bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Computer-Assisted Continuous ST-Segment Analysis for Clinical Research: Methodological Issues
Authors: Wung Shu-Fen
Published: March 2007

Continuous ST-segment monitoring has been used to detect acute myocardial ischemia, determine the success of the reperfusion therapy, and predict outcomes in both research and a variety of clinical settings. However, analyzing the abundant electrocardiography (ECG) data recorded using continuous multilead ST-segment monitoring techniques is time consuming and requires expertise. Experienced data interpreters in dedicated ECG core laboratories handle many continuous ECG data records fromlar ge clinical trials. Little information on measurement issues for computer-assisted ST-segment analysis is available for individual investigators. Unsupervised or inexperienced computer analysis of ST-segment deviations can, under certain circumstances, yield invalid or unreliable summary indices. The goal of this article is to discuss basic ST-segment measurement principles in evaluating acute myocardial ischemia and methodological issues surrounding the use of computerassisted ST-segment analysis for continuous ECG data. Variables affecting ST-segment measurements will be examined. Sources and examples of variability for these potential errors will be identified.
Isokinetic Strength Testing in Research and Practice
Authors: Gaines Jean M. , Talbot Laura A.
Published: March 2007

Age-related losses in lower extremity strength result in functional disabilities that diminish the quality of life for many older adults. Multiple factors, including type of muscle fiber, size of the muscle, length and speed of the muscle at contraction, age, and gender, affect the magnitude of strength generated. Assessment in clinical practice, in order to be cost and time effective, screens older adults for loss in strength. Further evaluation of strength loss requires the use of sophisticated procedures and equipment. Research into the causes of loss of strength and interventions to lessen or prevent loss of strength requires valid and reliable assessment tools. This article examines components of isokinetic muscle strength, the measurement of strength in clinical practice, methods to measure isokinetic strength, and validity and reliability of these measures.
Architectural Frontier/Spatial Story
Authors: Lozanovska Mirjana
Published: March 2007

The “tools” of architectural discourse—maps, plans, sections, elevations, photographs—are one way of representing an architecture of the everyday. In this article, the theoretical problematic of representing the everyday is investigated through a specific site, Zavoj, a village in the Republic of Macedonia. How do we look at, document, and analyse a place that is outside the map of western architectural interest? The tools of architecture are staged as the mechanics of an architectural frontier against the narratives that describe the processes of dwelling, the spatial stories of the inhabitants of the village. Stories and words of a fictive reality intervene in the clear geometry of architectural representation and thereby produce a complexity to the representation of the everyday. The article, however, does not settle within this hypothesis; rather, it invests the siting of a particular place as a struggle for the discourse.
Camouflage
Authors: McCarthy Christine
Published: March 2007

This article examines the World War II gun emplacements at Castor Bay, Auckland, New Zealand, as a site of camouflage. It explores the architectural mechanisms and development of camouflage and the implications of these for interior upholstery and coverings.
Flush with Success
Authors: Srinivas Tulasi
Published: March 2007

Until the 1970s, the focus of the Hindu home was the puja room, or domestic shrine, but during the past 20 years, the focus has shifted to the bathroom. Bathrooms are now the showplaces of the Hindu home where conspicuous consumption and display are the norm, whereas the puja rooms have become increasingly smaller and private. The article discusses the dynamics of this shift in the significance of domestic spaces and the underlying changes in attitudes toward purity and pollution, cleanliness and hygiene, sacredness and secularity, and the categories of public and private that these changes imply. Exploring such changes problematizes the underlying cultural changes, the phenomena of secularization and commodification, and the changes in attitudes and values among the Hindu middle classes.
The Learning Organization: An Undelivered Promise
Authors: Elkjaer Bente
Published: March 2007

The article presents a case study on the development of a learning organization that did not last very long. I suggest that the reason for this result was the way in which learning in the learning organization was understood and enacted. The emphasis was placed on changing individual employees while the organization itself-its managerial structures and work practices-remained fairly constant. The emphasis on individual learning as opposed to organizational changes in the pursuit of developing a learning organization may be an effect of the general and abstract terms in which learning is described in the prescriptive literature on learning organizations. The case is evaluated against John Dewey's learning theory, which would consider employees' active involvement as the turning point around which a learning organization may develop.
Development Training - Using the Outdoors in Management Development
Authors: Beeby J.M. , Rathborn S.
Published: March 2007

This paper argues that although the increased use of outdoor components in management courses has led to a resurgence of interest in the approach it remains, nonetheless, mistrusted and misunderstood by many trainers. The authors consider this to be due to the interplay of several factors which include the nature of media coverage of particular courses; the character of the existing literature; and the indiscriminate use of certain 'labels' by those active in the field.

