Family Group Conferencing: An Indigenous Practice Approach to Compliance With the Indian Child Welfare Act

Native American children are perpetually over-represented in the U.S. child welfare system, despite the creation of the Indian Child Welfare Act. This article examines the use of family group conferencing, particularly initiated in Indian child welfare systems, as a practice method to reduce the disproportionality in this area.     

Chapter 1

Abstract

In this paper, we review the result of research conducted in the context of a 13-year collaborative partnership between DePaul University and a community-based, self-run, residential substance abuse recovery program called Oxford House. This collaborative effort highlights several examples of the research and action activities fostering a positive alliance that benefited both the research team and the Oxford House community. It also proposed practical guidelines for developing effective action research collaboratives that may be helpful to others who desire to cultivate and maintain similar mutually beneficial partnerships; including such processes as the development of trust, respecting the personal experiences of the community members and group, commitment to serving the community, validating findings with organization members, and accountability.     

Chapter 9: Partnerships Between Health Professionals and Self-Help Groups

SUMMARY

The study aimed to identify the meanings and mechanisms of partnership between health professionals and self-help group members. The three project stages involved in-depth individual interviews of professionals (n = 47) and of members (n = 49) using a semistructured interview guide; separate group interviews of professionals and members to rank themes which emerged in Phase I, and a joint professional/member workshop. A Partnership Framework was developed. The predominant partnership characteristics identified by professionals were egalitarian, flexible, decreased professional control, understanding and shared goals; and by members were trusting, reciprocal, shared goals, flexible and understanding. The five critical obstacles to partnerships, from professionals' standpoint were communication, attitudes, role ambiguity, the format health care system and ideological conflicts, and from self-help groups' perspectives were knowledge, the system, skills deficiency, attitudes and ideological conflicts. The foremost mechanisms for achieving partnership according to health professionals involved education, clearinghouses, and role and goal clarification; to self-help group members, they entailed trust building, communication building, and education. [Note: italics denote consensus by professionals and members.]     

Homeowners United: the attempt to create lateral networks of homeowners' associations in urban China

Under the slogan of ‘weiquan’ (defending our rights), homeowners in urban China are increasingly prepared to stand up for their rights of ownership, often through non-confrontational actions organized by homeowners' associations (yeweihui). There is also a growing concern for the need to create collective platforms on which homeowners' associations can support one another, muster their collective resources against powerful developers and lobby for status as legitimate organizations. The activists involved in this work are well aware of its political sensitivity in a regime that is antagonistic towards autonomous organizations, which are seen as posing a threat to its hegemony. Based on a case study in Guangzhou, this paper traces the tactics that housing activists have employed to create horizontal cooperation among homeowners' associations to defend their rights and devise ‘boundary-spanning’ strategies that exploit divisions within the state apparatus. The Guangzhou union of homeowners' associations can be regarded as an experiment in organizational infrastructure which has far-reaching implications. This study sheds light on the complexities as well as the institutional fluidity of state–society interactions in contemporary urban China.     

China's Shanzhai Culture: ‘Grabism’ and the politics of hybridity

This article focuses on the broad spread of shanzhai culture in 2008, exploring the central question: what is it that brings such disparate phenomena together under one label? Shanzhai things have typically emerged from new spaces for participation in production beyond the control of formerly monopolistic authorities. But things are not necessarily shanzhai by birth, for it is also an identity affixed to things by consumers. The shanzhai identity's inherent ambiguity—almost the same but not quite—brings with it a dimension of disruption of authority (cf. Bhabha), but its political standpoints are elusive. Using insights from hybridity theory, this article characterizes shanzhai as a contemporary successor to what Lu Xun termed Grabism: the active reappropriation of economic and cultural authority for diverse local purposes, which have themselves been shaped and redefined by those same authorities.     

