Comm Final Exam

Empowerment

an intentional ongoing process centered in the local community, involving mutual respect, critical reflection, caring, and group participation, through which people lacking an equal share of valued resources gain greater access to and control of those resources

Benefactor

view communities as a bundle of needs instead of empowerment

mission statements look like, “here is what we will do/improve for communities”

Intermediary

encourage, advocate, interdependent, act as a broker or guide, promotes action of community members (i.e. to encourage or assist)

Ex. to promote the full participation of women in the social, economic, and political life of their countries

Paradox of empowerment

Sense of empowerment versus self empowerment

we feel that we have the power to decide or alter decision but it is different than empowerment because there is always a higher system that controls everything (i.e. an organization can give and take away your power)

Dynamic system of power: the rules and social norms we have in our head limits us to do more (i.e. group quizzes)

Citizen Participation and power of spin

Citizen participation

a process in which individuals take part in decision-making in the institutions, programs, and environments that affect them

BUT it is critiqued as useful rhetoric in a fashionable way of speaking rather than authentic practice; tokenism

Tokenism

you can sit at the table but you don’t have real power or voice over decision making (sense of empowerment)

Shaping the Definition of a Public Issue or Conflict

Power of Spin: define public problems or shape the terms of public debate on issue

Ex. key decision maker favored technical jargon and scientific expertise while discounting practical knowledge of resident (client vs. citizen)

BUT

Ex. social media shaped how police violence towards African Americans are viewed

How does empowerment manifest?

Citizen Participation, power to, power from, empowering settings, empowered settings

Power to

the ability of individuals or groups to pursue their own goals and develop their capacities

Ex. negotiate strategies to affect managerial decisions or policies

Power from

ability to resist the power or unwanted demands from others (i.e. work, feminism)

Ex. context in organization (nondiscriminatory or macrosystem influences)

Value and Empowerment

For some, this involved spiritual faith and practices; for others, it centered on a secular commitment to moral principles such as social justice and ensuring a future for our children and the larger planet

Spiritual support for community involvement included a sense of innate value within everyone, a sense of “calling” to the work, and a certainty of the work’s spiritual necessity. Beliefs that enabled taking risks included a certainty that “God will provide” and a “willing suspension of fear and doubt” as participants began new challenges. A capacity for forgiveness in the rough and tumble of community decision making was also important

Manifestations of Social support

Which racial group has low mortality and why?

when the levels of playing field is equalized, equality feels like oppression (ED>IC); stress increases

BioPsychoSocial Diagram

1. Message from Authority: A witch doctor say you’re going to die

2. Community/Family Belief System (Eco Model): Whether they also believe the authority or not which may lead to withdrawing support

3. Personal Belief System: You have to believe the authority to feel the effects (does your individual capacties meet environmental demands)

4. Perception of one’s own power (self-efficacy and social confirmation): can’t change oppressive system

5. Person’s Psychological Reaction: deserted, isolated

6. Person’s Bio Reaction: ANS/SNS, digestive, heart

7. Both leads to person’s Physiological reaction

Biopsychosocial Examples: Which goes with which?

Ex. Minorities always have to think about their race because you always have to be on guard from harm compared to whites

Ex. African Americans don’t have time for relaxation, always hypertensed

Ex. People with terminal illness gets treated differently (i.e. death talk)

Ex. U.S. POW who were in solitary confinement did not die because they had a sense of community (in their heads) while soliders were confronted by their community that they did not belong

Racism exist because we make it exist, it’s not real, it is voodoo

Voodoo Death

the sudden, unexpected death of a healthy person caused by extreme emotional stress, such as fear or the belief they have been cursed.

Autonomic Nervous System

Sympathetic versus Parasympathetic

Sympathetic

• fight/flight

• pupils dilate; more visual info to locate survival tools

• increase heart rate, relax bronchin (absorbing more oxygen), blood vessels constrict; more energy to fight

• Digestive and immune system shuts down to save energy

• Adrenal gland is always activated

  • #1 leading cause of death is heart diseases and it is caused by stress

Parasympathetic

rest/digest

Stress

ED>IC; when we feel that our individual capacities can’t manage environmental demands

Learned helplessness

In the study of rats that were switched to another cage and next to a new rat and died compared to the group of rats that stayed in the same cage and didn’t die, they were waiting out the pain until something changed because there is no escape

Minor vs. Major

Minor: Big deals but episodic (acute)

Major: daily hassels, chronic

Social embeddedness

number of people you recognize that you can rely on (not a good measure as quality can overpower quanitiy)

Distal factors

contributors to or buffers against a problem that may not be readily observable or obvious

vulnerabilities that increase the likelihood of a problem developing (i.e. an economic recision that may reduce fiancial resources for employers)

buffers that decrease likelihood

Proximal stressors

event or situations that represent a threatened or actual loss of resources

major life events, life transitions, daily hassels, disasters, minority-related and acculturative stressors, and vicious spirals (loss of one resource triggers other losses)

Coping

you’re at the point where things aren’t getting worst but isn’t getting better either

Process: cognitive appraisal, reappraisal, categories of coping, virtuous spirals, positive emotions, postraumatic growth

Cognitive appraisal

ongoing process of constructing the meaning of a stressful situation or event

Reappraisal

reframing a problem involves altering one’s perception of the situation or its meaning

Categories of coping

1. Problem-focused coping: involves adressing a problem situation directly, especially by making a plan to change the situation and following the plan

2. Emotion-focused coping: addresses the feelings that accompany the stressors

3. Meaning focused coping: involves finding significance in the stressor by reappraising it, especially if this leads to growth or learning of important lessons

Virtuous spirals

resources are increased, successes build on each other, and the stressor is transformed into a catalyst for growth

