Helen Keller: rethinking the problematic icon

More than 30 years after her death, Helen Keller is still known internationally as the little deaf blind girl, the 'miracle child' who triumphed over adversity. However, behind the image, hidden from the public gaze, was a flesh-and-blood woman, writer and radical activist, suffragette and Socialist. She was a woman who lived to old age, yet is fixed in the public imagination as an eternal child. This paper charts the creation of Keller's popular image and enduring iconic status, analysing their purpose and the implications they hold for us as disabled people. It then examines the truth of her life, revealing how contemporary are the issues which determined it. Finally, it explores the value of retelling her biography and the relevance it holds in the building of disability culture.     

Social movements and biopolitical states: A study of humanitarian aid in Cape Town 2008

In May of 2008, a wave of xenophobic violence erupted in South Africa resulting in the displacement of thousands of ‘refugees’ who ended up in government-established ‘safety camps’. Due to the lack of an adequate response by government and the United Nations, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), a South African AIDS activist organisation, began providing relief to the displaced population. In this paper, we are interested in investigating the ‘biopolitical technologies’ used by the TAC in their response to this crisis. We argue that the TAC's approach to providing humanitarian aid to refugees in Cape Town drew on both the organisation's own archive and repertoire of activist techniques and practices and the biopolitical toolkit deployed by international agencies such as the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. The outcome of this cross-fertilisation, we argue, was a hybrid assemblage of tactics and techniques that did not conform to the characterisation of humanitarian aid as simply another kind of bureaucratic antipolitics. The case study draws attention to the ways in which the TAC sought to ‘empower’ refugees and non-nationals as well as pressure and leverage the South African state into responding to the crisis, and thereby fulfil its pastoral role as ‘the watchful shepherd’ and the protector of human life.     

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc.: the fall of an American icon

Domestic advice, entertainment, and home products icon Martha Stewart has been convicted of lying to government investigators following the sale of nearly 4000 shares of ImClone Systems Inc. Following accusations of insider trading, stock price manipulation, and perjury during a government investigation, the share price in her company tumbled, her award-winning television show was cancelled, advertising revenues in her magazine have plunged, and corporate officers have resigned. Can Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. survive the downfall of its namesake? Is it safe or rational to build a publicly traded brand around the name of a living person?     

Postman Pat and me: Everyday encounters with an icon of idyllic rurality

It is, by now, well accepted that those of us who live with/in contemporary Anglocentric popular culture are presented, from birth, with manifold icons and imaginings of the English countryside as idyllic. Indeed, the idea that, through such popular representations, we encounter and ‘consume’ this sense of ‘rural idyll’ – and a particular, underlying, ideologically laden set of idea(l)s – has been well rehearsed. However, this paper reflects upon a question which has hitherto been often overlooked: what is the (practical, tangible) nature of this ‘consumption’? Approaching this question, the paper re-presents a succession of encounters with one icon of idyllic rurality: Postman Pat. In so doing, the paper develops an understanding of some complex – and frequently banal, odd, happenstance, taken-for-granted – happenings and practices which are fundamentally part of the ‘consumption’ of ‘rural idyll’.     

Old age as a choice and as a necessity two interpretative repertoires

This article applies the method of discourse analysis to look at how older people talk about age and getting old. The data come from biographical interviews with people aged 90 years or over. The picture that emerges from these interviewees is one of ambivalence: old age is constructed through two contrasting repertoires that are described as the choice repertoire and the necessity repertoire. Talk about old age as a necessity produces it as a self-evident fact that the essence of old age is deterioration. Talk about old age as a choice is used to undermine the necessity repertoire and to argue for various and more positive definitions of old age among which one can make a choice. It is important to note that the contrast is not between cultural views and individual experience, but the ambivalence is rooted in people's minds. Both repertoires are reasonable and justifiable, which turns old age into a dilemma. Our thinking about old age is dilemmatic by nature     

Homelessness as a Lifestyle

For those homeless people who are rejecting traditional social services, one may have to be able to treat their symptoms as secondary while looking beyond them for primary social patterns. This reveals a lifestyle devastated by disaffiliation and social distance. People who have been homeless for a long time can be shown to be suffering from a lifestyle of homelessness or from homelessness-as-a-lifestyle. This is a condition, the components of which often include early life transiency, impulsiveness, clusters of unsolved problems, as well as a lack of social and other supports. These lifestyle elements interact with one another in perpetuating fashion, dragging the person along in an undertow, one result of which is downward mobility. Four case studies demonstrate examples of this social condition.     

