Catalyst For Social Change Research Articles

Continually Neglected: Situating Natural Disasters in the African American Experience

It is perplexing why natural disasters, as important life-altering events, are seldom viewed as a catalyst for social change in the United States in general but particularly for African Americans. This article addresses a gap in literature by proposing natural disasters as a variable to help understand the African American experience. The authors argue that the first post-Civil War migration altered the life courses for many. Subsequent to the first migration wave (the Great Migration of 1916-1930), environmental factors altered many African American lives. Natural disasters such as The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927, The 1948 Vanport Flood, and Hurricane Katrina illustrate the federal government’s indifference and neglect of responsibility, which played a role in decisions to migrate. These major natural environmental disasters, when situated in historical context as a part of the social, political, geographical, and economic landscape, are vital in the understanding of the African American experience.

Religion, Rhetoric, and Social Change after Hurricane Katrina

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and in its aftermath, Americans were left asking why it had happened. This paper explores the discussions that occurred in newspaper articles, editorials, websites, and blogs in an attempt to distill the multiple interpretations people had of such a major natural disaster. Three major meanings emerge: that the hurricane was a type of divine retribution, that the hurricane was caused or its consequences exacerbated by human failings, and that the hurricane could serve as a catalyst for social change.

The Origins and Early Developments of Special/Adaptive Wheelchair Seating

The design and use of wheelchairs significantly changed during the last half of the twentieth century, enabling greater mobility, independence, and social inclusion for the user. Among many innovations was the development of special or adaptive seating. Emerging in the last quarter of the century from a multifaceted and multidirectional movement, special or adaptive seating transformed wheelchairs from simple mobility tools into postural aids. They afforded the possibility for people with learning disabilities and/or severe physical impairments to leave the confines of institutional life and access the wider community. This article explores the social and technical processes involved in the rise and formation of this movement and resulting technology. We chart early developments in special seating and show how the wheelchair developed, both as a response to and as a catalyst of social change.

Understanding multi-purpose hybrid voluntary organizations: The contributions of theories on civil society, social movements and non-profit organizations

The paper offers a theoretical framework to study the conditions that lead to the emergence of multi-purpose hybrid voluntary organizations and the factors that influence their ability to mobilize resources and enlist commitment. These organizations are characterized by four interrelated attributes: (a) they set out as their mission to uphold and promote cultural values that are typically at variant with dominant and institutionalized values; (b) they offer services to members and the public that express their distinct values, using the services as a model and catalyst for social change; (c) in addition to their instrumental goals, they aim to meet the expressive and social identity needs of their members by promoting a collective identity; and (d) they evolve into hybrid organizations by having multiple purposes—combining to various degrees goals of value change, service provision and mutual-aid. Because they deliberately combine features of volunteer-run associations, social movements and non-profit service organizations, we articulate a theoretical framework that melds concepts and propositions from the various theoretical perspectives used to study each of these organizational forms. We argue that the expanded theoretical framework offers a more comprehensive and dynamic view of civil society and a better perspective to the study of third sector organizations.

Literacy, Power, and Agency: Love Letters and Development in Nepal

In this paper, a case study of women's incipient literacy in Junigau, Nepal, I argue that literacy can be both a catalyst for social change and a result of numerous other types of social transformation. The increase in female literacy rates in Junigau in the 1990s made possible the emergence of new courtship practices involving love letters and facilitated self-initiated marriages, but it also reinforced certain gender ideologies and undercut some avenues to social power, especially for women. Thus, this study reminds us that literacy is not a neutral, unidimensional technology, but rather a set of lived experiences that will differ from community to community. The new practice of love letter writing in Junigau facilitated not only a shift away from arranged and capture marriage toward elopement but also a change in how villagers conceive of their own agency (i.e., their socioculturally mediated capacity to act). Through a close reading of the most salient written sources of development discouse in the village – government textbooks, female literacy textbooks, novels, magazines, and love letter guidebooks – this paper analyses some likely sources for these new ideas about agency and identifies some prototypes for the development discouse so prevalent in Junigau love letters.

Lifelong learning to reduce domestic violence

The purpose of this paper is to identify domestic violence as a social problem, provide background information concerning domestic violence, identify strategies related to adult education currently being used to address the problem of domestic violence and examine the philosophical underpinnings of the programmes. Domestic violence is not only a legal problem, but represents a substantial public health issue and is one of the most overlooked social problems of today. As a result of increased public awareness concerning domestic violence in the late 1980s, there have been many changes in laws and training. Educational programmes have been established for both offenders and public officials who may come in contact with the victims. These programmes range from those based on behaviourist philosophy to those on humanist philosophy and are offered by the courts, community agencies, health care providers and in the workplace. Programmes to reduce domestic violence and efforts of multiple social institutions illustrate the use of adult education as a catalyst for social change.

