Susan P. Kemp

Feminisms and Social Work in the United States: An Intertwined History

This article explores the interlocking historical trajectories of feminisms and the social work profession in the United States. Bringing these two histories together, the article examines the ideas, practices, and people that have shaped the complicated organism that is ‘‘feminist social work,’’ from the civic involvement of 19th- and early 20th-century women to 21st-century efforts to craft more global, fluid, and inclusive feminist theories and practices. Structured around the three ‘‘waves’’ of feminist activism and theory building, it focuses in particular on changes and continuities in U.S. feminist social work theorizing.

“Little Alien Colonies”: Representations of Immigrants and Their Neighborhoods in Social Work Discourse, 1875–1924

The “vexed problem of immigration,” as Jane Addams (1909, 214) termed it, became a central issue for the emerging social work profession. Through a close reading of social work’s public documents in the period from 1875 to 1924, this article analyzes the complex discursive mechanisms by which early social workers made immigrants and their environments legible as objects of intervention and advocacy. In particular, it examines the parallel social and moral calculi employed in social work’s analysis of immigrants and their “little alien colonies” (e.g., Greenleigh 1941, 208). Despite good intentions, social workers often viewed immigrants as dependent, abject, and exotic subjects; at a deeper register than their expressed interest in “the needs and possibilities of the immigrant” (Abbott 1917, 282), social work representations underscored and supported the problematization of immigrants in the public discourse. Contemporary social work faces many of the same dilemmas in fashioning a response to immigration.

ENVIRONMENT THROUGH A GENDERED LENS: FROM PERSON-IN- ENVIRONMENT TO WOMAN-IN-ENVIRONMENT

Building on interdisciplinary work by critical and feminist scholars in geography, architecture and urban planning, and history, this article proposes a reworking of social works person-environment formulation to incorporate gender and its implications more fully. Three interlocking domains are addressed: (a) womens subjective experiences of their everyday environments; (b) the connections among these environmental experiences, the geography of womens lives, and larger social categories such as race/ethnicity, class, and sexual orientation; and (c) womens environmental strengths, resources, and agency.

Preparing Emerging Doctoral Scholars for Transdisciplinary Research: A Developmental Approach

Research models that bridge disciplinary, theoretical, and methodological boundaries are increasingly common as funders and the public push for effective responses to pressing social problems. Although social work is inherently an integrative discipline, there is growing recognition of the need to better prepare emerging scholars for sophisticated transdisciplinary and translational research environments. This article outlines a developmental, competency-oriented approach to enhancing the readiness of doctoral students and emerging scholars in social work and allied disciplines for transdisciplinary research, describes an array of pedagogical tools applicable in doctoral course work, and urges coordinated attention to enhancing the field’s transdisciplinary training capacity.

Transdisciplinarity and Translation Preparing Social Work Doctoral Students for High Impact Research

Contemporary research models are becoming increasingly transdisciplinary (TD), multilevel, community-connected, and bent on expediting the movement of research to impact. This requires not only fresh thinking about the science of social work but an educational architecture that fosters both cross-disciplinary understanding of complex underlying determinants and the ability to translate that knowledge into effective, sustainable action. This article illustrates the need for greater intentionality and coherence in preparing social work practitioners and researchers for participation in this changing landscape. We focus here on doctoral level training, but underscore opportunities for a robust educational “pipeline” linking undergraduate and graduate professional degree preparation to that at the doctoral and postdoctoral levels. We summarize selected literature that defines and operationalizes TD translational research, reflect strategically on social work’s positioning within this scientific “marketplace,” and offer recommendations for capacity building in social work doctoral education.

Response: Social Work, Science, Social Impact Crafting an Integrative Conversation

Shifts in the ways that science is being undertaken and marshaled toward social change argue for a new kind of professional competence. Taking the view that the science of social work is centrally about the relationship of research to social impact, the authors extend Fong’s focus on transdisciplinary and translational approaches to science, illustrating ways that national and international priorities are exerting enormous influence in structures for and expectations of science relevant to social work. The authors also emphasize the growing centrality of transformational research, focusing in particular on the interdependence of education and impact. The intent is to stimulate reflectiveness regarding social work’s preparedness to support and indeed amplify a robust culture of high impact science, including more confident, clearly articulated roles and skills in this contemporary scientific landscape.

Place, History, Memory: Thinking Time Within Place

Flourishing interest in place as a critical mediator of human well-being has brought with it calls for researchers to move beyond understandings of place as simply “here” – local, fixed, bounded, and, frequently, ahistorical – to more fully engage the dynamics of place, over time and across spatial scales. A “relational” view of place (Cummins et al. 2007) conceptualizes it as process rather than entity – a fluid, dynamic field of constantly interacting elements, within and beyond itself. Inherent in this shift away from conventional, static notions of place is renewed interest in the role of time as a salient factor in place/health relationships. Cummins et al. (2007), for example, propose the development of research approaches that focus on not only “the life course of individuals, but also the social and economic trajectories of the places which they inhabit” (p. 1,832). Popay et al. (2003) have likewise argued for a more thorough-going focus on time, and specifically history, in research on place and health, particularly in relation to health disparities. This chapter, written from the vantage point of a scholar of place with historical training, rather than a health disparities researcher, attempts to add further dimensionality to these proposals.

‘‘My Ever Dear’’: Social Work’s ‘‘Lesbian’’ Foremothers—A Call for Scholarship

Same-sex intimate relationships were central to the lives of many of social work’s early women leaders. Recognizing these relationships is important to address the erasure of sexuality in the profession’s historical record and to give sexual minority social workers access to their history. This article explores conceptual issues in lesbian historical scholarship, describes the same-sex relationships of four remarkable social workers—Jane Addams, Mary Richmond, Jessie Taft, and Virginia Robinson—and calls for further research in this area.

Introduction: Place as Marginality and Possibility

Place matters to the quality of human existence. Place is not a static, empty backdrop for social relationships. It is neither an architectural model, Geographic Information System (GIS) map, census tract, Google Earth image, nor cyberspace; rather place “is filled up by people, practices, objects, and representations.”1 Place is a dynamic material form—a process that requires cultural interpretation and brings people together in particular relationships. Place makes social structures endure; patterns activities; embodies cultural norms, identities, and memories; expresses ecological values; and plays a role in creating and sustaining people’s sense of self. Place has purposefulness; it provides a framework not only for daily routines and actions but also for spectacle and revolutionary change. Within place, difference is produced, sustained, negotiated, and resisted.2

Dwelling within political violence: Palestinian women's narratives of home, mental health, and resilience.

Political violence is increasingly played out within everyday civilian environments, particularly family homes. Yet, within the literature on political violence and mental health, the role of threats to home remains under-explored. Using focus group data from 32 Palestinian women, this paper explores the implications of violations to the home within political violence. Threats to the privacy, control, and constancy of the family home - key dimensions of ontological security (Giddens, 1990) emerged as central themes in womens narratives. Surveillance, home invasions, and actual or threatened destruction of womens home environments provoked fear, anxiety, grief, humiliation, and helplessness, particularly as women struggled to protect their children. Women also described how they mobilized the home for economic, familial and cultural survival. Study findings illuminate the impact of threats to intimate environments on the well-being of women and their families living with chronic political violence, and underscore the importance of attention to violations of place and home in research on civilian experiences of and responses to political violence.