bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Ex Post Evaluation: A More Effective Role for Scientific Assessments in Environmental Policy
Authors: Herrick Charles , Sarewitz Daniel
Published: June 2009

Unreasonable expectations about the nature and character of scientific knowledge support the widespread political assumption that predictive scientific assessments are a necessary precursor to environmental decision making. All too often, the practical outcome of this assumption is that scientific uncertainty becomes a ready-made dodge for what is in reality just a difficult political decision. Interdisciplinary assessments necessary to address complex environmental policy issues invariably result in findings that are inherently contestable, especially when applied in the unrestrained realm of partisan politics. In this article, the authors argue that predictive scientific assessments are inherently limited in the extent to which they can guide policy development and that rigorous scientific assessments can be much more valuable in the role of ex post policy evaluation than they can in the context of ex ante policy formulation.
The Cultural Fix: An Anthropological Contribution to Science and Technology Studies
Authors: Layne Linda L.
Published: June 2009

Since at least the 1960s, science and technology studies (STS) scholars have distinguished between technological and social fixes. The author introduces a new concept for the STS theoretical tool kit—the cultural fix—and illustrates this concept using examples from her own research on pregnancy loss and neonatal intensive care, as well as that of anthropologists Katherine Newman and Sherry Ortner on downward mobility and unemployment in the United States. It is argued that the cultural fix represents a distinctive anthropological contribution to the field.
Changing Research Cultures in U.S. Industry
Authors: Varma Roli
Published: June 2009

Changes brought by the rise of the global economy and the end of the Cold War era have resulted in industry, government, and university rethinking their roles vis-à-vis research and development (R&D), basic versus applied research, and the role of corporate research. Since the mid-1980s, industrial research in the United States has been going through restructuring. Interviews with seventy-two scientists and eighteen managers working in six centralized corporate R&D laboratories in high-technology industry show that a new culture of dependence with a mission-oriented approach is replacing the cherished culture of independence with a result-oriented approach.
The Importance of Being European: The Science and Politics of BSE in Portugal
Authors: Gonçalves Maria Eduarda
Published: June 2009

This article provides a comparative analysis of the contents of two parliamentary hearings on BSE carried out in Portugal in 1993 and 1996 as instances of interaction between science and politics. One question to be addressed is the extent to which relationships between science and politics in Portugal as a so-called “semiperipheral society” differ from those of more advanced states, and how one can possibly explain those differences. Another issue to be considered is whether the Europeanization of BSE crisis after March 1996 has played a role and, if so, what role in the evolution of the attitudes and behavior of Portuguese policy makers toward science and toward risk. The question is whether political and administrative culture is changing in Portugal under the effect of both the Europeanization of regulatory processes and the emergence of a “risk society.”
Working Practices of the Menopause Clinic
Authors: Guillemin Marilys
Published: June 2009

Although there are many possible ways of understanding menopause, it is the notion of menopause as hormone deficiency that currently dominates. How is it that this account remains prevalent rather than some alternative understanding of menopause? This question is explored through the employment of a framework informed by both actor network theory and symbolic interactionist studies. The author exploits the common ground shared by these two conceptual approaches to analyze how practices generate and reify particular kinds of knowledge about menopause. The analysis is situated within Australian menopause clinics and explores several key contemporary practices of these clinics to show how the particular understanding of menopause as hormone deficiency is generated and stabilized. The study stresses the knowledge/practice nexus and emphasizes that meanings are not given in advance but are generated through practices. In particular, the focus is on the interactions of the social and the material entities of menopause clinics and how through these interactions the understanding of menopause as hormone deficiency is produced.
Flexible Infections: Computer Viruses, Human Bodies, Nation-States, Evolutionary Capitalism
Authors: Helmreich Stefan
Published: June 2009

This article analyzes computer security rhetoric, particularly in the United States, arguing that dominant cultural understandings of immunology, sexuality, legality, citizenship, and capitalism powerfully shape the way computer viruses are construed and combated. Drawing on popular and technical handbooks, articles, and Web sites, as well as on e-mail interviews with security professionals, the author explores how discussions of computer viruses lean on analogies from immunology and in the process often encode popular anxieties about AIDS. Computer security rhetoric about compromised networks also uses language reminiscent of that used to describe the “bodies” of nation-states under military threat from without and within. Such language portrays viruses using images of foreignness, illegality, and otherness. The security response to viruses advocates the virtues of the flexible and adaptive response—a rhetoric that depends on evolutionary language but also on the ideological idiom of advanced capitalism.
“Knowledge Value Alliances”: An Alternative to the R&D Project Focus in Evaluation
Authors: Rogers Juan D. , Bozeman Barry
Published: June 2009

