bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Health Expectancy
Authors: Barendregt Jan J. , Bonneux Luc , Van Der Maas Paul J.
Published: March 2007

This article presents a methodologic framework for a disability-adjusted life expectancy (DALE), an extended and enhanced variety of the common health expectancy indicator. The DALE is based on a causal link running from risk factors through diseases and disability to mortality. This causal link allows the DALE to be used for evaluation of potential interventions and analysis of observed trends. The DALE methodology consists of a combination multistate life table with explicitly modeled disease processes and disease-specific disability weights. In this article, two illustrations are presented: the impact on the DALE of trends in cardiovascular disease epidemiology and the benefits of nonsmoking. Two problems of the DALE are discussed: estimating "all other causes" disability and the presence of comorbidity.
Religious Denomination and Depression in Older Dutch Citizens
Authors: Braam Arjan W. , Beekman Aartjan T. F. , Knipscheer Cees P. M. , Deeg Dorly J. H. , Van Den Eeden Pieter , Van Tilburg Willem
Published: March 2007

This study describes the distribution of depressive symptoms in older Dutch citizens (N = 3,020) across religious denominations. Reformed Calvinists had the lowest depressive scores (CES-D); Protestants from liberal denominations the highest; Roman Catholics, Dutch Reformed, and nonchurch members were in between. Two types of explanatory mechanisms are examined: (a) social integration and (b) positive self-perceptions, which both help to prevent depression. Alternatively, strict Calvinist doctrines are hypothesized to enforce negative self-perceptions, facilitating depression. For 2,509 respondents, complete data were available on social integration and self-perceptions, as well as on the parental religious denomination. Explanatory effects were tested using hierarchic regression models. The negative association between Calvinist background and depressive symptoms was partly explained by size of social network, and between Roman Catholic background and depressive symptoms by self-esteem. Leaving church had a positive association with depressive symptoms. This depressogenic effect remained after controlling for explanatory variables.
Reframing “Social Origins” Theory: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
Authors: Wagner Antonin
Published: March 2007

A recent article by Salamon and Anheier proposes a new theoretical approach to explaining patterns of nonprofit development cross-nationally—the social origins approach. Although it focuses on a broader societal and political context, the analysis still seems to rest on the prevailing government-failure approach and a two-sector view of society. Institutional analysis suggests nonprofit organizations should be viewed not as forming an institutional sector but as part of a complex network of organizations linked together in the publics phere. Following an institutional perspective, this contribution develops an alternative conceptual framework for analyzing the structural transformation of the public sphere and the changing role played by nonprofit organizations in this process. It will be shown that—at least with respect to Western Europe—this conceptual framework gives a more accurate picture of the historical development of welfare regimes and the interdependence of organizations in society than the social origins approach.
Measurement Issues in Surveys of Giving and Volunteering and Strategies Applied in the Design of Canada’s National Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating
Authors: Hall Michael H.
Published: March 2007

Despite the frequent use of surveys to study charitable giving and volunteering, little is known about the quality of the data collected. This article discusses the challenges associated with designing giving and volunteering surveys, suggests strategies for improving measures of giving and volunteering, and shows how they were applied in the design of Canada’s 1997 National Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating.
Reaching beyond the Family: New Nongovernmental Organization Alliances for Global Poverty Alleviation and Emergency Response
Authors: Lindenberg Marc
Published: March 2007

In the past two decades, failed states, the end of the cold war, and the rise of ethnic identity movements have spawned civil wars and humanitarian disasters. Global economic changes have generated new economic disparities and spawned additional forms of poverty in both the developing and the developed worlds. These profound changes raise new issues about the role of the not-for-profit sector in a world where state resources for human services have eroded. The purpose of this article is to identify several new patterns of engagement by international relief and development nongovernmental organizations (NGOs): experimental partnerships with the private sector and new multidirectional, global NGO alliances and networks for both operational response and advocacy.
The United Way System at the Crossroads: Community Planning and Allocation
Authors: Gronbjerg Kirsten , Harmon Lori , Olkkonen Aida , Raza Asif
Published: March 2007

United Way (UW) organizations have long portrayed themselves as performing three core functions for local communities: fund-raising, community planning, and fund-allocation. Contradictory forces increasingly threaten the ability of UW organizations to perform all of these core functions. Some remain hidden and unacknowledged for some period of time. Many UW systems face the same challenges: how to raise funds, address needs, and respond to diverse constituencies; how to manage conflicts with adjacent United Ways; and how to create and maintain internal consensus to address these challenges effectively. These are important questions for understanding how organizations relate to their environment and for understanding U.S. society. The scope of United Way systems is impressive and plays a key role both in shaping community perceptions of problems and as a major avenue through which the corporate sector takes an active role in local communities.
Volunteers' Motivations: Findings from a National Survey
Authors: Clary E. Gil , Snyder Mark , Stukas Arthur A.
Published: March 2007

