bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Methodology and Reduction in the Behavioral Neurosciences: Object Exploration as a Case Study
Authors: Chemero Anthony , Heyser Charles J.
Published: September 2009

This article looks at the research methodologies in behavioral neurosciences focusing on reductionism and object exploration procedures for rodents. It provides a brief description of reduction and reductionism and describes the object exploration methodology as it is used in behavioral neuroscience, behavioral genetics, and psychopharmacology. It discusses three of a series of experiments conducted using the object exploration methodology which showed that the affordances of the to-be-explored objects affect the way rodents explore objects. It concludes that neuroscientists, even those who focus their research on genes or neurotransmitter effects, must attend closely to the details of behavior and that neuroscientists who use the object exploration methodology must adopt an extended cognition approach.
Space, Time, and Objects
Authors: Grush Rick
Published: September 2009

This article outlines a unified information processing framework whose goal is to explain how the nervous system represents space, time, and objects. It explains the concept of the emulation theory of representation and describes an extension of the emulation framework for temporal representation. It discusses Alexandre Pouget's basis function model of spatial representation and describes how to combine the basis function model of spatial representation with the trajectory emulation model of temporal representation to yield an information processing framework that genuinely represents behavioral spatiotemporal trajectories of behavioral objects.
Neuroanatomy and Cosmology
Authors: Cherniak Christopher
Published: September 2009

This article aims to examine the possible relation between neuroanatomy and cosmology. It describes brain-wiring optimization and suggests that such extreme neural network organization is a prerequisite for brain functioning, and it states that it is possible that other set of brain-enabling conditions of the universe exist. It also discusses the relation between brain-wiring minimization and optimization landscapes and between brain-wiring optimization and the anthropic principle.
Intuitionism Reconsidered
Authors: Cook Roy
Published: September 2009

The debate between intuitionists and classical logicians is fought on two fronts. First, there is the battle over subject matter—the disputants disagree regarding which mathematical structures are legitimate domains of inquiry. Second, there is the battle over logic—they disagree over which algebraic structure correctly codifies logical consequence. In this article the emphasis is on the latter issue—it focuses on what the correct (formal) account of correct inference might look like, and, given such an account, how we should understand disagreements regarding the extension of the logical consequence relation. In the next two sections of the article, two typical sorts of arguments for intuitionistic logic are examined. The article then examines exactly what is at stake when one provides a logic as an account of logical consequence.
Naturalism Reconsidered
Authors: Weir Alan
Published: September 2009

This article focuses on naturalism. It makes one terminological distinction: between methodological naturalism and ontological naturalism. The methodological naturalist assumes there is a fairly definite set of rules, maxims, or prescriptions at work in the “natural” sciences, such as physics, chemistry, and molecular biology, this constituting “scientific method.” There is no algorithm which tells one in all cases how to apply this method; nonetheless, there is a body of workers—the scientific community—who generally agree on whether the method is applied correctly or not. Whatever the method is, exactly—such virtues as simplicity, elegance, familiarity, scope, and fecundity appear in many accounts—it centrally involves an appeal to observation and experiment. Correct applications of the method have enormously increased our knowledge, understanding, and control of the world around us to an extent which would scarcely be imaginable to generations living prior to the age of modern science.
Nominalism
Authors: Chihara Charles
Published: September 2009

Undoubtedly, the most enlightening published work dedicated to giving knowledgeable readers an overview of the topic of nominalism in contemporary philosophy of mathematics is A Subject with No Object by John Burgess and Gideon Rosen. This article begins with a brief description of that work, in order to provide readers with a solidly researched account of nominalism with which the article's own account of nominalism can be usefully compared. The first part, then, briefly presents the Burgess–Rosen account. A contrasting account is given in the longer second part.
Predicativity
Authors: Feferman Solomon
Published: September 2009

While the term predicativity suggests that there is a single idea involved, what the history will show is that there are a number of ideas of predicativity which may lead to different logical analyses. This article uncovers these only gradually. A central question is then what, if anything, unifies them. Though early discussions are often muddy on the concepts and their employment, in a number of important respects they set the stage for the further developments, and so this article gives them special attention. Note that, ahistorically, modern logical and set-theoretical notation are used throughout, as long as it does not conflict with original intentions.
Relevance in Reasoning
Authors: Tennant Neil
Published: September 2009

