support pages for Heather Smith and Mark K. Smith's book: the art of helping others

7: getting from here to there

resources

further reading

home and forum: the art of helping others

resources

Throwing out the balance with the bathwater. Michael Newman argues for the jettisoning of the concept of balance. 'Balance' allows the teacher and helper to adopt an amoral or even immoral stance; to refuse to take sides even in the face of the unpleasant, the gross and the unjust.

Sissela Bok on lying and moral choice in private and public life. Robert K. Fullinwider explores and amplifies Sissela Bok’s seminal work: Lying: Moral Choice in Private and Public Life. Bok's work has no peer as a serious treatment of a central, but neglected, dimension of moral life.

The retreat from calling and vocation. Tony Jeffs argues that in recent years face-to-face work has been devalued and constrained; policymakers have opted for quantity over quality in terms of workers; and the need for vocation and calling has been sidelined.

Green jazz and social jazz. 'Just doing it'  - not waiting upon national governments and international organizations to take action - has led to a remarkable outpouring of initiatives around the global environmental crisis. We explore James Gustave Speth's vision of unscripted, voluntary initiatives that are decentralized and improvisational - what he calls 'jazz' - and the possibilities for community development.

further reading

Bok, Sissela (1999) Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. New York: Vintage. Bok’s book has become the central modern treatment of lying and repays careful reading.

Ginsborg, Paul (2005) The Politics of Everyday Life. Making choices, changing lives. New Haven: Yale University Press. Helpful diagnosis of the problems of representative democracies and exploration of the possibilities of local civic action.

Mulgan, Geoff (2007) Good and Bad Power. The ideals and betrayals of government. London: Penguin. An interesting exploration of the democratic state and why renewal and challenge are so important.

Speth, James Gustave (2005) Red Sky at Morning. America and the crisis of the global environment, New Haven: Yale University Press. 'Just doing it' - not waiting upon national governments and international organizations to take action - has led to a remarkable outpouring of initiatives around the global environmental crisis. However, James Gustave Speth's vision of unscripted, voluntary initiatives that are decentralized and improvisational - what he calls 'jazz' – has considerable potential for thinking about what we do as helpers.