bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Discourse of Disillusionment: Letters to the Editor in Two Zimbabwean Magazines 10 Years after Independence
Authors: Morrison Andrew , Love Alison
Published: March 2007

This paper examines Letters to the Editor (LEs) in two Zimbabwean magazines in 1990. Zimbabwe celebrated 10 years of independence in 1990 and the marking of a decade stimulated evaluation of the achievements of independence. The LEs in independently owned magazines provided a site for non-elite writers to engage in an alternative discourse to the `celebratory' discourse of the state-controlled daily press. We examine the corpus of LEs in terms of discourse structure and lexico-grammatical features, using critical discourse analysis and computer concordancing to identify features of this alternative discourse. We conclude that there is an emergent `discourse of disillusionment' which suggests the gradual erosion of the post-independence national consensus. We discuss briefly the relevance of this discourse to the role of media and civil society in Zimbabwe.
Political Discourse of a Working-Class Town
Authors: SOTILLO SUSANA M. , STARACE-NASTASI DANA
Published: March 2007

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) studies have examined the construction, reproduction, and mental appropriation of `top-down' discourses of dominance but have paid little attention to `bottom-up' analyses of semi-formal texts such as Letters to the Editor (LEs) in small-town newspapers. We investigate here the discourse of LEs written by candidates for political office, their supporters, and opponents. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed on a corpus of 123 LEs. Four research questions were addressed. The results of the study indicate that (1) letter writers used four specific forms of argumentation and selectively addressed issues; (2) LEs furnished a convenient platform for political campaigning but did not provide an effective medium for constructive dialogue leading to action and social change; (3) tax increases, ratables, the environment, and morality in education emerged as major topics; and (4) gender and class differences were salient in the discourse of LEs. An underlying discourse of disaffection, perceived as loss of social cohesion, emerged from the linguistic choices, content, tone, and structure of the letters. Reader-writers feel powerless at their inability to effect social change in their own communities.
`Going Nowhere' with Wittgenstein
Authors: Moore Kevin
Published: March 2007

Wittgenstein is famous for eschewing `scientific' explanations of language in philosophy and for commending, as an alternative, the examination of ordinary language, `the language of everyday'. `Scientific' explanations should be avoided, according to Wittgenstein, because they lead our attention into paradoxical ontologies and away from the one place where solutions and clear understandings will be found. This desire to avoid going into such ontological mires I term `going nowhere' and I suggest that it is one of the most insightful yet most misunderstood aspects of Wittgenstein's later work. This paper examines the arguments in favour of `going nowhere' and in the process rebuts the charge that Wittgenstein himself was involved in providing explanations. The discussion then focuses on the conceptual benefits to be gained in psychology from `going nowhere', including that of the demystification of psychological phenomena. Finally, the paper explores the sense in which `going nowhere' leaves psychologists in the `world' of ordinary language, an everyday `world' that is surprisingly robust in the face of irrealism without succumbing to the temptations of ontological realism.
A Discourse-Dynamic Approach to the Study of Subjectivity in Health Psychology
Authors: Willig Carla
Published: March 2007

As one of the key tools of social constructionist research, discourse analysis has allowed us to explore the ways in which `health' and `illness' are constructed through language. There are two major ways in which a Foucauldian version of discourse analysis has been applied within this context. Discourse analysis has been used to deconstruct expert discourses of health and illness (Focus 1) and to determine the extent to which dominant discourses are reflected in lay people's talk about health and illness (Focus 2). This article argues that in order to progress our understanding of the subjective experience of what it means to be `healthy' or `sick', discourse analysis needs to develop Focus 2 through the use of memory work and positioning theory. The article concludes by sketching a research programme for a discourse-dynamic approach to the study of subjectivity in health psychology.
Embodied Perception
Authors: Soffer Joshua
Published: March 2007

Common to different versions of social constructionism is the definition of discourse as taking place between persons. Experiences that take place in the absence of immediate others, such as thinking to oneself or reading a text, are treated as secondary phenomena, as introjected versions of social utterances/gestures. This article asserts that representative constructionist articulations of between-person relationality rest on abstractions masking a more primary locus of sociality. I offer an alternative formulation of the social as the embodiment of sensate experience, borrowing from Merleau-Ponty's and Gendlin's accounts. Sensate experience is already radically relational before and beyond any notion of sociality as between-person voices/gestures, generating more intimate and mobile possibilities of interpersonal understanding than are offered via discursive readings of terms like `social', `language' and `embodiment'.
Towards a Semiotic Psychotherapy
Authors: Barclay Michael W. , Kee Michael
Published: March 2007

