bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Mission Accomplishment as Philanthropic Organization Effectiveness: Key Findings from the Excellence in Philanthropy Project
Authors: Sheehan Robert M.
Published: March 2007

Philanthropic organizations make a significant impact on the lives of Americans, and the effectiveness of these organizations is of great interest. The Excellence in Philanthropy Project is intended to contribute to the development of theory for designing philanthropic organizations for producing increased levels of effectiveness. The findings reviewed here are based on questionnaires collected from 101 philanthropic organizations in Franklin County (Columbus), Ohio. This article reports on the ways mission statements are expressed-as an intention to affect the world outside the organization, the organization itself, or both-and also on whether organizations 'performance measures assess mission accomplishment.
Another Role for Nonprofits: The Case of Mop-Ups and Nursemaids Resulting from Privatization in Emerging Economies
Authors: Abzug Rikki , Webb Natalie J.
Published: March 2007

This article synthesizes economic, sociological, and historical theory, first in the American context and then in an Eastern European (Polish) context, to develop an explanation for a distinctive type of nonprofit activity. The authors explore a role for some nonprofits arising due to the privatization experience in the early history of the United States and to recent privatization in Poland (as an example of a transitioning economy), where nonprofits develop as facilitators for the creation of for-profit enterprises. The "facilitator hypothesis" proposes two roles for nonprofits. First, they "mop up" problems created when firms are privatized, assisting those persons left unemployed or otherwise adversely affected by privatization. Second, they act as "nursemaids," nurturing nascent for-profit businesses and industries. This article suggests further study of emergent organizational forms in the transformation from command to market-oriented economies as a way to understand the diffusion of sectoral models from one economy to another.
Voluntary Organizations and Advocacy: The Case of Housing for Older Americans
Authors: Laws Glenda
Published: March 2007

This article provides a brief overview of nonprofit organizations and advocacy that outlines the multiple forms that advocacy might take and introduces a conceptual frame work for understanding better the discursive attributes of advocacy. Housing opportunities for older people in the United States are then reviewed, focusing in particular on the role of nonprofit organizations. This brief historical review provides the context for a consideration of the ways in which nonprofits have advocated on behalf of elderly people, in debates about housing, looking in particular at representations made at the Select Committeeon Aging. Conclusions address matters relating to both housing in particular and the role of nonprofits in a more general view.
Embarking on a Republic of Benevolence? New Survey Findings on Charitable Giving
Authors: Schervish Paul G. , Havens John J.
Published: March 2007

In this article, the authors provide a tentative answer to a vexing statistical question about the level of charitable giving in the United States: Why does the Indepndent Sector's (IS) Survey of Giving and Volunteering consistently estimate personal contributions to nonprofit organizations to be 65% to 75% lower than correspondingestimates reported by the American Association of Fund-Raising Counsel (AAFRC). The authors' analysis of several additional surveys suggests that there is sufficient new evidence to conclude that average annual household giving is closer to an AAFRC-based estimate of $1,167 than to the IS's published estimate of $696. This would herald the good news that levels of charitable giving are indeed higher-at least 34% and perhaps up to 48% higher-than previously reported from survey data. These findings indicate that a substantial upward revision in the perceived amount of annual charitable giving is in order.
Assessing the Value of Volunteer Activity
Authors: Brown Eleanor
Published: March 2007

One standard way to convert estimates of time volunteered into estimates of the dollar value of volunteered time is to multiply estimated hours by the average hourly compensation rate for paid labor. Economic theory suggests an alternative valuation strategy that acknowledges the importance of taxes, the provision of volunteer-assisted services at less- than-market prices, and the value of volunteer experiences captured by volunteers themselves. One conclusion is that the standard estimate overstates the value of volunteering to the recipients of volunteer-assisted services but understates the overall value of volunteering when the gains accruing to volunteers themselves are included.
The Distribution of Public-Private Partnerships: Targeting of Voluntary Efforts to Improve Urban Education
Authors: Longoria Thomas
Published: March 2007

With increasing activity of volunteers in service provision, effectively managing voluntary involvement is a significant issue for local governments. This study examines the distribution of school-business and school-community-based-organization partnerships as voluntary efforts to improve urban education. This study uses multivariate regression analysis to examine the distribution of partnership programs as a function of school-level characteristics. Based on a consideration of the motivations for founding partnerships and the scope and sponsorship of the partnerships, several hypotheses are proposed. The study finds differences in the targeting to schools and students in the most need based on the scope of effort and the sponsorship. The findings have implications for the management and organization of partnerships in public schools.
Young People's Participation in Decisions Affecting Their Welfare
Authors: MURRAY CATHY , HALLETT CHRISTINE
Published: March 2007

