From <Emphasis Type="Italic">Hōshi</Emphasis> to <Emphasis Type="Italic">Borantia</Emphasis>: Transformations of Volunteering in Japan and Implications for Foreign Policy

This study explores the relationship between state–citizen relations and changing notions of volunteering in Japan. I map Japan’s state–citizen relations through an analysis of the transformations of volunteering in Japan from “hōshi” (mutual obligation) to “borantia” (borrowed from the English “volunteer”). The article broadly considers these paradigm shifts in terms of the context of the role International Non Profit Organisations (INPOs) play in Japanese foreign policy.     

Good Jobs, Good Deeds: The Gender-Specific Influences of Job Characteristics on Volunteering

While research has shown that having a “good” job significantly promotes formal volunteering, we have limited knowledge of how this paid work-to-volunteer work relationship may differ between men and women. Based on the gender-identification spillover theory, we hypothesize that because of the societal expectations that women should be caring, giving and communal, positive job traits such as authority and autonomy promote women’s volunteering more than men’s. Our analysis of data from the National Survey of Midlife in the United States shows that women who exercise supervisory authority on the job volunteer significantly more hours than women who do not, whereas job authority makes no difference in the number of hours volunteered for men. Meanwhile, job autonomy promotes men’s volunteering, but not women’s. Implications of these and related findings for future research on gender and volunteering are discussed.     

Why Sociology Abandoned Communication

This paper considers the possibility that early sociological interest in the integrative role of mass communication may have been undermined (1) by the short-run study of media “campaigns,” and the declaration that such persuasive efforts have only “limited effect”; (2) by the wrangling over theories of “mass society”; and (3) by a quasi-journalistic emphasis on “media events.” In spite of the theoretical basis for reconciling these traditions, the rift over the academic locus of communications research has not been repaired.     

Disunity within the house of labor: Change to win or to stay the course?

In September 2005, six unions representing 5.4 million workers held their founding convention as a new federation independent of the AFL-CIO. Infelicitously named “Change to Win Federation” (CTWF), the new alliance has called for a rededication of union resources and energies towards organizing the unorganized. Although CTWF has occasioned considerable interest and speculation among labor supporters and observers, it is difficult to determine why the break occurred, other than, perhaps, the personal agenda of some of its leaders. An unstated, significant reason may be a desire on the rebels’ part to operate relatively free of “noraiding” strictures of the AFL-CIO, even though the group disclaims any interest in challenging existing bargaining relationships and has penned “solidarity pacts” with some of its principal AFL-CIO competitors and with state and local units of the federation. Competitive forces are missing in the market for workplace representation services. The new group may reignite the rival unionism that spurred organized labor’s marked growth from 1935–1954, but early returns suggest an emphasis on militant posturing and on trendy, implausible themes such as “global unionism” and “subcontracting out strikes.”     

Financial Capability in Children: Effects of Participation in a School-Based Financial Education and Savings Program

A groundswell of interest in young people’s ability to understand and handle financial decisions has generated keen interest in financial knowledge and effectiveness of financial education. This study examines an innovative four-year school-based financial education and savings program, called “I Can Save” (ICS). Using a quasi-experimental design, the study examines quantitative and qualitative data to analyze program effects on financial knowledge. Elementary school children who participated in ICS scored significantly higher on a financial literacy test taken in fourth grade than comparison group students in the same school, regardless of parent education and income. Results suggest that young children increase financial capability when they have access to financial education and it is accompanied by participation in meaningful financial services.     

Consistent judgement aggregation: the truth-functional case

Generalizing the celebrated “discursive dilemma”, we analyze judgement aggregation problems in which a group of agents independently votes on a set of complex propositions (the “conclusions”) and on a set of “premises” by which the conclusions are truth-functionally determined. We show that for conclusion- and premise-based aggregation rules to be mutually consistent, the aggregation must always be “oligarchic”, that is: unanimous within a subset of agents, and typically even be dictatorial. We characterize exactly when consistent non-dictatorial (or anonymous) aggregation rules exist, allowing for arbitrary conclusions and arbitrary interdependencies among premises.     