This article advances an unabashedly partisan view of how best to “relevantize” a logic. The view is laid out as informally as possible, given the technical nature of the subject matter. Here, “relevantizing” is understood as the project of formulating a decent system of logic that does not endorse Lewis's First Paradox: A, ¬A:B. Such a system will be paraconsistent, in that it will allow for distinct inconsistent theories (within a given language). But it will not be dialetheist. That is, it will not allow for true contradictions. Dialetheism does not follow from (though, in order to avoid trivialization, it requires) a refusal to infer whatever one pleases from a contradiction.
No Requirement of Relevance
Authors: Burgess John P.
Published: September 2009

Classic logic defines entailment to hold between a premise (or set of premises) and a conclusion if and only if their logical form guarantees that either the premise (or at least one element of the set of premises) is false, or the conclusion is true. The definition obliges the logician to recognize certain degenerate entailments. A premise (or set of premises) that is contradictory in the sense that its logical form guarantees that it is false (or that at least one element of the set of is false) entails any conclusion: ex falso quodlibet. And a conclusion that is tautologous in the sense that its logical form guarantees that it is true is entailed by any premise (or set of premises): ex quolibet verum. The commitment of classical logic to these principles has frequently been attacked by indignant critics who denounce the degenerate cases of entailment as “paradoxes.”
Higher‐order Logic Reconsidered
Authors: Jané Ignacio
Published: September 2009

This article discusses canonical (i.e., full, or standard) second-order consequence and argues against it being a case of logical consequence. The discussion is divided into three parts. The first part comprises the first three sections. After stating the problem in Section 1, Sections 2 and 3 examine the role that the consequence relation is expected to play in axiomatic theories. This leads to put forward two requirements on logical consequence, which are called “formality” and “noninterference.” It is this last requirement that canonical second-order consequence violates, as the article sets out to substantiate. The fourth section argues that canonical second-order logic is inadequate for axiomatizing set theory, on the grounds that it codes a significant amount of set-theoretical content.
Nontheistic Conceptions of the Divine
Authors: Griffiths Paul J.
Published: September 2009

Nontheistic conceptions of the divine could be classified and discussed in many ways. One approach would be to construct a typology of possible nontheistic understandings, but this would be tedious and not terribly useful. A second approach—the one followed here—would collect some representative instances of nontheistic understandings of the divine and would comment on the concepts and argumentative strategies that inform them. Because most theistic understandings of the divine will be related in one way or another to Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, it will be easiest and most useful for purposes of contrast to take the examples from traditions of thought and practice largely or completely uninfluenced by the concepts familiar to these Abrahamic religions.
Religious Epistemology
Authors: Wolterstorff Nicholas
Published: September 2009

Adherence to a religion, and participation therein, typically incorporate such actions as worship, prayer, meditation, self-discipline, commemorating certain persons and events, treating certain writings as canonical, allowing one's beliefs and actions to be formed by one's own and others' interpretation of those writings, acting in certain characteristic ways in society, and associating with one's fellow adherents for all the above activities. Typically they also incorporate a variety of propositional attitudes: hoping that certain events will take place, trusting that certain events will take place, regretting that certain events did take place, believing that certain things are true about God, about the cosmos, about the natural world, about human beings—their misery and glory, their history, their institutions. Wittgenstein's phrase “form of life” is appropriate: adherence to and participation in a religion is a form of life.
God, Science, and Naturalism
Authors: Draper Paul R.
Published: September 2009

How is science related to theology or, more broadly, to religion? According to one view, religion has made war on science by trying to stop or limit or control scientific progress. Further, this war is inevitable, both because the questions addressed by science and religion overlap and because scientific and religious modes of thought stand in fundamental opposition to each other. Scientists are disinterested investigators who make objective and demonstrable claims based on known facts; theologians are biased apologists who make subjective and speculative claims based on unsupported opinion. The warfare view is seriously flawed, both philosophically and historically. All sorts of biases influence scientific research; scientific inferences are obviously not demonstrative; and what scientists take to be the “facts” often depends in part on the theories they hold.
Faith and Revelation
Authors: Evans C. Stephen
Published: September 2009

The concepts of faith and revelation, though logically distinct, are related in a variety of ways. All of the great theistic religions, especially the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have traditionally taught that God can be known only through revelation. Because God is conceived by these traditions to be all-powerful and all-knowing, it is impossible for anyone to gain knowledge of God unless God is willing for this to occur. In some sense, all knowledge of God is made possible by God's decision to allow himself to become known. Reflection on God's revelation in these traditions has generally distinguished between God's general revelation and what are termed special revelations.
Death and the Afterlife
Authors: Baker Lynne Rudder
Published: September 2009

