Empowering Settings and Voices for Social Change

by Aber, Mark S.; Maton, Kenneth I.; Seidman, Edward; Kelly, James G.

• ISBN13: 9780195380576
• ISBN10: 0195380576
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-12-03
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Empowering Settings and Voices for Social Change combines a focus on understanding social settings as loci for empowering intervention with a focus on understanding and giving voice to citizens. The volume illuminates advances in theory and method relevant to changing a broad spectrum of social settings (including programs, organizations, institutions, communities and social policy) from a strengths-based perspective. Three cross-cutting concepts -- a strengths-based approach to research and social action, empowerment, and narrative research methods -- serve as integrating and foundational themes. Part I takes up issues of setting processes and outcomes of influence, research methods, and implications for setting and community change efforts and social policy. Questions addressed in Part I include: What is the nature of current and future conceptualizations of social settings? What are the actionable features in social settings? How can settings that place a premium on empowerment and promotion be created or restructured? What are the organizational characteristics of empowering community settings? What mechanisms mediate the impact of these characteristics on individual well-being? Part II examines how action scientists have sought to understand and amplify the voices of those individuals and communities who serve as the focus of their research and social change actions. Part II authors explore the role of institutional beliefs, community narratives, and personal stories in recovery from serious mental illness; trace the cultural contours of "mental health" among the Gros Ventres of the Fort Belknap Indian reservation; examine youth voice in the juvenile justice system, illuminating the loss of focus on individualized justice and accountability to youth; and, outline ways in which community narrative can enrich culturally anchored work in prevention and public policy. Finally, chapters in Part III seek to situate the rest of the volume's chapters in the context of decades of work on empowering settings, giving voice and social change.

Table of Contents

Contributors	p. xi
Preface	p. xiii
Empowering Settings and Voices for Social Change: An Introduction	p. 1
Empowering Settings
Changing Social Settings: A Framework for Action	p. 12
Empowering Community Settings: Theory, Research, and Action	p. 38
Pursuing Paradox: The Role of Adults in Creating Empowering Settings for Youth	p. 65
Settings and Empowerment	p. 94
Giving Voice
Voices from the Ground Up: The Use of Narrative in Understanding Recovery from Serious Mental Illness	p. 107
ôI Came to Tell You of My Lifeö: Narrative Expositions of ôMental Healthö in an American Indian Community	p. 134
Tales of Terror from Juvenile Justice and Education	p. 155
The Neglected Role of Community Narratives in Culturally Anchored Prevention and Public Policy	p. 173
On Voice: Difference, Power, Change	p. 193
Retrospect and Prospect
Contradictions and Consistencies: Rappaport's Contributions to Community Psychology (1968-2007)	p. 207
Searching for OZ: Empowerment, Crossing Boundaries, and Telling Our Story	p. 232
Index	p. 239
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