The literature, in general, and social work literature, in particular, is full of manuals and books on community organization and empowerment, Dalit empowerment and related topics. However, there has always been dearth of materials emerging out of field practice that facilitate testing, verifying, accepting or rejecting theories in the light of experiences from the field. In this manner, this is a unique and enriching joint venture of an academician and practitioner in social work discipline. Human service professions, such as social work, can grow only if academics and field practice are strongly interconnected, complement, contribute and give insight and foresight to each other to rectify, improve and make itself suitable to meet the demands of fast changing socio-cultural milieu. While, the divorce or disconnect between the two would engulf both theory and practice, making them redundant and eventually extinct. It is in this backdrop, that the present work bears its significance. It depicts the interventions and strategies that have worked well in the field and hence have critical importance for academia. The book highlights the process of community empowerment. The purpose of documenting the process of Dalit empowerment in the book is to facilitate social workers and other human service professionals to gain an insight into the challenges and problems change agents encounter in social action and approaches, strategies and models of intervention that ‘work’ in empowerment of deprived and marginalized groups and communities. For social planners and policy makers, the present work would provide enough food for thought and analysis that may result in planning of pro-poor and responsive policies and programmes. The social work educators, practitioners and students would appreciate the theoretical perspectives on different aspects of empowerment of downtrodden people gained through fieldwork practice. Hopefully, it would enrich their teaching, learning and practice. The literature, in general, and social work literature, in particular, is full of manuals and books on community organization and empowerment, Dalit empowerment and related topics. However, there has always been dearth of materials emerging out of field practice that facilitate testing, verifying, accepting or rejecting theories in the light of experiences from the field. In this manner, this is a unique and enriching joint venture of an academician and practitioner in social work discipline. Human service professions, such as social work, can grow only if academics and field practice are strongly interconnected, complement, contribute and give insight and foresight to each other to rectify, improve and make itself suitable to meet the demands of fast changing socio-cultural milieu. While, the divorce or disconnect between the two would engulf both theory and practice, making them redundant and eventually extinct. It is in this backdrop, that the present work bears its significance. It depicts the interventions and strategies that have worked well in the field and hence have critical importance for academia. The book highlights the process of community empowerment. The purpose of documenting the process of Dalit empowerment in the book is to facilitate social workers and other human service professionals to gain an insight into the challenges and problems change agents encounter in social action and approaches, strategies and models of intervention that ‘work’ in empowerment of deprived and marginalized groups and communities. For social planners and policy makers, the present work would provide enough food for thought and analysis that may result in planning of pro-poor and responsive policies and programmes. The social work educators, practitioners and students would appreciate the theoretical perspectives on different aspects of empowerment of downtrodden people gained through fieldwork practice. Hopefully, it would enrich their teaching, learning and practice. pvchr.net/2014/10/a-new-book-of-dr-archana-kaushik-and-ms.html
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 06:46:54 +0000