Troubling solutions through anthropological fieldwork: Mediation research in Ghana, Australia, and the United States

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 1441-1460
Author(s):  
Alexandra Crampton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Research Goal ◽  
Anthropological Fieldwork ◽  
The One

Social workers and anthropologists encounter different representations of mediation as a professional practice: On the one hand, Social Work is grounded in mediation as expert knowledge that helps others to resolve interpersonal disputes. For example, mediation as Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) can enable court cases to resolve without formal trials. On the other hand, Anthropology is grounded in mediation as a research field site and by past intervention experience of anthropologists. As mediation professionalized and became mandated across public institutions, anthropologists became strong ADR critics. Academic debate between mediation proponents and critics ended as critics abandoned research in the 1990s and 2000s. My initial research goal was to pick up from past empirical study. Research was conducted in Australia, Ghana, and the United States in two areas of mediation practice; resolving parenting disputes between adults who are separating or not married, and “elder mediation” cases involving older adults. Initial findings reified past debate through data that supported proponents and critics. Further insight was gained through return to fieldwork using an expanded, ethnographic case study design. This article provides a journey through a seemingly intractable divide that was ultimately resolved through prolonged time in fieldwork focused on understanding client perspectives. I show how social work and anthropology scholars of professional mediation have been positioned on opposite sides of an expert knowledge/fieldwork research boundary. This boundary can be made productive through open exchange about mediation as a practice that evolves through an interplay of expert knowledge, intervention practice, and client engagement.

Is Distance to Drop Box an Appropriate Proxy for Drop Box Treatment? A Case Study of Washington State

2021 ◽  
pp. 1532673X2110221
Author(s):  
Loren Collingwood ◽  
Benjamin Gonzalez O’Brien
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
The United States ◽  
Washington State ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Primary 52 ◽  
The One ◽  
Vote By Mail

In the United States, drop box mail-in voting has increased, particularly in the all vote by mail (VBM) states of Washington, Colorado, Utah, and Oregon. To assess if drop boxes improve voter turnout, research proxies box treatment by voters’ residence distance to nearest drop box. However, no research has tested the assumption that voters use drop boxes nearest their residence more so than they do other drop boxes. Using individual-level voter data from a 2020 Washington State election, we show that voters are more likely to use the nearest drop box to their residence relative to other drop boxes. In Washington’s 2020 August primary, 52% of drop box voters in our data used their nearest drop box. Moreover, those who either (1) vote by mail, or (2) used a different drop box from the one closest to their residence live further away from their closest drop box. Implications are discussed.

Estimating Lightning NOx Production Using NO2 Columns from the TROPOMI Instrument and Flashes from the Geostationary Lightning Mappers

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Pickering ◽  
Dale Allen ◽  
Eric Bucsela ◽  
Jos van Geffen ◽  
Henk Eskes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Case Study Analysis ◽  
Convective Systems ◽  
Convective Clouds ◽  
Deep Convective Clouds ◽  
The One