The present investigation used responses to Independent Sector's 1992 national survey of giving and volunteering in the United States to address several questions about the motivations of volunteers. Drawing on the functional approach to volunteers' motivations, and its operationalization in the Volunteer Functions Inventory (VFI), relations between motivations and various aspects of volunteer behavior were examined, along with associations of motivations and demographic variables. Analyses revealed that current volunteers and nonvolunteers differed on motivations; people with different volunteering histories revealed different motivational patterns; unique combinations of motivations were associated with different types of volunteering activities; and motivational differences were associated with different demographic groups. The implications of these findings for understanding the nature and function of the motivations to volunteer, and the applications to the practice of volunteerism, are discussed.
Corked Hats and Coronation Street
Authors: HOLLOWAY SARAH L. , VALENTINE GILL
Published: March 2007

This article contributes to the developing literature on childhood and national identity by considering the ways in which children imagine other nations. Focusing in particular on on-line interactions between children in 12 British and 12 New Zealand schools, the article explores their imaginative geographies of each other, and assesses the ways these visions are endorsed or contested by the children to whom they refer. The article not only illustrates the sources and importance of stereotypical understandings of landscape, people and patterns of daily life in other nations, but also the ways these may be contested through on-line contact.
Growing Up with Unemployment
Authors: CHRISTOFFERSEN MOGENS NYGAARD
Published: March 2007

The study explores whether parental unemployment is a significant risk factor for abuse and neglect of children. Information from population-based registers cover several health aspects, education, social networks, family violence, parental self-destructive behaviour, parental alcohol or drug abuse, and parental unemployment. Preliminary analysis of a 10 percent randomized sample of two birth cohorts (children born in 1966 and 1973) led to the present design. The study included all Danish children born in 1973 who had been hospitalized due to abuse or neglect between the years 1979 and 1991, when the children were between 6 and 18 years of age. Population-based registers were used to gather data on health, education, social networks, family violence, parental self-destructive behaviour, parental alcohol or drug abuse and parental unemployment. The study analyses how the family situation prior to the abuse or neglect differs from the controls. The nested case cohort data were analysed by means of logistic regression to isolate the potential influence from parental unemployment. The results show that incidences of abuse or neglect of children and adolescents are seen more often in families suffering from: (1) father's neurotic disorder; (2) diminishing social networks; (3) violence in the family and parental criminality; (4) mother's alcohol or drug abuse; (5) parental lack of vocational training and (6) mother's long-term unemployment. Boys were more exposed to abuse and neglect than girls. Estimates show that the odds ratio for abuse and neglect is 1.3 if the mother had been unemployed for at least 21 weeks the previous year - standardized for other risk factors. The article suggests that as unemployment degrades and humiliates parents, it can put considerable strain on their behaviour towards their children.
Individualization, Family Transitions and Children's Agency
Authors: KALTENBORN KARL-FRANZ
Published: March 2007

Family transitions such as parental separation and divorce create the necessity for individual decisions, e.g. regarding parental custody and the children's residence arrangements or regarding visiting access with the non-custodial parent. The present longitudinal study of 62 children is based on interviews with members of divorced families, including the children, and on the analysis of child psychiatric custody reports and legal files. A second follow-up survey was also conducted. The study examined the child's attachment and relationship preferences and residence wishes as a custody decision criterion and the child's agency in custody decision-making and family transitions. The article argues in favour of constituting by law the child's attachments and residence wishes as custody criterion for children of any age and for establishing appropriate social and legal contexts to enable and promote the child's agency in custody decisions and residence changes.
Global and Local Approaches to Children's Rights in Vietnam
Authors: BURR RACHEL
Published: March 2007

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) assumes that children are universally the same. It can be argued that its provisions are weighted in favour of a modern, western sense of the individual. While there is a growing body of literature that supports this proposition, little material exists in which both the lives and attitudes of children and the approaches of international aid agencies working with them are researched and considered alongside each other. This article examines the CRC in relation to its influence on local attitudes towards childhood and children's lived experiences in the context of Vietnam. In doing so it also presents the attitudes of aid agency members that work with, and focus their attentions on, those children. It is suggested that members of the organizations that uphold the CRC too often assume that local people share their notion of what is meant by rights. The article concludes that it is imperative that we continue to challenge poor connections between the global and local, the public and the private as advocated in the work of Sharon Stephens.
A Plea for a Child-Centred Approach in Research with Street Children
Authors: BEERS HENK VAN
Published: March 2007