The question of what the relevant entities or units of analysis for studying the dynamics of R&D are is central not only for adequate characterizations of the system of scientific and technological knowledge production but also for determining the correct focus for evaluation of R&D activities. Typically, R&D performance evaluations have focused not only on the wrong thing but have looked in the wrong place. Most evaluations have been project or program based. Often this focus is misleading. This article presents a “knowledge value” framework as an alternative focus for understanding and evaluating scientific and technical work. This framework consists of two core concepts: the Knowledge Value Collective (KVC) and the Knowledge Value Alliance (KVA). On the basis of the analysis of twenty-eight case studies of research activities, the authors present a typology of KVAs and conclude that they are a better object of evaluation than discipline-based projects.
The Law-Set: The Legal-Scientific Production of Medical Propriety
Authors: Edmond Gary
Published: June 2009

This article examines some of the interactions between law, science, and society taking place during a trial (in Victorian England). By focusing on a restricted set of scientific and nonscientific actors (the law-set, a derivation of the core-set) engaged in negotiating the meaning, relevance, and reliability of scientific (here medical) evidence, the article illustrates how the categories—law, science, and society—are inextricably interrelated in the legal negotiations and outcome. The introduction of scientific evidence into adversarial legal settings produces strategies, opinions, and claims that are not shaped solely by scientists, lawyers, or legal processes. The situated law-science negotiations provide a site where social order and scientific knowledges are mutually constituted. The outcome of specific law-science interactions will be open to a range of readings and constraints that are not reducible to some putatively correct scientific understanding nor adequately described as the distortion of scientific evidence by the legal system.
Controversy in Environmental Policy Decisions: Conflicting Policy Means or Rival Ends?
Authors: Lockhart Charles
Published: June 2009

In the past few years, environmental activists and some academic studies of environmental political issues have portrayed environmental protection as a new social consensus. This view has some, though limited, capacity for explaining the controversial character of many environmental protection issues and the frequent losses that environmental activists experience in political struggles. In an effort to clarify this seeming conundrum, the author delineates the core of the societal consensus thesis’ best explanation for the controversial character of many environmental policy decisions. This explanation is contrasted with explanation that draws on conflict among three coherent rival environmental perspectives in contemporary political life. These environmental views are integral, if frequently unrecognized, aspects of familiar general social perspectives distinguished by contrasting principles, values, and practical objectives. A strategy is designed to facilitate responsible environmental protection legislation in light of these three rival perspectives.
Symbolic Communication in Multidisciplinary Cooperations
Authors: Duncker Elke
Published: June 2009

With the advent of strategic science, multidisciplinary and cross-institutional research is more and more becoming the rule. The problems encountered by such multidisciplinary research and development cooperations are highly varied. They derive from multiple differences in the backgrounds of the participants and are often perceived as cultural gaps that need to be bridged for cooperation. The main argument of the article is that multidisciplinary collaborations have mechanisms at their disposal to cooperate despite multiple problems counteracting such a cooperation. Since symbolic communication is the primary medium of articulation across sites, this article focuses on how symbolic communication enables cooperation across sites without a deep comprehension of each other's work. Multidisciplinary cooperations start out with few shared symbolic resources, but as the cooperation continues, they may develop communicative boundarytranscending objects such as active and passive dictionaries and hybrid repertoires.
Lessons from the Recent History of the Health Effects Institute
Authors: Keating Terry J.
Published: June 2009

Created in 1980, the Health Effects Institute (HEI) funds research relevant to air quality policy debates and performs other tasks at the boundary between the health effects research community and the air quality policy community. In a 1993 review, the HEI was harshly criticized for a lack of relevance and timeliness in its research products and for poor relationships with its sponsors. Since the review, the HEI has undergone a series of changes that have strengthened its position as a central and respected institution in both the health effects research and air quality policy communities. The apparent success of these recent changes suggests a number of lessons that can be learned about the function of boundary organizations, which bridge the worlds of science and governance. In particular, the HEI’s recent history demonstrates the importance of effective leadership and the importance of maintaining independence without resorting to isolation.
Integrating Climate Forecasts and Societal Decision Making: Challenges to an Emergent Boundary Organization
Authors: Agrawala Shardul , Broad Kenneth , Guston David H.
Published: June 2009

