scholarly journals Mama! I hear your silence: Grief and COVID-19 on the Global North and South disparity

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 142-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magnus Mfoafo-M’Carthy
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global North ◽  
Intimate Link ◽  
Mother’S Voice ◽  
North And South

In this conversation with Mama, I use my mother’s voice as a reflexive mirror to explore the social work silences that the COVID-19 pandemic expresses so eloquently in my own life and work. I seek to highlight the intimate link between Mama’s silence and social work silence.

The Politics of Debt and Europe's Relations with the 'South'

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Essential Feature ◽  
The South ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Past Injustice ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Individual ◽  
North And South

While debt has the capacity to sustain social relations by joining together the two parties of a debt relation, it also contains the risk of deteriorating into domination and bargaining. Throughout history, different understandings of debt have therefore gravitated between reciprocity and domination, making it a key concept for understanding the dynamics of both social cohesion and fragmentation. The book considers the social, spatial and temporal meanings of this ambiguity and relates them to contemporary debates over debts between North and South in Europe, which in turn are embedded in a longer global history of North-South relations. The individual chapters discuss how debts incurred in the past are mobilised in political debates in the present. This dynamic is highlighted with regard to regional and global North-South relations. An essential feature in debates on this topic is the difficult question of retribution and possible ways of “paying” – a term that is etymologically connected to “pacification” – for past injustice. Against this backdrop, the book combines a discussion of the multi-layered European and global North-South divide with an effort to retrieve alternatives to the dominant and divisive uses of debt for staking out claims against someone or something. Discovering new and forgotten ways of thinking about debt and North-South relations, the chapters are divided into four sections that focus on 1) debt and social theory, 2) Greece and Germany as Europe’s South and North, 3) the ‘South’ between the local, the regional and the global, and 4) debt and the politics of history.

scholarly journals The gendered effects of entrepreneurialism in contrasting contexts

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Malin Tillmar ◽  
Helene Ahl ◽  
Karin Berglund ◽  
Katarina Pettersson
Keyword(s):  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Careful Analysis ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Social ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Experiences Of Women ◽  
North And South

Purpose Contrasting Sweden and Tanzania, this paper aims to explore the experiences of women entrepreneurs affected by entrepreneurialism. This study discusses the impact on their position in society and on their ability to take feminist action. Design/methodology/approach This paper analysed interviews conducted in the two countries over 15 years, using a holistic perspective on context, including its gendered dimensions. Findings The results amount to a critique of entrepreneurialism. Women in Sweden did not experience much gain from entrepreneurship, while in Tanzania results were mixed. Entrepreneurialism seems unable to improve the situation for women in the relatively well-functioning economies in the global north, where it was designed. Research limitations/implications In mainstream entrepreneurship studies, there is a focus on the institutional context. From the analysis, it is apparent that equal attention must be given to the social and spatial contexts, as they may have severe material and economic consequences for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. The paper raises questions for further studies on the gendering of markets in different contexts, as well as questions on the urban-rural dimension. Practical implications In Sweden, marketisation of welfare services led to more women-owned businesses, but the position of women did not improve. The results strongly convey the need for a careful analysis of the pre-existing context, before initiating reforms. Originality/value The paper adds to the understanding of context in entrepreneurship studies: Africa is largely an underexplored continent and contrasting North and South is an underexplored methodological approach. This paper further extends and develops the model of gendered contexts developed by Welter et al. (2014).

scholarly journals Introduction to the symposium: seed as a commons—exploring innovative concepts and practices of governing seed and varieties

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie Sievers-Glotzbach ◽  
Anja Christinck
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
Transformative Power ◽  
Global Commons ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global North ◽  
Legal Frameworks ◽  
Cultural Commons ◽  
Initial Starting ◽  
North And South

