Social worker and immigrant client experiences in multicultural service provision: Educational implications

Social work education, while committed to preparing students for anti-oppressive practice with immigrants and refugees, has not always been successful in achieving this goal. Student knowledge about and interest in cross-cultural practice, as evidenced in Canadian and US studies, often remains superficial and marginalized. This may in part be due to a lack of inclusion of practice wisdom and lived experiences of front-line practitioners and their clients. To remedy this deficit, 13 Canadian social workers of varied cultural backgrounds providing services in inner-city schools and 19 immigrant clients were interviewed in-depth to ascertain their perceptions of central elements of anti-oppressive practice with immigrant populations. Results yielded two major themes: Multifaceted Perception of Self and Other , which pertained to a recognition that culture was multifaceted, complex, and defined interactively; and Proactive Service Delivery , which pertained to active worker involvement in cultural bridging, brokering and advocacy. Implications for anti-oppressive social work education include a focus on multifaceted definition of culture, and admissions policies that promote multilingual, multicultural competencies.     

Social Status and the Application of Sanctions to Hypothetical Criminal Offenders

Abstract

Responses to hypothetical episodes of criminal acts from 523 adult respondents were used to test the proposition that persons react to criminal offenders and victims partially on the basis of class identification. Specifically, we hypothesized that persons would tend to recommend greater degrees of punishment to offenders who occupied class positions different from themselves and to offenders whose victims were similar to themselves. The data did not support the hypotheses.     

Organization–Public Relationships and Crisis Response Strategies: Impact on Attribution of Responsibility

The study examines how relationships with an organization and crisis response strategy affect attribution of crisis responsibility. Participants were exposed to 1 of 4 different crisis response strategies, manipulated through news articles. The study measured perceptions of the organization–public relationship, and after exposure to 1 of the 4 news articles, attribution of crisis responsibility. People with a positive relationship with the organization were less likely to place blame for the crisis on the organization regardless of crisis response strategy. The study provides evidence that maintaining positive relationships with stakeholders may be more important that individual crisis strategies.     

Book Reviews

Indonesia: the making of a culture. James J. Fox (ed.). 286pp, maps, figures, tables, bibliographies. (Vol. 1 in Indonesia: Australian Perspectives. James J. Fox, Ross Garnaut, Peter McCawley, J.A.C. Mackie (eds).) Canberra: Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University. 1980. $10.

Mekeo: inequality and ambivalence in a village society. Epeli Hau’ofa. x, 3 39pp., maps, figures, tables, plates, appendices, glossary, bibliography, index. Canberra: Australian National University Press. 1981. $19.50.

Tribal communities in rural areas. Elspeth Young, xxiii, 230pp., maps, figures, tables, bibliography. (The Aboriginal Component in the Australian Economy, no. 1.) Canberra: Development Studies Centre, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University. 1981. $9.

Women in India and Nepal. Michael Allen and S.N. Mukerjee (eds). xiii, 286pp., figures, bibliographies, index. Canberra: The Australian National University (Monographs on South Asia no. 8). 1982. $10.     

Who can lead the revolution?: Re-thinking anticolonial revolutionary consciousness through Frantz Fanon and Pierre Bourdieu

Theory and Society - While several scholars have explored the connections between the work of Frantz Fanon and Pierre Bourdieu through their shared relationship to French Colonial Algeria,...