Is proximity preservation rational in social choice theory?

We establish a strong impossibility theorem of a rational social choice that the proximity preservation (also called weak proximorphism WPX) and the diagonal surjectivity are logically inconsistent. The result is valid for finite or infinite alternatives, discrete or continuous. It generalizes the Baigent theorem, largely weakening his antecedent. For continuum set of alternatives, we clarify the notion of WPX by showing (1) WPX almost implies the continuity, (2) WPX is almost rigid. These observations raise the issue whether WPX is a natural condition for a social welfare function. A splitting reformulation of the proximity preservation which is weaker but rational is suggested.     

Freshman 15: valid theory or harmful myth?

The authors investigated whether the perception that freshmen gain 15 pounds during their 1st year of college is related to either actual or perceived weight gain. Forty-nine incoming freshmen at a small liberal arts college completed the study by filling out questionnaires and health data at the beginning and end of their 1st year on campus. The findings revealed no significant weight gain at the end of the year. The "Freshman 15" myth was found to play an important role in perpetuating negative attitudes toward weight. Freshmen who were concerned about gaining 15 pounds were more likely to think about their weight, have a poorer body image than others, and categorize themselves as being overweight.     

Is theory development essential for the social work dissertation?

Grounded theory methodology (GTM) is a popular methodology used in social work dissertation research. GTM entails the development of theory ‘grounded in’ and generated from data systematically gathered and analyzed through qualitative methods. But little is known of its theory development and relationship to social work education at the doctoral level. In this article, we reflect on contemporary usage of GTM with respect to the state of theory development in social work education by reviewing a sample of Canadian social work doctoral dissertations that utilize GTM, identifying if and how theory was developed. Our analysis draws from a broader review of GTM research published as social work doctoral dissertations in Canada using the Qualitative Research Quality Checklist (QRQC). The findings indicate that almost half of the dissertations in the sample did not contribute to theory development, and for many, theory development was not the intention. This raises a question about whether theory development when utilizing GTM is essential in social work dissertation research, and perhaps, whether the focus should be on exploring a social work issue rather than generating theory. The paper concludes with considerations for social work educators in regards to research methodology, epistemology, and theory.     

Is there a need for a theory of urban ecology?

Although urban ecosystems are governed by the same ecological laws as rural ecosystems, the relative importance of certain ecological patterns and processes differs between the two types of ecosystems. For instance, as compared to rural areas, urban habitats are usually more islandlike, more often represent early successional stages, and more easily invaded by alien species. All these features are results of the intense human influence on urban landscapes. The question then arises whether a distinct theory of urban ecology is needed for understanding ecological patterns and processes in the urban setting. The answer is no, because urban ecosystems can be successfully studied using existing ecological theories, such as the metapopulation theory. However, due to the intense human presence approaches that include the human aspect are useful in studying urban systems. For instance, the human ecosystem model, which emphasizes human impact by identifying social components with connections to ecology, is a useful approach in urban studies. This model, combined with the urban–rural gradient approach, forms an effective tool for studying key ecological features of urban ecosystems. Better understanding of these features would increase our ability to predict changes that land use causes in urban ecosystems, and would help to integrate ecology better into urban planning.     

Mandating dialogue? International perspectives on differences between theory and practice

This paper replicates an Australian study (Lane, 2018) into how public relations practitioners understand dialogue in practice. The original study found practitioners believed they were carrying out dialogue legally required by government, but what they were doing was no more than two-way communication. It also found practitioners’ operating environments meant they could never actually undertake dialogue, even if mandated to do so. These empirically-based insights revealed the existence of gaps between theory and practice in dialogue in public relations. The study was repeated in Austria to determine if these findings were consistent internationally, and to consider what this might mean for the place of dialogue in public relations. Examples of so-called mandated ‘dialogue’ provided by Austrian public relations practitioners in semi-structured interviews were analyzed using Kent and Taylor’s (2002) five principles of dialogue. This analysis showed that despite the Austrian practitioners’ familiarity with the work of Habermas on dialogue, the mandated communication they carried out was not dialogue. The Austrian experience also showed that the nature of the underlying context of mandated communication—the need to achieve agreement between parties in varying levels of conflict; and conducting communication within boundaries of time and non-negotiable pre-existing decisions—meant dialogue could never occur. Comparing the two studies demonstrated high levels of similarity between the countries’ results, which we hope can provide the starting point for the development of a longitudinal and international perspective. This paper concludes that the place of dialogue in the theory and practice of public relations is dependent on the education of practitioners in its implementation; and a re-thinking of the role of the aspirational in situations where it can never be attained.     

