bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Ideology, Partisanship and Decision-Making in a Contemporary American Legislature
Authors: Scully Roger , Patterson Samuel C.
Published: March 2007

Despite widespread agreement that American politics in the 1980s and 1990s has become more ideological, with more deeply entrenched partisan divisions, studies of legislative decision-making within the American context have generally continued to downplay the role of ideology and partisan attitudes in explaining the behaviour of politicians. Why? We argue that this situation is explained by a combination of instrumentalist conceptions of behaviour that neglect attitudinal motivations, and methodological problems following from the scarcity of data which measure ideology and partisanship separately from the behaviour they putatively explain. To address these problems, we employ original data on a state legislature to allow us more direct insight into such matters. Independent measures of ideology and partisan attitudes are found, as expected, to have a strong empirical association, but nonetheless also to have identifiable and separate impacts on the voting decisions of legislators. Our findings underscore both the importance of ideology and partisan attitudes to an understanding of legislative decision-making and the value of developing independent measures of these concepts wherever possible.
Old Parties and New Democracies
Authors: Taylor-Robinson Michelle M.
Published: March 2007

The democratization literature suggests a country's chances of successfully democratizing are improved by having an institutionalized party system that evolved before the recent authoritarian period. However, the conditions under which old parties established in previous democratic, quasi-democratic or authoritarian periods will benefit a new democracy have not been explored. If a party engaged in undemocratic behavior in the past, such as military alliances, election rigging or internal procedures that denied rank-and-file members chances for meaningful participation, then it may bring these undemocratic behavior patterns into the new democratic regime. The traditional parties in Argentina, Honduras, Panama, Peru and Uruguay are used to explore when parties bring undemocratic past behavior patterns into a new democratic regime, thereby hindering consolidation. These cases show that parties which experienced harsh treatment under an authoritarian regime are unlikely to continue authoritarian tactics such as military alliances and election fraud. However, traditional parties resist changing closed internal procedures that they utilized in the past, and thus cannot be relied upon to provide the mass public with opportunities for political participation beyond voting.
Counting Candidates: an Alternative to the Effective N
Authors: Niemi Richard G. , Hsieh John Fuh-sheng
Published: March 2007

Counting the number of `real' candidates in elections is complicated by the frequent presence of individuals who win a small percentage of the vote and have no realistic chance of winning the election. Increasingly, researchers have solved this problem by using the Laakso—Taagepera `effective N', originally devised to count numbers of political parties (usually in the overall electorate). We argue that when counting candidates in individual districts, the focus should be on viability and that the effective N is therefore inappropriate. We discuss the concept and measurement of candidate viability and propose two alternative measures. We illustrate the use of these counting rules by re-analyzing and updating Reed's (1990) analysis of the number of candidates in Japanese elections under the Single Non-Transferable Vote. In contrast to Reed, we find lower numbers of candidates, more rapid learning of strategic behavior, and closer adherence to the theoretical upper limit of one more candidate than the district magnitude ( M + 1).
Block Voting in the Labour Party
Authors: Quinn Thomas
Published: March 2007

This paper offers a retrospective analysis of the trade union block vote, a key internal institution in the decision-making bodies of the British Labour Party. The block vote is normally presented as an institution that facilitated oligarchic control of the Labour Party, a claim largely accepted in this paper. Much less attention has been given to its efficiency in safeguarding the supply of trade union resources to the party by linking financial donations to voting power. To understand both the efficient and distributional consequences of the block vote, a political exchange approach to the study of party organizations is adopted.
Attitudes to Europe
Authors: Batory Agnes
Published: March 2007

The objective of the article is to assess the extent to which party ideology and strategic incentives account for political parties' attitudes to European integration in one of the East Central European EU-applicant countries, Hungary. Starting with general propositions regarding the relationship between particular ideological strands and orientations to European integration, the main focus of the article is on individual parties' policies and rhetoric on the EU as shaped by the dynamic context of the party system. The Hungarian case suggests that, while ideology structures underlying attitudes to integration, parties' predispositions are not directly translated into a corresponding policy of supporting or rejecting membership per se: the parties are constrained by their own early pro-European rhetoric as well as short-term competitive pressures and the need to be acceptable as coalition partners.
Formation of Party Cleavages in Post-Communist Democracies
Authors: Kitschelt Herbert
Published: March 2007