The focus of the following article is on the generation of meanings that found the self in the context of psychotherapeutic exchanges. We want to outline the domain of semiosis as a proliferating, polysemic realm of meaning. We hope to suggest through this outline that clinical frames of reference, as well as everyday aspects of our language exchanges, are susceptible to an essentially shifting nature of meaning. As a result, what we take as definitive characteristics of classic diagnostic lexical items are also subject to the uncertainty of semiosis. And, finally, the construct psychology applies to the individual-a self-is best viewed as a semiotic object susceptible to the promiscuous nature of semiosis. When a practice such as psychotherapy takes the self as its object, and utilizes certain clinical frames of reference as its basis, practitioners should be aware of the shifting and labile ground upon which its constructs are erected. Semiotic analysis and its subsequent category of linguistic analysis can thus offer a ground for a theory of psychotherapy.
The Psychology of Psychology
Authors: Richards Graham
Published: March 2007

Rhetorical calls for disciplinary unity and vision currently lack any grounding in historically informed analysis of Psychology's character and functions, while the historians of Psychology providing the material for such an analysis continue to remain marginalized. A framework for considering the issue is outlined in terms of a circuit reflexively linking the discipline ('Psychology') and its subject matter ('psychology'). This focuses on the psychologist role, the `inputs' from which Psychological ideas ultimately derive, and the disciplinary `outputs', which in turn affect psychology itself. Thus viewed, the prospects for disciplinary unity appear necessarily faint. The importance of history of Psychology, however, is clarified and reinforced. (The distinction between `Psychology'/ `Psychological' to refer to the discipline and `psychology'/'psychological' to refer to its subject matter is sustained throughout this paper.)
Cognitive Psychology and the Study of Scientific Discovery1
Authors: Guimberteau Bernadette
Published: March 2007

This article focuses on the validation and explanatory power of the predominant model of scientific discovery used in cognitive science. Two strategies of validation are identified: validation by reproduction and validation by convergence. It is argued that neither provides a sufficient approach to validation and that a more appropriate strategy would consist in testing the model against current scientific problems to try to generate new discoveries. Another contention of this article is that the explanatory power of the model can be increased by understanding cognitive differences between the small proportion of `discoverers' and the large number of scientists working on a given problem at a given time. This question can best be tackled by studying how experts acquire their expertise from fragmentary and complex knowledge and by understanding expert learning, a topic that has so far been neglected in the cognitive psychology of expertise.
Psychology's Bridgman vs Bridgman's Bridgman
Authors: Koch Sigmund
Published: March 2007

Since its inception as science, psychology has generated a rhetoric of `rigor' concerning the ideal characteristics of its inquirers. An early emphasis on experimental exactitude expanded, by the 1930s, to a conception that saw the first-year graduate student also as a mature theoretical physicist, logician and (when required) carpenter. By the 1960s, the student was expected also to be an expert in `computer science', and an adept in esoteric speciations of probability mathematics. Consistently missing from these autistic job specifications have been such trivial matters as the ability to read, to report reliably on what has been read, and to write. As for the more sophisticated hermeneutic and analytic skills of scholarship, these have apparently been seen as positive threats to scientific purity. This article illustrates the consequences of the divorce between psychology and even minimal requirements of the western scholarly tradition. The doctrine of `operational definition' (or `operationism') has been a central strand in the official epistemology governing psychological method for over 55 years. Despite a large literature of stipulation and pseudo-exegesis of operational procedure, it can be shown that any demand that `variables' or `concepts'-whether of psychological theory or experiment-be operationally defined in the senses advocated would, if literally construed, confine psychological discourse to matters so fragmented and trivial as to be worse than empty. The doctrine of `operational definition' in psychology was presumably based on the methodic thinking of the distinguished Harvard physicist, Percy William Bridgman, who, in many writings over some 46 years, elaborated a way of explicating the meaning-contours of concepts already in place within physics and other contexts-including that of natural language. He called his method `operational analysis' and did not suppose that he was stipulating any canonical schema for definition. The total misconstrual by psychologists of Bridgman's `critical concern', and the evidence suggesting that they had based their `reading' of Bridgman's position on little more than a single slogan taken out of the context of the very paragraph in which it had occurred (at the beginning of his first book on general methodic issues, The Logic of Modern Physics, 1927/1960), provides a dramatic case study of the quality of scholarship that has long prevailed in psychology.
Repopulating the Depopulated Pages of Social Psychology
Authors: Billig Michael
Published: March 2007