The public image of street children takes little account of root causes of the problem or their own perceptions of the realities of their lives. Their relationship to urban life is seldom analysed and it is rare to see street girls mentioned without a link being made between their lives on the street and prostitution. A plea is made for a more child-centred, participatory approach to research with street children and some recent examples of this kind of work are discussed.
Changing Rationales For Governing the Child
Authors: HULTQVIST KENNETH
Published: March 2007

This article is about a period of transition (1920-40) in the history of the Swedish preschool when Friedrich Fröbel's discourse on the child, which was the major discourse in the early days of the preschool movement in Sweden, gradually became replaced by the discourse of developmental psychology. The article's major concern is with the issue of change in preschool discourse about the child. Using the Foucauldian theme of governmentality, the article argues that change in preschool discourse is related to the emergence of new rationales for governing the child. In addition, the article argues that a comparison with the child that emerged in the context of schooling during the 19th century, is essential for the understanding of the post-Fröbel discourse about the child. It is suggested that the child of the post-Fröbel period is in fact the product of a reinvention of the evangelical streams of thought of the 19th century.
Bodyhood and Fatherhood
Authors: HALLDÉN GUNILLA
Published: March 2007

In a project concerned with how adolescents construct their self-identities, a group of 13- to 14-year-old boys living in suburban and rural communities in Sweden wrote about a future family life and about themselves as fathers. The narratives are seen as reflecting the boys' ways of exploring a male identity through their main character. In the stories analysed here the boys' writing connects to fellowship, equality and the transmitting of knowledge. The boys' taking on a fatherhood in their narratives gives them access to possibilities that are not theirs in their capacity as child, but at the same time they retain their freedom in being a child. We can say that they combine the advantages of boyhood and fatherhood.
Coalition Building between Native American and Environmental Organizations in Opposition to Development
Authors: Moore Mik
Published: March 2007

Coalitions between Native American and environmental organizations in opposition to ecologically destructive projects have been an important recent development in environmental actions. This article explores one such coalition, which was organized in resistance to a large dam project, the New Los Padres Dam, planned for the Carnel River; California. Social movement theorists have, in the past, emphasized the importance of material resources for the success of social movements (the resource mobilization perspective) and more recently, have placed attention on symbolic resources (ideas and beliefs) as key factors in mobilizing support for a movement. In the coalition studied here, the significance of traditional Native American philosophy (the indigenist vision) as a symbolic resource both for Native American and non-native activists is investigated, and the respective contributions of Native American and environmental organizations to the struggle against the New Los Padres Dam are outlined, exploring both collaborations and differing strategies.
A Problem with Referendums
Authors: Lacy Dean , Niou Emerson M.S.
Published: March 2007

When some voters have nonseparable preferences across multiple binary issues, majority rule may not select a Condorcet winning set of outcomes when one exists, and the social choice may be a Condorcet loser or Pareto-dominated by every other set of outcomes. We present an empirical example of one such paradox from voting on the Internet. We evaluate potential solutions to the problem of nonseparable preferences in referendums, including set-wise voting, sequential voting, and vote-trading. Sequential voting and vote-trading prevent the selection of Condorcet losers and universally Pareto-dominated outcomes. Legislatures facilitate sequential voting and vote-trading better than referendums, suggesting that referendums increase the quantity of participants in democratic decision-making but decrease the quality of participation.
Collusion, Competition and Democracy
Authors: Bartolini Stefano
Published: March 2007

In the first part of this work, published in the Journal of Theoretical Politics 11(4), I discussed the nature of competitive interaction as opposed to other types of social interaction such as conflict, negotiation and cooperation. I subsequently analysed the relationship which exists between political competition and the two basic aspects of democratic accountability and responsiveness. Finally I introduced four concepts (`contestability', `electoral availability', `offer's decidability' and `electoral vulnerability') which identify distinct and independent dimensions of the overall process of politico-electoral competition. Only the first two were discussed in the first part. In this second part the remaining two (`offer's decidability' and `electoral vulnerability') will be considered, before concluding with a discussion of the ambivalent relationships which link these dimensions and how they can be organized for an empirical study of politico-electoral competition.
Fair Allocation and Re-Weighting of Votes and Voting Power in the EU before and after the Next Enlargement
Authors: Sutter Matthias
Published: March 2007

Laruelle and Widgrén (1998) have raised the question of whether the allocation of voting power in the EU is fair. This paper extends some of their results insofar as (1) it deals with the consequences if the square root rule - which is the basis for calculating fair shares of voting power - is not fully applicable; (2) it calculates voting weights that lead to a fair allocation of voting power in the EU Council; and (3) it considers the effects of an EU enlargement on the fair allocation of voting power.
A Theory of Presidents' Public Agenda Setting
Authors: Canes-Wrone Brandice
Published: March 2007

