1,721,257 research outputs found
Horror autotoxicus: critical social work as autoimmunity
No full textHorror autotoxicus, literally means the horror of self-toxicity. The famous German scientist Paul Ehrlich used the metaphor to describe the body’s innate aversion to immunological self-destruction. However, as we now know, the immune system can upon occasion attack itself and does so in the autoimmune disorders. Indeed, this autoimmune system is healthy and plays beneficial homeostatic roles for the body. All species are bathed in beneficial autoantibodies that react with “them” selves. This chapter takes up the biological metaphors to show how critical social work has an affirmative autoimmune function in relation to the mainstream. Immunity is shown to be a biopolitical metaphor as “negative protection”, with autoimmunity, the political agonism of critical social work. A principal aim of the chapter is to clarify the agonistic nature of the immune-autoimmune dialectic as political and to strengthen the foundations of the meaning of critical social work. In plain terms, this involves conceptualising critical politics as continuous struggle against the immunitary function of normative social work, especially those forms of negative protection explicitly performed in child welfare and mental health work
Introduction - analytics of power and politics for social work: introduction to the handbook
Get PDFThe Routledge Handbook for International Critical Social Work (ICSW) provides a systematic guide to the leading traditions, innovations and international trajectories in critical social work. With the publication of this new Routledge ICSW Handbook comes an opportunity to further demonstrate the richness, diversity and innovation of critical scholarship and research in social work across the globe. Critical social work is increasingly involved in a global conversation, hence the rationale for including “international” in the handbook title
Empowerment as biopolitical: the case of Roma people in the Czech Republic
No full textIn this chapter, the authors consider the marginal horizons of empowerment on a concrete case of the Roma people in the Czech Republic. The authors draw on critical social work scholarship through which they explore a concrete case of social work intervention;, the case of social work intervention that effectively leads to greater disadvantages and racism of the Roma people in the Czech locality. We deploy the concept of “exclusive inclusion” to unpick the neoliberal influences on empowerment via work of Giorgio Agamben and to a lesser degree by Roberto Esposito. With the case of social work engagement with the Roma people in Czech Republic, the authors argue that social work practice as a profession is in serious need of deep critical reflection on existing practice and the so-called progressive values;, practices that are also shaped by exclusion, despite them having a veneer of inclusivity and empowerment in the rhetoric
Jet impingement on porous surfaces
Get PDFA series of experiments are described, documenting the flow resulting from the normal impingement of planar and axisymmetric jets onto a porous surface. Six different porous surfaces with open area ratios of 23, 26, 31, 37, 44 and 54% (? = 0.23, 0.26, 0.31, 0.37, 0.44 and 0.54) were placed in low speed (usually 40m/s exit velocity) air jets sufficiently far from the jet exit for the jet to be self similar. The ?=0.31, 0.37, 0.44 and 0.54 surfaces were wove wire mesh. Exit Reynolds number based on jet exit diameter is 3x104 for the axisymmetric case and based on exit width from 0.5x104 to 2.1x104 for the planar case.For ?=0.44 and ?=0.54 the impingement of the jet for both planar and axisymmetric geometries can be summarised as a widening of the jet as it passes through the mesh, followed by a region of reduced entrainment. For ?=0.37 and below, there is evidence of wall jets on the upstream side of the surface. For the ?=0.31 mesh and ?=0.26 perforated plate, there are marked differences between the axisymmetric and planar cases. For the planar cases the flow is turned downstream of the porous surface away from the centreline such that on the centreline the axial velocity falls to zero, whilst a clear jet remains in the axisymmetric cases. Downstream of the ?=0.23 porous surface there is a clear bounded jet in both planar and axisymmetric cases. The presence of a counter-flow at some distance from the centreline, downstream of the surface inhibits entrainment into the downstream jet; its growth rate and velocity decay rate are reduce
Professional identity as a matter of concern
No full textWhy is professional identity a matter of concern for so many different professions and especially for social work? The extent to which the Scottish Changing Lives: Report of the 21st Century Social Work Review dramatically concluded that "the 'crisis' in social work is mainly a matter of professional identity that impacts on recruitment, retention and the understanding of the profession’s basic aims” (2006: 4, my emphasis added). Anecdotally, this concern seems to be ubiquitous across social work, particularly with senior policy makers, professional bodies, management, pressure groups and activists. What does it mean to say professional identity is a matter of concern? Here I want to pick up from and extend upon where I left off in the opening chapter. If you recall the significance of “mattering” in considerations of professional identity was underlined. The chapter is intended to critically synthesise the various chapter contributions throughout the volume using the lens of matters of concern.<br/
Resistance, biopolitics and radical passivity
No full textThis chapter deals with a fundamental break between G. Agamben and Michel Foucault’s analysis of power and resistance. It examines the potential of Agamben’s inoperativity as a strategic form of radical passivity to jam and disrupt the biopolitical apparatus and this is coupled to fresh insights about how resistance can contribute to ungovernability. For critical social work a trajectory for rethinking a New Left Politics may well be to craft an alliance between communism and insurgency from the perspective of an affirmative biopolitics of transformation. An emerging body of feminist literature develops a novel approach to radical passivity which resonates neatly with Agamben’s political ontology of inoperativity. In Agamben’s biopolitical terms what is performed in the hunger strike is the collapse of the distinctions between sovereignty and bare life, will and passivity, potentiality and actuality
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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