Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Introduction, Michael Reisch, Stanley Wenocur

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

One of the few promising developments within social work during the current era of Reaganomics has been the revival of interest in community organizing strategies and methods. During he 1970s, most of the vitality in the community organizing field came from outside social work--from the grassroots community groups Harry Boyte described in THE BACKYARD REVOLUTION, from raining schools like the Midwest Academy and the Industrial Areas foundation, and from social movement organizations among women, minorities, gays, the elderly and the disabled. Now, in response o the pressures of severe resource cutbacks, shifts in national ideology and culture, and a less …

Journal Of Sociology & Social Welfare Vol. 13, No. 3 (September 1986)

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Symposium on Community Organization

MICHAEL REISCH, STANLEY WENOCUR - Co-Editors

• Introduction - MICHAEL REISCH, STANLEY WENOCUR - pp. 445
• Community Empowerment As A Non-Problem - JOHN L. RUSSELL-ERLICH, FELIX G. RIVERA - pp. 451
• Community Work Practice and Client Empowerment Under Conservative Conditions: From Observed Practice to A Theory of Societal Context - RALPH E. WOEHLE - pp. 466
• Community Organization: A Survival Strategy For Community-Based Empowerment-Oriented Programs - STEPHEN M. ROSE - pp. 491
• Recruitment and Retention of Organizational Participants: What's Happening Out There Now? - JACQUELINE B. MONDROS, SCOTT M. WILSON - pp. 507
• People Learning To Help …

Building Citizen Support For Planning At The Community Level, Barry Checkoway

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Planning practice is changing. Previous years of economic growth contributed to an increase in federal, state, and local planning agencies, in addition to regional and special purpose bodies with territorial or functional responsibilities. In times of growth, planning was viewed by many as a type of urban engineering and applied social science characterized by objective fact-finding and the so-called rational model. Leading texts emphasized technical research methods and "hard data" analysis, while government guidelines described scientific application of facts (Krueckeberg and Silvers, 1974; Spiegel and Hyman, 1978). Planners were akin to technical experts who analyzed data for other people who …

The Influence Of Rev. Jesse Jackson's Candidacy For President On Pluralistic Politics: Implications For Community Action, James Craigen

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This essay addresses the significant changes in power relationships brought about by the candidacy of the Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson for President of the United States. Specifically, it will attempt to focus on themes or issues reflecting the impact of his entry into the contest for the Democratic nomination as a viable Black candidate in November 1983, and the consequent redefinition of power relationships which occurred not only within the Democratic Party, but between Blacks and Whites, Blacks and Jews, Black elected and appointed officials, and his effort on relative deprivation among the people in the Rainbow coalition that he …

Community Work Practice And Client Empowerment Under Conservative Conditions: From Observed Practice To A Theory Of Societal Context, Ralph E. Woehle

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The thesis of this paper is that community work can be understood in relation to the larger structure of society. Community work is seen in terms of observations on cases previously reported. These observations suggest a political model of community work. In that model, goals are short term task goals of program development aimed at social problem or disadvantaged groups. The model assumes conflict among groups which can be dealt with politically. Client systems are different than constituent systems in that model, and clients are weak participants in community work. Non-client voluntary associations can nonetheless influence program decisions. These model …

Community Organization: A Survival Strategy For Community-Based, Empowerment-Oriented Programs, Stephen M. Rose

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Social work as a profession and social workers as individual professionals often labor within the constraints of structural ambiguity. The historical emergence and location of the profession within the structure of a political economy whose normal functioning simultaneously creates the miseries of the profession's clients and the funds to serve them, poses a series of contradictions internal to the field and to most of its practitioners. The central expression of this conflict is hidden or mystified in social work education, thus preserving the legitimacy of the social structure while delegitimating or invalidating its oppressed populations. This process occurs through the …

Recruitment And Retention Of Organizational Participants: What's Happening Out There Now?, Jacqueline B. Mondros, Scott M. Wilson

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This is a study on some initial research relating literature to actual practice in social action organizations. Our concern is to learn what are social action organizations of the 198 0s doing to recruit and maintain their membership and how this relates to the literature on recruitment and retention. We will review the literature, describe the methodology and report the findings, and then attempt to connect the findings and the literature.

Examination Of The Basque Collectives: Lessons From One Of The World's Most Successful Community Organization Efforts, Charles H. Frost

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The system of Basque collectives is recognized as the world's most effective worker owned system (Henk & Logan, 1982). It is a direct result of the community organization effort of Father Jose Maria Arizmendiarreta, who created an extremely progressive agenda under Spain's repressive Franco regime. Father Jose Maria's work will be explored in this paper and principles extracted that are important lessons for community organization teachers and practitioners.

