Global Problems, Local Solutions

The inspiration for this special issue came at a faculty retreat held on a glorious late summer day on a bucolic campus. In such a setting, what else would Social Work and Labor Studies faculty think about but intractable problems and impossible solutions! We had been thinking of ways that our two disciplines, social work and labor studies, converge, and the obvious answer was that both were oriented towards problem-solving, as were other disciplines in the social sciences. But what were the problems we were trying to solve? Where did they originate and where were the solutions come from? Two things seemed obvious, intuitive, and in need of specific attention of the type provided by a journal issue. First, many of the problems faced by the populations both disciplines serve were, if not new, then at least historically located in the emergent global order. And second, most solutions were being worked out at the local level, through some combination or coalition of actors attempting to fashion problem-solving institutions and methods that empowered at-risk populations. Thus was born the Global Problems and Local Solutions issue of Advances in Social Work. What was out there that could be shared amongst practitioners to bring best practices to problems at different local levels? Our hope was to bring in different approaches that could be applied across regions and disciplines in order to see what works, who was doing what, and if there were truly regional applications to problem solving that, with some adjustments, could be generally applicable at the local level given the ongoing processes of global emergence. We recognized that such a single journal issue could never be comprehensive, and that our target of potential contributors would necessarily be limited by disciplinary and professional boundaries. Yet in looking at the state of the game in local problem solving and empowerment, our 15 essays provide a valuable window into both the successes and ongoing difficulties of providing paths of resistance, preparedness, and pro-active power to vulnerable, at-risk communities

Engineering ethics · Political science · Social issues · Social science · Sociology · Engineering · Labor Movements and Unions · Law · Social Work