(Re)Embracing Islam in Neidi: the ‘Xinjiang Class’ and the dynamics of Uyghur ethno-national identity

This Xinjiang Class is a four-year, national-level boarding school program established by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the year 2000. The overarching aim of the program is clear: the CCP intends to train a core group of young Uyghurs who have internalized the ideals of the Party. This article, which is based on interviews and regular interaction with over 60 graduates of the Xinjiang Class, casts doubt on whether the boarding schools have been effective in ‘interpellating’ young Uyghurs as compliant members of the Chinese Nation (Zhonghua minzu). This article contends that Uyghur graduates of the Xinjiang Class have instead embraced a non-Chinese ethno-national identity—an identity bound by Central Asian and Islamic cultural norms—and have largely rejected the Zhonghua minzu identity.     

Television News as Political Ritual: Xinwen Lianbo and China’s journalism reform within the Party-state’s orbit

Besides being the most influential television news program with the largest viewership in China, Xinwen Lianbo (Television News Simulcast) also boasts of unique political value in the Chinese media landscape. Each and every change in form the program has adopted since its first broadcast in 1978, has been a reflection of a certain aspect or element of the arch of political reform in the country, and has been widely interpreted as such, thus making it ‘the toughest nut to crack’ in news reform. Throughout its 35 years of history, by striving to represent, maintain, adapt and disseminate the established ideological framework, thus ensuring political reform has progressed at a cautious and gradual pace acceptable to the ruling party, Xinwen Lianbo has proven to be a great example of the construction of political reality by journalistic text on the symbolic level. This article adopts the methodology of new social history with semi-participatory observation as it combs through the evolution of Xinwen Lianbo over 35 years, in an attempt to explore the patterns and paths of Chinese journalistic reform and the factors that have come to shape this journey in the broader context of political reform in China.     

Barriers to Cross-Systems Collaboration in Child Welfare,Education, and the Courts: Supporting Educational Well-being of Youth in Care Through Systems Change

Cross-systems collaboration between child welfare, education, and the courts benefits when challenges and priorities are identified early. We measured perceptions of educational stability in foster youth with a statewide survey of 1,603 professionals in education, child welfare, and the courts. Results reveal commonalities among perceived challenges to collaboration across systems (e.g., multiple foster care placements; school changes) and differences in perceived importance or significance of a given issue by professional group. Results guided collaborative work in Kansas and may assist other states seeking strategies that inform cross-systems collaboration to improve educational well-being for youth in foster care.     

‘Rise of the Great Powers’=Rise of China? Challenges of the advancement of global history in the People's Republic of China

Ever since it was first broadcasted in 2006, the Rise of the Great Powers, a popular Chinese TV mini-series of 12 episodes, has received great attention both at home and abroad. Some have suggested that the showing of this series marked a new orientation in China's foreign policy and a new perception of its position in the world. Using oral interviews and written works by the historians who masterminded the project, this article analyzes the view of the Chinese historian, and of current Chinese leadership, about the globalizing world today and China's position in and relation to it. Using the documentary as a starting point, it discusses the status quo of world-history study in China today and argues that though receptive to the incentive for globalizing history writing, historical scholarship in China remains grounded in a Eurocentric understanding of modern world history. China's recent economic expansion has paradoxically reinforced this tradition, as the country is bracing for its own world power status.     

Envisioning Public Child Welfare Agencies as Learning Organizations: Applying Beer's Viable System Model to Title IV-E Program Evaluation

The idea of a learning organization emerges from organizational cybernetics and results in agency staff having the means to use their skills and expertise to meet the needs of the organization's clients. Relevant to Title IV-E training programs, such organizational processes would maximize the use of knowledge and skills the graduates bring back to the agency. This article uses focus group data to explore how Title IV-E graduates perceive the potentialities of their agency as a learning organization. This analysis results in recommendations to improve organizational performance without impinging on existing agency resource constraints.     

