Barriers to Training for Disabled Social Work Students

Disabled people wishing to enter Higher Education are confronted with a number of barriers, yet relatively little research has been carried out to identify the level and nature of such obstacles. The short study reported here was designed to examine policy and practice within a number of social work training institutions in Scotland. Interviews were held with disabled students and ex-students, course tutors and practice teachers. Barriers to training are identified in five main areas: first, the disabling physical environment; secondly, problems of typification (whereby global assumptions of impairment are made about individuals); thirdly, failure of equal opportunities policies; fourthly, the practice of treating all students in the same way, resulting in discrimination against a few; and, finally, self-censorship on the part of students. It is argued that the reluctance of some students to 'declare' an impairment is a rational response to the disabling policies pursued, albeit inadvertently, by institutions. The implications of these findings for policy and practice are discussed.     

Accounting for Everyday Incivility: an Australian study

The question of how we live among strangers in daily life is an established concern in contemporary social analysis. A key topic has been the achievements of the individual in rendering daily life among unknown others possible. Yet, questions of residual failure await full development. The study aims to describe the results of an Australian study that examined the significance and meaning of interactional breakdown with strangers in everyday life for the contemporary individual. Focus group methodology is used to describe common threads of understanding that ordinary people have developed around such events in terms of prevalence, reasons and remedies. Noteworthy findings are (i) the use of period and generational kinds of historical thinking in lay reflections on the state of everyday incivility (ii) the materialization of excessive individualism, runaway capitalist values and diminished community as key ideas within lay talk about the generators of everyday incivility, and (iii) the articulation of communitarianism as a preferred panacea to everyday incivility for lay actors.     

Gender dynamics and rural household strategies

La forme que prend le ménage en milieu rural semble dépendre de facteurs structuaux tel l'accès aux ressources sans toutefois en être déterminée. Contrairement aux analyses qui soulignent seulement la présence d'un concensus au sein du ménage, nous considérons le ménage rural comme une unité politique qui implique des négotiations quotidiennes entre ses membres. Le concept d'hégémonie du ménage' est un outil analytique utile permettant d'aller au-delà des catégories 'conflit' et 'consensus' pour caractériser les dynamiques internes du ménage rural. Cette perspective est développée à l'intérieur d'une analyse de la dynamique entre les sexes dans le ménages ruraux de la côte de l'Équateur. Cet essai identifie certaines implications de cette approche en ce qui concerne les femmes et le développement.
Structural criteria such as access to land may condition the form the rural household takes but they do not determine it. It is suggested here, in contrast to analyses which emphasize household consensus, that we appreciate the farm household as a political unit involving daily negotiations between household members. The concept of 'household hegemony' is introduced as a helpful analytical tool which goes beyond conflict versus consensus dynamics. This approach is developed through a consideration of the gender dynamics within rural households in coastal Ecuador. Specific implications for women and development issues are considered.     

MARKET VENTURES, MORAL LOGICS, AND AMBIGUITY: Crafting a New Organizational Form in Post-Socialist China

How do institutional entrepreneurs craft new organizational forms under unstable conditions, especially when all of the relevant organizational models have serious liabilities in terms of legitimacy? Previous literature argues that emergent organizational models must adopt existing organizational elements in order to solve three problems: (1) gaining access to resources, (2) exploiting previous competencies, and (3) demonstrating legitimacy to salient audiences. Yet, these three distinct needs often require very different organizational elements associated with diverse, contradictory moral logics. This article, which examines the case of for‐profit ventures started by Chinese state organizations in the 1990s, reveals one strategy that entrepreneurs can use to solve this problem—to deliberately increase ambiguity about the organization's central characteristics and its underlying moral logic. This strategy makes it possible for new organizations to solve the problems of resources, competency, and legitimacy by simultaneously adopting (and adapting) contradictory organizational elements.     

Casework Job Design and Client Outcomes in Welfare-to-Work Offices

Differences in performance across different locations of a humanservice program may be driven by client, managerial, organizational,policy, or environmental characteristics. While many of thesefactors are outside the control of local managers, other factorsmay be open to influence by local discretion and may have independenteffects on performance. One issue facing local managers is howto divide job tasks among frontline staff, but little evidenceis available regarding whether job design is related to performance.In this article, I examine the relationships between differentcasework task configurations and welfare-to-work office performance.Controlling for a number of client and office characteristics,I find that clients' average earnings are higher over a two-yearperiod in offices that primarily use unified case managementand in offices with a specialist who develops job opportunities.I find no effects on earnings in offices that use other kindsof specialists and no effects of unified case management orspecialists on welfare benefit receipt in the two-year period.Overall, the findings suggest that local managerial decisionsregarding job design help explain the variation in performanceacross offices and suggest a possible lever through which performancecan be improved.     

The impact of Indian gaming on crime in New Mexico: A research note

The complexity of the relationship between gambling and crime make empirical establishment of a relationship between the two difficult. Focusing on one state, we examine the impact of Indian gaming on crime in New Mexico. Specific crime rates in New Mexico counties with tribal gaming are discussed. Comparisons of the rates of specific crimes are made between New Mexico counties with tribal gaming and those without.