Disability: A Rose by Any Other Name?“People‐First” Language in Canadian Society*

Dans cet article, nous examinons la notion d'incapacité telle qu'elle est créée et véhiculée par le langage qui privilégie la « personne avant tout » Nous nous penchons en premier lieu sur la formulation très répandue, qui consiste à désigner les personnes handicapées comme des « personnes comme les autres ». En second lieu, nous étudions l'idéolo‐gie actuelle, qui met l'accent sur le fait que les personnes handicapées sont simplement des « personnes avec des handicaps », dans l'une de ses manifestations les plus concrètes, c'est‐à‐dire un document récent du gouvernement intituléÀl'unisson: Une approche canadienne con‐cernant les personnes handicapées. En partant du concept de Dorothy Smith, selon lequel le langage constitue l'organisation sociale, nous démontrons la façon dont l'incapacité est médicalisée et individualisée dans ce document, et, par là, la manière dont l'incapacité prend la forme d'une limitation anormale et d'une insuffisance fonctionnelle que certaines personnes, quatre millions de Canadiens en l'occurrence, «éprouveraient ». Enfin, nous concluons que le langage qui privilégie la personne avant tout se comprend dans le cadre d'un processus continu où l'incapacité n'est plus perçue comme un phénomène social et, par conséquent, complexe sur le plan politique. This paper examines the representation of disability that is generated by, and supports, “people‐first language.” The paper first describes the ubiquitous formulation of disabled people as “just people.” Second, the current ideology that stresses that disabled people are simply “people with disabilities” is examined in one of its concrete manifestations: a recent government document entitled In Unison: A Canadian Approach to Disability Issues. By making use of Dorothy Smith's concept that language is social organization, the author shows how disability is organized in this document as a medicalized and individual matter and, as such, takes shape as abnormal limitation and lack of function that some people‐four million Canadians‐“just happen to have.” Finally, the paper concludes that people‐first language is best understood as part of an ongoing process that removes the possibility of understanding disability as a social, and thereby complex, political phenomenon. How we are seen determines in part how we are treated; how we treat others is based on how we see them; such seeing comes from representation — Dyer, 1993: 1     

A Case of Sexual Abuse by a Traditional Faith Healer: Are There Potential Preventions?

Adolescent sexual abuse is not an uncommon phenomenon in Malaysia. It is a traumatic experience that complicates the psychosocial development of young people on the threshold of adulthood. This case report highlights the psychosocial sequelae of adolescent sexual abuse by a traditional healer and discusses management issues in the context of unique cultural and belief systems.     

Welfare Recipients or Workers? Contesting the Workfare State in New York City

This paper addresses how New York City's workfare program has structured opportunities for collective action by welfare recipients. As workfare blurs the distinction between wage workers and welfare recipients, it calls into question accepted understandings of the rights and obligations of welfare recipients and fosters new claims on the state. The concept of "cultural opportunity structures" can help to explain the political mobilization of workfare participants if it is linked to a Durkheimian tradition of cultural analysis attentive to symbolic classification. The dramaturgic approach to culture exemplified in the work of Erving Goffman can usefully complement this structural approach if a narrow focus on frames and framing processes is broadened to include interaction rituals and ceremonial profanation.     

A glamorous feminism by design?

Glamour is often understood as a capitalist technology of allure and as a device with which women are objectified. The consumption glamour has also been theorized as representing a refusal to be imprisoned by the norms of gender, class, and race, as well as a form of escape from everyday life. In this article, I explore the attractiveness of glamour both as a technique of feminine performance and as a technique of capitalism. By defining and historicizing the aesthetic, I consider if, and how, glamour could be utilized to strengthen a feminist politics. I argue that glamour has become more salient in a contemporary context in which the myth of natural beauty has generally been debunked, and in which the performance of femininity constantly refers to its own artifice. Through analysis of examples of the material practices of glamour, such as putting on lipstick, wearing high-heel shoes, and drinking cocktails, I suggest that glamour works as an imaginative resource by both triggering a sense of the already enjoyed and provoking idealized visions of the future. I document how everyday experiences of glamour involve the acknowledgement of artifice, fantasies of ‘the good life’, and inevitable failure. I argue that these qualities make glamour a powerful existing resource that can be used to explore how femininity functions and to speculate about the future of feminism. Just as feminist discourses have been incorporated and reterritorialized by capitalism, I suggest that feminism could incorporate and reterritorialize the material practices of glamour in order to counter capitalist neoliberal imperatives. I explore how speculative design could allow feminists to use existing optimistic attachments, such as glamour, to think beyond capitalism.     