Implementation Issues in a Community and Police Partnership in Law Enforcement Space: Lessons from a Case Study of a Community Policing Approach to Domestic Violence

Community Policing theory is personified by law enforcement organizations serving as catalysts for social change by enabling and empowering community-led involvement in the creation and maintenance of safety and order. Evidence suggests, however, that this personification is overshadowed by a reality marked by expanded law enforcement power and limited community involvement. A prominent explanation for a lack of significant community involvement is that community members are less than willing to put forth and sustain, or buy into, the effort required of effective collaboration with law enforcement. Although the lack of community buy-in offers a valid explanation, it may also oversimplify the complexity associated with coordinated responses to community and social problems. A case study of a community policing response to domestic violence is used to deconstruct the process of implementing a community and police partnership in law enforcement space. Several factors are identified that undermine both law enforcement and community involvement with the partnership.

Second World War as Catalyst for Social Changes in India

Second World War as Catalyst for Social Changes in India

From evil to illness: medicalizing racism.

Arguments for treating racism as an illness or an addiction are critiqued, and it is suggested that such efforts constitute a step backward in the battle against racism and discrimination. Medicalization, rather than being a catalyst for social change, is a mode of social control. The assumptions underlying the disease model are examined, and a strategy is outlined for dealing with racism as a structural phenomenon broader and more complex than personal prejudice and individual pathology.

Our Elders, Our Roots: College Students and Immigrant Elders

The contemporary demographic transition resulting from decreasing fertility rates and increased life expectancy has created an incremental proportion of elderly persons within the overall population. As we approach the next millennium, professionals involved in the education of future human service providers should address these demographic trends. America is aging, and the projected magnitude of changes in the population is clear. The number of people aged 65 and over is expected to increase. Within this aging population, demographers predict that the number of ethnic elderly will increase in the future because of increased longevity and the recent waves of (Johnson, 1996, p. 309). Intergenerational programming has emerged as a cost-effective way of mobilizing human resources and fostering cross-age understanding. The main belief of these programs is that each of us, at every age, has value and that by working together, we can be catalysts for social change (Intergenerational programming and service learning, 1995).This paper reports the findings of the initial stage of a service-learning project in which college students participated in weekly interactions with immigrant elders. A topic class called Our Elders, Our Roots: Intergenerational Relationships was used to provide the theoretical and reflective components. The goals of this project were:* to examine cross-cultural perspectives on the aging process within the family and the society;* to provide services (translations, advocacy) to immigrants/ refugees/elders with limited English proficiency;* to learn about the experiences of these elders;* to offer support to them in order to their needs;* to build friendships across age and cultures;* to increase students' knowledge and appreciation of their own cultural heritage;* to provide an arena where the connection between practice and theory becomes evident.Theoretical Framework of the ProjectSegregation by age and its consequences for human behavior and development pose problems of the greatest magnitude for our society. This social context and the prevalence of ageism have produced great impediments to the transmission of cultural heritage. We need to learn our history to be able to understand our present and, consequently, our future. The process of immigration has altered the roles of older people within the family unit. Furthermore, it has created discrepancies between new cultural demands and traditional roles (Gelfand, 1989). is critical to understand that ethnicity affects communication, interpretations, feelings, behaviors, values, and beliefs (Hines, Garcia-Preto, McGoldrick, Almeida, & Weltman, (1992). In analyzing intergenerational issues for elderly immigrants, the role ethnicity plays in the aging process should be examined, integrating gender issues, socioeconomic status, historical and sociopolitical contexts, generational place, education, and life experience.Intergenerational programs can affect healing within cultural groups, facilitate the transmission of traditions and values from old to young, and encourage the development of new cultural forms that reflect contemporary conditions (Intergenerational programming, 1994, p. 1). In the spirit of intergenerational programs, service-learning at the college and university level has been established with the intention of providing an avenue to integrate academic instruction with public service. It is a collaborative effort whereby students apply their classroom learning to inform and understand an individual or community being served (Delve, Mintz, & Stewart, 1990, p. 3). The tasks are to meet human needs in combination with conscious educational growth.... They combine needed tasks in the community with intentional learning goals and with conscious reflection and critical analysis (Kendall, 1990, p. 20). Throughout this process, the student is faced with the realities of individuals and groups from the community. …

