The crisis in psychology

The crisis of psychology is not in the lack of psychologists or lack of literature being produced. It is in the poor development of our understanding of human life, the science itself, and the relationship of the science to the world. Three senses in which there has been loss, subject matter, method, and mission, are discussed. The loss with respect to subject matter is associated with the systematic denial of the self-evident fact that mentation, at least in the form of decisions, plans and goals, is essential to human conduct. The loss with respect to method is based on the uncritical acceptance of the assumption that the psychological is readily revealed by applying statistical methods to aggregated measures of behavior. The loss with respect to mission is manifested in the separation of modern psychology from its classical association with political science, and the task of designing the social order so that it is in harmony with human nature. The historical role of psychology in promoting the unfortunate idea that the main purpose of education is to fix responses rather than to enlighten and liberate is indicated.     

The Crisis in Psychology

The crisis ofpsychology is not in the lack of psychologists or lack of literature being produced. It is in the poor development of our understanding of human life, the science itself, and the relationship of the science to the world. Three senses in which there has been loss, subject matter, method, and mission, are discussed. The loss with respect to subject matter is associated with the systematic denial of the self-evident fact that mentation, at least in the form of decisions, plans and goals, is essential to human conduct The loss with respect to method is based on the uncritical acceptance of the assumption that the psychological is readily revealed by applying statistical methods to aggregated measures of behavior. The loss with respect to mission is manifested in the separation of modem psychology from its classical association with political science, and the task of designing the social order so that it is in harmony with human nature. The historical role of psychology in promoting the unfortunate idea that the main purpose of education is to fix responses rather than to enlighten and liberate is indicated.     

高职工学结合人才培养模式下“热炉法则”在教学质量监控与评价中的应用

高职院校人才培养,质量是核心,评价是手段,监控是保障。在工学结合人才培养模式下,把"热炉法则"应用到高职教学质量监控与评价工作中,有利于高职院校提高办学质量。文章旨在通过对这一问题的探讨,为高职院校教学管理提供一些参考。     

The European delay in transition to parenthood: the Italian case

A delay in the transition to parenthood is common to all European countries, but Mediterranean and North European young people follow different pathways of transition to adulthood, which are described in the article. Since 2003, we have conducted four social inquiries in Italian urban contexts involving male and female young people with and without children and the article is therefore focused on Italy. The principal purpose of this research programme is to interpret the determinants of the Italian phenomenon of delaying the birth of the first child. The interpretative axes for conceptualizing the problem are intergender and intergenerational comparisons. In particular, the results of these inquiries indicate that in Italy the delay of the parenthood transition is linked to the policy-makers' ‘delay’ in realizing that the decision to postpone having children is not strongly linked to any ‘crisis of family values’. The real problem is that since the beginning of the twentieth century, the present younger generation is the first to suffer from a general decrease in social opportunities as compared with the previous one. The mechanism is illustrated by Bourdieu: the new generation's members continue to form their life expectations on the basis of their parents' situations without considering the changes in conditions (e.g. inflation of study titles) that restrict their access to social resources. According to our results, the delay in the assumption of the parental role is an unintentional effect of a set of intentional actions aimed at creating and consolidating life conditions supporting self-realization. ‘Delayers’ continually try to resist the distressing sensations of precariousness, instability, vulnerability and uncertainty recognized by influential sociologists as distinctive features of contemporary life. Consequently, the delay in the family-building process takes on an active connotation: the attempt is to fill the gap in life chances related to gender and generational memberships. The last part of the article is dedicated to a comparison of European countries' social policies in support of parenthood.     

Chinese in France: diasporic experiences vary depending on generation and age of arrival

ABSTRACT

The objective of this study is to identify the factors that contribute to the successful or unsuccessful integration of the Chinese diaspora in France. There is already a significant amount of literature that probes into the immigrant experiences of various other groups in France. However, the Chinese diaspora in France has remained insufficiently studied. This study aims to address this gap. The main findings of this study are that 1) unsurprisingly, the older the age of arrival, the less well integrated immigrants are in French society, 2) somewhat surprisingly, the less well integrated an immigrant is, the more likely he or she is going to believe that France is a tolerant and open-minded country, and 3) counterintuitively, the more deeply a member of the Chinese diaspora is immersed in French society, the more likely he or she is going to believe that France is hostile to people of Asian heritage.     