We provide a theory that derives conditions under which presidents' ability to increase the salience of an issue will generate legislative influence and correspondingly, conditions under which presidents will engage in this activity of public agenda setting. The theory shows that presidents can obtain influence from not only the act, but also the threat of public agenda setting. However, even when the action is costless, presidents can not always achieve policy goals from it. When a president does not want Congress to become more responsive to public opinion, or when the status quo is not extreme relative to his/her preferred outcome and voters' preferences, the president lacks a policy-based incentive to increase the salience of an issue. These predictions are illustrated with cases involving President Reagan's tax policy negotiations and President Clinton's budget negotiations.
Single-Peakedness and Disconnected Coalitions
Authors: Brams Steven J. , Jones Michael A. , Kilgour D. Marc
Published: March 2007

Ordinally single-peaked preferences are distinguished from cardinally single-peaked preferences, in which all players have a similar perception of distances in some one-dimensional ordering. While ordinal single-peakedness can lead to disconnected coalitions that have a ‘hole’ in the ordering, cardinal single-peakedness precludes this possibility, based on two models of coalition formation:

• Fallback (FB): Players seek coalition partners by descending lower and lower in their preference rankings until a majority coalition forms.

• Build-Up (BU): Similar to FB, except that when non-majority subcoalitions form, they fuse into composite players, whose positions are defined cardinally.

The ‘strange bedfellows’ frequently observed in legislative coalitions and military alliances suggest that even when players agree on, say, a left-right ordering, their perceptions of exactly where players stand in this ordering may differ substantially. If so, a player may be acceptable to a coalition but may not find every member in it acceptable, causing that player not to join and possibly creating a disconnected coalition.
Sequential Elections and Retrospective Voting
Authors: Williams Kenneth C.
Published: March 2007

Retrospective considerations do influence vote choice. But the manner in which voters incorporate retrospective evaluations is still an empirical question. This essay compares two voting rules: a traditional retrospective rule and a retrospective-prospective rule. The rules are differentiated based on the information costs associated with each. It is assumed that the traditional retrospective rule is less costly since voters need only make evaluations about the incumbent, whereas using a retrospective-prospective rule, voters must acquire additional information about the challenger. This essay argues that a choice of voting rule is a function of whether voters perceive the electoral environment as being stable or unstable (in terms of the issue positions candidates adopt over time). Laboratory experiments are conducted to test this proposition. In general, the results show that voters show a greater tendency to rely on a traditional retrospective rule when they perceive a stable electoral environment.
Are Public Goods Myths?
Authors: Cornes Richard , Sandler Todd
Published: March 2007

This paper makes the case that nonrivalness and nonexcludability properties of public goods are still relevant and crucial considerations. Although these characteristics of publicness may be socially endogenous with institutional choice, these properties are not necessarily determined by this choice. For club goods, a wide range of institutional structures are consistent with the same properties of publicness. Even when these publicness properties are endogenous, the resulting characteristics of the public good are still important for comparing equilibrium outcomes with social optima. Although public good theory has been misused by some to support public provision of such goods, this misuse does not mean that the modern theory is devoid of interest.
9. Heterogeneities at Two Levels: States, Non-State Actors and Intentional Oil Pollution
Authors: Mitchell Ronald B.
Published: March 2007

Heterogeneities among states, among non-state actors and between state and non-state actors explain the timing, process, form and effectiveness of international regulation of intentional oil pollution. Understanding the progressive movement toward rules that reduced intentional oil discharges depends on identifying different varieties of heterogeneity and their unique influences on the process and outcomes of cooperation. Success at reducing discharges by tanker operators, who had few incentives to provide the public good of a cleaner ocean, depended on rules that took advantage of existing heterogeneities in preferences and capacities to build a regulatory structure that coerced compliance by preventing most violations and deterring the rest.
Equilibria in Weighted Voting Games with Sidepayments
Authors: Sened Itai
Published: March 2007

Coalition formation is modeled as a cooperative games. Each party enters the game endowed with a weight that is a function of the proportion of the votes the party obtained in the elections, and an ideal policy position. Payoffs to parties are a function of the distance of the government's policy position from the party's ideal point, and the number of portfolios that the party receives in the coalition. The game analyzed is a variation on the `divide the dollar' problem. Unlike the divide the dollar game, however, ideological payoffs are also introduced into the analysis. It turns out that the ideological concerns of parties `induce' a core in the `divide the dollar' problem that would, otherwise, have a generally empty core. A comprehensive analysis of the new core concept, the `IVCORE', follows.
Culture as a Foundation Concept for the Social Sciences
Authors: Eckstein Harry
Published: March 2007

