Student isolation: the experience of distance on an international field placement

In an era of global awareness of the impact of social, political and environmental impact, the international field placement has become a feature of many social work programmes throughout Australia. A theoretical framework of international social work principles allows for a guiding platform for teaching and learning; however, the experience of the social work student is often one of cultural isolation and emotional vulnerabilities. Whilst cross-cultural learning is a core practice goal of the placement, the ability to engage with this learning is affected by the impact of distance on the student. In turn, the university responsibility for the student is heightened by the distance involved, creating an increased sense of risk for both the student and the social work educator. This article draws on a mixed-methods study, with data sourced from both questionnaires and in-depth interviews with university field education staff, former social work students, and field educators. Five lenses of distance are explored in the aim of increasing understanding of the student experience: geographical distance, cultural distance, emotional distance, pedagogical distance and technological distance. In doing so, the social work educators’ ability to monitor and support remote students is enhanced, and the capacity for the student to engage in a positive teaching and learning environment is increased.     

城市居民家庭贫困脆弱性的测度、因素识别与消减策略

全球化、高科技、高风险的社会特征给城市居民家庭带来巨大风险冲击,其贫困脆弱性问题值得关注。贫困脆弱性是指因风险冲击而使得家庭或个人未来生活水平降到贫困线以下的概率或可能性,在反贫困领域有着广泛的应用。在贫困脆弱性的概念与分析框架基础上通过CFPS数据对城市居民家庭的贫困脆弱性进行测度,识别其中的影响因素,这是进行前瞻性政策设计的前提与基础。研究发现,城市居民家庭的贫困脆弱性在户主年龄、就业状态等维度呈现一定的特征分布。总体而言,有将近一半的城市居民家庭属于贫困脆弱性家庭需要政策的干预。文化程度、生活支出、家庭资产、地区、重要事件、婚姻状况、就业状态、社会保障、社会关系等是影响贫困脆弱性的重要因素,尤其要重点关注收入变动性贫困脆弱性。可以通过兜底保障、风险缓解、能力提升及行动改善等手段来消减城市居民家庭的贫困脆弱性。     

走出美德与规则“厚此薄彼”的道德误区

伦理学或道德哲学的思维理路可以区分为美德目的论传统与权利规范论传统.作如此界别的真实目的并不是要在两者之间营造“非此即彼”或者“厚此薄彼”的二中择一,而是希冀挖掘美德与规则的关键性联系,即美德的脆弱性,需要规则的强化和补充;规则的有限性,需要美德的培源与支持;敬重规则亦是一种美德;永远保持美德对规则的优先性,反之弗然.     

Human beings as receivers,doers and judges. The anthropological foundations of sustainable public action in the capability approach

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we argue that the capability approach can suggest avenues to reform social policies in the direction of a more valuable and sustainable conciliation between people's different engagements in community, work and family. We thus develop a theoretical framework for assessing the extent to which social policies support the freedom to lead a valuable life and to choose how to combine in a sustainable way employment, family life and active citizenship. With this aim, we study the anthropological conception at the core of the capability approach and its implications for social policy. We argue that in the capability approach human beings are seen as receivers (i.e. vulnerable beings in need of support), doers (i.e. actors able to contribute to society) and judges (i.e. political beings with aspirations, values and desires). By the same token, the capability approach sheds light on three prerequisites for developing a sustainable community, work and family interface: a) recognizing the multiple dimensions of human beings (and not seeing them only as ‘doers’ or ‘human capital’ for the economy), b) including all human beings, with their strengths and weaknesses, and allowing them to lead valuable lives (and not excluding those that cannot abide by the ‘doer’ standards), and c) insisting that the development of such an interface is the joint responsibility of the individual and the community (and not only of the individual).     

Articulating selfhood through the therapeutic: Teaching for justice and social transformation in contradictory spaces

In this article, we argue that it is in engaging with the particularly socio-politically loaded topics such as racism, gender-based violence, homophobia, and classism, where we urgently need to find new ways of simultaneously opening up, holding, and containing the visceral responses of students in relation to continuously renegotiating boundaries of the learning environment. Specifically, we contend that under the current conditions of calls for decolonization in South African higher education and elsewhere, the university as a whole (its curriculum, the classroom and its dynamics, teaching methodologies, and its governance structures) needs to be questioned and its pedagogical practices in general need to be reviewed. We take as the point our separate, but related experiences of teaching in the Department of Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. Some of the questions that frame our theoretical and methodological concerns are: How do we actually teach social justice related topics in diverse classrooms; how can we teach within, across, and beyond our own situatedness, especially where privileges and experiences of discrimination intersect and; how does one, ultimately, hold a space where the collective engagement with structural violence in its multiple intersecting expressions and the factual complexity of a dialogical pedagogical practice often lead to both moments of productivity and also repressive chaos? What we struggle with in this article, then, including the incidents foregrounded in it, are the complexities of engaging with social justice within the South African higher education context that is constantly grappling with being both the best and the worst example of political imagination.     

