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.     

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.     

Rethinking reification

Conclusion By now this essay has accumulated over twenty alleged meanings, senses, or aspects of reification; there seems not much point in listing them. Some of them are mutually consistent, almost overlapping; others are incompatible. Some are in accord with the dictionary definition, others not. With some, the sense in which some entity is being converted into a res is evident; with others, try as I might, I cannot find such a sense. The dictionary entry itself is rather slipshod, and interpreters have expanded the term's meaning almost indefinitely beyond it. The main ways in which Lukács and Berger and Luckmann use the word do not fit into the dictionary definition at all. They make the meaning of reification dependent on concepts like can and could that are themselves heavily dependent on the particular context of their use. Lukács's and Berger and Luckmann's discussions are confusing and very probably confused. The whole thing is a swamp.Can this concept be saved? And should it?Within the limits of the dictionary definition, the concept does its work well enough. When Stephen Gould, say, criticizes psychologists for reifying intelligence by assuming that the I.Q. test must be testing something, he and the concept perform a clear and useful function. But if the main concerns are those of Lukács and Berger and Luckmann, in my opinion the term mystifies more than it reveals. Their concerns could be accommodated within the dictionary definition as reification of persons, in the sense of denying people's capacity for agency. But although Lukács and Berger and Luckmann do occasionally use the word this way, for the most part they do not. So articulating their concerns within this sense of the word would require extensive rewriting of their arguments. Would political theorists who share those concerns not do better to abandon the concept?I would unhesitatingly advise it, except for one, crucial consideration. There really is something going on among us that we urgently need to think and talk about, and that Lukács's and Berger and Luckmann's conceptions of reification were meant to address. People do feel trapped, in a way that makes Kafka's little fable so perfectly emblematic for our experience. Despite the prevalence in modern society of all of Berger and Luckmann's social circumstances that favor dereification, very many people do feel helpless to influence the conditions that constrain their lives. Millions of Americans turn their backs on politics, judging that engagement in it would make no significant difference. Millions of members of the underclass feel worthless - though also filled with diffuse rage - because society seems to have no use for them. Almost all of us function in large organizational systems, whether as parts of the machinery or materials being processed, and have learned to take that condition for granted. We function within an economy that depends on a system of international banking and finance that everyone knows to be in constant danger of collapse. Almost all of us submit without question to the technological imperative that daily exhausts our resources, destroys our health, and poisons the earth. And we march like sleepwalkers down the road marked deterrence and nonproliferation, toward nuclear doom. Experts and critics offer various diagnoses of our condition, but whatever measures are actually taken to treat it seem only to make it worse.This familiar litany of troubles suggests a malaise far too extensive and too grave for the powers of political prudence. When a society, or an entire civilization, or even the whole human species seems bent on self-destruction, one suspects systematic, pervasive, fundamental derangement in people's patterns of both thought and conduct. Calling on political prudence here is almost bound to mean calling for more of the same. Here what is needed is a more basic realignment of assumptions, of the sort that has traditionally been associated with great political theory.Wading through the dismal swamp of reification theory, as this essay does, can leave one feeling that such concepts, and political theory itself, are hopelessly abstracted from reality and of no practical use in relation to our urgent political problems, so that political prudence is the only hope. But political reality itself, and the prudence by which gifted actors know how to move within it, always presuppose and depend on theoretical frameworks - if not self-conscious, deliberate theorizing, then unexamined, inherited theory or, more likely, fragments of theories that may well be outdated or mutually inconsistent. So if we seem today bereft of political prudence and judgment, close to our wits' end, that may be because our wits are operating out of such incoherent fragments of inherited assumptions.The message to be derived from the familiar litany of our troubles and our sleepwalking, then, is not the familiar exhortation to, For God's sake, do something before it is too late! For while we may feel inert, we are already doing something - a lot of things - and they are the source of our troubles. Like Kafka's mouse, we run and run. Berger and Luckmann's and Lukács's concept of reification was meant to address precisely those troubles that are the large-scale outcome of our myriad activities, sustained and enlarged by nothing more than what we do. The problem is how to stop, how to do something else, what else to do.That is a problem as much for thought as for action, a problem for action informed and empowered by new thought. Part of the value of Berger and Luckmann's - and even more of Lukács's - discussion of reification is that they tried to provide a general theory of the nature and roots of our condition, orienting us to likely avenues for action, feasible ways and means, probable allies and opponents. Their efforts, this essay has argued, were confused and deeply flawed. The concept of reification is probably not a good tool for the job, and bad tools mean sloppy work. But better sloppy work with a bad tool than no work at all. Those of us who persist in reaching for the word reification as a tool should probably employ greater care. We should require ourselves to specify in each case precisely what we mean, and attend to whether and how our various meanings in various contexts are interrelated. But whether we revise the concept of reification, or abandon it, or just let it continue to slop along in its present state of dishevelment doesn't much matter. What matters is that we continue to think - hard and critically, theoretically and politically - about the conditions that Lukács and Berger and Luckmann were trying to address.Our thinking here must be simultaneously theoretical and political: theoretical in the sense of radical, cutting through conventions and cliches to the real roots of our troubles, seeing social arrangements large-scale and long-range, as if from the outside, which may be what Lukács meant by intending totality. Yet the thinking must also be political, in the sense of oriented to action, practical, speaking in a meaningful way to those capable of making the necessary changes, those Lukács called the we of genesis. For Lukács, of course, that meant the proletariat. But one need not be a Marxist to see the need for locating such a we, and the point of seeking it among those with an objective interest in the right sort of change and the potential power to bring it about. The aim is not some new doctrine to save us from ourselves, but a transformed way of seeing what we already tacitly know and do, which restores us to our real world - the concrete here and now, as Lukács puts it - and our real, living selves, including our capacities for action. That would mean not some access to mysterious, infinite powers, but the appropriation of our actual powers, recognizing the present moment as the moment of decision, the moment of the birth of the new, as Lukács says, out of which we jointly make the future. That is no return to Hegelian idealism, but a recovery of the practical, political Marx.Thinking both theoretically and politically in this way is no easy task; indeed, it is almost a contradiction in terms. Yet it may well be our best hope, and the world is in a hurry. Despite all of the political and philosophical difficulties, unless we undertake this task we may well guarantee our own entrapment, assuring that we will end up like Kafka's mouse, rather than human and free.