The potential values of worker ownership have long been recognized; the ability of community organizers, however, to realize this potential has generally fallen far short. The worker owned enterprises in the Basque …

Experiences Of Women Activists: Implications For Community Organizing Theory And Practice, Cheryl Hyde

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The field of community organizing would be wise to heed the words of Abigail Adams to her revolutionary husband, John. Contributions of women activists have been virtually ignored by the field of social work. Consequently, social work has a diminished knowledge base and has alienated large numbers of talented women. Ironically, both the past and the future of community organizing are tied intimately with the action of women. Foremothers include Jane Addams, Dorothea Dix and Lillian Wald. Current trends suggest that "women's issues," such as poverty, the family and reproductive rights, will be on national, state and local agendas for …

Electoralism, Mobilization And Strategies For The 80s: An Assessment Of Organizing Trends In The Mid-Decade, Steve Burghardt

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Community organizers in the United States have two tasks today: a short-term defensive one of holding back the rightward assault against both the social welfare state and the working class in general; and a long-term, mobilizing task of building a constituency strong enough to transform the welfare state itself. We cannot lose sight of this latter goal, for the method and objectives we set for ourselves in the short-run will greatly determine the feasibility of our long-term goals.

This is no small matter, for the assault on the welfare state is as fundamental to the restructuring of class and social …

Collective Mobility And Fragmentation: A Model Of Social Work History, David Wagner

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The author utilizes recent sociological approaches to professionalism in order to develop a dynamic conceptual model of the history of Social Work. Professionalization is understood as a social movement or "collective mobility project" of the lower middle class which has been the dominant force in Social Work for a century. This social movement seeks control and expansion of professional markets for services and recognition and sanction from elites. In each period of history, however, Social Work professionalizers have had to struggle against popular unrest and elite criticism aimed at the field. Challenges to Social Work professionalizers and their basic paradigms …

The Cultural Significance Of Religious Festivals Of Seville: Holy Week And The Romeria Of Rocio, Brent Metz

Honors Theses

This project began long before I traveled to Spain. With the guidance of Dr. Smith, I wrote preliminary questionnaires and learned research methods and interviewing techniques in the fall, 1985. He also assisted me in writing a research proposal for the Waldo-Sangren Scholarship, and this award made my trip to Spain possible. In addition, I collected books and other information from Western's Waldo Library and from professors and friends who had previously been in Spain. Although I later modified my questionnaires and changed my conception of religious festivals in Seville, my preparation last fall was critical in orienting myself to …

Effects Of Seating Arrangement On Affective Meanings And Group Interaction In Healthy Senior Citizens, Judith Ann Boughton

Masters Theses

Occupational therapists state that environmental factors (seating arrangements) influence behavior. This ex post facto study examined the effect of peripheral versus central seating arrangement on interaction (verbalizing and looking), affect, and group climate in 41 healthy senior citizens. Nine men and 32 women aged 62 to 83 participated in two collage activities (creative and imitative) in either a parallel/nonsharing group or a project/ sharing group. Seating arrangement was added to an earlier study's independent variables (creative and imitative activities, and sharing and nonsharing groups). Dependent variables consisted of three factors of affective meaning from the Osgood Semantic Differential, evaluation, power, …

Auditory Stimulation-Induced Analgesia In Rats: Its Irreversibility By Naloxone, Ilsun Miranda White

Masters Theses

After receiving intermittent exposure to a tone (3000 Hz, 100 db, SPL), rats were tested on a hot plate for analgesia. Rats that received tone alone showed a higher average paw-lick latency than rats that received either naloxone or saline alone. This result indicates that the auditory stimulus used in this study can be considered a neurogenic stressor and may be added to the list of various noxious stimuli that prouces analgesic effects. Naloxone given to tone-treated subjects produced mean paw-lick latencies were comparable to control group latencies for the first two treatment sessions and to tone group latencies for …

A Study Of The Relationship Between Marital Expectations And Satisfaction For First Married And Remarried Couples On Factors Extracted From Two Marital Adjustment Scales, Daniel K. Ehnis

Dissertations

The primary purpose of this study was to establish the construct validity of the Marital Comparison Level Index (MCLI), an instrument designed by Sabatelli (1984) to assess the degree to which married individuals' outcomes compare with their marital expectations. A subordinate goal was to examine the relationship between expectations and satisfaction in marriage.