Death comes to all creatures, but human beings are unique in realizing that they will die. Hence, they are unique in being able to consider the possibility of life after death. Ideas of an afterlife of one sort or another have been promulgated by all manner of cultures and religions. For ancient peoples, the afterlife was a realm of vastly diminished existence populated by shades, ghostly counterparts of bodies. Ancient Indians and Egyptians before 2000 bce postulated a judgment after death. There are many conceptions of an afterlife. To say that there is an afterlife (of any kind) is to say that biological death is not the permanent end of a human being's existence: At least some people continue to exist and to have experiences after death. The idea of reincarnation is shared by a number of religions, including Hindu, Jaina, and Buddhist.
Feminism and Analytic Philosophy of Religion
Authors: Coakley Sarah
Published: September 2009

The relation between analytic philosophy of religion and feminist thought has to date been a strained one. To the extent that most analytic philosophers of religion have attended to feminist theory or feminist theology at all, their acknowledgment has generally gone no further than a belated concession to the use of gender-inclusive language. More substantial issues raised by feminist philosophy or theology have in large part been ignored in the standard literature. Although there have been certain notable exceptions to this “rule,” it is undeniable that analytic philosophy of religion remains predominantly “gender blind” in its thinking, and thus, no doubt unsurprisingly, when feminist thinkers have troubled to comment on the discipline, their criticisms have tended to be severe. This article primarily aims to probe the reasons for the mutual incomprehension between the disciplines of analytic philosophy of religion and feminist thought, and to chart—and assess—the feminist criticisms leveled against analytic philosophy of religion for what is claimed to be its covert “masculinist” bias.
Alternative Spiritualities, New Religions, and The Reenchantment of the West
Authors: Partridge Christopher
Published: September 2009

This article asks if the West is witnessing a thoroughgoing erosion of belief in the supernatural. Is the loss of faith in otherworldly forces a linear, one-way, inevitable decline, or are there reasons to believe in the reemergence of religion in the West? On the other hand, if there is evidence indicating that the West is witnessing a gradual “sacralization,” should we abandon notions of “secularization?” Or are we in the midst of a much more complex process in which accurate analysis demands that we take account of both secularization and sacralization, disenchantment and reenchantment? It is argued that while disenchantment is ubiquitously apparent in the West, the forces of secularization have never quite been able to stifle the shoots of religion. Although traditional forms of institutional religion have been seriously damaged and do not seem to be able to arrest the process of erosion, cracks are appearing in the disenchanted landscape and new forms of significant spiritual life are emerging.
Conversion and “Brainwashing” in New Religious Movements
Authors: Anthony Dick , Robbins Thomas
Published: September 2009

A substantial amount of research has transpired regarding patterns of conversion to “alternative religions” or new religious movements (NRMs). A disproportionate amount of this research and related theorizing has concerned the assertion that recruitment to certain “cults” has been essentially involuntary in the sense that powerful techniques of “brainwashing,” “mind control,” or “coercive persuasion” have rendered the processes of conversion and commitment psychologically coercive and nonconsensual, notwithstanding its formally voluntary status. Although various forms of the mind control thesis have been supported by self-proclaimed “cult experts,” most scholars who have actually done research on the topic view their results as contradicting the thesis. This article focuses on the issue of involuntary conversion of the “brainwashing thesis.” It summarizes research on the topic and presents a theoretical critique that will identify its cultural significance.
Children in New Religious Movements
Authors: Hardman Charlotte E.
Published: September 2009

This article outlines the main issues and debates surrounding “kids in cults”. It demonstrates how the vast majority of the literature upon which most people's understanding of children in new religious movements (NRMs) has been constructed remains focused on three key themes, which have preoccupied the public and academics alike. The first part of the article puts the understanding of children in NRMs in perspective, pointing out the historical and cross-cultural relativity of the concept of the child. The second part looks at the research and media interest in children in NRMs, which have concentrated on child abuse, including mental and sexual abuse and neglect; child socialization and education; child custody cases and “the best interests of the child.” It outlines the key arguments in each of these three areas. In conclusion, the article argues that, the focus on the scandals involving children in NRMs draws attention away from developing wider research on the ways in which children develop spiritually, how they gain meaning and order from the religious and cultural patterns in which they live, and what they think about religion and spirituality, whether growing up in new religious movements or the mainstream.
Historical Institutionalism and the Study of Law
Authors: Smith Rogers
Published: September 2009