Abstract This Symposium explores how the theory of commons can be used to study, conceptualize and transform governance models for seed and plant varieties to counter ongoing trends towards agrobiodiversity loss and concentration of economic and political power in farming and food systems. Contributions to the Symposium present case studies from a range of geographical and socio-cultural contexts from the Global North and South. They show how seed and varieties relate to various known commons categories, including natural resource commons, knowledge and cultural commons, and global commons. Elements of these categories need to be integrated to gain a deeper understanding of Seed Commons, including the specific challenges that arise from the fact that seed, although a biological asset, is at least partly shaped by human selection driven by values, knowledge and needs of users. Collective responsibility, sharing of knowledge and seed, protection from private enclosure, and distributed, polycentric governance are key features of Seed Commons. The notion of ‘commoning’ focuses on the social practices and processes that create and sustain commons. Conceptualizing Seed Commons in their complexity offers initial starting points for policies and legal frameworks conducive to releasing the transformative power of Seed Commons for advancing sustainable farming and food systems.

Development Education in the Age of COVID-19 and Climate Change

2022 ◽  
pp. 472-492
Author(s):  
Stephen McCloskey
Keyword(s):  
Social Needs ◽  
Active Citizenship ◽  
Development Education ◽  
South Central ◽  
Poverty And Inequality ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Global North ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
North And South

Development education (DE) is a radical learning pedagogy that combines analysis, discussion, and action to engage the learner in active citizenship toward positive social change. This chapter discusses the contribution that DE and other related ‘educations' can make to mitigating the climate crisis and addressing the growing levels of poverty and inequality in the global North and South. Central to this discussion is the neoliberal economic model that has driven ‘development' since the 1970s and placed the needs of the market above the social needs of citizens. This has become particularly apparent during the coronavirus pandemic which has overwhelmed the health services of countries across the world. The chapter argues for a more sustainable form of development based on de-growth and a Green New Deal.

Social Work Scholarship on Forced Migration: A Scoping Review

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Odessa Gonzalez Benson ◽  
Karin Wachter ◽  
Jessica Lee ◽  
Darlene Nichols ◽  
Erica Hylton
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Scoping Review ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Large Majority ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global North

Abstract This scoping review identifies and analyses historical to present–day contributions of social work scholarship on forced migration, with the aim of reviewing trends and identifying priority areas for the discipline moving forward. This review examined 331 articles related to forced migration published in 40 social work journals over four decades (1978 to 2019). Findings illustrate notable trends in temporal, methodological, topical and geographical dimensions and how those vary by first authors' locations, research sites and study populations. Temporally, the number of articles has been increasing, quadrupling between 2001–2010 and 2011–2019, with 20 social work journals doubling their number of articles. Methodologically, the large majority of articles were qualitative and/or conceptual. Topically, the most common were practice, intervention, health and mental health, while the least common topics included human rights, social justice, poverty, religion, violence, history and theory. Geographically, social work scholarship was mainly focused on refugees in the Global North and third-country resettlement contexts, and authored by scholars in the Global North. Findings thus reveal critical gaps in topics and geographical biases, raising questions related to issues of ethics, power and the production of knowledge about forced migration in the social work academy.

scholarly journals From the post-industrial prophecy to the de-industrial nightmare: Stagnation, the manufacturing fetish and the limits of capitalist wealth

2021 ◽  
pp. 102452942110443
Author(s):  
Alexis Moraitis
Keyword(s):  
Economic Security ◽  
Technical Aspects ◽  
Industrial Age ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Stagnation ◽  
Global North ◽  
Physical Output ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Social Wealth ◽  
North And South