To accomplish these goals, the factorial content of the MCLI was compared with the factor structure of the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS), a well-validated measure of marital satisfaction. Responses of 170 married individuals on both scales were factor analyzed using a principal components analysis with varimax rotation …

Perceptions Of American College Students About Arabs: The Role Of Mass Media And Personal Contact In The Formation Of Stereotypes, Mansour Owaid Aljeaid

Dissertations

American students, as well as people of other nations, form perceptions of others who differ from their own cultural, racial, and social groups. These mental pictures are "stereotypes."

The purpose of this study was to identify stereotypes that American students enrolled at Western Michigan University (WMU) had about Arabs and to determine if there were differences in these stereotypes when students were classified by race, sex, level of education, age, and sources of stereotypes. Twenty-five bipolar adjectives were organized as semantic differential scales to assess students' perceptions. The instrument was either mailed or hand delivered to a sample of 400 …

Instructional Leadership: The Role Of The Director Of Library Services For The Grand Rapids, Michigan, Public School District, Judy A. Deruyter

Masters Theses

The purpose of this project was to familiarize the intern with the position of director of library services. A review of the district's media program enabled the intern to assist in the district's media program and work on the curriculum development changes that would be occurring during the duration of the internship.

The major results of the internship were a district handbook detailing policies and procedures for the media specialists and, using Appleworks (Lissner, 1983), a computer program was written for library management and utilization.

Important aspects of the project were curriculum work sessions and the resulting plans for implementing, …

The Effects Of Instructions And Cue Controlled Relaxation Training On Cardiovascular Reactivity To Social Stressors, Patricia A. Fettes

Masters Theses

Cue controlled relaxation (CCR) training was compared to simple instructions to relax and control blood pressure on the basis of their effects on cardiovascular reactivity to role played social stressors. The CCR intervention consisted of training subjects to say a cue word ("calm") that had been previously paired with muscular relaxation responses, during presentation of stressors. The instructions intervention was associated with significant reductions in blood pressure reactivity, regardless of whether this condition preceded or followed the CCR condition. Factors that may relate to the relative ineffectiveness of CCR are discussed, as well as those that may have been responsible …

An Analysis Of Potential Adjunctive Behavior In Two Developmentally Disabled Subjects, Nancy K. Brhely

Masters Theses

Past research on adjunctive behavior in humans has generally not employed methods which are comparable to those included in studies of adjunctive behavior in nonhumans. Consequently, the results of these studies of adjunctive behavior in nonhumans. Consequently, the results of these studies are often difficult to interpret. The present study examined locomotor movement and salient self-stimulatory behaviors in two developmentally disabled students exposed to four fixed-interval (FI) schedules of food delivery (FI 16-, 60-, 120-, and 240-sec). Results of this study were analyzed according to whether the seven defining characteristics of the prototype of adjunctive behavior, polydipsia, were present. Locomotor …

The Effects Of Vocal Instructions And Sequence Of Conditions On The Acquisition And Maintenance Of Behavioral Chains, Charles L. Lowe

Dissertations

Five children, ages 5 to 6 1/2 years, were trained to learn and relearn four-link behavioral chains using conditioned reinforcement. Subjects were presented with a horizontal array of 12 chips in four equal groups. During Control Learning (CL) sessions, a new sequence of responses was learned through contingency shaping. The same sequence was presented later that day during a Control Relearning (CRL) session. Instruction on correct responses was provided during Instruction Learning (IL) sessions. The same sequence was presented without instruction during an Instruction Relearning (IRL) session later that day. Thus, new behavioral chains were acquired during CL and IL …

Perceived Barriers And Proposed Solutions For Employment Of The Handicapped: Attitudes Of Employers And Employment Agencies, Leonard Robert Mcconnell Ii

Dissertations

The intent of this research was to analyze the employment barriers and to identify possible policy strategies for the unique employment problems faced by persons with handicaps. The study surveyed barriers to employment and proposed employment solutions for the handicapped as perceived by private- and public-sector employers and employment agencies. The handicapped and six disability groups were compared with women, blacks, and Hispanics on the same barriers and solutions. It was hypothesized that: (1) the handicapped as a protected group faced more and different employment barriers than did women, blacks, or Hispanics, and therefore (2) the handicapped needed more and …

The Relationship Between Learning Disabilities And Juvenile Delinquency In Macomb County Juvenile Court (1983-84), Rita M. Bologna

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate the link between learning disabilities and juvenile delinquency in the Macomb County Juvenile Court System. Because of the presence of several key variables, it was believed that learning disabilities was a unique trait of the detained population.