Research on post-communist party systems must deal with (1) the extent to which party systems crystallize around programmatic cleavages or are based on clientelistic or charismatic parties and (2) if programmatic competition is high, the content of the major divisions that are represented by the parties. The extent to which programmatic structuring takes place in post-communism depends on countries' democratic experience and the nature of their democratic institutions fostering more personalized or more depersonalized power relations. These institutions, in turn, are influenced by the pathways of transition from communism to democracy, the type of communist rule and earlier traditions of democratization and industrialization in the inter-war era. With regard to the content of cleavage divisions, the paper identifies several configurations of party systems. Determinants are derived from voters' economic interests, the varying salience of socio-cultural conflicts in post-communist countries and the relations among ethnic groups.
Cadre, Catch-All or Cartel?
Authors: Katz Richard S. , Mair Peter
Published: March 2007

In response to Koole's criticisms of our cartel party argument, we suggest that the relationship between participation in an inter-party cartel (a systemic characteristic) and the characteristics of the individual parties participating in the cartel is strong enough to generate a `cartel party' as a party type. While the boundaries between interest organizations and the state have blurred, this is a generalization of the blurring of boundaries between parties and the state to which we referred, and only means that more of the traditional linkages between society and the state are becoming problematic. Precursors of the cartel party phenomenon can be traced to the 1950s or before, but in recent years it has become increasingly typical rather than aberrational. While there are no fully fledged cartel parties (as there never were fully fledged mass or catch-all parties), the type has developed sufficiently as to justify the specification of an additional `corner' in space, relative to which real-world cases can be anchored.
Voting Behavior in the US House and Senate
Authors: Cover Albert D. , Pinney Neil , Serra George
Published: March 2007

If we want to know what is happening to political parties today, the answer depends in part on how we define the term `party' and in part on the time frame used for analysis. In this paper we focus on parties as voting coalitions in the US House and the Senate over the last 40 years. To assess the ideological placement and cohesiveness of each party in the House and Senate, we use adjusted scores issued by the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA). Our adjustment corrects for changes in the ADA's scale from year to year. The analysis is carried out by focusing on each of the four main regional factions comprising the parties. The cross-chamber comparisons for the Republicans show a high degree of stability with respect to ideological placement and cohesiveness; eastern Republicans maintain a more liberal stance throughout the period of analysis. For Democrats in both chambers there has been a liberal shift in recent years and an increase in cohesiveness overall; the southern Democrats are distinctively more conservative than the rest of the party, although less so in recent years. Both of the `outlier' factions (eastern Republicans and southern Democrats) unexpectedly display less cohesiveness than do the mainline factions of their respective parties. The paper concludes with some discussion of why this may be the case, what the future holds for outlier cohesiveness, and implications for responsible parties in the United States.
Party Change and Continuity in Amsterdam
Authors: Eldersveld Samuel J.
Published: March 2007

The study of party organization has recently re-emphasized the changing nature of party structures and the probable connections of such organizational adaptation to both the changing environment under which parties work and party survival. This study is an empirical effort to precisely describe the conditions of organizational change in local parties and then to assess how this co-varies with their vote. The setting is Amsterdam and the time period 1961-93. The database comprises surveys of the leaders of the major parties undertaken in 1961, 1976 and 1993, focusing on three aspects of party organizational change: social clientele renewal, ideological change, and variations over time in activists' involvement in the local organization. Significant differences are found by party, by time period, and by organizational adaptation component. There does seem to be a linkage for certain parties between adaptive strategies and the increase or decrease in their vote.
Parties and the Expansion of Direct Democracy
Authors: Scarrow Susan E.
Published: March 2007

This article considers the extent to which political parties can use direct democratic reforms as an effective tool for reshaping political behavior. It investigates the interaction between behavioral and institutional changes associated with recent German extensions of direct democracy and intra-party democracy. The examination finds clear links between individual participation preferences and the evolution of the institutional framework: parties promoted reforms in hopes of making `conventional', electorally orientated political participation more appealing to citizens who were increasingly attracted by `unconventional' political outlets. The parties were less successful in using institutional design to achieve specific modifications in patterns of political participation.
Temporal and Developmental Risk Factors for Sexual Harassment and Abuse in Sport
Authors: Cense Marianne , Brackenridge Celia
Published: March 2007

