Methodology

Abstract

Any discussions about specialized helping environments for children or young people would be incomplete without reference to the relationships found between practices in group care centers and schools. This involves thinking of a child's total environment as a curriculum for teaching competencies and learning outcomes important to daily living. The task involves making a conscious effort to deal with a child's functioning in the present, thereby avoiding diagnostic conclusions that emphasize difficulties in one area of their life as the cause of learning problems.     

Chapter 11. The Economics of Group Care Practice

Abstract

For the past two decades, economic influences have significantly impacted the provision of health and welfare services for children, young people and their families in communities around the world. The dynamic of cost has reshaped both the nature and provision of group care services, promoting de-institutionalization and transforming the nature of caring services offered in local communities. In a reappraisal of themes identified in his seminal contribution more than two decades ago, this leading authority looks back at key themes impacting on the economics of social care that shape group care services for the new millennium.     

The politics of global assessments: the case of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge,Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD)

The IAASTD – the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development – which ran between 2003 and 2008, involving over 400 scientists worldwide, was an ambitious attempt to encourage local and global debate on the future of agricultural science and technology. Responding to critiques of top-down, northern-dominated expert assessments of the past, the IAASTD aimed to be more inclusive and participatory in both design and process. But to what extent did it meet these objectives? Did it genuinely allow alternative voices to be heard? Did it create a new mode of engagement in global arenas? And what were the power relations involved, creating what processes of inclusion and exclusion? These questions are probed in an examination of the IAASTD process over five years, involving a combination of interviews with key participants and review of available documents. The paper focuses in particular on two areas of controversy – the use of quantitative scenario modelling and the role of genetically-modified crops in developing country agriculture. These highlight some of the knowledge contests involved in the assessment and, in turn, illuminate four questions at the heart of contemporary democratic theory and practice: how do processes of knowledge framing occur; how do different practices and methodologies get deployed in cross-cultural, global processes; how is ‘representation’ constructed and legitimised; and how, as a result, do collective understandings of global issues emerge? The paper concludes that, in assessments of this sort, the politics of knowledge needs to be made more explicit, and negotiations around politics and values, framings and perspectives, need to be put centre-stage in assessment design.     

互动:操纵的传媒与传媒的操纵——浅析新闻传媒与美国政治之间的相互影响

在美国,新闻作为一种特殊的政治力量,在一定程度上改变着政治结构,而政治又在某种程度上影响着新闻的形成.这使得新闻传媒自觉或不自觉地成为一种被操纵的工具;而传媒也反过来影响政治及统治者本身.政治与传媒的互动形成“你中有我、我中有你”的动态平衡,从而使传媒政治化、政治社会化.     

城市职业青年群体的分化及其对策研究

随着我国经济社会结构的逐步转型与知识经济的兴起 ,城市职业青年群体之间的分化正日益凸显。知识青年与未进大学校门的一般青年之间 ,在就业状况、工资性收入、职业流动、继续教育状况、经济社会地位的自我认定、政治参与及生活质量等方面呈现出显著差异。正视职业青年群体的分化应成为我们制定青年政策的出发点     

Gender,HipHop and Pop-Islam: the urban identities of Muslim youth in Germany

While many opponents construe the growing presence of Muslim headscarves in Germany as evidence of creeping Islamicization, religious activism can also be interpreted as an attempt on the part of migrant offspring to forge positive ‘hyphenated identities’, rooted in urban culture, material consumption, and specific mosque communities. Islam has become ‘young, chic and cool’ among ethnic minorities, often denied citizenship and opportunity in their country of birth owing to jus sanguinis and/or other complex naturalization requirements. Religiosity, in turn, is slowly giving rise to new types of civic engagement, leading more ethnic youth to pursue German citizenship. Drawing on representative surveys, inter alia, this essay argues that while not problem free, an emerging Pop-Islam movement has provided Muslimas especially with an important platform for breaking with traditional gender roles, building social capital and acquiring the participatory skills necessary to bring ‘civil society’ into their own communities. It moreover infers that national policies banning headscarves in public service professions are increasingly at odds with European Union directives addressing gender equality and religious discrimination.     

Re/visioning the women's movement in Israel

Current literature on the women's movement argues that in recent decades, a schism based on the politics of identity has divided women and led to the weakening of the movement. This process, intersecting with the escalation of neoliberal trends and the ‘NGOization’ of civil society, has resulted in the depoliticization of the women's movement and the waning of its influence as a political force. The present paper seeks to examine whether this argument is consistent with the situation in the Israeli women's movement of the early twenty-first century. Based on the history of the women's movement in Israel, the paper posits a twofold argument: (a) the women's movement in Israel has not disappeared but has been restructured as a result of its NGOization; (b) despite criticism of the movement in the literature and on the part of activists as the result of its NGOization, the movement's political messages have remained intact and even expanded to embrace questions of social justice, including novel thinking on matters of peace and security.     

关于监狱青年警察成长问题的考察报告

青年警察是监狱事业的未来和希望。应当看到,青年警察是监狱事业发展的重要力量,目前他们的主流是积极的,是符合未来社会、未来监狱事业发展要求的;同时,他们中的一些警察中存在的种种问题,也值得引起我们的高度关注。未来一个时期对青年警察的工作思路可以作如下概括：客观分析、积极应对、正面引导、重在培养。     

Strategic Alliances: State-Business Relations in Mexico Under Neo-Liberalism and Crisis

Abstract – This paper examines how neoliberal policies implemented under Carlos Salinas Gortari (1988–1994) changed the nature of state-private sector relations in Mexico. The paper attempts to show how Mexico's entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) solidified a strategic alliance between the state and business. The drastic peso devaluation of December 1994 and the ensuing economic crisis however, threatened to shatter the very foundation of the new alliance with the private sector. This paper thus, explores how the Ernesto Zedillo regime (1994–2000) addressed the expectations of the capital class and strengthened its transparent ties with the private sector. The paper argues that given the nature of the more transparent strategic alliance formed under the Salinas administration, big business continues to be brought into the policy making process, and that in fact, Zedillo continues to intervene on the side of business.