My Recovery Story

This is an autobiographical story in which Charles Feldman grows up absurd, wants to be a hippie, is briefly involved in a socialist organization, comes down with schizophrenia, doesn't realize at first that he has an illness, suffers at the hands of an incompetent psychiatrist, gets better treatment with new providers, comes to terms with the illness, advocates on behalf of people living with mental illness, and resolves his existential identity crisis by finding a spiritual home in the Vedanta movement, which provides the culmination of his recovery.     

Adolescents gradually improve at detecting trustworthiness from the facial features of unknown adults

People can (to some extent) detect trustworthiness from the facial features of social partners, and populations which underperform at this task are at a greater risk of abuse. Here we focus on situations in which adolescents make a decision whether to trust an unknown adult. Adolescents aged 13–18 (N = 540) played a trust game, in which they made decisions whether to trust unknown adults based on their picture. We show that trusting decisions become increasingly accurate with age, from a small effect size at age 13 to an effect size 2.5 times larger at age 18. We consider the implications of this result for the development of prosociality and the possible mechanisms underlying the development of trustworthiness detection from faces.     

Subjective well-being

This paper examines the notion of “subjective well-being” as it is used in literature on subjective measures of well-being. I argue that those who employ the notion differ at least superficially on at least two points: first, about the relationship between subjective well-being and well-being simpliciter, and second, about the constituents of subjective well-being. In an effort to reconcile the differences, I propose an interpretation according to which subjective measures presuppose preference hedonism: an account according to which well-being is a matter of desired mental states.     

Ich – wir – meine Organisation werden das überstehen! Der Fragebogen zur individuellen,Team- und organisationalen Resilienz (FITOR)I – we – my organization will survive it! The questionnaire to measure individual,team and organizational resilience (FITOR)

Resilience is defined as the capacity to bounce back from failures, setbacks or other potentially threatening situations. Moreover, resilience enables employees, teams, and organizations to thrive when facing situations of change or adversity. Despite the theoretical discussion of the importance of resilience at different levels (i.?e., individual, team, and organizational level), previous research has mainly focused on individual resilience at work. This may be due to a lack of options to measure resilience in an efficient and reliable way simultaneously at all three levels. The purpose of this study is therefore to develop an instrument to assess resilience in parallel at the individual, team, and organizational level. Applying interviews and two questionnaire studies, we introduce a new instrument which enables researchers to analyze how these different levels of resilience are linked to each other. Furthermore, this instrument offers practitioners a deeper insight in employees’ different perceptions of resilience, which may help to implement interventions at relevant levels.     

The good,the bad and the unnatural: a study of coroners' decisions in Northern Ireland

This paper is concerned with an examination of the investigatory resources and explanatory principles which surround the dead. The central focus is upon the distinctions which are drawn between natural and unnatural death, and the paper has two main aims. First, it attempts to measure the direction and flow of investigatory and observatory power which emanates from the coroners’ court. Second, it attempts to unravel the connotations embodied in the concept of unnatural death. It is argued that the characteristics of the natural and the unnatural are not to be found within the anatomy or physiology of the corpse, but rather in the principles of an aetiological framework which seeks to decontextualise death and disease from their social base, and which consequently distorts our vision of the human condition at death. The data on which the arguments are based are drawn from studies of those deemed to have died unnaturally in Belfast at various periods during the twentieth century.     

Four Paths to Spirit at Work: Journeys of Personal Meaning,Fulfillment, Well‐Being,and Transcendence Through Work

Spirit at work involves profound feelings of well‐being, a belief that one's work makes a contribution, a sense of connection to others and common purpose, an awareness of a connection to something larger than self, and a sense of perfection and transcendence. This exploratory qualitative study revealed 4 paths leading to spirit at work: the always there path, which had a continuous nature; the coming together path, which resembled a growing and integrative journey; the transformative events path, which was in response to an awakening or crisis; and the contextually sensitive path, which was dependent on the work environment. Implications for career counseling are discussed.     

‘Rachel's not here’: Constructed dialogue in gossip

Sociolinguistic research has demonstrated that gossip is a co‐constructed phenomenon, which allows participants to establish solidarity and build alignments with each other, while evaluating an absent party. Gossip can also serve important social functions, such as helping to establish and reconfirm group norms and values. The present study provides a detailed analysis of an extended gossip episode that occurred within an institutional context: a study group interaction at a U.S. university. Our analysis shows how, in gossip, constructed dialogue both prompts and legitimizes pejorative evaluations towards an absent third party, and is actually the pivot around which group members negotiate values and norms in the process of arriving at a shared moral stance. Our analysis also demonstrates that alignment in gossip interactions is tenuous and must be continuously renewed.     

Discourse and the containment of disability in higher education: an institutional analysis

We use a social model of disability to examine disability discourse at a regional university in the mid-western United States. Using an institutional unit of analysis and several different information sources (e.g. interviews, federal regulations, syllabus texts, surveys), we illustrate the ways in which disability-as-difference is governed by an architecture of containment at the university.     

Developmental issues in child abuse: Implications for intervention

This paper reviews some of the issues in child abuse such as problems of definition, characteristics of abuser and abused, and etiology. It emphasizes that child abuse can start at any age. A developmental approach is suggested in order to understand the relationship between the child's stage of development and its idiosyncratic potential for stimulating aggression on the part of the parent. This approach offers a broad framework in which phase specific stressors, characteristics of the child, the abuse prone personality of the abuser, as well as the family system and external stress factors, can be considered together and upon which intervention strategies can be planned.Lynn Ohrenstein is Administrative Supervisor at the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services, a doctoral candidate at Yeshiva University, and in private practice.This is an expanded version of a paper delivered November 4, 1982 by the author at an interdivisional meeting at the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services devoted to Issues on Domestic Violence.     

Almost all social choice rules are highly manipulable,but a few aren't

Explores, for several classes of social choice rules, the distribution of the number of profiles at which a rule can be strategically manipulated. In this paper, we will do comparative social choice, looking for information about how social choice rules compare in their vulnerability to strategic misrepresentation of preferences.I am indebted to Universidad Internacional Menendez Pelayo for an invitation to present an early version of this paper at a June, 1989 conference at Valencia, Spain. Thanks for comments go to the participants of that conference, especially Salvador Barbera; also for comments at seminars at Syracuse University and the University of Rochester.     

MANDATORY RETIREMENT AS A CLAUSE IN AN EMPLOYMENT INSURANCE CONTRACT

This paper postulates the existence of an "employment insurance contract" in which firms insure the employment of workers, at a predetermined wage, against potential, age related declines in productivity. To limit its liability the firm establishes an age limit to its promise ––– the mandatory retirement age. It is demonstrated that Pareto-efficient contracts exist which involve mandatory retirement at a specific age. The existence of these contracts, including mandatory retirement, increases workers' life-time utility and encourages the accumulation of human capital. Empirical results are consistent with the predictions of the model.     

The central Europe experiment: Looking at persons and looking at objects

Gaze at objects, another person, and background was measured for fifteen dyads which constituted five different experimental groups in which task and situational factors were varied. The findings were that background stimuli had an unreliable effect on gaze; a very simple object relevant to the subject's task attracted a great deal of gaze and greatly reduced gaze at the other person. This effect was even stronger with a complex relevant object, where visual attention was almost completely transferred from the other person to the object. There was evidence of forces to avoid too much gaze at the other person. These findings suggested the possibility of postulating some new function of gaze in addition to information-seeking, or the possibility of an explanation in terms of the approach-avoidance model of gaze (Argyle & Dean, 1965).The authors are grateful to the S.S.R.C. for financial support.     

THE ECONOMIC ROOTS OF THE AMERICAN “ZIGZAG”: KNIVES,FORKS, AND BRITISH MERCANTILISM

Relative prices that prevail at critical times can shape culture in precise ways. Building on the work of the renowned archeologist James Deetz, this essay argues that the difference between Europeans’ and Americans’ use of knives and forks at the dinner table is an artifact of British mercantilism, which inflated the price of tableware in the American colonies and preserved the table fork as a colonial luxury long after it was an ordinary utensil in England. Pressures of conformity at the table have locked in these manners, which persist as an enduring effect of the British Navigation Acts. (JEL A10, D02, F13, N00)     

OVEREXPANSION IN THE SOCIAL INSURANCE BUDGET AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL PERSPECTIVE

Browning (1975) has recently reasoned that the social insurance budget is inevitably too large in a democracy. The purpose of this paper is to argue that there are different conceptual contexts within which the correct size of the social insurance budget can be analyzed. Within at least one relevant context it is not at all obvious that the social insurance budget must inevitably be too large in a democracy, The first part of this paper reviews Browning's argument. The second presents an alternative analysis which leads to the conclusion that the social insurance system may well have certain characteristics that work toward the maintenance of an efficient budget level.     

Violence and political culture in Mozambique

This article is an attempt at developing a lens through which political culture in Mozambique can be analysed, described and interpreted. It is based on the notion of a political teleology that emerged out of the conditions within which the country fought for its independence. The paper argues that violence in a symbolic and physical form played a central role in the constitution of this political teleology by, on the one hand, allowing the liberation movement to produce an account of Mozambican history which both gave legitimacy to its own struggle while at the same time undermining alternative accounts and, on the other, set the scene for the implementation of a national project that came to be primarily concerned with the reproduction of the claim to power of the liberation movement. Forty years of independence in Mozambique offer an ideal time frame to attempt the construction of such a lens.     

Restructuring structuration theory

The article looks critically at Giddens's duality of structure notion which is at the centre of his structuration theory. It argues that the concept of subject/object dualism, which is not seriously considered by structuration theory, is as essential as the concept of duality for an understanding of how actors orient themselves to rules and resources as a virtual order, as well as to sets of interactions in time and space.     

Why social work should care: Television violence and children

There is an abundance of research on the influence of television violence on children. The convergence of research demonstrates an association between heavy viewing of violence and aggressive behavior. Despite thirty years of research, regulatory policy has failed to decrease violence on children's television. Children exposed to high rates of violence on television may be at greater risk of developing school and social problems. This paper highlights both research and theory which explains the relationship of television violence to children. It further makes the case that television violence should be an important and legitimate concern for social work.Ms. Lazar is an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Southern Maine and a Doctoral student at Simmons School of Social Work.     

The concept of confiding ties: Implicatons for social work research and practice

Abstract

Recent research into the effects of life event stress and other areas has begun to accumulate evidence of the apparently protective effect which an informal confiding relationship can have in everyday life. This paper first looks briefly at the results of this research and at ways in which measures which have been used so far could be developed and refined. Some determinants of confiding ties are then discussed as a guide to social work practice, and types of relevant assessment and intervention are considered.     

From boundary-work to boundary object: how biology left and re-entered the social sciences

In an archaeological spirit this paper comes back to a founding event in the construction of the twentieth-century episteme, the moment at which the life- and the social sciences parted ways and intense boundary-work was carried out on the biology/society border, with significant benefits for both sides. Galton and Weismann for biology, and Alfred Kroeber for anthropology delimit this founding moment and I argue, expanding on an existing body of historical scholarship, for an implicit convergence of their views. After this excavation, I look at recent developments in the life sciences, which I have named the ‘social turn’ in biology (Meloni, 2014), and in particular at epigenetics with its promise to destabilize the social/biological border. I claim here that today a different account of ‘the biological’ to that established during the Galton–Kroeber period is emerging. Rather than being used to support a form of boundary-work, biology has become a boundary object that crosses previously erected barriers, allowing different research communities to draw from it.     

Strategy-proof Cardinal Decision Schemes

This paper analyses strategy-proof mechanisms or decision schemes which map profiles of cardinal utility functions to lotteries over a finite set of outcomes. We provide a new proof of Hylland’s theorem which shows that the only strategy-proof cardinal decision scheme satisfying a weak unanimity property is the random dictatorship. Our proof technique assumes a framework where individuals can discern utility differences only if the difference is at least some fixed number which we call the grid size. We also prove a limit random dictatorship result which shows that any sequence of strategy-proof and unanimous decision schemes defined on a sequence of decreasing grid sizes approaching zero must converge to a random dictatorship. We are most grateful to an Associate Editor and two referees for very helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper. An erratum to this article can be found at