Equine-assisted activities and therapies: enhancing the social worker’s armamentarium

Introduction: Equine-assisted activities and therapies (EAAT) have gained prominence as a viable therapeutic approach for a range of mental health and developmental problems, yet is not widely known and not conventionally provided within the social work educational curriculum. Thus, the purpose of this study is to provide a review of various certification bodies available to social workers in order to bring EAATs into their therapeutic work. Methods: A multi-stage process, including consultation with experts in the field and an online search was undertaken to locate certification programs for mental health professionals. Results: Seven certification organizations were identified; programs varied with respect to mental health pre-requisites, type of certification, training components, and cost. Discussion: There has been substantial growth in EAAT for children with mental health and developmental problems, and there are a range of certification types to select from. Factors to consider when choosing which type of certification to pursue, and barriers to certification are discussed.     

Allocative Failures: Networks and Institutions in International Grantmaking Relationships

Using neo-institutional theory to guide my inquiry, I ask how foundations award international development grants in an institutionally complex environment, and if and how that process contributes to homophily in grantmaking. Employing a qualitative multiple case study method, I show that grants are awarded via interpersonal networks, a meso-level finding that suggests a second, macro-level research question: how are interpersonal networks institutionalized in this context? In my analysis, I contribute to a theoretical understanding of the recursive relationship between networks and institutions: I show how macro-level institutional practices and forms emerge from networks, and how the micro-level character of the network participants themselves ultimately shapes institutional forms. Combined, my results provide a mechanistic, multi-level understanding of the relationship between networks and institutions, as well as of how homophily operates in grantmaking. Because of the potential for social stratification and exclusion based on the structure of the network itself, I argue that such networks should be understood as “allocative failures.”     

Invisible disabilities,visible Service Dogs: the discrimination of Service Dog handlers

This article examines the social experiences of Service Dog handlers using survey data from adult US Service Dog handlers (N = 482). The main research question examined is how disability visibility impacts the experiences of Service Dog-related discrimination. Analysis reveals that half of all Service Dog handlers report experiencing discrimination but those with invisible disabilities report experiencing significantly more discrimination. For those with invisible disabilities, the decision to use a Service Dog prevents them from ‘passing’ while at the same time opening them up to increased skepticism about the legitimacy of their disability.     

Regional mobility of economists: An extension

We extend Davis and Patterson’s analysis of the incidence and determinants of regional mobility of Ph.D. economists. By exploiting previously collected data, we identify the patterns of regional mobility not only at the point of entry into the labor market for economists who received their doctoral degree in 1968 but also the net mobility of these economists over a 25-year period. The net effects of regional mobility decisions made between graduation in 1968 and year-25 employment in 1993, and between initial professional employment in 1969 and year-25 employment in 1993, are analyzed. Our results suggest that many economists demonstrate a propensity to“nest“ in their degree and first-job regions of employment and that those employed in government service and those with a greater diversity of work experience are more likely to migrate across regions during their careers.     

Conservative Politics,Sacred Cows,and Sacrificial Lambs: The (Mis)Use of Evidence in Canada's Political and Penal Fields

This article explores the federal government's justifications for its decision to cancel Canada's prison farm program, and demonstrates how Harper's Conservatives used talk of “evidence,” “science,” and “research” to appear to be performing good, modern governance. We argue that developments within the penal field are deeply intertwined with activities within the political field—and are more clearly understood when situated within the broader context of politics, science, and the strategic (mis)use of evidence. Scholars must be careful in assuming the state is actually engaging evidence rather than doing so only at the level of rhetoric and discourse. Cet article explore les justifications utilisées par le gouvernement fédéral par rapport à sa décision d'annuler le programme canadien de prisons‐fermes, et démontre comment les conservateurs d'Harper ont utilisé les notions d’‘évidence’, de ‘science’ et de ‘recherche’ pour donner une apparence de bonne performance et de gouvernance moderne. Nous affirmons que les développements du champ pénal sont profondément imbriqués avec les activités à l'intérieur du champ politique—et sont mieux comprises lorsque situés dans le cadre plus large des politiques, de la science et des stratégies de (mal)utilisation d’évidences. Les spécialistes devraient être prudents lorsqu'ils assument que l’État prend réellement en compte les évidences alors qu'il est en fait seulement au niveau de la rhétorique et du discours.     