Recent revelations of sexual misconduct by sports coaches have challenged long-held beliefs in the educational value of sport, yet there is very little knowledge about the dynamics of sexual exploitation in sport upon which to base improvements in the practice of sports coaching or teaching. Earlier inductive research by Brackenridge in Britain established a set of hypothesized risk factors for sexual abuse in sport which have subsequently been reinforced by the results of survey research on elite athletes in Canada. However, risk analysis for sexual abuse in sport has not yet been framed within a temporal or developmental sequence, nor sufficiently differentiated between elite and recreational levels of sport, or between coach-initiated and peer-initiated abuse. This article reports selected findings from a Dutch qualitative study of 14 athletes who have survived sexual abuse in sport. The aim of the study was to identify risk factors that influence sexual abuse and harassment and to analyse which risks might be diminished through a prevention policy implemented by sport organizations. The Dutch study reinforces the earlier risk factor analyses but extends them by putting forward a preliminary temporal model of risk in sport that integrates offender behaviour with athlete and situational factors. On the basis of this model, suggestions are made to assist early diagnosis and prevention of sexual harassment and abuse by authority figures in sport.
Undisciplined Actions and TeacherñStudent Transactions During two Physical Education Lessons
Authors: Bertone Stefano , MÈard Jacques , Flavier Eric , Euzet Jean Paul , Durand Marc
Published: March 2007

This study concerns teacher–student transactions regarding undisciplined actions in physical education. Two lessons (A and B) of the same teacher were observed and recorded. The speech acts of teacher and students were transcribed verbatim and analysed from individual transactions. The observational data were triangulated with the data from post-lesson interviews. The results showed that during transactions in which the teacher prescribed the students to act, they did not produce undisciplined actions but performed the prescribed actions only in his presence and that, during the same transactions based on the teacher’s prescriptive actions, the number of students’ undisciplined actions decreased in Lesson A and increased in Lesson B. When students produced undisciplined actions at the beginning of Lesson A, prescriptive actions were efficient; when students did not performed undisciplined actions at the beginning of Lesson B, prescriptive actions provoked the appearance of these undisciplined actions.
Test-Retest Reliability in Quantitative Physical Education Research: A Commentary
Authors: Lamb Kevin
Published: March 2007

This paper highlights an important statistical development for exercise and physical educa tion research. Traditionally, the Pearson and intraclass correlation coefficients have been liberally used by researchers to quantify the test-retest reliability of many performance, behavioural, and physiologically-related measurements. The suitability of these forms of analyses has recently been challenged by British exercise scientists, who argue that they do not really address what they are meant to, that is, the level of agreement between repeated measurements or scores. As a consequence, our existing knowledge of the reliability of such measurements is questionable and deserves to be re established with a more appropriate statis tical technique. Accordingly, the 95% Limits of Agreement method is presented and offered as an essential supplement for future measurement and evaluation research.
The Case-study Model
Authors: Garaway Gila
Published: March 2007

In seeking an evaluation approach and organizational framework for a complex cross-cultural evaluation conducted in India, a multiple-case, replication design, with each individual case embedded with multiple units of analysis, was found to be well suited to the challenge. Enabling a quantitative look at individual units as well as at intervening factors, while promoting a somewhat goal-free look at overall contexts, the approach produced overarching cross-case answers while still remaining sensitive to the innuendos and idiosyncrasies of each cultural setting. A discussion of the rationale behind the approach is followed by a brief description of its application in the India study in terms of data collection, analysis and presentation of findings. With the demand for cross-cultural evaluations increasing, ongoing exploration for new conceptualizations of evaluation is warranted.
Evaluating the Progress of Clinical Audit
Authors: Robinson Sarah
Published: March 2007

This article reports on an evaluation of the progress of clinical audit in four health-care professions. The project had both a research and a development component. Interviews were held in six sites with practitioners and others with a stake in the outcome of audit. Findings indicated that a wide range of audit activities were in progress, that a diversity of factors could affect this progress, and that negative as well as positive impacts could ensue from participation in an audit. A model comprising four cycles (delivery of patient care, standard setting, carrying out audit, and decision-making concerning change) was developed from existing work, from fieldwork in the six sites, and from a process of evaluation, revision and further evaluation. The final version provided a framework which practitioners could use to analyse current audit activities and guide the planning of future projects. In particular, the model demonstrated ways in which the various factors that affected progress could act as a facilitator or constraint at each stage of the audit and decision-making cycles.
Policy Evaluation and the Concepts of Deadweight and Additionality
Authors: Mceldowney James J.
Published: March 2007

This article examines the nature of policy evaluation with particular reference to the twin concepts of deadweight and additionality. Two different perspectives on evaluation are presented, namely: (a) a 'control' model based on assessing the value for money of a policy intervention where emphasis is often placed on the measurement of deadweight and additionality and (b) a 'helping' model where the emphasis is on providing feedback on the policy or program in question, thereby leading to a mutual learning process. A critical analysis is presented of the way in which the concepts of deadweight and additionality are treated in evaluations, with evidence drawn from the evaluation of various industrial support schemes in Northern Ireland.
Bridging the Macro and Micro Levels in Outcome Evaluation
Authors: Munck Ingrid M.E.
Published: March 2007

