bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Conflict, Legitimacy, and Effectiveness: Who Speaks for Whom in Transnational NGO Networks Lobbying the World Bank?
Authors: Nelson Paul J.
Published: March 2007

Networks of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have gained a measure of influence in policy and funding debates for the multilateral development banks, particularly the World Bank (WB). Addressing organizations owned and governed by member states, they have raised issues of environmental impact, economic and social justice, political participation, and the rights of minorities (sometimes majorities) usually excluded from national and global decision making. With their success have come pressures that reveal tensions and contradictions in the networks' representation, agenda setting, self-governance, and claims to legitimacy. These tensions can be traced to the networks' position in a changing international political economy. They have weakened the NGOs' influence with the WB and its major member states and are now stimulating proposals and initiatives to change the networks' self-governance.
The Benefits and Costs of Volunteering in Community Organizations: Review and Practical Implications
Authors: Chinman Matthew J. , Wandersman Abraham
Published: March 2007

The authors reviewed the literature of the benefits and costs associated with participation in voluntary organizations. The literature shows that benefits and costs can be measured, are related to participation, and can be managed by voluntary organization leaders. Therefore, understanding benefits and costs is important because they can be used to enhance participation in voluntary groups. Membership, activity level, and different organization types are ways in which researchers have examined benefits and costs. Researchers have also collapsed benefit and cost items into factors and constructed a direct ratio of benefits to costs. Practical implications of the research are discussed, and recommendations are given to refine future research efforts.
Marginalization of Fatherhood in Western Countries
Authors: GILLIS JOHN R.
Published: March 2007

The globalization of the world economy since the 1970s has placed existing definitions of fatherhood under extreme pressure throughout the western world. At the high as well as at the low end of the social scale, men have found it difficult to fulfill the traditional breadwinner role. In all developed countries, there has been a growing incidence of what some have called `fatherless families' due to this and other causes. Many see this as a major crisis, requiring intervention and coercive measures. But, before we endorse these, it would be well to place this latest round of worries about `fatherlessness' in historical context and realize that the relationship between fathers and children has always been problematic.
Imagining New Narratives of Youth
Authors: GRIFFIN CHRISTINE
Published: March 2007

Research approaches to `youth' and `adolescence' in many disciplines have been shaped by the western construction of adolescence as a period of inevitable `Storm and Stress', although researchers in anthropology and cultural studies have questioned the value of this model. British research on youth cultures and subcultures during the 1970s presented a critique of dominant representations of (particular groups of) young people as `troubled' or `troubling'. The 1980s saw a decline in this work due in part to the rise of the New Right, postmodern critiques of ethnographic research and cuts in social science research funding, especially for radical qualitative studies. The 1990s saw something of a resurgence of radical youth research, and a transformed cultural studies approach remains central to this endeavour. The 1990s also brought the construction of a `new Europe' following the demise of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. At the turn of the century, youth research began to engage with theories of globalization and the notion of global youth culture(s). This article discusses the importance of maintaining a critical perspective on these questions, and the possibility of a fruitful debate between globalization theory and youth cultural research. Examples from recent youth studies are considered as possible means of developing a continued critique of the `youth as trouble' paradigm in the context of an engagement with globalization theory.
Constructing Indigenous Childhoods
Authors: BALAGOPALAN SARADA
Published: March 2007

Through interrogating our prevailing understanding of childhoods of the poor in the Third World as `traditional', this article attempts to make apparent the significant break that colonialism signified in these lives. It does so through locating a Calcutta street child's vocational education experiences within a historical understanding of the workings of colonial education policies. The effort in the article is to highlight the effects of these policies on the street child's cultural narratives as well show how these narratives are imbricated in the creation of the national modern.
Dialogues with Children
Authors: NEALE BREN
Published: March 2007

The notion of listening to children so that they can participate in decision-making about their everyday lives has become an established principle of child law and policy in England and Wales. That there are fundamental constraints to putting this principle into practice, however, is widely acknowledged, particularly in the context of divorce and parental conflict. This article shows how the operation of the welfare principle in an English context constrains children's participation within private law proceedings. It goes on to explore children's own discourses around the issue of being listened to and reviews current debates about their participation in the light of this evidence. The children's commentaries offer fresh insights into what it means to listen to children, along with some new ways of thinking about young people's citizenship within and outside their families.
Child Welfare AND Stigma
Authors: COLTON MATTHEW , DRAKEFORD MARK , ROBERTS SUSAN , SCHOLTE EVERT , CASAS FERRAN , WILLIAMS MARGARET
Published: March 2007