The International Research Institute for Climate Prediction (IRI) was created in 1996 with an “end-to-end” mission to engage in climate research and modeling on a seasonal-to-interannual time scale and to provide the results of this research in a useful way to farmers, fishermen, public health officials, and others capable of making the best of the predicted climate conditions. As a boundary organization, IRI straddles the divides between the production and use of research and between the developed world and the developing world. This article describes the institutional history of IRI, examining how the end-to-end mission evolved over time, how it is becoming institutionalized in IRI as a boundary organization, and the ongoing challenges it presents to managing the boundary between climate variability research and societal applications.
Hybrid Management: Boundary Organizations, Science Policy, and Environmental Governance in the Climate Regime
Authors: Miller Clark
Published: June 2009

The theory of boundary organizations was developed to address an important group of institutions in American society neglected by scholarship in science studies and political science. The long-term stability of scientific and political institutions in the United States has enabled a new class of institutions to grow and thrive as mediators between the two. As originally developed, this structural feature of these new institutions—that is, their location on the boundary between science and politics—dominated theoretical frame-works for explaining their behavior. Applying the theory of boundary organizations to international society requires a refocusing of some of the theory’s central features, however. In this article, I introduce a new framework—hybrid management—to explain the activities of boundary organizations in the more complex, contingent, and contested settings of global politics. I develop the framework of hybrid management using the specific example of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice.
Images Are Not the (Only) Truth: Brain Mapping, Visual Knowledge, and Iconoclasm
Authors: Beaulieu Anne
Published: June 2009

Representations of the active brain have served to establish a particular domain of competence for brain mappers and to distinguish brain mapping’s particular contributions to mind/brain research. At the heart of the claims about the emerging contributions of functional brain mapping is a paradox: functional imagers seem to reject representations while also using them at multiple points in their work. This article therefore considers a love-hate relationship between scientists and their object: the case of the iconoclastic imager. This paradoxical stance is the result of the formation of an interdisciplinary approach that brings together a number of scientific traditions and their particular standards of what constitutes scientific evidence. By examining the various ways in which images are deployed and rejected, the origins of these conflicting tendencies can be traced to the technological, methodological, and institutional elements in the work of functional imagers. This approach provides insight into the current demarcation of imaging and reflects on features of visual knowledge.
The Public Understanding of Science—A Rhetorical Invention
Authors: Locke Simon
Published: June 2009

This article contributes to the development of a rhetorical approach to the public understanding of science or science literacy. It is argued that rhetoric promises an alternative approach to deficit models that treat people as faulty scientists. Some tensions in the relevant rhetorical literature need resolution. These center on the application to science of an Aristotelian conception of rhetorical reasoning as enthymematic, without breaking from the Platonic/Aristotelian division between technical and public spheres. The former opens science to the potential of public critique; the latter closes this, effectively reinstating a deficit model. Gross’s writings are used to bring this point out sharply. A resolution is proposed, building on a view of rhetoric as socially constitutive and leading to a conception of public understanding as witcraft. Here, Billig’s rhetorical psychology provides the basis for reconfiguring the enthymeme in a manner that construes the division between spheres as itself rhetorically constituted. Creationism is used to provide brief illustration.
Assessing Water Scarcity and Watershed Development in Maharashtra, India: A Case Study of the Baliraja Memorial Dam
Authors: Phadke Roopali
Published: June 2009

In the drought-prone regions of Maharashtra State, a growing social movement for equitable water distribution is engaging the help of engineers to build technical projects. This movement aims to challenge the state’s agroindustrial development model favoring water-intensive sugarcane farming by redistributing water. This article examines the Baliraja Memorial Dam, located in southwestern Maharashtra. Through the dam, 400 families in the villages of Balawadi and Tandulwadi will receive a share of water for irrigation and domestic needs. This article explores the Baliraja Dam as an appropriate technology project designed jointly by village farmers, engineers, and social activists. Through this unique alliance, Baliraja was designed to meet the needs of ecological restoration, community empowerment, and democratic technological design. The pioneering success of the Baliraja effort has prompted other communities to pressure the state irrigation bureaucracy to address the ecological and human costs of prolonged drought and water misuse.
The “Traffic” in Graduate Students: Graduate Students as Tokens of Exchange between Academe and Industry
Authors: Slaughter Sheila , Campbell Teresa , Holleman Margaret , Morgan Edward
Published: June 2009

