Social Science Section 3

What is social work + its focus?

• A profession concerned with helping people (families, groups, individuals, communities, etc.) to enhance their individual and collective well-being 

• Concern for justice and quality of life (and helping people with it) 

  • Works with the marginalized

Historical figures in social work and their contributions

• Jane Addams

  • Founded a settlement house in Chicago (Hull House) 

  • Desire to nurture community life as a way to promote change in society 

    • Beginning of macro practice/ social response strand

• Mary Richmond 

  • Used a systematic approach to social work → attempted to understand individuals problems and then apply a technical response 

  • Casework strand 

2 streams of social work

1. Micro

• Creating change starts at an individual level

• Mary Richmond

• Contemporary social work is more micro

2. Macro

• Creating change means addressing social problems at a higher/ community level 

• Jane Addams 

Christianity in social work

• Reality: Christians were the first social workers 

  • Local churches doing social work before it as professionalized or named 

• When social work was professionalized, Christianity faded into more secular approaches that taught religion as unnecessary for understanding and fixing the world 

• Now: there exists an overt hostility to Christianity in social work 

  • However Christians are still involved  

Contemporary figures in social work

• Brene Brown 

  • Researcher and works with organizations

  • Interested in shame, vulnerability, and empathy

Research topics of contemporary social workers

• Research tends to be fairly practical 

• Examples:

  • Client needs 

  • Intervention 

  • Theory

Social work research methods

• Using qualitative (ex. interviews) and quantitative (ex. surveys) research methods

  • Experiments are difficult to conduct and not popular 

Why is social work practical? What do social work students learn in their education?

• Listening skills 

  • Learnt skill and technique that helps relate to other people 

  • In social work, listening requires purpose and intentionality → to help people feel heard and valued

    • Ex. specific listening skills (verbal and non-verbal) 

      • Physical presence and behaviour → facial expressions, posture, tone of voice, etc. 

  • Communication (verbal, physical) goes both ways

Social work jobs

• Micro practice as the dominant stream social workers pursue 

• Job examples: 

  • Counselors (school, substance abuse, etc.) 

  • Crime victim advocates 

  • Working in: 

    • Hospitals

    • Schools

    • Social service agencies 

    • Private practice 

Limits of social work

• Very difficult to research 

• Limited existing research and evaluation

• Efficacy

Pluralism

A theory that differences can coexist

Is pluralism possible within disciplines (psych, socio, social work)? Is pluralism desirable?

• Possible: yes 

  • Yes: Many different fields within social sciences

• Desirable: yes and no

  • Yes: it increases efficiency in dealing to problems because it allows knowledge from a variety of disciplines to be employed 

  • No: it can lead to eclecticism, identity crisis risks within disciplines (they all start to blend and overlap), and general complication

Bias in the social science

• They aren’t neutral

• Social science is shaped by researchers, journals, funders, and general academia

Johnathan Haidt: shift from universities seeking truth to social justice. When, how, why? Truth university vs social justice university?

• 2,500 yrs ago universities sought truth

  • This shift emerged in universities in the 1990s 

• A truth seeking university is interested in allowing conversation in order to uncover truth 

  • Multiple viewpoints would be encouraged to interact 

  • This was the dominant pursuit of most universities for the past 2500 years 

• A social justice seeking university is interested in “changing the world” and solving social issues

Advantages/disadvantages of academia shifting to a social justice position

• Advantages:

  • Academia itself

  • Increased representation (more kinds of people included) 

  • Broader focus (more diverse) 

• Disadvantages:

  • Reduced diversity (less unfavourable ideas allowed) 

  • Politiziation  

  • Less truth-seeking (because it is assumed)

Positive and negative implications for academia that universities have shifted to a social justice position

1. Dominance 

• Advantages: good critique 

• Disadvantages: ideas become sacred (disallowing critique of perceived social justice) 

2. Topic diversity 

• Advantages: 

  • Topic diversity 

• Disadvantages: topic reduction (because opposing opinions are disallowed), feelings, biases (research becomes bias leading to the whole of academia becoming bias) 

3. Withholding information: individuals withholding information out of fear of crucifixion for having a “wrong” or “invalidating” opinion

• Advantages: 

• Disadvantages:

  • Weaken people’s ability to support and argue their own ideas because they are never challenged

  • Victimhood culture 

  • Students walking on eggshells 

4. Students taught to see people as part of a dual: either part of a good group or a bad group

• Advantages:

• Disadvantages: 

  • There can never really be peace (groups pitted against each other and forever in conflict) 

  • Need for protection because disagreements can lead to “invalidating existences” 

  • The “good” group/ victim is understood as weaker than the bad from which they need to be freed/ protected

Solutions for navigating and rectifying bias in academia more broadly and the social sciences specifically

• Understanding that we as people and as academia are biased 

  • Ex. rationality, confirmation bias, belief perseverance (we want to hold onto our own ideas and fail to consider others), supremacy, value violations (feeling as though disagreements are discriminatory), etc. 

• Academia critique 

  • It’s important to understand, notice, and speak out against these these changes

• A “heterodox academy”?

  • Focus on macro and micro level issues

What can negatively challenge conversations?

• Single sided stories 

  • Demonizes people 

  • Avoids and dismisses other perspectives 

• Centralizing differences 

  • Segregates 

  • Overlooks commonalities 

• Harmful speech patterns 

  • Hurts people 

  • Shuts down conversations

• Involuntary sharing 

  • Makes people uncomfortable

• Unbalanced tension

  • Too much hostility or safety 

  • Undermines authenticity 

What can facilitate positive conversations?

