The merton thesis: Oetinger and German Pietism,a significant negative case

The Merton thesis identifies two movements — English Puritanism and German Pietism — as causally significant in the development of the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries. It attributes this connection to a strong compatibility between the values of ascetic Protestantism and those associated with modern science. This article questions Merton's conclusion regarding one of these movements, German Pietism, by arguing that the Pietist ethos stood in sharp conflict with what Merton has called the normative structure of science. One manifestation of this conflict involves Friedrich Oetinger's articulation of a contending religious-mystical conception of science, which assigned a central place to feeling, intuition, the role of the divine, and a qualitative approach to nature. This conception of science, it is argued, provides the clearest indication of the conceptual and valuative distance that tended to separate Pietists from the new science of the 17th and 18th centuries.An earlier version of this article was presented at the 1990 meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, in Virginia Beach.     

Making Minorities: Cultural Space,Stigma Transformation Frames,and the Categorical Status Claims of Deaf,Gay, and White Supremacist Activists in Late Twentieth Century America

This article compares the efforts of movement activists in three dissimilar groups to replace a stigmatized status with a valued one by portraying their groups as resembling established minorities (claims of contiguity in cultural space) and as differing from groups stigmatized as deviant (claims of distance). The most common claims assert similarity to African Americans, and frequently incorporate civil rights themes (exemplifying frame diffusion). Tactically, these minority status claims exploit both the resonance of cultural pluralism and state recognition of minorities. Strategically, minority status framing enables stigmatized groups to claim legitimacy without changing — simultaneously asserting both normality and difference.     

Snarls,Quacks, and Quarrels: Culture and Structure in Political Process Theory

Political process theories of social movements have relied on a set of oppositions between culture and structure that has limited their capacity to capture the supraindividual, durable, and constraining dimensions of culture. The solution is not to abandon an emphasis on objective political structures in favor of potential insurgents' subjective perceptions of political opportunities, but rather to probe the (objective) resources and constraints generated by the cultural dimensions of political structures. Such a perspective would pay closer attention to the cultural traditions, ideological principles, institutional memories, and political taboos that create and limit political opportunities; and would link the master frames that animate protest to dominant political structures and processes.     

The Making of a Narcissist

In discussing the etiology of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, faulty parenting or disturbed object relations is a common causal theme in most writings. However, the question remains as to its specificity. In this author's experience, faulty parenting is ubiquitous in all psychological disturbance. This paper postulates that the specific fault lies in the caretaker's failure to provide optimal frustrating experiences necessary to enable the child to develop a more realistic self-image. Clinical case examples reveal some common personality characteristics in the parents and parenting styles conducive to the child's development of a narcissistic disorder. A brief, informal comparison is made between these cases and over 100 other cases of poor, welfare children who were seen in psychoanalytic treatment by this author.     

The treatment of bulimia from a self psychological perspective

This paper examines concepts from self psychology which contribute to the understanding of bulimia. A case example from the author's work illustrates the significance of the sense of self both in the development of bulimic symptoms and also in the therapeutic process. Painful feelings of shame and humiliation over who and what one is are often part of the bulimic experience. The author suggests that therapist's role is not so much to change the bulimic person, but to accept and understand who the person is and how he or she came to be that way. Change often follows such understanding.     

The Nomothetic-Idiographic Issue: Some Roots and Recent Trends

A review of the history of the nomothetic-idiographic issue suggests that the problem of the uniqueness of the individual is secondary in this context to that of the right approach to the study of the human person. Idiographic approaches emphasize the need for an unmutilated conceptualization of psychological processes. The requirements of this unmutilated kind of research need to be integrated with those of nomothetic science asking for the controlled gaining and analyzing of information regarding psychological processes. One form of such a kind of integration is represented by biographical studies based on semistructured interviews and a systematic qualitative and quantitative analysis of their contents. Findings from such research as especially related to developmental and personality psychology are reported here by summarizing a series of studies conducted at the University of Bonn.     

