PUBLIC ART/PRIVATE LIVES

This essay traces a body of work, as it emerges in the space between visual art and an engagement in the public sphere. A range of projects and exhibitions, using photography as medium, is described in the context of a discussion about the complexity of the photographic transaction. All of these projects explore notions of intimacy, pushing at the boundaries between ‘the private’ and ‘the public’ in the South African public cultural domain. The essay focuses particularly on Hotel Yeoville (2010), a participatory public art project-based online and in the library of the old Johannesburg suburb of Yeoville. Yeoville's estimated 40,000 inhabitants are largely disenfranchised migrants and refugees from every part of the African continent. The project comprised a website and an exhibition space with a series of digital, interactive booths in which members of the public were invited to document themselves through mapping, video, photography, text and social media applications. The essay reflects upon the performative, evocative and expressive potentials of the media platforms that could be accessed through the Hotel Yeoville installation and in this particular social and political context asks questions about the photographic encounter and its relationship to self-representation, truth, knowledge and power.     

Voting is Social Work: Voices From the National Social Work Voter Mobilization Campaign

ABSTRACT

The National Social Work Voter Mobilization Campaign, also known as Voting is Social Work, involved social work faculty, field educators, practitioners, and students in a nonpartisan voter engagement drive. Following the 2018 elections, researchers surveyed Campaign participants in social work schools and agencies to document their voter engagement activities.The study reported extent and amount of their involvement. The survey distinguished between the voter engagement participation of school- versus agency-based social workers, which has not been studied elsewhere. Participants also reported the benefits of political participation to individuals, communities, and the profession and perceived barriers such as organizational constraints, fears of appearing partisan, and distrust of politics. Presented in historical context, the findings highlight the need to mainstream voter engagement throughout social work education.     

The Sexual Consent Scale–Revised: Development,Reliability, and Preliminary Validity

The Sexual Consent Scale–Revised (SCS–R) measures an individual's beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors with respect to how sexual consent should be and is negotiated between sexual partners. This study extends previous research on sexual consent by revising a scale using the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991 Ajzen , I. ( 1991 ). The Theory of Planned Behavior . Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes , 50 , 179 – 211 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2001 Ajzen , I. ( 2001 ). Attitudes . Annual Review of Psychology , 52 , 27 – 58 .[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2005 Ajzen , I. ( 2005 ) . Attitudes, personality, and behavior ( , 2nd ed. ). Milton-Keynes , England : Open University Press/McGraw-Hill . [Google Scholar]) as its theoretical foundation. The psychometric properties of the SCS–R were established using factor analysis, construct validity tests, as well as internal consistency and test–retest reliability. Five factors emerged: perceived behavioral control, positive attitude toward establishing consent, sexual consent norms, indirect consent behaviors, and awareness of consent. Results indicated that the SCS–R can be useful for examining a variety of research questions relating to sexual consent.     

Learning about child protection

Where do social workers acquire the knowledge they use in child protection work? What opportunities exist for them to access and use research? Should they bother? This paper addresses these questions using information provided by twelve local authority social workers involved in child protection work and findings from relevant research.

In a learning and work climate which appears not to encourage interest in research findings or knowledge from books generally, the paper considers both how knowledge from research might best be brought to the attention of busy workers and what are the necessary conditions for workers to develop and use knowledge in child care and protection practice.     

Children ever in care: an examination of cumulative disproportionality

Most studies of ethnic disproportionality in child welfare examine data in one of two ways: a point in time approach or an entry cohort approach. While each provides insight into disproportionality, neither gives a full picture of the differences among ethnic groups in the experience of the child welfare system over time. This study uses longitudinal administrative child welfare data to examine ethnic disproportionality in involvement with the child welfare system during the first seven years of life at three levels of contact: (1) initial referrals, (2) substantiated referrals, and (3) first entries. Findings suggest the experience of African American families, and probably Native American families, with the child welfare system is much different from other families.     

Preference for Nature in Urbanized Societies: Stress, Restoration, and the Pursuit of Sustainability

Urbanicity presents a challenge for the pursuit of sustainability. High settlement density may offer some environmental, economic, and social advantages, but it can impose psychological demands that people find excessive. These demands of urban life have stimulated a desire for contact with nature through suburban residence, leading to planning and transportation practices that have profound implications for the pursuit of sustainability. Some might dismiss people's desire for contact with nature as the result of an anti-urban bias in conjunction with a romantic view of nature. However, research in environmental psychology suggests that people's desire for contact with nature serves an important adaptive function, namely, psychological restoration. Based on this insight, we offer a perspective on an underlying practical challenge: designing communities that balance settlement density with satisfactory access to nature experience. We discuss research on four issues: how people tend to believe that nature is restorative; how restoration needs and beliefs shape environmental preferences; how well people actually achieve restoration in urban and natural environments; and how contact with nature can promote health. In closing, we consider urban nature as a design option that promotes urban sustainability.     

Structure of Uncertainty and Decision Making: An Experimental Investigation*

Decisions in the real world usually involve imprecise information or uncertainty about the precesses by which outcomes may be determined. This research reports the results of a laboratory experiment which examined whether the structure of uncertainty, namely, both the center and the range of the probability distribution describing the uncertainty, is an important determinant of choice. Specifically, it examines how the uncertainty of audit by the Internal Revenue Service of income tax returns affects taxpayers' decisions about intentional noncompliance. The context is relevant as almost nothing is known about how taxpayers assess detection risks using the probability information they have. The study focuses on intentional noncompliance. The factors affecting it are distinct and separate from those affecting unintentional noncompliance. Other factors that affect intentional tax noncompliance, such as risk, tax rates, and penalty rates, were controlled in the experiment. It was hypothesized that the lower the mean and the lesser the range (ambiguity) of the perceived audit probability, the greater the international noncompliance. As hypothesized, the analysis indicates that both the mean and the range of the perceived audit probability rate affect intentional noncompliance, though the effect of ambiguity is greater at a relatively higher level of mean. This result suggests that the strength of the information describing an uncertain event is captured better by both the mean and the range of the uncertainty than either of those components singly.     

Feminized cultural capital at work in the moral economy: Home credit and working-class women

One of the defining features of the home credit sector is the role played by its agents—workers who act as intermediaries between lending companies and borrowers to facilitate lending and collect repayments. There is a prevailing and pervasive narrative in the sector that women make superior agents, largely based on the belief that female agents can manage relationships with borrowers more successfully than their male counterparts. This article analyzes data from 349,078 home credit accounts (loans), as well as 71 interviews with home credit agents and lending company managers, to evaluate both the myths and realities of women's roles in home credit. The data is also used to explore the opportunities for—and potential constraints on—women's career progression in home credit work, based on an understanding of the moral economy in which they operate. By exploring the moral economy of low-income communities, the article highlights the role of working-class women's cultural capital within the labor market. Despite women forming the majority of the agent workforce in home credit, women's capital is undervalued in comparison with their male counterparts' capital. The analysis within this article allows a greater understanding of the highly classed and gendered nature of the moral economy of low-income communities and the exchange value of women's capital within the labor market.