In 1984, James March and Johan Olsen published a landmark article, “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life,” which saw in political science “a resurgence of concern with institutions.” March and Olsen did not cite any works focused on law, but they suggested the relevance of new institutionalist approaches to legal scholarship by arguing that “Constitutions, laws, contracts, and customary rules of politics...develop within the context of political institutions.” They also stressed the significance of “normative structures” defining “duties, obligations, roles and rules,” and how “consistency and inconsistency in beliefs affect...political meaning” and the creation of “social order.” Subsequently, they endorsed jurisprudential views holding that judges, like other institutional actors, actively gave “meaning to the values they espouse” in politically consequential ways. This article discusses the emergence of historical institutionalism, historical institutionalism as a theoretical perspective, and the current state of future prospects for historical institutionalism and public law.
Establishing and Maintaining Judicial Independence
Authors: Vanberg Georg
Published: September 2009

The ideal of judicial independence expresses the aspiration that judicial decisions should not be influenced in an inappropriate manner by considerations judged to be normatively irrelevant. Typically, judicial independence in this sense is associated with independence from the political interests of current office holders. Judges are independent when threats of sanctions or promises of rewards by public officials in return for favorable decisions do not have inappropriate sway over their decisions. An independent judiciary is created and maintained primarily because it serves the interests of those in a position to undermine it. This article considers how judicial independence can be established and maintained. It discusses the connection between judicial accountability and independence, and the role that accountability may play in preserving independence. The article also examines separation of powers and how it can guarantee judicial independence, and issues of credibility and reciprocity.
Comparative Federalism and the Role of the Judiciary
Authors: Halberstam Daniel
Published: September 2009

The distinctive feature of federalism is to locate the central and constituent governments' respective claims of organizational autonomy and jurisdictional authority within a set of privileged legal norms that are beyond the arena of daily politics. For the most part, the debate about the role of the judiciary as federal umpire has taken place within two separate disciplinary compartments: comparative politics and law. Building on recent efforts to bring these two disciplines closer, this article provides a fresh look at three common criticisms of granting the central judiciary power to protect federalism. It argues that political safeguards of federalism are insufficient, that concerns about judicial bias are overstated, and that the particular limitations on the judiciary's ability to implement the principles of substantive subsidiarity, instrumental subsidiarity, and integration should inform judicial doctrine more systematically than they currently do.
The European Court and Legal Integration: An Exceptional Story or Harbinger of the Future?
Authors: Alter Karen J.
Published: September 2009

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) was established as part of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1950, and later adapted as part of the 1957 Treaty of Rome. The most important design feature of the ECJ proved to be the “preliminary ruling mechanism,” intended to provide national courts with technical support in interpreting complex European law. In practice, preliminary ruling references provided a means for the ECJ to insert itself into national debates regarding the relationship of European law to national law, and to harness national courts as enforcers of ECJ decisions. This article explores the ECJ's role in European integration and locates its remarkable experience in the larger context of international courts and international law. It also discusses comparative politics and the role of the ECJ as an interlocutor.
Constitutional Law and American Politics
Authors: Graber Mark A.
Published: September 2009

Public law scholars whose scholarship focuses primarily on the public conflicts between constitutional authorities fail to appreciate how constitutional law influences politics and judicial decision making in the United States. Legal norms better explain how constitutional controversies are structured than how they are resolved. Basic principles of constitutional law help secure legal agreement in the face of political disagreement. When political disagreements are resolved into legal disagreements, basic principles of constitutional law alter the terrain on which those conflicts are fought. This article examines how and why constitutional law influences both judicial and public decision making. It discusses the tendency for political scientists to first claim that constitutional law is no different to other forms of policy-making, observes how those claims are almost always qualified in practice, and points to problems with the standard qualifications. The article then considers policy and law in constitutional decision making.
The Legal Structure of Democracy
Authors: Pildes Richard H.
Published: September 2009