Understanding the Russian Health Crisis: a Sociological Perspective

This essay applies a sociological perspective to the health crisis in Russia by delving increasingly deeper into the layers of causes. The major characteristic of this crisis is the decline in life expectancy among men and the relative stagnation of longevity among women. The primary cause is increased cardiovascular disease and alcohol-related poisoning and accidents. However, in order to determine the ultimate cause, it is necessary to examine secondary level factors to explain what is responsible for the rise in heart disease and alcohol-based afflictions. Several secondary factors were considered, including infectious disease, poor medical care, environmental pollution, policy, and stress, but the strongest evidence supported negative health lifestyles. The next step is find what is causing a lifestyle harmful to male health in particular and while stress is likely important – the best tertiary level cause is the deeply embedded working-class style of heavy drinking that is normative in Russia.     

Economics,psychotherapy and politics

The paper explores the application of ideas derived from psychotherapy to questions of economic and social policy. It is argued that disputes concerning human nature underlie many debates on economic theory. Class is reviewed from internal and emotional perspectives. Psychological obstacles to the achievement of economic inequality are explored and ways of overcoming them critically discussed. Particular attention is paid to the operation of economic sadism in the behaviour of individuals and societies. A range of possible gender differences in relation to money is reviewed. Inherited wealth is explored from the perspective of ‘therapy thinking’. The paper proposes that we reconsider what is deemed to be realistic and what is deemed to be (hopelessly) idealistic in thinking about economics. The paper concludes by proposing a deeper discussion of the problematic of sacrifice in connection with sustainable economics.     

The Science of Infancy: Academic,Social, and Political Agendas

The effectiveness of researchers in infancy is conditioned by their participation in 3 agendas. The academic agenda is devoted to the question of understanding infants, the social agenda is devoted to the question of how to improve the life of infants, and the political agenda is devoted to finding the resources for both understanding and improvement. Amplification is provided for each agenda with attention to the evolution of theoretical frameworks used by infancy researchers.     

Adult–Adolescent Interaction and Adolescents' Brain Development: Integrating Pragmatism/Interactionism and Neuroscience to Develop a Platform for Research on Adolescents' Life Regulation

The aim of this paper is to outline a platform for research on adolescents' life regulation. Adolescents' brain development is described with the help of neuroscience and integrated with pragmatist and symbolic interactionist insights about how adolescents can learn to control their impulses and act thoughtfully. The foundation for the analysis is found in American pragmatism, where a biopsychosocial perspective is built on the understanding that the developed human brain is the essential precondition of a complex and civilized society. Today's interactionists, and in general, the majority of sociologists, show little interest in brain development and function. However, there is an opportunity for sociologists and neuroscientists to collaborate in order to better understand how the brain develops in relation to biological development and social experience.     

Network brokerage and the perception of leadership

We renovate a classic experiment to define a research platform that provides data on network behavior and the causal effect of access to structural holes. Our hypothesis is that people are perceived to be leaders when they behave as network brokers, which is to say, when they coordinate information across structural holes. We focus on the perception of leadership to connect with the many field studies in which access to structural holes predicts success measures keyed to leadership. Our hypothesis is clearly supported. The broker-leader association we report is very similar in strength and form to broker-success associations reported in previous research. At the same time, it is also clear that people adapt to their randomly assigned network, re-shaping it to suit preferences that in some part emerge in team deliberations or outside the experiment. A modification to our hypothesis — at least for these small laboratory teams — is that monopoly brokerage is key to being cited as team leader. Leadership is ambiguous when multiple people are positioned to be brokers unless one person emerges by his or her network behavior as a monopoly broker. Our summary conclusion is that access to structural holes can be causal to the perception of leadership, a characteristic implicit in many success measures used to document the broker-success association.     

Children's participation: control and self‐realisation in British late modernity

Children's participation in public life in contemporary Britain is examined in relation to the tension between control and self‐realisation found in late modernity. It is argued that, despite the recognition of children as persons in their own right, public policy and practice is marked by an intensification of control, regulation and surveillance around children. This tension is considered in relation to the constitution of children in the public sphere as human capital and therefore as a means of controlling the future. This is contrasted to the private sphere where children's potential for self‐realisation is increasingly sequestered in the family. It is suggested that these trends raise issues of social inequality, intergenerational justice and institutional disengagement in relation to children. This requires more serious attention to enabling children's participation in the society. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conceptualizations of Heterosexual Anal Sex and HIV Risk in Five East African Communities