The author of this academic article writes about the way that psychology, especially social psychology, is written in academic journals. It is argued that the journals are `depopulated' texts; strategies for `repopulating' them are discussed. Two issues of the European Journal of Social Psychology are examined in detail, in order to show how social psychological texts rhetorically transform individuals into interchangeable subjects. Several rhetorical devices are outlined: for instance, `variable vagueness' in describing subjects, unmarked expressions for describing group differences, and the routine absence of individual data. These rhetorical devices are not discussed as methodological defects, but as means for accomplishing depopulation. The result of these conventional practices of writing is that psychologists tend to produce general descriptions which are not instantiated in particular cases. To remedy this, the procedure of Median Case Reconstruction is suggested. Not only would Median Case Reconstruction have methodological and theoretical implications, but it would necessitate changes in the writing of social psychology. Its advantages, and more generally those of a repopulated social psychology, are discussed. But there is more. Amongst other things, the author introduces some characters of his own and warns readers not to trust abstracts.
Sexing the Phallocentric Pages of Psychology: Repopulation is Not Enough
Authors: Ussher Jane M.
Published: March 2007

Whilst the case for the repopulation of psychology made by Billig is supported in principle, it is argued that repopulation without serious reassessment of the underlying phallocentric bias in psychology is not enough. It may even act to reinforce reactionary tendencies within the discipline through coating them in a veneer of liberalism. Following critiques of the inherent sexism in both science and psychology, feminists have already moved to repopulate the discipline, taking a more radical step than is suggested by Billig's `Median Case Reconstruction'. Critiques of objectivity and neutrality, increased reflexivity, and acknowledgements of subjectivity are commonplace in feminist psychology. Yet as feminist critiques and genuine repopulation threaten the very foundations of psychology, it is not surprising that they are not readily accepted by the academic gatekeepers. It is concluded that only a paradigm shift will allow Billig's arguments to be taken seriously in mainstream psychology, and a feminist analysis suggests that this is a long way off.
Discourse and Uncertainty: Postmodern Variations
Authors: Michael Mike
Published: March 2007

This paper has two broad themes. The first concerns two approaches that discourse analysis might take toward the understanding of `uncertainty'. First, the study of `discursive uncertainty' can trace the ways that people linguistically convey and deploy their relative uncertainty in social interaction. Second, the examination of `discourse of uncertainty' can show how discourses represent certain physical, social and institutional loci as containing or generating uncertainty. Both of these are illustrated with examples drawn from the sociology of scientific knowledge. After a summary introduction to the postmodern condition which emphasizes, in particular, the historically specific `decentring' of the individual, the second broad theme is addressed, namely the impact of postmodernity upon these relations of discourse to uncertainty. With regard to discursive uncertainty, it is suggested that, with the postmodern fragmentation of the individual, uncertainty cannot fulfil its traditional social functions of mediating consensus or persuasion. Postmoderns are likely to represent uncertainty as shifting from specific external loci to the self. A possible consequence of this is the disabling of political action.
American Behaviorism
Authors: O'Neil W. M.
Published: March 2007

Behaviorism dominated mainstream American academic psychology from the 1920s for four or five decades. It emerged slowly under Watson from a background going back to Darwin and involving the development of comparative psychology in Britain, continental Europe and America. Watsonian behaviorism was a mixture of certain methodological principles and certain metaphysical doctrines. The main behaviorists were active experimenters and diligent theorists. They agreed with Watson and with each other on a few methodological principles but they disagreed on others. In respect of content they concentrated on learning, ignored perception and behavior genetics and had little to say on the taxonomy of motivation. Even in their principal field of investigation they could not agree on the nature and conditions of learning. Yet behaviorism has had a significant influence on mainstream empirical American psychology and for that matter elsewhere: while not confining itself to intersubjectively testable data, it has become critical in respect of data used; it has become rigorous in experimental design and more critical in theorizing. Although some of this could have been a trend which helped generate behaviorism it would seem to be mainly a heritage from behaviorism itself.
Socializing Affordances
Authors: Costall Alan
Published: March 2007

Modern disciplines both reflect and perpetuate a basic dualism. The natural sciences deal with a `material world', abstracted from human concerns, while the social sciences have, in their turn, constructed a world of `agents' disconnected from material things. James Gibson's theory of affordances was an attempt to counter this deep schism in modern thought by emphasizing the material conditions of human activity. He came to see that psychology, as traditionally conceived, was itself a creation of dualistic thinking. Yet, Gibson failed to engage in a corresponding exploration of the sociality of the material. This paper examines the reasons why Gibson retained a dualism of the natural and socio-cultural in his theory; points to some of the ways in which the concept of affordances should be socialized; and, finally, raises the question: what would ecological psychology stand to lose if all affordances were social?
Meta-Analysis and Science
Authors: Sohn David
Published: March 2007