Power to the People? Villagers' self-rule in a North China village from the locals' point of view

This article examines ethnographically the implementation of the Organic Law and practice of ‘villagers’ self-rule' in a North China village from 2003 to 2004. Based on in-depth interviews and participant observation, it recounts the election of a villagers' committee and the functioning of a ‘democratic supervisory small group’. It shows that critical disparities exist between what Chinese policymakers and many scholars argue for on the one hand (for instance, enhancing cadre accountability, empowering ordinary villagers, and promoting grassroots democracy), and how most villagers view the actual practices on the other. It concludes that the locals' negative views are not idiosyncratic, the vision of ‘rule by the people’ remains difficult to take root, and that local metaphors are resourcefully used to make sense of newly-introduced practices.     

China as a latecomer: Toward a global logic of the open policy

The paper reviews a number of substantive issue‐areas in China's foreign economic sector (the foreign trade system, industrial and geographical targeting, foreign investment regulations, and the foreign exchange regime), finding that conventional mercantilist accounts of China's recent success in world markets are overstated. In fact, the paper argues that the most salient changes occurring in China's foreign economic sector are now in many respects beyond the immediate control of the state. In this vein, it is argued that most scholars have seriously underestimated the structuring impact of the international political economy on China's reform and opening. Indeed, the paper maintains that there is a ‘global’ logic to the evolution of the Open Policy, just as others have identified an ‘economic’ or ‘political’ logic to foreign trade reform, the creation of the SEZs, liberalization of investment laws, the loosening of foreign exchange controls, and other such changes. The paper concludes, therefore, that there is much about the course of China's reform and deepening integration into the world economy that can be understood as a function of its position as a latecomer in the international system.     

Scaling the Socioeconomic Ladder: Uyghur perceptions of class status

This paper asks: do most Uyghurs perceive themselves to be middle class or lower class? What are the major determinants of their perceptions? Data are drawn from a 2007 survey (N = 900) conducted in Ürümchi in China. This paper focuses on individualized and subjective hierarchical differentiation and reports three main findings about class identity among Uyghurs. Firstly, class identity is not closely linked to occupational attainment and income among Uyghurs. However, education is a key determinant of Uyghur class identification. Secondly, psychological well-being measures are not predictors of the choice of class label by Uyghurs. Thirdly, ethnic consciousness is closely related to class identification among Uyghurs, holding main background characteristics constant. Uyghurs give more attention to their group concerns (discrimination, prejudices, intergroup inequality, etc.) than to their individual worries (such as unemployment or stress) when choosing a class label.     

Resident-Defined Neighborhood Mapping: Using GIS to Analyze Phenomenological Neighborhoods

Using a natural quasi-experimental pretest/posttest design, residents in randomly selected homes in a suburb of Los Angeles were surveyed about their perceptions of their neighborhoods with respect to cohesion and sense of community. Responses from the pretest surveys—administered before the construction of a freeway that would bisect the city—were compared to the responses from the posttest survey six years later, administered two years after completion of the freeway. Respondents living adjacent to the new freeway—residents who experienced a fourfold increase in the average decibel levels in their neighborhoods since the freeway opened—reported both a lower sense of community and smaller neighborhood areas as compared to residents not living adjacent to the freeway and as compared to the results from the pretest. The analysis of the data incorporated geographic information system (GIS) software to allow for the analysis of phenomenological neighborhoods—neighborhoods as defined by respondents. This Resident-defined Neighborhood Mapping methodology permitted us to analyze neighborhoods as the respondents outlined them, not as they were preconceived by someone outside the neighborhood. It is suggested that this new methodology may prove useful in advancing the field of neighborhood research by detecting neighborhood-level change that traditional methods may miss.     

Urban Residents’ Prejudice and Integration of Rural Migrants into Urban China

Using data from a 2011 national household survey, this study examines the factors shaping urban residents’ prejudice toward rural-to-urban migrants and the impacts of prejudice on rural migrants’ integration into urban communities. The author addresses the endogeneity of the prejudice variable by employing an instrumental variable method. The results show that urban residents with higher education and household income report stronger prejudice. Also, urban residents with urban hukou at birth are more prejudiced toward rural migrants. Given that hukou status at birth is tied to parental hukou status, this result implies that prejudice can be transferred across generations. With regards to rural migrants’ integration into urban communities, high levels of prejudice in one’s current county of residence reduces perceived social standing of rural migrants and increases the number of livelihood problems they encounter. The author also conducts a falsification test, which provides support that the effect of urban residents’ prejudice on rural migrants’ integration is causal.     

