Named social workers – better social work for learning disabled people?

In 2016, the Department of Health in England announced that it would pilot the role of Named Social Worker. We chose to be part of the pilot because we regularly witness too many people’s lives being defined by restrictions imposed by professionals. Erroneous associations between the concepts of risk and danger have become the norm in how learning disabled people’s decision-making is perceived and managed. However, we believe social workers educated in the social model of disability and grounded more generally in disability studies offer an alternative perspective. The pilot is an opportunity to test our hypothesis that social work practice rooted in social model thinking can successfully challenge oppressive practice and disabling barriers, thus providing the opportunity for social workers to genuinely be ‘servants not masters’ in the lives of disabled people.     

Mass-mediated surveillance: borders,mobility, and reality television

This article analyzes the social construction of border surveillance and policing in reality-based television. Utilizing content analytic methods to document and decode popular images of borders, mobility, and insecurity, it assesses three programs from Australia, the UK, and the United States. Despite claims of offering accurate and unfiltered depictions, the programs are ideological and provide visions of enforcement that reinforce stereotypes regarding the risks of permeable borders and exonerate intensive regimes of surveillance and securitization. Our findings suggest this occurs in three ways. First, the programs inflate the extent and seriousness of lawlessness associated with cross-border movement. Second, they offer individualistic explanations of crime that cite personal choices and pathologies as determinants. Finally, alongside neglecting their perspectives and interpretations of events, when compared to the reality of official statistics, the programs disproportionately feature suspected offenders as members of marginalized groups. The social and political implications of these findings are discussed.     

Thinking through tragedy: critical distance and the law of genre

Abstract

This article focuses on two problems associated with tragedy. One ancient: what is it that draws us to the dramatic presentation of events of terrible suffering and loss? And one modern: namely, that while tragedies are still performed and appreciated, little new tragedy is being written. It will be argued in relation to the second problem that the vitality of tragedy as a dramatic form requires a less rigid approach to what might be considered tragic. And in relation to the first problem it will be argued that this more expansive conception of tragedy will allow an understanding of the ‘pay-off’ of tragedy in a way that draws both on the tradition that focuses on tragedy as cathartic therapeutic, and on the tradition that sees it as a thought laboratory that allows ethical dilemmas to be posed and explored from different perspectives. This argument constitutes a two-fold dialectical synthesis (emotional and intellectual approaches to tragedy on the one hand and the technical and popular use of the word ‘tragedy’ on the other) and the effect of this is to facilitate an understanding of tragedy as establishing a ‘critical distance’ that sets the scene for the possibility of thinking.     

Family Communication and Adolescent Alcohol Use in Nicaragua,Central America: A Test of Primary Socialization Theory

ABSTRACT

Applying primary socialization theory to a sample of early adolescents from Nicaragua, this study examines direct and indirect associations between family bonding and adolescent alcohol use via substance specific prevention communication (SSPC) and adolescent efficacy. Early adolescents in 7th and 8th grades completed a self-report, cross-sectional survey. Structural equation modeling revealed that family expressiveness was significantly indirectly related to adolescent lifetime alcohol use through SSPC. Results are discussed in relation to primary socialization theory, family communication, and international substance use prevention efforts. This study provides supportive evidence for the important role of positive family communication as a protective factor for early adolescents in Nicaragua.     

Cambodian Refugee Families: Impacts of Immigration-Related Stressors on Intergenerational Relationships

The purpose of this study was to elucidate Cambodian refugees’ perceptions of immigration-related stressors and their impacts on intergenerational relations during the processes of immigration and settlement. We used narrative analysis to evoke older immigrants’ voices as they transitioned to the United States. Thirty-one Cambodian immigrants were interviewed using open-ended interview guides informed by ethnographic tenets of data collection. Participants expressed (a) changes in family structure and elder isolation and (b) intergenerational ambivalence and elder’s dependence on adult children as products of immigration-related stressors. Implications of these results for refugee and immigrant mental health research are discussed.     

Computationally and statistically efficient model fitting techniques

A significant challenge in fitting metamodels of large-scale simulations with sufficient accuracy is in the computational time required for rigorous statistical validation. This paper addresses the statistical computation issues associated with the Bootstrap and modified PRESS statistic, which yield key metrics for error measurements in metamodelling validation. Experimentation is performed on different programming languages, namely, MATLAB, R, and Python, and implemented on different computing architectures including traditional multicore personal computers and high-power clusters with parallel computing capabilities. This study yields insight into the effect that programming languages and computing architecture have on the computational time for simulation metamodel validation. The experimentation is performed across two scenarios with varying complexity.     

Disasters,local organizations,and poverty in the USA, 1998 to 2015

Disaster research has drawn attention to how natural hazards transform local organizational dynamics and social inequalities. It has yet to examine how these processes unfold together over time. We begin to fill this gap with a county-level, longitudinal analysis that examines how property damages from natural hazards correlate not only with local shifts in poverty a year later but also counts of for-profit as well as bonding and bridging social capital organizations. Results show that poverty and all organizational types tend to increase with local hazard damages. They also show that poverty tends to increase most where the number of bonding social capital organizations is also increasing. This pattern suggests a Janus-faced dynamic in which bonding, or more inwardly focused, organizations that arise after disaster may end up inadvertently marginalizing those in more dire need.