Heterosexual anal sex is underresearched and little understood, particularly in the African context. Existing prevalence data indicate that heterosexual anal sex is a widespread practice, yet little is known about the way in which it is conceptualized and understood. Describing findings from qualitative research conducted in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, we shed light on conceptualizations of heterosexual anal sex and its relation to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). These findings suggest that penile-anal sex is practiced by men and women in Africa for a range of reasons, including virginity maintenance, contraception, fulfillment of male pleasure, relationship security, menstruation, in the presence of vaginal complications, financial gain, fidelity, and prestige. Despite anal sex being the most efficient way to transmit HIV sexually, there is widespread lack of knowledge about its risks. These findings describe the ways in which anal sex is conceptualized in five East African communities, highlighting how penile-anal intercourse is often not considered “sex” and how the omission of anal sex in safe-sex messaging is interpreted as meaning that anal sex is safe. In light of its frequency and risks, greater attention must be paid to heterosexual anal sex in Africa to ensure a comprehensive approach to HIV prevention.     

Social capital contested

The purpose in this paper is to specify certain basic ways of conceptualising social capital (SC) in order to bring out the contested character of it. The paper starts by touching on the origins of the concept. This is followed by a critical overview of the views of P. Bourdieu, J.S. Coleman, A. Portes and R. Putnam, and an attempt is made to show the fragmentation of the different approaches, which in itself creates difficulties for the meaningful utilisation of SC in social-scientific research. The adoption of the SC concept by international organisations and national governments has fanned, it is claimed, its ideological use. If the notion of SC is to be salvaged, because there is something useful to it, it is therefore necessary to overcome the evident confusion and fragmentation.     

Documentation in evaluation research: Managerial and scientific requirements

Documentation in evaluation research consists of written material, in human- or machine-readable form, pertaining to the plans, activities, and results of the project. It is argued here that good documentation is essential for effective management of evaluations, and for responsible reporting of the research procedures and findings. Documentation relating to electronic data processing activity is especially important. The purpose of this paper is to stimulate consideration and discussion of documentation, and to emphasize its importance in evaluation research. The role of documentation in the planning and control functions of project management is reviewed, and the importance of documentation in the assessment of research quality with respect to objectivity, validity, and replicability is discussed. Reasons for poor documentation are considered. An outline of documentation required in different phases of research projects is provided, and recommendations for improving the quality of documentation are presented.     

构建“想象的地方”:从地方的视角看广州城市空间的文化表述

在世界同质化加剧的今天,地方的独特性和差异性成为城市提升吸引力的重要手段。从地方的视角体察城市的演进和变化,进而构建"想象的地方",或者可以成为地方参与城市规划与建设的一种方式。不过,地方本身是一个复杂的概念。地方根著于历史,但地方又是一个"未完成的过程",因而地方处于流变之中。根据地方的社会建构理论,广州的作为地方的独特性和差异性首先可以集中表现为由千年古港的经济活动所建构的商贸文化传统。以千年古港和商贸之都为核心,构建"想象的地方",就是将这种商贸文化传统融入多种表现形式的城市叙事,通过地方记忆的再现,获得地方认同。     

Trust in complementary medicine: the case of cranial osteopathy

Trust has been seen as operating within situations in which an individual's ability to assess risk or probability is absent and yet they still choose to believe in something. The development of new sets of knowledge in modern societies raises interesting questions about how the public come to trust the ‘experts’ who practice them and there is a paucity of work which addresses how trust ‘happens’ in these new relationships. This paper uses the accounts of patients who use cranial osteopathy to discuss the bases of trust in complementary medicine. It is argued that the practitioner and their therapy is not the basis of patient trust. For the initial attendance the patient relies upon the accounts and credibility of other people (network trust). After this it is the phenomenological work of the patient, who strives to find meaning in the treatments they experience, which is essential to the development of trust relationships. The paper demonstrated that patients mobilise ideas and understandings which they are familiar with to understand the unfamiliar and that it is this process of seeking meaning which is central to the creation of trust.     

Action as Will-Power

The concept of power, as commonly formulated in contemporary sociology, is noted to lack any reference to the critical dimension of personal conative striving, or will-power. This deficiency is shown to stem from an overly cognitive conception of action, one in which acts are seen to embody choice and meaning but not emotion or effort, a view that has been reinforced by the use of trivial, easily-accomplished acts as examples to illustrate the nature of action. A perspective is advocated that redresses this imbalance; one that accepts that the immediate cause of all true actions is an act of will and that action is best conceived of as behaviour that individuals allow to happen to them. Power is then defined as an individual's ability to initiate and maintain action despite behavioural resistance, a conceptualization that closely links it to the concept of 'character'. This perspective on human conduct is then shown to be identical to that adopted by Weber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism .