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Journal Of Sociology And Social Welfare Vol. 42 No. 1 (March 2015)

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Table of Contents

• SUCCESSFUL APPROACHES TO ENDING FEMALE GENITAL CUTTING - Kay Young McChesney
• THE 47 PERCENT: U.S. TRENDS IN INCOME MAINTENANCE AND MEDICAID SPENDING, 1990-2011- Elgin Mannion and Gordon C. Chang
• UNDERSTANDING FRINGE ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR: A BOURDIEUSIAN-INFORMED META-ETHNOGRAPHY - Peter A. Kindle and Mary A. Caplan
• TACTICAL DECISION-MAKING: COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS DESCRIBE ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN SOCIAL ACTION CAMPAIGNS - Donna Hardina, Mathew Ari Jendian, and Catherine Garoupa White
• RELIEVING HUMAN SUFFERING: COMPASSION IN SOCIAL POLICY - Mary Elizabeth Collins, Sarah Garlington, and Kate Cooney
• SELF-EMPLOYMENT AND PUBLIC EMERGENCY WORK IN URBAN LABOR MARKETS DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION: THE CASE OF …

Tactical Decision-Making: Community Organizers Describe Ethical Considerations In Social Action Campaigns, Donna Hardina, Matthew A. Jendian, Catherine G. White

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Social work curriculum on social action-oriented organizing methods is often devoid of content on the day-to-day role of the organizer in recruiting diverse participants, facilitating group decision-making, and planning and implementing campaigns. Little attention is paid to how tactical decisions are made and how the ethical implications of these decisions are weighed. In this study, professional organizers were interviewed about how they viewed their work, their relationships with their constituents, and the values and ethical principles used to make tactical decisions.

Understanding Fringe Economic Behavior: A Bourdieusian-Informed Meta-Ethnography, Peter A. Kindle Phd, Cpa, Lmsw, Mary Caplan

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This paper is a meta-ethnography of four low-income communities in order to explore fringe economic behaviors. Rejecting the interpretation of fringe economic behaviors as irrational, we affirm these behaviors as viable alternatives for people marginalized in the mainstream economy. Using a meta-ethnographic method and employing the concepts of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, we identify the habitus and social capital values of each community as distinct Bourdieusian fields and conclude that an awareness of the localized development of a fringe economic cluster with distinct goals and rules undermines one-size-fits-all social welfare programs.

Self-Employment And Public Emergency Work In Urban Labor Markets During The Great Depression: The Case Of Industrial Cities, Robert Boyd

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Self-employment and public emergency work were frequent reactions to the economic dislocations of the Great Depression. Census data for men show that in urban-industrial centers, self-employment reduced the demand for public emergency work by absorbing displaced workers into the entrepreneurial sector. Census data for women reveal that, in these centers, self-employment and public emergency work coexisted due to mutually beneficial relations between women who were self-employed and those women who worked on government projects. The results suggest that, contrary to popular theoretical and ideological views, there is no inherent conflict between private- and public-sector responses to stagnant labor markets.

Health Status, Medicare Part D Enrollment, And Prescription Drug Use Among Older Adults, Jin Kim

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

To account for potential selection factors in the observed relationship between Medicare Part D coverage and prescription drug use, this study uses data from the 2010 and 2012 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to first examine the determinants of Medicare Part D enrollment, paying particular attention to the role of functional health status on the enrollment decision. Next, the study assesses whether and to what extent Medicare Part D coverage moderates the effect of functional health status on prescription drug use and monthly out-of-pocket spending among older adults. As prior studies indicate, the findings reveal that individuals …

Relieving Human Suffering: Compassion In Social Policy, Mary E. Collins, Sarah Garlington, Kate Cooney

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Human suffering is always present in society. There is general consensus that action should be taken to address suffering, but there are differing views as to the appropriate means of doing so. In this paper we utilize a classical understanding of the virtue of compassion to answer the research question: How does contemporary U.S. policy address human suffering through compassionate response? To answer this question, we conduct a critical analysis of three policy domains (hospice care, domestic violence, and disaster relief) to determine variation in response to human suffering. Comparisons among the domains suggest the various ways in which compassion …

Review Of Social Justice In Clinical Practice: A Liberation Health Framework For Social Work. Dawn Belkin Martinez And Ann Fleck-Henderson (Eds.). Reviewed By Nancy Feldman., Nancy Feldman

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Dawn Belkin Martinez & Ann Fleck-Henderson (Eds.), Social Justice in Clinical Practice: A Liberation Health Framework for Social Work. Routledge (2014), 218 pages, $48.95 (paperback), $155.00 (hardcover).

The 47 Percent: U.S. Trends In Income Maintenance And Medicaid Spending, 1990-2011, Elgin Mannion, Gordon C. Chang

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

We analyze trends and variations in state-level expenditure growth for Medicaid, SSI, SNAP, and TANF. We explore three areas of interest: (1) How program structure impacts growth; (2) How programs responded to the 2008/2009 recession; and (3) How state preference for limited government, measured by Right- To-Work (RTW) status and political affiliation, impacts program expenditure growth. Findings show that program structure impacts expenditure growth: the state-matched programs like TANF and Medicaid grew slower from 1990-2011 than did open-ended federal programs like SNAP. OLS models found states with RTW policies and large Hispanic populations positively associated with higher income maintenance and …

Differences In Experiences Of Racial And Ethnic Microaggression Among Asian, Latino/Hispanic, Black, And White Young Adults, Shandra Forrest-Bank, Jeffrey Jenson

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Racial and ethnic discrimination is a significant risk factor for health and mental health problems among non-White children, adolescents, and adults. Recent evidence suggests that a form of discrimination known as microaggression, characterized by subtle and often unintentional acts of discriminatory behavior, is associated with detrimental effects on the psychological and emotional wellbeing of non-White individuals. We examined differences in microaggression experiences among a sample of 409 Asian, Latino, Black, and White young adults. The Racial and Ethnic Microaggressions Scale (Nadal, 2011) was used to measure respondents’ experiences of racial and ethnic microaggression. Young adults in all the non- White …

Review Of Social Development Theory & Practice. James Midgley. Reviewed By Lynne M. Healy., Lynne M. Healy

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

James Midgley, Social Development Theory & Practice. Sage Publications, (2013), 296 pages, $40.00 (paper), $120.00 (hardcover.)

