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Book notice #2

David Race. Social Role Valorization and The English Experience. London: Whiting and Birch Ltd., 1999.

Dr. Wolfensberger is by far the most prolific writer about SRV, but a few other writers have contributed greatly to the body of published work concerning SRV. One of these is Dr. David Race, an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Salford and the Chair of Values Education and Research Association in the UK.

From the Prologue: The need for this book

… the events of the years since 1983 have resulted, in my view, in a lack of availability of a detailed explication of SRV theory in England. The third edition of Wolfensberger’s introductory monograph (Wolfensberger 1998) goes a long way to filling this gap, and should ideally be read in conjunction with this book, which follows the same structure. What is, hopefully, important about this book to an English audience is its two main objectives. First, both for readers unfamiliar with either normalization and SRV, and for those who have had some contact with those ideas, the book attempts, in an English context using mainly English writings as evidence, to lay out my interpretation of SRV theory … The second objective … is my attempt, in the course of the explication of SRV, to address as many of the academic critiques of the theory (or more usually of the English experience of ‘normalisation’) as possible, so that the current ‘accepted wisdom’ might be challenged.

Abbreviated Table of Contents:

Prologue

Acknowledgements

1. ‘Normalisation’ and SRV: An English experience

2. Social Devaluation: The foundation of SRV

3. Experiences of devaluation: ‘The wounds’–Part one

4. Experiences of devalued people: ‘The wounds’–Part two

5. Social roles and SRV theory

6. The ten themes of SRV: Consciousness and unconsciousness; symbolism and imagery

7. The ten themes of SRV: Mindsets and expectancies; The power of role expectancies and role circularity

8. The ten themes of SRV: The developmental model and personal competency enhancement; Relevance, potency and model coherency

9. The ten themes of SRV: Interpersonal identification; The power of imitation

10. The ten themes of SRV: Personal social integration and valued social participation; The conservatism corollary

11. Conclusion and epilogue

References

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