• Calling truces 

  • Results in listening to people 

  • Causes people to be slower to negatively react

• Remaining in conversations

  • Facilitates learning 

  • Allows for future conversations

• Monitoring communication

  • Advances the conversation

  • Allows for future conversations

• Nuanced focus on differences (acknowledge)

  • Dignifies differences 

  • Dignifies common humanity 

  • Avoids labels 

Dr. Kathy Absolon and her contributions

• An associate professor (faculty of social work and Indigenous studies) and director of the Centre for Indigegogy at Wilfred Laurier University 

• Contribution: What would an indigenous worldview look like in the perspective of research?

  • Re-terms the word research to “re-search”

    • Process of recovery

  • Illustration of a flower as a metaphor

Reasons for difficulty in incorporating Indigenous worldview into the social sciences

• It has been perceived as invalid from a Western perspective

• Western academics have been the gatekeepers of knowledge

• There is an existing illusion that there is one way of doing science to establish truth 

What is “re-search?”

• It is a method of re-creating methodologies in study and academia 

• A recovery of Indigenous knowledge gaining 

• Part of an Indigenous worldview – doing research from an Indigenous perspective

Why would Indigenous scholars want to do “re-search?”

• Out of knowledge that there are different realities and ways of gaining knowledge 

• There is fear around traditional research in Indigenous communities because they have been hurt by Western academics before 

• Outside interpretations on Indigenous communities can lead to inaccurate representations of the truth

How is “re-search” conducted by Indigenous scholars?

• Indigenous worldview – doing research from an Indigenous perspective

  • Includes understanding knowledge as relational with all creation (not individual), and seeing knowledge as existing in many places (including within, in dreams, the metaphysical world, dance, etc.)

Developments in Indigenous knowledge in Canadian universities?

• Inclusion of Indigenous research in social science 

  • Funding for Indigenous research emerging in psych, social work, and anthropology

• Emerging education programs for Indigenous worldviews and students 

  • Indigegogy program at Laurier 

    • Land based education 

    • Indigenous teaching 

    • Decolonizing practice

Advantages and disadvantages of decolonization for academia and the social sciences

• Questioning how we construct ideas of rationality and science, especially in the West, and considering if they marginalize nonration, nonscientific ways of knowing 

  • Advantage: invites other worldviews

Are Christianity and science compatible?

Yeah

Realities of Christians in social sciences

• Christianity is underrepresented 

• The Christian worldview does not exist in upper education (in public institutions) 

Why would Christian scholars want to do research from a Christian perspective?

• Understanding of science not as a worldview but as a tool for understanding the created order 

  • Provides proper perspective 

  • Provides humility 

• Christians can contribute to research, raise awareness of Christian issues, and bring attention to other ways of knowing 

• Some existing methods in science are inappropriate/ do not fit in specific situations 

• Outside interpretation on Christian communities/ issues can be flawed

• Number of Christians are dropping in the West

How could Christian scholars do research from a Christian perspective? How would they align/differ from a secular worldview?

• Christian worldview: 

  • Theological assumptions: God created the world (and is involved in it), He created things with order, He created us to be rational, etc. 

• Christians could continue to gather knowledge using Western methodologies because they also assume order

  • Qualitative 

  • Quantitative

• Similar approach to science since both assume order

Realities that have contributed to hostility against Christianity in the social sciences

1. Secularization

• Led to understanding of Christianity as outdated 

• Christian understandings of things delegitimized (and contempted) 

• Christianity seen as an obstacle 

• Stereotypes about Christian character 

2. The move toward science

• Religion removed from educational foundation

3. Non-religious faculty

• Liberal worldview

• Less religious than world population

• Christian social scientists are less likely to be there

• Christians are kept out of the social sciences

4. “WEIRD” students and faculty

• Western, educated, industrial, rich, democratic people 

• There is a class of people in academia that are not representative of the general population

  • Less religious, less liberal, etc. 

• Social workers are then less representative of the general population and hold different value systems than the community (out of touch) 

5. The “new class”

• Power is held by the knowledge class to shape: 

  • society/ culture 

  • Apply labels 

  • Public perceptions 

  • Little space for religion 

  • Public discourse 

  • Religion as an obstacle 

6. Seeing religion as problematic

• Leads to seeing religious people as irrational, pathological, and promoting violence } and therefore needing help 

7. Anti-oppressive practice

• Christians can be denied admittance, receive lower grades, denied practicums, generally discouraged from the field, denied research funds, denied tenure, etc. 

• Leads to fear when talking about faith

• The discipline must be anti-oppressive and empowering, and focus on dismantling structural inequalities rather than controlling individuals

Why should Christians be in mainstream social science?

• It is valuable to learn about mainstream social science (fishbowl risk otherwise) 

• Potential to have an impact 

• Potential to contribute to research with a Christian perspective

Dr. Russell Kosits’ discussion of how and why Christians should be… What is his advice for Christians in academia?

Deeply or weakly engaged

• Strongly engaged contributes to higher influence in the mainstream 

Strongly or weakly perspectival

• Stronger perspectival results in more explicitly Christian natures

View academia as a missional opportunity 

• Encourage listening as well

Dr. George Yancey’s advice for Christians in academia

• Do not fall for the hype of academics being “open searchers for the truth” 

• Seriously consider the consequences 

• Strive for excellence (less for people to pick apart)

Dr. Richard Mouw’s argument for Christians to engage with others who have different worldviews (His view and God’s)

Says maturity happens when we engage with people who are different from us (civility)

• We should interact maturely, respectfully, and with our common humanity in mind

God loves diversity - and intentionally created us to be different 

• We should also appreciate it