A Theory of Love and Sexual Desire

The experience of being in love involves a longing for union with the other, where an important part of this longing is sexual desire. But what is the relation between being in love and sexual desire? To answer this it must first be seen that the expression ‘in love’ normally refers to a personal relationship. This is because to be ‘in love’ is to want to be loved back. This much would be predicted by equity and social exchange theories of interpersonal attraction. Findings suggest however that love differs fundamentally from liking and, consequently, distinct approaches to the theory of love have been developed. A phenomenological theory is then put forward which suggests that the experience of being in love involves a complex of desires for reciprocal vulnerability in order to care and be cared for. Sexual desire is then seen to involve the physical expression of these desires in the form of desires for mutual baring in order to caress and be caressed. Unlike love, however, sexual desire need not refer to the other person's desires. This is supported by the existence of sexual desires like fetishism. It is concluded that other desires which often appear in instances of being in love are not basic to the experience of being in love.     

从专业社会学角度评估我国社会工作的专业化

专业社会学是以专业现象为对象的社会学的分支学科,依据国内该领域的最新研究成果——专业化运动理论——对我国社会工作的专业化水平进行定性兼定量的测评,得出我国社会工作正处在专业化的初级阶段。专业化是社会工作发展的历史选择,对专业化水平进行评估是一个系统的反思过程,具有总结经验、发现不足和辨明道路的功能。     

Themes and Continuities in Radical and Traditional Social Work

Summary Traditional and radical social work are amongst the principalcombatants in the paradigm-crisis that is alleged to characterisecontemporary social work. In considering the way in which thesetwo theoretical stances approach one of social work's centralproblems—the relationships between the person and society—itis argued that what is revealed is as much overlap as disagreement.This is in part through the subdued radicalism of a traditionalapproach which struggles to comprehend the effects of societyon clients' lives, and in part because radicalism is incorporatedinto prevailing ways of thinking through having to answer thesame questions as social work orthodoxy. It is because of thisthat Marxist social work is shown to be inevitably compromised,though this is not to deny the important contribution of radicalismin providing more satisfactory answers to crucial social workproblems.     

Confidentiality and Media Attention: A Discussion Concerning Denial and Public Education

The article presents the beginning of a discussion on how the doctrine of confidentiality may have been misapplied in the area of children's protective services. It asks the reader to consider who the client is in these cases and, having answered that question, asks what is the professional responsibility? The whole discussion is linked to the difficulties in dealing with media attention in these cases and offers some experience in the form of case examples. Woven in to the matrix of the above discussion is a clinical and public educational discussion. Preserving confidentiality in its traditional sense can contribute to a preservation of the family secret, namely, child abuse. In that way, a child protection agency can actually be contributing to the maintenance of abuse patterns in a family. Also, with no capacity to speak professionally about specific abuse, the public education impact is diminished.     

Assessment and decision-making in a case of child neglect and abuse using an attachment perspective

Assessment and decision-making in complex cases of child abuse and neglect is a difficult and taxing process. Although social workers have become increasingly good at collecting information, often under the direction of agency checklists and manuals, there is less confidence in knowing how to make sense of that information for purposes of assessment and decision-making. Theories help organize knowledge and attachment theory is proving to be a powerful player in helping practitioners make sense of what they know. The paper outlines the basic tenets of attachment theory. When adapted to the context of social work, a key principle of an attachment-based practice is the recognition that young children develop a range of adaptive strategies that are designed to help them cope with, survive, and function in whatever caregiving environment they happen to find themselves, including ones in which there is abuse and neglect. Although these strategies are functional within the context of adverse caregiving environments, they carry the risk of children suffering a variety of developmental impairments and failure to develop social competence. A case is described in which there are elements of abuse and neglect both within and across the generations. An attachment perspective is used to analyse and assess the quality and character of parenting and the different adaptive strategies developed by each child in the caregiving context in which they have found themselves. The assessment is then used to inform the decision whether or not to leave the children in the care of their mother or to place them with a long-term substitute family, with or without contact.     

Issue Information

In 2017, the number of applications for care orders in England and Wales was the highest ever recorded at 14,207. This is a significant factor, contributing to the rise in the number of children who are looked after, which is at the highest level since 1985. The authors reflect on the recently published Care Crisis Review 2018, a sector‐led review, which examines the reasons for the rise in care proceedings and the number of children in care. The review sought to identify changes to policy and practice within local authorities and the family justice system, in an attempt to divert cases away from the family courts and to reduce the number of children in care, where it is safe to do so. Whilst the legislative framework is largely effective and the system generally works well, there is insufficient funding and resources to meet the needs of children and their families when they seek help, regardless of whether this is at an early stage or when they are in crisis and most in need of care and protection.     