In an attempt to clarify the nature and scope of the overall approach the authors discuss relevant aspects of their own experience as providers of outdoor Develop ment Training programmes, the distinctive characteristics of which are defined, and compared and contrasted with Adventure Education and Outward Bound.
Knowing, Managing and Learning
Authors: Spender J. -C.
Published: March 2007

Observers of management education see a paradox, an expanding activity bombarded with profound complaints from all of the constituencies involved. But this only seems paradoxical to those with a unidimensional notion of managerial knowledge. Following the lead of philosophers such as William James and Polanyi, and experimental psychologists, we argue that managerial knowledge is of several distinct types. We set these out in a 2 X 2 matrix built from the individual-social and the explicit-taken-for-granted dichotomies. Each type of knowledge implies a different kind of managerial activity. The matrix also reveals characteristically different relationships between knowledge and action. Given this variety, we see that the complaints relate to the areas in which management education is weak, while the growth relates to areas in which it is strong. Vygotsky's 'activity theory' adds to our understanding of the dynamics of the managerial learning process and of the interaction between the different types of knowledge. In the final section we explore the implications of this dynamic epistemology for management educators.
Rearticulating Organizational Identity
Authors: Carroll Craig
Published: March 2007

Managers have often tried to enact a 'preferred' organizational experience on others through business concepts such as corporate philosophies, values, vision and mission statements either to create, maintain, perpetuate or redirect organizational identification processes. While managers cannot control the degree to which constituencies identify with the organization, this does not mean that they stop trying. One way managers attempt to influence organizations is through the introduction of new metaphors refraining organizational identity. This study explores the organizational discourse when a new 'official' corporate image has been introduced, 'retiring' a prior administration's /official' corporate image.
Winner Takes all
Authors: Ibbetson Adrian , Newell Sue
Published: March 2007

In the current turbulent business climate, teamwork is the ultimate competitive advantage (Tjosvold, 1991). In an attempt to achieve better teamwork some organizations have turned to adventure-based experiential training (ABET). This study evaluates outcomes from a case study of one particular ABET provider and examines what factors might affect such outcomes. A total of 157 individuals, randomly assigned to teams (n = 20), attended a residential ABET programme. The outcomes, measured in a pre- and post-test design, were perceptions of team effectiveness and perceptions of personal benefits derived from the training. Overall, results showed that there had been no improvements on both of these measures. However, this concealed significant variation between teams, with some teams improving while others deteriorated. Four moderating variables were considered to explain this variation: the team `make-up' in terms of learning styles and team roles, neither of which explained any variation; and the weather and the team's position in the staged competition, both of which were found to predict outcomes.
Seeing Organizational Learning: A `Cultural' View
Authors: Yanow Dvora
Published: March 2007

What sight does a `cultural' approach to organizational learning enable? In an earlier essay my co-author and I argued that such an approach made it possible to bypass certain conceptual problems inherent in treating organizational learning as an attribute of individuals. In this essay I reflect on the metaphoric process that enabled that argument, which was implicitly as much methodological as it was ontological and epistemological, and spell out the attributes of such an approach, which today I would term `interpretive'. I touch briefly on questions of organizational size and geographic dispersal raised by another field-based study and conclude with a brief comparison of `culture' with `communities of practice', both of which enable a collective approach, and with some observations on the implications of a cultural-interpretive approach for research methods.
Hustling, Hassling and Making it Happen: Researching Consultants in a Small Firm Context
Authors: Ram Monder
Published: March 2007

The investigation of work in small consultancy firms poses particular challenges for researchers. These include the omnipotence of the founding entrepreneur, estrangement from the academic community, a lack of time, an ambiguous knowledge base and the ostensibly unitarist nature of work relations in such settings. Drawing on the experience of an intensive fieldwork study of employment relations in three small consultancy firms, this paper examines how an `entrepreneurial' approach was used to address such contingencies. Key features of this process were the enactment of fieldwork opportunities, the potential creation of a `joint venture' and the subsequent management of relations in the field. A degree of manipulation is an inherent feature of such an enterprise; but this should be seen in the context of a relationship of `symmetry' between researcher and researched.
The Old Ways are the Best? The Durability and Usefulness of Bureaucracy in Public Sector Management
Authors: Schofield Jill
Published: March 2007