<p>Nitric oxide (NO) is produced in lightning channels and quickly comes into equilibrium with nitrogen dioxide (NO<sub>2</sub>) in the atmosphere.  The production of NO<sub>x</sub> (NO + NO<sub>2</sub>) leads to subsequent increases in the concentrations of ozone (O<sub>3</sub>) and the hydroxyl radical (OH) and decreases in the concentration of methane (CH<sub>4</sub>), thus impacting the climate system.  Global production of NO<sub>x</sub> from lightning is uncertain by a factor of four.  NO<sub>x</sub> production by lightning will be examined using NO<sub>2</sub> columns from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) on board the Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor Satellite with an overpass time of approximately 1330 LT and flash rates from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) on board the NOAA GOES-16 (75.2° W) and GOES-17 (137.2° W) satellites.  Where there is overlap in coverage of the two GLM instruments, the greater of the two flash counts is used.  Two approaches have been undertaken for this analysis:  a series of case studies of storm systems over the United States, and a gridded analysis over the entire contiguous United States, Central America, northern South America, and surrounding oceans.  A modified Copernicus Sentinel 5P TROPOMI NO<sub>2</sub> data set is used here for the case-study analysis to improve data coverage over deep convective clouds.  In both approaches, only TROPOMI pixels with cloud fraction > 0.95 and cloud pressure < 500 hPa are used.  The stratospheric column is removed from the total slant column, and the result is divided by air mass factors appropriate for deep convective clouds containing lightning NO<sub>x</sub> (LNO<sub>x</sub>).  Case studies have been selected from deep convective systems over and near the United States during the warm seasons of 2018 and 2019.  For each of these systems, NO<sub>x</sub> production per flash is determined by multiplying a TROPOMI-based estimate of the mean tropospheric column of LNO<sub>x</sub> over each system by the storm area and then dividing by a GLM-based estimate of the flashes that contribute to the column.  In the large temporal and spatial scale analysis, the TROPOMI data are aggregated on a 0.5 x 0.5 degree grid and converted to moles LNO<sub>x</sub>*.  GLM flash counts during the one-hour period before TROPOMI overpass are similarly binned. A tropospheric background of LNO<sub>x</sub>* is estimated from grid cells without lightning and subtracted from LNO<sub>x</sub>* in cells with lightning to yield an estimate of freshly produced lightning NO<sub>x</sub>, designated LNO<sub>x</sub>.  Results of the two approaches are compared and discussed with respect to previous LNO<sub>x</sub> per flash estimates.</p><p> </p>

The Management of High-Security Prisoners

2019 ◽  
pp. 259-278
Author(s):  
Andrew Coyle
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Solitary Confinement ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Administrative Segregation ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
High Security ◽  
Good Order ◽  
The One ◽  
Vexed Question

This chapter deals with the vexed question, ‘If not solitary confinement, then what?’. The author describes his personal quest to find an answer this question throughout a professional lifetime during which he spent over two decades in the United Kingdom managing high security prisons where he tried to balance the obligations, on the one hand, to maintain security, safety and good order in each prison while, on the other hand, dealing in a decent and human manner with men who had the potential to be violent and dangerous. He recounts his early observations in the United States and Canada on the beginnings of what were to become ‘supermax’ and ‘administrative segregation’. Having spent a further two decades in academia researching this subject at an international level, he links his earlier experiences in North America with recent involvement in court cases in Canada and the United States. He concludes by laying out a series of operational principles which, if properly applied, are likely to lead to a dramatic reduction and eventually to the elimination of the use of solitary confinement.

scholarly journals Use of English in Ph.D. programs in Social Work in the United States. An illustrative case study of idiomatic hegemony

2021 ◽  
pp. 165-186
Author(s):  
Smitha Rao ◽  
◽  
Carlos Andrade ◽  
Javier Reyes-Martínez ◽  
Ignacio Eissmann-Araya ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Social Work Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Illustrative Case ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Illustrative Case Study ◽  
Work Education

This study reviews the experiences of non-native English-speaking students in Doctoral Social Work Education in the United States. The research, through a qualitative case study, interrogates regarding the centrality of English in education processes, and generates recommendations for improving them. Findings show that English can play a hegemonic role in Social Work Education and that some educators can exert discrimination based on language proficiency. Among recommendations are the need to promote reflexivity to contribute that educators reconnect with discipline principles as well as review the way their power is exerted in the classroom.

Social work approaches to mental health work: international trends

2012 ◽  
pp. 1408-1413
Author(s):  
Shulamit Ramon
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Managed Care ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Professional Status ◽  
For Profit ◽  
The One

