Gale Miller

SYSTEMS AND SOLUTIONS: THE DISCOURSES OF BRIEF THERAPY

The author describes how brief therapy has evolved in the past 10 to 15 years from ecosystemic to solution-focused brief therapy. SFBT is characterized as a radically constructivist approach to personal problems which emphasizes how troubles and solutions are socially constructed realities.

The Interpretation of Nonoccupational Work in Modern Society: A Preliminary Discussion and Typology

This paper is a general and preliminary attempt to deal with the various meanings associated with work in modern society. It is claimed that such an approach requires that sociologists expand their theoretical and empirical concern to include the many nonoccupational forms of work found in social movements and alternative communities. A scheme (based on time and sacred-secular variables) for classifying and studying such forms of work is presented and six examples are discussed. When these alternative forms of work are considered, it becomes apparent that the meaning of modern work is highly variable and problematic. This variation is reflected in the ways in which work is organized and rewarded, and how it is linked to modern technology and the life cycle.

Social problems in everyday life : studies of social problems work

Part 1 Culture and social problems work: safe home, dangerous street - remapping social reality in the early modern era, Leslie J. Miller rethinking victimization, James A. Holstein and Gale Miller the burden of facts - rhetoric in the debate over Asian-American student admissions, Dana Y. Takagi. Part 2 Social problems work in the mass media: secondary claims making - claims about threats to children on the network news, Joel Best speak of the devil - talk shows and the social construction of Satanism, Kathleen S. Lowney. Part 3 Social problems work in human service organizations: creating clients - social problems work in a shelter for battered women, Donileen R. Loseke homeless in River City - client work in human service encounters, J. William Spencer. Part 4 Social problems work in social control settings: neutralizing resistance - probation work as rhetoric, William D. Darrough constructing serious violence and its victims, processing a domestic violence restraining order, Robert M. Emerson. Part 5 Social problems during public life: gender, social problems work and everyday philanthropy among strangers, Carol Brooks Gardner what Waco stood for - jokes as popular constructions of social problems, Kathleen S. Lowney and Joel Best.

Work, Ritual Structures, and the Legitimation of Alternative Communities

The symbolic interpretation of work as a part of the legitimating process found in alternative communities is explored. This is done through a critique of Kanters (1972) structural functional approach and the development of a dialectical perspective within which legitimacy is treated as a product of the efforts of community members to ritualistically reconcile contradictions between their public claims about themselves and the practical problems found in daily life. Central to this process is the rise of ritual structures through which seemingly mundane features of everyday life are given symbolic meaning. The implications of this perspective for analyzing time conventions and legitimation crises are also discussed.

Jenseits von Beschwerden: Ein Entwurf der Kurztherapie

Die therapeutische Arbeit besteht fur die meisten Therapeuten in der Analyse, Interpretation und/oder der Unterbrechung der Beschwerden der Klienten. Fur Therapeuten sind Beschwerden wichtig, weil sie die Basis fur die Therapeut-Klient-Beziehung bilden und oft als Indikatoren fur die Probleme der Klienten gelten. Indem Therapeuten die Beschwerden der Klienten analysieren, interpretieren und/oder unterbrechen, definieren sie die Probleme der Klienten und versuchen sie zu beseitigen. Die Verringerung der Beschwerden oder die Veranderung ihrer Bedeutung bilden einen wichtigen Indikator zur Prufung der Interventionsstrategien. Therapeuten interpretieren die Reduktion oder das Verschwinden der Beschwerden der Klienten als Zeichen fur therapeutische Effektivitat und fur Veranderung. Die meisten Therapeuten wurden dem bisher Angefuhrten zustimmen. Es gilt als allgemein anerkannt und wird nicht weiter hinterfragt.

Conclusion: Is Stress Likely to Abate for Faculty?

SUMMARY Work stress is first analyzed as a socio-cultural device to make sense of and respond to problems at work. Then, a number of factors are examined that will significantly affect the future of faculty work and the stress that will be associated with this work.

Discursive Therapies as Institutional Discourse

An institutional discourse perspective is developed and applied to discursive therapies. The perspective focuses on the interactional and interpretive practices that organize therapist-client encounters. Ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and Foucauldian discourse analyses are discussed as different but related orientations to institutional discourse. Each perspective highlights different aspects of the institutional discourse perspective and discursive therapies. The perspective is applied by reconsidering the concept of collaboration in discursive therapies. Three issues are discussed. They are the value of thinking about collaboration as a shifting achievement in discursive therapy interactions, power relationships that include the potential for client resistance, and sites for the negotiation of multiple—sometimes competing—discourses.

The Rhetoric of Emotions: A Dramatistic ExplorationThe Rhetoric of Emotions: A Dramatistic Exploration, by PerinbanayagamRobert. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2016. 270 pp.

agree with Pennell’s initial argument, midwestern wineries are places that offer something for everybody. That something that appeals universally is the experience of wine. At least at this stage of the industry’s evolution, the third-place thesis suggests that diverse groups of customers primarily perceive value in the social factors of their going and being at the winery (the laid-back fun). The dimensions of quality associated with the social context of wine consumption seem to matter more to the audience than the intrinsic dimensions of quality of the wine. Then a logical solution to the growth dilemma for midwestern wineries would be to focus less on what product is worth recommending to customers and more on which place is worth visiting for its location, history, and amenities. Perhaps because Pennell’s heart beats for his vintners, the full implications of his strategic analysis are not investigated critically. The book has omissions (ignoring recent sociological studies such as Fiona Scott Morton and Joel Podolny’s on owner motivation among wineries in California). But it presents a clear point of view, tight writing, and extensive, eloquent excerpts from field notes. Like Pennell, I don’t know if Robert Parker would find midwestern wine worth recommending. But when I finished reading this book, I had new questions in my mind and a renewed interest in this industry. My glass was half full.

105.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781412863964.

Kenneth Burkes dramatistic perspective is applied to accounts told by staff members working in methadone maintenance treatment centres in Copenhagen, Denmark. As a harm reduction strategy, methadone maintenance is designed to reduce the costs and dangers of chronic long-term drug use by providing substitution (methadone) treatment to users. Burkes dramatistic perspective calls attention to the recurring relationships among rhetorical elements within accounts of social reality. The elements form a pentad: scene, purpose, agent, agency and acts. Our analysis examines how the ideal of governmentality is constructed by staff members to justify and criticize the operations of the Copenhagen methadone maintenance program. For Burke, social criticism involves rearranging pentadic elements to produce new meanings and justify alternative actions. We discuss how Burkes perspective might be developed by sociologists as a critical dramatism of social policies and programs.