The paper addresses the paradoxical question of why, given two decades of ideological and structural reforms in the public sector, has bureaucracy survived both as a concept and in practice. The findings of research conducted in the British National Health Service suggest that bureaucracy is both useful and durable because it means that governments can rely upon the obedience of bureaucrats. In turn, it is suggested that this obedience is a function of bureaucratic vocation, the protection of professional reputation and a form of instrumental motivation. In conclusion, there is a theoretical discussion about the relevance of using Labour Process Theory to explain how state workers (bureaucrats) have experienced social and cultural adaptation to public sector reforms.
Strategy: Where is the Pattern?
Authors: Araujo Luis , Easton Geoff
Published: March 2007

Strategy as an academic subject and as a concern for practitioners has grown in importance over the last decade. A review of the strategy literature reveals that the model employed by most current schools of thought concentrates on the notion of the firm attempting to control its own destiny in the face of a hostile and faceless environment. In this paper we seek to explore an alternative view of strategy which acknowledges the limitations of a theoretical and managerial discourse that emphasizes the dichotomy between the firm and the environment and constitutes the firm as the locus of strategic control. Starting with a processual definition of strategy as consistency in a pattern of firm actions, we discuss the sources of consistency; cognitive, cultural, political, economic, market relationship, institutional relationship and network structures, and show that they can stem from outside the firm as well as within.
Managing Masculinity in Contemporary Organizational Life: A Managerial Project
Authors: Kerfoot Deborah , Knights David
Published: March 2007

This paper seeks to theorize managerial discourses and practices in terms of their effects upon sexuality, intimacy and power in organizations. While accepting the real and immediate gendered material and social inequalities that are reinforced by the recent resurgence of unadulterated `free market' capitalism, the authors focus here on certain limited aspects of femininity and masculinity that are important for an understanding of gender identity and sexuality. Acknowledging the multiplicity of masculinities and femininities, they speak of a predominant form of masculinity that is elevated and privileged in everyday life, not least in organizational settings. This form of masculinity offers many men a secure and `comfortable' identity in generating and sustaining feminine dependence and a sexuality of men that displaces intimacy. By contrast, as a socially privileged yardstick by which women are judged, and judge themselves and one another, the model of what womanhood has come to be is bound up in an image of passivity. Feminine passivity then, may be understood as an often `reluctant collaborator' in what can be seen as a silencing of women's authority and fuller participation in organizations.

The authors argue that the idealized conception of passive femininity and this silencing of women's authority has the effect of privileging men over women both materially and socially.
Organizing Madness: Reflections on the Forms of the Form
Authors: McLean Christine , Hoskin Keith
Published: March 2007

This paper investigates the form, as a modern and unprecedented textual device, which embodies a certain combination of writing and space, poses certain imperative questions, and generates `information' from the answers given. It offers a theoretical reflection on what kind of text the form is, and a possible history of how the form has been invented. It also offers an analysis of how one particular form, a Needs Assessment Schedule used in mental health care, embodies the complexities of this history, and poses ambiguities and opacities for professionals and clients using the form, or interacting with it. It also attempts an understanding at this micro-level of analysis of how larger entities, such as organizations, are constituted out of particular practices.
Too Much, Too Little and Too Often: A Critique of du Gay's Analysis of Enterprise
Authors: Fournier Valerie , Grey Christopher
Published: March 2007

In recent years, organizational and political debates have accorded a privileged position to enterprise as holding the promise for both corporate and individual development. In several publications, Paul du Gay has articulated a persuasive analysis and critique of the enterprise discourse; he and a number of collaborators have analysed the various managerial discourses and techniques through which employees are reimagined as entrepreneurs, and organizations are to move from dysfunctional bureaucracies to models of excellence. Whilst we share du Gay's critical position towards enterprise and the Foucauldian tradition upon which he draws, we feel that his analysis suffers from several flaws which we articulate around three themes. Firstly, we argue that du Gay's analysis claims too much for enterprise, and relies on a flawed dualism between enterprise and bureaucracy; secondly, we feel that his analysis is over-deterministic and makes too little space for resistance and alternative discourses to enterprise; finally, we suggest that du Gay has presented the same arguments too often and that his work is implicated in the constitution of the enterprise discourse as an accomplished fact within the academic community.
A Change of Episteme for Organizations: A Lesson from Solaris
Authors: Tirado Francisco Javier , Alcaraz José Manuel , DomèNech Miquel
Published: March 2007