The gradual emergence of the idea of culture is traced from the writings of Comte to those of Durkheim, Weber and Parsons, from whom Almond and Verba derived the concept of political culture. The idea of culture emerged as a response to a problem raised by Comte around 1830: how the social sciences, when developed, would differ from the other positive sciences, yet remain a branch of a unitary `positive philosophy'. It is suggested that the idea of culture is an appropriate solution to Comte's problem, a solution preferable to its chief historic rival, utility (rational choice) theory.
Electoral Competition and Coalition Bargaining in Multiparty Systems
Authors: Narud Hanne Marthe
Published: March 2007

This paper is about mass constraints on parties engaged in coalition bargaining. Models of coalition bargaining most commonly focus on policy distances between parties, and have often neglected the part electoral competition plays in the process. In the electoral arena, in order to gain votes, parties are advocates of conflict and offer the electorates clear and distinctive electoral platforms. In the parliamentary arena, however, in order to bargain their way into some coalition alternative, they are forced to water down the clarity of the party program and to give policy concessions to other parties. Thus, a dilemma occurs between seeking office and seeking votes. This dilemma is the topic of the current paper. Two questions are analysed: to what extent do the parties' electoral strategies constrain their coalition potentials? And what is the effect of elite strategy on voters' attitudes and preferences? Using the 1993 Norwegian parliamentary election as a case study, the findings suggest that policy alterations made in the electoral arena for the purpose of gaining votes in fact reduced the parties' bargaining potentials.
On the Origins of Political Unions
Authors: McKay David
Published: March 2007

This paper attempts to explain why it was that the countries of the European Community came together to form a political union in the early 1990s. The explanations most often invoked to explain this process - those drawn from competing schools in international relations and federalism theory - are critiqued and an alternative perspective based on an adaptation of William Riker's work is offered. Riker argues that countries form unions only when faced with an external or internal threat to the territorial integrity of the component states. As no such threat or threats existed in Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, this approach looks limited. However, it is argued that the participating politicians at Maastricht did strike a bargain based not on fear of an external or internal military threat, but based on fear of electoral and political instability. Perceiving that inflation was politically damaging and potentially threatening to the existing political order, and aware that they could not control inflation at the national level alone, they were willing to cede authority over monetary policy to a supranational authority. Given the importance of monetary policy as a government function, only federallike arrangements could accommodate this reallocation of government responsibilities.
Relevance of Voting Power
Authors: Lane Jan-Erik , Berg Sven
Published: March 2007

Democratic decision-making in groups requires institutions that aggregate the preference of the choice participants into a collective choice under the restriction that no player is a dictator. Constitutions deliver alternative rules for democratic decision-making, the consequences of which are best analysed using cooperative game theory. The emergence of a power index literature in the 1980s reflects the relevance of this type of modelling of institutions for groups like the European Union, stating modalities of power for the players.
Ignorance-Based Quantitative Models and Their Practical Implications
Authors: Taagepera Rein
Published: March 2007

Some basic models in science are not grounded in what we know but in careful specifying of the limits of our ignorance. Boundary conditions on the conceptually possible range determine whether a distribution is likely to be closer to normal or lognormal and whether arithmetic or geometric means should be used. If finite and non-zero boundary values can be defined, then most actual cases tend to be around the center of the possible range. This approach makes it possible to estimate the number of parties in a national assembly within a factor of two, using only assembly size and electoral district magnitude. Deviations from ignorance-based base line are a signal to look for specifically political causes. This approach may be of use in many aspects of political science.
Experiences of madness
Authors: Foucault Michel
Published: March 2007

'Expériences de la folie', chapter 4 of Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique, Paris: Gallimard, 1972. The editors wish to thank Gallimard, and in particular Mme Ania Chevallier, for permission to publish this new translation.
History and the history of the human sciences: what voice?
Authors: Smith Roger
Published: March 2007

This paper discusses the historical voice in the history of the human sci ences. I address the question, 'Who speaks?', as a question about disci plinary identities and conventions of writing - identities and conventions which have the appearance of conditions of knowledge, in an area of activity where academic history and the history of science or intellectual history meet. If, as this paper contends, the subject-matter of the history of the human sciences is inherently contestable because of fundamental differences about the subject, man, how is the field to be shaped as if it were a whole? The meta-narratives that once sustained synthetic writing, such as the teleological narratives of the emergence of a modern discipline or of progress towards truth, have lost authority. I ask whether the alternatives rely on 'wilful' authorial rhetoric, the use of the resources of language to sustain a narrative, the defence of which depends on intelligibility and inclusiveness, not detailed correspon dence to a supposedly independent past. If this is the case, an author's theoretical stance will inevitably be more out in the open - the author will have a 'theoretical voice' - than is common in most mainstream history writing. In the light of this, I reflect on my own effort to write a synthetic history of the human sciences.
Machiavelli and Rousseau: the standpoint of the city and the authorial voice in political authorial voice in political theory
Authors: Buckler Steve
Published: March 2007

