Stephanie Wahab - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Stephanie Wahab
American Journal of Public Health, 2010
Objectives. We sought to understand how African American women's beliefs regarding depression... more Objectives. We sought to understand how African American women's beliefs regarding depression and depression care are influenced by racism, violence, and social context. Methods. We conducted a focus group study using a community-based participatory research approach. Participants were low-income African American women with major depressive disorder and histories of violence victimization. Results. Thirty women participated in 4 focus groups. Although women described a vicious cycle of violence, depression, and substance abuse that affected their health, discussions about health care revolved around their perception of racism, with a deep mistrust of the health care system as a “White” system. The image of the “strong Black woman” was seen as a barrier to both recognizing depression and seeking care. Women wanted a community-based depression program staffed by African Americans that addressed violence and drug use. Conclusions. Although violence and drug use were central to our ...
Social work has experienced long-standing tensions between care and control since its inception. ... more Social work has experienced long-standing tensions between care and control since its inception. As shifting moral, social, political, intellectual, and market forces have historically shaped social work agendas and practices, so have feminists through politics, research, teaching, and praxis. While radical and critical social work has frequently pushed back against oppressive systems and movements, social work and feminist social work frequently find itself colluding with and/or being coopted by institutions and systems that oppress, coerce, and control certain people and communities. We need not look far for evidence of these tensions, including but not limited to social work practice and interventions steeped in carceral logics and rescue-based work poignantly evidenced by the now defunct Project Rose (Wahab & Panichelli, 2013). Gramsci (1992), pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will, captures the spirit from which we write this editorial, and we turn to paperson’s (2017) A T...
Although sex work has generated interest and intrigue among different disciplines since ancient t... more Although sex work has generated interest and intrigue among different disciplines since ancient times there has been a swell of research focused on sex work-related issues since the 1980s. A dynamic discourse and inquiry related to sex work and the lives of people involved in the sex industry has emerged. This discourse has been informed by a range of competing forces such as the initial scapegoating of sex workers as transmitters of disease following the onset of the AIDS epidemic the feminist ‘sex wars’ on pornography and prostitution international attention to trafficking issues the founding of sex workers rights groups and a growing number of sex workers involved in academic research. Consequently practice and research around sex work reflect the challenges presented by these competing groups values agendas and perspectives. Some of these challenges or ethical dilemmas are described hereafter. (excerpt)
Secrecy and the use of “secret information” as capital in the hands of the state is mobilised by ... more Secrecy and the use of “secret information” as capital in the hands of the state is mobilised by affective racialised machineries, cultivated on “security” grounds. Securitised secrecy is an assemblage of concealed operations juxtaposing various forms of invasions and dispossessions. It is a central strategy in the politico-economic life of the state to increase its scope of domination. Secrecy is used and abused to entrap and penetrate political subjects and entities. This article explores the necrocapitalist utilisation of secrecy embedded in the coloniser’s attempt to distort the mind of the colonised. Built from the voices of those affected by secrecy’s violent psychopolitical entrapment and penetrability, we expose the ways in which secrecy manufactures colonisers’ impunity and immunity. Further, we discuss the ruins that secrecy mislays, arguing as Fanon explained, that psychic ruins are common usage of colonial violence. In fact, Fanon (1963) argued that damaged personhood wa...