The article stems from a science fiction classic: Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem. The novel enables the authors to suggest a change of episteme needed in organizational thinking in order to grasp the kind of relationships that define our present. Relationships both in the novel and in organizations have to do with the clash between finite and unlimited-finite strengths. The authors use the concept of `logic of cyborganization' to refer to the features this new setting has in present organizations. It is possible to review such logic through four considerations: (i) it moves away from the logic of representation; (ii) its condition of possibility is digital codification; (iii) its sufficient condition is simulation; (iv) it questions time as a principle of intelligibility.
Political Agency in a Globalizing World:
Authors: CERNY PHILIP G.
Published: March 2007

Theories of globalization have tended to privilege structural explanations of change, whereas agency-centred approaches have either over-emphasized the potential autonomy of ideas and rule-writing or focused on relatively incremental changes. This article attempts to develop a structurationist analysis — i.e. not only that structure and agency are mutually constituted, but also that different types of structures interact with different types of actors in analytically distinct, ideal-type modes as well as in real time. A two-dimensional typology of structuration processes is postulated, in which the coherence of structures is said to be either loose or tight and the orientations of actors either structure-bound or transformational. Such a heuristic model, however, must be expanded to cover real-time structuration processes, which are highly complex and unpredictable. This is especially true of globalization, given its scale and scope, its many levels of interaction and types of actors, and its complex iterated character: globalization generates multiple equilibria. Consequently, structural variables involved in the globalization process do not merely constrain actors but also create structurally significant opportunities for some actors to enlarge their action repertoires within an expanding and increasingly complex playing field (transnational opportunity structures). Thus different categories of actors may develop greater potential capacity to exercise disproportionate leverage in shaping the contours of longer-term change. Three stylized categories of actors are briefly examined — economic, political and social — and a first cut is made at generating hypotheses about the potential differential impact of each. Three globalization scenarios are posited, and hypotheses are generated concerning (1) the potential scope available to each category of actors for shaping wider globalization processes and (2) the possible alternative ways each category might effectively alter the balance of convergence and divergence in a globalizing world, leading to different systemic outcomes.
A Democratic Critique of Cosmopolitan Democracy: Pragmatism from the Bottom-up
Authors: COCHRAN MOLLY
Published: March 2007

This article begins by critically evaluating recent work on cosmopolitan democracy by David Held. I argue that where cosmopolitan democrats should now focus their energies is in filling a significant gap that Held's inquiries have left open — an exploration of what `bottom-up' processes bring to cosmopolitan democracy, more specifically the work of problem-solving, publicity and advocacy that takes place in sites that are referred to as international public spheres (IPSs). The next stage for the literature on cosmopolitan democracy must continue the work that James Bohman and John Dryzek have begun; that is, theorizing the role of bottom-up processes, in particular how IPSs and their members — individuals — work together in making their shared views authoritative in international decision-making. However, I argue that a pragmatist understanding of this key democratic concept, as opposed to the deliberative ones used by Bohman and Dryzek, is better suited to this endeavour.
Multiple Identities, Interfacing Games:
Authors: FIERKE K. M.
Published: March 2007

This article explores an alternative approach to the analysis of patterns in International Relations. These patterns are not to be found in recurring cause-effect sequences, but in shared rules, drawn from the past, by which actions are constituted. The metatheoretical approach builds on the later work of Wittgenstein, and particularly his use of `language games'. The approach is applied to a cursory analysis of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The exercise is less explanatory in any complete sense than illustrative of the approach. The choice of context did, however, result from a number of questions that arose during the dramatic events of the summer of 1995. The first was how to understand the apparent inability of `the West' to act. The second was how to understand the change by the end of August 1995 towards more interventionary strategies thought originally to be unrealistic in this context.
Activity Theory Is a Dead End for Cultural-Historical Psychology
Authors: Toomela Aaro
Published: March 2007

In this article, activity theory is analysed. Specific examples for the analysis are taken from Ratner’s (2000) article on emotions. It is concluded that activity theory in general and Ratner’s approach in particular are deficient at three different levels of analysis: from a general theoretical approach to the study of mind to specific details of how particular mental phenomena and their development are studied. Reasons are proposed for why activity theory in principle cannot solve those deficiencies. It is proposed that Vygotsky’s cultural-historical psychology may be more suitable for understanding the human mind and its genesis.
The Philosophies of Royce, James, and Dewey in Their American Setting
Authors: Mead George Herbert
Published: March 2007

