On elephants, giraffes, and social development

Social development rests on varied assumptions, including thegreater effectiveness and efficiency of local over central management,legally endorsed resource control, and the popular ability totake responsibility for the environment. The article outlinesthe experience of community-based natural resource managementin Botswana in validating these and other assumptions, and concludesthat in some instances, particularly in small rural communities,grassroots development that follows them may not yield the expectedoutcomes.     

Individualism and Collectivism in Israeli Society: Comparing Religious and Secular High-School Students

Triandis' theoretical framework, concerningcultural patterns labeled individualism andcollectivism, is probed with regard to the religiousmarker in the Israeli Jewish society. Three methods areused to examine collectivism-individualismconstructs in 185 religious and 956 secular high schoolstudents: value items, interest in different domains ofhistory, and attitudes toward political issues. A common collective basis of mutual value consensus wasfound in the two groups; however, as predicted, therewere differences between secular and religious studentson the three kinds of items, since the religious scored higher than the secular students onitems emphasizing collectivist orientation. Thedifferences, however, do not fit the common theoreticalframework of collectivism-individualism, but rather tend to reflect the distinction between in-group anduniversal collectivism.     

Quantitative assessment of response shift in QOL research

Two assumptions which characterize the measurements of quality life (QOL) studies, are questioned by the present report: First, the assumption that QOL is the same thing for all subjects, is usually related to health problems and can easily be measured across subjects. Second, when this assumption is given up by introducing subjective base-rates in an intra-subject (before-after) design, researchers still tend to assume that no response shifts occur on the QOL scales, e.g., that these scales maintain the same meaning and values for subjects over time and interventions. In our study we found that QOL had different subjective interpretations [1--4]. While for some certain issues in their family-life determined their quality of life, for others these were issues at their workplace or of their health conditions. Second, when QOL was tested against a subjective base-line (for each individual according to their choices of domains), about eleven percent of the hypertensives and normotensives showed a clear response shift of scale-calibration over the period of one year. When the scores of these subjects were excluded, the significance of certain previously reported results changed. For example, the significant difference between normotensives and hypertensives concerning the change in their subjective evaluation of QOL over the year and their initial depression became more significant, while similar changes in their evaluation of sexual impairment and control at their work-place became insignificant. These results suggest that response shifts have to be traced and quantified, before one can claim any results (or lack of results) in 'before-after' designs, concerning subjective meaningful issues like quality of life.     

Storytelling as a Way to Work Through Intractable Conflicts: The German-Jewish Experience and Its Relevance to the Palestinian-Israeli Context

The storytelling method can be used to work through intractable conflicts. Working-through enables people who have suffered traumatic social experiences to learn to live with these painful events while developing an ability to listen to the pain of the "other." The storytelling approach focuses on the way personal storytelling facilitates the working-through processes in intractable conflicts. The storytelling approach was used in To Reflect and Trust (TRT), a dialogue group that began in 1992 and involved descendants of Nazi perpetrators and Jewish descendants of Holocaust survivors. The storytelling method was applied to a year-long Jewish-Palestinian student workshop held at Ben Gurion University in 2000–2001.     

Poverty amid Plenty: Lessons from Botswana's Social Assistance Scheme

Social assistance programmes are making a strong comeback after social policy analysts had predicted their demise, as is the use of the budget standards approach to identifying poverty and to establishing the generosity of social assistance benefits. Using the example of Botswana, this article highlights some pitfalls in using the budget standards approach in social assistance schemes, and especially the parsimonious help the poor can expect from this approach. It suggests, however, that conventional explanations for the increasing popularity of social assistance, such as economic constraints and the pathologizing of the poor, are not universal. Greater attention needs to be given, therefore, to the context of poverty rather than to the customary focus of poverty studies on measuring poverty "objectively".     

When assumptions on fieldwork education fail to hold: The experience of Botswana

In most parts of the world, social work fieldwork education takes for granted that the different stakeholders in the fieldwork learning process - students, academic staff, and field instructors - are dedicated to their task and can carry it through, yet this assumption does not always hold. This article examines one such situation, in Botswana, and several measures that have been introduced to tackle it.     

Restoring Power to Social Work Practice

Correspondence to Arnon Bar-On, Department of Social Work, University of Botswana, Private Bag 0022, Gaborone, Botswana. E-mail: bar-on{at}mopipi.ub.bw Summary Largely because they are unacquainted with power theory, socialworkers judge power as an aberration of their intentions toempower their clients and to make organizations more humane.Contrarily, this article, which explicates power and power-in-use,argues that social workers must increase their power and theirunderstanding of its dynamics and adopt a wider range of meansof influence than they currently do if they are to effectivelyhelp those society excludes and makes vulnerable.