This article focuses on young people and participation, drawing on a study of the Scottish Children's Hearings system, titled Deciding in Children's Interests, which was conducted at the University of Stirling between 1994 and 1997. It notes the surprising paucity of recent research on the hearings system, given that it was one of the earliest examples of young people systematically participating in decisions affecting them in a child welfare context. The authors consider several dimensions of participation in relation to the hearings system and other decision-making arenas. They suggest that participation rights may have become a reality more for young people involved in welfare systems than for other young people in the UK.
The Textual Abuse of Childhood in the English-Speaking World
Authors: SAUNDERS BERNADETTE J. , GODDARD CHRIS
Published: March 2007

Research at Monash University, Australia, highlights how the language chosen by some journalists and academics to refer to the child and the child's experiences may both reflect and influence the position and rights accorded to children in the English-speaking world. The authors contend that the current low status of children, and lack of respect given to their rights, may be perpetuated through `textual abuse'. This article particularly highlights `textual abuse' discovered in academic literature focusing on children and children's rights. The child is objectified in language; denied his or her gender, which is essential to his or her identity; and the child's gender appears to be used to pursue adult agendas. The authors stress the importance for children of `critical language awareness' if children are to be granted the recognition, rights and respect to which they are entitled.
Kids and Commerce
Authors: ZELIZER VIVIANA
Published: March 2007

Analysts have frequently neglected children's economic activities as peripheral and/or morally threatening, but recent work has challenged both characterizations. Direct observation of children's participation in production, distribution and consumption reveals their extensive and consequential involvement in the economy. The organization, meaning and consequences of children's economic activity vary significantly among three different sets of social relations: with other household members, with agents of organizations outside households and with other children. A review of exemplary studies identifies an extensive agenda for new child-centered studies of production, distribution and consumption.
`You Want to Be a Girl and Not My Friend'
Authors: SCOTT KIMBERLY A.
Published: March 2007

Few researchers have closely examined intersections between race and gender in the social relations of children, and the voices and experiences of African-American girls have been notably absent in the literature on children's peer relations. This article, based on fieldwork with the first-graders in two racially mixed US elementary schools, draws upon Black feminist theory to examine intersections between gender and racialized ethnicity, especially in the experiences of African-American girls. Findings suggest that racial positioning and gender of the African-American girls hold different meanings according to the context. The impact of race and gender as intersecting forces on the girls' peer interactions are considered.
Presumed Innocence
Authors: RENOLD EMMA
Published: March 2007

When sexual harassment and schooling have been the focus of research, the site of investigation has been the secondary school and subsequently the experiences of adolescents. Locating the primary school as a key arena for the production and regulation of sexual discourses, practices and identities, this article examines the neglected area of preadolescents' experiences of different forms of sexual harassment. Drawing on data from an ethnographic study of children's gender and sexual identities during their final year of primary school, the author reports on the physical and verbal forms of heterosexual, homophobic and heterosexist harassment of both girls and boys and suggests that such practices are the means by which many children define, create and consolidate hegemonic masculinities and femininities, heterosexual identities and heterosexual hierarchies. The implications regarding the more damaging practices of children's sexual cultures and relationships for policy and practice are discussed briefly in the concluding section.
Street Researchers
Authors: BEMAK FRED
Published: March 2007

To advance work with street children, realistic and effective programs must be based on prior research. Traditional research methods are not applicable to investigations with street children, thus this article presents a new paradigm introducing the concept of `street researchers'. The street researcher is redefined and examined within the context of the street child's world. Issues such as the transformed role of the researcher, countertransference, new conceptualizations of time and space, testing behaviors, value-based research, and the integration of ethnography are discussed. It is recommended that street researchers also assume broader responsibilities as research/social change agents.
Policy, Protectionism and the Competent Child
Authors: WYNESS MICHAEL G.
Published: March 2007

This article examines the way that recent policy initiatives on childhood in Britain generate contradictory models of childhood. It is argued that the childcare and educational policy contexts suggest that children are (1) in need of greater protection, control and `redevelopment' and (2) more active in constructing strategies for dealing with problems within the home and the school. In an attempt to make sense of these seemingly irreconcilable definitions of childhood, the article locates policy within a broader context of shifting adult boundaries between public and private spheres which generate more fluid roles and responsibilities involving adults and children.
Competence and Risk Factors in Norwegian Client and Non-client Children
Authors: SANDBÆK MONA
Published: March 2007