The population consisted of 517 male and female detained and adjudicated delinquents that were admitted to the facility during the 1983-84 school year. Biographical and crime related data were gathered by hand searches of the legal file. The learning disabled or non-learning-disabled classification resulted from interpretation of the scores on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test …

Successful Women: A Racial Comparison Of Variables Contributing To Socialization And Leadership Development, J. Baraka Love

Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to identify variables that have contributed to the growth and development of successful women and to explore whether those variables were the same for Black and White women by comparing the perceptions and backgrounds of women who have reached top level positions in the fields of education, business, human services, and government.

Data were collected by questionnaires from 547 women respondents out of a sample of 1,500 identified in Who's Who in America (43rd ed., 1985) and Who's Who Among Black Americans (4th ed., 1985). The response rate was 38.4%; 298 (19.9%) were Black …

An Historical Analysis Of Public Policy For The Care And Treatment Of People Who Are Mentally Retarded In Michigan, Kenneth O. Slater

Dissertations

This dissertation traces the historical development of Michigan's public policy associated with the residential care and treatment of mentally retarded people. Michigan laws and programs from 1830 through 1983 were studied after being compared to a national history. The central question was: What factors, over time, influenced public policy related to residential care and treatment of the mentally retarded?

Initially, care was the responsibility of families and friends of the mentally retarded. This responsibility shifted from townships to counties, then to the state during the nineteenth century. Until the late 1800s many mentally retarded people were housed on county poor …

The Socializer, June 1986, Department Of Sociology

The Socializer

Volume 1, Number 25 of the Socializer, published February 22,1973.

Prison Education, Joseph Behar

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

College level education is provided by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice to inmates on site at the Riker's Island Correctional Facility in New York City. This undergraduate satellite program is examined in relation to the opportunities for de-institutionalization, re-socialization, and possible effects on "prisonization." The conditions and potential of "education behind bars" for rehabilitation, student development, and personal reorientation are discussed through an analysis of the emergence of an innovative instructional environment not directly controlled by the official nor subcultural systems of the institution. In this context, the educational uses of the "sociological imagination" become part of a …

Determinants Of Knowledge About Social Security: A Study Of Nonremarried Widows Caring For Children, Martha N. Ozawa, William T. Alpert

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Social security beneficiaries and the general public alike are concerned about the financial solvency of the social security program. But how much do they know about how the system works? This study analyzes the determinants of knowledge about social security among nonremarried widows having children under their care. It builds a research model based on the economic theory of rational decision making. Using ordinary least squares regression estimation techniques, the level of knowledge about specific social security provisions is regressed on family income, implicit tax rate, number of children, human capital variables, and other demographic and locational variables. The findings …

Journal Of Sociology & Social Welfare Vol. 13, No. 2 (June 1986)

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Table of Contents

• The Anatomy of "Burn-Out": The As Antidote - NORMAN N. GOROFF
• Love Paradigm
• Determinants of Knowledge About Social Security: A Study of Nonremarried Widows Caring For Children - MARTHA N. OZAWA, WILLIAM T. ALPERT
• Income Tax and Inequality: What Constitutes Welfare State Expenditure? - GORDON W. TERNO ETSKY
• Factors Contributing to Coalition Maintenance - MARIA ROBERTS-DeGENNARO
• On the Dialectics of Social Theory And Action: A Synthesis of Six Models of Community Engagement - DREW HYMAN
• Role-Set Diversity: Benefits or Strain? - MARILYN GAIL MORGAN, ALFRED DEMARIS
• Retirees As Technoguides: A New Role As Shapers And Makers of …

Assessing Social Agency Functions: A Model, Elizabeth W. Lindsey, John S. Wodarski, Kristyn S. Greaves

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The assessment of general agency functions is the focus of this manuscript. Initially inventories that may be utilized in the assessment of the relevance and quality of services provided are reviewed. Next, cost benefit analysis is addressed in terms of helping social workers estimate the cost of services provided. The manuscript concludes with a discussion of the issues involved in general agency assessment.

Retirees As Technoguides: A New Role As Shapers And Makers Of The Future, Arthur B. Shostak

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Retirees nowadays serve in many out-of-the-home roles that make astute use of their maturity, their discretion time, and their flexibility about compensation: Large numbers help as paid or voluntary aides in day care centers, health fairs, home health care, hospice programs, nursing homes, and the vital like.

A brand new role that might appeal to many would have them learn and practice the craft of technology assessment and the process of technology diffusion: With these tools retirees could serve as technoguides, or paid or voluntary aides in the testing, evaluating, and adapting of new products and services to the needs …