International Association on Social Quality

• Important Journal Articles Available for Free
• International Journal of Social Quality: Two Special Issues
• New Working Paper on Central and Eastern Europe
• New and Updated Social Quality Projects
• Remembering Ton Korver

Important Journal Articles Available for Free

The International Journal of Social Quality has made two of the articles of issue 10.1 of the journal available for free. Both articles are outcomes of long collaborations within multidisciplinary project groups.
 

Empowering Vulnerable People

The first of these two articles is Pathways to Empowerment: The Social Quality Approach as a Foundation for Person-Centered Interventions. This article (the first investigating Social Quality's constitutional factors) describes how the Social Quality Approach has been used as the theoretical framework to structure and ground a person-centred intervention. This intervention (Pathways to Empowerment, PTE) aims to improve the quality of the daily lives of persons who experience losing control of their lives. PTE focuses on their strengths, and stimulates personal agency, participation in society, and self-direction. So far, this intervention has been implemented in 75 care organizations in the Netherlands.

Bridging the Gap Between the Natural and the Human Sciences

The second project and related article, Evolutionary Thermodynamics and Theory of Social Quality as Links between Physics, Biology, and the Human Sciences, includes a philosophical journey into the natural sciences, focusing on the concept of time irreversibility as developed in the field of Evolutionary Thermodynamics (ET).
This paper opens the potential to bridge the theoretical divide between physics and other natural sciences on the one hand, and social quality and other human sciences on the other. For the human sciences, social quality provides the tools to make this possible, because in ontological sense it incorporates ET and its related dialectics. This may open pathways for meaningful interdisciplinary approaches within and between natural sciences and human sciences – an essential condition for addressing challenges like the overall sustainability in a comprehensive way.

Acces to Issue 10.1 of the Journal 

There are two more articles in this issue. The first explores the situation in ever growing megacities all over the world and the impact of the COVID pandemic there. This concerns a new view of the contemporary urban problematique, seen from a Social Quality perspective. The second article evaluates the practicing of corporate sustainability within large corporate organizations.

You can access Volume 10.1 of the International Journal of Social Quality here.

International Journal of Social Quality: Two Special Issues

March 2021: Special Edition of Journal on CEE

The upcoming issue of the International Journal of Social Quality (10.2) will be a special edition on Central and Eastern Europe. Several leitmotivs will appear across the articles: (a) the extent to which people are able to participate in soci(et)al relationships under conditions which enhance their well-being, capacity and individual potential – and the issue of participation gap; (b) the persistently low levels of trust in society and its impact upon all four dimensions of societal life; (c) a societal polarization with strong links to the previous two points; and (d) the changing global landscape where liberal democracy is no longer a there-is-no-alternative kind of scenario for development. The special issue is scheduled to appear in March 2021. IASQ Working Paper 17 delivers the most important points of departure for this project.

November 2021: Special Edition COVID and Society

In the second half of 2021, a special double issue of the International Journal of Social Quality (IJSQ) will be devoted to the societal consequences of the current COVID pandemic. This issue will reflect the first outcomes of an international project (started in the summer of 2020) aimed at analyzing the societal consequences of the pandemic through the lens of social quality. The project and the content of this special issue are supported ty scholars from all continents. The first arguments for leading to this project and the connected IJSQ issue (Volume 11, 1&2) were outlined in the Editorial of issue 10.1 of the Journal. 

New Working Paper on Central and Eastern Europe

IASQ Working Paper 18, written by Peter Herrmann, argues that the so-called transformation of the countries of Eastern Europe could actually not happen due to the fact that the politics and policies of designing societal development started from misleading suppositions. It is suggested that social quality thinking, if it wants to be relevant in assessing major historical shifts has to find a way of thoroughly including a historical perspective. This means not least to consider two strands influencing the development: the first is the meaning and effect of long-term processes, meaningful for the establishment of specific national and/or regional identities. The second aspect is given by the necessity to assess social quality in the context of international comparison always is a matter of relationality, i,e. here a matter of what is going on between countries. Following this through, the foundation is laid for some far-reaching challenges for the social quality approach.

New and Updated Projects

Over the years, Social Quality has been the driving force in a number of projects worldwide. This is why the IASQ website has been updated with new or extended overviews of these projects.

The latest updates concern

• Public Health and Social Quality, projects 1995 – ongoing
• Empowerment of Vulnerable People in The Netherlands, projects 2008 – ongoing
• Collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), Projects 2017 – ongoing
• Concerning Politics of the BRICS-Platform, Projects 2018 – ongoing 

Also, the manifestos and declarations that have been issued over the years, have been grouped together. You will find them here.