Sociology as a vocation

What does it mean to be a sociologist? Does it still make sense to “commit a social science”? This essay reflects on the former question and answers the latter affirmatively. It accepts much of Weber’s argument in “Science as a Vocation,” but it goes beyond Weber by suggesting that the practice of sociology is meaningful in ways he did not fully recognize. The point of doing sociology is not only being dedicated to specialized scholarly work or called to illuminate human affairs, but also being oriented to certain virtues and moved by a particular kind of passion.     

Alienation as a Process: Work as a Case in Point*

A theoretical framework is tested predicting that the lack of perceived status recognition within a status structure promotes social psychological withdrawal from that status structure. Scales of Powerlessness, Meaninglessness, and Normlessness were used as independent variables, representing aspects of the work status structure. Self-Evaluative Involvement in work and Instrumental Work Orientation scales were employed as two indicators of social psychological withdrawal from the work role. Some empirical support for the theoretical framework is presented.     

Canada as a family

This article examines Wilden's theory of the ‘Imaginary Canada’ by studying the social construction of Canada according to two major Toronto newspapers from 1976 to 1980. Their dominant metaphor sees Canada as a marriage threatened by separation. From this metaphor all the arguments which are advanced for Canadian unity can be generated. Other less common metaphors represent Canada as a structure, a parent with several children, a body, a group of cooperative equals, or a property-owner with a dependent. They function rhetorically to shock the reader, or to supplement the dominant metaphor at its weak points. In most respects the data support Wilden's theory, although it is unclear how far the ‘Imaginary Canada’ succeeds in masking the inequalities which exist. La théorie du Canada imaginaire de Wilden est examinée à travers une étude des analogies qu'emploient les Canadiens anglais pour défendre la Confédération contre le mouvement indépendantiste québécois. L'indépendance du Québec leur paraît semblable à la rupture d'une famille, dans laquelle le Québec est ou la femme du Canada anglais ou un(e) des dix enfants. Parfois ils perçoivent les provinces comme un groupe d'amis ou d'alliés ou comme les parties d'un corps. Dans chaque cas on tire la même conclusion: que le Canada est légitime et doit rester uni. D'autres conclusions que Ton eût pu tirer de ces analogies, et d'autres analogies qui pourraient mener à d'autres conclusions, ont générale-ment été supprimées. Les analogies populaires ont done pour fonction d'unir le Canada anglais, de légitimer la structure politique et économique actuelle, et de supprimer la conscience populaire de ses inégalités et de son oppression. Les analogies multiples sont probablement plus efficaces à cet égard que ne pourrait l'ètre une simple analogie. La recherche ne révéle pas à quel point ces analogies ont pour effet de répandre la fausse conscience. Elle ne saurait résoudre cette imprécision dans la théorie de Wilden, tandis qu'elle confirme le reste de sa thèse.     

Sociology as a vocation

During the 1950s, when sociology modeled itself on the natural sciences, the vocational ideals that shaped the profession were also modeled on the natural sciences; objectivity, peer review, and other such ideals were linked to the epistemological assumption that reality existed out there in the world to be discovered by the techniques of science. With postmodern and other similar philosophical challenges in the air, it is no longer possible to believe that the relationship between reality and its representations is so uncomplicated. But what do these new epistemologies have to say about professional conduct? This paper argues that it would be a mistake to practice the deconstruction one preaches. Epistemological skepticism, far from leading to an attitude toward professional conduct that “anything goes,” requires an ever-greater belief in professional responsibility.     

Durkheim as a Functionalist*

Functionalism is basic to Durkheim's sociology. Like other functionalists, he focused on the problem of order and the positive effects of social institutions, explaining their existence in terms of their functionally necessary contributions. As a pioneer he grappled with many of the basic problems posed by this perspective. He derived more than one explanation linking existence and necessity. The most distinctive, and yet widely ignored, aspect of his approach is the implicit argument that as a powerful, self-conscious entity controlling the behavior of its individual members, society can perpetuate the social conditions of its own existence. Many of the characteristic strengths and weaknesses of Durkheim's sociological theory may be traced to his functionalism.     

