Behind the Rhetoric of Community Development: How is it perceived and practiced?

State and local governments in Western Australia increasingly identify ‘community development’ as a key approach for the delivery of community services. In this paper I explore how the concept of community development is understood and practiced by workers in the context of government community services. While definitions are most often presented as a universally understood approach, my key argument is, that there are instead, community development ‘discourses’ that are variously applied to diverse situations. Foucauldian notions of discourse and power are used to propose that, while there may be core and recognisable traits found within the language of community development, in any given situation these combine with a number of variables (most notably stemming from the organization responsible for community services) to form a ‘situated’ community development ‘discourse’.     

The diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and adopted adolescents: A cautionary note

Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder and adopted emotionally-disturbed adolescents share many personality and psychodynamic characteristics: problems with object loss, separation and abandonment, identity disorders. Emotionally-disturbed adopted adolescents are likely to receive a BPD diagnosis because of 1. unknown genetic or constitutional components, 2. defects in early mothering or chaotic parenting seen in late adoptions, 3. possible misdiagnosis, 4. psychodynamic similarities. Authors caution against the possibility of misdiagnosis because of this environmental reinforcement provided by an adopted status.     

Toward a Conceptual Framework for Understanding Community Belonging and Well-Being: Insights from a Queer-Mixed Perspective

Although previous research indicates a positive relationship between community belonging and well-being, little is known about how this relationship is experienced within diverse communities. In this study, interviews were conducted with 12 queer-mixed-identified individuals. Proposed is a conceptual framework for understanding how and why experiences of community belonging contribute to and detract from well-being. Specifically, the dimensions being close, being read, being seen, and being heard are explored through participants’ intersectional and often-contradictory narratives. This study may enhance scholarship regarding lived experiences of community; research and practice related to multiracial, queer, and trans* experiences; and community efforts to promote well-being.     

Increasing aging and advocacy competency: the intergenerational advocacy pilot project

The Council on Social Work Education's (CSWE) Strengthening Aging and Gerontology Education for Social Work (SAGE-SW) project, funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation partnered with the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM) to develop an Intergenerational Policy and Advocacy Project (IAP). This curriculum pilot project, based on a community organization model, was conducted with 13 baccalaureate social work (BSW) and master's social work (MSW) programs across the country and 122 students. The project was one method to pursue CSWE SAGE-SW's efforts to infuse aging content into social work foundation curricula, to support intergenerational teaching, to strengthen social work advocacy skills, and to provide social work students with positive experiences working with older adults. Pilot sites were asked to carry out the project as part of an existing course foundation or field practicum course. Project activities included collaboration with a variety of community agencies, holding issues or "town hall" forums in order to educate community members about critical policy issues affecting older adults; making contacts and establishing relationships with local, state and/or federal legislators; and conducting assessments of the service needs of older adults in the students' communities. Questionnaires, feedback, pre-post evaluations as well as brief accounts of each project are presented. Participants considered the IAP to be a successful project in terms of the objectives of increasing awareness and competency among social work students of aging issues and of promoting intergenerational linkages between older people and social work students.     

NGOs’ transnational advocacy networks: from ‘legitimacy’ to ‘political responsibility’?

NGOs that operate as part of transnational advocacy networks face a number of ‘legitimacy challenges’ concerning their rights to participate in the shaping of global governance. Outlining the legitimacy claims that development NGOs make, the article argues that ‘legitimacy’ is a socially constructed quality that may be ascribed to an NGO by actors and stakeholders with different viewpoints. NGOs operating transnationally link disparate communities and conceptions of legitimacy, and undermine the discourse and practice of sovereignty. Therefore such NGOs will find it difficult to be universally regarded as legitimate, especially by states that hold a sovereignty‐based conception of legitimacy. However, relationships are the building blocks of networks, and efforts to improve them should not be abandoned simply because ‘legitimacy’ is too closely connected with sovereignty. In particular, NGOs ought to improve their relationships with the poor and marginalized communities whose interests they claim to promote. To this end, the concept of ‘political responsibility’ is suggested as a pragmatic approach to understanding power relations as they arise in transnational advocacy networks and campaigns.     

Re-Creational Television: The Paradox of Change and Continuity within Stereotypical Iconography

Speculation abounds regarding the cumulative effect of stereotypical images in the media, especially those effects directed toward ethnic/gender identity. Using images of Black women in the United States as a case study, this paper explores the ways in which three historical stereotypes—Mammy, Jezebel, and Sapphire—are re-created in current-day television broadcasts. I argue that these recreations influence modern depictions of Black women in important ways. But my analysis differs from other sociological works on stereotypes, as it critically examines three underexplored components of the stereotyping process: (1) the symbolic properties of stereotypical images; (2) the separation of time and space achieved on television; and (3) the use of rigid interpretive frames as means of sustaining stereotypes in this media age.
[b]lack women, still least powerful economically, socially and politically in American society … have been refracted through a prism that tends to project them in one of three extremes: larger than life as matriarchs or sex objects, diminished to insignificance as mammies or maids, or faded into invisibility as irrelevant. (Edwards 1993, p. 217)