This study analyzes interview data from 37 science and engineering faculty involved in university-industry relations. Faculty are particularly concerned about how these relations affect their work with graduate students. Our analysis is guided by ritual exchange theory and network theory. First, we explore the ways faculty define and redefine what makes industrial or corporate research appropriate or inappropriate for training graduates. Second, we examine difficulties and tensions faculty face when they work with students on industrial or corporate projects. These difficulties and tensions center on intellectual property and we look at how faculty negotiate with industry over restrictions on publication of graduate student and faculty research results, on faculty and graduate student involvement in start-up companies, and on faculty and graduate student ownership of intellectual property.
Comprehension, Apprehension, Prehension: Heterogeneity and the Public Understanding of Science
Authors: Michael Mike
Published: June 2009

This article examines the main approaches to public understanding of science (PUS) in light of recent developments in social and cultural theory. While traditional and critical perspectives on PUS differ in terms of their models of the public, science, and understanding, they nevertheless share a number of commonalities, which are humanism (an emphasis on the pure person), incorporeality (a neglect of embodiment), and discrete sites (science and the public are presupposed as separate entities). These are contrasted, respectively, to versions of the person as hybridic, to treatments of embodiment drawing especially on Whitehead’s notion of prehension, and to a rhizomic view of science and public as interwoven. Throughout, it is stressed that the alternatives posed do not constitute an accusation of deficit on the part of traditional and critical PUS. Some research and political implications of interweaving these three perspectives are presented.
It, Gender, and Professional Practice: Or, Why an Automated Drug Distribution System Was Sent Back to the Manufacturer
Authors: Novek Joel
Published: June 2009

Recent research has focused on how gender and computer technology contribute to the structuring of professional roles. A case study was carried out at a long-term care facility in Winnipeg, Canada, in which a nursing unit-based automated system had been installed to control the distribution of medication to patients. A questionnaire was distributed to all nursing staff, and detailed interviews were carried out with pharmacists and nursing administrators. It was found that gender and technological change did interact to produce an ambivalent impact on professional practice and identities. New clinical pharmacy positions were established; however, the pharmacy was split into clinical and deskilled data entry positions. Nurses hoped the new system would improve medication accuracy, but they resented features that controlled their time and their autonomy. Neither group accepted the new system as a boundary object effectively linking the nursing and pharmacy departments, and it eventually was returned to the manufacturer.
Multiplicity in Scientific Medicine: The Experience of HIV-Positive Patients
Authors: Barbot Janine , Dodier Nicolas
Published: June 2009

This article examines HIV-positive patients’ experiences of treatments within a context characterized by the multiplicity of opinions expressed both by specialists and the public domain (media in particular). It is based upon a survey of 63 patients encountered in a Paris hospital. The authors demonstrate the contrasts between these patients in terms of two main dimensions: the degree of the patients’ proximity to specialist knowledge, and the level of homogeneousness that the patients attribute to medical know-how. At the point where these two dimensions meet, the article distinguishes between three forms of patient attitude towards treatment; in other words, three ways of simultaneously positioning oneself with regard to the media, associations, doctors and family circles/entourage: resorting to exteriority; self-integration into biomedical institutions; arranging heterogeneous actors. It analyses the transformations relating to the main experience profiles highlighted by sociological studies of other pathologies.
The Prosthetic Imagination: Enabling and Disabling the Prosthesis Trope
Authors: Jain Sarah S.
Published: June 2009

This article critically examines the ways in which the trope of prosthesis has been used in recent theory to understand human-technology relationships. Analyzing the trope from a number of angles, including disability, factory labor practices, mass production, and marketing, the author scrutinizes ways in which technologies are simultaneously wounding and enabling in ways for which the prosthesis trope cannot account.
Rediscovering the Presettlement Landscape: Making the Oak Savanna Ecosystem “Real”
Authors: Helford Reid M.
Published: June 2009

The North American landscape has changed considerably since European settlement, and ecological restorationists are responding to these changes by attempting to restore “natural” areas to their presettlement conditions. Through participant observation, interviews, and document analysis, this work details the physical and conceptual reconstruction of the oak savanna ecosystem. The construction of the “oak savanna” is shown to be more than the creation of a new classification of nature; it is the remaking of a natural community in situ. The “creation story” of the oak savanna is told through the examination of the contested creations of the scientific claim, the expertise to make such a claim, and of nature itself. Finally, the implications of this research for environmental science and the place of the constructivist sociologist are discussed.
From Omega to Mr. Adam: The Importance of Literature for Feminist Science Studies
Authors: Squier Susan
Published: June 2009