论我国的庭前审查程序改革

我国庭前审查程序没有能排除预断,也不利于庭审的准备和辩护权的保护.庭前审查程序功能在于防止公诉权的滥用和为审判作准备,审查范围限于性质较重的案件,审查模式有职权式与对抗制.我国庭前审查范围上限于重罪、功能上能分流案件、程序上有独立性并有利于庭审进行、审查方式为混合式,审查结果有救济机制.     

西部大开发中的金融支持

西部大开发是我国中长期发展战略,金融是现代经济的核心,西部经济的发展离不开金融的支持.金融可通过四个方面为西部大开发提供支持1.有效利用政策性银行.政策性银行在支持西部大开发方面十分重要.2.充分发挥商业性银行在西部大开发中的作用.西部大开发对资金的需求数量巨大,单靠政策性银行是不能满足的,要发挥商业性金融的优势.3.高度重视西部大开发中资本市场的发展.4.加快改革,完善金融体系,以适应西部大开发的需要.     

Social Security through Guaranteed Employment

This article reviews the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGA), perhaps India's foremost social security scheme, which is in the form of a right for rural households throughout India to work for up to 100 days a year in public works and to be paid the minimum wage for unskilled labourers. It is argued that self‐targeting leads to a more pro‐poor scheme than a cash transfer programme. However, in many states, especially poor states, work for NREGA is shown to be not a right. This is a major aspect of the corruption which gives the scheme a bad name. Also generally disappointing is the value of the assets created by the public works. But it is argued that NREGA is worth salvaging, especially if the example of the best states could be followed more widely. Attention is particularly drawn to the contribution of NREGA to the empowerment of women and scheduled castes and tribes in much of rural India.     

Moral structures and axiomatic theory

Axiomatic decision theory has proven to be a valuable analytical tool in many disciplines, and in this paper I discuss its application to moral theory. The first part of the paper discusses the general structure of moral theory, and it argues that morality need not be identified with a particular moral principle. The concept of a moral framework is introduced, and a framework for use in analyzing issues of distributive justice is presented in the second section. The application of this framework is discussed in the paper's final section, and two different moral situations are analyzed. The utilitarian principle is argued to be appropriate for the first situation in which a scarce good is to be efficiently distributed, while Rawls' difference principle is claimed to be the correct one for the more abstract issue of basic institutional justice.     

Implications of Eurocentrism for Social Work Education: Trivialization vis-à-vis Skin Color

The significance of skin color among people of color and its relative absence in social work literature is arguably attributed to Eurocentrism. Eurocentrism defines human reality via Eurocentric norms, ideas, values and perspectives. Evidence of Eurocentrism in social work is contained in its literature priorities, skin color litigation, brown racism and skin bleaching. Demonstration of the aforementioned social pathologies involving skin color pertaining to people of color is a critical, existential phenomenon. If social work is to remain viable and be sustained in the future, it must conform to the dictates of changes in the population. That will require a commensurate adjustment and a willingness of its intelligentsia to accommodate skin color and other alternative views relative to education and practice.     

Organisational transformation: a case study of the Chinese Mainland

It is necessary to develop a social service system as an efficient and effective system that is fit-for-purpose from the moment it is commissioned and flexible enough to adapt to a different social economic environment. In this paper, the case being studied is a small-scale social work organization in X city of Guangdong Province. The agency has to restructure itself in order to face the external changes in the environment. A 3PE model is originally an industrial service engineering model which is adapted and applied in this case study. The 3PE concepts represent the product, process, people and environment. This article brings significant implications to knowledge building in the social service sector. Moreover, it suggests ways for social work managers on how to act quickly to environmental changes.     

Positive confirmation bias in the acquisition of information

An experiment is reported which tests for positive confirmation bias in a setting in which individuals choose what information to buy, prior to making a decision. The design – an adaptation of Wason's selection task – reveals the use that subjects make of information after buying it. Strong evidence of positive confirmation bias, in both information acquisition and information use, is found; and this bias is found to be robust to experience. It is suggested that the bias results from a pattern of reasoning which, although producing sub-optimal decisions, is internally coherent and which is self-reinforcing.     

