A REVISIONIST RENDERING OF STRUCTURAL FAMILY THERAPY

The popular view of structural faimly therapy sees the structural diagnosis of faimiles and lying at the heart of this therapeutic approach. This article challenges that view. It argues that the practive of structural family therapy is driven not by structural diagnosis but by two fundamental assumptions about human and family functioning: the assumption of comptence and the assumption of uniqueness. Consequences of this revisionist view are explored in two areas: (a) the area of the dialogue within the family therapy field regarding the emerging tradition of second-order therapy and (b) the area of training in structural family therapy.     

An Analysis of the Relationships Among Structure,Influence, and Gender: Helping to Build a Feminist Theory of Public Relations

Feminist public relations scholars have suggested that the organizational context may be to blame for the powerlessness of some female public relations practitioners. This study assessed this claim by using feminist theory and a structural framework. This study tested whether the perceived organizational influence of men and women in corporate public relations was related to formal structural power, relationship power, or gender. Women had less formal structural power than men, but there were no gender differences in relationship power or influence. Consistent with feminist hypothesizing as well as the structural framework, practitioners' influence was related to both their formal structural power and relationship power-but not gender.     

Assessing the structural heterogeneity of urban areas: an example from the Black Country (UK)

The increasing acknowledgement of the importance of urban habitats in the maintenance of biodiversity has brought with it a need to quantify this importance at a scale appropriate to the characteristic patch sizes encountered in urban areas. Taking a study area in the Black Country (UK) we used a spatially complete, rapid assessment method to evaluate habitat patches in terms of their internal structural heterogeneity. This method recognises the importance of both natural and anthropogenic processes in providing a diverse range of habitats and niches for both flora and fauna. It also recognises the key role of context in determining the ecological significance of each patch within the urban landscape.All habitats studied had a complex mix of both natural and artificial structural elements, where an element is a within-patch contributor to structural diversity, with each habitat type having a large range of element totals. Characteristic totals, reflecting the level of habitat structural diversity, were observed in some habitat types with residential areas having high values and industrial and commercial areas having low values. Certain structural elements were also associated with each habitat type allowing characteristic element assemblages to be derived. If structural diversity is linked with biodiversity, as seems to be the case in many (though not all) habitat types, then this unique method of viewing the urban landscape becomes a powerful tool for informing wildlife ecologists, nature conservationists, urban planners, environmental managers and landscape architects.     

A Structural Analysis of the R. Kahane Code of Informality: Elements toward a Theory of Informal Education

Reuven Kahane's code of informality, which identifies and defines eight "internal structural components," provides one of the few theoretical guides in the field of informal education. As a contribution to the development of a theoretical basis for empirical studies in this field, we wanted to uncover the underlying structural organization of these internal structural components. In a multidimensional analysis of Kahane's data, we found this structure of Kahane's eight components of informality along two axes. The first represents objects to which the structural components are applied: group, content, and activities. The second axis illustrates the components'expected impact–a process beginning with identification, moving through experimentation, and culminating in commitment. The process of experimentation represents a major contribution to the field on Kahane's part and is especially relevant to an understanding of education in a "postmodern" era. However, we found two gaps in the structure, possibly indicating missing components. Further analysis suggests that three of the components (modularity, pragmatic symbolism, and voluntarism) form a foundation of this structure and may be the minimal requirements for an understanding of informal activities and organizations.     

Islam and patriarchy: how robust is Muslim support for patriarchal values?

Evidence that Muslims support patriarchal values more than non-Muslims is abundant but the nature of this evidence is contested. The ‘cultural’ interpretation suggests that patriarchal values are an inherent element of Muslim identity. The ‘structural’ interpretation holds that patriarchal values reside in structural characteristics and have little to do with Muslim identity. Evidence on these contradictory claims is inconclusive. Neither have advocates of the cultural position shown that Muslim support for patriarchal values remains robust under control of structural characteristics; nor have proponents of the structural position demonstrated that Muslim support for these values vanishes under such controls. Filling this gap, we use multi-level models to test whether Muslim support for patriarchal values vanishes under control of patriarchy's structural underpinnings. We find that Muslim support for patriarchal values is robust against various controls; and we identify mosque attendance as a mechanism to sustain Muslim support for patriarchy in non-Muslim societies. Yet, rising levels of education, labor market participation, and a glacial emancipative trend diminish Muslim support for patriarchy, especially among women.     