Sex work: constructing ‘families’ with community of practice theory

This article examines the construction and maintenance of fictive kinships within a street-level sex work community. The analysis is supported by interviews of 14 street-level sex workers regarding everyday language use within their community. Utilizing community of practice theory to demonstrate how peripheral participants of the sex work community are socialized to understand and participate in fictive kinships, a primary finding is that language use within this community operates as a discursive framework which creates a metaphorical family where kin terms are used as an identity-making strategy. The implications of this research suggest that familial structures impact sex workers' sense of agency in relation to other members of the community. Finally, this article discusses the implications for understanding the discourse of a street-level sex worker community in the context of relationship formation and maintenance.     

Theorizing the social: Émile Durkheim's theory of force and energy

This paper offers a new interpretation of Émile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) as the basis for reconsidering the Tarde–Durkheim debate of 1903 and the distinctions between a theory of social force and a theory of social assemblage. Resisting traditional interpretations of Durkheim's scientism, this essay traces how concepts of force and energy are centrally developed in Elementary Forms to draw new lines between epistemology to ontology for twentieth-century theory. I argue that Durkheim develops an ‘energetic epistemology’ that conceives of the human capacity for shared meaning as a product of invested energy in the form of continually enacted and evolving material practice, thought, and attention. According to Durkheim, when a member of a collective perceives a god or feels belief, he or she actually perceives the accumulated energy of on-going creation and maintenance of objects and ideas by members of a collective. Sacred objects, images, and ideas bear the trace of collective energy the more they are carefully crafted, maintained in spaces that are specially arranged, and written into behavioural codes. This reading of Durkheim allows us to consider him in a lineage of social constructivists and, particularly, in relation to Ludwik Fleck, who has been largely confined to different theoretical discussions when his contributions to sociology have been acknowledged at all. By reconsidering Durkheim, we have occasion to rethink his sociology and understand how he redrew the lines between thought and action, between epistemology and ontology, through the material framework of energy and force.     

Etzioni’s new theory: a synthesis of liberal and communitarian views

There has always been a rather strong contrast between liberal and communitarian views. The liberal doctrine of “irreversible plurality of philosophical and moral ideas” for instance does not only mean that consensus about social values is difficult. “A public consensus about the necessary conception of the good cannot be obtained,” says Rawls. On the other hand, communitarians such as MacIntyre, Sandel, and Walzer, are deeply convinced by the idea of an “immanent telos” of societies, which in their opinion have the utmost influence on the development of individuals. A similar strong contrast exists between the liberal universalism of values and the communitarian particularism. Etzioni’s New Theory now tries to overcome these unsatisfactory “tyrannies of dualism” (A. Gutmann) Instead of the traditional and hostile either- or, Etzioni puts a reconciliatory as well as. “As many other dichotomies the dualism between universalism and particularism stands in the way of the development of a social Paradigm,” he regrets. Therefore Etzioni wants to combine instead of dividing. For example, social order (communitarian value) and personal autonomy (liberal value). So he proposes to install more personal autonomy in states with strong social order, as for instance Japan, and he demands more social order in traditional individualistic states like the United States (“Inverse Symbiosis”). Such “combining and balancing solutions” coincide with the theory of a “Flexible System of Private Rights” created and proposed by the famous Austrian Legal Scholar Walter Wilburg. On the level of “value principles” in the sense of Ronald Dworkin (instead of “rules” of law), Wilburg combines the differing “weights and strengths” of values (elements). An example of this is negligence, dangerous behavior, and economic capacity of risk spreading to more or less far reaching compensations of private damages, instead of the traditional either-or. The underlying idea is that of proportion. In terms of Etzioni, “The more social order within a state or society—the more individual autonomy has to be promoted.”     

A new sexual revolution? Critical theory, pornography, and the Internet

The "sexual revolution" was a central element of North American culture in the 1960s. Today, sex is increasingly central to mainstream culture, in large part due to the Internet, and we might wonder whether we are living through a comparable period of sexual history. In this article, I revisit the work of Herbert Marcuse-the original theorist of the sexual revolution-to ask whether it can contribute to a critical theory of sexuality in the era of digital technology. After outlining Marcuse's theory of the role of Eros in social life, I discuss two pornographic Web sites that combine eroticism and social critique. I argue that Marcuse's work is valuable for its emphasis on the intersection of sex, technology, and capitalist economy, but that it needs to be supplemented by a focus on masculinity and the male body in Internet pornography.     

Public governance of information asymmetries—The gap between reality and economic theory

There are numerous situations where governments take action due to systematic information asymmetries in society, while economics textbooks do not offer an integrated theory to justify these interventions in terms of utility. This paper starts with a taxonomy of situations where governments try to correct for information asymmetries. A distinction is made between government interventions due to information asymmetries between market partners, within political markets and between the government and citizens. It is then shown that Public Choice Theory offers only few and Public Finance Theory not enough explanations for the prevalence of such government interventions. Further explanations for government actions are given by Institutional Economics and Cultural and Behavioural Economics. The latter will probably generate the best progress towards creating better explanations.     