Domestic group,status of women,and fertility

An attempt is made in this paper to explain the fertility behavior of Patels; a major peasant caste in village Mogra in Rajasthan, India. The Patels make up 162 of the 404 households in the village and nearly 50% of the village's population of 2610. The Patels claim to have migrated from Gujarat a few centuries ago. This paper is based on a study of 140 randomly selected Patel households comprising 168 couples by using the method of intensive fieldwork over a period of about 6 months. Every household in Mogra, with the possible exception of 1 household of a Bania trader, is involved in agriculture in 1 capacity or another. The Patels are the major landowning caste, and all but 2 of the households in the sample of 140 own land. The Patels marry early, and the practice of child marriage remains common today. Being a patrilineal people, Patels consider sons as heirs to family property and status. Of the 140 households in the sample, 65 are complex in composition while 75 are simple. All the simple households are consequences of the partition of complex households. The consummation of marriage marks an immediate loss of independence to the woman. The Patels of Mogra have sound economic reasons for having a large number of children. They prefer to use family labor to the maximum possible extent. When labor is the major input, the land can absorb whatever labor is available. A great demand exists for labor in the domestic sphere as well. Compared to the returns, the cost of bringing up children is negligible. The expenditure on their clothing and education is minimal. Economics alone do not explain high fertility. Sons are essential to continue the line and for old age security. The marriage of daughters brings in bride price and religious merit. 1 son may find the burden of carrying out the kinship obligations inherited from his parents too high. When there are several sons, they can share the burden among themselves. Religious values and the obligations of kinship and marriage impel couples toward large families. It is this conjunction of forces rather than any single factor which is crucial. All these forces find expression in interpersonal relations within the family. The young mother is the person most interested in restricting births, but she is also interested in the additional labor supply that children would bring in. It is difficult for her to carry the load of domestic and farm work, childbearing and child rearing. When her reproductive career is at the peak, the woman's own power within the domestic group is at its lowest. It is through the process of giving birth to many children that she gains in power and status.     

Structural pressures, social policy and poverty

The purpose of this article is twofold. The first aim is to examine 15 OECD countries from the point of view of the so-called third-generation studies, analysing if the development of poverty and income transfers has been uniform in countries classified under the same welfare state models. This has been done to test how appropriate it is to use welfare state models as an analytical tool in comparative welfare state research. The second aim is to examine the effect of different structural factors on poverty and income transfers. Obtained results indicate that two demographic variables studied behave somewhat differently. The share of older people in the population is – not very surprisingly – connected to an increase in income transfers. In the case of younger population groups, the results are the opposite. The results show that the greater the proportion of older people in the population, the lower the poverty rates. Social policy has in many countries consisted primarily of pension policy, and investments in the elderly population are now beginning to bear fruit. Good pension schemes diminish the immediate poverty risk of older people. As a consequence of their increased well-being, the overall poverty rate will fall. In addition to demographic factors, the results indicate that the unemployment rate is connected, on the one hand, to growth in income transfers and, on the other hand, also to increases in poverty. However, unemployment's effect on poverty is not straightforward. The direct effect is indeed an increase in poverty but, if income transfers are taken into account, the indirect effect is a decrease in poverty, since unemployment increases income transfers (unemployment benefits), which on their side alleviate poverty.     

The Economic Crisis in Russia

The Russian economy has been going through an extremely grave crisis in the last few years on a scale that is unequaled in modern peacetime world economic history and that in terms of the decline of production and living standard is comparable to the rigors of wartime and the occupation of part of the country's territory, as was the case in the Soviet Union during the Patriotic War. Contrary to the hopes of many ordinary citizens and scientists, the dimensions of the crisis are growing with the expansion of the market and private property. The more capitalism there is, the worse matters become in the economy. There is no end to the crisis in sight. That the worst is yet to come is evidenced in particular by the grain-procurement crisis, which has brought the country to the brink of starvation and financial catastrophe.     

A Cross-Cultural Study of Stereotypes of Female Behavior: (in Russia and the United States)

In different cultures, the norms that enable women and men to conduct themselves in a particular way and to play particular roles in the family and society (gender roles) can differ quite widely. When it comes to gender roles that are permitted in a given culture, ideas about them that are formed by representatives of other cultures, countries, and ethnoses are called gender stereotypes. In order to indicate that what is referred to is how gender roles are perceived by representatives of the same culture (which is to say, about themselves), the term that is used is gender autostereotypes.     

Choices Under Ambiguity With Familiar And Unfamiliar Outcomes

This paper considers a decision-making process under ambiguity in which the decision-maker is supposed to split outcomes between familiar and unfamiliar ones. She is assumed to behave differently with respect to unfamiliar gains, unfamiliar losses and customary (familiar) outcomes. In particular, she is supposed to be pessimistic on gains, optimistic on losses and ambiguity neutral on the familiar outcomes. A generalization of the usual Choquet Integral is formalized when the decision maker holds capacities and probabilities. A characterization of the decision-maker’s behavior is provided for a specific subset of capacities, in which it is shown that the decision-maker underestimates the unfamiliar outcomes while is linear in probabilities on customary ones.