Although it is unclear whether racial disparities in depressive symptoms can be explained by cult... more Although it is unclear whether racial disparities in depressive symptoms can be explained by cultural or socioeconomic factors,1–6 there is ample evidence that important differences exist in depression care. African Americans are sig-nificantly less likely than Whites to receive guideline-appropriate depression care.7,8 Several studies have shown that in real-world settings primary care physicians are less likely to detect, treat, refer, or actively manage de-pression in minority patients than in White patients.9–13 Also, African Americans are less likely than Whites to seek specialty mental health care, accept recommendations to take antide-pressants, or view counseling as an acceptable
Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2021
Social Justice and Social Work is a foundational course required for all social work students in ... more Social Justice and Social Work is a foundational course required for all social work students in the master’s of social work program at Portland State University. Although the course has long focused on interrupting oppressions including White supremacy, teaching the course during the fall of 2020 required a nimble dance between our familiar modes of teaching and the need for spontaneous adaptation and creativity. The unique landscape for this course included teaching the course remotely (Zoom), inside a university embattled around the arming of its security force (that killed a Black man in 2018), in a city targeted by an armed federal response to the racial uprising led by Black Lives Matter, in a state with a long history of White supremacy and Black exclusion, and under a federal administration explicitly aligned with White supremacy. This paper offers a reflection of our teaching about and against White supremacy during this unique moment in time. We position our writing at the...
Sexuality & Culture, 2010
This article presents the process and findings of a review of the empirical research literature o... more This article presents the process and findings of a review of the empirical research literature on exotic dance/dancers in the United States and Canada from 1970 to 2008. We present research methods represented in this sample, as well as the main purposes of these studies, the deployment of theory in exotic dance research, and the visibility of researcher subjectivities. Over time researchers have gradually moved from micro-level analysis with singular explanations toward multi-dimensional and contextual understandings of exotic dance/dancers. Contemporary researchers are less grounded in deviance, pathology, or victimization. We conclude with a discussion and a series of recommendations for future research.
Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2012
Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2007
... life provided crucial emotional support and gracefully endured many con-versations about mora... more ... life provided crucial emotional support and gracefully endured many con-versations about moral reform,anti-vice crusades,and related topics.In this regard, I'd like to thank Lisa Amoroso, Sarah Babb, Khamisah Barger, Will Berg, Michelle Boyd, Gary Castañeda, Mark Donovan ...
Affilia, 2005
This article discusses some findings of a qualitative evaluation of Salt Lake City’s Prostitution... more This article discusses some findings of a qualitative evaluation of Salt Lake City’s Prostitution Diversion Project (conducted in 2003-2004) to expose some of the challenges and opportunities of mixed-theory projects. The findings focus specifically on project stakeholders’ recommendations for improving the program. Many of these recommendations are related to the tensions that manifested between the two major stakeholders: Criminal Justice Services and the Harm Reduction Project. The unlikely relationship between these stakeholders is what distinguished the Salt Lake City project from other prostitution-diversion programs in the United States and Canada.
Affilia, 2010
Social work as an academic discipline has long included women and gender as central categories of... more Social work as an academic discipline has long included women and gender as central categories of analysis; the social work profession, started and maintained largely by women, has been home to several generations of feminists. Yet, social work is curiously and strikingly absent from broader multidisciplinary discussions of feminist research. This article explores contemporary feminist social work research by examining 50 randomly selected research-based articles that claimed feminism within their work. The analysis focused on the authors’ treatment of the gender binary, their grounding in theory, their treatment of methodology, and their feminist claims. Feminist social work researchers are invited to reconceptualize feminisms to include third-wave feminist thought and more explicitly engage theory and reflexivity in their work.
Journal of Social Work, 2005
• Summary: Motivational interviewing was proposed as an alternative model to direct persuasion fo... more • Summary: Motivational interviewing was proposed as an alternative model to direct persuasion for facilitating behavior change. Social work behavior change interventions have traditionally focused on increasing skills and reducing barriers. More recent recommendations tend to encourage practitioners to explore a broad range of issues, including but not limited to skills and barriers. The article defines and explains motivational interviewing by presenting its essential spirit and techniques, and provides a brief case example within a domestic violence context. • Findings: This article proposes motivational interviewing as an intervention appropriate for social work practice concerned with behavior change by arguing that motivational interviewing is an exciting intervention model for numerous social work settings due to its consistency with core social work values, ethics, resources, and evidence-based practice. • Applications: Social workers may strive to practice and test motivational interviewing in addictions settings, as well as within other critical social work arenas including but not limited to health, domestic violence, batterer treatment, gambling, HIV/AIDS prevention, dual disorders, eating disorders, and child welfare.
