Disabled by Design

This paper describes and analyses the author's attempts to engage in a user-led design/research process. This was undertaken during an MA in Design Research for Disability. The first section of the study delineates the background and context of the process of inquiry. This involves examination of the common features within design participation and emancipatory research. The second section of the study uses six principles of emancipatory research, defined by Emma Stone and Mark Priestley (1996), as a framework for analysis of the author's own process of inquiry.     

Client Perceptions of Professional Helpers: A Commentary

Comments on factual and methodological matters raised by Murphy, Remenyi and Hudson² precede some more general observations on possible reasons for the replicated findings reported.     

Living Close to a Person With Cancer: A Review of the International Literature and Implications for Social Work Practice

To help family caregivers (FCs), social workers need to understand the complexity of FC’s experiences and challenges. For this systematic review, several relevant, multidisciplinary electronic databases were searched. Of 1,643 titles identified, 108 articles met the inclusion criteria and are included in this review. Various experiences, symptoms, and burden related to caregiving responsibilities are described and discussed. The understanding evolving from this study about the FC’s own health risk, caregiver burden, and experiences over time can enhance a social worker’s awareness of an FC’s challenging situation and the potential impact this has on the FC’s ability to provide care to the patient.     

A Preliminary Study of the Role of Attunement in Adult Psychotherapy

This paper presents the results of a preliminarystudy on the recognition of affect attunement in adultpsychotherapy. Brief extracts from six videotapedtherapy sessions were shown to experienced clinicians, who were asked to judge whether the therapistwas attuned to the client/patient or not. Clear examplesof attunement and non-attunement were obtained and thesewere then shown to a sample of postgraduate social work trainees. The trainee resultsshowed none of the consistency of the cliniciansjudgments: 67% (n = 21) were undecided about the exampleof attunement, with only 19.3% (n = 6) giving responses which corresponded with those of theclinicians. For the non-attuned extract, just over athird gave a response which coincided with theclinicians, with 42% (n = 13) undecided. The resultswere used to develop a model for future research on affectattunement, which should provide the basis for thedevelopment of strategies for teaching the attunementskills which may be required by therapists.     

The paradox of Durkheim's manifesto: Reconsidering The Rules of Sociological Method

Conclusion In summary, my three formulations of Durkheim's The Rules of Sociological Method as a manifesto have progressively found it to be epistemologically and pedagogically embedded in its object of scientific interest. In the first and most limited formulation, Durkheim's text was a violent and strategic preparation for his vision of sociology, that laid its grounds, but was ultimately inessential to sociological practice itself. It marked what he hoped was a historical rupture in western thought, after which true sociological reason could get underway. In my second formulation his text was the creation of a precise sociological object and moral reality. And while constituting sociology's first action, the manifesto could then be superseded as this morality began to sustain itself. Nevertheless, more than in the first formulation, it actively produced a new social fact in European culture. Finally, in the third formulation, Durkheim's manifesto is an ongoing moment of sociology itself (in the sense of a Hegelian moment, which is fully visible only in its first conflict-ridden appearance, but subsequently constitutes an essential part of the phenomenon's makeup). This manifesto is sociology's first clear attempt to understand representation as the fundamental element of social life. As such, sociological images and language are more than new social facts, they are also collective representations themselves, that reveal how the collective both imagines itself and interprets its own images. In this last formulation, sociology is deeply intertwined with the phenomena it seeks to explain, and becomes increasingly so as it proceeds historically.The implications of understanding sociology as a collective representation are manifold. But among the most important is that sociology develops by way of a dialectical relation to its object. Not surprisingly, a century after the appearance of Durkheim's manifesto, popular mass culture is permeated with reified sociological language, while cultural and mass-media studies have become a central interest of contemporary social theory. One could even speculate what Durkheim might say about late twentieth-century North American or European culture, and the place of sociological images therein. Would he, like one might imagine Freud, despair at the popular tropes and metaphors that he helped produce? Would he see only a monster of his own creation? Unlike Freud, who might be able to condemn popular psychoanalytic language as itself an indication of an immature culture looking for therapeutic fathers, Durkheim formulated the inevitability of the reification and deification of sociological language. For example, he explains that his own time was dominated by the language of the French Revolution: ...society also consecrates things, especially ideas. If a belief is unanimously shared by a people, then ... it is forbidden to touch it, that is to say, to deny it or to contest it. Now the prohibition of criticism is an interdiction like the others and proves the presence of something sacred. Even today, howsoever great may be the liberty which we accord to others, a man who should totally deny progress or ridicule the human ideal to which modern societies are attached, would produce the effect of a sacrilege. He gives Fatherland, Liberty, and Reason as examples of the sacred language inherited from the Revolution. And although he understands that these ideas are historically contingent, he nevertheless defends their value, especially the value of Reason. Evidently, Durkheim is not troubled by the knowledge that thoughts are shaped by the sacred ideas of their time.Noting the popularity of his own texts in the undergraduate classroom, Durkheim might ask how they function now. He might ask how The Rules of Sociological Method is an academic collective representation. He might also ask more generally how the word society has come to be used as a moral reality, or a social fact. How do speakers gain a moral stronghold on conversation by invoking society as the overarching totem (signifying everything from tradition and order to constraint and oppression)? Durkheim would probably conclude that in its current usage society means many things, and perhaps is even reducible to a dada utterance. Society is the punishing god and the forgiving god; it is used to authorize the judge and justify the deviant. It is, most generally, the way our culture signals its attempt to formulate itself by way of its sacred images.And yet, to avoid concluding that sociology, as it proceeds, ultimately becomes another instance of the object it studies, one must see Durkheim as providing the opportunity within his images and tropes to make them more than religion or ideology. In other words, although social reality has traditionally been represented as the Judaeo-Christian god in western cultures, that does not mean that Society will in turn become the new god of the organically solidary collective. As Durkheim provided sociology with a basic manifesto orientation (in all three of my formulations of sociology as strategic, moral, and interpretive), he also provided the opportunity for sociology continually to change its object by studying it. While normally for scientists their influence on their object constitutes a disastrous error, because the data have been contaminated by the act of observation, Durkheim makes clear that sociology inevitably has this effect (indeed it has this moral obligation and responsibility). Sociology encourages a culture where the openness of human identities and practices is generally known, and where this openness does not lead to anomic despair. This was Durkheim's promise to his time - i.e., that looking at ourselves as agents of our collective condition provides an opportunity to produce sacred objects that are sacred by the very fact that they are patently produced collectively. While all collectives produce representations of themselves, what is peculiar to the sociological culture is that it is supposed to be able to identify these as such - it is supposed to see its own totem building. This requires a certain ironic orientation grounded in an insight that the collective could be drastically otherwise, without provoking a crisis of meaning. In this way, sociology is a system of beliefs without being an ideology or religion.And, of course, within a sociological culture change does occur. Once these sociological tropes are established, they undergo interpretation and reinterpretation as they are disseminated, circulated, and used in popular discourse. As the dialogue between academic language and popular language continues through time, sociologists are required to imagine sociological interventions that keep these images dynamic rather than ideological. Hence, as sociology contributes to the sacred language used by opinion (or doxa), it is neither reducible to opinion, nor fully distinguishable from it. Sociology seeks to influence the way opinion recollects its basis (i.e., social life), and in so doing must change its own language to continue to induce para-doxa.It is possible therefore that the tropes and images introduced by Durkheim have served many rhetorical purposes and need to be reinterpreted by each new generation of sociologists as they consider the particular sociological rules of method of their own time. But what is inexhaustible about the Durkheimian legacy is his insight that sociology must look for its effects at a general discursive level, remaining cognizant that it is a part of modernity's particular collective representations. Thus formulated, the grounds of sociological thought are necessarily present even in the most specialized of contemporary research, as each topic covertly speaks about collective representational desire. Sociology also meets its own limits (even the possibility of its own death) at the very point where it becomes self-conscious as a cultural practice - i.e., its various inevitable crises as to its relevance point to its entanglement in the representational anxieties characteristic of modernity in general. It seems to me crucial that sociological practitioners acknowledge and orient to this condition so that sociology remains vital to itself and to the collective life it studies. Or in stronger, more polemical words: sociology is a significant cultural force to the extent that it understands itself already to be one.

