Book reviews

This article examines nationalist impulses toward a familiar, traditional heteronormativity through the language and imagery of a sample of tabloid newspapers in Britain during the Falklands War in 1982. In doing so, it asks how tabloid representation of the war created a particular and normative version of ‘Britishness’, central to which was the English woman, whose body became the site for a specific coalescing of race, gender and sexuality; a fixed notion of whiteness and normative heterosexuality located in the particular, unstable cultural space of a struggling ‘post-colonial’ Britain.     

Turning 18 in specialised residential therapeutic care: Independence or a cliff edge?

This article describes research undertaken in 2018 in a therapeutic residential home for young women with multiple and complex needs in out-of-home care in England. Based on qualitative interviews with five young women, aged 16–18, and four professionals working with the home, the article analyses the under-researched leaving care needs and experiences of this group of young women. The findings highlight the tensions between notions of childhood and expectations of adulthood surrounding this group of young people. These converge around reaching the age of 18 and foreground vulnerability on the one side, and responsibility on the other.     

Using Adjuncts in Social Work Education: Challenges and Rewards

Adjunct faculty have become an essential addition to social work programs in the United States. Full-time social work faculty have not been able to meet the demands created by continued growth of BSW and MSW programs. The number of doctoral students in social work programs has not kept up with the growth of the programs. A survey of program directors available through the Association of Baccalaureate Social Work Program Director's (BPD) listserv in the United States found that respondents saw adjunct faculty as assets to social work programs. The survey results indicated that adjunct faculty provide a ‘value added’ component. Adjuncts need to receive an orientation and continual training to help prepare them for classroom management and become aware of university policies. Adjuncts can be retained if they receive training, have frequent contact with faculty, and have access to university resources.     

Hope and activism in the ivory tower: Freirean lessons for critical globalization research

Abstract

This paper uses Freirean theory and field studies of counter-globalist campaigns to add greater lucidity and normative deliberateness to our understanding of resistance to neo-liberal globalism. A difficult tension exists between complete submersion in movement struggles, versus a mythical position of objective analytic detachment. We sketch out the basis for a productive dialogue between these two competing pulls of political engagement and analytic objectivity. To do this, we draw from the writings of Paulo Freire, a Brazilian thinker famous for his theories of popular education. Freire's writings have not seriously entered academic studies of globalization, even though activists in the ‘globalization-from-below’ camp frequently draw on his words for inspiration. We seek to remedy this omission, and construct a dialogue between Freire and social movement struggles on four dualisms centred on epistemology, normativity, methodology and strategy. In each dualism, we outline how Freirean concepts can help redefine these binaries as productive tensions to be developed, rather than conflicts to be suppressed. These insights are not intended as a theoretical injunctive delivered from upon high, but are used in dialogue with examples from global justice campaigns in order to clarify what is already taking place on the ground. Identifying Freirean priorities can also encourage openings for more emancipatory approaches to critical globalization scholarship. While academics cannot engineer resistance to neo-liberal globalism from the top down, they can contribute their research energy and resources, becoming more actively engaged in the process of envisaging alternatives.     

An Exploration of Cohesion and Recovery Outcomes in Addiction Treatment Groups

This article explores the relationship between group cohesion and recovery outcome variables in inpatient addiction treatment groups. We surveyed 104 people in group therapy using measures of cohesion, self-efficacy, social support, and coping. Length of stay in treatment has a relationship with cohesion. Significant higher order interactions were found with group cohesion (length of stay by type of addiction and length of stay by type of referral). The interaction of gender by addiction on measures of social support and self-efficacy were also significant. The latent construct of collective efficacy was confirmed using factor analysis, and we discuss collective efficacy and implications for group work with addictions.     

An evaluation of prototype school-based peer counseling program.

This study reports short-term outcome evaluation results of a school-based peer counseling (PRC) program as implemented by North Forsyth High School during January 1990-February 1991. The PRC program is evaluated in terms of: 1) the content of the program as evaluated by the PRC trainees; 2) the quality of the PRC instructor as perceived by these trainees; 3) several instrumental objectives deduced from the PRC training program; and 4) the degree to which the program was able to reach other students at North Forsyth during the time the PRC was in operation. In the absence of a control group, the treatment effect of the program is determined in terms of individual growth curve models. Through the multiple evaluation designs employed in this research, it has been learned that a significantly larger proportion of students in the PRC group had more favorable attitude toward the content of the PRC program when compared to the content of what they learned from their regular school curricula. Furthermore, a significantly larger proportion of students in the PRC program reported more favorable attitude toward their instructor than their regular school teachers. The PRC program was able to elicit an improvement of trainee self-esteem (p less than .01) and their social values (p less than .05) between pre and post of the Peer Training Evaluation Instrument. In terms of client access, 18.4 percent of the totality of potential clients at North Forsyth have been reached through sixty-one peer counselors sanctioned by the school.