A systematic comparison is made between the respective political theories of Machiavelli and Rousseau. Initially, the comparison centres upon key substantive claims made by each theorist with a view to estab lishing a general, thematic contrast. This is used as a basis for structur ing a further comparison between the respective authorial standpoints adopted by Machiavelli and Rousseau. It will be suggested that this comparison establishes, (a) that a connection can be made between sub stantive theory and authorial standpoint and, (b) that, in comparison, the authorial standpoint adopted by Machiavelli reflects a fidelity to the political which is absent in Rousseau.
Charles E. Raven, The Creator Spirit, (London: Martin Hopkinson, 1927) p. 155
Authors: Leal Dave
Published: March 2007

It is in the failure to achieve integration ... that personalities too often make shipwreck, either breaking down (physically or mentally) under the strain of conflict or abandoning any real desire for effective synthesis.
Urban development and the environment in Port Harcourt
Authors: Izeogu C V
Published: March 2007

Urban development and the environment in Port Harcourt describes the city's very rapid growth in recent decades and environmental problems there: very poor housing conditions; very inadequate waste disposal and sanitation; flooding and poor drainage; and air, land and water pollution. Final sections consider the needed measures.
The employment of minors in Brazil
Authors: Cuopertio Maria Amélia Marcondes
Published: March 2007

The employment of minors in Brazil considers the employment of children in that country. Despite only limited sources of data, a number of different aspects are examined: the salary earned by these children and its importance in family income; the extent to which child workers are "registered" and what the implications of this might be; and the relationship between education and employment.
Financing regional and local government in Sudan
Authors: Al-Teraifi Al-Agab Ahmed
Published: March 2007

Financing regional and local government in Sudan discusses the main issues and trends in loal government finance following the reform of regional government in 1980. Particular attention is given to the relationship between central and regional/local governmentt The final secton suggest somr e reforms and improvements.
Households and environment in the city of São Paulo; problems, perceptions and solutions
Authors: Jacobi Pedro R.
Published: March 2007

This paper presents findings from a 1,000-house-hold survey in Sao Paulo City that examined environmental problems at the household and neighbourhood levels and th respondents' perceptions with regard to the nature and cause of these problems and the best means for their resolution. The sample was chosen to allow the findings to be representative of six socioeconomic strata (so that findings from high, middle and low-income households could be compared) and of different spatial locations so that findings from the central city, inner suburbs and the outer periphery of the city could be compared. The paper reveals in detail the environmental problems and household perceptions that vary most and least between strata and suggests new bases for action in which both government agencies and citizens share responsibility.
Alfred Maury and the politics of the Unconscious in nineteenth-century France
Authors: Dowbiggin Ian
Published: March 2007

As scholars have observed recently, the study of hallucinations, hypnosis, and dreaming in nineteenth-century France was often linked to divisive social, political and cultural issues. For example, during the July Monarchy (1830-1848) many secular and religious figures on the political Left celebrated these phenomena for their capacity to disclose moral strategies that would lead to the regeneration of French economic and political life. The revolutionary implications of these views alarmed moderate liberals like Alfred Maury (1817-1892) who instead believed that all involuntary mental states were no more than the natural results of physiological conditions in the brain and nervous system. Maury's pioneering studies of the psychology of the unconscious mind are important not only because they cast doubt on the reliability of Catholic ideas, but also for the way they refracted growing bourgeois anxiety about the escalating threat of revolution from France's 'dangerous classes'.
Depersonalization: a conceptual history
Authors: Sierra M. , Berrios G.E.
Published: March 2007

As with other clinical phenomena, the historical analysis of the term, concepts and behaviours involved in the construction of 'depersonalization' should provide researchers with an essential frame for its empirical study, Before the term was coined in 1898, and under a variety of names, behaviours typical of 'depersonalization' were reported by Esquirol, Zeller, Billod, and Griesinger. The word dépersonnalisation derived from a usage in Amiel's Journal intime, was first used in a technical sense by Ludovic Dugas. The new disorder has since been explained as resulting from pathological changes in the sensory system, memory, affect, body image and self-experience. During the 1930s, evolutionary views became popular, particularly in the work of Mayer-Gross. The unclear conceptual boundaries of depersonalization still invite confusion and often enough fragments of what used to be its core-behaviour are used to diagnose the disorder. Depersonalization has of late become subsumed under the dissociative disorders. The definitional instability of the latter, however, has caused further complications to the study of depersonalization. It is recommended that the term is used to refer only to the original core-behaviour as this has shown adequate stability.
Notice-board
Authors: Looseley David
Published: March 2007