A structural model of consumption: An application to China during the global financial crisis

In this paper, we develop a structural model of consumption by incorporating psychological constructs which constitute important antecedents of household consumption and provide crucial structural linkages to the mental accounting evaluation of saving or consumption. Our model is tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). The model is applied to China for measuring consumption expenditure under uncertainty emanating from the 2008 global financial crisis. An empirical test using 9784 new Chinese household survey data show that our structural model is a significant improvement over the existing behavioral life cycle model, as it is able to capture the psychological states affecting different groups of consumers such as employed workers and unemployed retirees. Our new structural model of consumption fits the data very well. The results have important implications for public policy assessment.     

PATHS AND SEMIPATHS: RECONCEPTUALIZING STRUCTURAL COHESION IN TERMS OF DIRECTED RELATIONS

In a groundbreaking article, Moody and White (2003) introduced the concept of structural cohesion, simultaneously characterizing emergent communities and their internally embedded layers by the number of node-independent paths interconnecting individuals. Like many studies, however, they "corrected" the directionality discovered in some of their data. While often done for important purposes, doing so potentially confounds structural cohesion with unrelated concepts. Some relations, especially those relating to the dynamic aspects of social life, are inherently directed, in whole or in part, and it may prove worthwhile to respect this directionality. In this article, I recast structural cohesion in terms of directed social relations and identify four distinct ways of measuring it. In two example data sets—hiring relations among graduate programs and trust relations among neighborhood residents—I show that only strong embeddedness, a type of structural cohesion emerging from directed relations, proves to be a powerful, robust, independent explanatory factor. I further show that if the directionality in the data in these examples had been "corrected," the importance of structural cohesion would have been dramatically undervalued.     

Finding Hope in the Life of Young Part-timers

The objective of this article is to link the structural factor (employment structure) and subjective factor (notion of labor) concerned with the generation process of young part-timers (freeters) by considering their life histories in terms of hope. Based on the ongoing research conducted over a period of 5 years on three male freeters, the following facts have come to light. Freeters are located on the lower strata of full-time and part-time jobs. They cannot envision a future career path in either employment style. Due to current labor ethics, they cannot form a subgroup that acknowledges their employment style and present-time orientation. Under pressure from labor ethics, which insist that they do “decent” work, they cannot help but hope to escape from this double-bind. To put it briefly, present Japanese society needs flexible workers, on the one hand, but cannot permit them to be flexible on the other. This kind of structural tension drives the young workers to hope. But hope does not dissolve the structural tension. On the contrary, it works to prolong this structural tension itself.     

Sexual harassment in contemporary workplaces: Contextualizing structural vulnerabilities

Recent high‐profile cases of unwanted sexual attention in the workplace and the vibrancy of the associated #MeToo movement have drawn attention to the need to continue to explore workplace sexual harassment. In this article, we review existing literature on workplace sexual harassment, with an emphasis on the roles of power and structural vulnerability—key factors underlying sexual harassment. We argue for the need to contextualize structural vulnerabilities, with an eye towards uncovering how dimensions of power and vulnerability vary across workplaces, creating different mechanisms contributing to sexual harassment in specific contexts. With this backdrop, we then use the restaurant service industry as an example to illustrate the unique structural vulnerabilities workers are exposed to in this environment. We conclude with a discussion of the importance of continuing to investigate the dynamics of sexual harassment, especially with work that takes an intersectional approach.     