Affilia
In our first editorial, published in the February issue of 2017, we explained our hope for the jo... more In our first editorial, published in the February issue of 2017, we explained our hope for the journal to become a space in which innovative thinking and boundary-pushing scholarship could be voiced and shared. As we, the new editorial team, learned the day-today tasks of running a journal in the months that have followed, we have also been pondering how to actualize those aspirations. The dilemma, to put it bluntly, is this: We aspire to be a journal that publishes radical scholarship that pushes the edges of received knowledge in social work, but the social work academe that generates the authors-and of which we and the journal are a part-does not promote or support such scholarship. Notwithstanding the Hollywood trope of the ardent scholar driven by the pursuit of pure knowledge unimpeded by distractions and detractors, the reality of the academe is that we write and publish not only to follow our scholarly vision and ideals, but because it is a necessity for the particular type of public recognition required for job security and career advancement. Putting aside the issue of the enormous privilege inherent in tenure-track faculty jobs, sustained by the labor of an army of poorly compensated contingent faculty, it must be acknowledged that the system of in-orout tenure is structured so that job security requires career advancement, and career advancement is measured most often by a narrow definition of productivity. Social work academics know that productivity means that numbers-of published manuscripts, of journal rankings by impact factor, and of funded grants and dollars granted-are what matter most, most often. We are also aware that impact factor, H-index, and other such quantitative metrics used to account for productivity have been repeatedly critiqued as biased measures that clearly valorize only particular types of scholarship. Social work scholarship, in other words, is bound within and delimited by the business models that govern the institutions in which we work. The business model of the increasingly corporatized universities is one in which funding directs scholarship, and metrics designed for and about such fundable scholarship shape the viability of its faculty and the form, content, and tenor of their scholarship. Ideas such as slow scholarship argue against such academic business models (http://web.uvic.ca/ *hist66/slowScholarship/). The slow scholarship movement critiques pressures for high
Affilia
People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they c... more People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values. Activist, community leader Grace Lee Boggs (1998, p. 254) On February 7, 2019, newly elected U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and seasoned U.S. Senator Ed Markey released a plan for a Green New Deal, so named to inspire the stimulus package they propose for the United States to address pressing economic and environmental concerns. This Green New Deal outlines unprecedented investment in public works projects, financial reforms, and welfare programs to tackle climate change and related "systemic injustices." Consensus within the scientific community attributes the acceleration in global warming to human activity (Oreskes, 2004, p. 242, quoting World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987) with devastating effects on human health and welfare due to pollution, drought, extreme cold and heat waves, more frequent and more powerful storms (e.g., hurricanes, tornados, wildfires, and flooding; Gamble, Ebi, Grambsch, Sussman, & Wilbanks, 2008). Growing concern for climate change informed a November 2018 mandate for "Women and Climate Action" authored by Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women and United Nations Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations. Mlambo-Ngcuka (2018) declared that "climate change and gender inequality are arguably two of the greatest sustainable development challenges of our time" (as cited in Brownworth, 2019). While the effects of climate change impact all people, gender inequality amplifies the effects of climate change for women and girls who, Mlambo-Ngcuka notes, make up 70% of people living in poverty worldwide and disproportionately perform unpaid care and domestic work which will likely increase with climate change (Brownworth, 2019). As Park and Miller (2006) argue, environmental disasters are hardly "natural." Marginalized populations who face intersecting structural inequalities are more likely to live and work in regions with higher
Advances in Social Work
There has been recent concern that many practices and programs erroneously claim to be strengths-... more There has been recent concern that many practices and programs erroneously claim to be strengths-based. In reaction some have called for researchers to make systematic comparisons to the tenets of strengths-based practice (SBP) before making the contention that an intervention is strengths-based. Motivational interviewing (MI) is an intervention which has been described as being strengths-based; however, no systematic efforts have yet been made to compare the two. This article takes a methodical approach to comparing SBP and MI to determine level of cohesion and how they might be used together. A case-example is used to illustrate how MI and SBP may be used in conjunction and implications for social work practice and education are discussed.