Meta-analytic writers have argued that psychological science is not working and that the solution to the problem is meta-analysis (MA), quantitative summaries of the research literature. This paper assesses these claims by evaluating MA as a means of scientific discovery and by considering the nature of effective science. It is shown that MA should not be credited as a means of discovery because its database, the research literature, is an untrustworthy source of information about nature. The difference between scientific activity, on the one hand, and literature study, on the other, is highlighted in the analyses. Both MA and empirical science are said to be misguided by a hypothesis-testing approach to science, which approach leads to an obliviousness with respect to mechanisms that underlie phenomena.
Displays and Fragments
Authors: Radley Alan
Published: March 2007

This paper draws a distinction between the concepts of embodiment and the body. It focuses upon embodiment as a central condition of social life, through which individuals are able to symbolize their world. The physically bounded body is often seen as a matter relating either to individual experiences of corporeality, or to social evaluations and constraints concerning its scope of action. Embodiment, however, is fundamental to how people collectively and individually `take a stand' towards each other, and in so doing define or propose the worlds in which they meet. The paper explores this idea through an examination of display in social life, drawing upon the work of Goffman and of Geertz on expression, Simmel on style and Goodman on exemplification. It argues that display enables us to reconfigure possible `ways of life'. This involves us, as embodied beings, in entering into and transforming the present moment. This refiguring of everyday experience is achieved by virtue of our appearing as exemplars of the social worlds portrayed (i.e. those that we embody), such as the spheres of play, ecstasy or danger.
The Metaphoric Foundation of Literal Language
Authors: Barclay Michael W.
Published: March 2007

Metaphor had typically been understood as a rhetorical device which was a sometimes useful but dispensable trope. In the last two decades, however, attention has focused on the function of metaphor and its relation to concepts. Metaphoric language has been set in opposition to literal language, on which it seemed to depend. In contrast to this view, the thesis of the following paper suggests instead that metaphor is the foundation of literal language, and that it is ubiquitous in the formation of psychological constructs. Psychological description ultimately confronts problems of a rhetorical sort. A particular problem arises when reified constructs create potential limitations in psychological description. Especially in regard to human phenomena, reification of constructs can be misleading, if not dangerous. Perhaps a means of avoiding the pitfalls of reification is to identify the ways in which it occurs. The following paper suggests that a process of what might be called literalization contributes to reification, and attempts to identify a means of reification of psychological constructs in the movement from metaphoric to literal meanings.
Theories of Crime and Crimes of Theorists
Authors: Arrigo Bruce A. , Young T. R.
Published: March 2007

Social science scholarship is increasingly addressing the dynamics of gender, race and class in various institutional contexts. Criminological research is no exception to this trend. Within the criminological sciences, postmodern research is also gaining greater attention and respectability. Notwithstanding the discipline's recent emphasis on postmodernity and cultural plurality, little attention has been given to criminological theory and how the voice of and way of knowing for women, minorities and the poor are represented within its own discourse. This article represents one preliminary step in that direction. At issue is the psychic configuration of criminological reality. Our method of analysis incorporates the conceptual tools of Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theory, especially his reliance on several topological constructs. We argue that Lacan's complex social system provides us with the interpretative tools necessary to examine theories of crime as a manifestation of culture and the psychological roots of cultural inclusivity embedded within its discourse. Our provisional assessment suggests that while criminology offers important insights relevant to gender, race and class, it has essentially failed to make sense of these differences within its own theoretical language. We argue that this is because the language of modernist (and premodernist) criminology is already prestructured (psychically encoded) to exclude these differences.
Intimacy and Heteronomy
Authors: Williams Richard N. , Gantt Edwin E.
Published: March 2007

The modern self, understood as individual consciousness, derives from Greek and more recent sources that have come to be called modernism. It is argued that genuine intimacy is an impossible achievement for this self, and that its ethical concern must take the form of rational moral principles. The work of Emmanuel Levinas offers an alternative perspective wherein the self derives from the presence of the face of the Other. The mode of being of the self is thus fundamentally ethical, grounded in heteronomy and ethical obligation to the Other. Intimacy, from this grounding, is the taking on of ethical obligation. If human being is fundamentally ethical in this way, psychology should reflect this unavoidably ethical nature.
Marxism, Ideology and Psychology
Authors: Dobles Ignacio
Published: March 2007