The simultaneous publication in 1992 of two texts dealing with a global decline in sperm potency, P. D. James’s The Children of Men and Elisabeth Carlsen’s “Evidence for Decreasing Quality of Semen during the Past 50 Years,” inaugurates the exploration of another kind of sterility: the failure of feminist literary criticism and feminist science studies to converge as a fertile zone of inquiry and analysis. This article considers the modern discipline of literary studies, as well as feminist literary criticism and feminist science studies, and suggests how Latour’s seven rules of method might be adapted to produce cross-fertilization between these fields...
Of Cannibals, Missionaries, and Converts: Graphing Competencies from Grade 8 to Professional Science Inside (Classrooms) and Outside (Field/Laboratory)
Authors: Roth Wolff-Michael , Bowen G. Michael
Published: June 2009

To date, little is known about when and to what degree science students begin to participate in authentic scientific graphing practices. This article presents the results of a series of studies on the production, transformation, and interpretation of graphical representation from Grade 8 to professional scientific practice both in formal testing situations (inside) and in the course of field/laboratory work (outside). The results of these studies can be grouped into two major areas. First, there is a discontinuity in the graph-related practices that marks a boundary between people who engage in work that requires them to transform data into graphical representations (converted) and people who do not have such experiences (cannibals). Second, the didactic practices of high school textbooks and university lectures exhibit a marked discontinuity relative to graphing practices in scientific journals. Graphs used in didactic circumstances may be associated with students’ difficulties in interpreting “real data.” It appears that school teachers and university professors (missionaries) do little to put their students on trajectories of increasing participation in authentic scientific graphing practices.
Representing Users’ Bodies: The Gendered Development of Anti-Fertility Vaccines
Authors: van Kammen Jessika
Published: June 2009

This article is about the ways in which representations of users’ bodies mediate in the designers’ configuration of anti-fertility vaccines and their future users. Anti-fertility vaccines are a novel and not yet available method to regulate fertility. The researchers involved claim that anti-fertility vaccines can be developed for both men and women. But in the material and political specificities of the research contexts, representations of male bodies as users have disappeared, and most research involves the development of a method to be used by women. Anti-fertility vaccines therefore provide an opportunity to study when the sex of future users is deemed relevant by the researchers. This article explores how the fact that most anti-fertility vaccines are developed for female users can be explained without resorting to biological or cultural determinism. How much room for maneuver did the researchers have in defining the vaccines and their users?
Institutional Collaboration in Science: A Typology of Technological Practice
Authors: Chompalov Ivan , Shrum Wesley
Published: June 2009

An increase in the scale of modern science is associated with the proliferation of a new kind of research formation: collaborations involving teams of researchers from several organizations. Historical and sociological studies indicate substantial variation in such formations, but no general classification scheme exists. The authors provide the outline of a scheme through a systematic analysis of multi-institutional collaborations that span a variety of fields in physical science. First, general dimensions of scientific collaborations were identified through a qualitative, historical analysis of collaborations in high energy physics, space science, and geophysics. Next, the authors used informants in five new areas to collect systematic information on twenty-three recent collaborations. Finally, cluster analysis was employed to develop a variety of classification schemes and examine their relationships with outcome dimensions. Results show that a classification based on a broad conception of technological practice is superior to others in its ability to predict perceived success, trust, stress, conflict, and documentary routines.
Making Sense of Sound: Auscultation and Lung Sound Codification in Nineteenth-Century French and German Medicine
Authors: Lachmund Jens
Published: June 2009

With the introduction of the technique of auscultation in nineteenth-century medicine, the auditory became a most important means of producing diagnostic knowledge. The correct classification and interpretation of the sounds revealed by auscultation, however, remained an issue of negotiation and often controversy throughout the mid-nineteenth century. This article examines the codification of lung sounds within two cultural and geographic contexts: first, the original approach as it was developed by Laennec and his followers in Paris that came to be dominant in French medicine, and second, the alternative approach that grew out of Joseph Skoda’s reception of Laennec’s method in Vienna and became widely adopted in the German-speaking world. On one hand, it will be argued that lung sound classifications attempted a standardization of the perception and the interpretation of auscultation sounds. On the other hand, it will be shown that the development of auscultation sounds was shaped by the local context in which it took place. This article seeks to shed light on the way in which auditory experiences were instrumentalized for epistemic purposes in medicine. Furthermore, it discusses the role of standardization both as a mechanism for the universalization of knowledge and as a contextually bounded practice.
Evaluating the First U.S. Consensus Conference: The Impact of the Citizens’ Panel on Telecommunications and the Future of Democracy
Authors: Guston David H.
Published: June 2009