In a symbiosis between social research methodology, statistics and information technology, a strategy can be found for evaluation in large systems and organizations. The paper outlines a multilevel design concept for studies of the outcome from interventions on different levels, including the whole system, its parts, and the individuals in it. For the case of the evaluation of the outcome of cuts in funding of schools, the presentation illustrates the necessity to collect data directly from teachers and students themselves. Methodological advancements in psychometrics and statistics are presented and illustrated.
Playing Symbolically with Death in Extreme Sports
Authors: BRETON DAVID LE
Published: March 2007

Many amateur sportsmen in the West, have today started undertaking long and intensive ordeals where their personal capacity to withstand increasing suffering is the prime objective. Running, jogging, the triathlon and trekking are the sorts of ordeal where people without any particular ability are not pitting themselves against others but are committed to testing their own capacity to withstand increasing pain. Constantly called upon to prove themselves in a society where reference points are both countless and contradictory and where values are in crisis, people are now seeking a one-to-one relationship by redical means, testing their strength of character, their courage and their personal resources. Going right on to the end of a self-imposed ordeal gives a legitimacy to life and provides a symbolic plank that supports them. Performance itself is of secondary significance; it has a value only to the individual. There is no struggle against a third party, only a method for reinforcing personal will-power and over-coming suffering by going right to the limit of a personally imposed demand. The physical limit has come to replace the moral limit that present-day society is failing to provide. Overcoming suffering tempers the individual, providing a renewed significance and value to his life.
The Negation of the Body - A Problem of Communication Theory
Authors: LOENHOFF JENS
Published: March 2007

Where is it written that only naming words, conceptual signs, language symbols can facilitate the sort of intersubjective communication about things which is necessary in human life? (Bühler, 1990: 120)
Aura, Armour and the Body
Authors: TESTER KEITH
Published: March 2007

This article identifies the emergence of the problematic of the body as a consequence of the forces of technology and bureaucracy which have run through the 20th century. It explores the hypothesis that the problem of the body has emerged out of the wreckage of the aura of the individual. It is proposed that aura was destroyed in the First World War, but it is also shown that for Benjamin anticipations of the destruction can be found in the technologies of photography. Yet, out of the ruin of the auratic individual, there emerged a vision of the armoured body in the work of fascist writers such as Ernst Jünger. A variation on the theme of armour can also be found in Kracauer's discussion of the Tiller Girls. The article concludes that the Holocaust can be read, at least in part, as a logical product of the destruction of the aura of the individual and the subsequent identification of the individual with her or his body alone.
The Adolescent `Unfinished Body', Reflexivity and HIV/AIDS Risk
Authors: LUPTON DEBORAH , TULLOCH JOHN
Published: March 2007

School-based sexuality education is a type of sexology directed at specific bodies: `unfinished' adolescent bodies in the process of becoming sexual bodies. This article explores notions of the adolescent `unfinished' body in the context of HIV/AIDS education for young people. Drawing on empirical research carried out in Australian secondary schools, we look at the concepts of the project of the self and reflexivity as they are articulated by young people in their evaluation of HIV/AIDS education. The open character of self identity and the reflexively monitored nature of the body were emphasized by the young people in their attempted construction of intimacy and sexuality. The discourses of openness and trust and the reliance on both `expert' and `experiential' knowledges were evident in the ways in which they dealt with the risk of HIV/AIDS. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these data for the theorizing of risk and reflexivity.
The Prevalence of Mental Disorders Among Saskatchewan Indians
Authors: Roy Chunilal , Choudhuri Adjit , Irvine Donald
Published: March 2007

Indian communities in Saskatchewan are undergoing social changes as a result of rapid growth in populations and a closer contact with the non-Indian communities. The effect of such changes may be reflected in the nature and extent of the mental health problems among the Indian populations. This paper is an attempt to understand such problems in Saskatchewan. Analysis of hospital first-admission statistics at the North Battleford psychiatric institution, for the period from 1961 to 1966, showed that the Indian sample contained significantly higher numbers of schizophrenics and epileptics. These findings prompted an active case-finding survey for the first time in Canada in an arbitrarily defined geographical area which contained 18 rural municipalities (non-Indian) and ten Indian reserves. Analysis of the data revealed that the prevalence of mental disorder was significantly higher in the Indian communities. Furthermore, the Indian sample contained significantly higher numbers of schizophrenics and mental retardates. Findings are discussed in terms of relevance to future cross-cultural psychiatric research and methodological problems.
Treating Children with Eating Disorders Ethical and Legal Issues
Authors: Honig Peter , Bentovim Marianne
Published: March 2007