An age cohort of fourth graders was divided into children receiving help from social services (client children) and those who did not receive such help (cohort children). The samples were examined using risk as well as competence-related variables, based on questionnaires filled out by the children, their parents and teachers. The results showed few significant differences between the two subsamples on sociodemographic variables. In other respects the clients scored higher on risk and lower on competence-related variables. Parents' and teachers' responses identified consistent differences between the two groups, whereas the children's answers revealed smaller and inconsistent differences between the client and cohort children.
Institutional Incentives for Resource Mobilization
Authors: Hilton Rita M.
Published: March 2007

This article examines the effect of institutional arrangements on resource mobilization in three irrigation systems in Nepal. Applying tools of institutional analysis, three hypotheses are tested. Specifically, these hypotheses concern the influence of (1) decision-making autonomy, (2) extent of external agency involvement and (3) reliability of water delivery on farmers' incentives to mobilize their own resources for system operation and maintenance costs. Findings indicate that: (1) the more control farmers have in system decisions, the more likely it is they will contribute their own resources; (2) indirect intervention tends to promote farmer financing of recurrent costs to a greater extent than does direct outside involvement; and (3) reliable water delivery is the key to effective local resource mobilization.
The Traditional Distinction between Public and Private Goods Needs to Be Expanded, Not Abandoned
Authors: Adams Roy D. , McCormick Ken
Published: March 2007

Observations that goods and services cannot legitimately be divided into just two categories - private and public - have led to a proposal, published in this journal, that the traditional concept of public goods be abandoned. In this paper it is suggested that the problems of the private versus public dichotomy be solved by expanding the taxonomy, not by abandoning it. Non-rivalry and non-excludability are independent characteristics (i.e. one can exist without the other), and they can be present in varying degrees (i.e. they are not all-or-nothing characteristics). Recognizing this, an expanded taxonomy is constructed which is not subject to the valid criticisms which have been made of the too simple private versus public dichotomy.
4. Heterogeneity, Linkage and Commons Problems
Authors: Martin Lisa L.
Published: March 2007

Like individuals facing common-pool resource problems, states search for ways to solve collective-action problems in the international system without turning to external enforcement. Heterogeneity of power and of preference intensities may enhance the probability of cooperation, if states are able to link issues credibly. International decision-making rules that require more than majority support will also increase the demand for issue linkage. Credible issue linkages are facilitated by stringent domestic ratification rules.
South Africa's Party System
Authors: Botha Susan
Published: March 2007

This discussion on the South African party system looks at the past, present and possible future of the party system in terms of a number of indicators, notably: voter participation, number of political parties, competition, ideological distance, characteristics of political parties, voter volatility, change and stability. In the past the nature of the party system was to a large extent predetermined by legislation as an external factor. The repeal of legislation that affected the party system will undoubtedly lead to changes, but it will take some time to determine the impact of all the new forces on the party system.
Two Stories, One Power Index
Authors: Holler Manfred J.
Published: March 2007

This paper demonstrates that the mathematical properties of the member bargaining power measure (MBP) are identical with those of the public good index (PGI). However, the underlying theoretical concepts of the two measures are different. The MBP refers to bargaining over shares of the coalition value, and thus has a private good perspective, whereas the PGI considers power with respect to providing a public good as coalition value. The identity of the mathematical properties is used to study the properties of the two measures. For weighted voting games, both measures violate monotonicity with respect to voting weights, and the paradox of weighted voting applies.
Who Steals my Purse Steals Trash
Authors: Knoke David
Published: March 2007

Researchers often ask participants in community power structure and organizational network projects to rate actor reputations according to their perceived influence over system affairs. Analysts typically assume that such evaluations comprise a uni-dimensional ranking from low to high influence, but the extent of inter-rater consensus about judgments might vary across informants. I conceptualize the reputation measurement process as network relationships where organizational informants choose among a set of organizations treated as objects. I test three hypotheses that informant consensus increases with similarity in type of organizations, position in the influence hierarchy, and communication proximity, using data on 117 US and 126 German organizations in those nations' labor policy domains of the 1980s. Although I find some support for two hypotheses, a substantial consensus occurred between two primary blocks of informants about the most and least influential labor policy organizations. I conclude with some suggestions for further investigations of sources of consensus and variation in the evaluation of organizational reputations.
Why Resist the Temptation to Apply Power Indices to the European Union?
Authors: Garrett Geoffrey , Tsebelis George
Published: March 2007

The temptation to apply power indices to decision-making in the European Union should be resisted for two reasons. First, power index approaches either ignore the policy preferences of relevant actors in the EU or incorporate them in ways that generate unstable and misleading results. Second, no matter how sophisticated, power indices cannot take into account the strategic properties of the procedures that govern Europe's legislative processes, especially concerning changes in the institutional location of agenda-setting power. Proponents have responded to our criticisms of earlier power index research with ingenious efforts to include functional substitutes for institutions and preferences. The problems with power indices, however, are congenital and cannot be adequately addressed without moving to a non-cooperative game theoretic framework.
Constructing the Social
Authors: Velody Irving
Published: March 2007