Mental health social work is a broad, rather than a rigorous, church. Since the 1980s social workers have gained in professional status by the introduction of the roles of the approved social worker (or licensed to carry out civil commitment in the American context), care co-ordinators, managers of managed care facilities, or psychotherapists. These gains have come at a price outlined in the text above. Often the cost of closer collaboration within the multi-disciplinary framework has led to the risk of giving up the attempt to hold on to, and further develop, an alternative and complimentary perspective from that of psychiatrists, nurses, or psychologists, as well as raising doubts as to the uniqueness of MHSW. The increased narrowness of the role is not simply the byproduct of the legal framework. It is also due to increased specialization within mental health on the one hand, and the effects of neo- liberal policies globally on public sector funding on the other hand. The move to privately contracted work, either in managed care or in psychotherapy so apparent in the United States, is yet another outcome of neo-liberal policies which fragments MHSW. As a trend we are likely to see growing beyond the United States, the increased concentration of mental health social workers within the private sector does not bode well for a profession whose value base focuses on the need to protect the more vulnerable and stigmatized populations, and to provide the dual perspectives of psychosocial input. Mainly due to governmental pressure related to fear of risk and its potential political fallout, the focus on working exclusively with people experiencing long-term severe mental illness has contributed to the increasing narrowness of the role of social workers in most First World countries. The paralleled withdrawal of social work involvement with people who have milder forms of mental distress within public sector and not-for-profit services, and its increased availability only to those who can afford it, is a reflection of this situation. The core qualities of belief, optimism, and caring of MHSWs identified in a cross-national research coupled with the ability of MHSW to innovate as highlighted in this chapter, illustrate the optimistic scenario for positive change within this branch of social work. However, unless theory building and research aspects are given the importance they deserve within MHSW globally, including an inevitable critical dimension of the existing system, mental health social work is likely to be no more than a reflection of the developments in other professions. This will not only mean curtailing its autonomous potential, but also the impoverishment of the multi-disciplinary framework as a whole of a crucial dimension necessary for its comprehensive work, as exemplified in some recent work on the social aspects of MHSW. In addition, mental health social work will have to develop a much stronger policy making function, if it is to provide a more responsive, effective, and comprehensive service to users, relatives, and the communities in which these people live.

scholarly journals Outsiders and the Amateur Legislature: A Case Study of Legislative Politics

1986 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 22-34
Author(s):  
Arthur English ◽  
John J. Carroll
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Rhode Island ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Legislative Politics ◽  
United States Congress ◽  
Part Time ◽  
The One ◽  
Legislative Institutions

Political scientists have concentrated their analyses on the United States Congress and legislatures in the larger states, while developing a literature rich in insight on legislative institutions. But this literature has often overlooked that most typical, albeit declining, legislative phenomena, the amateur or citizens legislatures which are found in the smaller and more rural states. The defining difference between these two types of legislative institutions, i.e., between the "professionalized” Congress, California legislature, and the amateur Rhode Island or Arkansas General Assemblies, is that in the one legislators "legislate" for a living while in the other members serve part-time and draw their principal paychecks elsewhere.

Gendered differences in emigration and mobility perspectives among European researchers working abroad

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Scheibelhofer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
The Future ◽  
Highly Skilled

This paper focuses on gendered mobilities of highly skilled researchers working abroad. It is based on an empirical qualitative study that explored the mobility aspirations of Austrian scientists who were working in the United States at the time they were interviewed. Supported by a case study, the paper demonstrates how a qualitative research strategy including graphic drawings sketched by the interviewed persons can help us gain a better understanding of the gendered importance of social relations for the future mobility aspirations of scientists working abroad.

‘A Routh O’ Auld Nick-Nackets’ – the antiquarian collection of John Rae

2015 ◽  
Vol 36-37 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-183
Author(s):  
Paul Taylor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
The United States ◽  
Representative Case ◽  
National Museums ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The University

John Rae, a Scottish antiquarian collector and spirit merchant, played a highly prominent role in the local natural history societies and exhibitions of nineteenth-century Aberdeen. While he modestly described his collection of archaeological lithics and other artefacts, principally drawn from Aberdeenshire but including some items from as far afield as the United States, as a mere ‘routh o’ auld nick-nackets' (abundance of old knick-knacks), a contemporary singled it out as ‘the best known in private hands' (Daily Free Press 4/5/91). After Rae's death, Glasgow Museums, National Museums Scotland, the University of Aberdeen Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, as well as numerous individual private collectors, purchased items from the collection. Making use of historical and archive materials to explore the individual biography of Rae and his collection, this article examines how Rae's collecting and other antiquarian activities represent and mirror wider developments in both the ‘amateur’ antiquarianism carried out by Rae and his fellow collectors for reasons of self-improvement and moral education, and the ‘professional’ antiquarianism of the museums which purchased his artefacts. Considered in its wider nineteenth-century context, this is a representative case study of the early development of archaeology in the wider intellectual, scientific and social context of the era.

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