This article draws on an empirical study of stigma and child welfare in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Spain; it shows how stigma continues to be a part of the experience of using and delivering child welfare services, despite the positive determination of policies in all three countries that this should not be so. More optimistically, however, it is also evident that the experience of stigma and exclusion can be reduced, and the article concludes by outlining those factors which would appear to be most significant in combatting stigma.
Ministrables and Government Formation: Munchkins, Players and Big Beasts of the Jungle
Authors: Laver Michael , Shepsle Kenneth A.
Published: March 2007

Many models of government formation pay particular attention to certain key political actors. Schofield, for example, uses the concept of the `core party', while Laver and Shepsle focus on `strong parties'. Such parties have an important position in bargaining over government formation because they are in certain circumstances able to form minority governments on their own. In practical terms, this implies controlling the entire political machinery of government without help from other parties. An important matter hitherto ignored in theoretical discussions of government formation is the possibility that actors with pivotal positions in such models may in practice simply not have access to the political resources they need to exploit these. There may well be `small' parties that are well located in terms of some model of government formation, but which cannot capitalize upon this position for lack of access to sufficient political talent. This paper explores the implications of this phenomenon for government formation, showing that the failure of one or more parties in the system to have sufficient political resources to control a national government single-handed can involve striking reallocations of bargaining power.
The Downsian Model Predicts Divergence
Authors: Berger Mark M. , Munger Michael C. , Potthoff Richard F.
Published: March 2007

The `Downsian' model is widely held to predict the convergence of parties to the median in two-party systems with unidimensional policy spaces. We show this is not true, if voters are uncertain. This paper gives an exposition of the two-party divergence results, including (1) if both candidates are free to move, but the incumbent has lower variance of policy action as perceived by voters, then there is no equilibrium, even if preferences are `single-peaked'; (2) if the lower-variance candidate is forced to run on a fixed record, then an equilibrium platform exists for the challenger, but it always diverges from incumbent's platform; (3) if the incumbent's perceived policy once in office has a lower variance than any prospective challenger, the incumbent may win each of a long series of elections even if the incumbent's policy choices diverge from the underlying median of the distribution of voter preferences.
Top-Down Divergence
Authors: Kanthak Kristin
Published: March 2007

Although the traditional Hotelling—Downs—Black (Hotelling, 1929; Downs, 1957; Black, 1958) spatial model of voting predicts candidate convergence, several empirical studies show that convergence in actual elections is rare. In response, researchers have designed models that produce the more empirically tenable candidate divergence outcome. While most of these models rely on assumptions about the election or the electorate to derive divergence predictions, I show that divergence is possible based on assumptions about institutional power seeking among legislators. More specifically, I assume that ideological proximity to political parties within the legislature determines how much power over policy outcomes an individual legislator receives. Given this assumption, I find that candidates competing for seats in legislatures with two parties virtually never converge, because their parties pull them in different directions and away from their districts’ median voter ideal point. Party divergence within the legislature, then, creates candidate divergence at the electoral level.
Veto Players and Referendums Around the World
Authors: Hug Simon , Tsebelis George
Published: March 2007

The literature on referendums comes to conflicting assessments: for some authors referendums are equivalent to direct democracy, for others, a poor and unfounded substitute. In addition, existing classifications use very diverse criteria, and theoretical models lead to different results depending on whether the underlying assumptions reflect a single- or multi-dimensional policy space: single-dimensional models lead to specific policy predictions, while multidimensional models typically identify paradoxes connected with referendums. We present a multi-dimensional model of referendums that leads to generalizations of the single-dimensional models. This multi-dimensional model makes predictions about how various provisions for referendums affect policy stability and the relationship between voter preferences and policy outcomes. To assess the relevance of these predictions we present information about referendum procedures all around the world on the basis of our model. Linking this information with existing empirical work on the effects of referendums suggests that our theoretical predictions are largely borne out.
The `Comparative Revolution' and the Transition in Central and Southern Europe
Authors: Ágh Attila
Published: March 2007

The Latin American, South European and, later, the Central and East European democratic transitions have led to a `revolution' in comparative politics. Instead of the polar notions of democracy and dictatorship, different types of `transitions' have emerged and democracy has appeared also as a function of the world-system. The paper suggests that there are four scenarios for Central and East European democratic transitions in their international context: (1) Sleeping Beauty (easy westernization); (2) Deepfreeze (return to the past); (3) Latin Americanization (falling back to the Third World); and (4) Fair Weather (Central Europe joins the European integration).
Competition, Multiple Objectives and Imprecision
Authors: Sanjian Gregory S.
Published: March 2007