Consensus conferences, also known as citizens’ panels—a collection of lay citizens akin to a jury but charged with deliberating on policy issues with a high technical content—are a potentially important way to conduct technology assessments, inform policy makers about public views of new technologies, and improve public understanding of and participation in technological decision making. The first citizens’ panel in the United States occurred in April 1997 on the issue of “Telecommunications and the Future of Democracy.” This article evaluates the impact of this citizens’ panel. The standard criteria to evaluate the impact of analyses focus on the “actual impact” and on the “impact on general thinking.” To these standard criteria, this article introduces the evaluation of two impacts related to learning: impact on the training of knowledgeable personnel and the interaction with lay knowledge. The impact evaluation is based on a nearly comprehensive set of semistructured telephone interviews with the participants in the panel.
Gender, (de)commodification, economic (in)dependence and autonomous households: the case of Sweden
Authors: Nyberg Anita
Published: June 2009

Sweden has been considered both `worker friendly' and `women friendly'. Both workers and women have called upon the welfare state to support their demands and they have also had some of their requests granted. Feminists' oldest and most important demand has been economic independence from men and the capacity to form and maintain an autonomous household including children.1 The article investigates whether women were closer to these goals in Sweden in the 1990s than in the 1970s, and whether this was achieved by commodification (paid work) and/or decommodification (transfers from the welfare state). The result is that women as a whole have become more economically independent of men in families, thanks to paid work, and that lone mothers' capacity to form and maintain an autonomous household has been upheld by transfers from the welfare state. However, the capacity of lone mothers to support themselves and their children through paid work has decreased. Overall, by the 1990s, women in Sweden were more economically independent from men than they had been in the 1970s. Similarly women's capacity to form and maintain an autonomous household had become greater, however, this is through higher transfers, not higher earnings from the labour market.
Madness, the family and psychiatry
Authors: Jones David W.
Published: June 2009

It is argued that an important factor behind the lack of direction in current policies towards serious mental illness has been the failure to critique properly the highly entwined relationship between the discourses of psychiatry and `the family'. Interviews carried out with an ethnically diverse group of Londoners, who had a relative diagnosed as suffering from serious mental illness, suggest that while the families have an allegiance to a medical model, they are also actively and critically appropriating psychiatric discourse. Closer examination suggests that concerns about sexuality and people's apparent ability to engage successfully with intimate relationships are prominent among the criteria that family members use to judge sanity. A certain amount of historical explication is necessary to put these observations into context, since there has been so little critical analysis of the role that families play in psychiatry. A number of points can be made from the known histories of asylums and psychiatry that suggest that families and familial ideologies were significantly involved in defining ideas of insanity during both the rise and demise of asylum. On the one hand, idealizations of familial and emotional life came to be seen as connected to the causes and treatments of sanity. On the other hand, families were themselves actively involved in the construction of the asylums since they were choosing to commit relatives they deemed to be mad. These historical observations can help illuminate material from contemporary interviews with families. It is argued that our contemporary understandings of mental illnesses are immanent to ideas of family and emotional life.
Making sense of social citizenship: some user views on welfare rights and responsibilities
Authors: Dwyer Peter
Published: June 2009

Against the backdrop of New Labour's claim to be constructing a new welfare state for the 21st century, this article explores how a diversity of welfare service users make sense of the principles and values central to the ongoing reform of public welfare. Drawing on a series of focus groups with welfare service users, the article adds an important empirical dimension to current debates about the contentious issue of welfare `resettlement' and notions of social citizenship.
Citizen bodies: is embodied citizenship a contradiction in terms?
Authors: Bacchi Carol Lee , Beasley Chris
Published: June 2009

In this article, we draw connections between notions of embodiment and conceptions of citizenship to provide insights into contemporary debates about desirable modes of governance. We suggest that there is a need to challenge the instrumental conception of bodies which informs much public policy (our examples are New Reproductive Technologies and cosmetic surgery in Australia), and which underlies much citizenship theory, both feminist and mainstream. We identify a demarcation in our selected policies between those presumed to have control over their bodies and those presumed to be controlled by their bodies. The former are designated `autonomous citizens' (with autonomous meaning distance from government oversight), while the latter are constituted as lesser citizens in need of forms of control. Women appear on both sides of the dichotomy, but in ways which leave them invisible as political subjects. We coin the term `social flesh' to capture a vision of interacting, material, embodied subjects and initiate consideration of the forms of governance that might be appropriate for embodied citizens.
Making Connexions: a case study in contemporary social policy
Authors: Ainley Patrick , Barnes Tim , Momen Abdul
Published: June 2009