At both the macro and micro levels, law and political science have become increasingly intertwined in understanding the causes and effects of democratic institutions and processes. Recent years have spawned greater attention to the way in which the “nature” of democracy in different states, including the United States, is shaped by the specific ways in which the institutional and legal framework of democracy is designed. The focus of promising academic research ranges from the broadest issues of how different forms of power sharing among groups in deeply divided societies affect the stability, acceptance, and performance of democracies, to much less visible issues that nonetheless have considerable influence on the nature of democratic politics, such as how election districts are designed, how political parties choose their candidates, how elections are administered, and how election disputes are resolved. These issues are examined in the present article, along with gerrymandering and campaign finance.
Formalism: Legal, Constitutional, Judicial
Authors: Schauer Frederick
Published: September 2009

Formalism is a style of adjudication and an approach to constitutional interpretation that is often caricatured but rarely described, let alone defended. For years, the most common target for accusations of formalism has been the Supreme Court's 1905 decision in Lochner v. New York, and a close look at this case may help us to understand formalism at its worst. It may be that the epithetical use of the word “formalism” is much more about candor and deception and facing up to judicial choice and legal variability and indeterminacy than it is about adherence to prescribed forms. When the expected consequences of the errors of mistakenly disabling wise decision makers from reaching wise decisions, in constitutional law and elsewhere, are greater than the expected errors of mistakenly enabling unwise decision makers from reaching unwise decisions, then many of the arguments for a formal approach to adjudication and judicial decision making will and should be unavailing.
Feminist Theory and the Law
Authors: Baer Judith A.
Published: September 2009

American feminists have identified law as an instrument of male supremacy since their first national gathering at Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. Critiques of law thus became an important part of the early feminist movement, which succeeded in eradicating the most blatant examples of legal sexism. The successes of the contemporary feminist movement might not have happened without one of those early successes: the opening of higher education to women. Contemporary feminism has had a profound and lasting impact on intellectual discourse. Many young scholars focused on gender in their research, pursuing the feminist goal “to question everything.” These scholars and their successors continue to realize the revolutionary potential of feminist thought. “Feminist jurisprudence,” as it came to be called, is law's equivalent of feminist history, feminist psychology, feminist philosophy, and their counterparts. Feminist jurisprudence has borrowed freely and fruitfully from these cognate disciplines. This article examines the premise and presence of male bias, feminist jurisprudence and gendered reality, and feminist legal reasoning.
Relations among Courts
Authors: Haire Susan B.
Published: September 2009

The interactions between judges of different courts are frequently complex, as illustrated in the case of U.S. v. Sawyer. Over the last several decades, a substantial line of scholarly inquiry has been devoted to evaluating the dynamics that characterize intercourt relations. Early scholarship offered rich descriptive accounts of lower-court reaction to controversial Supreme Court decisions in criminal procedure, equal protection, and civil liberties. The organization of judicial power in the United States is frequently conceptualized as a pyramidal structure with the Supreme Court standing at the apex on questions of federal law, including the interpretation of the Constitution. From this perspective, the Supreme Court establishes doctrine by deciding cases, which in turn guide lower courts in disputes involving similar fact patterns. Despite widespread compliance with Supreme Court doctrine, there is no clear scholarly consensus on the causal mechanisms underlying lower-court compliance.
Law and Regulation
Authors: Rose-Ackerman Susan
Published: September 2009

In the United States, federal courts have been extraordinarily important in constraining and monitoring the development of the modern regulatory state. The existing literature helps one to understand why delegation accompanied by judicial review takes place and how the interests of political, bureaucratic, and judicial actors interact with institutional structures. This article explores law and regulation from the contrasting viewpoints of public policy analysis and rational choice political economy. It begins with an introduction to the economic case for regulation of economic activity and moves next to research on the political economy of regulatory policy. The article then discusses the regulatory process in the United States, along with public participation in other legal systems and how a background norm of cost/benefit analysis could be used by courts as a way to evaluate the quality of regulatory decision making. Finally, it considers rule making in a democracy, focusing on technocracy and public accountability.
Law as an Instrument of Social Reform
Authors: Epp Charles R.
Published: September 2009

This article examines why groups seeking social reform in the United States (and elsewhere) commonly have resorted to litigation, and whether (and how) court-made law is an instrument of social reform. First, what is “law” and what is “social reform?” These definitions take on significance in light of the ongoing debate over judicial role and capacity generated first by the Supreme Court's social-policy interventions under the leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1950s and 1960s, and, more recently, by the growing role of courts virtually worldwide and its close link with civil rights and civil liberties litigation. In this context, when scholars have examined whether “law” may be used as a tool of “social reform,” they generally have meant whether judge-made law, particularly in cases brought by social movement litigators, improves the conditions of the disadvantaged groups targeted by such litigation, particularly racial minorities, women, inmates, and people living in poverty.
Law and Society
Authors: Mather Lynn
Published: September 2009