In this article, we explore some current difficulties for clinicians and lawyers working with children who have serious eating disorders where issues such as their consent to treatment are of central importance. The child's right to consent to or refuse treatment has now been tested in the courts as has the question of the child's level of competence. This proved particularly controversial in the area of eating disorders; the ethical and legal issues raised by such cases are the primary focus of our article.
Dancing with Health Bureaucrats: Redeveloping Victoria's Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services
Authors: Birleson Peter
Published: March 2007

Clinicians and health bureaucrats often find themselves on opposite sides of the fence. As a clinician with an interest in management, I was offered the opportunity to work with health bureaucrats in the Victorian Department of Health and Community Services to redevelop public child and adolescent mental-health services (CAMHS). Recent mental health reforms in the Australian state of Victoria required a blueprint to outline the future directions of services to under-19-year-olds and to help planners, purchasers and providers communicate. My article reports on the general features of the new framework for service delivery in Victoria, describes some of the thinking behind the policies and makes comments on the experience of working with health-policy planners.
Parent Education/Training in the USA: Current Status and Future Trends
Authors: Long Nicholas
Published: March 2007

There is a need to reform mental-health services for children in the USA. As part of this reform it is anticipated that greater attention will be given to the role of parent education and training services. This article focuses on the history and anticipated future of parent education in the USA. It is asserted that we are presently entering the third generation of parent education. It is anticipated that this third generation will involve more targeted programs, improved leader training, increased accountability, a more comprehensive view of parenting, greater attention on meeting consumer needs, improved accessibility, a focus on how to optimize programs, increased utilization of emerging technologies, improved coordination of programs, a greater research focus on outcomes and uncertainty regarding clinical parent training within child outpatient-therapy services.
On the Engagement of Psychotic Adolescents and their Families
Authors: Goldberg David , Aggett Percy
Published: March 2007

This article describes strategies to promote the engagement of adolescents and their families during and after the adolescent's psychotic episode. These strategies were developed following a retrospective study of the clinical records of nine consecutive cases. Key issues that lead to failure are identified and include pressure to institutionalize and poor management of secrets.
A Social Skills Group for Boys with Tourette's Syndrome
Authors: Lambert Sarah , Christie Deborah
Published: March 2007

Tourette's syndrome is a complex neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by involuntary vocal and motor tics. Sufferers may also exhibit features common to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorders, in addition to anxiety, depression and low self-esteem. Parents attending the monthly Tourette's Syndrome Clinic at Great Ormond Street Hospital voiced concerns about their child's apparent social isolation and difficulty making friends. These children were offered the opportunity to participate in a social skills programme. Just over half of the children had low self-esteem in relation to social and academic situations. We adapted an existing programme with the intention of addressing some of the social difficulties associated with Tourette's syndrome and also to bring these children together in order to share their experiences. At the end of the programme children showed small increases in overall self-esteem. Reports from both parents and children suggested that all had benefitted from participation. This project resulted in the setting-up of a monthly support group for parents and children, an evaluation of which is currently underway.
Preparing Patients for Total Hip Replacement
Authors: Clode-Baker Edward , Draper Elizabeth , Raymond Neil , Haslam Cheryl , Gregg Paul
Published: March 2007

Previous research indicates that giving appropriate information to patients before surgery yields many benefits. This randomized controlled trial evaluated a pre admission and postadmission intervention comprising a video, booklet and plastic models for patients undergoing total hip replacement. Seventy-eight patients participated in the study and were randomized into control and intervention groups. The intervention was implemented one month before surgery. Over the operative period, patients completed questionnaires including the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Nottingham Health Profile and Stress Arousal Checklist. Results showed no significant differences between control and intervention groups for the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Nottingham Health Profile and Stress Arousal Checklist. However, patients from the intervention group were more likely to know as much as they wanted to know before admission ( p <.001) and felt less confronted by information on arrival for the hospital stay. In an era when patient satisfaction is of paramount importance, this preoperative intervention has applications in many settings.
Stages of Adopting Regular Screening Mammography
Authors: Clark Melissa A. , Rakowski William , Ehrich Beverly , Pearlman Deborah N. , Goldstein Michael , Dube Catherine E. , Rimer Barbara K. , Woolverton Hugh
Published: March 2007