The post-2008 era saw a return of the manufacturing fetish, the idea that manufacturing constitutes the flywheel of growth without which no nation can thrive. Across the Global North and South, voices are calling to reverse deindustrialization and revive manufacturing. While today deindustrialization is met with anxiety, in the 1930s economists predicted deindustrialization but interpreted it as a liberating process leading to a post-industrial age based on material abundance and widespread economic security. Far from delivering this vision, deindustrialization actually produces a precarious economic order driven by labour precarity, economic stagnation and lost development opportunities for the Global South. What can be termed the Baumolian and Kaldorian frameworks, attribute this precarious reality to services’ inability to replace manufacturing as a growth engine given their technologically stagnant nature. However, this article argues that, by focusing on the technical aspects of service economies, such views overlook the social limits of the capitalist economy and its historically specific conception of wealth, value. As capitalism matures, productivity becomes an increasingly inadequate form of augmenting social wealth as it results in great increases in physical output but counterintuitively undermines the expansion of value. Capitalism is underpinned by a secular movement towards declining dynamism, as it increasingly struggles to maintain its former economic vigour. Stagnation and heightened labour precarity are not merely the product of tertiarization but symptoms of capitalism’s declining trajectory.

Introduction: new economies North and South – sharing the transition to a just and sustainable future

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter North ◽  
Molly Scott Cato
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social Entrepreneurship ◽  
Social Enterprise ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Social Economy ◽  
Solidarity Economy ◽  
Sustainable Future ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global North ◽  
North And South

This chapter sets the scene for the edited collection which follows it, recounting the findings of an international conversation on the social and solidarity economies between participants from Europe and Latin America. It discusses problems and possibilities for learning and policy transference between different places, acknowledging the power relations involved between global north and south, centre and periphery. It introduces a four part conceptualisation of the social and solidarity economy sector between Social Enterprise and Social Entrepreneurship; the inclusive Social Economy; the Solidarity Economy, working on conceptions of how we want to live in a climate constrained world, and the Antagonistic Economy, challenging pathological aspects of contemporary neoliberalism.

scholarly journals Intercountry adoption and the social production of abandonment

2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 271-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riitta Högbacka
Keyword(s):  
Social Workers ◽  
South African ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Intercountry Adoption ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Birth Mothers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global North ◽  
North And South ◽  
Adoption System

Although the objective of intercountry adoption is to provide parentless children with families, it also has other unintended consequences. Postcolonial theorists have shown that the intercountry adoption system is shaped by unequal power relations between the Global North and South. Drawing on interviews with South African adoption social workers and birth mothers, this article shifts attention from Global North perspectives to those of the Global South. By focusing on the circumstances of how children become available for adoption, some of the ways in which the adoption system participates in creating the pool of ‘abandoned’ children are explicated.

Development Education in the Age of COVID-19 and Climate Change

2021 ◽  
pp. 153-173
Author(s):  
Stephen McCloskey
Keyword(s):  
Social Needs ◽  
Active Citizenship ◽  
Development Education ◽  
South Central ◽  
Poverty And Inequality ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Global North ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
North And South

Development education (DE) is a radical learning pedagogy that combines analysis, discussion, and action to engage the learner in active citizenship toward positive social change. This chapter discusses the contribution that DE and other related ‘educations' can make to mitigating the climate crisis and addressing the growing levels of poverty and inequality in the global North and South. Central to this discussion is the neoliberal economic model that has driven ‘development' since the 1970s and placed the needs of the market above the social needs of citizens. This has become particularly apparent during the coronavirus pandemic which has overwhelmed the health services of countries across the world. The chapter argues for a more sustainable form of development based on de-growth and a Green New Deal.

Social Work in Germany. Developments in a professional field and academic discipline

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-11
Author(s):  
Caroline Schmitt ◽  
Matthias D. Witte
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
Social Question ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global North ◽  
Professional Field ◽  
Insight Into

In many countries of the Global North, social work developed as an independent profession and discipline in the 20th century. One of the countries in which social work became established as a professional field was Germany. This field's origins go back to the “social question”. The articles in this volume deal with current social work issues, offering an insight into the current state of discussion on each topic in Germany. They all draw attention to the complex interplay between local social work and the field’s expansion beyond individual places and national states, and the interconnections between national societal developments in Germany and those on an international, global level.

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