Chicanas modernize domestic service

The shift from live-in to day work was a step in the modernization of domestic service because it limited the length of the working day and reduced the psychological exploitation involved in the interpersonal relationship between domestics and mistresses. Even the shift to an hourly wage did not end the extraction of emotional labor, however. Interviews with Chicanas employed as private household workers reveal the next step in the evolution of domestic services. The current development is away from wage work, in which labor time is sold, selling a service in which a job is exchanged for a specified amount of money. Chicanas are defining themselves as expert cleaners hired to do general housework. Most supervision and personal services are thus eliminated from the job. Mistress-servant relations are being transformed into customervendor relations, reducing the personalism and asymmetry of employer-employee relationships.An earlier draft of the paper was presented at the 1986 National Association for Chicano Studies, El Paso, Texas. This research was made possible by a grant from the Business and Professional Women's Foundation and a University of California President's Fellowship. I wish to thank Frances Kleinman and Eric Margolis for their helpful comments on this paper     

The Fatherbook: A Document for Therapeutic Work with Father-Absent Early Adolescent Boys

There is convincing evidence that children who grow up without fathers are vulnerable for psychosocial dysfunction. A document called the Fatherbook is presented for therapeutic work with the father-absent early adolescent boy. Modeled on the life story book used with children in foster care, the Fatherbook records information, thoughts, and feelings about absent fathers. It provides a tangible object with which the youngster can begin to work through the experience of being fatherless. The boy's mother must have the opportunity to voice her feelings about the Fatherbook because the Fatherbook brings the father back into her life as well as her son's.     

Like A Virgin: Temptation,Resistance, and the Construction of Identities Based on “Not Doings”

Despite the attention given to what actors do, identity theorists give virtually no attention to those behaviors in which individuals do not engage, the assumption being that these acts are not influential. In this article, I use the generic case of the virgin identity to demonstrate the social construction of what I term never identities, a subcategory of the various identities based on not engaging in particular acts (simply, not doings). Through the use of fictional genre, it becomes evident that such identities are not based on absence alone, but are more about demonstrated resistance to the trials of temptation and the evaluation of these tests by others. While this article focuses on the construction of such identities under specific historical circumstances, I argue that the findings lay the groundwork for further exploration of a largely overlooked yet critical area of identity research. Future research on never identities should consider the temporal norms of such identities (e.g., the expected stay in such states), the degree of technical purity required, and the issue of directionality (i.e., whether one can return to such identities subsequent to exiting).     

Bargaining with set-valued disagreement

It is arguable that in many-two person bargaining situations disagreement leads to a set of possible payoffs with no probabilities attached to the elements of the set. Axioms are developed for bargaining games of this kind and solution concepts are derived from these axioms. Particular attention is paid to what are here called the max-max and rectangular general solutions. The latter can be applied to an important sub-class of bargaining games where the disagreement set is equal to the feasible set.A part of this work was done while I was a visitor at the University of Stockholm. For valuable discussions and comments I am grateful to T.C.A. Anant, Salvador Barbera, Bhaskar Dutta, Efe Ok, Jorgen Weibull and an anonymous referee of this journal. The paper also benefited from a presentation at the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi.     

The employment contract: A test of the transaction cost theory

This paper tests some predictions derived from Williamson's transaction cost theory of the organization of work, which holds that the form of the employment relationship is determined largely by the idiosyncrasy of work—that is, the nature of skills and knowledge used in production. It examines the occurrence of theoretically relevant provisions in collective bargaining agreements in the United States and finds they are related to a contract-level proxy for idiosyncrasy (based on bargaining structure) as predicted by the theory. An analysis of an individual-level variable, the difficulty of finding a comparable job, provides some additional support. Finally, several alternative explanations of the results are considered, and it is argued that none are consistent with the evidence. The analysis thus finds strong, if necessarily provisional, support for the theory.     

Interpersonal utility theory

A triangulation strategy is sketched for constructing an empirical testable theory of interpersonal comparisons of utility units. Bargaining theory and the theory of the utility curves of money are tentatively suggested as triangulation points.During 1981–82, I presented these ideas in talks at Chicago, Michigan, Oberlin, Princeton, Stanford and Yale. I have benefitted from the comments I received then as well as from comments of the referees.     

A quantitative theory of preferences: Some results on transition functions

We investigate a general theory of combining individual preferences into collective choice. The preferences are treated quantitatively, by means of preference functions (a,b), where 0(a,b) expresses the degree of preference of a to b. A transition function is a function (x,y) which computes (a,c) from (a,b) and (b,c), namely (a,c)=((a,b),(b,c)). We prove that given certain (reasonable) conditions on how individual preferences are aggregated, there is only one transition function that satisfies these conditions, namely the function (x,y)=x·y (multiplication of odds). We also formulate a property of transition functions called invariance, and prove that there is no invariant transition function; this impossibility theorem shows limitations of the quantitative method.Research supported in part by the National Science Foundation.     