An Integrated Framework for Environmental Multi‐Impact Spatial Risk Analysis

Quantitative risk analysis is being extensively employed to support policymakers and provides a strong conceptual framework for evaluating decision alternatives under uncertainty. Many problems involving environmental risks are, however, of a spatial nature, i.e., containing spatial impacts, spatial vulnerabilities, and spatial risk‐mitigation alternatives. Recent developments in multicriteria spatial analysis have enabled the assessment and aggregation of multiple impacts, supporting policymakers in spatial evaluation problems. However, recent attempts to conduct spatial multicriteria risk analysis have generally been weakly conceptualized, without adequate roots in quantitative risk analysis. Moreover, assessments of spatial risk often neglect the multidimensional nature of spatial impacts (e.g., social, economic, human) that are typically occurring in such decision problems. The aim of this article is therefore to suggest a conceptual quantitative framework for environmental multicriteria spatial risk analysis based on expected multi‐attribute utility theory. The framework proposes: (i) the formal assessment of multiple spatial impacts; (ii) the aggregation of these multiple spatial impacts; (iii) the assessment of spatial vulnerabilities and probabilities of occurrence of adverse events; (iv) the computation of spatial risks; (v) the assessment of spatial risk mitigation alternatives; and (vi) the design and comparison of spatial risk mitigation alternatives (e.g., reductions of vulnerabilities and/or impacts). We illustrate the use of the framework in practice with a case study based on a flood‐prone area in northern Italy.     

Toward an Epidemiology of Safety and Security Risks: An Organizational Vulnerability Assessment in International Airports

International airports are complex sociotechnical systems that have an intrinsic potential to develop safety and security disruptions. In the absence of appropriate defenses, and when the potential for disruption is neglected, organizational crises can occur and jeopardize aviation services. This investigation examines the ways in which modern international airports can be “authors of their own misfortune” by adopting practices, attitudes, and behaviors that could increase their overall level of vulnerability. A sociotechnical perspective, the macroergonomic approach, is applied in this research to detect the potential organizational determinants of vulnerability in airport operations. Qualitative data nurture the case study on international airports produced by the present research. Findings from this study highlight that systemic weaknesses frequently reside in areas at the intersection of physical, organizational, and social spaces. Specific pathways of vulnerability can be drawn across these areas, involving the following systemic layers: individual, task, tools and technology, environment, and organization. This investigation expands the existing literature on the dynamics that characterize crisis incubation in multiorganization, multistakeholder systems such as international airports and provides practical recommendations for airport managers to improve their capabilities to early detect symptoms of organizational vulnerability.     

A General Framework for the Assessment of Power System Vulnerability to Malicious Attacks

The protection and safe operations of power systems heavily rely on the identification of the causes of damage and service disruption. This article presents a general framework for the assessment of power system vulnerability to malicious attacks. The concept of susceptibility to an attack is employed to quantitatively evaluate the degree of exposure of the system and its components to intentional offensive actions. A scenario with two agents having opposing objectives is proposed, i.e., a defender having multiple alternatives of protection strategies for system elements, and an attacker having multiple alternatives of attack strategies against different combinations of system elements. The defender aims to minimize the system susceptibility to the attack, subject to budget constraints; on the other hand, the attacker aims to maximize the susceptibility. The problem is defined as a zero‐sum game between the defender and the attacker. The assumption that the interests of the attacker and the defender are opposite makes it irrelevant whether or not the defender shows the strategy he/she will use. Thus, the approaches “leader–follower game” or “simultaneous game” do not provide differences as far as the results are concerned. The results show an example of such a situation, and the von Neumann theorem is applied to find the (mixed) equilibrium strategies of the attacker and of the defender.     

Insights into Flood‐Coping Appraisals of Protection Motivation Theory: Empirical Evidence from Germany and France

Protection motivation theory (PMT) has become a popular theory to explain the risk‐reducing behavior of residents against natural hazards. PMT captures the two main cognitive processes that individuals undergo when faced with a threat, namely, threat appraisal and coping appraisal. The latter describes the evaluation of possible response measures that may reduce or avert the perceived threat. Although the coping appraisal component of PMT was found to be a better predictor of protective intentions and behavior, little is known about the factors that influence individuals’ coping appraisals of natural hazards. More insight into flood‐coping appraisals of PMT, therefore, are needed to better understand the decision‐making process of individuals and to develop effective risk communication strategies. This study presents the results of two surveys among more than 1,600 flood‐prone households in Germany and France. Five hypotheses were tested using multivariate statistics regarding factors related to flood‐coping appraisals, which were derived from the PMT framework, related literature, and the literature on social vulnerability. We found that socioeconomic characteristics alone are not sufficient to explain flood‐coping appraisals. Particularly, observational learning from the social environment, such as friends and neighbors, is positively related to flood‐coping appraisals. This suggests that social norms and networks play an important role in flood‐preparedness decisions. Providing risk and coping information can also have a positive effect. Given the strong positive influence of the social environment on flood‐coping appraisals, future research should investigate how risk communication can be enhanced by making use of the observed social norms and network effects.     

Mapping Socioeconomic Exposure for Flood Risk Assessment in Italy

Detailed spatial representation of socioeconomic exposure and the related vulnerability to natural hazards has the potential to improve the quality and reliability of risk assessment outputs. We apply a spatially weighted dasymetric approach based on multiple ancillary data to downscale important socioeconomic variables and produce a grid data set for Italy that contains multilayered information about physical exposure, population, gross domestic product, and social vulnerability. We test the performances of our dasymetric approach compared to other spatial interpolation methods. Next, we combine the grid data set with flood hazard estimates to exemplify an application for the purpose of risk assessment.