This study examined whether distinct subgroups of women could be identified within stages of adoption for screening mammography. These subgroups may represent differential readiness to move to the next stage of the adoption continuum. Data were from a baseline survey of 1323 women between the ages of 50 and 74 years who were recruited through a staff- model HMO for an intervention study to increase rates of mammography. Multiple regression models were used to identify correlates of positive decisional balance within each of four stages of adoption, and an index of positive indicators was developed from the significant correlates for each stage. Analysis of variance showed that the number of positive indicators discriminated women within each stage. This information can be used to develop more effective tailored interventions to increase the percentage of women receiving mammograms on a regular schedule.
External Inducement and Non-Westernization in the Uses of the ◊ Asheninka Cushma
Authors: Veber Hanne
Published: March 2007

The cushma is a cotton tunic worn by the Pajonal Ashéninka and other montaña Indians in the Peruvian Amazon. The cushma constitutes an impor tant article of dress and cultural identity. Its continued use points to the per sistence of shared Ashéninka values and practices in the face of prolonged colonization efforts in the area. An influx of industrial goods into the Ashéninka trading system has boosted the circulation of traditional exchange items. Recent political organizing has further strengthened Ashéninka iden tity. Ashéninka leaders who have started to wear Western-style clothes now don the cushma to display Ashéninka-ness to influential outsiders. No longer may we assume that its use merely testifies to the cultural purity of its wearer. Its use may also be an indication of his or her sophisticated acknowledgment that the timely display of indigenous identity may well be rewarded. This adds a new layer of meaning to the Ashéninka cushma.
Uneasy Relationships
Authors: Schneider Arnd
Published: March 2007

The documentary, narrative or even fictional character of ethnographic pho tography and film has been debated for some time. However, anthropology has hardly taken notice of the visual representation of other cultures in recent contemporary art. In contrast with earlier modernist 'primitivism' these con temporary artists also appropriate anthropological methods and provide a critique of ethnographic and collecting practices. The article investigates the epistemological implications that arise from anthropological appropriations in contemporary art and ultimately argues that such art can be as legitimate in the representation of other cultures as already academically established written and visual discourses in anthropology.
Commodifying Affection, Authority and Gender in the Everyday Objects of Japan
Authors: McVeigh Brian
Published: March 2007

Cute objects are encountered everywhere in Japan: in advertising, company logos, everyday objects and pornography; and in government-sponsored public safety posters, baby faces, smiling children, tiny bunnies and beaming bears are used to inform, warn, advise, admonish and shape opinion. Cuteness communicates power relations and power play, effec tively combining weakness, submissiveness and humility with influence, domination and control. It merges meekness, admiration and attachment with benevolence, tenderness and sympathy. This paper focuses on the gen dered aspect of cute things: how they communicate messages about being the 'ideal' woman. The multivocality of cuteness is revealed by employing Turner's symbolic analysis and this paper discusses the meanings and cul tural values that, embedded in all the varied objects of cuteness, constitute a socionormative commentary about how women should behave, especially vis-a-vis men. Examples are provided to show how cuteness, as a sentiment that has been objectified, commodified and commercialized, affords com municative potency.
Design as a Practice of Modernity
Authors: Attfield Judy
Published: March 2007

The material culture of the everyday resides in the kind of objects that have an uneasy status within the boundaries of conventional design history because they have little to say about aesthetics, functionality, or the pro fessional practice of design. By taking up the invitation to undisciplinarity offered by this journal, it is possible to challenge that definition of design which blocks discussion of it as a common activity and enables its re- definition as an everyday practice of modernity. This essay focuses on the transformation of the visually banal 'occasional table' into the stylish 'coffee table' and its popular appropriation as symptomatic of the partial welcome given to modern design in the post-Second World War British household. The informal conviviality embodied in the coffee table gave access to a sector of the population not in possession of the taste required by the rules of 'good design' to some of the innovatory social features of modernity.
Elicitation of First-Order 'Theory of Mind in Children with Autism
Authors: Bowler Dermot M. , Strom Esther
Published: March 2007

Failure to pass certain kinds of false belief task is a characteristic both of preschool children and of children with autism. In the present study normally developing children, children with autism and children with learning difficulties, all of whom had failed a standard first-order false belief task, were given five replications of the standard false belief task with the inclusion of enhanced behavioural and emotional cues to the protagonist's false belief on the four repetitions. The results showed that the children with autism as well as some of the normally developing subjects benefited to a significant extent from the enhanced cues but not when the task was repeated without enhancement. The children with learning difficulties, by contrast, showed no improvement. The implications of the results for current cognitive theories of autistic dysfunction are discussed.
Clinical Features Associated with Autism
Authors: Whiteley Paul , Rodgers Jacqui , Shattock Paul
Published: March 2007