Education as a social agreement

This article shows that the main hypotheses used in the economic literature to explain the existence of low-skill traps are not necessary. In particular, if we relax two strong assumptions, those of perfect information in the labor market and individual homogeneity, less-developed countries may remain caught in a poverty trap even when there are not intergenerational or intertemporal spillovers, intersectoral complementarities, increasing returns to scale or credit market imperfections. Due to the lack of coordination among workers, the role played by some institutions such as universities or unions in escaping the trap becomes crucial. A numerical calibration of the model supports our conclusions.     

Marriage as a commitment device

Non-cooperative couples are inefficient. Cooperation raises the utility of both parents, and of each child, but does not guarantee efficiency. In the presence of credit rationing, a cooperative equilibrium may not exist outside marriage, because the main earner cannot credibly promise to compensate the main childcarer at some future date, and may not be able or willing to do so at front. By allowing the main childcarer to credibly threaten divorce if the main earner does not deliver the promised compensation when the time comes, marriage makes that promise credible, and thus increases the probability that a cooperative equilibrium will exist. In a separate-property jurisdiction, a reduction in the cost or difficulty of obtaining a divorce increases married women??s participation in the labour market. In a community-property one, it has no such effect.     

Referenda as a Catch-22

The result of a referendum delivers a significant amount of information about social preferences to each composite member of the society. This paper argues that, beyond this obvious fact, the choice of an authority not to offer a referendum, although permitted to do so, may enhance the information individuals posses about social preferences as well. The addition of a referendum option in the rules of a game, that is, by enabling the authority to offer referenda at will, results in an assured re-election of the authorities that implement socially beneficial policies and reduces the likelihood of the re-election of the authorities that implement socially detrimental policies. In a sense, by allowing an authority to offer referenda, an inescapable Catch-22 is introduced in the game, which inhibits the re-election of a measure of “bad” authorities and, thus, confirms that one of the main benefits of a democratic institution is the preservation of “good” authorities in power. It is, finally, demonstrated that non-binding referenda are more influential (in the directions described above) than binding referenda as far as the authority’s re-election prospect is concerned.     

Conceptualizing jealousy as a disposition

The following aspects of jealousy are discussed: (1) An initial conceptualization of jealousy as a disposition which posits that to understand jealousy one must consider causes of individual differences and situational variation in jealous behavior. (2) Initial research on the personality of dispositionally jealous persons which found them to be self-deprecating, unhappy, anxious, externally controlled, and dogmatic. In addition, a research study on the role of arousability is reviewed and preliminary speculations on integrating jealousy with research and theory on social cognition are presented. (3) A review of research on the nature of jealousy-evoking situations. (4) How the person and situation interact and how this view can be integrated with dispositional jealousy. And (5) a few implications for the management of jealousy.     

Gambling as a rational addiction

This paper applies the Becker-Murphy model of rational addiction to gambling and tests the hypotheses of the model empirically using data on pari-mutuel betting at horse tracks from 1950 through 1987. Gambling demand equations which explicitly account for the fact that gambling is an addictive behavior are derived from the Becker-Murphy theoretical model of rational addictive behavior. The effectiveness of changing the takeout rate, the price variable, on gambling behavior, is examined within the addictive framework. Using instrumental variables techniques, gambling demand equations are estimated, with the results supporting the hypothesis of model of rational addictive behavior. In particular, significant inter-temporal linkages are found in gambling consumption, confirming the assumption that gambling is addictive. Future events are found to have a significant impact on current consumption, implying that individuals are not behaving myopically. The long run price elasticities of demand implied by the estimates obtained for the addictive demand equation for handle per attendee is approximately –0.68, significantly larger (by approximately a third) than those obtained from demand equations estimated under the hypothesis of nonaddictive behavior (with an elasticity of –0.454). This reaffirms that the takeout rate is an effective policy instrument for state governments as they set the price of gambling.The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of Michael Grossman and Frank Chaloupka. Comments and insights on early drafts of this paper from Gary Becker, Kevin Murphy, Robert Cherry, Alice Hughey, and William Eadington are appreciated and have improved the final product. Peggy Hendershot (Thoroughbred Racing Commission), and Terri LaFleur (Gaming and Wagering Business Magazine) made the job of collecting data for this study a manageable task. Also, thanks goes to Eugene Martin Christiansen for spending hours explaining terms and giving me direction, in an untiring and supportive manner. The research assistance of Christopher Mobilia and Allan Markowitz is appreciated. The views expressed, along with any errors are those of the author.