Educational Media and ‘Agit Prop’: II. The Vertov Process repatriated

Abstract In the preceding article, a 75‐year old educational media process involving interactive multimedia, formative evaluation, and a sophisticated distance education system, was described. Although these techniques are mainstays of modem educational technology, their origins in the work of 1920s' film director Dziga Vertov have not previously been recognised. The previous article registered the techniques' roots on the Leninist ‘agit prop’ film train, and their development by Vertov for social intervention purposes. It described their essence, a feedback process whereby media footage is viewed and discussed by its producers and the people it portrays, and used as a catalyst for mass education and change. The Vertov Process culminated during the 1930s in the work of Alexander Medvedkin before being suppressed by Stalin. The article charted the subsequent influence of Vertov's educational techniques on the European schools of film documentary led in Britain by John Grierson, and in France by the avant‐garde movement and by the anthropologist film‐maker Jean Rouch. In 1996, Vertov's centennial year, the two articles indicate the film‐maker's role as an unsung founding father of the modern educational media, and political and cultural reasons for the lack of recognition which his visionary educational impact has received. Part II of the series examines the adoption of Vertov's techniques by French‐Canadian film‐makers, notably Michel Brault and Fernand Dansereau, in the early 1960s, and the manner in which their origins were further eclipsed by cultural and political discord within Canada's National Film Board. The implications of the process for educational media practitioners in the 1990s are discussed, and its 1995 repatriation on the railroads of the former Soviet Union by a team of educational media specialists from Britain, Canada, and Ukraine are described. The Vertov Process is seen as having unique modern potential, both as a catalyst for social change and as a means to maximise the effectiveness of the media's current and future content.

Experiential Education as a Catalyst for Social Change: Is it Time to Challenge the Metaphor?

Experiential Education as a Catalyst for Social Change: Is it Time to Challenge the Metaphor?

The Unfulfilled Promise: Public Subsidy of the Arts in America

Preface 1. The Problem 2. What Are the Stakes? The Value of Artistic Experience * Art Experience and the Problem of a Mass Society * Art Experience as a Catalyst for Social Change * Art Patronage as Social Capital * The Philosophical Conflict 3. Elite Domination of the National Endowment for the Arts A Theoretical Formulation of Agency Cooptation * Budget Analyses * The Hanks Years * Legislative Oversight * Report of the Surveys and Investigations Staff * Conclusion * A Word on the Reagan Administration 4. State Arts Agencies The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts * Characteristics of State Arts Councils * (Washington, Texas, Wyoming, Ohio, North Carolina, Louisiana, New Mexico, Indiana, Idaho, California) * Concluding Observation 5. Achieving Cultural Democracy Aid to the Creative Artist * Fostering Community Arts * Some Conclusions Notes Index

Masturbation and mental health—uses and abuses

Abstract Historical misconceptions have resulted in social and religious hostility towards masturbation. Nevertheless, after Victorian frenzy to repress the masturbator, an understanding of masturbation has served as a catalyst for social change in sexual attitudes and it is increasingly utilized in psychosexual therapeutic programmes.

Radical Behaviorism and the Social Order

Attempts by radical behaviorists to create a better society are marked by serious analytical and philosophical shortcomings. It is argued that the allegiance of behaviorism to the ideology of technocracy serves primarily to reinforce existing societal structures. Although behaviorism is being used mostly to preserve the regnant social order, it is suggested that behaviorism is potentially capable of becoming a significant catalyst for social change.

The neighbourhood museum as a catalyst for social change

I had a vision of. a branch museum in a small neighborhood that needed the infusion of form, of design, or varied color patterns and shapes, to inspire its young. We have miles to go and little enough time. The road is still rough and the future unclear, but. we have made a start.1

The university as a catalyst for social change: An example from Singapore

The university as a catalyst for social change: An example from Singapore

Masturbation from Judaism to Victorianism

This article demonstrates how masturbation, based on a misconception of Genesis 38:7-10, was judged harshly in both Judaism and Christianity, laying the foundation historically for social and religious hostility toward sex. Masturbation, known as the "secret sin," a threat to the human race, and an ontic evil, was condemned officially in 1054 by Pope Leo IX.From the medieval era to Victorianism there evolved new distortions of religion and science, so that masturbation was regarded as unnatural sex, murder, a diabolical practice, and the cause of two-thirds of all diseases and disorders including insanity, neurosis, and neurasthenia. Masturbation has historically served as the catalyst for social change in sexual attitudes.