Ethnic economies, affirmative action, and mining cultural capital

If the goal of affirmative action is to make the marketplace a more congenial place for women and minority persons to improve their economic situation, then its champions and detractors are bound to be disappointed. Only a comparatively small number of persons will ever benefit materially from such policies, and they are not likely to view their accomplishment as requiring them to give something back to the larger community or group in whose name the assistance was provided. An affirmative action plan organized around practices common to “ethnic economies,” on the other hand, would spread the benefit and the responsibility for an individual person's material success to a bigger and more inclusive community or ethnic group.     

Mental Health of Non-gamblers Versus “Normal” Gamblers Among American Indian Veterans: A Community Survey

Goal This analysis was undertaken to assess the demographic and mental health characteristics of “normal” or non-problem gamblers versus non-gamblers in a representative community sample. Sample Study participants consisted of 557 North Central American Indian veterans. Data collection included a demographic and trauma questionnaire, a computer-based Diagnostic Interview Schedule for DSM-III-R, and a treatment history algorithm. Findings Univariate analyses revealed that gamblers had greater social competence (i.e., higher education, living with a spouse) and higher lifetime psychiatric morbidity. Binary regression analysis revealed that, compared to non-gamblers, gamblers were older, more highly educated, and more apt to be married. More gamblers showed evidence for lifetime risk-taking as evidenced by Antisocial Personality Disorder and Tobacco Dependence. Conclusions Social achievement and disposable income function as prerequisites for “normal” gambling in this population, although “externalizing” or “risk-taking” disorders also serve as independent contributors to at least some gambling. The increased rate of “internalizing” or emotional disorders are only indirectly related to gambling, perhaps through increasing age or through the “externalizing” disorders.     

Finessing a point: augmenting the core

The “finesse point” introduced here extends the notion of a core; it is a position that minimizes what a candidate needs to do to counter moves that are made by an opponent. The definition, which is motivated by the “chaos theorem” as well as by the dynamics of positive and negative political campaigning, is also used to define a “malicious point,” which is an optimal location from which a candidate can engage in “negative campaigning.”     

The Government–Third Sector Interface in Québec

In this paper, the authors analyze different forms of interface between the government and third sector organizations in Québec. In order to do so, they studied relationships in eight different fields of activity: homeless youth services, housing for intellectually deficient people, support organizations for natural caregivers, community leisure centers, community housing for the elderly, daycare centers, social economy organizations for domestic assistance, and services specializing in employment for handicapped people. Following a review of international literature on the relationship between the government and the third sector, the paper analyzes these relationships on the basis of the typology developed by Jennifer M. Coston, which is adapted to the Québécois context. In the eight activity sectors studied, the authors found the presence of four different types of interface between the government and the third sector: “subcontracting,” “coexistence,” “supplementarity,” and “co-construction” relationships.

Affect-Regulation Expectancies among Gamblers

Factor scores on a gambling expectancy questionnaire (GEQ) were used to subtype 132 university students who gamble regularly (37.9% male; M age = 22.6 years, SD = 6.04) as: Reward Expectancy Gamblers (Reward EGs)—have strong expectations that gambling augments positive mood, Relief Expectancy Gamblers (Relief EGs)—have strong expectations that gambling relieves negative affect, and Non-Expectancy Gamblers (Non-EGs)—have neither strong expectation. Gambling on a high-low card game was compared across subtypes following priming for either “relief” or “reward” affect-regulation expectancies with the Scrambled Sentence Test (SST). The hypothesized Prime type × GEQ subtype interaction was not significant. When a more stringent set of criteria for GEQ subtyping was imposed, the “purified” sub-sample (n = 54) resulted in the hypothesized statistically significant Prime type × GEQ subtype interaction. Relief EGs gambled more after being primed with the construct “relief of negative emotions” compared to after being primed with the construct “augmentation of positive emotion.” Planned orthogonal contrasts showed a significant linear increase in number of bets made across GEQ subtypes when prime type corresponded to GEQ subtype. The results suggest a need for components in gambling treatment programs that address clients’ expectancies that gambling can provide a specific desirable emotional outcome.     