Introduction With this issue, Culture & Psychologyadds a new thematic rubric to its previously established ones (‘From Theory to Practice’ and ‘Investigation into Ideas’). The goal of this new rubric is to bring to the attention of our contemporary readership some selected papers that have been published in the past, and largely forgotten. Yet these papers may contain ideas that are relevant for the state of affairs of the given area of inquiry in its present state, and may help in the advancement of future ideas. Each of these ‘old’ articles will be furnished with commentaries that build the bridge between the old and the new perspectives— critically examining what of the older contribution is useful for the present and the future. The first example of this new feature includes a paper by George Herbert Mead (1863–1931), published for the first time in the International Journal of Ethicsin 1930. The paper—’The Philosophies of Royce, James, and Dewey in Their American Setting’—includes a number of insights into US society in its historical divergence from from British society. The first contemporary commentary, that by noted historian Peter Stearns, provides a critical analysis of Mead’s ideas.
Locating the Dialogical Self in the Age of Transnational Migrations, Border Crossings and Diasporas
Authors: Bhatia Sunil , Ram Anjali
Published: March 2007

We begin by outlining that the dialogical self may be conceived from the point of view of the self- fuland the self- lessperspectives. Both these perspectives of self-work involve different assumptions about what should be the starting point of the I-position of the dialogical self. These assumptions need to be made explicit because they provide the key to explaining how Ipositions get transformed in the process of entering into a dialogical relationship with the other. Furthermore, we argue that in order to explain how dialogue occurs, and how the I-positions are organized and reorganized by the individual, a developmental framework may be necessary. We believe that the dialogical model is extremely relevant in the age of transnational migration and diasporic cultures. However, the challenge, for the theory of a dialogical self, is to explain how individuals living with hybridized and hyphenated identities in borderland cultures and diasporic communities coordinate their incompatible and often conflicting cultural and personal positions.
Remembering and Forgetting: Narrative as Cultural Memory
Authors: Brockmeier Jens
Published: March 2007

This paper has two objectives: one is to explore the dialectics of remembering and forgetting, an issue traditionally neglected in psychological memory research; the other is to question the widespread dichotomy of individual and social memory. To do so, a cultural-historical perspective is outlined that allows us to conceive of individual memory as an inextricable part of an overarching cultural discourse, the discourse of cultural memory. In this discourse, narrative practices are of central importance because they combine various cultural symbol systems, integrating them within one symbolic space. In order to explain and illustrate this conception of narrative, a historical memorial and work of art is examined. Three narrative orders of this artwork are distinguished—the linguistic, semiotic and performative or discursive—and discussed as particular forms of meaning construction. Together, they constitute a mnemonic system, a symbolic space of remembering and forgetting in which the time orders of past and present are continuously recombined.
Building Identities in a Mass-Communication World: A Commentary on Steven Miles's 'The Cultural Capital of Consumption'
Authors: del Río Pablo
Published: March 2007

The process of identity formation is approached from the multilevel perspective of symbiotic, distributed units (dyads, groups of consciousness, communities) that follows from a sociocultural interpretation of the issue of identity. According to that view, objects in general, and consumer goods in particular, are seen as psychological tools that are directed towards oneself as much as towards others. The process of socio-economic change that has replaced the socially mediated identification of goods by an instrumental and visual identification seems to be extending to personal identities. The effect of consumption and mass communication processes would seem to point to the fragmentation of the different units into separate and even confronting identities, as well as to the dramatization of objects in the symbolic narratives of postmodern identities constructed through advertising.
Social Representation and the Ontology of the Social World: Bringing Another Signification into the Dialogue
Authors: Campos Gilberto Pérez
Published: March 2007

Robert Farr (1998) invites us to return to Durkheim with the aim of recovering his concept of collective representations. Accepting the proposal, a review is made of Durkheim's distinction between collective and individual representations. There we can find as the core problem an ontological question: the existence of different levels of reality that cannot be reduced to each other. Farr rephrases the problem as the ontological status of social representations, but his solution—social representations are objects of study in social psychology—falls short because says nothing concening their ontological status. Wagner's (1998) paper addresses that core problem, not in terms of a return to Durkheim, but by emphasizing the social constructionist character of the social representation approach. Wagner's analysis of the social construction of 'objects' through 'constructive events' solves diverse problems involved in the issue of the ontological status of social representations, but it is suggested that more is needed to be said about social articulation and social change. The writings of Cornelius Castoriadis are then introduced in an attempt to extend the horizon of our reflection about the problem of the ontological status of the social world and to show some of its implications in the more general field of cultural psychology.
On the Internal Balance of Party Power
Authors: van Biezen Ingrid
Published: March 2007

