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The Council on Social Work Education's (CSWE) instruction on diversity and social justice is central to the mission of social work education. The population of the United States has become more diverse and social work education has a pressing need to ensure students understand how diversity and social justice issues shape human experiences. Little research has systematically examined Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) programs in that regard. This paper examines correlations among demographic characteristics and program directors' impressions on teaching diversity and social justice in the United States' (BSW) programs. Using Qualtrics, a web-based survey tool, 36 program directors responded to a 47-item instrument composed of both closed and open-ended questions. Content analysis of the data was conducted with the assistance of Nvivo 12 to identify themes and nodes. However, due to inadequate information from the program directors, the open-ended questions were analyzed using thematic analysis. Emergent themes primarily pertained to implicit and explicit curricula. A central finding from the data was that there was variation in the way schools approached instruction regarding diversity and social justice assessment. The study raises questions for continued research and may have implications for the role of accrediting organizations in offering guidelines for diversity and social justice instruction and assessment.

We develop a quantitative framework for understanding the class of wicked problems that emerge at the intersections of natural, social, and technological complex systems. Wicked problems reflect our incomplete understanding of interdependent global systems and the systemic risk they pose; such problems escape solutions because they are often ill-defined, and thus mis-identified and under-appreciated by communities of problem-solvers. While there are well-documented benefits to tackling boundary-crossing problems from various viewpoints, the integration of diverse approaches can nevertheless contribute confusion around the collective understanding of the core concepts and feasible solutions. We explore this paradox by analyzing the development of both scholarly (social) and topical (cognitive) communities — two facets of knowledge production studies here that contribute towards the evolution of knowledge in and around a problem, termed a knowledge trajectory — associated with three wicked problems: deforestation, invasive species, and wildlife trade. We posit that saturation in the dynamics of social and cognitive diversity growth is an indicator of reduced uncertainty in the evolution of the comprehensive knowledge trajectory emerging around each wicked problem. Informed by comprehensive bibliometric data capturing both social and cognitive dimensions of each problem domain, we thereby develop a framework that assesses the stability of knowledge trajectory dynamics as an indicator of wickedness associated with conceptual and solution uncertainty. As such, our results identify wildlife trade as a wicked problem that may be difficult to address given recent instability in its knowledge trajectory.

Rainforests are legendary because their extreme species richness. In the richest rain forests every second tree on a hectare is a differnt species. As a consequence, most species are rare. Using field data from studies in dfiferent parts of the world, we show that species-rich plots often display a distribution of number of species N_s(I) represented by I individuals with a power-law shape N_s(I)∝I^-β with β≈1.5. Power laws are characteristic (but not exclusive) of systems poised close to critical points and this is supported by the analysis of the gap distribution over space in the Barro Colorado Island forest, which has been shown to be fractal. Here we propose a new model of rainforest dynamics which is able to account for a wide set of observations, strongly suggesting that indeed rainforests would be organized close to instability points, showing strongly path-dependent dynamics.

We consider a generalization of replicator dynamics as a non-cooperative evolutionary game-theoretic model of a community of N agents. All agents update their individual mixed strategy profiles to increase their total payoff from the rest of the community. The properties of attractors in this dynamics are studied. Evidence is presented that under certain conditions the typical attractors of the system are corners of state space where each agent has specialized to a pure strategy, and/or the community exhibits diversity, i.e., all strategies are represented in the final states. The model suggests that new pure strategies whose payoff matrix elements satisfy suitable inequalities with respect to the existing ones can destabilize existing attractors if N is sufficiently large, and be regarded as innovations that enhance the diversity of the community.

The debate between Gandhi and Tagore aptly represents mutual respect for varying perspectives that unfolded in the crucible of Indian freedom struggle guiding the destiny of democracy in India. Though Gandhi– Tagore debate has often been studied by scholars for highlighting the agreement or divergence in their views, this chapter examines this debate as an entry point into an understanding of Gandhi’s ideas on democracy. First, a study of the relationship between Tagore and Gandhi is expected to shed light on the reflection of democratic ideals in Gandhi’s very personality. Second, several themes — like the importance of the dignity of labour, the idea of village republics as the building block of democracy, the participation of masses in the creation of their destiny, the path to the achievement of not only political freedom but real swaraj, and the importance of education for swaraj — emerge from the debate and provide an indispensable framework for understanding Gandhi’s ideas on democracy. This chapter undertakes an analysis of various letters, essays and exchanges between Tagore and Gandhi, and also supplements them with various key texts by Gandhi which throw light on his ideas on democracy. These especially shed light on India’s dialogical traditions, which were to lay a strong foundation for Indian democracy — the tolerance of dissent and respect for diversity being prominent among them. The issues arising from the Gandhi–Tagore debate, therefore, continue to be relevant today.

This chapter explores the concepts of ethics, morals and social responsibility from organisational and societal perspectives covering both marketing that is focused on profit and marketing focused on bringing about social benefit. It discusses the meanings of social responsibility from different paradigmatic viewpoints and highlights the advantages and limitations of particular approaches. The chapter also considers some aspects of legal and regulatory frameworks and the potential for the development of codes of conduct for socially responsible for-profit marketing and social marketing. The discussion is positioned in a global context and is grounded by intercultural considerations and the diversity of ethical perspectives and norms across cultures.

People of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) backgrounds, representing around 28 per cent of Australians and hundreds of ethnic backgrounds and language groups, are often overlooked or under-considered in health communication campaigns. This diversity presents challenges for those wishing to successfully communicate health messages, particularly given the fragmenting communications landscape. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light many of these challenges and the, often, limited consideration given to CALD communities in communicating urgent health messages. This chapter reviews the Victorian government’s innovative CALD Youth Content Campaign which engaged social media influencers to communicate COVID-19 messages through channels not ordinarily accessible to government communication teams. From this case study, we draw insights for future health campaigns aimed at diverse audiences.

In this chapter, we discuss diversity and inclusivity in advertising. Based on theories of socialisation, social influence and attitude formation, we explain how advertising messages impact on the target and broader audiences using the case of a 2020 TRESemmé advertising campaign for haircare products in South Africa. The advertising campaign posted by a major pharmaceutical retail chain (Clicks) on their website described black people’s hair as “frizzy & dull hair” and “dry & damaged hair”, in comparison to white people’s hair, which was labelled as “normal hair” and “fine & flat hair”. The campaign resulted in public outrage and protests because many perceived it to be racist, offensive and distasteful. We deconstruct the advertisement and analyse the ensuing fallout using publicly available resources. The advertisement had an unintended message emanating from the use of the textual content and the race of the models used. Given that incidents like this are not uncommon, we conclude that diversity and inclusivity interventions need to be taken more seriously in advertising.