INDIGENOUS PRACTICE: SOME INFORMED GUESSES –SELF-EVIDENT BUT IMPOSSIBLE

Ever since Western social work was exported to Africa an ongoing debate has been taking place on whether it fits the African context. Most of this debate, however, has revolved around Western social work’s techniques rather than on its ends, which, being predicated on Western values, are likely to be alien to many Africans. The article outlines the arguments why Africa might require a form of social work of its own and the chances of such indigenisation taking place. It concludes, however, that while indigenisation may be a desirable end, it is probably impossible unless African social workers can engage in reflective learning with their clients.Common sense, presumably a universal trait, suggests that people behave differently in different situations and, as a corollary, that they require different types of knowledge that befit these situations. Most people, for example, conduct themselves differently at home and elsewhere and adapt their clothing and behaviour differently to formal and informal occasions. Equally apparent is that similar differences apply to people who live in different circumstances and, partly as a result, entertain different conceptions of the good. Thus, children in a resource-strapped school, who must share pencils in class, are more likely to develop interdependent outlooks than their counterparts in richer schools. Indeed, so self-evident are such observations that they beg the question why a practical pursuit like social work, as distinguished from more theory-oriented disciplines, must examine them at all?Or is this so? Recent years have seen a sharp rise in social workers being accused of skirting this common sense by ignoring the specific, lived-in experiences of many of their clients and consequently of being largely ineffective. Among these concerns are the negatively labelled "anti-racist", "anti-sexist", "anti-oppressive" and "anti-agist" prescriptions that increasingly imbue Western social work writings, and the more positively labelled "indigenisation" movement that emanates more from developing countries. This article examines the latter’s apprehensions, mainly as presented by African scholars, arguing that while its reasoning is self-evident, effective transformation of this reasoning into professional practice is often impossible. The article that follows this exposition (MW/SW 38(4) pages 311 - 323), by Kwaku Osei-Hwedie, contests this position in maintaining that the development of indigenous African social work knowledge and practices are possible

¿Una nueva Marcha del Fascismo sobre Occidente?

Today «Brown Scares» are the order of the day in many countries in Europe and the Americas. Why is this the case in anti-fascist age when fascism is not really on the march? I want to advance the argument that there are few fascists remaining today in Euro-American societies, but that «Brown Scares» have been revived in various decades since the 1950s. These «Brown Scares» are used by the establishment to undermine political opponents and to engage in more authoritarian mechanisms against enemies of the current pro-liberal and pro-capitalist establishment.El «pánico marrón» está a la orden del día en muchos países de Europa y América. ¿Por qué ocurre esto en la era antifascista, cuando el fascismo no está realmente en marcha? El argumento principal de este artículo es que actualmente quedan pocos fascistas en las sociedades euroamericanas, a pesar de ello, los «miedos pardos» se han reavivado en diversas épocas históricas desde la década de 1950. Estos «Brown Scares», sin embargo, son utilizados por el establishment para socavar a los oponentes políticos y para emprender mecanismos más autoritarios contra los enemigos del actual sistema pro-liberal y pro-capitalista

Emotional intelligence among surgical nurses in Latvia

Personality dimensions - coping strategies, emotional intelligence, locus of control related with behaviour at work. This study focuses on the conceptualization of Bar-On which formulated emotional intelligence as a noncognitive intelligence which influences an individual's ability to cope effectively with environmental demands and pressures. The purpose of this paper was to study emotional intelligence among surgical nurses in Latvia. The study is using demographic data and Questionnaire of Emotional intelligence. The highest average rates of emotional intelligence subscales are Emotional Self-Awareness, Social Responsibility and Interpersonal Relationship and leading competencies are Interpersonal and Intrapersonal.publishersversionPeer reviewe

The Elusive Boundaries of Social Work

Repeated attempts to conceptualize social work have assumed that social work should and can have a precisely defined domain. One suggestion is to equate social work with personal social services. This article suggests that the uniqueness of social work lies in the very absence of defined boundaries. Implications for social work practice are identified, in particular social work\u27s heavy dependence on resource controllers, and the consequent need of social work education to shift its traditional focus from client-centered interventions to managing non-client interactions

A fast and stable parallel QR algorithm for symmetric tridiagonal matrices

AbstractWe present a new, fast, and practical parallel algorithm for computing a few eigenvalues of a symmetric tridiagonal matrix by the explicitQR method. We present a new divide and conquer parallel algorithm which is fast and numerically stable. The algorithm is work efficient and of low communication overhead, and it can be used to solve very large problems infeasible by sequential methods