The strength of Marxist theory lies in its treatment of social contradictions and conflict. Furthermore, the concept of ideology is important as an expression of social processes and the concealment of social contradictions and power; it cannot be reduced to cognitive or individual processes. The production and reproduction of ideology in everyday settings is stressed. In addition, there is a need to resist ideology as legitimization and concealment of the injustices in the social order in order to foster autonomy and the liberation of individuals and groups, as suggested in the work of the Salvadorean social psychologist Ignacio Martín-Baró and in the contributions of Paolo Freire. The task of `de-ideologization' pointed out by Martin-Baró is highlighted as an important contribution to Latin American social psychology.
Collective Bargaining Coverage and the Status Divide: Denmark, Norway and the United Kingdom Compared
Authors: Scheuer Steen
Published: March 2007

Which occupational groups are covered by collective bargaining agreements today and which are not? To what extent do differences between occupational groups have an impact on the differences in collective bargaining coverage in different countries? This article addresses these questions using data from three countries with `voluntary' industrial relations systems (without legal extension clauses). Cross-national differences in coverage vary considerably according to occupational status and sector. It appears that salaried employees - constituting a growing proportion of the workforce - may become an Achilles' heel of voluntary collective bargaining systems, since their coverage in the private sector (especially in the Danish case) is much lower than that of manual workers. Collectivist traditions and the status of collective bargaining as a dominant means for the regulation of pay and conditions may become increasingly marginalized if unions and employers' associations are not able to find ways to expand collective bargaining beyond the scope of those employees traditionally covered.
Czech Trade Unions in Comparative Perspective
Authors: Myant Martin , Smith Simon
Published: March 2007

This article covers the development of the Czech trade union movement after 1989. The emerging leadership aimed to emulate the most successful unions in western Europe. The transformation into a movement emphasizing collective bargaining was generally successful, but membership, bargaining coverage and ability to influence the government declined in the following years. Comparison with developments elsewhere in Europe suggests that this can be attributed to the specific political and economic environment and to the new union movement's origins. Strategic choices during the reconstitution of the trade union movement led to a structure that made it difficult to adapt to changing economic conditions.
Time, Work and Task Orientation
Authors: O'Malley Michael
Published: March 2007

The notion of task orientation - that natural cues govern both the pace and intensity of labor in preindustrial societies - has been too readily accepted by historians, especially American historians. Mistaking `natural time' for a more leisurely approach to life, they have missed the cultural attitudes about work that inform any interpretation of natural temporal cues. Nature offers no specific models for labor, and in many cases `natural' sources for time have resulted in regimented, regular and intense patterns of labor.
A Cultural Exploration of Time
Authors: van Loon Joost
Published: March 2007

Every understanding of reality that takes account of time is necessarily involved in a cultural practice of making sense. This article, by theorizing time in relation to cultural practices, provides a cultural exploration of the argument that no event is ever `present' as itself to itself, but rather, is always in mediation. This takes place in two ways. On the one hand, mediation delays the making present of the event by intervening in processes of interaction; on the other hand, mediation dissolves the present/presence of the event by displacing it to a `third domain' that is constitutive of the `time of the event'. The aim of this article is to assert that any theory of time needs to take into account the time of theory - i.e. the temporality of writing - as a principal entry for constituting an agenda for the future.
Time Travels: Time, Oral Histories and British-Polish Identities
Authors: Temple Bogusia
Published: March 2007

In the research process, as in life generally, people construct their ethnic identity in different and changing ways. In this process, time is both a resource and a tool for construction. Looking at research into Polish communities in Britain, it is argued that time, far from being a measure of a pre-existing reality, is instead auto/biographically constructive of selves, identities and realities.
Time After Time
Authors: Brewis Joanna , Linstead Stephen
Published: March 2007

Following the recent resurgence of interest in time and space in the social and organizational sciences, this paper examines the significance of time in prostitution. Prostitution provides a useful basis for analysis, given that it is at once similar (in its provision of consumer services) and different (in that sexuality is not fully commodified) to other industries. Time is significant to prostitution - for example, the industry is to some extent seasonal, human sexual activity being known to increase during spring and summer. Using data from studies of prostitution undertaken in various locations in the UK, the US and Australia, time is addressed from the perspective of the client and the prostitute - and we argue that time for prostitutes and clients is experienced and constructed very differently. Time is shown to be gendered in ways which mean that, paradoxically, the characteristics of time as experienced in the encounter may be the reverse of the participants' gender - female prostitutes experiencing masculine, striated time whilst clients experience or pursue a more feminine, relational time.
Seven Faces of Putin's Russia: Federal Districts as the New Level of State—territorial Composition
Authors: PETROV NIKOLAI
Published: March 2007