Introducing a special section of four papers to be presented at the Conference 'Constructing the Social', which will be held at the University of Durham on 7-8 April 1994.
The intellectual origins of Rational Psychotherapy
Authors: Still Arthur , Dryden Windy
Published: March 2007

In this paper we attempt to understand the intellectual origins of Albert Ellis' Rational Psychotherapy (now known as Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy). In his therapeutic practice Ellis used a 'lumper' argument to replace the focus of change in psychoanalysis: not the lengthy uncovering and reworking of the individual's personal history, but the demands in self-talk through which the client is currently dis turbed. In constructing around this the persuasive (rhetorical) package that became his therapy, Ellis drew on a number of popular intellectual movements, operationalism, General Semantics, the holistic theory of emotion, cognitive psychology, and psychoanalysis itself.
Boltanski's visual archives
Authors: Hobbs Richard
Published: March 2007

The Archive is a central but paradoxical image in the work of the con temporary French artist Christian Boltanski (born 1944). Because Boltanski is obsessively concerned with the death-like rupture and loss by which experience is continuously reduced to fragmentary and inac curate memories of the past, especially regarding the adult's perception of childhood, archives represent for him a potential means of regaining access to what has been lost and is being mourned. However, Boltan ski's installation and performance works that investigate the powers of archives set out ironically the absurdly limited and misleading processes of an archive. Photography in particular is shown to be unreliable, more icon than document, challenging rather than asserting notions of cat egory and coherence. The notion of the icon, moreover, underlines the spiritual dimension that accompanies this absurdist relationship with the past. Our faulty but much-desired awareness of a past gives complex value to our present, often in a touching, pathetic way, however arbitrary the means involved. The trail of the archive leads to an uncertainty that is nonetheless precious. The many subjects that Boltanski treats in this light vary disarmingly and controversially from the trivia and detritus of everyday living to the supreme seriousness of the Holocaust. He also transforms himself and his family into a labyrinthine and playful archive. Here a curious relationship emerges with the reputation and books of his brother, the sociologist Luc Boltanski. Christian borrows with no explicit acknowledgement the archive resources of Luc's sociological research as a sub-text in his visual works. Even more surprisingly, Luc Boltanski published in 1993 HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 11 No. 4 © 1998 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi) [0952-6951(199811)11:4;121-140; 006612] Poème, a collection of highly emotive and personal poetry about the past and the Holocaust. The problems raised by Christian Boltanski and by Luc conflate the personal and historical dimensions of the Archive.
Sex After Natural Law
Authors: Loughlin Gerard
Published: March 2007

The Church is a sexed body, in both carnal and symbolic terms. The Church has sex, but being the Church it does so in a radically creative way. This article explores the contrast between sex as imagined by the Church and as imagined by evolutionary psychology (Darwinism). It argues that the latter reduces sex to reproduction (repetition) and makes this a metaphysical principle, whereas the Church transforms sex into a means for final beatitude. (Christian sex is not about self-perpetuation, but about welcoming strangers; not about children as possessions, but as God's most precious gifts.) Darwinism strangely repeats a debased (neoscholastic) form of the natural law, whereas the Church looks to follow a law that is the dispossessive desire of God for God. Sex after this law orders us towards the infinite joy of our consummation with and in God, in the fellowship of Christ and the holy saints.
Rehousing the urban poor: looking at women first
Authors: Falú Ana , Curutchet Mirina
Published: March 2007

Rehousing the urban poor: looking at women first examines the extent to which a project to rehouse squatters in C6rdoba, Argentina met the needs of women-headed households. It identifies a considerable proportion of "hidden" women headed households and demonstrates the inadequacies in house design and the unrealistic demands for self-help.
Landslides in the squatter settlements of Caracas; towards a better understanding of causative factors
Authors: Diaz Virginia Jimenez
Published: March 2007

Landslides in the squatter settlements of Caracas; towards a better understanding of causative factors examines the vulnerability of squatter settlements to landslides in Caracas, Venezuela and provides an overview of the causes and effects of slope instability. The causes range from the rapid growth of the barrios and the attitudes of the government, to the impact of rainfall and the slope modifications caused by the settlement process.
Sanitation in a poor settlement in Bangladesh: a challenge for the 1990s
Authors: Hoque Bilqis A. , Hoque M. M. , Ali N. , Coghlan Sarah E.
Published: March 2007