This paper develops a fuzzy multi-criteria game model of the competition between two arms exporting countries. The model permits multiple goals for the participants and anticipates a sizable degree of decision-making imprecision. The imprecision in the process is portrayed by fuzzy sets, the multiple goals of the exporters are incorporated through the principles of multi-criteria analysis, and the two-party competition is modeled by game theory. A method for deriving the exporters' equilibrium arms transfer strategies is presented in the paper. An equilibrium strategy for a particular exporter is a function of that exporter's fuzzy calculations on the potential effectiveness of certain combinations of strategies (the exporter's and its adversary's) for accomplishing its goals, on the likelihood that its rival will select a certain strategy, and on the importance of the goals to the exporter. The paper also illustrates the model by using it to identify the equilibrium arms trade strategies of the US for Israel and the USSR for Egypt in 1967.
The Citizen and the State: Implications of the Interim Constitution of South Africa
Authors: Brynard Dirk J.
Published: March 2007

Increasing citizen-state interaction in modern society is inevitable. As the most fundamental law of the land the Constitution should therefore make provision for special institutions to monitor these interactions. The article attempts to describe briefly some of the monitoring institutions which were created in terms of the new Interim Constitution of the Republic of South Africa and to make some provisional observations in this regard. The need for extensive research on all aspects of the Constitution, particularly during the next two years, is stressed.
Symposium. The Directional Theory of Issue Voting: II
Authors: Merrill Samuel , Grofman Bernard
Published: March 2007

Under the assumption that a voter's utility is maximized when s/he chooses the candidate/party that is closest to the voter's own most preferred set of policies, the Downsian proximity model of voter choice has become the standard method for modeling the linkage between the policy preferences of voters and the policy positions of candidates. Alternative spatial models of voter utility and voter choice - based on directional criteria - have been proposed by Matthews and by Rabinowitz and Macdonald. The relative fit of models can best be addressed by nesting seemingly disparate models in a unified statistical framework which embodies proximity, directional and intensity components and which has each of the `pure' models as a special case. Theory suggests the need to distinguish the ability to predict distinct shapes of voter utility functions from the ability to predict voter choice. Using data on the voter utility functions for major candidates for the US presidency during the period 1980-92, we show that the best fit incorporates all three components with intensity significantly more prominent for challengers while the Matthews directional model - which de-emphasizes intensity - is preferred to the Rabinowitz/Macdonald version for incumbents. Differing utility functions for incumbent and challenger imply that the former should seek the center while the latter espouses strong stands. We show that the marked preference for the model obtained by Rabinowitz and Macdonald using mean issue placements of the candidates is greatly reduced with voter-specific candidate placements, even after adjusting for projection. However, when we shift from utility functions to voter choice, we find no significant difference in predictive power between the proximity and directional models.
Suppressing Shays' Rebellion
Authors: Cain Michael J. G. , Dougherty Keith L.
Published: March 2007

Under the Articles of Confederation, the American states frequently failed to pay their requisitions to the national government, sapping it of revenue. This paper explains the failure to raise revenue from the states by analyzing the system of requisitions in the context of Shays' Rebellion. Shays' Rebellion is of particular interest because it illustrates the clear conflict between common state interests and constitutional obligations on the one hand and the incentives to withhold contributions on the other. Our analysis shows that states had sufficient resources to fund a national army but did not contribute these resources to the nation. With adequate revenues within the states, the flaws of the Articles of Confederation were clearly revealed. The Articles failed to prevent free-riding among states, contributed to the disharmony of the union, and ultimately prevented Congress from accomplishing its constitutional tasks. These problems were not unique to the Articles. They result from voluntary requisition systems in general.
The musical horizon of religion : Blumenberg's Matthäuspassion
Authors: Krajewski Bruce
Published: March 2007

Compassion is a sign of superficiality: broken destinies and unrelenting misery either make you scream or turn you to stone. Pity is not only inefficient; it is also insulting. And besides, how can you pity another when you yourself suffer ignominiously? Compassion is as common as it is because it does not bind you to anything! Nobody in this world has yet died from another's suffering. And the one who said that he died for us did not die; he was killed. (E. M. Cioran, On the Heights of Despair)
Myth as archive
Authors: Zajko Vanda
Published: March 2007

This article utilizes Derrida's explorations of the archive in Archive Fever to debate the status of Greek myth as archive. It begins with out lining a conservative notion of the archive, particularly as it has been conceived by those whose object of study is myth. It ends with an interpretation of the myth of Cassandra that seeks to augment the archive, the archive that is now refigured in terms of metaphors of time and space.