The development of structure in random networks: an analysis of the effects of increasing network density on five measures of structure

The density of ingroup relations continues to be proposed as an indicator of structural cohesion. Network density is obviously a misleading indicator of structural cohesion when a group has subgroups; in such circumstances, the cohesion may be entirely internal to the subgroups. However, it is plausible that network density is a useful indicator of structural cohesion when it can be assumed that a group lacks subgroups. In order to analyze this possibility, I construct a set of random networks, increase the density of relations in these networks, and observe how the networks' structure develops in terms of five measures. The results show that low densities in large networks may be associated with more structural cohesion than higher densities in smaller networks; it is suggested that in field studies, attempts to control for network size will encounter problems of nonlinearity and heteroscedasticity. I conclude that network density is not a useful indicator of structure and that direct measurement of structure is to be preferred.     

Initiating dialogue on social media: An investigation of athletes’ use of dialogic principles and structural features of Twitter

In this study, the authors examine the Twitter activity of professional athletes to determine how dialogue is initiated with followers using dialogic principles and the structural features of Twitter. Findings of a content analysis suggest that two-way dialogue is under-utilized but the structural features of Twitter (hashtags and multimedia) are used to keep users coming back to their Twitter feed.     

Trading Blocs and the Capitalist World-Economy: Insights and Evidence

The structure of the world-economy is a central issue in world-systems research. Empirical structural analysis, however, has generally focused on a single structural aspect of the world-system: delineation of the core, periphery, and semiperiphery. This study examines another important structural facet of the world-system–blocs within the world trading order. The existence of blocs within the world-economy, as well as their configuration, have implications for states at all structural positions of the world system. Analysis of blocs which exist among core states can provide insights into issues of hegemonic cycles and decline. Outside of the core, the character of clusters can provide evidence regarding peripheral mobility, fragmentation, or subimperialism. Employing two complementary network methods, asymmetric multidimensional scaling and clique detection, this study examines blocs within the world-economy at three points since World War II: 1955, 1975, and 1994. Results indicate a somewhat multipolar, though not necessarily antagonistic, core and a somewhat fragmented periphery.     

Indigenous identity, ‘authenticity’ and the structural violence of settler colonialism

In many ways, the structural violence of settler colonialism continues to dominate the lived experience of Indigenous populations, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in contemporary Australia. One aspect of this structural violence concerns the regulation of Indigenous identity, today perpetuated through state monitoring of the ‘authenticity’ of Aboriginal people. This article argues that the contest over Indigenous identity perpetuates a form of symbolic political violence against Indigenous people. It considers the ways in which structural violence against Indigenous identity has featured in Australia's settler colonial regime and examines the particular violence faced by urban-dwelling Aboriginal people, who endure much contemporary scrutiny of the ‘authenticity’ of their Indigeneity. As a case study, the article examines the symbolic violence associated with a particular legal case in Australia and, in light of this analysis, concludes that settler colonies could make a decolonising gesture by legislating for the protection of Indigenous identity.     

The Problems for Academic and Entrepreneurial Research in the Use of Health Services: the Case of Unstable Structural Relationships*

Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the longitudinal stability of the structural relationships between the predisposing, enabling, and illness-morbidity characteristics of the population-at-risk and measures of health services utilization. The structural coefficients estimated from the 1971, 1972, and 1973 Health Interview Surveys were examined using the Relative Instability Ratio (RIR) presented in this paper. The RIR values indicate that—except for age, family size, occupation, and family income—all the predisposing, enabling, and illness-morbidity characteristics produce unstable structural relationships. In addition, a negative monotonic relationship was found between the temporal ordering of the groups of characteristics and their ability to produce stable structural relationships. These results demonstrate the need for entrepreneurial health manpower projection techniques and abstract academic explanatory models of health services utilization to become dynamic, rather than remaining in their present static states.     