The primary purpose of a water supply an sanitation project is to achieve an effective and sustainable imrovement of the community environment. This paper presents the experiences gained in the evaluation of a water supply and sanitation project in a settlement in Dhaka where improved water supply, sanitary latrines and hygiene education were provided by a reputed international non-governmental organization. Water and latrine use practices by adults improved but latrines were maintained so poorly that concentrated pollution created a problem within the community. The people from the community were not provided with appropriate knowledge or a system of maintenance. Even though water supply and sanitation were given priority status, since they were not planned with a view to being sustainable, they failed to interrupt the environmental contamination process.
English asylums and English doctors: where Scull is wrong
Authors: Crammer J.L.
Published: March 2007

After 1808, to meet public concern, public asylums developed as totally locally financed and controlled non-profit making institutions for both paupers and paying patients, until 1949. Government had no powers except to inspect, and advise on humanity and physical care. The insane continued at home, or went to the workhouse, or private or public asylum. Legally after 1828 every asylum of 100 beds or more had to have a full-time resident apothecary to treat the numerous physical ills in the heterogeneous population. Concerned with diet, hygiene and nursing care, he became administrative head under a ruling committee which controlled all finance, until 1949.
On the Context Sensitivity of Institutional Interaction
Authors: ARMINEN ILKKA
Published: March 2007

The study of institutional interaction explicates the verbal activities and interactional arrangements through which institutional practices are realized. I demonstrate that to analyse these practices sensitively, the analyst must possess sufficient knowledge of the context. In institutional settings an agent may orient to expert knowledge or organizational procedures taken for granted for the practice in question, but not known to outsiders.

Understanding the context-sensitive meaning of the activities may depend on access to these particulars. Methodologically, the procedural relevancy of context is a crucial criterion against arbitrary invocation of a countless number of extrinsic, potential aspects of context. I will show that the analyst's ability to use procedural consequentiality as an analytical criterion depends on the analyst's sufficient knowledge of the context in question. By characterizing the ways `generic' interactional patterns are used in institutional settings, we can also address larger sociological questions about institutional identities and the exercise of institutional power.
Frequency and Specificity of Referents to Violence in News Reports of Anti-gay Attacks
Authors: HENLEY NANCY M. , MILLER MICHELLE D. , BEAZLEY JO ANNE , NGUYEN DIANE N. , KAMINSKY DANA , SANDERS ROBERT
Published: March 2007

Two studies were conducted to test the hypotheses that: (1) news reports of anti-gay attacks would use fewer and vaguer referents to the violence than similar stories about attacks against straight persons; and (2) this milder use of referents would cause readers to perceive less harm done and to blame the perpetrator less. A content analysis of two newspapers found that one used far fewer, less specific nominals to refer to anti-gay than to anti-straight violence, whereas the other, based in a more gay-friendly community, did not differentiate significantly by sexual orientation. An experimental study in which frequency and specificity of referents were systematically varied in mock newspaper stories found that greater referent frequency, but not specificity, caused readers to perceive greater harm to victims. The results are interpreted in terms of cognitive processing and within the context of the use of linguistic variation to encode and enforce power differences.
Discursive Hierarchies and the Construction of Crisis in the News: A Case Study
Authors: Astroff Roberta J. , Nyberg Amy Kiste
Published: March 2007

An extensive analysis of US news coverage of the French Socialist Party victories in regular elections in 1981 shows how US news media constructed a discourse of crisis. A hierarchy of discourses is identified, as are the mechanisms of nomination and exclusion, paradox and appropriation through which the discourse of crisis became dominant. Specifically, the crises for the French people and for the American government are created through a continued appropriation of the voice of the voters, who are never allowed to speak for themselves, and the construction of the French Left as inherently paradoxical. The paradoxes of depoliticized politics and non-ideological votes for the Socialists functioned to explain away the contradictions between an appropriated discourse of the people and their actions.
Gender-Based Language Reform and the Social Construction of Meaning
Authors: Ehrlich Susan , King Ruth
Published: March 2007

In this article we consider the implications of the social construction of meaning for the possibility of language reform. Since meanings are socially determined and since the dominant culture is sexist, it is not surprising that women's meanings are often appropriated by that culture and that gender-based language reform is not always successful. Based on an analysis of attempts at gender-based language reform in Canada and in particular at York University, we consider relative success in terms of the support they have received in a given speech community. In so doing, we identify those factors which promote (e.g. being situated as part of a larger sociopolitical goal such as the achievement of employment equity) as opposed to those which hinder (e.g. being left to the discretion of individuals within an organization) language change.
Parliamentarianism and Sobornost': Two Models of Representative Institutions in Russian Political Culture
Authors: Biryukov Nikolai , Sergeyev Victor
Published: March 2007

