Staying on topic,changing the topic: language and gender in the 1995 Louisiana governor's race

This study examines the gendered use of topic shifting within an electoral community of practice of ten candidates for the governor of Louisiana (three female, seven male) during two political debates. Despite gender, the candidates shared the same communicative goals of building camaraderie with voters as well as distinguishing themselves from each other within these debates. Due to these shared goals, the debate context provided a type of baseline setting to explore whether or not previously established language and gender patterns, such as male communicative goals being generally competitive and female goals being generally collaborative, hold in a public forum. Overall, topic shifting has tended to be seen as a conversational control mechanism associated with competition and male patterns of speech. However, meta-topic shifting (i.e., shifting the topic from a particular educational plan to education in general) has been seen as a collaborative strategy associated with female speech. The findings on men's speech and topic shifting did not support previous research; however, the findings on women's speech and meta-topic shifting did support previous research.     

Electoral Politics, Ideology and American Social Policy

This article addresses the politics of social policy in the context of the 2004 American presidential election. It examines the divisions in American society and their distinctive agendas. It also explores the record of the Bush administration on key social policy issues and shows how it relates to the broader conservative tradition as well as to the Clinton administration's reform of welfare. Finally, it examines the election results. The article argues that the Bush administration has a distinctive agenda on social policy issues and that its approach is likely to reduce further the role of the social government in the provision of social policy, by emphasizing market forces and philanthropy as well as cutting taxes. It also notes, however, that the Bush administration has taken a strong stance on traditional moral values and that its opposition to abortion and homosexuality is an important part of its political strategy.     

Social Exclusion in Britain 1991—1995

The purpose of this paper is to offer a working definition of social exclusion and to operationalize it in such a way that an initial empirical analysis of social exclusion in Britain today can be undertaken. After a brief review of conceptions of social exclusion and some of the key controversies, we operationalize one definition based on the notion of participation in five types of activity—consumption, savings, production, political and social. Using the British Household Panel Survey, indicators for participation on these dimensions are developed and analysed both cross-sectionally and longitudinally for the period 1991–5. We find strong associations between an individual's participation (or lack of it) on the five different dimensions, and on each dimension over time. However, there is no distinct group of socially excluded individuals: few are excluded on all dimensions in any one year and even fewer experience multiple exclusion for the whole period. The results support the view that treating different dimensions of exclusion separately is preferable to thinking about social exclusion in terms of one homogeneous group.     

Marie Rozette and her world: class, ethnicity, gender, and race in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Mauritius

In 1790, Marie Rozette, a freedwoman of Indian origin on Mauritius, executed a series of notarial acts which revealed that she possessed a small fortune in cash assets as well as slaves and substantial landed property in one of the island’s rural districts. The life of this former slave between 1776, when she first appears in the archival record, and her death in 1804 provides a vantage point from which to gain a subaltern perspective on aspects of Mascarene social and economic history, as well as developments in the wider Indian Ocean world during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Marie Rozette’s life history challenges the notion that free persons of color in Mauritius were little more than an “unappropriated” people, and invites us to consider how supposedly marginalized individuals were able to cross various socio-economic and cultural boundaries. More specifically, her life affords an opportunity to consider the ways in which class, ethnicity, and gender, as well as race, interacted to create a distinctive Creole society in Mauritius, the nature and dynamics of which bear directly on our knowledge and understanding of the free colored experience elsewhere in the European colonial slave plantation world.     

Social Psychology in American Sociology

A Soviet scientist analyzes the emergence within the past half century of social psychology and psychological approaches in sociology as disciplines typical of Western philosophical interpretation. A contrast is made between this and the Marxist appraisal of social phenomena. Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta, Seria Ekonomiki, Filosofia (Journal of Moscow University, Economics and Philosophy Series), 1960, No. 5 — slightly abridged.     

1995 World Summit for Social Development and the Elderly

Abstract

INTRODUCTION TO PUBLIC POLICY: AN AGING PERSPECTIVE. David K. Brown. University Press of America, 1997, ISBN0-7618-0414-5. Reviewed by M. Joanna Mellon

LONG-TERM CARE FOR THE RURAL ELDERLY. Edited by Graham D. Rowles, Joyce B. Beaulieu, and Wayne W. Myers. New York: Springer Publishing Company, Inc., 1996, 201 pp. Reviewed by Linda J. Redford     

当代美国的社会保障与妇女

现代福利哲学的启示告诉我们 ,生产的社会化需要社会保障的社会化。本世纪３０年代的大萧条表明 ,个人的贫困不完全是自身的原因 ,相反“这是社会的失败 ,而不是特殊的个人或集团或阶级的失败”（Ｂｒｏｃｋｗａｙ１９９９：１０—１２）。这就需要传统意义上由私人和社区承担的社会保障转为由政府来承担。然而 ,美国社会保障体制在当代出现了一些问题 ,需要进行改革。本文考察了美国妇女在现行社会保障体制下的状况以及未来各种社会保障的设想对妇女退休收入的影响 ,并对改革设想进行了哲学上的反思。当代美国社会保障的两大问题１９３５年…     

Social Capital and Economic Performance in the American States*

Objective. This study tests the claim that areas with higher levels of social capital have superior economic performance. Method. The 14‐measure index of social capital created by Robert Putnam is reconstructed for an extended time period and integrated into cross‐sectional regression models including physical capital, human capital, and other factors relevant to state economic performance. Results. The analysis shows that social capital has no discernable influence on aggregate measures of output and employment. However, it does have a positive and significant impact on measures of economic equality and employment stability. Conclusions. This study does not support the claim that social capital is a general prerequisite for prosperity, but it does suggest that it may serve to reinforce a particular mode of communitarian economic development.     

美国华裔社群的生存环境与参政路向

当前美国华裔所面临的生存环境充满了政治气味和政治情结 ,特别是冷战结束后中美关系的起伏跌宕 ,使美国华裔不得不以更为急迫的心情来思考 :如何适应乃至驾驭居住国的政治环境 ,如何通过参政来保护自己 ,如何通过推动中美关系的发展来改善自身的生存与发展环境。美国主流社会对华裔移民态度波动的时代背景与直接原因美国主流社会对华裔移民的态度波动有一个大的时代背景 ,那就是由于拉美裔、亚裔和具有伊斯兰教背景的近东地区移民的大量涌入 ,以及他们的高出生率、顽强的生存能力和某些族群的强大的竞争能力 ,使得以土地主人自居的ＷＡＳＰ…     

Social class as a dimension in casework judgment 1

With few exceptions, outcome studies evaluating batterer treatment groups are inconclusive at best and, at worst, label such treatment programs as ineffectual. This qualitative research study was developed in an effort to understand the forces behind how positive change either happens or is subverted. Through analysis of treatment groups for batterers, the study investigated two questions: How do batterer treatment groups affect the psychological defenses of the members? What types of group dynamics emerge in offender treatment that might be unique to this population and promote defensive change? The theoretical frameworks used in this project include constructs from ego psychology related to defensive maturity and the curative factors in group process, articulated by Yalom (2005).     

Structures of seeing: blindness,race, and gender in visual culture

This essay draws on critical disability studies and blindness studies to rethink our commonsense understanding of vision and unsettle the normative sensory subject that is lodged in visual culture studies. Through a disability studies critique of visual culture studies and a juxtaposition of blind studies alongside the canonical images of the “male gaze” and the “white gaze” this paper argues that (visual) difference does not exist in the world waiting to be seen, but that difference is produced in visual power relations. This essay proposes that the possibilities of visual culture are determined by structures of seeing, rather than physiology or optics, arguing that as long as visual culture and social justice studies are lodged within a Cartesian conception of the subject, they falter in conceptualizing the social construction of perception and difference, for they have not destabilized the “distribution of the sensible” (Rancière) of their own epistemic tradition. Race, gender, and disability are apprehended here not primarily as identity categories, but as possibilities of the body that develop(ed) in tandem in complex socio-historical formations.     

Social Movements, Social Justice and Social Work

Correspondence to: Neil Thompson, Avenue Consulting Ltd, PO Box 2060, Wrexham LL13 OZG, Wales, UK. Summary This paper explores the relationship between social movements,social justice and social work. It examines the role of socialmovements in promoting social justice and considers the influencesof such movements in the development of emancipatory forms ofsocial work practice. It also considers the question of whethersocial work can be viewed as a form of social movement in itsown right. A central theme of the paper is the fundamental tensionbetween social work as a force for social regulation and asa force for social development and emancipation.