Social Well-being

Every one of us on the planet is a unique individual, a person in our own right, with our own unique perspective. Of course, there are various things that people can have in common – the influence of culture and upbringing, for example. We will share certain views with particular groups of people because of political affiliation, religious belief, educational experience or whatever, and so there will generally be considerable overlap between, say, my perspective and that of many other people. However, there will not be a single person whose outlook will be exactly like mine. Even identical twins will have significant differences of perspective on certain issues. One of the implications of this is that conflict is inevitable. By…

Sociology of the American Indian by Gerry R. Cox, Edwin Mellen Press, ISBN 9 781495 503191 Guest post by Dr Sue Thompson The discriminatory treatment of minority groups is something that still exercises us to this day, but it has a long history. A significant part of this history is the way Native American nations were displaced and marginalised by the European settlers. Much has changed since those early days, but the legacy of those events is still with us. In this important text, sociologist Professor Gerry Cox provides a fascinating and thought-provoking overview of a range of key issues relating to the life experiences of contemporary American Indian groups. At over 600 pages it is a lengthy tome that…

Robert Adams was one of the most successful and highly respected authors of his generation. His death on New Year’s Eve at the age of 70 therefore means that the world of human services is now much the poorer. He was a prolific author and editor, with his work being extremely well received in social work and social care and the human services more broadly. He shared with me and many others a commitment to trying to make sure that social work was not seen as something separate from the wider field of intervening in human problems. In all this his compassion and integrity came shining through. Jo Campling, the renowned publishing adviser, was keen that Robert and I should…

A – Z of Groups and Groupwork by Mark Doel and Timothy B. Kelly, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, ISBN 978 0 230 30857 2, 9 + 241pp. This book is part of a new series of A to Z books from Palgrave Macmillan. As the name implies, each book contains a set of dictionary-style definitions covering different aspects of the subject concerned, in this case groups and groupwork. Groupwork is a method that can be very effective in a variety of ways, a powerful way of bringing about much-needed change in what can often be very demanding circumstances. Sadly, it is not used as much as it used to be, but its value as a helpful resource remains unchanged and there…

A recent survey carried out by HR Magazine found that a high proportion of organisations were claiming to take diversity issues seriously but only 57% had a diversity strategy in place. This reminds me of the early days of anti-discriminatory practice when there was a lot of rhetoric about the importance of tackling discrimination and oppression, but nowhere near as much evidence of concrete steps being taken to promote equality by translating the verbal commitment into actual practice. Tokenism is what it was called in those days, so perhaps that’s what we are seeing today. Back then an additional problem was that much of the discussion generated more heat than light and led to a lot of people backing off…