The paper seeks to inquire into the differences between the pluralist and the populist visions of democracy and the two models of representative assemblies associated with them, namely parliamentarianism and sobornost'. The first section attempts to trace the latter to its historic roots, both traditional and Marxist, while the second section deals with the impact it still bears on present-day political discourse. The argument is supported by the analysis of the proceedings of the First Congress of the People's Deputies of the USSR in 1989. Treated as indicative of this type of political culture are the `anti-procedural' philippics pivoted on insistent contraposition of `real work' to `idle talk' and certain patterns of deputies' social and political identification as expressed in the variety of meanings attached to pronouns we and/or our.
Climate of Opinion: Public and Media Discourse on the Global Environment
Authors: Bell Allan
Published: March 2007

Global environmental issues are among the most serious problems facing humankind at the end of the 20th century. This research focuses on what people understand about climate change. It compares the New Zealand public's discourse on climate change with media coverage in the preceding year. Instances of overstatement, over-certainty and confusion in the media texts are identified and analysed. There remains considerable mismatch between media reporting of scientific information and the public's understanding of that information. People greatly overestimate scientific scenarios for temperature and sea-level rises, a reflection of public concern about global environmental risks. They confuse the greenhouse effect and ozone depletion, blending information in a fashion typical of comprehension meltdown between related topics. People know little about the causes of the greenhouse effect. This misunderstanding is socially and politically disabling because it misleads people away from dealing with an issue at the heart of western consumer society—the consumption of fossil fuels.
The Discourse of Official Violence: Anti-Japanese North American Discourse and the American Internment Camps
Authors: Thiesmeyer Lynn
Published: March 2007

Mainstream discourse about Japanese North Americans has been less thoroughly analysed than discourse towards more populous North American minorities. The racist nature of this discourse became obvious during the Second World War and the discourse about their incarceration, despite their being citizens, in internment camps. There are three types of data for this political discourse: (a) the official orders by the US President, the Secretary of War and the US regional Defense Commands; (b) the Congressional hearings to confirm the government decision on the need for internment through testimony by state officials and anti-Asian lobbies; and (c) the report on censorship of internment camp conditions which attempts to justify the censorship of information about Japanese North Americans. This paper shows how this discourse was primarily performative: what began as anti-Japanese North American rhetoric was soon codified as a national policy to remove Japanese North Americans from their homes and businesses and to silence more direct information from Japanese North Americans themselves. The discourse shows two main features: (1) the pragmatics of collusion, in which privately made government decisions are `confirmed' through public discussion or hearings; and (2) the discourse of justification, in which overtly anti-democratic actions are both legalized and justified in the same discourse.
The Discourse of the Illegal Immigration Debate: A Case Study in the Politics of Representation
Authors: Mehan Hugh
Published: March 2007

It is the proposition of this paper that our search for enemies is turning inward now that the Cold War is over. The State, in alliance with business and other elite interests, is encouraging citizens to treat the immigrant, the poor, the unfortunate as the enemy. The discourse strategies that fabricated the immigrant as the enemy are analyzed in the debate over California's Proposition 187, which would exclude undocumented immigrant children from public schools and health care facilities. In the unsettling climate of California's economic uncertainty and perceived loss, powerful voices, including the State, successfully blamed the crisis on undocumented immigrants. By framing the debate in us v. them terms, presenting compelling anecdotes of illegal aliens taking jobs and abusing social services and appealing to the self-interest of disaffected citizens, proponents of Proposition 187 successfully countered universalistic appeals to the general good, a higher morality and universal human rights. In short, human rights lost in this election to self interest.
Positioning and Interpretative Repertoires: Conversation Analysis and Post-Structuralism in Dialogue
Authors: Wetherell Margaret
Published: March 2007

This article focuses on Schegloff's (1997) comments on critical discourse analysis and evaluates their force in relation to the analysis of a segment of a group discussion with three young white middle-class men concerning an episode in one of the participant's recent sexual history. The post-structuralist-influenced writings of Laclau and Mouffe (1985, 1987) are presented as an alternative analytic frame for the same data. The analysis examines the contextualization of the event which is the topic of the conversation and the positioning taken up and offered to the young man involved, drawing on the analytic concepts of interpretative repertoire and ideological dilemma. A critique of the post-structuralist concept of subject positions is developed and also of the methodological prescriptions Schegloff proposes for critical discourse analysis. The implications for critical discursive research in social psychology are discussed.
Institutional Responsibility and Hidden Meanings
Authors: Iedema Rick A.M.
Published: March 2007