Event sequences as generators of social network evolution

The argument presented in this paper is that one fruitful approach to the study of social network evolution takes the form of examining event sequences as generating mechanisms. Evidence for this comes from two empirical studies of structural balance theory and one simulation study of balance theoretic processes. Four views of causality—system, statistical (predictive), mechanism and algorithmic—are briefly contrasted and then examined with structural balance theory in mind. The conventional statement of the theory turns out to be under specified and inattentive to alternative mechanisms that can generate signed networks through time. Empirical studies of structural balance are limited with regard to the kinds of data that are usually collected. Proposals for studying the generation of signed networks through event sequences while being attentive to structural balance ideas are presented.     

Understanding the Microdynamics of Farm Structural Change: Entry,Exit, and Restructuring among Wisconsin Family Farmers in the 1980s1

Abstract Despite many differences among competing theories of agrarian transformation, all tend to presume that aggregate structural changes are essentially a reflection of changes taking place on individual farms over time. This presumption has been reinforced by a reliance on aggregated county-level census data or cross-sectional surveys of individual farm operations, which unfortunately afford few opportunities to test conventional assumptions about the underlying dynamics of the process. Given the large gross flows into and out of the farm sector, this paper examines the question: do aggregate structural changes primarily result from adaptations made on continuing farms, or are they the product of selective entry and exit processes? Data from a panel study of Wisconsin farmers are used to shed light on the micro-dynamics of structural change. The results suggest that continuing farmers often adapt in ways very different from aggregate trends. They also demonstrate how the character of entry and exit patterns is critical to the structural change process.     

Limited liability and its moral hazard implications: the systemic inscription of instability in contemporary capitalism

The principle of limited liability is one of the defining characteristics of modern corporate capitalism. It is also, we argue in this article, a powerful structural source of moral hazard. Engaging in a double conceptual genealogy, we investigate how the concepts of moral hazard and limited liability have evolved and diffused over time. We highlight two parallel but unconnected paths of construction, diffusion, moral contestation, and eventual institutionalization. We bring to the fore clear elective affinities between both concepts and their respective evolution. Going one step further, we suggest that both concepts have come to be connected through time. In the context of contemporary capitalism, limited liability has to be understood, we argue, as a powerful structural source of moral hazard. In conclusion, we propose that this structural link between limited liability and moral hazard is an important explanatory factor of the systemic instability of contemporary capitalism and, as a consequence, of a pattern of recurrent crises that are regularly disrupting our economies and societies.     

Black Adolescents’ Critical Reflection Development: Parents’ Racial Socialization and Attributions About Race Achievement Gaps

This research explored the development of Black adolescents’ (N = 454) critical reflection, conceived as individual (i.e., blaming Black people) and structural (i.e., blaming systemic racism) attributions for race achievement gaps. In this longitudinal study, adolescents and their parents reported their individual and structural attributions for race achievement gaps and parents’ racial socialization. Adolescents’ structural attributions increased from Grade 10 to Grade 12. Average levels of individual attributions did not change. Adolescents’ reports of parental racial socialization and parents’ structural attributions when youth were in Grade 10 predicted increases in adolescents’ structural attributions. Findings are applied to future research and efforts to increase adolescent critical reflection.     

Tracing Differentiation in Gendered Leadership: An Analysis of Differences in Gender Composition in Top Management in Business,Politics and the Civil Service

The aim of this article is to discuss the relationship between the gendering of leadership positions and sector‐specific structures within politics, business and the civil service in Denmark in the context of differences between the Nordic countries and other western countries. The analysis is based on data from a survey of top male and female leaders within the three sectors. The theoretical point of departure of this article is constructivist. It looks at gender as constituted by actions in social space, orchestrated by structural processes and a symbolic order of gender. This constitutes a cultural discourse on gender reflected in gender conventions in society and in a range of possibilities of gender positioning. Expressions of this are discussed in the analysis of the patterns of difference in structural conditions for women and men in leadership positions to be found within the three sectors. The structural conditions encompass access conditions and conditions for gendered positioning and are analysed on the basis of data on social background, education, career course, family, children and distribution of housework. The analysis shows that there is a correlation between gender composition of leadership and possibilities of gendered positioning within a sector. The results are finally discussed as possible expressions of an egalitarian culture.