An archive has traditionally been considered to be something to do with the past. In the case of myth, the archive is understood as the stories told by the ancient Greeks, which are separate from the cat egorization of those stories and explicit theories or ideas about them. This separation locates myth as something prior and organic, as the archive constituted as the object of study, and the interpretation as something secondary and derivative, a commentary on the archive, which is the thing that scholars do. But at what point does the past begin to be the past? Is Ovid's Metamorphoses part of the archive of Greek myth or a commentary upon it? What of Servius? Or Frazer? Or Freud? Or Bernal? Derrida's suggestion that the archive resides in the future perfect tense leads to a reformulation of the relationship between myth and interpretation, which relies what might be described as a typological model of knowledge. His question 'Where does the outside commence?' forces an examination of who has the right of appropria tion, an issue pertinent to the study of the history of the interpretation of myth.
Child health in the spontaneous settlements around Khartoum
Authors: Omer Mohamed Ibrahim Ali
Published: March 2007

Child health in spontaneous settlements around Khartoum describes the health problems faced by inhabitants of these settlements and the links between these problems and the living environment, inadequate infrastructure and low incomes. Special consideration is given to the health problems of children (and their mothers) who are particularly vulnerable.
Gender and the environment: the challenge of cross-cutting issues in development policy and planning
Authors: Levy Caren
Published: March 2007

The achievement of sustainable development depends on the availability and use of a coherent planning methodology to ensure the integration of gender issues and environment into development. Gender and the environment: the challenge of cross-cutting issues in development policy and planning suggests a basis for an explicit conceptual framework which can be used as a first step to translating an integrated perspective into organizational relationships, planning processes and methods.
Praja Sahayaka Sewaya (Community Assistance Service)
Authors: Gamage Nandasiri
Published: March 2007

The Praja Sahayaka Sewaya (Community Assistance Service) grew out of the experiences of community leaders in assisting the Sri Lankan government's National Housing Development Authority to carry out the "Million Houses Programme" In this paper, the author explains how a formal government programme resulted in the formation of a number of nongovernmental organizations to support community development.
Tijuca lagoon; evictions and human rights in Rio de Janeiro
Authors: Kothari Miloon
Published: March 2007

Tijuca lagoon: evictions and human rights in Rio de Janeiro examines the eviction threats faced by the people living in "Barra da Tijuca" in Rio de Janeiro and the roles of the private land developers and the municipal government in promoting this eviction. It also describes how the Tijuca communities have organized to resist these evictions, including taking their case to the United Nations Centre for Human Rights and publicizing their situation internationally.
To cure those afflicted with the disease of insanity: Thomas Bakewell and Spring Vale Asylum
Authors: Smith L.D.
Published: March 2007

Thomas Bakewell was a prominent, and rather colourful, lay proprietor of a private lunatic asylum in the early nineteenth century. He has perhaps been rather overlooked in the developing history of psychiatry and of the asylum. He wrote quite widely on mental disorder. His first book appeared in 1805. He later produced another, followed by numerous articles in popular literary journals. In the 1820s he became something of a 'popular psychiatrist'. Bakewell believed that insanity was curable, if treated properly and early enough. The treatment system he developed combined a medical approach, which was directed mainly at the bowels, with a fairly sophisticated 'moral treatment'. Spring Vale was opened in 1808, and was designed to enshrine Bakewell's treatment system. After some years of difficulty, it became a commercially successful venture. Despite his achievements at Spring Vale and his extensive writings, however, Bakewell never really succeeded in his goal of convincing public opinion and the legislature that his 'system' ought to be adopted as the model of good practice.
Psychiatric treatment and the condition of the mentally disturbed at Berlin's Charité in the early decades of the nineteenth century
Authors: Windholz George
Published: March 2007

The life of the mentally disturbed in psychiatric institutions during the first decades of the nineteenth century has been many times described by psychiatrists connected with those institutions. The accuracy of these accounts is, however, difficult to ascertain because independent testimonies are rare. Yet, such material on the conditions at the Psychiatric Section of Charité Hospital in Berlin, which was at that time Prussia's leading psychiatric institution, is extant. This material pertains to the criminal trial proceedings against Ernst Horn, the Second Director at Charité, who in 1811 was charged with malfeasance and negligent homicide in the treatment of a mentally disturbed patient. The materials describe the daily routine of the patients as well as the therapeutic procedures - both occupational therapy and the application of noxious agents. Consideration of the conditions and therapeutic treatments of the mentally disturbed at this time is important because these were the formative years of institutionalized psychiatry which have to some extent, influenced practices during the rest of the century.
Surviving on the Streets of Java: Homeless Children's Narratives of Violence
Authors: BERMAN LAINE
Published: March 2007