Is the basic life-cycle theory of consumption becoming more relevant? Evidence from Portugal

Review of Economics of the Household - In this paper we report and discuss estimates of life-cycle consumption profiles obtained using microdata for Portuguese households. The estimated profiles...     

Breadth or depth? A content analysis of the use of public relations theory

In a 2003 content analysis of scholarly public relations journal articles, Sallot, Lyon, Acosta-Alzura and Jones stated that, although no dominant paradigms had yet emerged, scholarship and theory building in public relations was well on its way. Entering into this project, the authors expected to see public relations at a stage where the majority of public relations research and scholarly journal articles were focusing on a centralized body of theory as the field entered the first decade of the 21st century. The results of the study presented in this article, however, suggest that this expectation was unduly optimistic. The evidence demonstrates that, after more than three decades of scholarly efforts, it is still not the case that public relations has enough of a central focus in its research and theory building to be deemed a mature discipline.     

Evaluating phase movement theory with the dramatis personae of time: 1923–1988

Parsons and Bales maintain that the temporal organization of a group's activities is characterized by a periodic swing between internal and external imperatives. The phase hypothesis holds that at the societal level phases characterized by an emphasis on solving external problems will be accompanied by economic prosperity. Temporal organization is also characterized by adaptive upgrading in response to environmental demands and a concomitant secular trend, or increasingly external focus. To test these hypotheses, 3,209 roles featured on the cover of Time magazine from 1923 to 1988 were classified as either internal (educators, mass media, entertainers, athletes, celebrities, private interest group leaders, religious leaders, and labor leaders) or external (politicians, public interest group leaders, military, administrators, scientists, and foreigners). A Phase Index was determined by the proportion of external roles. The level of business activity was established by the Cleveland Trust Company's “American Business Activity” index. While Henry Luce was editor‐in‐chief of Time (1923–1967), the phase and business cycles were correlated at +.58 (p <.01), and for the 60‐year period from 1923 to 1988 the correlation was +.468 (p = .001). Lagged values of the Phase Index produced steadily increasing correlations with business activity, from a seven‐year lag (r = ‐0.048) to a maximum correlation of +0.485 with a two‐year lag, suggesting that the Phase Index is a two‐year leading indicator of the business cycle. The trend hypothesis was evaluated by regression analysis. An increase in the proportion of external roles from 1923 to 1988 was found to be significant (Y = 63.5 + .151(X), p = .0052). Increasing numbers of “villain” roles suggest that high levels of external activity in the 1970s and 1980s may be creating internal problems. These strains may be a sign of transition from an external to an internal phase. These data are interpreted as supporting Parsons and Bales’ phase and trend hypotheses.     

Cross‐community comparability of attitude questions: An application of item response theory

The use of attitude questions is very common in comparative surveys as it allows researchers to gauge the perspectives of respondents toward social issues and explain cross‐country differentials in attitudes. Comparative studies implicitly assume that equivalently worded items are measuring the same construct in different settings. However, the results of these studies might be questionable if the measurement invariant assumption is violated and different groups of respondents do not have a shared understanding of the attitude items. This paper uses item response theory to compare the measurement of items and to test whether equivalently worded attitude questions about family dissolution are understood in the same way across various communities in India, Malaysia, Pakistan and the Philippines. The paper also examines the interaction between the respondent’s gender, the sex of the spouse leaving the marriage and the responses to the attitude questions about acceptability of family dissolution.     

Divided we stand: Defying hegemony in global public relations theory and practice?

The last decade has seen the world becoming increasingly complex. One way of dealing with complexity, according to Schwab (2010a), is to look for certainties or solutions that impose order by simplifying. The authors contend that this is a risk in public relations practice and the academy. While recognizing their benefits they warn against attempts to produce global models which also seek to impose hegemony and argue for maintaining a diversity that reflects reality. They take the cases of the UK and Singapore as respective exemplars where hegemony has arguably occurred and where it can still be resisted. They call for a professional and epistemological stand against hegemony.     

The poverty of organizational theory: Comment on: “Bourdieu and organizational analysis”

American organizational theorists have not taken up the call to apply Bourdieu’s approach in all of its richness in part because, for better or worse, evidentiary traditions render untenable the kind of sweeping analysis that makes Bourdieu’s classics compelling. Yet many of the insights found in Bourdieu are being pursued piecemeal, in distinct paradigmatic projects that explore the character of fields, the emergence of organizational habitus, and the changing forms of capital that are key to the control of modern organizations. A number of these programs build on the same sociological classics that Bourdieu built his own theory on. These share the same lineage, even if they were not directly influenced by Bourdieu.

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