DePoy, Gilson Publish New Text on Social Work, Human Behavior
Contact: Elizabeth DePoy, (207) 581-1469; Stephen Gilson, (207) 581-2409
ORONO — University of Maine social work and disability studies professors Elizabeth DePoy and Stephen Gilson recently published their seventh book, a textbook titled The Human Experience: Description, Explanation, and Judgment.
The book is geared to a social work audience, including college students studying human behavior and the social environment, according to Gilson and DePoy, but the text also could be appropriate for classes in human diversity, philosophy, research and sociology. It was published by Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
The text, according to one reviewer, Elizabeth Cramer of Virginia Commonwealth University School of Social Work, “will revolutionize the way instructors think about and teach their human behavior courses and will challenge students to examine how values influence which human behaviors are considered legitimate for social work services and which types of professional responses should be provided. The text includes numerous interesting case examples and thinking points, which encourage the students to engage in critical reflection about the material.”
Building on historical and current diversity scholarship and debates, DePoy and Gilson posit that individuals are assigned to diversity categories and engender both public and private responses on the basis of changing sets of values. Traditional approaches to writing and conversations about human diversity typically focus on specific experiences and needs of oppressed and marginalized populations.
While this group-specific approach has been essential in advancing affirmative knowledge, resources and opportunities for individuals and groups who have experienced significant disadvantage, the recent recognition of the limitations of nomothetic conceptualizations of diversity and of equating diversity with minority status have prompted important and progressive responses. In their new text, DePoy and Gilson advance a framework that expands and shifts conceptualizations of diversity. Their theoretical premises recognize the continuing importance of population-specific approaches, but then begin to fill the critical need for a larger and more progressive context in which to examine and respond to human diversity, including the critical area of diversity of ideas.
DePoy and Gilson co-coordinate the UMaine Interdisciplinary Disability Studies program at the UMaine Center for Community Inclusion. DePoy recently received the University of Maine 2007 President’s Research and Creative Achievement Award.