of the similarity between humans and other animals on their reactions to the physical aspects of sex. In Study 1, priming human‐animal similarities led to increased accessibility of death‐related thoughts after thinking about the physical but not romantic aspects of sex. In Study 2, when participants were reminded of similarities between humans and other animals, mortality salience resulted in decreased attraction to the physical but not romantic aspects of sex. In each study, priming thoughts about how humans are distinct from animals eliminated the association between sex and death.     

Abstracts of Papers Presented at the 1968 Annual Meetings of the O.V.S.S.

Abstract

Preparation for blizzard conditions by respondents in Wood County, Ohio, in 1977–1978 was higher than expected; a majority of those who received warnings responded with further preparation, but planned little more preparation for the winter of 1978–1979. The best predictors of preparation were: place of residence, age, marital status, sex, and occupation. Variables best predicting plans to prepare for the approaching winter were: maintenance expense incurred as a result of the winter of 1977–1978, marital status, the number of family members at home during the blizzard, and place of residence.

The respondents had a reasonably clear understanding of their actual situation; there was little evidence to suggest they were poorly prepared and unrealistic at the same time. Further examination of the theory of “bounded rationality” to determine conditions under which it is most useful is suggested.     

Acknowledging the Impact of Social Forces on Sexual Minority Clients: Introduction to the Special Issue on Clinical Practice with LGBTQ Populations

Over the last two to three decades, advances in clinical practice with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals have been extensive. Many clinical social workers now incorporate LGBTQ-affirmative approaches into their practice, and a number of social workers have contributed to the literature on clinical practice with sexual minority clients. Despite these advances, we still require specialized knowledge to understand a number of LGBTQ-related mental health issues. The Clinical Social Work Journal’s first special issue on clinical practice with LGBTQ populations emphasizes psychotherapy techniques that acknowledge and also address social forces (e.g., transphobia, homophobia, and heterosexism) that affect the psychosocial functioning of LGBTQ clients. The special issue focuses on LGBTQ populations, such as transgender and bisexual individuals, sexual minority youth, and older adults, and psychotherapy modalities informed by a number of clinical and theoretical approaches. These in-depth articles offer guidance to clinical social workers who need to expand their knowledge of LGBTQ-related mental health issues and also provide those with existing knowledge an opportunity to refine their clinical skills and sharpen their thinking.     

Psychiatric Labelling and the Imputation of Mental Illness by Jurors

Abstract

Previous research suggests that jurors in defense-of-insanity trials are influenced significantly more by defendent behavior than by professional psychiatric diagnoses. This finding would appear to refute labelling theory's emphasis on societal reaction as equally or more important in the development of a deviant career. These earlier studies of jury decision making, however, were not designed as tests of the labelling perspective and the results must therefore be regarded as inconclusive. The study reported here represents an attempt to reassess the issue of the relative influence of defendent behavior and psychiatric labelling on jurors while allowing for conflicting testimony and operationalizing behavior in terms of residual rule-breaking. Defendent behavior again emerges as the variable with the greatest explanatory power, but the findings do provide evidence of a significant labelling effect as well. Implications for labelling theory and defense-of-insanity trials are discussed.     

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AS CONTESTED GROUND IN AN ERA OF GLOBALIZATION: WORKER PERCEPTIONS AND SATISFACTION IN THE USPS

Many prior efforts have examined the personal characteristics of workers or the structural features of an organization that impact job satisfaction. By contrast, we examine organizational culture in the context of "high-performance work systems." We analyze the organizational culture of the United States Postal System, as it is presented in key organizational documents and perceived by workers. It is argued that a viable theory of job satisfaction in the modern workplace must treat worker perceptions, which spring from an organizational culture that is both prescribed and lived.