This article examines narratives of personal experience from homeless street youths in urban Indonesia. Following current research on narrative and victimization, the author identifies the processes of identity production required for survival in a world of rejection, deprivation and violence. The article also demonstrates how the children's repertoire of subject positions is constructed in relation to the power structures of the streets through which violence can be conditionally interpreted along a scale of acceptability. These life stories present us with a practice for constructing the self beyond that of agent or victim and without the sense of trauma mainstream adults associate with sexual abuse and violence. The stories also present scholars and outreach workers with an intimate glimpse of the street child's cognitive strategies for survival.
Power in Turkish Migrant Families
Authors: HULS ERICA
Published: March 2007

In this article, power relationships in Turkish families living in the Netherlands were studied by analyzing competition in conversational turn-taking. The notion of competition refers to those instances of turn-taking in which two or more persons are talking simultaneously, and one of them completes his or her turn at the cost of the other(s). A power hierarchy can be constructed on the basis of symmetries and asymmetries in winning and losing verbal competitions. The power structures of two immigrant Turkish families of different orientation and origin have been analyzed with the intention, from a methodological point of view, of contributing to the valid and reliable measurement of conversational power. In addition, the analyses reported in this article differ from mainstream research on Turkish family power, in that the focus is on power processes rather than on power outcomes. Finally, the data are based on observation rather than self-report. The results do not support the stereotype that Turkish families are rigid hierarchies of patriarchal authority. Power patterns in Turkish families - especially migrant families - appear to be changing rapidly.
A Homage to Beatriz R. Lavandera: An Overview of Political Discourse Analysis from the Approach of Lavandera and her Students
Authors: NEGRONI MARÍA MARTA GARCÍA , MENÉNDEZ SALVIO MARTÍN , RAITER ALEJANDRO
Published: March 2007

This article aims to pay homage to Beatriz R. Lavandera as a recognition of the dimension of her work on discourse analysis and of what she represents as a linguist in the academic world. We review some of her main ideas and describe briefly how we, as her disciples, are following her thought and teaching.
Dear Shit-Shovellers: Humour, Censure and the Discourse of Complaint
Authors: LOCKYER SHARON , PICKERING MICHAEL
Published: March 2007

In this article we analyse letters of complaint about instances of comic discourse where the humour is regarded as overstepping the mark and causing offence. We are particularly interested in how this sense of offence is registered and how complainants articulate the offence for which they seek some form of redress. In pursuing this interest, we seek to bring together two distinctive modes of analysis: linguistic discourse analysis and symbolic cultural analysis. This is methodologically appropriate to the discourse involved because of the ways in which epistolary complaints use forms of linguistic framing for offsetting potential objections to what they want to say, and because of the highly figurative language which is employed in voicing the substantive complaint and the censure of the humour that is entailed in this. Our focus overall is on the underlying ambivalence involved in negotiations between ethical and comic discourse.
`When the Mobs are Looking for Witches to Burn, Nobody's Safe': Talking about the Reactionary Crowd
Authors: DRURY JOHN
Published: March 2007

Previous research has successfully problematized the pathologizing discourses used to discredit crowd events. However, examples of reactionary crowds can operate rhetorically as an obstacle to a liberatory account of the crowd in history. This article presents an analysis of newspaper accounts of a series of `anti-paedophile' crowd actions which took place in Britain in the summer of 2000. Such accounts characteristically pathologized the crowd not only through use of particular terms and concepts, but also through anecdotes that served as evidence of diminished rationality. The article analyses the rhetorical and ideological functions of these and other constructions identified in the texts, including those offered by participants themselves. A way of talking about the (reactionary) crowd is offered which distinguishes particular crowd ideologies from collective processes per se and which therefore avoids condemning collective action in itself.
Rhetoric and Ideology in Social Identification: The Case of Second Generation Irish Youths
Authors: Ullah Philip
Published: March 2007

This article presents a social psychological analysis of ethnic identity among children born in England of Irish parents (hereafter referred to as second generation Irish). However, rather than drawing upon the cognitive models of identity currently popular within social psychology (e.g. Turner, 1987; Hogg and Abrams, 1988) it emphasizes the rhetorical aspects of identity, following the work of Billig (1987). It is argued that identity is not simply the automatic cognitive output of social categorizations (as currently conceived) but an active process, used and constructed in various ways to achieve certain goals. The argumentative nature of identity is revealed and located within a wider ideological context of intergroup relations and political conflict between Britain and Ireland. This is achieved through an analysis of the natural discourse of second generation Irish youths, obtained from ethnographic observation of those youths actively involved in the social and cultural activities of the Irish community in a large English city.
The Police War Story and the Narrative of Inequality
Authors: Fletcher Connie
Published: March 2007