This paper focuses on the relationship between the party central office and the party in public office in the relatively new democracies of Southern and East Central Europe. The analysis reveals that, although the party executives are strongly invaded by public office holders, it is, contrary to expectations, not the party in public office but the party central office that emerges as the most predominant of the two faces. It appears that party organizations in these new democracies are largely controlled from a small centre of power, located at the intersection of the extra-parliamentary organization and the party in public office. This phenomenon, it is argued, can probably be best explained as a device to increase party cohesion and to reduce the potentially destabilizing consequences that emerge from a context of weakly developed party loyalties and a general lack of party institutionalization.
Determinants of Political Behavior in Istanbul, Turkey
Authors: Özcan Yusuf Ziya
Published: March 2007

This paper investigates the factors that determined the party preferences in the 1987 and 1991 general elections and the 1989 local election in Istanbul, Turkey's largest metropolitan city. It argues that party preference is essentially an aspect of individual political behavior, which should be explained by the characteristics of individuals who are, in turn, affected by various macro factors. Theories developed for industrialized western countries are of limited use in developing countries and in need of revision. The research finds evidence for the importance of previous voting preferences and religious attitudes for the 1987 general election and the 1989 local elections. Predictions for the 1991 general election seem to be determined by region of birth, age, media follow-up, job status, political attitudes, years of residence in Istanbul, father's education, social class, the number of steps in migrating to Istanbul and the number of income-earners in the household.
The Re-Emergence of the Cadre Party?
Authors: Grabow Karsten
Published: March 2007

Since unification of the two German states and of the sister organizations of the major German political parties, the SPD and the CDU, party organizers in eastern Germany have been engaged in (re)building their extra-parliamentary organization into efficient and organizationally strong political agencies. The formally equal political environment since unification and also a massive transfer of material and non-material resources from western sister organizations have created conditions conducive to adjustment of the internal structures between East and West German parties. Based on empirical data from more than 140 local branches and 25 Land associations I compare major organizational characteristics of the parties in an East-West perspective.

After an analysis of the development of the party organizations since unification, I describe the type of party organization that has emerged in eastern Germany in the course of the political and societal transformation. I argue that in spite of formally equal political conditions in unified Germany, the East German parties differ so much in organizational structure from their western sisters that they resemble much more the so-called `cadre party', whereas the western parties still represent people's parties.
The Transformation of the Kuomintang's Candidate Selection System
Authors: Wu Chung-li
Published: March 2007

Candidate selection is an important part of the political process, and it has received comparatively little attention other than in some western countries. With respect to the criterion of centralization, this article analyzes the transformation of the ruling Kuomintang's (KMT) candidate selection system in Taiwan over the past five decades. The analysis draws implications for the evolution of decentralization in KMT candidate selection. Throughout this essay and in the conclusion, I note that the KMT appears likely to open its candidate selection practice in an attempt to perpetuate its dominant position in the electoral process.
In Defence of Sartori
Authors: Evans Jocelyn A. J.
Published: March 2007

In a recent re-evaluation of developments in European party systems, Paul Pennings has criticized Sartori for inaccurately predicting trends in party competition in his original typology, particularly as evidenced by indicators such as ideological polarization, electoral volatility and systemic stability. In this article I argue that many of these criticisms are unfounded as, firstly, they misinterpret Sartori's assumptions and predictions; and secondly, they employ invalid indicators to measure such party system traits. Furthermore, whilst the polarized pluralist type in particular needs clarification in many respects, focusing on voter preference distributions reveals that the fundamental arguments about the direction of competition are correct. I conclude that if a better understanding of contemporary party systems is to be reached, greater attention needs to be given to electoral demand and its interaction with party supply whilst retaining the principal features of Sartori's model.
Public Party Funding and the Schemes of Mice and Men
Authors: Mendilow Jonathan
Published: March 2007

A main aim of public party funding was to present parties with opportunities to participate on equal terms in public debate and to finance their ability to represent the general public. However, its impact on party communication and on party-voter contacts is a neglected aspect of research in the field. This paper suggests a disparity between intentions and consequences, mirroring that observed in the effects of public party funding on party expenditure, inter-party competition and party structure. This is illustrated by a case study of campaign finances and party communication in Israel since the inception of public party funding, with special attention to the 1992 elections, in which it spurred a shift to a `top-bottom' model of campaigning and to a concentration on the system management and ritualistic dimensions of electoral communications. It came at the expense of messages geared to enlist support for alternative prospective policies. The ensuing party-voter rifts and the effort to bridge them by reforming public party funding may throw light on the problematics of public party funding in western democracies and on the progress towards what have recently been termed cartel parties.
Structure and Choice
Authors: Perkins Doug
Published: March 2007