The study of law and society rests on the belief that legal rules and decisions must be understood in context. Law is not autonomous, standing outside of the social world, but is deeply embedded within society. While political scientists recognize the fundamentally political nature of law, the law and society perspective takes this assumption several steps further by pointing to ways in which law is socially and historically constructed, how law both reflects and impacts culture, and how inequalities are reinforced through differential access to, and competence with, legal procedures and institutions. This article discusses the key characteristics of a law and society perspective, some of the major research contributions of this field, and recent developments in law and society that hold particular promise for scholars of law and politics today. In particular, it examines three broad areas of law and society scholarship: disputing, decision making, and legal ideology and consciousness.
Psychology and the Law
Authors: Tyler Tom R.
Published: September 2009

The range of issues that can fall within the overall intersection of law and psychology is broad. Whenever the development of law and/or the functioning of legal institutions has a psychological component, research is relevant. In some cases, the development of the law itself is based upon psychology. Social psychology emphasizes that self-regulatory motivations can also be activated if people believe that they have an obligation to conform to the law. This article examines the implications of basic social psychological research for understanding human motivation in general and the specific types of motivation that lead people to obey the law and comply with legal authorities. In particular, it discusses the deterrence model, problems with the deterrence model, commitment based on legitimacy and moral values, value-based perspectives on motivation, and procedural fairness as the basis of legitimacy.
Law and Politics: The Problem of Boundaries
Authors: Shapiro Martin
Published: September 2009

Law and politics is one of the many “law and...” movements that have arisen in recent years, the most notable of which, of course, is law and economics. If we accept the vision of law and politics as a movement of political scientists who use their knowledge of the discipline of law to improve their scholarly performance as political scientists, we lunge into the definitional vagaries and boundary uncertainties of the subfields of political science. It would be most convenient to view law and politics as involving two overlapping but not coterminous specializations; one, law and politics, that, growing out of the historical concern of political scientists with public law, brings an expertise in law to the political science study of highly legally constrained government behavior; the other, law and courts, which consciously throws off the public law boundaries to study all of the behavior of courts.
Job Control and Reward
Authors: Siegrist Johannes
Published: September 2009

The strong interactions between organizational characteristics, employees' performance, and their well-being are generally recognized. Scientific evidence can contribute to this process of strengthening organizational well-being and its impact on the performance and health of employees. In this article, the focus is put on those particular features of organizations that have direct and long-lasting effects on the health of employees. As far as these features are amenable to organizational change, they point to additional challenges of intervention and organizational development. This article discusses health conditions that are associated with more widely prevalent organizational features. There is now growing recognition that the importance of work for health goes beyond traditional occupational diseases and that it is likely that work makes a greater contribution to ill-health not thought of as “occupational.” Therefore, psychosocial organizational characteristics that are relevant for health define the focus of this article.
Positive Emotions, Attitudes, and Health
Authors: Quick James Campbell , Little Laura M. , Nelson Debra L.
Published: September 2009

The central focus of this article is the cultivation of the emotionally healthy workplace. It discusses the importance of systemic integration, initially within the individual, in order to achieve positive, healthy outcomes. It addresses the importance and impact of emotional intelligence or emotional competence. It also examines the range of human emotions, from the very positive to the very negative. With the focus on the positive, this article turns to the interaction between the individual and the organization via examination of psychological contracts and attitudes in the workplace. From these foundations, this article explores the notions of motivated, engaged, and focused. This is achieved in the context of a safe, secured, and sacred place of work for the individual. This article briefly explores the meaning of work and the importance of positive, strength-based approaches to leadership in organizations.
Technology and Health
Authors: Coovert Michael D. , Walvoord Ashley A. G. , Stilson Frederick R. B. , Prewett Matthew S.
Published: September 2009

This article reviews the link between technology and health. It begins with a brief discussion of workplace health issues brought about through technologically induced strains such as musculoskeletal disorders, carpal tunnel, and psychological stress. It covers recent advances in keyboard design along with other novel approaches to limiting the associated strains on the body. It also covers worker's expectations and remote environments, identifying how these may lead to decrements in physical and mental health. Some health concerns occur in many workers, others are specific to teleworkers. This article moves on to computer-mediated collaboration and considers issues specific to work teams that coordinate efforts through technology. Furthermore, it introduces some newer developments in the technology arena. The list is by no means exhaustive, but rather, involve technologies that will either become more prevalent or carry the greatest implications for further changing the nature of work.
Mediators and Moderators of Organizational Interventions to Prevent Occupational Stress
Authors: Biron Caroline , Cooper Cary L. , Bond Frank W.
Published: September 2009

