回顾与展望:美国和平学的起源和发展

和平学是一个相对新兴和发展中的学科。从研究角度而言,和平学主要起源于欧洲国家,但大部分和平学课程却首先出现在美国。冷战后期,美国的和平学课程主要关注结构性、家庭和社会内部暴力问题。和平学的研究范围包括人际关系、组织关系和社会关系,超越了民族国家的界限,其价值基础和行动目的就是替代暴力。和平学的研究面临各种挑战,主要包括:关于和平的定义过分模糊;行政方面的支持不够;和平学还遭到政治偏见的批评。和平学有助于政治和经济政策的变化,为了促进这样的一个长时期的根本变化,需要营造一种和平的文化。     

先秦名家辨析

先秦时期的名学和辩学是中国古代思想家留给我们的宝贵遗产。名家作为先秦时期的一个学派,对名学的发展作出了重要的贡献。当代的名家研究在很大程度上受到了汉代史学家的影响,然而,汉代学者关于名家的论述却十分模糊,存在着一些需要澄清的问题。在这种情况下,分析名家的特征,考察名家人物,讨论名家与辩者、名家与名学的关系十分必要。     

汤因比《历史研究》的宗教学再探讨

著名历史学家汤因比的12卷巨著《历史研究》,通过比较近六千年的人类史,阐发了文明形态理论,他的历史哲学体系给人的启示,就是他把宗教信仰作为价值体系的基础,潜心深究宗教与文明社会的关系,宗教决定着文明社会的全部活动“一种文明形态就是其宗教表达的方式”。在他那里“宗教”一词是指古往今来的一切人生态度与信仰。     

Social Work Research in the Field of Disability in Australia: A Scoping Review*

Although in Australia disability is receiving unprecedented attention with the rollout of major reforms, the body of research on disability to inform policy and practice has been found “not fit for purpose”. This scoping review of empirical research papers published by Australian social work authors between 2007 and 2015 investigated the quantity, nature, and scope of social work research on disability in Australia. We found a steady growth, an annual average of 13.8 papers, and a total of 124. Social work disability research makes a distinctive contribution; it is contextualised in service systems or policy, has a greater focus on community and civic participation and social relationships, and concentrates on adults, with either intellectual disability or traumatic brain injury. These research strengths provide foundations for building the profession’s research capacity and informing its practice and contribution to the multidisciplinary field of disability.

IMPLICATIONS

• Service system reform is increasing engagement of social workers with people with disabilities, yet disability has a low profile in the profession.

• Social work disability research has strengths in understanding service systems, social relationships, and strategies for social and civic participation, particularly with adults with cognitive disabilities.

• Increased attention to disability in qualifying and higher degree programs will better prepare students for complex practice and develop the distinctive contribution of social work research in this interdisciplinary field.

     

Lay theories and criticisms of mental health news: elaborating the concept of biocommunicability

Abstract

This article examines how mental health service users/consumers, advocates, professionals and researchers interpret and theorise the impacts of mental health news. It focuses on the following themes: Creating fears about mental illness by focusing on criminal and violent acts; Reinforcing power imbalances by privileging biomedical issues and sources; and Sanitising mental health issues through the selective use of personal narratives. The study draws upon the concept of biocommunicability, which casts light on the performative power of health news in reinforcing ideas and expectations about the appropriate role for different actors to adopt in relation to health knowledge. Previous research on health news has identified biomedical authority, patient-consumer and public sphere as three predominant models of biocommunicability and this article examines how these are bound up with criticisms of mental health news. The findings are related to the ‘mediatisation of psychiatric culture’ as one of extremes and perspectives from Mad Studies.     

Achievements of and challenges facing the Korean Disabled People’s Movement

Abstract

This paper provides a critical review of the development of the disabled people’s movement in South Korea since 1945, reflecting both its achievements and the obstacles it has faced. In particular, political positions and responses to the movement’s agitation against socio-cultural discrimination and inequality are discussed. Further, three key theoretical foundations of the movement are examined in order to describe the diversity inherent therein. This paper concludes that the disabled people’s movement has heavily influenced the values, norms, and systems of Korean society, but it has predominantly focused on integrating disability issues into policy and legislation, not on changing society and culture. Hence, the Korean Disabled People’s Movement is currently facing many challenges that are major threats towards its future development.     

The nation’s body: disability and deviance in the writings of Adolf Hitler

This article takes its starting point in the Nazi ideology as it appears in the writings of Adolf Hitler, and discusses how disability and the body can be understood in the context of Mein Kampf. The article underlines how disability and bodily infirmities, alongside race, featured significantly in Hitler’s demagogic message. Although the overall image of disability was related to a sense of threat – and a culture gone wrong – Mein Kampf also contains a mixed interpretation of disability as a phenomenon, in which different and opposing disability narratives took part in the construction and the image of the body as a national property.     

From isolated fence to inclusive society: the transformational disability policy in China

China’s disability policies are changing, some of which are gradually closer to the requirements of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Based on the social model of disability, this article explains the driving forces of disability policy reform, and especially adopts the critical policy analysis approach to evaluate the revised education policy along with the rehabilitation policy of disabled people. The inclusive education policy is improving disability policy issues the most compared with others because of the disability advocacy by disabled persons’ self-help organizations. Meanwhile, the nascent rehabilitation policy is typically top-down oriented by the government. Public participation may be the main way forward, especially with the growth of the disability movement in China. It is hoped that scholars pay more attention to the transformational disability policy in non-western settings.     

Activism and the academy: losing the ideological and material battles

Abstract

In this article written in the summer of 2018 Professor Michael Oliver sought to convey a sense of urgency about the need to reinvigorate the relationship between disability, the academy and activism. In his usual clear unswerving style that is both liberating and enabling in its directness he calls upon all engaged with the journal to remember that the foundations of disability studies emerged out of democratic organisations of disabled people and must remain committed to placing the experiences of disabled people at the centre of academic and activist enterprise. He places emphasis on the original purpose of the journal to build on the social model of disability in order to produce real social change expressing frustration about what he saw as an increasing ineffectualness within the academic community to confront what is really happening to disabled people. He is forthright when describing his hope that disability activists and academics will strengthen the future of disabled people, and the future of disability studies too, by working ever more closely together.