On social work and what gender has got to do with it

Living in gendered societies makes it necessary to take into account the specific ways in which social problems and social issues affect the lives of women and men, girls and boys. Not only are social problems and social issues very often gender biased; this is also true for the professions dealing with these problems and issues, and for the training programmes for professions like social work. Sociological analysis of society and philosophical understanding of a good life are permeated by gender-specific perceptions -- often without those involved being aware of them. Furthermore, social policies reinforce gender-specific biases because they are based on gender-specific (i.e. male) standards. Gender as an analytical category has been brought into scientific and public discourse by feminist theoreticians and activists making women -- and thus also men -- visible with regard to structure and subject issues. The development of gender theory and research highlights the significance of gender arrangements to understand social phenomena and to support gender-equality ways of thinking and policies. At the same time, men and women are not only confronted with gendered structures, but via socialization processes and personal development they also reproduce these gender differences in their daily lives by 'doing gender'.     

Subjektivierung Distinktion Narzissmus

The work on subjectification tends to put actors in a victimized position and to restrain itself on organizational discourse and cultural analyses. The article proposes a sociostructural and -psychological enhancement of perspective. The concepts of distinction and symbolic violence will give a more accurate picture of class specific conditions, meanings and effects of subjectification in flexible capitalism. Concepts of narcissism theory improve our understanding of subjectification??s attraction through its relation to the antagonistic psychodynamic of impotence, omnipotence and fear. Not at last, this enhancement of perspective will allow for a better reflection on subjectification??s entanglement with power and dominance in the interest of its emancipatory potentials.     

Dangerous Discourses: Anxiety,Desire, and Disability

The pleasure and danger of sexuality thematizes erotic desire as always accompanied by a certain anxiety. Although some anxiety is material and precautionary, I address the issue somewhat differently through investigating the psychic factors at play in the western imaginary. Discomfort with manifestations of erotic desire is most clearly invoked by differential embodiment where the challenge to the normative body not only results in disqualification from discourses of sexuality but also raises the contested question of who is to count as a sexual subject. My purpose is not to inquire empirically into the ways that people with disabilities are denied sexual subjectivity but to ask what is at stake in the cultural imaginary that requires such a closing down of possibilities. I develop a psychoanalytic approach to sexually marked anomalous embodiment and ask what part the link between desire and lack plays in thwarting a positive model of disability and sexuality.     

Coaching und organisationale Ver?nderungsprozesse �C eine organisationstheoretische Betrachtung

For many organizations, the ability to change and to meet future needs has become a central challenge. This paper is concerned with the question of how the human resource development instrument coaching can be implemented in supporting change. Coaching settings usually deal with the context of role identity within a system. This paper follows up, outlines and links coaching with organizational theory respectively organizational learning. In conclusion, some points for the practice of coaching are outlined.     

Der gesellschaftliche Umgang mit menschlicher Hilfsbedürftigkeit

Gender relationships are based on social constructions of dependence and independence. Dependence is a status concerning care receivers as well as care givers. Even after years of formal education care work is not yet seen as a profession because of its traditional background in Christian charity and unpaid tasks of women in the family. In the centre of public attention so far are the costs of caring, not the achievements. The critique of the welfare state leads to reductions of benefits and services and to privatisation. Thereby care work becomes a public issue. Considerations of justice can no longer be restricted to the public sphere. Instead, it becomes evident that the private sphere, where a significant part of care takes place, needs to be included in a democratic discourse on justice. There must also be included the discourse on the concept of work, so far often restricted to paid employment as well as the growing internationality of personal services in the sphere of shadow work.     

Leadership in Social Movements*

Two types of leadership styles in social movements are constructed on the basis of closed or open access to the source of legitimacy. Several predictions about structural consequences of the open or closed access are then made. The types are applied to four cases: the Nazis, the Manson Family, the Millerites and Women's Liberation. The hypotheses are confirmed.     

Reproductions of global security: accounting for the private security household

ABSTRACT

This article shows how private security households exist at the nexus of two foundational logics of contemporary warfare—militarism and neoliberalism. The celebration of neoliberalism and normalization of militarism allow the private security industry to draw upon the labor of eager contractors and their supportive spouses. This article develops a feminist analysis of the role of the private security household in global security assemblages. In what ways are households connected to the outsourcing of security work to Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs), and how are these connections gendered? Through interviews with female spouses of former UK Special Air Services soldiers, now private security contractors, we demonstrate how the household is both silenced and yet indispensable to how PMSCs operate and how liberal states conduct war. These spouses supported the transition from military service to private security work, managed the household, and planned their careers or sacrificed them to accommodate their husband’s security work. Their gendered labor was conditioned by former military life but animated by neoliberal market logics. For the most part, the women we interviewed normalized the militarized values of their husband’s work and celebrated the freedom and financial rewards this type of security work brought.