论教育赶超战略与西部民族地区发展

文章从分析研究西部民族地区的具体情况出发,借鉴国际先进有效的做法和经验,提出了通过大力普及和发展教育,提高人的素质,开发和利用好人力资源,促进科技进步和经济发展的“教育赶超战略”。同时指出,实施好教育赶超战略,是我国西部民族地区全面建设小康社会的必然选择。     

A marginal return?—The problematic in Zhang Chengzhi's reinvention of ethnic identity

Amidst frantic economic and social changes in China today, Zhang Chengzhi, like most other humanists, must redefine the humanist role and reconfigure his individual identity accordingly. What he does is to rediscover his ethnic identity as a Muslim Chinese, which rehearses a problematic shared by other humanists: self‐reinvention must be contested and negotiated via social contingency and acculturation; one cannot renew a cultural entity without recourse to ‘the other‘—an allegorical subject, a suppressed ethnicity or a transcendental self. Zhang overcomes the void of a disoriented self by first recounting the muted history of Jahriyya Muslims (in his book History of the Soul) from the narrative stance of ‘a defamiliarized self and then engaging the primordial with the circumstantial in his effort to evoke the obscured awareness of his ethnic root. In his next book The Heroes’ Paths in Wilderness, Zhang recaptures key moments of his recuperation from the disoriented self through his psychoanalytic diagnosis of Lu Xun, his mirror image. The dialogic probing at the other in fact locates himself in the paradox between the historicity of the ethnic identity and the spirituality of a transcendent self. But his ambiguity toward a self/other reversal leaves us in question about his readiness to continue this fluid, open‐ended interaction and his ability to avert possible pitfalls of ethnocentrism.     

Gated Communities and Migrant Enclaves: the conundrum for building ‘harmonious community/shequ’

This article looks at the Chinese state's community/shequ building effort to govern a more heterogeneous and mobile population in urban China so that a ‘harmonious society’ (hexie shehui) can be achieved. Shequ building initiatives move away from the governance model based on direct government and administrative control, and toward a new model of structured community self-governance. Within some communities, this new model has faced challenges that appear to arise from the new diversity of interests that characterize Chinese cities today. The article acknowledges that social complexity often begets organizational challenges for emerging shequ organizations; but it also suggests that the social simplification of individual shequ is a tendency that has wider negative social implications and needs itself to be resisted.     

Citizen Empowerment

Abstract

Since the late 1970s, the notion of empowerment has appeared with increasing frequency in discussion of preventive social and community intervention. While the idea of empowerment is intuitively appealing both for theory and practice, its applicability has been limited by continuing conceptual ambiguity. Based on a small ?^G study of emerging citizen leaders in grassroots organizations, this article proposes a view of empowerment as a necessarily long-term process of adult learning and development. In this framework, empowerment is further described as the continuing construction of a multi-dimensional participatory competence. This conception encompasses both cognitive and behavioral change. Implications for practice are also addressed.     

Chinese Employee Class: an analysis using a three-dichotomy segmentation approach

As the ‘World's Factory’, China now has the biggest worker/employee class in the world. Though this newly emerging social group has captured much attention, relatively few scholars have paid attention to such sociological questions as raised by this paper: rather than referring to such a huge group of almost 500 million people simply as ‘Chinese workers’ or ‘Chinese employees’, can this social class be stratified and in what way? What is the current situation of the employee class in China's contemporary industrial relations? This paper attempts to concisely answer the above questions by proposing a three dichotomy segmentation approach and a review of the existing literature on the matter, providing a broader picture to the readers with regards to the current situations of different employee groups in the context of China's unprecedented transitional economy.