Journal of Social Work Education
Despite the congruence between critical feminist values and the cardinal values of the social wor... more Despite the congruence between critical feminist values and the cardinal values of the social work profession, feminist research in social work has lagged behind its feminist cousins in the social sciences, particularly in terms of critical uses of theory, reflexivity, and the troubling of binaries. This article presents as praxis our reflections as researchers, teachers, and feminists inside social work. We draw from a review of feminist social work research and offer suggestions for teaching critical feminist approaches in social work research. Incorporating critical feminist values and research practices into social work research courses creates the potential for greater integration of research, practice, and the principal values of our profession. As feminist social work academics, we argue that praxis is the critical contribution that social work as a discipline can bring to scholarly conversations around feminist research (Wahab, Anderson-Nathe, & Gringeri, 2012). Here we extend our previous work, offering as praxis our reflections on what we have learned about and from feminist social work research and its meaning for our work as educators, researchers, and feminists. Our interpretations throughout this project have doubtless been informed and influenced by our positionalities. We are two women and one man; two of us identify as queer and one as straight; two are White and one is mixedrace. We all identify as able-bodied and middle-class. These and other identities have led us to diverse experiences in conducting and teaching feminist research within university courses and to various-sometimes complicated-relationships with feminisms and social work. Our projects started because of our shared sense that social work as a whole is not critical enough in its praxis and that social work research and social work feminist research frequently reproduce practices and narratives associated with Whiteness, middle class, and benevolent work. In this article, we examine the strengths in feminist social work research, describe strategies researchers may consider to deepen their engagement with the processes of feminist research, and offer suggestions for the teaching of critical feminist approaches in social work education. We argue that the incorporation of feminist approaches in research courses at the doctoral level can provide social work scholars with effective tools to develop knowledge for the purposes
Affilia, 2017
At this pivotal time for Affilia, we first give thanks to the journal's outgoing editors in chief... more At this pivotal time for Affilia, we first give thanks to the journal's outgoing editors in chief, Dr. Noël Busch-Armendariz and Dr. Deb Ortega, for their peerless leadership during a period of growth and rising impact for the journal. Among their many accomplishments was the establishment of the consulting board of editors, an expansion of the existing editorial board structure that allowed the journal to effectively manage the volume of submissions which doubled during their tenure. Perhaps more importantly, the addition of new consulting board members widened the breadth of contentspecific knowledge within the board structure while ensuring that feminist principles in social work guided the review of manuscript. With the able support of associate editor Dr. Susan Chandler and editorial assistants Lindsay Morris, Karin Wachter, and Laurie Cook Heffron, they established a well-ordered system that resulted in both a more timely and rigorous peer-review process. Their success in upholding the journal's commitment to feminist leadership was demonstrated in their steadfast provision of collaborative mentorship to junior and mid-career feminist scholars as well as the creation of the Distinguished Feminist Scholarship and Praxis in Social Work Award to focus well-deserved attention to excellence in feminist scholarship. Last and not least, the powerful, topical editorials they generated issue after issue challenged us to expand the limits of feminist praxis. We will sincerely miss their collective wisdom and unfailing comradeship. Unwavering Commitment ''It is with great hope and enthusiasm that we begin our term as the new Editorial team for Affilia: Women and Social Work, social work's flagship feminist journal.'' With these words, we began the original draft of our first communication as Affilia's editorial team, a few months prior to the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In the fraught days that followed, we found ourselves questioning whether we could, in all honesty, still espouse such sentiments. We determined, ultimately, that we could and would do so, though their shape and tenor seemed irretrievably different;
Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers Prevention, Feb 1, 2009
American Journal of Public Health, 2010
Objectives. We sought to understand how African American women's beliefs regarding depression... more Objectives. We sought to understand how African American women's beliefs regarding depression and depression care are influenced by racism, violence, and social context. Methods. We conducted a focus group study using a community-based participatory research approach. Participants were low-income African American women with major depressive disorder and histories of violence victimization. Results. Thirty women participated in 4 focus groups. Although women described a vicious cycle of violence, depression, and substance abuse that affected their health, discussions about health care revolved around their perception of racism, with a deep mistrust of the health care system as a “White” system. The image of the “strong Black woman” was seen as a barrier to both recognizing depression and seeking care. Women wanted a community-based depression program staffed by African Americans that addressed violence and drug use. Conclusions. Although violence and drug use were central to our ...