This article attempts to demonstrate, through an examination of the police `war story', that narrative has at its core a fundamental inequality between narrator and audience. In collecting police narratives, through interviews with 125 Chicago police officers, I became aware that even the most seemingly direct police narrative is filtered through the narrator's sense of the chasm of experience that lies between narrator and audience, whether the audience is a fellow police officer or member of the public. This article focuses on the two audiences police address: that of police officers and `civilians', and also looks at the `excluded audience' of criminals and intimates. Police tell stories to both real and imagined audiences, in both spoken and published form, putting the police narrative in a pivotal position for demonstrating what happens to narrative along Ong's oralityliteracy shift and the way the narrator's perception of audience shapes narrative itself.
Quantification Rhetoric—cancer on Television
Authors: Potter Jonathan , Wetherell Margaret , Chitty Andrew
Published: March 2007

This paper is concerned with quantification rhetoric: the manner in which numerical and non-numerical quantity formulations are deployed when proposing and undermining argumentative cases. The analysis is focused on a set of materials derived from the making and response to a current affairs television programme about the (putative) lack of success in charity-supported cancer research in providing effective treatments. The study demonstrates: (a) how a range of calculation, fractionation, aggregation and presentational practices can be selectively drawn on to form the scaffolding of contrasting versions; (b) the systematic translation between numerical (e.g. `1 percent') and non-numerical (e.g. `small') formulations to obtain specific argumentative effects; and (c) the role of basic, but often inexplicit, definitional decisions to both constitute phenomena in a manner that makes them countable, and also to select arenas for the effective advancing of quantification argument. Overall, the study illustrates the efficacy of recent discourse theory and analysis for understanding the rhetorical orientation of quantitative versions of the world.
Women Talk about Talk at Work
Authors: Krol Tineke F.
Published: March 2007

Western theory of rhetoric is based upon a narrow culture-specific literacy practice of dominant groups in the public domains of society. Empirical research into rhetorical acts in other social contexts, and performed by non-dominant groups such as working-class women is neglected. I argue that such a research is needed. An important reason for research is the desire to ground a language education that empowers working-class women in courses of adult basic education to act effectively and to see themselves as people who have a say in the communicative situations in which they participate. In this paper I give an account of my research into the language experiences of twenty-two working-class women in their paid or volunteer jobs. It became clear that the rhetorical act is not a neutral or merely a technical concept. The rhetorical act is gendered and its description therefore needs a revised theoretical framework.
The Construction of Gendered Discourse in Chinese-German Interactions
Authors: Günthner Susanne
Published: March 2007

Interactions are central means to the construction of gender identities. The interactive construction of gender differences has become the analytical focus of much empirical research in the US as well as in Europe during the last 15 years. This paper focuses on gender in intercultural communication. On the basis of interactions between Chinese and German participants I discuss the following aspects: Can we find any gender-linked differences between the communicative strategies of the Chinese and those of the German speakers? To what extent does gender interact with other identity factors such as social role or ethnicity? Is gender a dominant category and thus relevant in all situations? The study reported here is oriented to the interrelation of cultural, social and gender differences and their interactive construction. The analytic methods used are based on the ethnographically oriented micro-analysis of interaction and interpretative sociolinguistics (Gumperz, 1982).
Meeting the Challenge on the Path to Democracy: Discursive Strategies in Government Declarations in Germany and the Former GDR
Authors: Schäffner Christina , Porsch Peter
Published: March 2007

The communicative practice in the ex-GDR was complex and diverse, although public political discourse had been fairly ritualized. Text-types characteristic of the Communist Party discourse were full of general (superordinate) terms semantic specification was hardly possible (propositional reduction). Changes in the social world result in changes in the communicative practice as well. However, a systematic comparision of text-types across cultures and across ideological boundaries reveals both differences in the textual macro- and superstructures and overlapping as well as universal features, probably related to functional aspects (discourse of power). Six sample texts of the text-type `government declaration', two produced in the ex-GDR, four in the united Germany, are analysed. Special attention is paid to similarities and differences (i) in the textual superstructure (problem-solution schema), (ii) in the concepts that reflect the aims of political actions (simple worlds), (iii) in the agents who (are to) perform these actions (concrete vs abstract agents). Similarities are found mainly in the discursive strategies, e.g. legitimization text actions. Differences become obvious in the strategies used for legitimization, and also in the conceptual domains referred to by the problem-solution schema. The metaphors of construction, path and challenge are of particular interest in this respect.
Reification and Evidence in Rhetoric on Economic Recession: Some Methods Used in the UK Press, Final Quarter 1990
Authors: Rae John , Drury John
Published: March 2007