Promoting Justice in the Delivery of Services to Juvenile Delinquents: The Ecosystemic Natural Wrap-Around Model

Caught between their child and doing the right thing, families of chronic juvenile delinquents often experience a series of injustices in the name of justice. Attempts by the system to correct the delinquency problem often result in the imposition of values and beliefs that negate the family's values, experiences and meanings of their child's behavior. The Ecosystemic Natural Wrap-around (E.N.W.) model attempts to respectfully account for the many influences that maintain problematic interactions, both internal and external, in the nuclear family of chronic juvenile delinquents. The model focuses on a variety of interventions at different levels and contexts, building on the strengths of the family, using the extended family and fictive kin networks, and clarifying the meanings associated with problematic behavior for the multiple players. The model proposed is an integrative theoretical approach, emphasizing systems theory and constructivism.     

The use of metaphor in therapeutic communication with young adolescents

The ability to utilize metaphor is presented as the normal stage in the development of the capacity to symbolize that is characteristic of the young adolescent. Symbolization is considered to be the basic structure through which the individual constructs a knowledge of the reality and of the self. Therefore, staying within the framework of the metaphor in treatment with the young adolescent is beginning where the client is but equally as importantly it is assisting the youngster to further develop both his symbolic capacities and himself. A case illustration is utilized to demonstrate both healthy and pathological usage of metaphorical language.     

Lying about running: The functions of talk in a scene

The running scene rests upon a system of beliefs (a code) about the qualities of running performances. Membership in the scene entails the interrelated use of conversational forms and the presentation of a team identity. The forms consist of nomic talk, ritualized lying and code truth telling. Within each form, the runner may lie about or manage information regarding running performances in order to construct, maintain or attack the system of beliefs. The lie, then, plays a major role in the scene as a device of social interaction.     

The Chicago School,So-Called

Many sociologists believe in the myth of a Chicago School, a unified and coherent body of thought and research practice carried on at the University of Chicago from the 1920s through the 1960s. Chicago never constituted such a coherent system and is better understood as a school of activity, a group of people who cooperated in the day-to-day running of a major department.     

Structure and process in interpersonal “distancing”

The present paper focuses on awho-why-where-when-how-what-whom structural model of interpersonal distancing. The term distancing denotes either approach or avoidance movement along an intimacy-immediacy dimension. This dimension itself is defined as an integration across proxemic, kinesic, paralinguistic, and linguistic interpersonal modalities. Parallels are drawn between the concepts of intimacy disequilibrium and cognitive dissonance; the latter deals with attitude-behavior discrepancies and the former with attraction-approach discrepancies. A compensatory model is expanded acrosswho's partners as well as across his sensory modalities, and the concept of intimacy overload is offered as a clarifying tool for the social refractoriness and information overload explanations appearing in various aspects of the literature.Paper presented at the Symposium on Some New Approaches for Studying and Measuring Interpersonal Communication, 82d Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, New Orleans, September 1974.The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Department 1229, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey, in the writing of this paper. Much of the work was supported by NSF Grant 2852A at Wayne State University.     

Adolescent Women's Recommendations for Enhanced Parent-Adolescent Communication About Sexual Behavior

Family communication about adolescent sexual health and behavior promotes adolescent health and family connectedness. However, few studies seek the perspective of adolescents regarding their recommended strategies for family communication. Findings of a survey of female adolescent family planning patients (n = 249) indicated adolescent recommendations for better family communication included treat teen as an equal, 63%; increase parental knowledge about lifestyle and peer pressures, 61%, and improve parental listening skills, 61%. There were no statistically significant differences according to age, pregnancy history, or school enrollment status for suggested strategies for improved communication with parents. Sexually active adolescent daughters expressed interest in maintaining family connectedness and support with increased time for family activities as well as increased quality and quantity of dialogue between the adolescent girl and her parents.     

Infant “surprise” expressions as coordinative motor structures

This study found that the facial action of moderately or widely opening the mouth is accompanied by brow raising in infnats, thus producing surprise expressions in non-surprise situations. Infants (age = 5 months and 7 months) were videotaped as they were presented with toys that they often grasped and brought to their mouths. Episodes of mouth opening were identified and accompanying brow, nose, and eyelid movements were coded. Results indicated that mouth opening is selectively associated with raised brows rather than to other brow movements. Trace levels of eyelid raising also tended to accompany this facial configuration. The findings are discussed in terms of a dynamical systems theory of facial behavior and suggest that facial expression cannot be used as investigators' sole measure of surprise in infants.This research was conducted as part of the second author's undergraduate honors program project and was supported in part by a grant from the NICHHD #1RO1 HD 22399-A3 awarded to G. F. Michel.