Silent Spring- Worth reading

“For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals from the moment of conception until death”

Rachel Carson

First published in the United States in 1962, Silent Spring surveys mounting evidence that widespread pesticide use endangers both wildlife and humans. Along the way, Rachel Carson criticizes an irresponsible chemical industry, which continues to claim that pesticides are safe, and imprudent public officials, who accept without question this disinformation. As an alternative to the "scorched earth" logic underlying accepted pest-control practices, the author outlines the "biotic" approach— cheaper, safer, longer acting, natural solutions to pest problems (for example, controlling the Japanese beetle by introducing a fungus that causes a fatal disease in this insect). The primary inspiration for the book was a friend of Carson's in Massachusetts who was concerned about dying birds in her hometown where the authorities had sprayed DDT to control mosquitoes. At about the same time, a disastrous pesticide campaign against the fire ant of the Southeast was receiving national attention. Formerly a science writer for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, A native of rural Pennsylvania, she had grown up with an enthusiasm for nature matched only by her love of writing and poetry. Her books Under the Sea Wind, The Sea Around Us and The Edge of The Sea were hymns to the inter-connectedness of nature and all living things. The educational brochures she wrote for the Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as her published books and magazine articles, were characterized by meticulous research and a poetic evocation of her subject. She already had some acquaintance with research on pesticides, and she was ready to speak out. Originally planned as an article, Silent Spring became a book of more than two hundred pages and it took 4 years for her to complete this book and the only outlet she could find was the book publisher Houghton Mifflin. It reminds one that the book's effectiveness was due mainly to Carson's passionate, poetic language describing the alleged horrors that modern synthetic chemicals visit upon defenseless nature and hapless humanity. Though Silent Spring is without question her best-known book today, Carson was already a national literary celebrity when it came out. As work of social criticism, Silent Spring represented a considerable departure from the natural history with which she had made a name for herself. Whether this would have been a turning point in her career or merely a detour is impossible to know because Carson succumbed to breast cancer only a year and a half after Silent Spring appeared. What is clear, however, is that her public image was irrevocably transformed. The chemical industry would quickly spend more than a quarter of a million dollars to discredit her. Carson's Silent Spring had as much impact on late twentieth-century life, though an environmental consciousness can be discerned in American culture as far back as the nineteenth century, environmentalism as it is known today has only been around for about forty years, and Carson's book is one of its primary sources. It exposed the hazards of the pesticide DDT, eloquently questioned humanity's faith in technological progress and helped set the stage for the environmental movement. This book wrenched environmentalism from its relatively narrow, conservationist groove and helped transform it into a sweeping social movement that has since impacted almost every area of everyday life.

Social Work and Social Work Research

In the recent time Social work profession emerged as one of the demanding profession with in the development sector. There is much scope for the social work profession in the job market and social work brings along with it the job satisfaction to an individual when she/ he do valuable to the society. Today the modern complex society brought different social problems and which need the guidance from the professionals. During my master’s there were few colleges in my vicinity which provided Masters Program in the social work. Today this course has spread like a mushroom and more than 15-20 colleges in the neighboring towns are offering this course to the students. One of the major factors for the growth of school of social work domain is due to the fact of hundred percent job placements for these professionals. Its mainly due to the fact that there is a need of social worker in all the settings of the society, the rationale of this is that we are dealing with individual and there society. Society and individuals are not objective but they are subjective in nature. This character of the human being affects the personal professional and social life and which is neglected in the present digital world. Today there are different specializations within social work profession. India is having its own standard social work course pattern and it identified four different standardized specializations in India and many schools are offering these four courses along with new types of specializations. Tata institute of social sciences is one institute which initially brought the western concept of social work in India way back in 1936. Later the program spread across the country and only few schools had the monopoly over this school of thought. After NEP in India there was shift in the ideology of the life style among the Indian middle class and along with that it brought the new social constraints. This gave the opportunity for new areas of specialization to be explored with in the development sector. I am from community development specialization and personally I felt that our pedagogy is outdated and there is a need for an innovative ideas and subjects within this specialization which can help the professionals later in there work domain. Today I stand as a research fellow and got an opportunity to take few courses which are in demand today. I felt that these courses need to be added in our national specialization standards. As a research fellow I have to deal with two roles with which I will be identified in my professional domain they are Social worker and Social Scientist/ Researcher. Here there exists a clash between these two philosophical schools. Social work is my passion and Social research is the sector through which I am able to address the issues which the social worker unable to do many a time. Social work is practical and field based domain and Social research also comes with the field based approach and is more focused to understanding the practices and constraints of the society and come out with different policy and programs to over come these constraints and recommend to the sate and national committees. The role of the social worker is as initiator, promoter and educator etc. She /he provides the assistance to individual, group or community to over come there social situation. The assistance is not in the form of financial assistance, instead we make them aware of their conditions and provide guidance to over comes the problems. They are the decision makers for there problems. Change is inevitable in any society but the time factor depends on the mobility of the people with the outside world. If a NGO enters a remote village it will take at least minimum 5-6 years to bring in concept of change in the village and it need to know that this can be differ also which is depend upon the people of that village. One of the important work ethic of the social work professionals is to work within village environment and crate awareness among the civilians of the society. The positive and negative traits which come along with the social work profession need to be discussed. The positive traits like recognition, individual growth, satisfaction, etc. The negative factors like low payment political favors and interest, lack of co-operation from community etc. One of the constraints in this sector is the availability of the funds. Funding agencies are increased over the decade but there is lot of competitions for the funds in different organizations across the country. If a social worker is paid good salary and remuneration for the work he/she does in the rural community sector they can help in the development of that society. There are many areas with in society which are in need of the social workers and also the draw back with in the social work profession made me to realize the important of bringing ‘concept of research’ in the social work domain. Social work research will help in connecting the reality with the policies of the government and it can help a social worker to become the voice of the voiceless people in the community. Social work research can interface with the social work profession which will provide the platform for the expression of thought and ideas through research articles. The research reports will help the different committees in time of policy making and these policies can be of region specific and can address different approaches which are based with the ground realities of the region. This time when I was doing my pilot study for my research the major problem which I faced was to identify my two different roles and to follow them effectively in my field site. I am social worker my ethical principal is to value human needs and social research philosophy teach us to observe and collect the existing data from the field site. Social researcher plays the role of a observer in the village setting and had to point what happening around in the field site. In the qualitative research the researcher looks for both the objective and subjective information’s in the study area. Here, I had to adjust myself to the social situation and convey my goal of approaching them and not to disclose everything as what I know about the project which is implemented in these areas. We can do that also but not during the time of my data collection but after the major data collection is completed. It’s ethical on researcher’s part to disclose the conclusions and recommendations to the community. Where as in social work profession we interact with the people and express our ideas to them and the main motto here is to make people aware about the issues or situations so that which can help them in over coming their constraints. In conclusion, there is growing demand for social work profession in India, but the social work research need to be developed in India. I hope that many youngsters to opt for social research and work for the development of subaltern and rural sector of the country and help the government in bringing the region specific policies in different sectors of the society. I wish many youngest get interests in the research and work towards more practically oriented policies for the community.