Volunteers for NPOs in Welfare Services in Iceland: A Diminishing Resource?

The question of declining membership of non-profit organizations (NPOs) has been central in academic discussion and research has indicated changes in the way people volunteer. Less emphasis has been on the functions of volunteers as a resource for NPOs and how changes such as increased reliance on professionals in their operations can influence the volume and type of volunteering. This paper examines the value of volunteers as a resource for Icelandic NPOs in the field of welfare services. It is based on a study of the majority of active Icelandic NPOs in the welfare field, as well as an analysis of their respective websites. The findings show that volunteer contributions do not constitute a significant part of the activities of most Icelandic NPOs in welfare services. Apart from membership of boards, volunteers seem to be used primarily as a means of supplementing other resources, such as temporary fundraising efforts. However, the level of volunteering varies according to the size and operational type of organization.     

To Integrate or Not to Integrate Dialectical Behaviour Therapy with Other Therapy Approaches?

With mounting evidence for its efficacy in the treatment of borderline personality disorder and related problems and increasing dissemination nationally and internationally, front line clinicians in practice settings are increasingly aware of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). Indeed, it is likely that this treatment is reaching individuals who practice from a variety of theoretical frameworks, such as psychodynamic, humanistic, cognitive, or some combination thereof. Therefore, this paper considers the ways in which DBT is an integrative approach, as well as the issues that may arise in the integration of DBT with other theoretical frameworks or with practices spawned by these alternative frameworks. We recommend that therapists practicing DBT adhere to the behavioral and dialectical theoretical foundations of the approach, in order to provide therapy that is effective, coherent, and consistent.     

Human rape: Adaptation or by‐product?

This paper examines two alternative evolutionary explanations of human rape. One explanation sees human rape as a facultative male reproductive tactic. The other explanation sees human rape as an evolutionary byproduct of certain evolved differences in the reproductive strategies of human males and females. These two explanations generate alternative testable predictions concerning cross‐species, cross‐cultural, and modern societal data on rape. Existing evidence is found to be insufficient to warrant an adaptive explanation of rape per se in humans. The question of whether the search for adaptations needs to be shifted from behavioral categories to the underlying psychological mechanisms is discussed.     

Psychosis caused by cannabis: Intoxication or induced?

Telling the difference between primary psychosis, cannabis intoxication and cannabis‐induced psychosis is challenging but important, especially now that it's known that almost 50% of cannabis‐induced psychosis precedes primary psychosis. A fictional case study reported in Paediatrics & Child Health makes these challenges come to life. But the purpose of the case study is only as an introduction to the meat of the article, which is how to differentiate between the three. The authors are psychiatrists from Canada.     

Self-Identified Traditional,Moderate, and Liberal Catholics: Movement-Based Identities or Something Else?

Through qualitative analyses of 50 in-depth interviews with Catholics in three Midwestern cities, I investigate the role of religious movement organizations in the formation of Catholic identities. I find that movement organizations and elites tend to have little direct impact on the formation of Catholic parishioners’ identities in my sample. While movements’ disruptions and interactions with media are useful for generating debate and wider recognition of religious disagreements, my respondents are not usually socialized by nor do they identify with familiar movements when they call themselves traditional, moderate, and liberal. Most are uninterested in and unacquainted with movement organizations and publications. Instead, their religious identification is a form of religious mapping, which reflects their self-understood position vis-à-vis recognized cultural conflicts within the larger religious community. While movements play a limited role, I argue that we should be wary of conceptualizing Catholic identities as products of movement groups or parachurch networks since most Catholic identity-work occurs within families and parishes, as opposed to movements or parachurch organizations.

Self‐Help Groups in the Welfare State: Treatment Program or Voluntary Action?

This article identifies two different perspectives used when studying self‐help groups: the professional treatment perspective and the voluntary action perspective. An outline of the perspectives leads to a discussion of their consequences for self‐help group research. The authors categorize about five hundred scientific publications from all over the world on the basis of the perspectives they present on self‐help groups; the results indicate that different perspectives seem to be preferred in different countries and when discussing different subjects. Finally, the authors suggest questions and concepts that the perspectives generate, and they emphasize the importance of being aware of which perspective is used in the study of self‐help groups.     

