Parent-worker relationships in child welfare social work: a Belgian case study

The involvement of parents within child and family social work has become an important research topic during the past few decades. Within this research, a lot of attention is paid to partnership, which is recognised as a dominant concept in current thinking about the parent–worker relationship in present-day practice. The debate on parent–worker relationships, however, seems to be mainly focussed on the individual relationship between the parent and the social worker. Based on a historical analysis of policy documents on a Belgian child and family welfare service, this article offers a historical and sociopolitical contextualisation of the current debate on the parent–worker relationship. The analysis reveals that sociopolitical ideas about the responsibilities of the state, the community and the private family have induced a continuous reflection on which children and parents should be seen as the most appropriate clients for a particular service, as well as an ongoing development of diagnostic instruments to legitimise inclusion and exclusion of families within child and family social work. Consequences for parent–worker relationships in child and family social work are discussed, as well as some implications for future research on child and family social work practices.     

Looking at their side of the conflict? Effects of single versus multiple perspective history teaching on Jewish and Arab adolescents’ attitude to out-group narratives and in-group responsibility

In the last decade, the issue of teaching the Palestinian perspective on the Jewish–Arab conflict in Israeli schools gave rise to considerable debate and competing curricula. A quasi-experimental study compared the effects of these competing approaches on learners’ attitudes to out-group narratives and perceived in-group responsibility (IR). A total of 176 Israeli Jewish and Arab participants were randomly allocated into teaching approaches differing in method of engagement with historical narratives (single authoritative narrative, empathetic dual narrative, and critical analysis of conflicting sources). Results revealed effects for teaching approach and majority–minority status. Engagement with a single authoritative narrative decreased interest in out-group perspectives while empathetic engagement with out-group and in-group perspectives increased it, though the effect was more pronounced for members of the Arab minority than for those of the Jewish majority. Among Jewish participants, an empathetic teaching approach led to a decrease in perceived IR while the critical approach led to the opposite outcome. The trends were inverted for Arab participants. Engagement with historical perspectives also moderated the impact of interest in out-group perspectives on acceptance of IR. Educational implications point to the harmful effects of enforcing a single narrative in conflicted societies and to the beneficial outcomes of multiple perspective teaching.     

“Gone to work to America”: Irish step-migration through south Wales in the 1860s and 1870s

Why did the Irish-born population of Wales decline so sharply in the decade 1861–1870? This paper argues that during the 1850s and 1860s, large numbers of Irish men and women travelled to south Wales in order to finance emigration to the USA. Using the US Federal Census, this paper shows how Irish step-migration through Wales led principally to the Pennsylvania coalfields. This type of migration is termed the Knight’s-move: a sideways move from agriculture into heavy industry, in order to advance forward across the Atlantic. The Knight’s-move challenges previous assumptions about immigration into the south Wales coalfield during the nineteenth century.     

Cruel Pessimism and Waiting for Belonging: Towards a Global Political Economy of Affect

Recent theorizations of affect have focused largely on Western historical, political and aesthetic contexts to distinguish between affect and emotion. Notably, these interventions offer new imaginaries to reinvigorate analysis of politics in the face of shrinking possibilities. However, much of this literature views affect as autonomous from emotion, while overlooking the political history of development and the differentiated relation to affect under colonial capitalism in other historical contexts. This paper studies subaltern engagement in activist performance in India to address these issues. It thinks through Lauren Berlant's account of the aesthetic genre and affective structure of cruel optimism, and her focus on historical contexts where people have recently lost the vision of a good life. By contrast, focusing on the historical present of those born into a pervasive and intractable sense of marginality and insecurity, I ask: what is the subject's relation to affect and activism in contexts where the loss of vision of a good life is not new under neoliberalism, but rather, reworks long-standing violence and inclusion/exclusion of colonial capitalism and nation-state histories. I argue that it is useful to understand Berlant's ‘materialist context for affect theory’ in light of uneven global histories of colonialism, development and neoliberalism. The affective experience of time is different across different spaces. As such, this paper contributes a global materialist context for affect theory, by focusing on activist theatre by a tribe called Chhara, designated ‘born criminals’ by British colonial law – a status legally denotified in 1952, but that is practically still effective in postcolonial India. Competing affective structures – sentimental optimism, cruel pessimism, betrayal and ordinary regard – shape and are shaped by Chhara negotiations with branded criminality. Ultimately, for the postcolonial subject, surviving in the neoliberal present involves vacillating among competing affective structures, only some of which generate sustained political critique.     

