Preaching to the converted: conversion language and the constitution of the TV evangelical community

A paradox is noted in the presentation of conversion in TV evangelism; this is that although the necessity of being converted is a common theme it is clear that the evangelists are aware that their audience is already converted. An attempt is made to resolve the paradox by showing how TV evangelists use conversion language as rhetoric to legitimate their role and the rationality of the organisation which they represent. It is further shown how this legitimation is itself made possible through another use of conversion language which creates a sense of moral community embracing evangelists, organisation and audience as copartners in the shared project of conversion. Finally, it is shown how the presentation of TV evangelism as the central ritual of a moral community generates a further conversion rhetoric which depicts the community as both exclusive of and yet open to non-members; a contradiction which is resolved through the establishment of distinctive roles within the community related to the activity of winning converts.     

The Corporate Management of Human Resources Under Conditions of Decentralization

This paper relates an aspect of recent corporate change – namely, decentralization – to the strategic management of human resources. Corporate attention to human resources in the decentralized organization is of particular interest because it represents a significant departure from decentralized norms, and signals a major revision of thinking about the role, status, and activities of the personnel function. At the centre of the argument is the notion of the internal labour market, a hitherto neglected theme in treatments of decentralization. The paper begins by outlining the circumstances that encouraged decentralization in the 1980s. It then sets out the influences on the operation of a corporate internal labour market, before identifying initiatives taken by some firms to offset the shortcomings of decentralization without overturning it. In the process, the shift in the centre of gravity of the corporate personnel function, away from industrial relations management and towards human resource development, has been reinforced.     

Dancing Ourselves to Death: The Subject of Emma Goldman's Nietzschean Anarchism

Abstract

This article draws together two lively and provocative radical theorists, Emma Goldman and Friedrich Nietzsche, and suggests that a reading at their intersections can inspire political thought, action, and resistance in particular ways. The argument is framed through and productive of a particular archetype which emerges from a reading of these thinkers, that of The Dancer. Both Goldman and Nietzsche have been noted for their affect-laden reflections on dance, as an image of the subject which evades capture within the frameworks of discipline, morality, and ressentiment and which instead commits to a ceaseless and creative insurrection of- and- against the self. Here, I argue that through this image of The Dancer we can conceptualise a form of critical or anarchic subjectivity which can provocatively interpret and inspire radical political action. In the article I look at some of the ways in which dance has formed an important component of radical politics. However I also argue that dance as understood in the terms established through Goldman and Nietzsche moves beyond corporeal performance, indicating a more general ethos of the subject, one of perpetual movement, creativity, and auto-insurrection. I also reflect on the difficulties involved in the idea of ‘self-creation’; as we can see from the more problematic dimensions of Goldman's thought, creation is an ethically and ontologically ambiguous concept which, when affirmed too easily, can serve to mask the subtleties by which relations of domination persist. With this in mind, the article goes on to discuss what it might mean to ‘dance to death’, to negotiate the burden of transvaluation, limitless responsibility, and perpetual struggle which these two thinkers evoke, in the service of a creative and limitless radical political praxis.     

Same-Gender Sexual Partnering: A Re-Analysis of Trend Data

Numerous studies have been carried out to estimate the prevalence of same-gender sexual behavior. Among studies conducted in recent years, few confirm the commonly quoted figure of 10%. Yet several studies in the early 2000s indicated that the prevalence of same-gender sex may be increasing, especially among women. This article reexamines the trends identified in previous research by using General Social Survey data from 1988 to 2010 and by focusing on multiple measures of same-gender sex over time. Results indicate that for both women and men the likelihood of having had a same-gender sexual partner since age 18 continued to increase through the 2000s, but that the likelihood of having had a same-gender sexual partner in both the past year and in the past five years leveled off for women and reversed for men. Results also indicate that the percentage of people reporting a pattern of predominantly same-gender sexual behavior has neither increased nor decreased over time. A similar result was found among persons who reported being in a same-gender sexual relationship. Overall, results paint a more complex picture than prior studies in characterizing trends in same-gender sexual behavior.     

Breaking the code of the street: extending Elijah Anderson's encryption of violent street governance to retaliation in Scotland

The ‘code of the street’ is a theoretical framework concerning violent interaction. Its enactment on the street can be seen as illustrating a hegemonic masculinity. The typical setting where the code is pervasive is in disadvantaged urban communities. Those in thrall to the code's localised retaliatory edicts are usually young working-class males. Understandably, given the code's origins in the US ghetto, it is a US criminological research tradition which has stimulated the terms of this framework. Although European scholars have pursued theorising violence by recourse to the code, Scotland has not been studied, and the qualitative study reported here aims to remedy this. Based on these data, a behavioural code is evident in Scotland sharing characteristics with Anderson's original contribution, despite differences in terms of chronology and cultural setting. The study contributes to our knowledge of the life histories and personal theorisations of young offenders whose trajectories are arguably entrapped by forms of retaliatory justice and performances of a ‘protest’ type of marginalised masculinity.     

The end of the asylum (town): community responses to the depopulation and closure of the Saskatchewan Hospital, Weyburn

Never is the fraught relationship between the state-run custodial mental hospital and its host community clearer than during the period of rapid deinstitutionalization, when communities, facing the closure of their mental health facilities, inserted themselves into debates about the proper configuration of the mental health care system. Using the case of Weyburn, Saskatchewan, site in the 1960s of one of Canada's earliest and most radical experiments in rapid institutional depopulation, this article explores the government of Saskatchewan's management of the conflict between the latent functions of the old-line mental hospital as a community institution, an employer, and a generator of economic activity with its manifest function as a site of care made obsolete by the shift to community models of care.     

Verbal and Nonverbal Dynamics of Privacy, Secrecy, and Deceit

We discuss the ways in which deception can be used to protect privacy, as well as the ways in which claims to privacy can provide the latitude to lie. In their attempts to maintain their own privacy and their secrets, people can be assisted by others who overlook their lies. Habits of honoring other people's verbal and nonverbal claims about themselves, even when they are not totally convincing, and expectations of similar indulgences from others can keep interactions from getting derailed by small interpersonal bumps. But they also enable exploitation in the form of frauds and scams .