Anthropology / Sociology at EOU

Number of credits: 5

Instructor: Bill Grigsby

Course time(s): every winter term, at either 9 or 10 am

General Education: Does not fulfill gen-ed requirements

Catalog description: In-depth examination of concepts and issues related to specific target populations of the social welfare system.

Prerequisites: Soc 204, 205, and 315. Senior status or permission from instructor.

Website: www.eou.edu/socprac

Most recent syllabus: Winter 2007

Recent textbooks used:

• David Wagner. 1993. Checkerboard Square: Culture and Resistance in a Homeless Community. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
• Robert Putnam. 2000. Bowling Alone. New York: Simon and Schuster.
• Frances F. Piven and Richard Cloward. 1993. Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare. New York: Vintage Books.
• Kristine Nelson and Paul Adams (editors). 1995. Reinventing Human Services: Community-and Family-Centered Practice. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
• Alan Weil and Kenneth Finegold (editors). 2002. Welfare reform: The next act. Washington, DC: Urban Institute Press.

General topics covered: bureaucracy, social capital, community development, social work, homelessness, hunger and food insecurity

Learning outcomes

• understanding of alternative models of social welfare and service delivery.
• familiarity with homelessness as a social and local problem.
• understanding of community development (through participation in Haven from Hunger project).
• clearer understanding of the politics of social welfare.
  

While Soc 315 (Foundations of Social Welfare) is designed to provide a broad overview of the field of social welfare, this course will focus more on practice. There are a few themes that will run through the class (in no particular order of importance): 1) Hunger. We will spend 5-6 weeks working on the Haven from Hunger project. 2) Homelessness. Besides devoting one of the texts to the topic, we will to the extent possible examine homelessness in La Grande. 3) Alternative conceptions of welfare. On a practical level, we will examine community-based models of welfare, and compare them with the more conventional social service bureaucratic model, and we will use the problems of hunger and homelessness to frame our analysis.