Career Pathways into Retirement in the UK: Linking Older Women's Pasts to the Present

Understanding of how women's experiences in retirement are shaped by their pre‐retirement lives is limited. In this paper we utilize an innovative mix of measures to examine the link between career histories and expectations and experiences of retirement. Analysis of timeline data capturing the long working lives of a sample of older women identifies five different pathways into retirement. We explore these trajectories in detail to determine how they are shaped and their links to different outcomes in later life. The analysis shows how different career histories unfold and how they shape expectations and experiences of retirement. Long, professional career pathways leave women feeling enabled in retirement, women following more fragmented pathways are more constrained, and some trajectories, including pathways involving transitions into professional careers in later life, can leave older women financially and emotionally vulnerable in older age.     

Theorizing the social: Émile Durkheim's theory of force and energy

This paper offers a new interpretation of Émile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) as the basis for reconsidering the Tarde–Durkheim debate of 1903 and the distinctions between a theory of social force and a theory of social assemblage. Resisting traditional interpretations of Durkheim's scientism, this essay traces how concepts of force and energy are centrally developed in Elementary Forms to draw new lines between epistemology to ontology for twentieth-century theory. I argue that Durkheim develops an ‘energetic epistemology’ that conceives of the human capacity for shared meaning as a product of invested energy in the form of continually enacted and evolving material practice, thought, and attention. According to Durkheim, when a member of a collective perceives a god or feels belief, he or she actually perceives the accumulated energy of on-going creation and maintenance of objects and ideas by members of a collective. Sacred objects, images, and ideas bear the trace of collective energy the more they are carefully crafted, maintained in spaces that are specially arranged, and written into behavioural codes. This reading of Durkheim allows us to consider him in a lineage of social constructivists and, particularly, in relation to Ludwik Fleck, who has been largely confined to different theoretical discussions when his contributions to sociology have been acknowledged at all. By reconsidering Durkheim, we have occasion to rethink his sociology and understand how he redrew the lines between thought and action, between epistemology and ontology, through the material framework of energy and force.     

中国美学史写作偏至论

中国美学史写作自20世纪初起步,迄今为止,已经取得了傲人的成绩,但同时在认识和实践上也存在一些未惬之处,这主要表现在以下几个方面:第一,存在把中国美学史写成美学理论史的偏向,第二,存在以艺术审美中心论来把握中国美学史的偏向,第三,存在亲外史研究而疏内史研究的偏向。认清这些局限,对于未来中国美学史的写作,将有着积极意义。     

关于乾嘉学派研究的几个问题

在中国学术史上,乾嘉学派活跃于18、19两个世纪间的学术舞台,其影响所及,迄于20世纪中而犹存。最近一二十年间,董理学术史之风复起,乾嘉学派研究成为学者关注的一个重要问题。本文对各位先进较多关心的几个问题进行探讨,旨在论证乾嘉学派如同历史上众多的学术流派一样,也有其个性鲜明的形成、发展和衰微的历史过程。准确地梳理和把握此一历史过程,或可窥见18、19世纪间,中国学术之演进脉络。     

导言：知识分子的心灵史

《读书》二十八年的历史，是中国社会转型期的学术史、思想史，也是当代知识分子的心灵史。《读书》译介了大量理论，推出了重要话题，形成了独特的“读书体”风格。同时，知识分子当下的文风值得反思。     

明清史与近代史:一个社会史视角的反思

在近几十年中国大陆的历史学界,明清史和近代史是两个取得了重大成就的研究领域;但与此同时,两个在时间上接续的历史时段中间出现了一道鸿沟———两段历史各有其问题意识,学者们向我们展示的是两种截然不同的历史和历史叙述方式。但是,出自明清史的社会史研究者从他们的实践出发,对传统明清史和近代史研究之间的这种断裂进行了反思。在更加多元和复杂、而非单线的问题意识之下,重新认识这一段历史的内在脉络,从而有可能使双方在一个共同的平台上进行讨论