Autism is traditionally viewed as a pervasive developmental disorder, diagnosed on the basis of clinically observed behavioural symptoms in the absence of any quantifiable biochemical or neurological markers. Anecdotal reports of the coincidence of certain physiological anomalies in subgroups of children with autistic spectrum disorders, outside the syndrome's diagnostic definition, have not as yet been adequately catalogued. Findings are presented from parental interviews (n = 46), examining the type and prevalence of these additional health and psychological factors, and their connection to a possible immunological/metabolic basis to autism and associated spectrum disorders.
The New `Peculiar Institution':
Authors: WACQUANT LOÏC
Published: March 2007

Not one but several `peculiar institutions' have operated to define, confine, and control African-Americans in the history of the United States: chattel slavery from the colonial era to the Civil War; the Jim Crow system in the agrarian South from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights revolution; the ghetto in the northern industrial metropolis; and, in the post-Keynesian age of desocialized wage labor and welfare retrenchment, the novel institutional complex formed by the remnants of the dark ghetto and the carceral apparatus with which it has become joined by a relationship of structural symbiosis and functional surrogacy. In the 1970s, as the urban `Black Belt' lost its economic role of labor extraction and proved unable to ensure ethnoracial closure, the prison was called upon to shore up caste division and help contain a dishonored and supernumerary population viewed as both deviant and dangerous. Beyond the specifics of the US case, this article suggests that much is to be learned from the comparison between ghetto and prison as kindred institutions of forced confinement entrusted with enclosing a stigmatized category so as to neutralize the material and/or symbolic threat it poses for the surrounding society.
SOS and the Retelling of Suicide
Authors: Petty Mary S.
Published: March 2007

Participants in a self-help group for suicide ‘survivors’– that is, people who have lost loved ones to suicide death – seek to recover and produce narratives of their experience. Based on a micro-study drawn from the author’s personal journals and an analysis of the national organization’s printed materials, this article explores how a particular view of the ‘self’ functions in a group where stories of tragedy are told. An interpretive analysis of the self-help process, as experienced in an SOS (Survivors of Suicide) group, suggests that the group’s methods of moving toward mutual understanding and recovery rely on a construction of the ‘self’ having experienced this particular loss. Descriptions of the group’s structure and of social interactions are drawn from observations made by the author who was a participant in the group.
Setting Yourself Free: Techniques of Recovery
Authors: Keane Helen
Published: March 2007

In self-help discourses of addiction the goal is not cure but recovery, an open-ended process which requires both the adoption of certain styles of conduct and the transformation of the self. While defining recovery as a spiritual awakening, popular self-help guides also provide practical techniques of daily living for recovering addicts: from how to attend parties to how to discover one’s inner voice. Using Foucault’s notion of technologies of the self to examine specific practices of recovery and their constitution of an ideal self defined by health, authenticity and freedom, the article argues that the project of self-formation relies on techniques of habit formation that conflict with self-help discourse’s notion of freedom. Refiguring recovery as a matter of habit compromises the transcendental notion of freedom proclaimed by self-help discourse, destabilizing the opposition between addiction and recovery that is supposed to mark improvement.
Gay Men and HIV/AIDS Risk Management
Authors: Flowers Paul
Published: March 2007

This article presents a framework through which changes in the management of HIV/AIDS risks among British gay men may be conceptualized. Three distinct periods of risk management are outlined. First, a ‘confused’ period in which the aetiology of AIDS and its cultural impact were poorly understood. Second, a ‘somatic’ period is described in which discourses linking HIV risk to the body became prevalent (following the ‘discovery’ of the HIV virus). Finally a third, ‘technological’ period is described which stresses the impact of recent social and medical technologies in the contemporary management of both HIV and AIDS risks. The privatization, fluidity and development of HIV and AIDS ‘risks’ are discussed with particular reference to notions of surveillance medicine, processes of ‘othering’ and the attribution of both responsibility and blame.
Routinization and Sensitivity: Interaction in Oncological Follow-Up Consultations
Authors: Sandén Inger , Linell Per , Starkhammar Hans , Larsson Ullabeth Sätterlund
Published: March 2007

The empirical data of this study were gathered in the form of audio-taped recordings of dialogues between 21 patients, who had had operations for testicular cancer and three physicians during follow-up consultations. The aim is to inquire into how routine practices affect the goals of checking up the medical conditions and providing patients with reassurance, and how practices affect the treatment of sensitive topics and the patients’ possibilities of bringing up their own problems are affected. The results show that the routines built up by the medical care programme are used as recurrent opportunities for the parties to confirm that the situation is under control and as resources when they talk about the sensitive topics of sexuality and fertility. How the routinization affected the patients’ possibilities of bringing up their own problems cannot be fully determined. Of the 50 initiatives by patients to present their problems, only nine did so solely on their own initiative.
Providers, Pills and Power: The US Mifepristone Abortion Trials and Caregivers’ Interpretations of Clinical Power Dynamics
Authors: Simonds Wendy , Ellertson Charlotte , Winikoff Beverly , Springer Kimberly
Published: March 2007