The article reports an evaluation of a Connexions pilot in a South London borough. Connexions is a new service for teenagers uniting teachers, youth workers, careers officers and others to integrate education with social services and other provision. However, we are less concerned with describing Connexions than with showing how it illustrates what we previously described as the present government's `experimental' approach to social policy development. As well as a speedy response, this approach encourages `social entrepreneurs' to deliver new services and recombine old ones to meet changing individual and group needs. The fluidity of the new arrangements encourages competition to meet these needs between the various `partners' involved. Similar scenarios are predicted for other public services, most immediately those in other parts of the new Learning and Skills sector that includes Connexions. This way of delivering social services is creating an extraordinarily dynamic but also extremely uncertain social policy environment.
Agency, social theory and social policy
Authors: Greener Ian
Published: June 2009

Social policy writers appear to be increasingly concerned with theories of human agency and their implications for the discipline. This article considers a recent model of agency presented by Hoggett, and attempts to marry it with the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu in order to present a framework for considering the assumptions about agency made in New Labour's social policy. The framework casts doubt upon the viability of contemporary British social policy, with its model of agency based on Giddens's theory of structuration, and instead questions whether the model more predominantly found in Bourdieu's work might be more appropriate. The article also considers the role of `context' in agency in more depth, exploring how behaviour varies according to structural and cognitive constraints, how changes in context led to the breakdown of the Keynesian consensus and the implications of this for social policy.
Diglossia in Switzerland? A Social Identity Analysis of Speaker Evaluations
Authors: Hogg Michael A. , Joyce Nicholas , Abrams Dominic
Published: June 2009

Ferguson (1959) cites German Switzerland as a defining case of diglos-sia; however, little or no research has been conducted to substantiate this claim. The present paper discusses diglossia, describes the language situation to be found in German-speaking Switzerland, and reports an experimental study adopting the matched-guise technique in which language variety (Swiss vs. High German) and situational formality (formal vs. informal) are orthogonally manipulated in a within-subjects design. Speaker evaluations revealed an upgrading with respect to formality of context only on status variables, and an interesting two-way interaction on solidarity dimensions, whereby less solidarity is felt for a speaker of High German in a formal context. The results uphold the experimental hypotheses derived from a social identity perspective (Tajfel, 1982a), but disconfirm predictions from Ferguson's diglossia. It is concluded that an adequate taxonomy of language situations must include a consideration of the identity function of language.
Identity Negotiation in Decision Making Groups: A Case Study
Authors: Hale Claudia L. , Ross Robert F.
Published: June 2009

This research examined the negotiation of self, other, and group identities in seven ongoing decision-making groups. The interaction selected for examination was the final group meeting during which those group members present were to divide among all group members a set number of class extra credit points. The transcripts of the decision-making conversations were examined in terms of a number of questions suggested by the literature in negotiation and identity bargaining. In general, the results of the analysis point to a need to re-examine assertions concerning what communication in bargaining situations should look like.
The Role of Nonverbal Signals in Co-Ordinating Speaking Turns
Authors: Walker Michael B. , Trimboli Carmelina
Published: June 2009

In a conversation between two people, a smooth transition from listener to speaker occurs when the listener takes the floor without interrupting but also without leaving a perceptible pause before speaking. According to Kendon (1967), as many as 50% of transitions in casual conversation may be smooth. This high frequency of smooth transitions in casual conversation implies a signalling system with which the speakers co-ordinate their turns. Several such signals involving both linguistic and nonverbal components have been suggested by past research. The explanatory power of these signals is critically analysed and this analysis leads to the conclusion that the currently accepted models of turn taking are unable to fully account for turn taking phenomena. Evidence is presented which points to the limited explanatory power of currently accepted models of turn taking. It is argued that insufficient attention has been given to the rhythmic structure of speaking turns and that currently accepted models of turn taking err by treating the signalling system as a purely digital structure. A new model of turn taking is proposed in which turn yielding signals are treated as a two stage process. Hypotheses derived from this model are presented and the possibility of experimental tests is discussed.
On the Ethnolinguistic Identity of Flemish High School Students in Brussels
Authors: Deprez Kas , Persoons Yves
Published: June 2009