Education and Social Stratification in Northern Zambia: The Case of the Uyombe

This paper explores relationship between formal western style education and developing patterns of social stratification in a community of northern Zambia. It examines manner in which a capitalist productive mode has affected indigenous occupational structures transforming millet cultivators into peasants and wage earners. ANTHROPOLOGY AND EDUCATION, SOCIAL STRATIFICATION, ZAMBIA, PEASANTS, CAPITALISM. The purpose of paper is to explore relationship between formal Western-style education and developing patterns of social stratification in Uyombe, a small chiefdom in Northern Zambia, as Yombe were being transformed from shifting millet cultivators into commercial peasant farmers and wage earners. More specifically, paper explores manner in which formal schooling has enabled individuals to enter into modern sector of Zambian society as skilled artisans, clerks, teachers, and civil servants. It describes adjustment of families to new social order and points to fact that educational and occupational achievements have been a gradual incremental process over several generations. Education in widest sense of term is a fundamental facet of all human societies and, thus, should not be narrowly conceived or defined. It occurs under numerous conditions in a multitude of places assuming a variety of forms. Cremin has defined it as the deliberate, systematic, and sustained to transmit, evoke, or acquire knowledge, attitudes, values, skills, or sensibilities, as well as any outcomes of that effort (1977: vii). In these terms it is part of historical process that binds individuals to society and imparts to them a shared cultural orientation. From this perspective it is superorganic, entailing intergenerational transmission of an inventory of accumulated sociocultural forms that prepare individuals to perform essential social tasks and assume social positions basic to their particular society. Education is a force for social continuity. It serves to reproduce basic arrangements of a society. In small-scale preliterate societies of type discussed later, indigenous education was informal and highly diffuse; it was intimately related to social institutions and production mode of society. There was education but no formal institutions of learning, since education was embedded in very fabric of social relationships. In Northern Zambia Western-style formal education was both cause and catalyst of social change. It was a markedly intrusive force, a vital element in processes of sociocultural transformation involving subsequent imposition of colonial rule and penetration of capitalism into Central Africa. The

The Engineer in the International Arena

Introduction My task is to contrast the role of the petroleum engineer working in the international arena with that of the individual employed in his native country. The U.S. is no longer the principal repository for the World's petroleum reserves. As a consequence, engineers concerned with petroleum technology have followed the seismic crews and drilling rigs to all areas of the world. In many countries with sizable reserves, petroleum engineering curriculums have been established in colleges and universities or special arrangements have been made to provide formal petroleum technology training for the young nationals of those countries. These engineers are now a pan of the sizable pool of international technical manpower.When you get fight down to it, there is no philosophical difference between an Indonesian working in the U.S. and an American working in Indonesia. In both instances, the individual and family must adjust to new cultural and job demands. The specific focus of this paper is the unique aspects of the engineer's job and family life that result from his choice to work in a country other than his own. It is the nature of this adjustment that I address.This is not a travelogue. I believe it is more important to discuss specific demands in the professional and personal life of the expatiate engineer. Once these are identified, I hope you will be able to determine more specifically your personal interest in an overseas career. This will require some introspection on your part to find a match between these demands and your capabilities and interests.I address four different aspect of the job:the role of the expatriate engineer,the subtleties of that role,the conduct of the engineer within this new environment. andpotential conflicts that could arise because of his expatriate status. Role of the Expatriate Engineer What is the role of the engineer in an overseas job? Obviously, he was imported to accomplish the very task for which he is trained. He must contribute his expertise and technical skills to accomplishing the company's petroleum development program. Within that objective, he must provide leadership to his project team and a standard of excellence in his job performance that merits the trust and support of his management and his host government.As in any job assignment, the expatriate engineer must work within the framework of organizational and governmental policies and constraints. But these job attributes are universal and are not specific to an expatriate assignment. What are the unique roles of the expatriate? The most significant on-the-job change is the time required to train local nationals. This situation arises because the demand for imported technological manpower exists in those locations with a shortage of specific skills. The local training requirement may be for operations or technical manpower or both. Similarly, it may be necessary to devote considerable time to informing government personnel who deal with an unfamiliar industry that has unique demands for fast decisions, large capital commitments, and great financial risks. The same principle also may apply to organization functions. In many nations developing new petroleum discoveries. there are few of the formal, complex organization relationships and functions that we take for granted. The formal organization can be dismaying to one whose experience is confined to a family business that is craft- or agriculture-centered. One of the first national petroleum engineers employed in one of Conoco's overseas subsidiaries was raised in a family whose traditional trade was pearl diving. Needless to say, this background did not provide the desired degree of confidence concerning his organizational relationships within Conoco. The demand on the expatriate employee to provide training to the local nationals is an inherent pan of an overseas job, other because it is specified in the contractual terms of the operating agreement, or because it represents the most effective means for improving on-the-job efficiency and accommodating future growth.The corollary of this training responsibility is the need to recognize local customs. By tailoring the methodology of the job to local approaches and working effectively within traditional systems, it is possible to accomplish goals that cannot be achieved in any other manner. A traditional approach may not conform to the demands of local customs. It is important to be sensitive to the social change associated with a totally new industry such as the development of significant petroleum reserves. The revenue, job opportunities, and imported labor (both skilled and unskilled) are the catalysts of social change. JPT P. 973^