Review Of Creating Positive Systems Of Child And Family Welfare: Congruence With The Everyday Lives Of Children And Parents. Gary Cameron, Marshall Fine, Sarah Maiter, Karen Frensch, And Nancy Freymond (Eds.). Reviewed By David Tobis., David Tobis

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Gary Cameron, Marshall Fine, Sarah Maiter, Karen Frensch, and Nancy Freymond (Eds.), Creating Positive Systems of Child and Family Welfare: Congruence with the Everyday Lives of Children and Parents. University of Toronto Press, (2013), 352 pages, $56 cloth, $27.96 paperback.

Review Of Youth Work: An Institutional Ethnography Of Youth Homelessness. Naomi Nichols. Reviewed By Melinda Mccormick., Melinda Mccormick

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Naomi Nichols, Youth Work: An Institutional Ethnography of Youth Homelessness. University of Toronto Press, (2014). 158 pp., $24.95, paperback.

Introduction To The Special Issue: New Scholarship In Institutional Ethnography, Paul C. Luken, Suzanne Vaughan

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Twelve years ago the Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare (JSSW) published a special issue devoted to institutional ethnography, “Institutional Ethnography: Theory and Practice” (Winfield, 2003). This alternative sociology, founded by Dorothy E. Smith, begins from the standpoint of the experiences of particular, active subjects and sets out to discover and describe the social relations shaping those experiences (Smith, 1987, 2005, 2006). JSSW, dedicated to publishing new, cutting-edge theoretical and methodological articles, was the first academic journal to devote a special issue to this new mode of inquiry used to investigate the social world. Over the ensuing years, the number …

Interrogating The Ruling Relations Of Thailand’S Post-Tsunami Reconstruction: Empirically Tracking Social Relations In The Absence Of Conventional Texts, Aaron Williams, Janet Rankin

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

This paper discusses methodological strengths and challenges in doing institutional ethnographic (IE) research in communities devastated by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Southern Thailand. IE is a mode of inquiry used to describe institutional mechanisms of reconstruction, aid, and recovery and to show how recovery efforts affected real people and communities over time. The chaotic nature of a disaster zone, combined with the more common difficulties of conducting research in a developing region relying on a translator, posed various challenges in the conduct of this IE study. Textual data, one of the important tools used in IE research, were …

(Un)Safe At School: Parents' Work Of Securing Nursing Care And Coordinating School Health Support Services Delivery For Children With Diabetes In Ontario Schools, Lisa Watt

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Using institutional ethnography and its approach to mapping institutional sequences (Smith, 2005; Turner, 2006), this paper examines the social organization of School Health Support Services (SHSS) for children with diabetes in Ontario schools. The inquiry starts with my own situated experience as a mother of a child with diabetes starting kindergarten, and the trouble of securing the health supports necessary to care for my child’s health and safety while she is at school. The paper takes up two specific texts—the Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) Referral Form and the CCAC Medical Orders for Services at School—to explore and describe how …

Review Of This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate. Naomi Klein. Reviewed By Sheila D. Collins., Sheila Collins

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. (2014). Simon & Schuster. $30 (hardcover), 576 pages.

Towards An Institutional Counter-Cartography Of Nurses’ Wound Work, Nicola Waters

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Under the banner of continuous quality improvement, process mapping has become an increasingly routine feature of healthcare administration. Driven by demands to improve efficiency through standardization, nurses’ knowledge of their often-unpredictable work is routinely changed to fit within graphical representations that depict it as objectively controllable. Tensions that arose as I attempted to apply my knowledge as a specialist nurse in the rapidly changing area of outpatient wound clinics formed the direction for my institutional ethnography (IE) inquiry. As a student new to IE, I encountered challenges as I tried to explain to my informants how Dorothy Smith’s alternative sociology …

Review Of Inequality In The Promised Land: Race, Resources, And Suburban Schooling. R. L'Heureux Lewis-Mccoy. Reviewed By Paul L. Tractenberg, Paul Tractenberg

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

R. L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy, Inequality in the Promised Land: Race, Resources, and Suburban Schooling. (2014). Stanford University Press. $24.95 (hardcover), 232 pages.

Review Of Out In The Union: A Labor History Of Queer America. Miriam Frank. Reviewed By Ann S. Holder., Ann S. Holder

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Miriam Frank, Out in the Union: A Labor History of Queer America. (2014). Temple University Press. $54.50 (hardcover), $29.95 (paperback), 240 pages.

Review Of It's Not Like I'M Poor: How Working Families Make Ends Meet In A Post-Welfare World. Sarah Halpern-Meekin, Kathryn Edin, Laura Tach, & Jennifer Sykes. Reviewed By Vanessa D. Wells, Vanessa Wells

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Sarah Halpern-Meekin, Kathryn Edin, Laura Tach, & Jennifer Sykes, It’s Not Like I’m Poor: How Working Families Make Ends Meet in a Post-Welfare World. (2015). University of California Press. $29.95 (paperback), 304 pages.