This paper represents part of an ongoing attempt to understand the nature of party formation and change in electoral democracies. The original goal was to account for the weakness of East European parties and party systems. This remains an important topic because weak parties are thought to be indicative of weaknesses in the democratic regimes themselves. Finding the theories of area specialists lacking, the author turned to traditional theories of party formation and change, which were created to explain these phenomena in the western setting. These theories, combined with the contextual insights provided by area specialists, provide considerable leverage on the question of party formation and change in Eastern Europe. In this paper, the author attempts to develop and provide evidence in support of a theory of party formation based on political choice in which actors operate not in a vacuum, but in a context that both constrains and provides resources for agency.
Institutionalization and Peronism
Authors: Levitsky Steven
Published: March 2007

The concept of institutionalization is widely employed but often poorly defined in the literature on political parties. This paper argues that `institutionalization' as it is frequently used encompasses a diverse set of meanings that are better thought of as conceptually distinct. The paper examines two phenomena that have been widely associated with institutionalization: `value infusion' and `behavioral routinization'. It uses the case of Peronism in Argentina, which is infused with value but poorly routinized, to demonstrate that these phenomena can vary independently. The paper argues that the failure to make these conceptual distinctions may pose serious problems for causal analysis. As an example, it shows how different conceptions of institutionalization lead to opposing arguments about the relation between institutionalization and the capacity of parties to adapt to changing electoral and policy environments. The paper then examines the distinction between formal and informal routinization with respect to political parties, arguing that many studies of political parties fail to incorporate informally routinized behavior patterns into their conceptions of institutionalization.
The Evaluation of Labour Market Policy
Authors: Schmid Günther
Published: March 2007

Over the past two decades, all major industrial western societies have been plagued with increasing unemployment. The member states of the European Union have been particularly hit by this phenomenon. Corresponding re- employment strategies, notably in the White Book of the European Commission in 1993, were formulated. But these proposals are still contested, partly because of lack of knowledge about the impact of existing policies. Thus, there is reason enough to draw closer attention to the evaluation of labour market policy. What do we know about the effectiveness and efficiency of labour market policies? Which approaches to measure the impact and the cost-effectiveness do exist? How do policymakers, agencies and their officials administering the policies and programmes use the results of evaluation researchers? The aim of this paper is to consider the progress made in evaluation research of labour market policy. The emphasis is more on methodological questions of evaluation and less on substantive questions of labour market policy. Section I outlines the rationale for a target-oriented approach to evaluate labour market policy; section 2 addresses general methodological issues of assessing policy impacts; section 3 discusses why experiments are so little used in labour market policy evaluation, particularly in Europe; section 4 turns to practical conclusions related to monitoring as a necessary complement to sophisticated evaluation research: and section 5 summarizes the arguments.
Bodies of Nature: Introduction
Authors: MACNAGHTEN PHIL , URRY JOHN
Published: March 2007

This issue of Body & Society was assembled to extend the interest in the embodied nature of people's experiences in, and of, the physical world. It thus seeks to develop further the emergent sociology of the body that has provided extensive insight into the embodied character of human experience. Such a sociology has, though, dealt less systematically with the various social practices that are involved in being in, or passing through, nature, the countryside, the outdoors, landscape or wilderness. These practices reflect the apparently enhanced `culture of nature' in many contemporary societies. In particular, we are concerned with various embodied performances.

The various articles consider: how is the body implicated in, and reproduced through, the diverse social practices happening within `nature'? Why is the body, and its physical capital, developed by practices thought to be beneficial because of the `natural' setting for such practices? In what form do these practices `in nature' come to be part of the reflexivity about the body, as the self and identity are increasingly matters of deliberation, negotiation and self-monitoring?
Bodies That Don’t Matter: Death and Dereliction in Chicago
Authors: Klinenberg Eric
Published: March 2007

Through a case study of the scientific, political and journalistic treatment of dead bodies in the 1995 Chicago heat wave, this article questions what kinds of truths are written on or contained within the body and what happens to the study of society once the body is not simply brought in, but made a core object of analysis. I focus on the kinds of social information bodies convey and conceal when they are made to stand in for the social in scientific and journalistic inquiries. During the heat wave, the dead bodies served as a double distraction from the sociological issues that the disaster might have made visible: first as commodified spectacles, in the media representation of the crisis; second, as scientifically defined objects, in the narrowly medical attribution of the deaths. In Chicago, the dead bodies were so visible that almost no one could see what had happened to them. This suggests that bodies can either lose their capacity to substantiate truth claims or turn into evidence for false claims when they turn into the subjects of spectacle or fetish.
The Quest for New Rituals in Dying and Mourning: Changes in the We-I Balance
Authors: WOUTERS CAS
Published: March 2007