This article aims to show how bureaucratic discourses encode and construe the `complicity' and `reciprocal power relations' which theorists like Giddens and Bourdieu see as underpinning and maintaining institutional and hierarchical power. It will address the levels of increasing linguistic complexity and implicitness inherent in bureaucratic texts specifying workers' institutional tasks and responsibilities: job statements, duty descriptions and competency standards. It shows that the higher the institutional rank, the better workers are presumed to be informed about and the more they are expected to embody appropriate and implicit institutional knowledges and behaviours: the `hidden baggage of shared assumptions' increases as one moves up. The linguistic nature of this bureaucratic discourse reveals that its concern is not primarily to make statements spelling out divisions of labour, as much as realizing a hierarchy of degrees of institutional implicitness into which workers are to be acculturated.
Struggle as Metaphor in European Union Discourses on Unemployment
Authors: STRAEHLE CAROLYN , WEISS GILBERT , WODAK RUTH , MUNTIGL PETER , SEDLAK MARIA
Published: March 2007

This study looks at how, over a period of several years, unemployment in two genres (speeches and Presidency Conclusions) generated in organizations of the European Union (EU) is constructed both as a `problem' and a `fight' and how these formulations can be viewed as closely connected under an overarching metaphor of `struggle'. A synthesis of discourse analytic and cognitive-semantic analyses, this article begins by demonstrating how struggle is invoked and then proceeds to decompose the notion into several categories, using statistical analysis to show their distribution. Ultimately, it is demonstrated that the differences between the two genres are connected to their respective purposes and target audiences, with Presidency Conclusions examples of internal organizational discourse and commissioners' speeches as external organizational discourse. The similarities between the two genres reflect the functions of the struggle metaphor in EU discourses of unemployment in general, the ways in which its dimensions serve various legitimizing functions in these genres' capacity as political discourse, and the connection between discourses on unemployment and the prevailing EU economic philosophy.
Direct Realism and the Analysis of Perceptual Error
Authors: Galloway Graeme
Published: March 2007

The dominant approach in psychology to the explanation of human cognition is information-processing theory, which is a version of the representative realist theory of knowledge, according to which knowledge of external states of affairs is not direct but rather comes about through the immediate awareness of representations of such states internal to the knower. An alternative to information-processing theory that to date has received little attention in the psychological literature is direct realism, which is the view that the external world, not a representation of it, is the immediate object of awareness. This article addresses a long-standing criticism of direct realist epistemology—namely that it does not enable a plausible analysis of perceptual error. That objection must be overcome if direct realism is ever to be entertained seriously as a means by which to account for the phenomena of human cognition. It is contended here that instances of perceptual error can be accounted for within a direct realist framework by reference to the notions lack of opportunity to cognize, and lack of ability to cognize.
Construction in Contention
Authors: Gergen Kenneth J.
Published: March 2007

The present critiques are framed within a tradition that views argumentation as a pathway to truth, objectivity and purity of reason. The constructionist dialogues substantially refigure these criterial concepts, conceptualizing them as artifacts of historically and culturally situated communities. Troubles begin when any particular community begins to declare alterior realities null and void. The constructionist dialogues invite us to replace questions of truth in all worlds with communal deliberation on the future outcomes—both for psychology and global cultures—of varying forms of intelligibility. In this respect, constructionist discourse harbors the potential for enormous gains in creative collaboration, a condition I find far more promising than the bounded worlds of realism and rationalism favored by these critiques. A liberal constructionism would not abandon the traditions from which these critiques emerge, while the unbridled expansion of any of these traditions would eliminate all save its own.
A Response on Concepts, Laws and Measurement in Social Psychology
Authors: Wallach Lise , Wallach Michael A.
Published: March 2007

While appreciating Kimble's (2001) praise of our paper (Wallach & Wallach, 2001), we argue against his reduction of mental states to behavioral dispositions. Crandall and Schaller (2001) make five points in criticism of our argument that much research in social psychology is plagued by circularity. We show that their first point is based on a misunderstanding, that their third point is irrelevant, and that their last two points do not attempt to answer our argument. This leaves their second point as Crandall and Schaller's only actual counterargument—namely that confidence in a measure for a construct is independent of confidence in the construct's relationships to other constructs. We show this claim of independence to be false.
The Control of Everyday Behaviour
Authors: Vollmer Fred
Published: March 2007

It has recently been claimed by several authors that all behaviour is causally determined by unconscious mechanisms, and not under our conscious control. What this amounts to is that none of our everyday behaviour can be regarded as intentional, as action. The aim of the present paper is to discuss the evidence on which this claim is based. The conclusion is that though numerous psychological phenomena (like perception, memory, feeling, mood, mannerisms and automatisms) have unconscious determinants, the data do not show that everyday behaviours like talking, writing, working and moving one's body are outside our conscious control.
The Explanatory Autonomy of Psychology
Authors: Bem Sacha
Published: March 2007