French Cultural Studies will be pleased to announce in the Notice-board forthcoming events or other items involving all aspects of modern French culture. Please contact Dr D. L. Looseley, Department of Modern Languages, Universityof Bradford, Bradford, BD71DP, West Yorkshire.
`Oh', Irony and Sequential Ambiguity in Arguments
Authors: HUTCHBY IAN
Published: March 2007

This article is concerned with the production of argumentative talk. Attention is focused on a particular device for `being argumentative', in which a turn is constructed using the marker `Oh' followed by a hearably ironical proposition. Analysis uncovers the structural aspects that contribute to that device's hearability as argumentative, and goes on to consider how an utterance deploying the device comes to be produced in terms of its surrounding, unfolding sequential context. The article thus addresses some distinctive resources available to disputants to construct their positions in the light of previous moves in the argument; and explores the way in which the sequential patterns of disputes themselves play a role in the making of arguments.
`Now is the Time to Put an End to all this': Argumentative Discourse Theory and `Letters to the Editor'
Authors: RICHARDSON JOHN E.
Published: March 2007

This article applies argumentative discourse theory to `letters to the editor', specifically letters written into and subsequently printed in the British broadsheet press. The sampled letters were all written in response to prior newspaper articles and reporting, in which Islam and/or Muslims were cited as actors. The pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation is applied as a model for explaining and understanding argument, emphasizing the functional, contextual and interactive features of argumentative discourse. The theory rejects the traditionally strict bifurcation of dialectic and rhetorical dimensions of argumentation, uniting them in the model. The article is informed by the presupposition that the power relationships represented in the broadsheet press are both generative and transposable, modifying power relations in other fields (Bourdieu, 1991), and concludes by suggesting that the letters represent an example of a discourse of `spatial management' - the `national space' being the space in question, and the `managers' being the dominant élites, as represented by the broadsheet newspaper readership.
Constructing Imperial Identity: How to Quote the Imperial Family and those who Address them in the Japanese Press
Authors: SATOH AKIRA
Published: March 2007

This article examines how speech representation in Japanese journalistic discourse reflects and reproduces the social structure in Japan and the identity of the Imperial Family. Japanese newspapers tend strongly to quote the Imperial Family verbatim, which supports the thesis `the higher the status of the speaker, the more direct the presentation' (Glasgow University Media Group, 1980; Davis, 1985). On the other hand, Japanese newspapers also tend to quote those who address the Imperial Family verbatim, which suggests that not only the more elite the speaker, but also the more elite the addressee, the more verbatim the presentation. I argue that this practice mirrors the Japanese media's ideology that the Imperial Family belongs to a noble class. However, there has been a sign of change in the quoting practice since the Crown Prince got married in June 1993. This change may contribute to constructing new power relations and identities in Japanese society.
Divorce before Marriage in the Singapore—Malaysia Relationship: The Invariance Principle at Work
Authors: WEE LIONEL
Published: March 2007

This article looks at how a particular metaphor, the Marriage metaphor, is used in the discourse concerning the Singapore-Malaysia relationship by tracking the metaphor through discourses concerning political merger, separation and possible re-merger. It shows how the details of the metaphor may be differentially mapped in order to achieve competing political aims. The article also observes that while the Marriage metaphor was productively used in the post-separation discourse, there is no evidence that it was used prior to this period. An explanation for this absence is offered in terms of the Invariance Principle.
(Un)reasonable Doubt? the Invocation of Children's Consent in Sexual Abuse Trial Judgments
Authors: MACMARTIN CLARE
Published: March 2007

The techniques of discursive psychology were used to analyze the discourse of offence descriptions in criminal trial judgments in recent cases of child sexual abuse in Canada. In certain cases, descriptions of the complaints provided resources that judges mobilized as a warrant for doubt by contrasting children's negative reception of sexual abuse with the innocuous or positive character of subsequent social contact with offenders. This argument emphasizes the agency of children in consenting to affiliate with offenders, presuming that authentic victims can and would avoid further involvement. Although a child's consent to sexual contact is no longer a possible defence under Canadian law, these findings show how the notion of consent can enter current trial decisions. Recommendations suggest ways of incorporating alternative conceptions of abuse in which repeated contact with offenders is viewed as consonant with children's dependent relationships with familiar (and often familial) abusers.
A Discourse of the Social: Medical Talk/Power Talk/Oppositional Talk?
Authors: Fisher Sue
Published: March 2007