This article reviews the effectiveness of organizational interventions to prevent organizational stress. It especially focuses on identifying possible moderators and mechanisms involved in work-/organization-directed stress initiatives. It begins by presenting systematic reviews, which are supposed to allow determining the overall impacts of interventions by considering all relevant studies. Then, it presents the gaps in the literature in this field in order to understand why reviews produce inconsistent conclusions. It then proposes a model illustrating moderators and mediators of stress interventions. This model includes a number of contextual issues as well as interventions' and stakeholders' characteristics for each stage of the risk management cycle. This article argues that by measuring and considering at least some of these variables, a better understanding of why interventions produce (or not) certain outcomes could be achieved and more consistency could be found in studies evaluating the impact of organizational interventions.
Creating a Healthy Work Environment through Sustainable Practices: Future Challenges
Authors: Bichard Erik
Published: September 2009

The concept of sustainability, and sustainable development, is based on the premiss that human society is able to find a way to fulfil its aspirations without undermining the environmental context that supports all life on the planet, or by exploiting people. The evidence currently available shows that it is very difficult to draw cause-and-effect conclusions between companies that have effective sustainability strategies, and the health of their workforce. There are some other factors which make it difficult to conclude that there has been an influence on the health of their workforce solely because of the motivational influence of environmental and social performance. Finally, much more work needs to be done before a firm line can be drawn between health and the sustainable workplace. If this can be achieved, then it will be one more piece of evidence that compels all organizations to invest in a sustainable future.
A Disabling Discipline?
Authors: Darby Phillip
Published: September 2009

The concept of international relations now straddles the globe and provides a common language with which to analyze world politics. In recent years, it has expanded its purview, bringing in new fields of study ranging from culture to ecology. However, for some years, there has been anxiety about the discipline's explanatory capacity, which came into question with the loss of meaning that accompanied the end of the cold war and the failure to predict the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union. Of late, attention has been directed to the disorder and the violence that has erupted within and between the successor states of empire. It is the contention of a growing number of scholars at the margins of international relations that processes on the ground in these societies challenge Western imagery of a world being set right by the workings of the market, the promotion of democratization, and the commitment to development. This article focuses on the discipline's failure over most of its history to engage with the non-European world except as an appendage to the body of thought developed in relation to the First World. It goes on to ask how far this situation is changing and whether international relations is now set to engage in a process of decolonizing its thinking. It concludes with some more general remarks about the discipline's knowledge procedures, which inhibit the development of alternative political agendas.
The New Liberalism
Authors: Moravcsik Andrew
Published: September 2009

This article presents three core theoretical assumptions underlying liberal theories, elaborates the three variants of liberal theory, and draws some broader implications. Liberal international relations theory's fundamental premise — state preferences derived from the domestic and transnational social pressures critically influence state behaviour — can be restated in terms of three core assumptions: the nature of societal actors: globalization generates differentiated demands from societal individuals and groups with regard to international affairs; the nature of the state: states represent the demands of a subset of domestic individuals and social groups, on the basis of whose interests they define ‘state preferences’ and act instrumentally to manage globalization; the nature of the international system: the pattern of interdependence among state preferences shapes state behaviour. Perhaps the most important advantage of liberal theory lies in its capacity to serve as the theoretical foundation for a shared multicausal model of instrumental state behaviour — thereby moving the discipline beyond paradigmatic warfare among unicausal claims.
The English School
Authors: Dunne Tim
Published: September 2009

International relations is no longer an American social science: the subject is taught in universities in dozens of countries and is becoming a global discipline. The English School of international relations is the oldest and arguably the most significant rival to the American mainstream. The English School purports to offer an account of international relations that combines theory and history, morality and power, agency and structure. One obvious consequence of this level of theoretical ambition is that the boundaries of the English School often appear to be unclear, which in part explains the ongoing debate about who belongs in the School and how it differs from other theoretical accounts of world politics. To shed light on these questions, Section 1 of this article considers in more depth the contextual emergence of the English School, and in particular its determination to develop an original account of interstate order. Section 2 takes its central claim — that the practice of states is shaped by international norms, regulated by international institutions, and guided by moral purposes — and explores this in relation to the countervailing forces of the states system and world society. In Section 3 the focus shifts away from debates inside the English School and toward a wider reflection on its place within international relations as a whole. It is argued that while the English School has a great deal to learn from constructivism, it should maintain its distinctive voice primarily because it has greater synthetic potential and is more openly committed to certain ethical standpoints.
Constructivism
Authors: Hurd Ian
Published: September 2009