The Effect of Including a Monetary Motive Item on the Gambling Motives Questionnaire in a Sample of Moderate Gamblers

This study explored the factor structure of the Gambling Motives Questionnaire (GMQ) with a large stratified sample of 839 moderate gamblers (49% female; median age category = 45–54 years) and examined the effect of including a monetary motive item on GMQ factor structure. Participants responded to a telephone survey in which they were asked how often they gamble for each of 16 reasons, including the 15 GMQ motives and an additional motive: “to win money”. Exploratory principal components analysis of the 15 GMQ items revealed three factors, together accounting for 49.04% of the total variance in GMQ scores. The factors tapped enhancement, coping and social motives, although only the coping subscale displayed strong internal consistency. A second exploratory principal components analysis of the 15 GMQ items and the monetary motive item continued to reveal three factors tapping enhancement, coping and social motives. The addition of the monetary motive item strengthened the independence of the components and dramatically improved the internal consistency of the enhancement factor. The results suggest that the psychometric properties of the GMQ, when used with a population of moderate gamblers, may be considerably strengthened with only minor modifications.     

Garfinkel before ethnomethodology

A short story titled “‘Color Trouble’” by Harold Garfinkel was published inOpportunity in 1940,The Best Short Stories 1941, andPrimer for White Folks in 1945. Garfinkel wrote this short story before World War II while a research fellow at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill under Howard W. Odum, the founder ofSocial Forces “‘Color Trouble’” narrates poignantly the racial victimization of a young black woman traveling on a public bus through the State of Virginia. The short story provides sociologists with a different medium through which to examine the seminal interests of ethnomethodology’s founder. In a literary form, the short story depicts such ethnomethodological concepts as the breaching experiment, the “et cetera clause,” “ad hocing,” and the status degradation ceremony. Garfinkel’s “‘Color Trouble’” also suggests the way in which ethnomethodology overlaps with, as well as diverges from, Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical perspective. He received his doctoral degree from the graduate program in sociology at York University, Toronto, Ontario. His article “Autonomy and Responsibility in Social Theory” will appear inCurrent Perspectives in Social Theory, Volume 10.     

On Past and Future of Community: A Pragmatic Analysis

Charles Sanders Peirce proposed a semiotic that directed attention to the person or people who are providing interpretation, making place for the social and cultural. Following Peirce, we consider the meanings and consequences the term “community” has in an international context. We argue that English affords a richer set of meanings to community, which was not paralleled in the languages of Southeast Asia. The encounter between English and Southeast Asian languages has lexical consequences, but more momentous are the cultural changes they index. In Southeast Asian cultures, there is less need for “community” to take on broader meanings, since those cultures assume social relationality. Thus, the spread of English “community” could be associated with a rise of individualism in these other cultures, but it could also impoverish the Anglophone West, which would be denied alternative frameworks in which associational and affective meanings of community are unnecessary.     

Boeing’s Diffusion of Commercial Aircraft Technology to Japan: Surrendering the U.S. Industry for Foreign Financial Support

Japanese firms have become increasingly important first-tier suppliers to the U.S. commercial aircraft industry (large passenger jets). Over time, this relationship has evolved from a simple “build to print” subcontractor arrangement to a turnkey “design and build” risk-sharing partnership. Using the Boeing 767, 777, and 787 as examples, we argue that the motives for Boeing’s commercial outsourcing to Japan are to access the Japanese market, spread risk, gain access to capital, and lower U.S. spending on research and development (R&D). This has clear implications for U.S. trade and employment, in that Japanese-subcontracting boosts foreign imports and reduces the need for domestic production workers and U.S. suppliers. From a trade perspective, however, a troubling feature of allowing the Japanese to produce large commercial aircraft subassemblies is that major Japanese public financial supports are involved which contravene existing international agreements on production subsidies. We review the types of production contracts that Japanese companies have sought on the Boeing 767, 777, and 787 programs. These contracts have allowed the Japanese to develop new capabilities in terms of production capacity, tooling, design, and final assembly. Ultimately, these capabilities imply that Japan will eventually enter the market as a fully-fledged producer of commercial aircraft. This does not bode well for the U.S. commercial aerospace sector.     