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made federal reform one of his key priorities, and his first serious action, taken just a couple of days after his inauguration, was the introduction of a new system of seven enlarged federal districts. In five cases, the presidential envoys appointed to these districts were generals, who hand-picked their deputies and staff mostly from the ranks. The majority of the chief federal inspectors in the regions also come from established `power structures'. In this article, the seven federal districts are described, and an analysis is made of the essence of the reform, the way it is proceeding, its effectiveness, and its future prospects. The forceful start of the federal reform in 2000 noticeably reduced the development of regional trends in Russia and strengthened central control; however, in 2001 the reform lost much of its dynamism, and the need for the new level of territorial organization remains questionable. It is argued that, whatever the Kremlin's initial plans and words, what is really happening is the insertion of police-state mechanisms into a delegative and declarative democratic state.
Peace Over the Taiwan Strait?
Authors: LIJUN SHENG
Published: March 2007

A war across the Taiwan Strait is neither inevitable nor imminent, and is less likely in the future since China believes that it has time on its side. This Chinese confidence is enhanced by Taiwan's current political and economic deterioration. For China, the decision not to use force is based on assessments and strategies discussed in this article, as well as on its unswerving commitment to economic modernization at home and its determination not to fall into what it suspects, rightly or wrongly, as being an international conspiracy to see China and Taiwan exhaust each other through war. China's military modernization, therefore, is aimed less at occupying Taiwan than at deterring its creeping independence and enhancing China's own future international status. The only thing that might disrupt this process would be a wave of political and economic chaos. Such a crisis, however, is not currently within sight.
Coping Strategies, Social Capital and Space
Authors: Bærenholdt Jørgen Ole , Aarsæther Nils
Published: March 2007

The theme of this article is the intersection of social and spatial factors in local and regional development. Based on empirical locality studies in the Circumpolar Northern context, the article introduces the concept of coping strategies. Coping strategies include three dimensions: innovation, networking and formation of identity. These dimensions and the ways in which they are interrelated are considered to be important to the forms of local development that can respond to global transformations and transcend institutionalized social fields. Coping strategies are discussed in relation to the different conceptualizations of social capital, and it is argued that while social capital is an asset, coping strategies are socio-spatial practices producing and drawing on social capital. As social capital is a social asset, it is important to transcend common sense understandings of ‘the social capital of the region’; networks between actors in different spatial settings, and relations on a macro level, can also produce social capital. The spatiality of coping strategies can be understood in a continuum from mobility to territoriality, and this continuum can be combined - and not intermixed - with processes of bridging and of bonding. The aim of the article is to provide theoretical inspiration to understand the complex forces at work in local development under conditions of increasing mobility of people, goods and information.
The Trans-European Transport Network
Authors: Richardson Tim
Published: March 2007

This article critically examines the integration of environmental policy in the European Union (EU), focusing on the development of Policy Guidelines for the trans-European transport network. Key events are charted by which the integration of environmental concerns came to hinge on a single contested issue-the adoption of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). The success of SEA in achieving environmental-policy integration is evaluated. An important aspect of this approach is to explore how the hegemonic discourses in the EU shape the policy process, and condition the success or failure of environmental integration. The article reflects on current debates about ecological modernization in the EU, arguing that the institutional learning model is inappropriate, and suggesting that understanding ecological modernization as cultural politics may bring a clearer understanding of the constructed nature of environmental-policy integration.
European Regional Unemployment Disparities
Authors: Baddeley Michelle , Martin Ron , Tyler Peter
Published: March 2007

The reduction of regional unemployment disparities is a key prerequisite for the achievement of socioeconomic cohesion in an integrated European Union. This article examines recent trends in the evolution of regional unemployment disparities across a number of European member states to determine whether and how far this reduction is occurring. There is in fact little indication of any widespread convergence of regional unemployment rates. Instead, regional unemployment disparities across Europe appear to be characterized by a high degree of persistence. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that this persistence is an equilibrium phenomenon rather than the result of prolonged disequilibrium in regional labour markets.
Individualised Familial Self: The Evolving Self of Qualified Technocrats in India
Authors: Gupta Rajen K. , Panda Abinash
Published: March 2007

The article focuses on the evolving nature of self of professionally qualified technocrats in India. It contributes to the growing literature on the nature of evolving self as a result of the process of West-led modernisation and the spread of free market capitalism across the globe. It reports the findings of a study of organisational culture in a high-tech joint venture in India. The factor analysis indicates the existence of individualistic as well as collectivistic tendencies amongst the educated professionals. This duality has been conceptualised as "indi vidualised familial self" amongst the qualified technocrats in India. The study suggests the need for similar explorations in different countries to understand the impact ofglobal forces of change in varying cultural contexts.
Hindu-Muslim Intergroup Relations in India: Applying Socio-Psychological Perspectives
Authors: Ghosh Emmanuel S.K. , Kumar Rashmi
Published: March 2007

