The World’s Mightiest Naval Station

The Korean War is often given a cursory glance, if that, in U.S. foreign relations today. This article provides all the information necessary to conduct a role-play in one class period to help students understand the events of the war. Introductory and follow-up questions are also included to stimulate discussion and to connect the events of a war over half a century ago to the events of today.     

Bureaucratization and Goal Succession in Alternative Organizations

Abstract

A review of the literature of counterculture-inspired efforts at organizing alternatives to commercialism and technocracy reveals that the duration of many of these organizations was quite short. However, in spite of a general fading away of the larger counterculture, some of these efforts did indeed survive. Among the survivors are the crisis centers, organizations originally seeking to provide nondirective, empathetic, problem-solving help to individuals undergoing a personal crisis. An analysis of a sample of crisis centers based in midwestern states reveals that the internal structure of most of them has, with the passage of time, become increasingly formalized. Furthermore, many of these alternative organizations now serve persons who are less socially marginal and more socially acceptable than were the centers' original clients. Our results seem to suggest that, for both internal organizational reasons and external societal reasons, such groups may provide feelings of worth for their members but often change their initial goals somewhat. Also, despite their initial commitment to a less bureaucratic structure alternative organizations in fact become more bureaucratic.     

Becoming a Social Worker: Chris' Account

Chris Murray, a young African-American male, admitted on a scholarship to a social work masters program, reflexively explores his negotiation of difference in dialogue with an Australian female social work educator twice his age. Standpoint theory and the concept of intersectionality are used to frame Chris' experiences at a private northeast US university after achieving an undergraduate degree in his southern home state. His initial access to university came through military service. Chris was interviewed by the author as part of her international study project examining social work students' experience of diversity in the classroom. The open-ended interview was designed to allow self-identity of difference. Chris ethnographically recounts to a stranger a subjectivity statement of who he is in relation to studying social work. Chris' story works the hyphen between the binary of subjectivity and objectivity through the particulars of his personal history and world-view and his expectation that I as a social work educator share his seeking of social justice. His detailing of what moved him to become a social worker and contextual complexities negotiated along the way connect to wider discourses on how agency and structure play out in lived experience in seeking social justice.     

Book Reviews

Abstract

This paper explores the emergence of the social work profession in Western Australia from beginnings in the 1920s through to 1970 when the first local graduates gained employment. The authors illustrate how WA's history both connects with and diverges from patterns of the profession's development in more populous states, througt, the use of interviews conducted with pioneering social workers These oral histories illuminate how gender, class and other markings of privilege and power framed, and were framed by, the education, practice, sites of practice and career paths of social workers in the early years. Two interacting themes identified in this research were restricted employment possibilities for social workers in the State and a lack of locally available professional education until the mining boom of the sixties. The paper concludes by listing six lessons for current practitioners: the transcendent importance of reading contexts; identifying and developing relevant sites of practice; maintaining flexible boundaries of professional practice; being able to articulate a dynamic value base to drive practice; the importance of practitioners in shaping education, and continuing practitioner reflexivity.     

Child migration

It is considered important to construct models of social work in particular settings in order to refine practice and to enhance the power position of practitioners in identifying appropriate roles and tasks in relation to other professions. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the accumulation of data about social work in association with legal aid, leading to the formulation of a model or practice in such a setting. Data is presented here in relation to three groups of personnel participating in the Caxton Street Legal Service in Brisbane: lawyer perceptions of social work roles and types of problems appropriately dealt with by social workers, similar perceptions of a group of social workers forming a roster of volunteers, and the actual roles and activities of three social work students placed at C.S.L.S. during 1980. Of major interest is the predominantly casework conciliatory nature of role perceptions and activities in the agency's declared policy. Analysis suggests that this situation is explicable partly in terms of political expediency in relation to funding aims, and partly in terms of the voluntary, part-time and fragmentary nature of the service. The need for further clarification of a practice model remains, however, if social workers are to extend their role in legal aid.     

Growing Parental Economic Power in Parent–Adult Child Households: Coresidence and Financial Dependency in the United States, 1960–2010

Research on coresidence between parents and their adult children in the United States has challenged the myth that elders are the primary beneficiaries, instead showing that intergenerationally extended households generally benefit the younger generation more than their parents. Nevertheless, the economic fortunes of those at the older and younger ends of the adult life course have shifted in the second half of the twentieth century, with increasing financial well-being among older adults and greater financial strain among younger adults. This article uses U.S. census and American Community Survey (ACS) data to examine the extent to which changes in generational financial well-being over the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have been reflected in the likelihood of coresidence and financial dependency in parent–adult child U.S. households between 1960 and 2010. We find that younger adults have become more financially dependent on their parents and that while older adults have become more financially independent of their adult children, they nevertheless coreside with their needy adult children. We also find that the effect of economic considerations in decisions about coresidence became increasingly salient for younger adults, but decreasingly so for older adults.     

Depression and Social Networks in Community Dwelling Elders: A Descriptive Study

Social isolation and inadequate social support have been identified as correlates of depression in older adults, although the relationship between depression and social isolation is not entirely understood (Dorfman et al., 1995). This study was conducted to describe the social networks of depressed older adults living in the community and to compare the social networks of depressed and nondepressed individuals, thus adding to the body of knowledge regarding social networks, older adults, and depression.

The sample consisted of 91 respondents aged 65 and older who were randomly selected using the voter registry. About 27% (25) respondents reported significant levels of depressive symptomology as measured by the Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D). All respondents completed semistructured interviews that included questions about social contacts with family and others during the prior week. All participants reported social contact with family and friends during this period.

In this sample, depressed elders were not socially isolated. They were more likely to report contacts with friends than those who were not depressed, and equally likely to report involvement in volunteer activities. Their likelihood of seeking social support was also comparable. Results emphasize the importance of peer relationships and suggest that, in some groups of older adults, social isolation may not be a hallmark of depressive symptoms.