The attitudes of Flemish high school students in Brussels towards different types of Brussels Flemings were registered in five different experimental conditions. The latter were created by varying systematically the following characteristics of the investigator: whether he belonged to the Flemish ingroup or to the Francophone outgroup, whether he was an insider or an outsider in Brussels, and whether he converged linguistically towards his audience or diverged from it. The purpose of this experiment was to examine the ethnic identity of the Ss and to evaluate Tajfel's and Giles's concept of it. It is argued that what their theory calls a positive sense of identity, in the present case, would be much better termed a defence mechanism serving to hide uneasiness and frustration and thereby protecting an uncertain and vulnerable self. Three points are made to show that the Ss' strong positive identification with the ‘consistent’ Brussels Flemings and their equally strong differentiation from the ‘gallicised’ ones cannot be considered as indicators of a positive sense of identity.
Establishing Social Identity Through Language Use
Authors: Eastman Carol M.
Published: June 2009

A method for describing patterns of language use that establish social group uniqueness is proposed. Language use as an aspect of social identity is described in terms of (1) culturally specific vocabulary, (2) context-sensitive topics and (3) shared attitudes. As people become members of a social group and learn to share that group's identity, they acquire this ‘group talk’. An understanding of group talk analysed on such a three-part model discoverable via participant observation may also be useful in leading toward an understanding of the process of social categorisation as it plays a role in intergroup communication. Examples of establishing social identity are drawn primarily from observations in an American Indian community with illustrations also from familial, professional, and other subcultural situations.
A Model of Uncertainty Reduction in Intercultural Encounters
Authors: Gudykunst William B.
Published: June 2009

Uncertainty reduction theory is one of the major theories used to explain interpersonal communication between people of the same culture. The model proffered in this paper extends the theory to account for uncertainty reduction during intercultural encounters. An initial test of the model indicated that it provides a good fit to data provided by students in the United States on their relationships (i.e. acquaintance or friendships) with international students. It is argued, however, that since the model is a straight-forward extension of an interpersonal theory, it may only apply to intercultural encounters where inter-group salience is low and not adequately explain communication in encounters that have high intergroup salience. An elaborated model that integrates uncertainty reduction and ethnolinguistic identity theories, therefore, is suggested.
Measuring Language Attitudes: The Speech Evaluation Instrument
Authors: Zahn Christopher J. , Hopper Robert
Published: June 2009

This paper describes investigations in the measurement of listeners' evaluations of spoken language. Lack of integration in research in this area has been due in part to the numerous measurement instruments used to assess such evaluative reactions. The paper reviews the development of past instruments, describes the design, analysis, and implementation of an omnibus measure, the Speech Evaluation Instrument (SEI), and interprets these findings in light of past research. The use of the SEI is recommended to researchers as a way to make findings of various studies more comparable. Although the development of the SEI was based on evaluation of linguistic diversity, its applicability to a wider range of speech phenomena is suggested.
Coping with Embarrassing Predicaments: Remedial Strategies and Their Perceived Utility
Authors: Cupach William R. , Metts Sandra , Hazleton Vincent
Published: June 2009

Two studies into the use and perceived utility of remedial strategies for coping with embarrassing predicaments are reported. In both studies, subjects were presented with two scenarios depicting embarrassing situations: one representing a loss of poise, and the other representing an inappropriate indentity display. In the first study, subjects rated four researcher-supplied strategies in terms of appropriateness, effectiveness, and satisfaction to others. In study two, subjects generated their own strategies for remediating embarrassment and rated them on the same criteria. Excuse and justification were not common or preferred strategies while apology and remediation were highly preferred. Females regarded more deferential strategies (e.g. excuse, apology) as more appropriate than did males. Males and females did not differ, however, in their reported use of strategies. In addition, the perceived appropriateness and effectiveness of strategies was found to vary as a function of the type of embarrassment.
Language and Social Influence in Small Conversational Groups
Authors: Brooke Mark E. , Ng Sik Hung
Published: June 2009

University students, in groups of 3 or 4, discussed legal aspects of commercial surrogacy and afterwards ranked the relative influence of each group member. As predicted, high-influence members spoke more words and had more successful turns during the conversation than low-influence members. The latter used a greater rate of intonation and intensifiers than the former. A closer examination of the results showed that turns were particularly important for high influence. Unexpectedly, tag questions and hedges did not result in low influence, probably due to the different usage of tag questions and to the nature of the conversation setting which, unlike one facing court witnesses, required tactful hedging in the exertion of influence.