In this article, we examine retrospective accounts of health care workers who participated in the Population Council’s clinical trials of mifepristone (RU-486) between October 1994 and September 1995. We conducted focus group interviews with 78 health care providers at 17 sites around the USA, after the clinical trials of mifepristone (RU-486) were completed. We discuss providers’ reflections upon power dynamics between them and their clients during the clinical trials, as well as the implications of these changes on the future provision of non-surgical abortion. Caregivers tend to see mifepristone users as more ‘empowered’ than women having surgical abortions, and see themselves as losing power over their clients’ abortion experiences. They offer nuanced and ambivalent assessments of the role of empowerment in their clients’ motivations and experiences as mifepristone users. They tend to view the method as responsible for generating more egalitarian clinical interactions (and to endorse it as such), but the variation present in their evaluations demonstrates most clearly the power of caregivers’ interpretative work in shaping clinical interactions. In assessing their experiences with mifepristone, caregivers demonstrate their interpretative work ‘on’ clients, which is enmeshed with their sense of who they are as medical workers.
How Lay Are Lay Beliefs?
Authors: Shaw Ian
Published: March 2007

The article explores and problematizes the concept of lay beliefs. The article undertakes this using an example of ‘good practice’ in lay beliefs research – an article by Ilka Kangas recently published in health: (2001 vol. 5(1)) – to illustrate how fundamental problems with the concept still arise. The article argues that lay beliefs are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to study because they are tied up with the certainty of diagnosis and the legitimacy that is afforded by taking on medical rationality. Moreover, ‘commonsense’ views are themselves based upon understandings within expert paradigms. Implications for research are considered and the author calls for a shift of focus from lay beliefs to illness accounts where individual understandings can be appreciated.
Refracting ‘Health’: Deleuze, Guattari and Body-Self
Authors: Fox Nick J.
Published: March 2007

This article considers ‘health’ and issues of embodiment through the prism of Deleuze and Guattari’s framework of theory. Deleuze and Guattari speak of an embodied subjectivity, a ‘body-without-organs’ (BwO), which is the outcome of a dynamic tension between culture and biology. This BwO – or ‘body-self’– is a limit, the outcome of physical, psychological and social ‘territorialization’, but which may be ‘deterritorialized’ to open up new possibilities for embodied subjectivity. The question ‘what can a body do?’ is posed to address issues of health and illness. The physical, psychological, emotional and social relations of body-self together comprise the limit of a person’s embodied subjectivity, and as such delimit its ‘health’. ‘Illness’ is a further limiting of these relations, while health care may offer the potential to de-territorialize these relations, opening up new possibilities. This model suggests the importance of a collaborative approach to illness, health and health care.
The Book of Life: How the Completion of the Human Genome Project was Revealed to the Public
Authors: Nerlich Brigitte , Dingwall Robert , Clarke David D.
Published: March 2007

The production of a ‘working draft’ of the human genome was announced on 26 June 2000 at a linked US/UK press conference involving President Clinton and Prime Minister Blair. This article analyses the politicians’ speeches, the accompanying press releases, with contributions from leading scientists associated with the project and British national newspaper coverage of this event. We ask why research on the human genome has not led to widespread negative reactions comparable to those provoked by cloning and GM food. Part of the answer lies in the metaphors, images, literary and cultural references used in the announcement of this development, especially by scientists and politicians attempting to steer the discourse towards public euphoria. Much of this rhetoric draws on the projected benefits for medicine and health care, particularly ‘dread diseases’ like cancer. Nevertheless some of the print media still focused on the ‘negative’ tropes of ‘designer people’ and on ‘genetic determinism’.
More Black Lace: Women, Eroticism and Subjecthood
Authors: Hardy Simon
Published: March 2007

This article explores the changing relationship of women to erotic meaning and subjecthood. It is hard to deny that in the past men have been the principal producers and consumers of pornography. Now, according to many commentators, this changing. While the attempt in the early 1990s to establish sex-magazines for women failed, evidence for this hypothesis can be found in the success of the Black Lace erotic novels. But what kind of eroticism do these books represent? And what kind of erotic subjectivity do they help to produce in their readers? These questions are addressed here by a comparison of Black Lace texts with conventional pornography and with reference to evidence about reader's fantasies.