Article
Основные проблемы современных немецких городов с точки зрения немецкой социологии города
In this issue we present a range of papers about current issues and developments in social work and welfare in Russia. In the Soviet era official state policy did not recognise the existence of social problems so social work was ‘not needed’ in the USSR, a situation which existed to varying degrees in other countries under state socialism (Iarskaia-Smirnova, 2013). The disciplines of sociology and psychology (which could form a basis for critical thinking and professional interventions) were eliminated from university curricula, except in forms which accorded with the dominant political view, and dissent was repressed. There have been major changes in political thinking, societal attitudes and welfare developments since perestroika started in 1985, and particularly since 1991 when the Soviet Union was dissolved, Russia then became open to relationships with western powers and capitalist economic thinking. However, Russia remains a considerable independent power with a distinct history and culture. In this editorial we give a brief overview of the historical and other contextual factors which are informing the particular nature and direction of current developments, some aspects of which are described in the articles.
Social Workers Affecting Social Policy is the first book to undertake a cross-national study of social worker engagement in social-policy formulation processes. At its core, it asks how social workers influence social policy in various national settings. It offers insights into social worker involvement in policy change, the social work discourse, and education in different countries. It will be of interest to social work practitioners, students, educators, and researchers, as well as to social-policy scholars.
Visual sources play a growing role in historical studies as well as in teaching as they offer new routes to understanding the past. The ways to construct and define social problems as well as approaches to solving them varied in different periods of history. To do so, it is important to challenge an ideological base of such concepts that often are taken-for-granted, to learn how to consider images as a means to conceive the world, as an important form of social knowledge. What are the differences on men’s and women’s labor in care work? How these distinctions were represented in certain sources and for which purposes? Photographs and episodes from the films, posters and cartoons depicting various images of men and women in the roles of parents, tutors, social care workers, nurses can be used not just as illustrations or representations but also as an important element of a studied context – as important as official documents or personal narratives. The aim of this lecture is to contribute to social work training by providing an overview of experiences, theories and methodologies on the visual, by collecting and building knowledge based on visual material and demonstrating its relevance to the study of human behavior, social networks and welfare policies.
In the article, the symbolic map of dangerous and scary urban places is reconstructed on the basis of the social representations concept. The coordinate system of this 'symbolic map of fears and risks' is represented by the following constructs: 'the City - the Non-City' and 'Me - the Other'. It is argued that, as perceived by urban residents, fearsome places are mainly connected with 'the Others' in the city.
This article outlines a range of the general and the unique features of the social work’s development in Russia. It explores the historic context of Soviet rule and period of transition, describes the postsocialist development of social services as well as establishment of social work as an occupation in early 1990s, and concludes by tracing general trends in the development of social work.
Ein Weltatlas Soziale Arbeit weckt Assoziationen und Erwartungen an kartografische Überblicke (Spillmann 2007, S. 155ff.). Wer 2013 auf den Internetseiten von tagesschau.de herumsurft, findet ebenfalls einen Link mit dem Titel ‚Weltatlas‘. Dahinter verbirgt sich eine Weltkarte, in der sich beim Anklicken differenzierte Informationen über die Länder sowie politischen Ereignisse in den ausgewählten Regionen finden lassen. Hätten wir diesen Anspruch an den vorliegenden ‚Weltatlas Sozialer Arbeit‘, so wäre es ein unverschämtes Projekt; denn insgesamt liegt kein ausreichendes Wissen zur Sozialen Arbeit in den unterschiedlichen Regionen dieser „Welt“ vor, damit ein Buch diesem Anspruch – wörtlich genommen – auch nur in Ansätzen gerecht werden könnte. Die internationale und transnationale Forschung zur Sozialen Arbeit lässt entsprechend gar keine lexikalische Vermessung Sozialer Arbeit zu. Es würde immer nur ein blasses Abbild dieser Welt bleiben. Dennoch haben wir uns für diesen Titel entschieden und dies aus zweierlei Gründen: Zunächst sehen wir den Titel als Aufruf, sich stärker auch in der hiesigen Forschung mit internationalen und transnationalen Zugängen in der Sozialen Arbeit auseinanderzusetzen. Darum haben wir uns nicht gescheut, in der Mehrzahl Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler anzusprechen, die in der deutschsprachigen Forschung in den vergangenen Jahren zu ausgewählten Zugängen Sozialer Arbeit zu unterschiedlichen Regionen oder in transnationalen sowie internationalen Perspektiven geforscht haben. Wir haben aber auch den Begriff ‚Weltatlas‘ gewählt, um den Leserinnen und Lesern zu zeigen, wie und dass gegenwärtig in „unseren“ sozialpädagogischen Welten Zugänge der Sozialen Arbeit diskursiv zusammen mit Verortungen in unterschiedliche Weltregionen hergestellt werden und in der Sozialen Arbeit vielfältige Grenzarbeit (Schröer/Schweppe 2013) geleistet wird.
The paper explores the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) parish-based social work specifics. The Russian government call for Church participation in welfare provision on the one hand and the emphasize on the social work in church life, made by Patriarchy, on the other, are followed by the attempts of the parish-based social practices formalization. Analyzing the quantitative and qualitative data on parish-based social work in Russia, authors make the evaluation of the ROC’s social work scope in the country and characterize this’ activity specific features in comparison with the professional social work. The article comes to the conclusion, that the bigger part of the parish-based social work in Russia is performed as informal practices of daily mutual aid by non-professionals and it doesn’t fit narrow frame of the professional aid to the needy. The authors suggest, that the attempts of the church social work professionalization, such as formal reports and quantitative indicators may push parishes towards the minimization of their informal social activity, so significant for general population.
Several approaches to the concept of fatherhood present in Western sociological tradition are analyzed and compared: biological determinism, social constructivism and biosocial theory. The problematics of fatherhood and men’s parental practices is marginalized in modern Russian social research devoted to family and this fact makes the traditional inequality in family relations, when the father’s role is considered secondary compared to that of mother, even stronger. However, in Western critical men’s studies several stages can be outlined: the development of “sex roles” paradigm (biological determinism), the emergence of the hegemonic masculinity concept, inter-disciplinary stage (biosocial theory). According to the approach of biological determinism, the role of a father is that of the patriarch, he continues the family line and serves as a model for his ascendants. Social constructivism looks into man’s functions in the family from the point of view of masculine pressure and establishing hegemony over a woman and children. Biosocial theory aims to unite the biological determinacy of fatherhood with social, cultural and personal context. It is shown that these approaches are directly connected with the level of the society development, marriage and family perceptions, the level of egality of gender order.
This article is talking about state management and cultural policy, their nature and content in term of the new tendency - development of postindustrial society. It mentioned here, that at the moment cultural policy is the base of regional political activity and that regions can get strong competitive advantage if they are able to implement cultural policy successfully. All these trends can produce elements of new economic development.