The present paper is an attempt to demonstrate the applicability of existing intergroup theoretical perspectives to the study of Hindu-Muslim intergroup relations in India. The paper is divided into three parts. The first part presents an overview of the cur rent theoretical approaches which have been adopted to explain intergroup relations and conflicts. In the second part, Hindu-Muslim relations are outlined in their histori cal, political and social contexts. The final part of the paper reviews socio-psychological researches done in India followed by a reference to the discontinuities between social realities of intergroup relations in the context of developing countries and 'individualistic' context free explanations of intergroup relations.
Pathways to a Psychology for Development: Reconstituting, Restating, Refuting and Realising
Authors: Maclachlan Malcolm , Carr Stuart C.
Published: March 2007

Psychology has, at best, only made a modest contribution to efforts aimed at resolving the problems of developing societies. While other disciplines have produced specialisations addressing the difficulties of the world's poorer nations, psychology has failed to do so. It is suggested that psychologists in developing countries lack a framework for applying psychological knowledge to their local settings and conditions. Wepresent a conceptual methodology which incorporates Reconstituting, Restating, Refuting and Realising the relevance of "Western psychology" to the challenges of development. Each of these pathways to a "Psychology for Development" is illustrated by describing some recent psychological contributions to identifying problems regarding development in Malawi.
Regional Similarities and Differences in People's Beliefs, Practices and Preferences
Authors: Sinha Jai B.P. , Daftuar C.N. , Gupta Rajen K. , Mishra Ramesh C. , Jayseetha R. , Jha S.S. , Verma Jyoti , Vijayakumar V.S.R.
Published: March 2007

Seven hundred fifty-three students from seven cities of India reported: (a) their perception of what people in general believe, practise and prefer (i.e., operative values); (b) their own allocentric and idiocentric orientations; (c) the extent to which they attached importance to other's (over their own) opinions, desires and interests; and (d) their age, gender, caste, class and urban exposure.

The significant mean differences between the seven sub-samples led to identify three clusters of cities, namely the North, the South and the Central. The North and the South presented a contrast—the former manifesting strong orientations to meet unjustifiable and inconvenient social obligations and to cultivate personalised relationships. The Central cluster showed a differentpattern. The items on which the sub-samples did not differ formed a general factor of collectivism consisting of the themes of familialism, hierarchy and relationship orientation. Collectivism was found to be unrelated to the respondents' rating of the importance attached to other's (over one's own) opinions, desires and interests. Femalestudents, and those who were low on caste, class and urban exposure attached greater importance to others' than to one's own desires, opinions and interests. The self-ratings of allocentrism and idiocentrism proved to be unreliable.
Achieving Excellence in Indian Organisations: New Opportunities for Psychologists
Authors: Srinivas Kalburgi M.
Published: March 2007

This article presents a meta-analysis of organisational development (OD) efforts in India, by examining OD outcomes at the organisation/system level as well as at the societal/national level. Intervention reports have shown that OD has been used in India in a variety of contexts and with a variety of organisations in the public, private, rural and voluntary sectors. The extent ofsuccess of such interventions has been measured in terms of organisation-level and individual-level outcomes, and the extent of institutionalisation, which is a result of the first two. Using clinical assessment metbodology anchored to qualitative criteria it was found that the organisational outcomes were positively assessed in 60% of the cases and the national-level outcomes were positively assessed in 31 % of the cases. Qualitative observations indicated that interventions which utilised the socio-technical mode were based in urban industrial settings. Further, interventions lacked built-in evaluations, there was a decrease in OD efforts after the 1970s, thechangeachieved was not sustainable in the long-term and the cultural context was often ignored. The implications of these findings are also discussed.
Body, Psyche, and Culture: The Relationship between Disgust and Morality
Authors: Haidt Jonathan , Rozin Paul , Mccauley Clark , Imada Sumio
Published: March 2007

"Core disgust" is a food related emotion that is rooted in evolution but is also a cultural product. Seven categories of disgust elicitors have been observed in an American sample. These include food, animals, body products, sexual de viance, body-envelope violations, poor hygiene, and contact with death. In addition, social concerns such as interpersonal contamination and socio- moral violations are also associated with disgust. Cross-cultural analyses of disgust and its elicitors using Israeli, Japanese, Greek and Hopi notions of disgust were undertaken. It was noted that disgust elicitors have expanded from food to the social order and have been found in many cultures. Expla nations for this expansion are provided in terms of embodied schemata, which refer to imaginative structures or patterns of experience that are based on bodily knowledge or sensation. A mechanism is suggested whereby disgust elicitors are viewed as a prototypically defined category involving many of the embodied schemata of disgust. It is argued that each culture draws upon these schemata and its social and moral life is based on them.
Lustful Women, Elusive Lovers
Authors: Chowdhry Prem
Published: March 2007