Social work has experienced long-standing tensions between care and control since its inception. ... more Social work has experienced long-standing tensions between care and control since its inception. As shifting moral, social, political, intellectual, and market forces have historically shaped social work agendas and practices, so have feminists through politics, research, teaching, and praxis. While radical and critical social work has frequently pushed back against oppressive systems and movements, social work and feminist social work frequently find itself colluding with and/or being coopted by institutions and systems that oppress, coerce, and control certain people and communities. We need not look far for evidence of these tensions, including but not limited to social work practice and interventions steeped in carceral logics and rescue-based work poignantly evidenced by the now defunct Project Rose (Wahab & Panichelli, 2013). Gramsci (1992), pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will, captures the spirit from which we write this editorial, and we turn to paperson’s (2017) A T...
Although sex work has generated interest and intrigue among different disciplines since ancient t... more Although sex work has generated interest and intrigue among different disciplines since ancient times there has been a swell of research focused on sex work-related issues since the 1980s. A dynamic discourse and inquiry related to sex work and the lives of people involved in the sex industry has emerged. This discourse has been informed by a range of competing forces such as the initial scapegoating of sex workers as transmitters of disease following the onset of the AIDS epidemic the feminist ‘sex wars’ on pornography and prostitution international attention to trafficking issues the founding of sex workers rights groups and a growing number of sex workers involved in academic research. Consequently practice and research around sex work reflect the challenges presented by these competing groups values agendas and perspectives. Some of these challenges or ethical dilemmas are described hereafter. (excerpt)
Secrecy and the use of “secret information” as capital in the hands of the state is mobilised by ... more Secrecy and the use of “secret information” as capital in the hands of the state is mobilised by affective racialised machineries, cultivated on “security” grounds. Securitised secrecy is an assemblage of concealed operations juxtaposing various forms of invasions and dispossessions. It is a central strategy in the politico-economic life of the state to increase its scope of domination. Secrecy is used and abused to entrap and penetrate political subjects and entities. This article explores the necrocapitalist utilisation of secrecy embedded in the coloniser’s attempt to distort the mind of the colonised. Built from the voices of those affected by secrecy’s violent psychopolitical entrapment and penetrability, we expose the ways in which secrecy manufactures colonisers’ impunity and immunity. Further, we discuss the ruins that secrecy mislays, arguing as Fanon explained, that psychic ruins are common usage of colonial violence. In fact, Fanon (1963) argued that damaged personhood wa...
Although it is unclear whether racial disparities in depressive symptoms can be explained by cult... more Although it is unclear whether racial disparities in depressive symptoms can be explained by cultural or socioeconomic factors,1–6 there is ample evidence that important differences exist in depression care. African Americans are sig-nificantly less likely than Whites to receive guideline-appropriate depression care.7,8 Several studies have shown that in real-world settings primary care physicians are less likely to detect, treat, refer, or actively manage de-pression in minority patients than in White patients.9–13 Also, African Americans are less likely than Whites to seek specialty mental health care, accept recommendations to take antide-pressants, or view counseling as an acceptable
Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2021
Social Justice and Social Work is a foundational course required for all social work students in ... more Social Justice and Social Work is a foundational course required for all social work students in the master’s of social work program at Portland State University. Although the course has long focused on interrupting oppressions including White supremacy, teaching the course during the fall of 2020 required a nimble dance between our familiar modes of teaching and the need for spontaneous adaptation and creativity. The unique landscape for this course included teaching the course remotely (Zoom), inside a university embattled around the arming of its security force (that killed a Black man in 2018), in a city targeted by an armed federal response to the racial uprising led by Black Lives Matter, in a state with a long history of White supremacy and Black exclusion, and under a federal administration explicitly aligned with White supremacy. This paper offers a reflection of our teaching about and against White supremacy during this unique moment in time. We position our writing at the...
