The guidance offered here is intended to assist social workers in thinking through the specific ethical challenges that arise whilst practising during a pandemic or other type of crisis. In crisis conditions, people who need social work services, and social workers themselves, face increased and unusual risks. These challenging conditions are further compounded by scarce or reallocated governmental and social resources. While the ethical principles underpinning social work remain unchanged by crises, unique and evolving circumstances may demand that they be prioritised differently. A decision or action that might be regarded as ethically wrong in ‘normal’ times, may be judged to be right in a time of crisis. Examples include: prioritising individual and public health considerations by restricting people’s freedom of movement; not consulting people about treatment and services; or avoiding face-to-face meetings.
MULTIFILE
The use of the word “social” in the context of information technology goes back to the very beginnings of cybernetics. It later pops up in the 1980s context of “groupware.” The recent materialist school of Friedrich Kittler and others dismissed the use of the word “social” as irrelevant fluff – what computers do is calculate, they do not interfere in human relations. Holistic hippies, on the other hand, have ignored this cynical machine knowledge and have advanced a positive, humanistic view that emphasizes computers as tools for personal liberation. This individualistic emphasis on interface design, usability, and so on was initially matched with an interest in the community aspect of computer networking. Before the “dot-com” venture capitalist takeover of the field in the second half of the 1990s, progressive computing was primarily seen as a tool for collaboration among people.
This paper explores country-level macro-structural conditions that are associated with social capital, measured as individuals’ access to social resources. To explain differences in social capital across societies, we formulate hypotheses based on welfare state generosity, cultural orientations (collectivism vs. individualism), and income inequality. We test our hypotheses using data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) 2017, which comprises a total sample size of 50,010 individuals living in 33 countries. We use the position generator survey instrument to build two composite measures of social capital: the diversity and the socio-economic status of social contacts. Multilevel regression models reveal that diversity of social contacts is generally greater among individuals in countries with generous welfare states, while access to contacts of a higher socio-economic status is generally better among individuals in countries with higher levels of individualism. A country’s income inequality is not associated with the social capital of its citizens. However, the association between a person’s socioeconomic status and the diversity of their social capital is moderated by income inequality. As such, our study serves to demonstrate that macro-social conditions at the country level do influence individual social capital and have different implications depending on the dimension considered.