Postraumatic Growth

the positive psychological change that results from struggling with highly challenging circumstances (i.e. greater appreciation for life)

Positive emotions

expand our “thought-action repertoires,” stimulating novel and adaptive mindsets and ways of coping. Help build our intellectual, social, and psychological coping resources

Types of support

families, natural helpers and mentors (bartenders), relationships, mutual help groups, multidimensional relationships

Multidimensional relationships

two persons involved do a number of things together and share a number of role relationships (i.e. coworker)

Online Mutual Groups

mutual assistance or self-help groups and mutual support groups, are voluntary associations of persons who share a life situation or status that produce challenges for coping in their environment

Channel Theory

Homeless Channel Theory

Primary Prevention

Problem-focused

acting to prevent the symptoms of a social problem from manifesting in the first place

Cons: high upfront costs, difficulty in measuring immediate impact, and the prevention paradox where high-population efforts yield low individaul benefits

Promotion

Ex. in addition to preventing obesity, there is an excerise program also put in place to promote people’s health

Secondary Prevention

Problem-focused

early intervention where problem is caught at its early manifestation

Teritary Prevention

Problem-focused

efforts directed at situations where the problem is full manifest. Work to reduce the symptoms and duration. Rehabilitation

Universal prevention

population-focused

given to everyone in a selected population

Ex. smoke ad campaigns

connected to primiary

Selective prevention

population-focused

given to those population that are more at risk to experience a social issue

Ex. high-school dropouts; preent by adding fun extracurriculars, programs and events

connected to secondary

Indicated prevention

population-focused

directed at those in a population who are considered at high risk, or who display symptoms, of the social issue

Risk factors

characteristics of individuals and situations that are thought to increasethe likelihood that a person will experience problematic outcomes, like personal distress, mental disorders, or behavior problems

Ex. multiple factors that put children with ch

Protective factors

provide resources for coping and often represents strengths of persons (personal qualities), families, and communities

Ex. Chronically ill parents have interpersonal resources such as relatives or friends

Cumulative-risk hypothesis

posits that the total number of risk factors a person experiences matters more for their development than any single risk factor alone

Gatekeepers

preventing the entering or not enetering a channel and moving from one section of a channel to another

Ex. housewife

Resilience

positively adapting despite significant adversity

Perseverence

succeeding by overcoming adversity

Adversity

a state of serious, persistent misfortune, hardship, or affliction, characterized by circumstances that feel "turned against" an individual.

Flea Scenario: What kind of opening was made in the sphere?

Think channel theory

Fleas escaping isn’t based on resilience and perseverance, it is random

Fleas who jumped while fleas that stayed on the ground escaped

What fundamentally drives human?

Fear

Uprising occurs because conditions gets so bad, fear no longer holds people back

What makes humans unique?

we can create and make anaglogies; make connection, understanding that one object can represent another, and phonological awareness

Power of narratives

stories that binds communities together and show how to overcome our fears

Fear: courage, putting it into context to know how to respond to it through analogies which forms narratives

Ex. “Defund the police” narrative failed because there is no substances added such as banning chokeholds or allocating funds from police to other social services system

Narrative examples

Taking Root: Maathai told the story of when the God Tree dies, the stream draisns of water and tadpoles no longer lives there because of loss water supply which connects to when we cut down forests it leads to malnutrition and disease

Wrong Bus Syndrome: stop the bus — stop the ignorance and confront the driver — take action (Civic and Environmental Education Seminar came about as tribal members started killing each other for resources)

At the political prisoner protest, women stripped naked to tell soliders that they are in trouble as mothers used it as a form of punishment for their children for disrespecting them

Story of me, story of us, and the story of now

Narrative theory

focuses on how individuals and communities construct meaning through stories, utilizing these narratives to foster empowerment, identity, and social change

Qualitative research

process of naturalistic inquiry that attempts to make sense of phenomena in terms of the meanings that people bring to them

useful for examining situations, processes, and contexts that have not been studied in detail

Contextual meaning: allowing persons to speak in their own voices to represent a form of insider knowledge

Ex. participator research

Participatory Research

collaborative research within community members and for understanding diverse social and cultural contexts; important to be part of the community due to perspectives and connection

Increase of quality of questions: EMIC perspectives on research questions which participants come up with

Increase of quality of data/results of reporting: community members know how to speak to the community in a way they can understand instead of academic words

Role modeling and empowerment: motivates participants to get a degree

Action Research

Kurt Lewin; purse answers to questions about how individuals shape ecological contexts and how ecological contexts impact individuals

A collaborative, cyclical approach focused on solving immediate, practical problems and fostering social change, rather than merely creating generalizable theory

Ex. How do we develop a psychological sense of a community in a neighborhood?

N.A.O.M.I

Reducing addiction to heroin by supplying a safe way to give heroin

amount spent on heroin decreased more than half (1200 — 300)

they were able to hold jobs and build better rapport with families

Quantitative research

methods that emphasize measurement, statistical analysis, and experimental or statistical control

analyze measurable differences among variables and the strength of relationships among those variables

Mixed-methods

qualitative and quantitative methods can be used in a single study to offer the advantages of both perspectives and overcome the limitations of each

Qualitative acts as an exploratory role that can help researcher ask questions in their quanitative research in the 1st sequence of research design

Also serves as an explanatory role to help uncover why the researcher found the quantitative results they did

Positive externalities

Qualitative: empowerment, knowledge transfer, actionable insights (better policies), therapeutic effect

Mixed: richer. more accurate understanding of social impactsand actionable social data

Negative Externalities

Qualitative: psychological distress, community sigmatization, breach of condfidentiality, resource depletion (consume local time and energy without improvements)

Mixed: distorted findings, resource inefficiency

Effectiveness vs. efficiency in program evaluation

Effectiveness: