Third Sector Research in International Perspective: The Role of ISTR

The International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR) celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2002. Voluntas, now the journal of ISTR, started publishing in 1990. This paper reviews changes in topics, diversity of regions studied, and diversity of authors from ISTR conference papers and Voluntas articles to examine the state of research on the third sector. The findings show that ISTR and Voluntas have increased in the range of content, regions covered, and disciplinary mix. The paper also reviews progress made on third sector research and some challenges that lie ahead.     

Role Salience and Multiple Roles: A Gender Perspective

This article describes Super's construct of role salience, and recent literature on gender issues in multiple roles that supports the wisdom of his basic ideas. Gender influences how individuals perceive various roles, role priorities and involvements over time, and role juggling during adulthood. Whether or not men and women report key roles as similarly salient; how they define, enact, and manage these roles may differ substantially. Personal variations in life careers remind counselors to explore clients' own life meanings as expressed in roles.     

Use of Scanning Research in Decision Making: An Examination of the Environmental Imperative and Power-Control Perspective

Environmental uncertainty provides the context for public relations practices. Arguably, environmental uncertainty leads to greater organizational responsiveness to those environments through strategic planning. This survey of 505 American Public Relations Society of America members indicated, however, that perceived environmental conditions were less important to management decision-making than how those conditions were translated or packaged as decision-making inputs through formal environmental scanning mechanisms. Environmental uncertainty had no impact on decision making, once the mediating influence of formal scanning was controlled.     

AIDS: An Unconventional Perspective

Amidst the destruction of AIDS, a glimmer of hope, not necessarily for a cure but for psychological well-being, exists among many persons afflicted with the virus. A large number of HIV-infected individuals have sought and attained emotional well-being despite carrying the virus and its associated stigmas. In fact, emotional growth may not necessarily be hindered, but rather enhanced by undergoing a trauma such as an HIV/AIDS diagnosis. Some HIV-positive individuals have stated that through the process of enduring the hardships of AIDS, such as revealing their condition to others and coping with the physical repercussions of the virus, they have experienced transcendence and growth. By learning from the experiences disclosed by some of those afflicted with the virus, we, as a society, can infuse value, meaning, and growth into our own lives.     

The Idea of a Cosmopolitan Europe: On the Cultural Significance of Europeanization

The idea of a cosmopolitan Europe is defined against a ‘national Europe’, on the one side and on the other, ‘global Europe’ where an internationalist EU-led Europe plays a major role in the world. A cosmopolitan Europe is a more accurate designation of the emerging form of Europeanization as a mediated and emergent reality of the national and the global. It is possible to conceive of European identity as a cosmopolitan identity based on a cultural logic of self-transformation rather than as a supranational identity or an official EU identity that is in a relation of tension with national identities. As a cosmopolitan identity, European identity is a form of post-national self-understanding that expresses itself within, as much as beyond, national identities.     

Europeanization,democratic deficit and the constitutional debate in Estonia

Using the tools of quantitative as well as qualitative discourse analysis, the article examines the patterns of politicization and Europeanization of the Estonian print media debate on the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE) during the reflection period between June 2005 and July 2007. The study arrives at the conclusion that the motive of deliberation behind the reflection period was channelled into an old habit of preferring efficiency, speed, and rationality over the principles of democratic deliberation and participation. Although a certain level of horizontal Europeanization of the media debate was detected, this was accompanied by a low level of politicization, resulting in a passive mode of argumentation and a minimum degree of debate.     

Patient Rights: An Advocate's Perspective

Abstract

The current growing concern about patients' rights and the delivery of student health care precipitates an environment of fear, distrust, and uneasiness within university health services. This paper addresses several selected clinical, ethical, and legal issues which have come into conflict during recent years. Our examination surveys ethical and legal principles of confidentiality, defines areas in which breaches are most likely to occur, and suggests ways of preventing breaches of confidence between students and health services.

While the fundamental ethical principle underlying confidentiality is the individual's right of privacy, many issues of confidentiality are extremely difficult to resolve. University health services have expanded the concept of health care to encompass all the conditions — medical, emotional, social, economic and environmental — which affect the health of students. As a result, health service administrators should be fully aware of the laws and associated legal complexities in their own state which affect confidentiality. Furthermore, student health physicians, and particularly mental health therapists must be sensitive to needs for protecting the privacy of students.

Legal principles of confidentiality discussed in this paper with respect to specific problem situations which might arise in a student health center include: 1) right to privacy; 2) privileged communications; 3) releasing information from the medical record; 4) releasing information to the student; and 5) treating minors without parental consent. Finally, in addition to the responsibilities which must be assumed by the health professional, certain student responsibilities in the selection and utilization of health professionals are recommended.     

Social Movements and Europeanization Processes: The Case of the French Associations Mobilizing around the Asylum Issue

This paper seeks to analyse the process of Europeanization of social movements mobilizing around the asylum policy since the middle of the 1990s. Taking the example of the principal French associations which have mobilized on this topic, the paper explores the dynamics that lead these associations to increasingly address the European institutions since the launching of the process of harmonisation of asylum policies. In particular, it shows that particular attention shall be given to the relationship between the associations that have constituted at the national level and the set of actors that are mobilized on this issue exclusively at the European level (which is defined as a European advocacy coalition). Through the analysis of this relationship, it can be seen that the French associations follow different processes of Europeanization. Some follow a process of inclusion into the existing European advocacy coalition while others create alternative mobilizations at the European level. This study allows us to observe and to analyse the similarities and differences in the interactions between social movements and institutions in the national political space and in the European political space on this particular issue. In doing so, it seeks to present an original perspective on a process of ‘Europeanization from below’. This research is based on the in-depth analysis of 11 associations which are representative of the diversity of the movement related to the asylum issue in France. It uses different methods that were developed in social movements studies: frame analysis, protest-event analysis and network analysis. It is based on several sources: associative discourses and publications, in-depth interviews, and associative internal literature.     

Organizational Careers: An Interactionist Perspective*

The concept of career is both useful and necessary for the study of organizations. Through members' constructions of organizational careers, an organization becomes real and capable of action. Organizational careers intermediate between the programmatic and the symbolic elements of organizational situations. Careers, through their objective and subjective dualism, penetrate both the organization's symbolic order and its objective activity and order, constituting a third and essential element in organizational structure. Careers are highly interdependent upon communication processes, notably as negotiation of joint plans of action and of identity, role and status. Careers, work, and identity are seen as interrelated aspects of the self as a social object. Events and interactions in organizational situations lead to shifts in the moral definitions of the self and others, and to behavior which serves to protect the self from becoming profaned.     

The Pet Connection: An Attachment Perspective

Using the ethological-evolutionary framework of attachment, and including how the theory has been updated and expanded by findings from attachment-based research, neuroscience and animal studies, this paper proposes that a relationship with a family pet, especially a dog or cat, reflects certain dynamics of attachment which may account for the sense of comfort and connection they provide to individuals at all stages of the life cycle. There is now convincing scientific evidence that companion animals have positive effects on psychological and physical well-being, helping shape how people regulate their emotions, deal with stress or trauma, and relate to others. Discussion considers the implications of these benefits for social work, in particular for policy, prevention, and psychotherapy. An illustration of treatment for pet loss, as well as a framework for promoting attachment in pets adopted from rescue shelters, is also presented. It is recommended that both social work professionals and social work students be educated about the human-animal bond and the significance of pets to so many of our clients.     

Coming of Age: An Individual Perspective*

This paper attempts to examine some of the broader system constraints to family therapy's ‘Coming of Age’ and to relate these constraints to more personal issues that arise for the presenter as a recently qualified family therapist. These issues and constraints are clustered around the question of hierarchy, and it is the presenter's belief that, although family therapy has much to offer as a direct service method, it has less to offer as a tool for analysing phenomena of a structural nature.     

The Making of Heroes: An Attributional Perspective

Abstract

Through the use of posed vignettes in a telephone survey, we investigate the construction of heroes. We examine the extent to which respondents attribute hero status to three potential 9/11 and “war on terrorism” heroes: Todd Beamer, Army Private Jessica Lynch, and President George W. Bush. Findings suggest the importance of the extraordinary nature and the rarity of action(s) performed by heroes in the attribution of hero status; the role of class, status, and party in the attribution process; and the moral consideration of what should be done in each posed vignette. In addition, the study indicates the utility of attribution theory for the sociological examination of heroism and the viability of normative constructs in examining heroic behavior.     

Hallmarks of the Political in Community Organizing: An Arendtian Perspective

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Drawing upon Hannah Arendt’s adherence to existential phenomenology, the article advances a political understanding...