This paper examines reasoning and rhetoric about economic recession in selected newspapers. This is an interesting topic for discourse analysis because it is a site of argumentation. We begin by asking: (1) epistemological questions (e.g. What evidential basis is drawn on in rhetoric about recession?) and then (2) ontological questions (e.g. How is recession pictured? and How is recession coordinated with the social world?). We examine the management of evidence and definitions concerning whether or not there is a recession. We then examine the entities invoked, showing how (a) a range of metaphors depict the recession as either an uncontrollable agent or as a controllable thing; and (b) rhetorical strategies used by both critics and supporters of the government collude in picturing the economy as a realm abstracted from social life.
Mapping the Mythical: A Geopolitics of National Sporting Stereotypes
Authors: O'Donnell Hugh
Published: March 2007

This article examines a number of stereotypes of national character which appear regularly in the sports reporting of 15 European countries. Having documented the major stereotypes, it argues that, though apparently independent, they should be seen as local entry-points into a much larger discursive network. This network constitutes a macrodiscourse which is geopolitical in scope, its ideological function being to further local elite interests by placing responsibility for existing coreperiphery imbalances on the periphery itself. The article investigates the possible origin of such a macro-discourse, as well as its links with racist discourse in general. Lastly, it examines the ways in which more recent reworkings in the form of local discourses have emerged, on the one hand, to account for imbalances operating within individual countries, and, on the other, to present certain advanced-peripheral nations as the bearers of alternative cultural values to those of the historic centre.
Representing Social Action
Authors: van Leeuwen Theo
Published: March 2007

The paper presents a framework for describing the representation of social action in English discourse, attempting to relate sociologically relevant categories of action to their grammatical and rhetorical realization in discourse. Departing from Halliday's theory of transitivity, it begins by describing 15 types of action and their typical grammatical realizations. It then describes the transformations which social actions can undergo in discourse—transformations such as objectivation, deagentialization, generalization, abstraction and overdetermination. The utility of the framework for critical discourse analysis is demonstrated through the analysis of an Australian newspaper feature critiquing the Australian Government's open door policy towards immigration from developing countries in a way which, the paper argues, is strongly tinged with racist attitudes.
Playful Teasing: Kiddin' on the Square
Authors: Yedes Janet
Published: March 2007

This discourse analytic study examines teases among diverse staff to show how social justice commitments play out in actual meetings in a homeless advocacy organization. Before considering specific teases, I discuss the relationship between informality and teasing in this workplace setting. The analysis then focuses on 13 examples which show how social justice commitments get challenged in everyday practice: (1) The egalitarian commitment for all to voice opinions comes into tension with avoiding time-consuming meetings; (2) volunteering to share work can come into tension with doing one's fair share; (3) the more egalitarian work practice where staff take responsibility for setting their own work deadlines can, in practice, come in tension with the more hierarchical director's setting a deadline for them; (4) staff differ in job positions as well as economic and educational backgrounds and whether or not they have experienced homelessness. Teases provide a playful reminder of their egalitarian relationships, that despite staff differences no one is better than anyone else; and (5) race matters so much that in talk a simple reference to color—black or white anything—can provide an opportunity to celebrate blackness in this organization.
Whose Terms? Whose Ordinariness? Rhetoric and Ideology in Conversation Analysis
Authors: BILLIG MICHAEL
Published: March 2007

This article examines Schegloff's (1997) defence of Conversation Analysis (CA) and his attack on critical discourse analysis. The article focuses on Schegloff's claims that CA takes an empirical stance without a priori assumptions and that it examines participants' talk in `their own terms'. It is suggested that these claims are problematic, and that CA, as depicted by Schegloff, contains an ideological view of the social world. This can be seen by examining CA's own rhetoric, which conversation analysts themselves tend to take for granted. First, CA uses a specialist rhetoric which is literally not the participants' own terms. Moreover, this specialist rhetoric enables conversation analysts to `disattend' to the topics of conversation. Second, CA's `foundational rhetoric' is examined. It is suggested that this foundational rhetoric, which includes terms such as `conversation', `member', etc., conveys a participatory view of the world, in which equal rights of speakership are often assumed. The assumptions of these rhetorical conventions are revealed if they are applied to talk in which direct power is exercised. In this respect, CA is not, as Schegloff suggests, ideologically neutral, but habitually deploys a rhetoric that conveys a contestable view of social order.
Construction and Corporeality
Authors: Barnard Suzanne
Published: March 2007