This article examines the features that distinguish constructivism from other approaches to international relations and then looks at some controversies within constructivist scholarship today and between constructivists and others. The rise of the constructivist approach has encouraged new strands of empirical and philosophical research in international relations, and has led to interesting end problems at the boundary between constructivism and other approaches. Two strands of research, on the relations between strategic behaviour and international norms and between rationalism and constructivism, serve as examples of promising research in constructivist international relations theory.
Postmodernism
Authors: Burke Anthony
Published: September 2009

This article situates postmodernism in international relations through its most fundamental and powerful characteristic: its systematic denaturalization of the real and the given, with the aim of social critique in the name of some ethical good. It presents some criticisms of postmodernism and a strong defence of its ongoing value and relevance in order to push the postmodern critique a little harder, and to promote internal debate over some of its claims. It argues for postmodernist currents in international relations to engage productively with sympathetic elements of other critical and traditional approaches, to gain greater clarity about their normative commitments, possibilities (and dangers), and for more work that connects theoretical innovation with specific projects and struggles that are of relevance both to policy-makers and to marginalized communities. In defence of postmodernism, it argues for its ethical and analytical value, and its sheer timeliness: its ability to diagnose and resist the bizarre nihilism of our age.
Sociological Approaches
Authors: Kratochwil Friedrich
Published: September 2009

This article is organized around the following points. After a clarification of the concept of society, it examines whether we can meaningfully speak of a ‘world society’. It then addresses some methodological issues that are crucial for approaches that focus on social action, be it in the internal or the external arena. The main difference between sociological and other approaches consists of how to treat ‘social’ facts, whether they can be treated like ‘natural’ ones or not. Quite clearly this is a far wider discussion than a discussion on ‘methods’ or even on ‘science’. Behind it looms the larger problem of what our ‘concepts’, which are part of our theories, do; whether they simply match a preexisting reality — which is therefore susceptible to ‘one’ correct description — or whether our concepts are implicated in the constitution of the very entities and problems we study.
Scholarship and Policy‐Making: Who Speaks Truth to Whom?
Authors: Nau Henry R.
Published: September 2009

The split between scholarship and statesmanship has grown wider since the Second World War. Today it is rare, if not inconceivable, that leading academics incubate in government service, as many post-war scholars did, or that top government officials lead the academy, as Woodrow Wilson did as president of Princeton University. The divorce between scholarship and policy-making has gone too far. This article makes three arguments that the two professions in fact depend upon one another. First, neither profession can make a superior claim to social knowledge. Social knowledge is not primarily objective such that scholars speak truth to power, nor is it primarily intersubjective such that consensus or policy success dictates truth. Rather social knowledge is primarily evolutionary. It is a product of the interaction between the study of policy and the making of policy, which leads over time to social change in directions that scholars discern and dispute. Secondly, while scholars and policy-makers pursue different types of knowledge, both types are necessary to achieve progress, especially when social knowledge is understood as evolutionary. Thirdly, both scholars and policy-makers make political commitments in pursuing their respective tasks.
International Relations: The Relevance of Theory to Practice
Authors: Nye Joseph S.
Published: September 2009

This article examines the gap between theorists and practitioners in the field of international relations. In recent years, the gap has been widening and bridging efforts have become more difficult. In response, former ambassador David Newsom (1995–6) advised his colleagues to broaden State Department research grants, to increase scholar-diplomat programs, and to encourage senior officials to participate in scholarly association meetings. The intelligence community, particularly the National Intelligence Council, holds regular unclassified seminars and conferences with academics. Internships and exchanges such as the Foreign Affairs fellowships sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations in the United States have also helped to introduce young American academics to a policy environment. The Internet and blogs also provide new opportunities for scholars to become involved in policy debates on a global basis. On the university side, departments could give greater weight to real-world relevance and impact in hiring and promotion decisions, and journals could place greater weight on relevance in evaluating submissions.