Traditional or Economic Values? Analyzing Absentee Landowner Attitudes Amid Social and Agricultural Transformation in Japan

Agricultural landownership in Japan has changed drastically over the last century due to post-World War II land reforms and cultural, political, and economic shifts in the subsequent decades. Initial land reform shifted the concentrated ownership of land from the wealthy to small-scale farmers. But as Japan industrialized and became more urban-centered, a substantial amount of rural land has been left abandoned or unmanaged by descendants of those farmers. This paper analyzes the attitudes of absentee agricultural landowners in Japan to better understand the prevalence of economically rational versus traditional attitudes toward land ownership. We draw on the rural sociological literature on place attachment to hypothesize why some absentee landowners feel a strong tie to the land of their ancestors, while others would be willing to sell for a reasonable price. We use unique survey data obtained from 466 absentee agricultural landowners in Japan. Logistic regression results indicate that attachment to place, gender, age, educational attainment, and usage of land is significant predictors of whether landowners hold traditional, rather than economic, values. We discuss the implications of these findings for the future of sustainable agricultural land management in Japan.     

Australian Aborigines: A growing or contracting minority?

The demographic study of aboriginal populations in Australia has been somewhat neglected until the last two decades. The historical study of aboriginal groups, from either the perspectives of epidemiology, morbidity or longevity, as a consequence has received little attention by health, education or welfare professionals until more recently. Some of the current studies, reviewed in this article, link historical approaches made in earlier studies in documenting the ‘dwindling’ presence of Australia's original inhabitants. Recent research highlights a gradually increasing public interest in a supposedly or even theoretically ‘contracting minority group’ with some disturbing implications for government policy‐makers.     

A Review of Sundberg and Partington’s Teaching Language to Children with Autism or Other Developmental Disabilities

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior -     

The Client Role: A help or a hindrance?

Using a case study methodology this paper describes the life of one man, Barry, who is labelled blind and mentally retarded. The role of the 'client' is used as an analytic tool to understand the dynamics of some of the counterproductive aspects of human services. It is illustrated how many behaviour patterns that were thought to be a reflection of the 'disability' could be understood as manifestations of the role of the client. The key attribute of this role, as understood through Barry's life, is that the person with a disability is cast as a 'recipient' or 'receiver' of services or assistance within a power dynamic where the receiver is extended little autonomy and responsibility. It is demonstrated that the client role exaggerates Barry's incompetence, perpetuates the perception that the 'problem' resides in Barry, rather than in the support system, and is an obstacle to developing relationships and participating in the broader community.     

Work in unemployment - occupied or preoccupied? A review

This review explores the literature on the concept of work in unemployment and its relationship to health. A range of literature about the activities of unemployed people is reviewed and discussed with reference to three questions: What do unemployed people do?, What activities are associated with the health of unemployed people? and Do unemployed people work? From the literature, two groups of unemployed people are described: those who are characterised by active patterns of activity and those characterised by passive patterns. It is argued that the active group is psychologically healthier than the passive group. Concepts of work in both groups of unemployed individuals are presented, arguing that the active group seeks to replace employment with other work activities and that the passive group are engaged in work also, but that this presents as fret and preoccupation about their situation. These concepts of work are presented in the context of three major theoretical models of the personal impact of unemployment. Finally, implications for practice and directions for future research are suggested.     

Group incentives or individual incentives? A real-effort weak-link experiment

Motivated by previous research on coordination problems and incentive design in organizations, we compare group incentives and individual incentives in a new experimental test-bed: a real-effort task embedding a weak-link technology. Comparing group-incentive and individual-incentive treatments, we find that the observed dynamics of both individual errors and worst performances within firms, after a phase of learning, are largely indistinguishable. Importantly, and possibly explaining our finding, more than 80% of our laboratory firms, notwithstanding initially widespread inefficiency, were eventually able to achieve and sustain efficient coordination despite the presence of an unforgiving payoff structure. This result, which may be due to the reduced strategic uncertainty so characteristic of chosen-effort weak-link game experiments, stands in stark contrast to standard results in the coordination game literature and provides an interesting challenge to test-beds currently used.