One of the most compelling but difficult questions raised by contemporary poststructuralist theory concerns what remains of `the body' if social, linguistic structures are granted primacy in determining its formation and representation. While some argue that poststructuralism renders `the body' passe, poststructuralist theory can be understood as framing a call to retheorize the body's relation to cultural and sociopolitical structures and practices. This call seems particularly urgent in light of the distribution and impact of new, biomedical `technologies of the self' (see Foucault). These technologies appear destined to become one of the most powerful new forms of subject-making to emerge in Western culture in centuries. In spite of the centrality of questions concerning the `materialized' body as a unique social, cultural and political object in other disciplines, such questions have yet to catch the disciplinary imagination of theoretical psychology in a sustained way. Theorizing the body in its materiality is more important than ever as a counterweight to appropriation of new biotechnologies within psychology's dominant essentialist materialist paradigm. The failure to theorize the particular ways in which the trope of materiality functions and is reproduced renders theoretical psychology ill equipped to address the consequences of the cultural shift towards understanding the body's materiality as the privileged medium for transforming subjectivity.
Psychological Value and Symbol Formation
Authors: Jones Raya A.
Published: March 2007

Jung's (1928/1988) radical revision of Freud's libido theory is critically reviewed here with a focus on its cogency, rather than historical context, identifying its convergence with gestalt field theory and the relational concept of mind. Jung was aware of a tension between his `pure' concept of psychic energy and the `applied' concept, already established in clinical practice. Today the latter is familiar, though objectionable on scientific and philosophical grounds, whilst Jung's arguably persuasive thesis is virtually unknown. Jung contended that energy is not a force, the functional context of behaviour is a closed system of psychological values, and therefore libido is not substance or desire. His proposal for applying the concept in psychology, especially regarding symbol formation, is less successful, reiterating the metaphor of libidinal flow. Parallels between Jung's thesis and current debates concerning the ontological status of information and informational processes are pointed out.
Three Misleading Assumptions in the Customary Rhetoric of the Bias Literature
Authors: Lopes Lola L.
Published: March 2007

In their commentary on Lopes (1991), Oaksford and Chater (1992) assume that (1) the psychological literature was once rife with presumptions of normative rationality; (2) bias research illustrates the bounded rationality viewpoint; and (3) people would not violate rational rules if they knew the correct rule and were relieved of the need for computation. Although these assumptions are shared by many, none stands up to scrutiny.
The Socializing of Personal Constructions
Authors: Mancuso James C.
Published: March 2007

This response contains a resubmission of the claim that the social processes involved in these cross-comments exemplify the major tenet of the principal essay: personal constructs stand as a central strand of the context surrounding interactions wherein actors carry on the psychological work of evolving social constructions. Responding-from their personal construct systems, Burkitt (1996) and Wortham (1996) reiterate the invalidity of the use of constructs suggesting individualism, descry the putative limited view of context found in the theoretical formulations offered in the principal essay (Mancuso, 1996), and repeat the social constructionist's objections to the use of cognitivist formulations. This response to their comments attempts to focus on and to elaborate those propositions in the principal essay that were aimed at obviating the points which they raise.
The Psychology and Management of Pain
Authors: Kugelmann Robert
Published: March 2007

The theory and treatment of pain have undergone major changes since 1950. Significant has been the gate control theory of pain, first described in 1965. This theory symbolizes a new epistemology and praxis of pain by redefining pain as a process. The redefinition legitimated new treatment possibilities for pain, making all of a patient's existence fair game for professional management. Social uses of the new psychology of pain are examined, in the context of a critique of the object of medical knowledge and power, the patient as a `person'. In the name of overcoming Cartesian dualism (which today carries a negative value), the new theory and treatment possibilities (which are holistic, therefore `better') promote a greater technical management of human suffering.
Two Incompatible Positions in the Challenge Against the `Individual Subject of Modernity'
Authors: Tekelioglu Orhan
Published: March 2007

This paper discusses the theoretical status of human beings in the therapeutic sciences of modern societies. The concept of the `individual' was shaped, and achieved an unsurpassable status in scientific discourse, during the 17th and 18th centuries. Likewise specialized disciplines have appeared to codify its `normal' and `deviant' conducts. Since the 1960s, there have arisen certain critical accounts challenging the existence of such an individual in social theory. I examine two perspectives questioning the status of the `individual' in administrative practices at institutions of confinement: the anti-psychiatry movement and the post-structuralist critique of `reason'. This paper contrasts these positions through the work of two exemplary thinkers (Goffman and Foucault), and reveals the impossibility of reconciliation, owing in the main to the very definition of the individual subject in theoretical discourse.
Some Psychological Theories are not Empirical
Authors: Smedslund Geir
Published: March 2007

Some psychological models can be shown to follow from plausible interpretations of the concepts involved, and, hence, cannot be strengthened or weakened by data. One of the most popular models in health psychology, the `Stages of Change' Model, is analysed, using smoking cessation as an example. The sequence of stages depicted by the model is logically necessary, and the relations between the stages and the postulated processes of change are necessary too. The model is useful, but does not need to be empirically tested.