Sexuality & Culture, 2010
This article presents the process and findings of a review of the empirical research literature o... more This article presents the process and findings of a review of the empirical research literature on exotic dance/dancers in the United States and Canada from 1970 to 2008. We present research methods represented in this sample, as well as the main purposes of these studies, the deployment of theory in exotic dance research, and the visibility of researcher subjectivities. Over time researchers have gradually moved from micro-level analysis with singular explanations toward multi-dimensional and contextual understandings of exotic dance/dancers. Contemporary researchers are less grounded in deviance, pathology, or victimization. We conclude with a discussion and a series of recommendations for future research.
Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2012
Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2007
... life provided crucial emotional support and gracefully endured many con-versations about mora... more ... life provided crucial emotional support and gracefully endured many con-versations about moral reform,anti-vice crusades,and related topics.In this regard, I'd like to thank Lisa Amoroso, Sarah Babb, Khamisah Barger, Will Berg, Michelle Boyd, Gary Castañeda, Mark Donovan ...
Affilia, 2005
This article discusses some findings of a qualitative evaluation of Salt Lake City’s Prostitution... more This article discusses some findings of a qualitative evaluation of Salt Lake City’s Prostitution Diversion Project (conducted in 2003-2004) to expose some of the challenges and opportunities of mixed-theory projects. The findings focus specifically on project stakeholders’ recommendations for improving the program. Many of these recommendations are related to the tensions that manifested between the two major stakeholders: Criminal Justice Services and the Harm Reduction Project. The unlikely relationship between these stakeholders is what distinguished the Salt Lake City project from other prostitution-diversion programs in the United States and Canada.
Affilia, 2010
Social work as an academic discipline has long included women and gender as central categories of... more Social work as an academic discipline has long included women and gender as central categories of analysis; the social work profession, started and maintained largely by women, has been home to several generations of feminists. Yet, social work is curiously and strikingly absent from broader multidisciplinary discussions of feminist research. This article explores contemporary feminist social work research by examining 50 randomly selected research-based articles that claimed feminism within their work. The analysis focused on the authors’ treatment of the gender binary, their grounding in theory, their treatment of methodology, and their feminist claims. Feminist social work researchers are invited to reconceptualize feminisms to include third-wave feminist thought and more explicitly engage theory and reflexivity in their work.
Journal of Social Work, 2005
• Summary: Motivational interviewing was proposed as an alternative model to direct persuasion fo... more • Summary: Motivational interviewing was proposed as an alternative model to direct persuasion for facilitating behavior change. Social work behavior change interventions have traditionally focused on increasing skills and reducing barriers. More recent recommendations tend to encourage practitioners to explore a broad range of issues, including but not limited to skills and barriers. The article defines and explains motivational interviewing by presenting its essential spirit and techniques, and provides a brief case example within a domestic violence context. • Findings: This article proposes motivational interviewing as an intervention appropriate for social work practice concerned with behavior change by arguing that motivational interviewing is an exciting intervention model for numerous social work settings due to its consistency with core social work values, ethics, resources, and evidence-based practice. • Applications: Social workers may strive to practice and test motivational interviewing in addictions settings, as well as within other critical social work arenas including but not limited to health, domestic violence, batterer treatment, gambling, HIV/AIDS prevention, dual disorders, eating disorders, and child welfare.