In the 1960s when federal policies in the United States were directed at countering societal inequalities, including inequalities in health care, a new health care professional came into being—the nurse practitioner. Nurse practitioners claim to provide care differently from doctors, to offer a system of care which adds caring to curing. Since the delivery of health care is essentially a communicational event and since overwhelmingly researchers have concentrated on doctor-patient communication, in this article I compare how nurse practitioner and doctor communicate with women patients during medical encounters and analyze the interactional and ideological work such communication does. Since nurse practitioners claim to provide just the kind of care that reformers are calling for—a more patient centered discourse of the social—this comparison allows me to address issues about how we understand the relationship between provider and patient—theoretical issues that are central to three recent sociological studies by Mishler, Waitzkin and Silverman.
Critical Discourse Analysis and the Marketization of Public Discourse: The Universities
Authors: Fairclough Norman
Published: March 2007

This paper sets out the author's view of discourse analysis and illustrates the approach with an analysis of discursive aspects of marketization of public discourse in contemporary Britain, specifically in higher education. It includes a condensed theoretical account of critical discourse analysis, a framework for analysing discursive events, and a discussion of discursive practices (including their marketization) in late capitalist society, as well as analysis of samples of the discourse of higher education. The paper concludes with a discussion of the value of critical discourse analysis as a method in social scientific research, and as a resource for social struggle.
AIDS Risk and Heterosexuality in the Australian Press
Authors: Lupton Deborah
Published: March 2007

The popular press is an important forum for communicating messages and meanings about health risks. This paper examines new reports of AIDS published in the Australian metropolitan press in late 1986 and early 1987. This period was chosen because it marked a change in news representations of AIDS from a disease of the deviant and (primarily) homosexual Other to a disease of the heterosexual Self. The discussion examines some of the discursive devices used in headlines, editorials and the main body of news texts to represent AIDS as a threat to heterosexuals. The dominant ideologies, narratives and discourses contributing to press accounts of AIDS risk and heterosexuality are identified, including victim blaming, public health paternalism, risk discourse, Judeo-Christian religion and sexuality, the moral meanings of disease and fin de millénium discourse.
The Discursive Construction of Society
Authors: Bowers John , Iwi Kate
Published: March 2007

The overall concern of this paper is to consider the concept of society and present some analyses of how `society' is used in participants' discourse as a rhetorical resource. After schematically reviewing several traditional notions of society as they appear in the sociological and allied literatures, we point out some of the difficulties associated with theorizing society and assess the appeal of the work of those who follow Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard in eliminating `society' from theory or proclaiming its `end'. As an alternative to fashionable announcements of the `death of the social', we investigate the plausibility of taking society as a topic for discourse analysis rather than as a resource for sociological explanation or postmodern theory. On the basis of an extensive corpus of largely interview data, we identify various constructions of society in participants' discourse and characterize the rhetorical functions associated with each. Discursively constructing society is an important and flexible rhetorical resource for identifying responsibilities, characterizing social actors and groups, praising and blaming, criticizing conventional knowledge or accepting it, legitimating courses of action or political strategies, and for promoting the factuality of otherwise contestable claims. Finally, extending the work of Bruno Latour, a `performative' account of the nature of the social bond is offered as appropriate for discourse analysis and contrasted with social constructionist, relativist and idealist explanations of discursive and social phenomena.
Watery Passion: The Struggle between Hegemony and Sexual Liberation in Erotic Fiction for Women
Authors: Patthey-Chavez G. Genevieve , Clare Lindsay , Youmans Madeleine
Published: March 2007

Erotic texts have historically been written for male consumption and women's erotic preferences were either marginalized or assumed to coincide with men's. Following Lakoff (1987), this paper examines the metaphors and semantic associations constructed in and through the first erotic genre explicitly directed to a female audience: the erotic romance novel. The sexual experiences portrayed in 16 romances representing a typical contemporary North American selection were excerpted for a detailed analysis guided by the precepts and methods of critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1989; Van Dijk, 1993) and cultural critiques (Christian-Smith, 1993; Lutz and Abu-Lughod, 1990). The genre presents a unique erotic style (Youmans and Patthey-Chavez, 1992) even as it reflects prescriptive formulas meant to enhance its marketability (Paludan, 1994). The analysis reveals that it is contested ground—at once consummation of female desire and hegemonic channeling of that desire into the safety of accepted/acceptable patterns of female agency and female experience.