Books & eBooks
Political Social Work by ISBN: 9783319685878Publication Date: 2018This social work book is the first of its kind, describing practical steps that social workers can take to shape and influence both policy and politics. It prepares social workers and social work students to impact political action and subsequent policy, with a detailed real-world framework for turning ideas into concrete goals and strategies for effecting change. Tracing the roots of social work in response to systemic social inequality, it clearly relates the tenets of social work to the challenges and opportunities of modern social change. The book identifies the core domains of political social work, including engaging individuals and communities in voting, influencing policy agendas, and seeking and holding elected office. Chapters elaborate on the necessary skills for political social work, featuring discussion, examples, and critical thinking exercises in such vital areas as: Power, empowerment, and conflict: engaging effectively with power in political settings. Getting on the agenda: assessing the political context and developing political strategy.
Measuring Social Change by ISBN: 9781503601406Publication Date: 2019The social sector is undergoing a major transformation. We are witnessing an explosion in efforts to deliver social change, a burgeoning impact investing industry, and an unprecedented intergenerational transfer of wealth. Yet we live in a world of rapidly rising inequality, where social sector services are unable to keep up with societal need, and governments are stretched beyond their means. Alnoor Ebrahim addresses one of the fundamental dilemmas facing leaders as they navigate this uncertain terrain: performance measurement. How can they track performance towards worthy goals such as reducing poverty, improving public health, or advancing human rights? What results can they reasonably measure and legitimately take credit for? This book tackles three core challenges of performance faced by social enterprises and nonprofit organizations alike: what to measure, what kinds of performance systems to build, and how to align multiple demands for accountability. It lays out four different types of strategies for managers to consider--niche, integrated, emergent, and ecosystem--and details the types of performance measurement and accountability systems best suited to each. Finally, this book examines the roles of funders such as impact investors, philanthropic foundations, and international aid agencies, laying out how they can best enable meaningful performance measurement.
Stories Changing Lives by ISBN: 9780190864750Publication Date: 2020Personal narrative and its significance for social change is a prominent topic in the psychological and wider social sciences. Yet while the importance of narrative for social change is commonly assumed by narrative researchers, no single text addresses it exclusively and from a variety of scholarly perspectives. Stories Changing Lives explores the strong and qualified significance of personal stories and how they catalyze and contribute to social change. The first of the book's three sections examines the embeddedness of personal narratives within larger narratives, and how these narratives shift towards justice. The second section considers how narrative language supports and generates social change. Finally, the concluding section addresses the ways in which re-narrations of the past taking place in the present, and narrations of the future using the present and past, impact social change. Stories Changing Lives sets out the theory and methodology underpinning a range of narrative projects that are committed to progressive change, delineating the strengths and limitations of that research.
Community-Based Learning and Social Movements by ISBN: 9781447343257Publication Date: 2020The rise of Far Right populism poses major challenges for communities, exacerbating divisions, hate speech and hate crime. This book shows how communities and social justice movements can effectively tackle these issues, working together to mitigate their underlying causes and more immediate manifestations. Showing that community-based learning is integral to the development of strategies to promote more hopeful rather than more hateful futures, Mayo demonstrates how, through popular education and participatory action research, communities can develop their own understandings of their problems. Using case studies that illustrate education approaches in practice, she shows how communities can engineer democratic forms of social change.
Mega-Events and Social Change by ISBN: 9781526117083Publication Date: 2017The spectacle of major cultural and sporting events can preoccupy modern societies. This book is concerned with contemporary mega-events, like the Olympics and Expos. Using a sociological perspective Roche argues that mega-events reflect the major social changes which now influence our societies, particularly in the West, and that these amount to a new 'second phase' of the modernization process. Changes are particularly visible in the media, urban and global locational aspects of mega-events. Thus he suggests that contemporary mega-events, both in their achievements and their vulnerabilities, reflect, in the media sphere, the rise of the internet; in the urban sphere, de-industrialisation and the growing ecological crisis; and in the global sphere, the relative decline of the West and the rise of China and other 'emerging' countries.
Race and Social Change by ISBN: 1119359287Publication Date: 2017A powerful study illuminates our nation's collective civic fault lines Recent events have turned the spotlight on the issue of race in modern America, and the current cultural climate calls out for more research, education, dialogue, and understanding. Race and Social Change: A Quest, A Study, A Call to Action focuses on a provocative social science experiment with the potential to address these needs. Through an analysis grounded in the perspectives of developmental psychology, adaptive leadership and complex systems theory, the inquiry at the heart of this book illuminates dynamics of race and social change in surprising and important ways. Author Max Klau explains how his own quest for insight into these matters led to the empirical study at the heart of this book, and he presents the results of years of research that integrate findings at the individual, group, and whole system levels of analysis. It's an effort to explore one of the most controversial and deeply divisive subject's in American civic life using the tools of social science and empiricism.
Strategic Social Media by ISBN: 1119259193Publication Date: 2017Strategic Social Media is the first textbook to go beyond the marketing plans and how-to guides, and provide an overview of the theories, action plans, and case studies necessary for teaching students and readers about utilizing social media to meet marketing goals. Explores the best marketing practices for reaching business goals, while also providing strategies that students/readers can apply to any past, present or future social media platform Provides comprehensive treatment of social media in five distinct sections: landscape, messages, marketing and business models, social change, and the future Emphasizes social responsibility and ethics, and how this relates to capitalizing on market share Highlights marketing strategies grounded in research that explains how practitioners can influence audience behaviour Each chapter introduces theory, practice, action plans, and case studies to teach students the power and positive possibilities that social media hold