Affilia
In our first editorial, published in the February issue of 2017, we explained our hope for the jo... more In our first editorial, published in the February issue of 2017, we explained our hope for the journal to become a space in which innovative thinking and boundary-pushing scholarship could be voiced and shared. As we, the new editorial team, learned the day-today tasks of running a journal in the months that have followed, we have also been pondering how to actualize those aspirations. The dilemma, to put it bluntly, is this: We aspire to be a journal that publishes radical scholarship that pushes the edges of received knowledge in social work, but the social work academe that generates the authors-and of which we and the journal are a part-does not promote or support such scholarship. Notwithstanding the Hollywood trope of the ardent scholar driven by the pursuit of pure knowledge unimpeded by distractions and detractors, the reality of the academe is that we write and publish not only to follow our scholarly vision and ideals, but because it is a necessity for the particular type of public recognition required for job security and career advancement. Putting aside the issue of the enormous privilege inherent in tenure-track faculty jobs, sustained by the labor of an army of poorly compensated contingent faculty, it must be acknowledged that the system of in-orout tenure is structured so that job security requires career advancement, and career advancement is measured most often by a narrow definition of productivity. Social work academics know that productivity means that numbers-of published manuscripts, of journal rankings by impact factor, and of funded grants and dollars granted-are what matter most, most often. We are also aware that impact factor, H-index, and other such quantitative metrics used to account for productivity have been repeatedly critiqued as biased measures that clearly valorize only particular types of scholarship. Social work scholarship, in other words, is bound within and delimited by the business models that govern the institutions in which we work. The business model of the increasingly corporatized universities is one in which funding directs scholarship, and metrics designed for and about such fundable scholarship shape the viability of its faculty and the form, content, and tenor of their scholarship. Ideas such as slow scholarship argue against such academic business models (http://web.uvic.ca/ *hist66/slowScholarship/). The slow scholarship movement critiques pressures for high
Affilia
People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they c... more People are aware that they cannot continue in the same old way but are immobilized because they cannot imagine an alternative. We need a vision that recognizes that we are at one of the great turning points in human history when the survival of our planet and the restoration of our humanity require a great sea change in our ecological, economic, political, and spiritual values. Activist, community leader Grace Lee Boggs (1998, p. 254) On February 7, 2019, newly elected U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and seasoned U.S. Senator Ed Markey released a plan for a Green New Deal, so named to inspire the stimulus package they propose for the United States to address pressing economic and environmental concerns. This Green New Deal outlines unprecedented investment in public works projects, financial reforms, and welfare programs to tackle climate change and related "systemic injustices." Consensus within the scientific community attributes the acceleration in global warming to human activity (Oreskes, 2004, p. 242, quoting World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987) with devastating effects on human health and welfare due to pollution, drought, extreme cold and heat waves, more frequent and more powerful storms (e.g., hurricanes, tornados, wildfires, and flooding; Gamble, Ebi, Grambsch, Sussman, & Wilbanks, 2008). Growing concern for climate change informed a November 2018 mandate for "Women and Climate Action" authored by Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women and United Nations Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations. Mlambo-Ngcuka (2018) declared that "climate change and gender inequality are arguably two of the greatest sustainable development challenges of our time" (as cited in Brownworth, 2019). While the effects of climate change impact all people, gender inequality amplifies the effects of climate change for women and girls who, Mlambo-Ngcuka notes, make up 70% of people living in poverty worldwide and disproportionately perform unpaid care and domestic work which will likely increase with climate change (Brownworth, 2019). As Park and Miller (2006) argue, environmental disasters are hardly "natural." Marginalized populations who face intersecting structural inequalities are more likely to live and work in regions with higher
Advances in Social Work
There has been recent concern that many practices and programs erroneously claim to be strengths-... more There has been recent concern that many practices and programs erroneously claim to be strengths-based. In reaction some have called for researchers to make systematic comparisons to the tenets of strengths-based practice (SBP) before making the contention that an intervention is strengths-based. Motivational interviewing (MI) is an intervention which has been described as being strengths-based; however, no systematic efforts have yet been made to compare the two. This article takes a methodical approach to comparing SBP and MI to determine level of cohesion and how they might be used together. A case-example is used to illustrate how MI and SBP may be used in conjunction and implications for social work practice and education are discussed.
Journal of Social Work Education
Despite the congruence between critical feminist values and the cardinal values of the social wor... more Despite the congruence between critical feminist values and the cardinal values of the social work profession, feminist research in social work has lagged behind its feminist cousins in the social sciences, particularly in terms of critical uses of theory, reflexivity, and the troubling of binaries. This article presents as praxis our reflections as researchers, teachers, and feminists inside social work. We draw from a review of feminist social work research and offer suggestions for teaching critical feminist approaches in social work research. Incorporating critical feminist values and research practices into social work research courses creates the potential for greater integration of research, practice, and the principal values of our profession. As feminist social work academics, we argue that praxis is the critical contribution that social work as a discipline can bring to scholarly conversations around feminist research (Wahab, Anderson-Nathe, & Gringeri, 2012). Here we extend our previous work, offering as praxis our reflections on what we have learned about and from feminist social work research and its meaning for our work as educators, researchers, and feminists. Our interpretations throughout this project have doubtless been informed and influenced by our positionalities. We are two women and one man; two of us identify as queer and one as straight; two are White and one is mixedrace. We all identify as able-bodied and middle-class. These and other identities have led us to diverse experiences in conducting and teaching feminist research within university courses and to various-sometimes complicated-relationships with feminisms and social work. Our projects started because of our shared sense that social work as a whole is not critical enough in its praxis and that social work research and social work feminist research frequently reproduce practices and narratives associated with Whiteness, middle class, and benevolent work. In this article, we examine the strengths in feminist social work research, describe strategies researchers may consider to deepen their engagement with the processes of feminist research, and offer suggestions for the teaching of critical feminist approaches in social work education. We argue that the incorporation of feminist approaches in research courses at the doctoral level can provide social work scholars with effective tools to develop knowledge for the purposes
Affilia, 2017
At this pivotal time for Affilia, we first give thanks to the journal's outgoing editors in chief... more At this pivotal time for Affilia, we first give thanks to the journal's outgoing editors in chief, Dr. Noël Busch-Armendariz and Dr. Deb Ortega, for their peerless leadership during a period of growth and rising impact for the journal. Among their many accomplishments was the establishment of the consulting board of editors, an expansion of the existing editorial board structure that allowed the journal to effectively manage the volume of submissions which doubled during their tenure. Perhaps more importantly, the addition of new consulting board members widened the breadth of contentspecific knowledge within the board structure while ensuring that feminist principles in social work guided the review of manuscript. With the able support of associate editor Dr. Susan Chandler and editorial assistants Lindsay Morris, Karin Wachter, and Laurie Cook Heffron, they established a well-ordered system that resulted in both a more timely and rigorous peer-review process. Their success in upholding the journal's commitment to feminist leadership was demonstrated in their steadfast provision of collaborative mentorship to junior and mid-career feminist scholars as well as the creation of the Distinguished Feminist Scholarship and Praxis in Social Work Award to focus well-deserved attention to excellence in feminist scholarship. Last and not least, the powerful, topical editorials they generated issue after issue challenged us to expand the limits of feminist praxis. We will sincerely miss their collective wisdom and unfailing comradeship. Unwavering Commitment ''It is with great hope and enthusiasm that we begin our term as the new Editorial team for Affilia: Women and Social Work, social work's flagship feminist journal.'' With these words, we began the original draft of our first communication as Affilia's editorial team, a few months prior to the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In the fraught days that followed, we found ourselves questioning whether we could, in all honesty, still espouse such sentiments. We determined, ultimately, that we could and would do so, though their shape and tenor seemed irretrievably different;
Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers Prevention, Feb 1, 2009