---

     

Giving to family versus giving to the community within and across generations

In this paper, we examine the impact of parental giving on the transfer behavior of adult children to family members and community institutions using unique data from the Indonesian Family Life Surveys. Our findings point to persistence of private transfer networks across generations. In particular, the community transfer decisions of adults living outside origin households are positively influenced by the origin household’s community giving. We also investigate the relationship between household transfers to family and community networks. We find that unobserved heterogeneity in giving to family members and community organizations is positively correlated, suggesting important complementarities between transfer networks.     

Estimating the Prevalence of Hard-to-Reach Populations: The Illustration of Mark-Recapture Methods in the Study of Homelessness

This paper assesses the potential of mark-recapture methods as a relatively powerful innovative research method for estimating the prevalence of "hard-to-reach"human populations in the social welfare field. We outline the development of mark-recapture methods, illustrating some recent applications. The body of the paper reviews the main methodological and practical questions raised by the method. We suggest, by way of illustration, how it might be applied to estimating the prevalence of rough sleepers in a given geographical region.     

Māori experiences of multiple forms of discrimination: findings from Te Kupenga 2013

ABSTRACT

Comprehensive exploration of Māori experiences of discrimination in Aotearoa New Zealand remains limited, particularly in relation to exposure to multiple and interlocking forms of discrimination. This paper presents findings from a secondary analysis of Te Kupenga 2013, the first Māori Social Survey, examining patterning and prevalence of different forms of discrimination for Māori (n?=?5,549). Māori report experiencing multiple forms of discrimination, both over their lifetimes and within the last year. Although racial discrimination was the most commonly reported form, Māori also experience discrimination on the basis of other grounds including age, gender, and income. Māori also report exposure to multiple forms of discrimination. Discrimination occurred in a range of settings, with schools and workplaces common sites. The findings support the lived reality of Māori that racial and other forms of discrimination are pervasive, and experienced in multiple domains across the life course, representing a persistent breach of rights. It is critical that other forms of discrimination are measured alongside racism in order to understand and address the realities of multiple discrimination for Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand.     

Understanding factors related to nonsmoking intention among college students

Abstract

Objective: While cigarette smoking in the United States has declined, the age range of smoking initiation has risen to include young adults. This study investigated the relationship of Theory of Planned Behavior constructs (TPB; attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control [PBC]) to nonsmoking intention among college students. Participants: Participants were 619 students at a Southeastern US university (69.8% female, 70.8% ≤ age 21, and 73.5% white). Methods: Students were recruited by email in March 2013 to participate in an online TPB-based questionnaire. Results: Future-oriented attitudes and PBC predicted higher nonsmoking intention; subjective norms did not. Moderator analyses indicated injunctive norms were more influential for occasional smokers and PBC was less influential. Conclusions: Findings suggest TPB is useful in predicting nonsmoking intention, but differentially for nonsmokers and occasional smokers. Future work should consider the health-related utility of future-oriented attitudes toward nonhealth domains and the differing beliefs of occasional smokers.