Rituals in dying and mourning have a social and a psychic aspect: they have the twin function of diminishing the danger of succumbing to intense emotions (fear, despair, powerlessness and grief) by evoking a feeling of solidarity, and of enhancing the sense of being connected to a larger community, on which basis these emotions are acknowledged as well as dimmed and kept under control. As the changes in mourning ritual of the last half of the 20th century demonstrate, the relation or balance between these social and psychic functions of mourning rituals has been changing. From the 1960s onward, many traditional rituals came under suspicion and were pushed aside. Since the 1980s, a quest for new rituals has emerged. The article will address the question of what has changed in the social and individual regulation of these feelings by comparing old, mostly religious rituals, to more recent ones. The latter will be interpreted as part of a highly individualized quest for societal recognition and solidarity, demonstrating how processes of individualization, `solidarization' and globalization are interconnected.
The New Biology of Violence: New Geneticisms for Old?
Authors: SPALLONE PAT
Published: March 2007

Nowhere is current controversy over biological explanations for human behaviour more striking than in debates over violence. New theories are being formulated, and biological markers are being identified in new ways. The terms of discourse and debate are being changed. Violence may be represented as a pathological biological syndrome, or as natural, especially for men. Why the growing interest now in biological explanations of violence? Is the biology of violence suggestive of a new brand of biological determinism? This latter, broader question poses a challenge to the argument that current biological theories of behaviour are different and better than faulty, often racist and eugenicist, theories which have gone before. New theories do not reduce to linear cause-and-effect explanations, and there are no `genes for crime'. Nevertheless, there is a question of geneticism, `the doctrine of the primacy of the genetic make-up in determining every aspect of the human mind, constitution and social behaviour...' (Medawar, 1984: 255).
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Treated in Adolescence: 14 Long-Term Case Histories
Authors: Bolton Derek , Luckie Michael , Steinberg Derek
Published: March 2007

Fourteen young adults treated for obsessive-compulsive disorder in adolescence, mainly though not only by behaviour therapy and family therapy, were followed up between nine and 14 years later. This is the longest follow-up period so far reported for obsessive-compulsive disorder treated in adolescence. Case histories show remarkable variability and unpredictability. Clinical implications include that a crucial focus for long-term care should be the effective management of relapse, that intensive behaviour therapy during adolescence may obviate the need for long-term maintenance pharmacotherapy and that the disorder should be treated vigorously at any stage with guarded optimism, notwithstanding previous treatment history.
Asperger's Syndrome: A Case Diagnosed in Late Adolescence
Authors: Gilmore Linda , Hayes Alan
Published: March 2007

The case is presented of a 17-year-old boy with a recent diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome. Despite displaying a characteristic pattern of deficits in cognitive, social and behavioural functioning, isolated cognitive skills and a remarkable ability for calendar calculation, this boy was not diagnosed during childhood. Coexisting skills and impairments were explored through a description of developmental history and current functioning. The article considers the reasons for the disorder not being identified during childhood and discusses the case-study findings in relation to current issues about the prevalence of Asperger's syndrome, the difficulties of diagnosis and essential diagnostic criteria.
Family Therapy: Terminable and Interminable
Authors: Byrne Noela
Published: March 2007

Families who terminate therapy, but subsequently return for `another dose' are examined in the light of Freud's question as to whether psychoanalysis can ever be completed and effectively terminated. The expectations of families in relation to therapy, the contributions to discontinuation and continuation of therapy and the assessment of outcome, each shapes the answer to the Freudian quandary. `Recidivism' is reformulated as returning for `top-up' or booster sessions in the same way the immune status is restored or reinvigorated through remuneration at regular intervals. A number of outcome studies of family therapy are considered. Several clinical vignettes are provided to illustrate some of the issues surrounding the question of returning families. In particular, persisting till satisfied, returning because satisfied and pursuing deeper and lasting satisfactions are illustrated. Finally Freud's quandary as to the possibility of completing family therapy is answered with a wholeheartedly ambiguous response. Families do not progress beyond problems but they may or may not feel more equipped to handle them.
The Complexity of Change: Developing Child- and Family-Centred Care in a Russian Children's Hospital
Authors: Dias Susan Vas
Published: March 2007

Facilitating the development of Family Centred Care in a large Moscow children's hospital is described. The two-and-one-half-year period of work demonstrated many obstacles to change such as alien culture, language barriers, extreme poverty, and political problems. The techniques used to work with and overcome these difficulties are described. Clinical examples are given.