The Social Engagement Of Social Science Volume 2

World War II brought together a group of psychiatrists and clinical and social psychologists in the British Army where they developed radical, action-oriented innovations in social psychiatry. They became known as the "Tavistock Group" since the core members had been at the pre-war Tavistock Clinic. They created the post-war Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and expanded on their wartime achievements by pioneering a new mode of relating theory and practice, called in these volumes, "The Social Engagement of Social Science." There are three perspectives: the socio-psychological, the socio-technical, and the socio-ecological. These perspectives are interdependent, yet each has its own focus and is represented in a separate volume. The Institute's dynamic social science approach to industrial problems, presented in this second volume, began with Eric Trist's coal-mining program for the development of more productive and personally satisfying self-regulating forms of work organization. The whole "Quality of Life" movement owes its theoretical and empirical basis to this pathfinding endeavor. Volume I, The Socio-Psychological Perspective, extended the object-relations approach in psychoanalysis to group, organizational, and wider social life. This extension is related to field theory, the personality/culture approach, and open systems theory. Action-oriented papers deal with key ideas in social psychiatry, varieties of group process, new paths in family studies, the dynamics of organizational change, and the unconscious in culture and society. Volume III will focus on non-hierarchical forms of organization facilitating inter-organizational relations in complex and rapidly changing environments—the socio-ecological perspective. This perspective is offered as a guide to institution building for the future.

World War II brought together a group of psychiatrists and clinical and social psychologists in the British Army where they developed radical, action-oriented innovations in social psychiatry. They became known as the "Tavistock Group" since the core members had been at the pre-war Tavistock Clinic. They created the post-war Tavistock Institute of Human Relations and expanded on their wartime achievements by pioneering a new mode of relating theory and practice, called in these volumes, "The Social Engagement of Social Science." There are three perspectives: the socio-psychological, the socio-technical, and the socio-ecological. These perspectives are interdependent, yet each has its own focus and is represented in a separate volume. The Institute's dynamic social science approach to industrial problems, presented in this second volume, began with Eric Trist's coal-mining program for the development of more productive and personally satisfying self-regulating forms of work organization. The whole "Quality of Life" movement owes its theoretical and empirical basis to this pathfinding endeavor. Volume I, The Socio-Psychological Perspective, extended the object-relations approach in psychoanalysis to group, organizational, and wider social life. This extension is related to field theory, the personality/culture approach, and open systems theory. Action-oriented papers deal with key ideas in social psychiatry, varieties of group process, new paths in family studies, the dynamics of organizational change, and the unconscious in culture and society. Volume III will focus on non-hierarchical forms of organization facilitating inter-organizational relations in complex and rapidly changing environments—the socio-ecological perspective. This perspective is offered as a guide to institution building for the future.

Vol. 3 edited by Eric Trist, Fred Emery, and Hugh Murray.

Volume three completes this set, which also presents socio- psychological (volume one) and socio-technical (volume two) perspectives. Thirty-four articles focus on nonhierarchical forms of organization facilitating interorganizational relations in complex and rapidly changing environments. The collection serves as a guide to institution building for the future. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

World War II brought together a group of psychiatrists and clinical and social psychologists in the British Army who developed a number of radical, action-oriented organizational innovations in social psychiatry. They became known as the "Tavistock Group," since the core members had been at the pre-war Tavistock Clinic. At the post-war Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, they developed a pioneering mode of relating theory and practice, called in these volumes "The Social Engagement of Social Science." Previous volumes presented two of three interdependent perspectives: the socio-psychological (Volume I, 1990) and the socio-technical (Volume II, 1993). The latest volume, on the socio-ecological perspective, completes the set. The socio-ecological perspective is concerned with the coevolution of systems and their environments. It considers the broader environment which shapes not only the task environments of socio-technical organizations but the institutional and cultural environment that confronts the individual. Volume III focuses on nonhierarchical forms of organization facilitating inter-organizational relations in complex and rapidly changing environments. This perspective provides a guide to institution building for the future.

In a time of worldwide turmoil and pervasive social displacement, universities and communities have come together to meet these urgent challenges in order to support the academic and social development of displaced young people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. It is crucial to understand and review how institutions, as well as individuals and collaborative groups, have worked together to expand institutional culture and practice in a process of cross-institutional expansive learning. A Cultural Historical Approach to Social Displacement and University-Community Engagement: Emerging Research and Opportunities focuses on university-community collaborative engagement as a strategic response to widespread social displacement and its implications for the educational and social development of underserved young people from displaced communities. Using a cultural historical perspective, the book offers a comparative study of collaborative engagement in multiple programs involving university and community partners in long-term efforts to address the social displacement and educational development of local young people. Specifically, it examines University-Community Links (UC Links), an international network of partnerships between universities and communities that has been addressing the educational implications of social displacement for over 20 years. This book is ideal for school faculty, students, university administrators, local community leaders, community-based organization leaders, local political leaders, teachers, and school partners, as well as researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders interested in discourse on university-community engagement in higher education, K-12, and local and state decision-making arenas.

Supported bilaterally by Sweden and Norway, the Scandinavian Action Research Development Program (ACRES — Action Research in Scandinavia) emphasized conceptualizing research questions and self-conscious writing processes for experienced action researchers. Participants came from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Holland, Great Britain, and the United States. A learning experiment in the tradition of Scandinavian industrial democracy, ACRES had both intellectual and organizational tensions common to action research projects. This book includes theoretical and historical overviews of action research, reflections on the writing process, narratives about the design and difficult internal processes of ACRES, and a selection of the participants’ writings. A particularly unique feature of the book is the discussion of the problematic relationship between action research and conventional modes of research writing and an analysis of the complex social processes collaboratively managed projects create, in combination with a set of participant cases.

"SAS[superscript 2]: A Guide to Collaborative Inquiry and Social Engagement represents a groundbreaking international effort to support the creation and mobilization of practical, authentic knowledge for social change. The guiding principle behind SAS[superscript 2] (Social Analysis Systems, www.sas2.net) is that group dialogue and social inquiry are crucial for local and global development. Social issues must be addressed socially and in a multistakeholder mode, not by private interests and experts alone, and the insights that emerge fully integrated into processes of knowledge production, planning, and decision-making." "This book will be an invaluable resource for researchers, consultants, facilitators, and activists working with people to solve problems and support inclusive inquiry and decision-making. It will also be useful to scholars and academics studying and teaching participatory action research in the social sciences."--BOOK JACKET.