Social documentary and personal investigations in contemporary South African photography: Tracey Derrick’s “One in Nine” series

A shell of white gauze floats against a split background in Tracey Derrick’s 2009 photograph, Inhabit – Habergeon – middle English, piece of armour to protect the neck and chest (Inhabit), both autonomous and materially frail. The shadowed wall lifts the calcified gauze towards the viewer, as its lithe body hovers above the vertical divide that separates light from dark. This position apart from the edge may be read as a passage missed or overcome. A year of invasive treatment following her diagnosis of stage two breast cancer in March of 2008 led South African documentary photographer Tracey Derrick to create a photographic series that combines her humanist sensibility with personal reflections on illness. Derrick represents meditations on her trajectory through illness in “One in Nine: My Year as a Statistic,” a collection of reposeful digital colour photographs – including Inhabit – that features the cast Derrick made to obtain accurate measurements for her prosthesis. This body of work complicates a widely held assumption that post-apartheid photography in South Africa focuses more on the individual than collective societal issues. Derrick’s unusual series warrants methodological treatment that attends to the complex ways in which the visual vocabulary and concerns of apartheid-era documentary photography overlap with the personal explorations associated with post-1994 photographic production. In this paper, I utilise socio-historical, psychoanalytic and phenomenological readings of Tracey Derrick’s photograph and “One in Nine” series to elicit an interpretation of the image and series as statement of agency within a metaphorical battle against an invisible, yet pervasive disease. By reading Derrick’s photograph through these theoretical lenses, I reveal her image to be a metaphoric assertion of tenacity and Derrick’s agency, and highlight the areas of overlap between Derrick’s documentary practice and her more personal “One in Nine” project.     

Race,risk, and American religious groups' views of Nazi Germany in 1935

What explains American religious groups' views of Nazi Germany before the U.S. entered the Second World War? Using a comparative-historical approach, we employ a novel set of data on 25 of America's most prominent religious denominations to answer this question. We find that two factors were crucial in explaining religious elite discourse about Hitler in the U.S. in 1935: whether leaders believed in white supremacy and whether their denominations were incumbents or challengers in the American religious field. Our findings underscore the growing theoretical consensus that racial resentment is key to support for authoritarianism and call attention to religious groups' complicity in its growth, both active and passive.     

Measuring Social Capital: Accounting for Nested Data and Subnetworks Within Schools

Social capital is a central concept in social science research, and it is measured in diverse ways. Few measurement approaches take the network structure of complex institutional settings into account. In this study, using data from a large-scale school-based randomized field trial, we develop several factor analytic models to test the validity and reliability of a new survey battery capturing multiple dimensions of social capital in such settings. We demonstrate that it is important to account for institutional and network structure in social capital measures, and we show how social capital can be operationalized as the shared variance between different relational characteristics in complex settings with multiple subnetworks.     

Do employers pay efficiency wages? Evidence from Japan

Economists have long been interested in the seemingly cooperative nature of Japanese industrial relations. It has been hypothesized that information sharing in the wagesetting process has been used to promote efficiency. But have Japanese employers really paid efficiency wages, that is, can productivity gains be linked to pay raises? Efforts to test for efficiency wage setting face the problem of sorting out the extent to which pay influences labor productivity and vice versa. For the 1975–1997 sample period, we used an innovative statistical technique developed by Geweke to disentangle the linear association between pay and productivity growth. Efficiency wage behavior has not been the norm in Japan. Nevertheless, efficiency wage setting cannot be ruled out for some key areas of manufacturing.