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This is a unique and groundbreaking collection of questions and answers coming from higher education institutions on diverse fields and across a wide spectrum of countries and cultures. It creates routes for further innovation, collaboration amidst the Sciences (both Natural and Social) and the Humanities and the private and the public sectors of society. The chapters speak across socio-cultural concerns, education, welfare and artistic sectors under the common desire for direct responses in more effective ways by means of interaction across societal structures.
Joining the emergent interdisciplinary investment in bridging the social sciences and the humanities, Childhood, Agency, and Fantasy: Walking in Other Worlds explores linkages between children’s agency and fantasy. Fantasy as an integral aspect of childhood and as a genre allows for children’s spectacular dreams and hopeful realities. Friendship, family, identity, loyalty, belongingness, citizenry, and emotionality are central concepts explored in chapters that are anchored by humanities texts of television, film, and literature, but also by social science qualitative methods of participant observation and interviews. Fantasy has the capacity to be a revolutionary change agent that in its modernity can creatively reflect, critique, or reimagine the social, political, and cultural norms of our world. Such promise is also found to be true of children’s agency, wherein children’s beings and becomings, rooted in childhood’s freedoms and constraints, result in a range of outcomes. In the endeavor to broaden theory and research on children’s agency, fantasy becomes a point of possibility with its expanding subjectivities, far-reaching terrain, and spirit of adventure.
Action research continues to see a growth in interest both internationally and across disciplines. This book demonstrates the diversity in settings and focus for action research and provides a guide to its core aspiration: to achieve principled change. Written by authors from a range of countries and range of disciplines (including education, health care, palliative care, social work and community development), this book answers these key questions: How can action research be used to achieve principled change? How has action research been applied in various disciplines and in different countries? What can be learnt about the conduct of action research from these diverse settings? By means of...
A sense of participation and opportunities to share and participate in activities or groups that are important to them are crucial factors in human wellbeing. This book provides a robust empirical and theoretical analysis of reciprocity and its implications for social work and social policy practices by discussing how ideas of reciprocity can be understood and applied to welfare policy and social care practices, as well as how the act of reciprocity supports the wellbeing of citizens. Contributions from Finland, Germany, Russia, the UK, the USA and Canada illuminate the ways in which socio-political contexts influence the power relations between citizens, practitioners and the state, and the potential (or otherwise) for reciprocity to flourish. It will be essential reading for social care practitioners, researchers and educationalists as well as postgraduate students in social work and related social care and community-oriented professions and social policy makers.
How have three decades of neoliberalism affected the Nordic welfare states as well as the organisation, education and practices of social work in those countries? During recent decades the welfare states of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have gone through dramatic changes infl uenced by the political triumph of neoliberalism. This has led to both the electoral success of extreme right and mainstream neoliberal parties, and to the neoliberal ideological transformations of social democratic parties. The neoliberal doctrine of making governance cheaper has thus been made the focus of governance and has led to increased marginalisation and social problems. This is the first book to comparat...
Involvement of community partners in the structure and design of services is largely accepted in principle, but its practice is heavily contested. This book argues that the co-production of research is one of the best ways to involve community partners. As well as having intrinsic value in and of itself, research embeds a culture of learning, co-production and of valuing research within organizations. It also creates a mechanism for developing evidence for, monitoring and evaluating subsequent ideas and initiatives that arise from other co-production initiatives. The book makes a case for research to be a synthesis of participatory research, critical pedagogy, peer research and community org...
Almost everywhere across the world, economic inequality has been rising within and across national borders. The vision of a fairer world embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is being assailed by the advance of conservative ideology aided by vitriolic right-wing populism sweeping across the globe. Neoliberal ideology has had a profound impact in the shaping social work and human services at the frontlines. This book contributes to scholarship in critical practice and theory. It does so by exploring a practice approach steeped in the critical tradition that has hitherto received inordinately nominal attention in social work literature. The book features accounts of consciousness-raising in a variety of contexts – caste relations, race and religion, gender and sexuality, disability and social class. The narratives are meant to tease out conceptions and potential applications of consciousness-raising as an approach for critical practice. It will be of interest to practitioners, educators and students of social work, community development, social development and social pedagogy as well as those engaged in the promotion of human rights and social justice.
Introducing students to core sociological concepts by debunking popular misconceptions Is it true that "numbers don′t lie?" Is America "the land of equal opportunity?" Is marriage a "dying institution?" Oft-repeated adages like these shape our beliefs about the society we live in. Each essay in Second Thoughts reviews a conventional wisdom familiar to both instructors and students. The authors introduce relevant sociological concepts and theories in order to explain, qualify, and sometimes debunk that conventional wisdom. This unique text encourages students to step back and sharpen their analytic focus. 23 engaging essays reveal the complexity of social reality and demonstrate the role of sociology in everyday life.
This ground breaking book is an innovative, passionate and provocative exploration of intersectionality. The sustained emphasis on activism and practice reasserts the potency of intersectionality borne out of Black feminism. The rare and pioneering international reach of this book crosses four continents. In this book context matters: there is no intersectionality without context! Resting on the premise that we cannot work for the liberation of individuals, communities and societies without intersectionality, this book asks: How does intersectionality challenge the structures and discourses of social work education, management and organisation? What is the revolutionary potential of intersec...