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There are two tendencies in present public discussions.Social problems have their causes in the individual, and are thus not a problem of socio-economic inequality. Consequently, we find an increasing policy in Europe of selfactivation and self-help as substitutes of social work. On the other hand, new types of social vulnerability and challenges for social work and social policy are detected which are discussed in the book in their European dimensions. Beginning in the last century in Europe, processes of social exclusion are discussed as common phenomena of the crisis in social welfare systems. They have their origins in the radical changes in paid employment, the weakening of family ties,...
This book examines a range of practical developments that are happening in education as conducted in urban settings across different scales. It contains insights that draw upon the fields of urban planning/urbanism, geography, architecture, education and pedagogy. It brings together current thinking and practical experience from German and international perspectives. This discussion is organised in four segments: schools and the neighbourhood; education and the neighbourhood; education and the city and finally, education and the region. Contributors cover a wide range of contemporary and significant socio-political aspects of education over the last decade. They reinforce emergent thinking that space and its urban context are important dimensions of education. This book also underscores the need for more research in the relationships between education and urban development itself. Current urban planning does not fully connect our understanding in education with what we know in the spatial and planning sciences. Accordingly, this release is an early attempt to bring together a growing body of integrated and interdisciplinary reflection on education theory and practice.
In this book, the author develops a relational concept of space that encompasses social structure, the material world of objects and bodies, and the symbolic dimension of the social world. Löw’s guiding principle is the assumption that space emerges in the interplay between objects, structures and actions. Based on a critical discussion of classic theories of space, Löw develops a new dynamic theory of space that accounts for the relational context in which space is constituted. This innovative view on the interdependency of material, social, and symbolic dimensions of space also permits a new perspective on architecture and urban development.
In many regions of the world the twenty-first century has started with a structure of endless challenges for social work. Social work seems to be in demand almost everywhere, from support schemes for children and young people into adulthood and on to support for elderly people, in community work in cities and rural regions, in disaster relief and in care for refugees. This book describes the field of social work – its themes, problems and methods – in the face of the concept of the second, reflexive modernisation. The question needs to be asked of how, and whether, social work’s success story from the first modernity can continue. We discuss the second modernity as a time of blurring boundaries. Today, it frequently faces the problem that the organised terms of its approaches come up against a social reality where the frameworks of social life are becoming dynamic. Normalised structures are dissolving or becoming mixed with new ones; boundaries are blurring and new ones appearing.
Different from literary works (prose, drama etc.) with techniques like montage and contemporary media (film, documentaries, video games, internet) where time-lines are being questioned through flashbacks and flashwords, historiography seems to have resisted such challenges. Most historiographical works (biographies, scholarly studies) still adhere to chronological narratives, even though the boundaries between history and literary fiction have been blurred over the past decades. Responding to 20th/21st c. attempts like Walter Benjamin’s prophetic historian, this volume asks: How to write history without following the chronologically oriented trajectory of time? The interdisciplinary contri...
Reading Jack Kerouac's classic On the Road through Virginia Woolf's canonical A Room of One's Own, the author of this book examines a genre in North American literature which, despite its popularity, has received little attention in literary and cultural criticism: women's road narratives. The study shows how women's literature has inscribed itself into the American discourse of the Whitmanesque "open road", or, more generally, the "freedom of the road". Women writers have participated in this powerful American myth, yet at the same time also have rejected that myth as fundamentally based on gendered and racial/ethnic hierarchies and power structures, and modified it in the process of writin...
Considering Space demonstrates what has changed in the perception of space within the social sciences and how useful – indeed indispensable – this category is today. While the seemingly deterritorializing effects of digitalization might suggest that space is a secondary consideration, this book proves such a presumption wrong, with territories, borders, distances, proximity, geographical ecologies, land use, physical infrastructures – as well as concepts of space – all being shown still to matter, perhaps more than ever before. Seeking to show how society can and should be perceived as spatial, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, geography, architecture and urban studies.
The contributions in this volume on social care and welfare, disadvanged groups or individuals are intended to be useful in the Eastern European social context to those who experienced or study the communist rule. The transition in Eastern societies is fast-paced, sometimes people oppose it or refuse to be involved. Rules are firm and imposed according to already established models in Western European countries. Society tends to become more ferocious in content but more accessible through media and democratic liberties. Changes are very swift and need greater attention because of the fundamental and structural nature of transformations in an age of transition.
Despite its capacity to produce knowledge that can directly influence policy and affect social change, academia is still often viewed as a stereotypical ivory tower, detached from the tumult of daily life. Knowledge, Normativity, and Power in Academia argues that, in our current moment of historic global unrest, the fruits of the academy need to be examined more closely than ever. This collection pinpoints the connections among researchers, activists, and artists, arguing that--despite what we might think--the knowledge produced in universities and the processes that ignite social transformation are inextricably intertwined. Knowledge, Normativity, and Power in Academia provides analysis from both inside and outside the academy to show how this seemingly staid locale can still provide space for critique and resistance.