Advocacy with Gloves on: The “Manners” of Strategy Used by Some Third Sector Organizations Undertaking Advocacy in NSW and Queensland

This article examines the strategies used by some third sector organizations in Australia to advocate. The purpose of this article is to identify the kinds of activities that organizations in New South Wales and Queensland use to promote advocacy, the kinds of language that is used to describe these activities, and the reasons given for the particular strategies adopted. The extent to which the organizations adopt “softer” (that is more institutional forms of advocacy) rather than more openly challenging forms of activism is examined, particularly in light of a neo-liberal political and economic environment. In this analysis emergent strategies are identified that are not easily categorized as either “institutional” or “radical” advocacy. The article presents an exploratory analysis of some of the implications of the strategies adopted, in terms of their democratic effects and potential to strengthen the capacity of third sector organizations. The article is informed by the findings of a qualitative research project involving interviews with 24 organizations in the community services and environmental fields.     

Much ado about Goffman

“The claim that all the world’s a stage is sufficiently commonplace for readers to be familiar with its limitations and tolerant of its presentation.” (Goffman 1959, 72, 254) “Given that the logic of privatization....now odiously shapes archetypes of citizenship, [and] manages our perceptions of what constitute the ‘good society’....it stands to reason that new ethnographic research approaches must take global capitalism not as an end point of analysis, but as a starting point.” (Kincheloe and McLaren 2000, 304) “My abhorrence of neoliberalism helps to explain my legitimate anger when I speak of the injustices to which the ragpickers among humanity are condemned. It also explains my total lack of interest in any pretension of impartiality, I am not impartial, or objective...[this] does not prevent me from holding always a rigorously ethical position.” (Freire 1998, 22)     

Quaternary dichotomous voting rules

In this article, we provide a general model of “quaternary” dichotomous voting rules (QVRs), namely, voting rules for making collective dichotomous decisions (to accept or reject a proposal), based on vote profiles in which four options are available to each voter: voting (“yes”, “no”, or “abstaining”) or staying home and not turning out. The model covers most of actual real-world dichotomus rules, where quorums are often required, and some of the extensions considered in the literature. In particular, we address and solve the question of the representability of QVRs by means of weighted rules and extend the notion of “dimension” of a rule.     

A feminist revisiting of the insider/outsider debate: The “outsider phenomenon” in rural Iowa

This article draws upon findings from an ethnographic study of two towns in rural Iowa to examine the adequacy of the insider/outsider distinction as a guideline for evaluating and conducting ethnographic research. Utilizing feminist standpoint and materialist feminist theories, I start with the assumption that, rather than one “insider” or “outsider” position, we all begin our work with different relationships to shifting aspects of social life and to particular knowers in the community and this contributes to numerous dimensions through which we can relate to residents in various communities. “Outsiderness” and “insiderness” are not fixed or static positions, rather they are ever-shifting and permeable social locations illustrated in this case study by the “outsider phenomenon.” Community processes that reorganize and resituate race-ethnicity, gender and class relations form some of the most salient aspects of the “outsider phenomenon.” These dynamic processes shaped our relationships with residents as ethnographic identities were repositioned by shifts in constructions of “community” that accompanied ongoing social, demographic, and political changes.     

Disordered Gambling among College Students: A Meta-Analytic Synthesis

The purpose of this study was to use a meta-analytic procedure to synthesize the rates of disordered gambling for college students that have been reported in the research literature. In order to identify all possible studies that met stringent inclusion criteria, Medline, PsychINFO, and SocioIndex databases were searched with the terms “gambling,” and “college student”. This process resulted in 15 studies concerning gambling among college students that were published through July 2005. To synthesize the 15 studies, a random effects model for meta-analysis was applied. The estimated proportion of disordered gamblers among college students was 7.89%. This estimate is noteworthy because it is higher than that reported for adolescents, college students or adults in a previous study using meta-analytic procedures with studies conducted prior to 1997.