One of the more popular self-projections of women in the oral tradition of rural north India is the image of a lustful woman, which directly contradicts the dominant and ideal image of the chaste woman and offers an alternative moral perspective on kinship, gender, sexuality and norms of behaviour. This article explores the construction of the lustful woman based exclu sively upon women's songs produced collectively by women and sung by women for an audi ence consisting purely of women. It seeks to understand how and why this image, common to both men and women's songs, has different connotations and messages. The construction of meaning around this image is explored in the social context of power relations and status con siderations existing within the family, caste and class. As such, the article seeks to understand how far the subversiveness of these songs finds its echo in the actual transgressive behaviour of women in caste/class and gender relationships, and with what effect. It highlights the construc tion of masculinity, pleasure and deprivation, which cuts across several societal hierarchies. The inevitable conflict within a worldview where different and contradictory beliefs and desires coexist brings to the fore the interface between ideology and practice.
Mahila Sanghas as Feminist Groups
Authors: Everingham Jo-Anne
Published: March 2007

With increasing focus on the place of women in development by multilateral agencies, donor countries and non-governmental organisations, various strategies of intervention are employed. One such intervention results in poor illiterate women in Orissa, redefining their position in contrast to the dominant discourses and gender ideology of state, religion and economy, to over come culturally enshrined powerlessness.

From the observation of the work of the People's Rural Education Movement (PREM), and the women's organisations and credit unions they support and foster it is clear that such women's groups are appropriately understood as feminist in that they have claimed the right to speak for themselves (and those with whom they are attempting to change the social order); conceptualised an alternative social order and defined for themselves alternative social, political and economic activities within it; are challenging the mass of constructed ideas, values and myths around their gender; and are also challenging the social construction of male-female dualism and the ways in which it is reinforced. Their activities are considered in terms of Kristeva's three tiers of feminist thought: liberal feminism, radical feminism and symbolic-order post-structural feminism.
Patrifocal Concerns in the Lives of Women in Academic Science: Continuity of Tradition and Emerging Challenges
Authors: Gupta Namrata , Sharma A.K.
Published: March 2007

This paper examines the social milieu of women academic scientists, parental influence in decision making in regard to the career of their daughters, parents' expectations, importance of marriage and the criteria involved therein. The support of parents and spouse are vital for the success of women scientists. Nevertheless, the 'dual burden' has an impact on professional work, and the consequent redefinition of 'success' is clearly a product of patrifocal social structures and ideology.
The Evolution and Structure of Science and Technology in Sri Lanka
Authors: Amaradasa R.M.W. , de Silva M.A.T.
Published: March 2007

The current structure of science in Sri Lanka is the combined result of a British colonial regime and subsequent attempts to generate self-reliance in indigenous scientific capabil ity. Paradoxically, the initial post-independence period was characterised by a sustained attempt to shake off the subtle neo-colonial impact and set in place an institutional frame work that could capitalise on indigenous capability. Unfortunately, restrictions in funding, loss of highly qualified manpower and inconsistent policy signals continued to restrain efforts for a resurgence in scientific capability. This is clearly evident from repeated abor tive attempts to commit the government to accept and implement an explicit national pol icy for science and technology. Sri Lanka, however, can boast of a network of scientific organisations, painstakingly created over the past fifty years. In this context, even if the dis abilities inflicted are considered symptomatic of the developing country scenario, there are no strong arguments to justify the current state of the scientific base of Sri Lanka struggling to establish and professionalise the scientific community.
The Silicon Valley Connection: Transnational Networks and Regional Development in Taiwan, China and India
Authors: Saxenian Annalee
Published: March 2007

This paper analyses the business ties that Silicon Valley-based Indian technologists are building with the IT industry in their home country through a comparison with their Chinese counterparts, of both Taiwanese and mainland origin. In each of these cases the growth of cross-border technical communities is transforming the brain drain into 'brain circulation' , and providing a more flexible and responsive mechanism for promoting transfers of technology and skill than traditional foreign direct investment. However, while policy makers in Taiwan and mainland China have aggressively promoted and facilitated the institutionalisation of these transnational networks, the more hands-off approach of Indian policy makers appears to contribute to India's lower rates of return entrepreneurship.