The main question of this contribution is how to define a (relatively) autonomous psychological level. It will be introduced by some remarks on the general problem of reduction and explanatory levels. The arguments for a psychological level will be applied to the question: in what sense can (mental) causation figure in psychological explanations? As it turns out, much depends on what, precisely, we want to know: are we interested in psychological questions about events at the neurological, physiological level; or in psychological questions about meaningful actions in intersubjective contexts?
Emotional Dissonance
Authors: Jansz Jeroen , Timmers Monique
Published: March 2007

Emotional dissonance is a feeling of unease that occurs when someone evaluates an emotional experience as a threat to his or her identity. The paper documents that the features ascribed to emotion in Western culture are likely to collide with the characteristics attributed to Western citizens. This collision results in a permanent evaluation of emotion. The paper concentrates on the level of individual experience where identity is used as a standard for evaluating emotional feelings. The argument is illustrated by some excerpts from an explorative study. The quotations indicate that the participants indeed experienced a feeling of unease when they assumed their identity was jeopardized. The last part of the paper discusses the ways in which emotional dissonance could be reduced. The interview excerpts illustrate here how the participants in our study talked about reducing the dissonant feeling.
Intentionality and the Problem of Discovery in Scientific Epistemology
Authors: Shames Morris L.
Published: March 2007

Discovery was not admitted into the epistemological arena until quite recently owing to its conception as a psychological-not epistemological-enterprise (Reichenbach, 1938/1961). However, more recently it has come to be realized as crucial to the scientific process itself (Royce, 1988; Shames, 1988) and sufficiently structured so that its epistemological status cannot be gainsaid (Lugg, 1985). Its epistemological status thus secure, two things become immediately apparent: first, the epistemology of discovery implicates psychological activity and, second, it is more than merely ironic that intentionality has been rendered unwelcome in the psychological laboratory. After all, intentionality is not merely implicated in scientific creativity, that is to say, in the act of discovery, it also serves to demarcate the various manifestations of science, `taxonomically' conceived (Habermas, 1971, 1989). It is argued that discovery can be understood in terms of a psychofigurational model which is grounded on an understanding of `radical' metaphor which, in turn, is most likely apprehended by those possessed of an `exegetical' aptitude. On this view, discovery is a non-voluntaristic enterprise which implicates unconditional, non-purposive intentionality (Meiland, 1970) in the case of empirical-analytic science. On the other hand, the historical-hermeneutic and critical sciences have a more factitious character which implicates a purposive form of intentionality.
Constructing Realism
Authors: Potter Jonathan
Published: March 2007

This paper offers some constructionist comments on Greenwood's (1992) realist argument. It describes seven rhetorical `moves' which sustain its plausibility and coherence: (1) construct constructionism as simple; (2) avoid empirical studies of science; (3) treat the nature of description as self-evident; (4) reconstruct scientific practice in terms of logic, inference and deductive structure; (5) elide everyday and technical concepts; (6) replace mapping talk with accuracy talk; (7) treat your own status as non-rhetorical.
Realism, Relativism and Rhetoric
Authors: Greenwood John D.
Published: March 2007

It is claimed here that the social constructionist `critiques' of scientific realism advanced by Jonathan Potter (1992) and John Shotter (1992) fail, both because they seriously misrepresent scientific realism, and because they provide no arguments or evidence to undermine the linguistic and epistemological objectivity of theories in natural and psychological science. A number of qualifications of scientific realism are made in the light of Rom Harrd's (1992) criticisms, which support a form of global epistemological relativism about scientific theories, but not forms of local epistemological relativism with respect to competing explanatory theories.
Conceptions of Interpretation in Cognitive Theories of Representation
Authors: Smythe William E.
Published: March 2007

This paper examines some conceptions of semantic interpretation that have come out of cognitive theories of mental representation. Fundamental to the cognitivist perspective of classical computational theories is a conception of mental representation based on self-contained systems of formal symbols which require separate principles of interpretation to fix their semantics. A number of specific proposals about interpretation developed in connection with computational theories of representation are critically examined, and it is argued that they all in various ways presuppose rather than genuinely explain the semantics of the mental. The basis for this sort of presupposition is then examined in the context of a hermeneutic conception of interpretation. It is argued that cognitive theory requires a radical revision of the notion of interpretation, that interpretation is not fundamentally a matter of attaching a meaning to a meaningless form, but of relating meaning as preinterpretively understood to meaning as more explicitly articulated.