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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.     

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.     

Nonbinary social choice for economic environments

Assume a finite integer l2 and a social choice correspondence mapping each (p, Z) into a nonempty subset (p, Z) of Z, where p is a profile of individual preferences and Z is a set of outcomes of cardinality l or more. Suppose that satisfies Arrow's choice axiom, independence of infeasible alternatives, and the Pareto criterion. If the preference domain is the family of profiles of classical economic preferences over the space of allocations of public goods, then is dictatorial.I am grateful for some especially helpful comments by Jerry Kelly, John Weymark, and two anonymous referees. In fact, they uncovered so many errors that I must revive the traditional disclaimer: All remaining mistakes are my own responsibility. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the financial support of the National Science Foundation, grants no. SES 9007953 and SES 9209039.     

Beyond the nature/society divide: Learning to think about a mountain

Sociological efforts to understand environment-society relationships fall primarily into four conceptual categories. The first three, involving analytical separation, analytical primacy, and balanced dualism, all draw distinctions between biophysical and social aspects of human experience, with subsequent analyses being based on thesea priori distinctions. The fourth or constructivist approach questions this naturalized dichotomy, calling attention instead to mutual contingency or conjoint constitution: What we take to be physical facts are likely to be strongly shaped by social construction processes, and at the same time, what we take to be strictly social will often have been shaped in part by taken-for-granted realities of the physical world. Technology offers important opportunities for tracing these interconnections, being an embodiment of both the physical and the social. The point is illustrated with a long-term historical analysis of a specific physiographic feature—a mountain—that has undergone little overtphysical change over the centuries, but has undergone repeated changes in its social meanings and uses. Few of the changes would have been possible in the absence of the mountain's physiographic characteristics; similarly, few would have occurred in the absence of changing sociocultural definitions and possibilities. The challenge for sociology is not just to recognize the importance of both the physical and the social factors, and certainly not to argue over the relative importance of the two, but to recognize the extent to which what we take to be physical and social factors can be conjointly constituted.The paper's subtitle is intended as a tribute to Aldo Leopold and to one of his most famous essays (1949).     

“Queer's” Near Absence in Academic and Student Service Websites

This essay studies several Websites that deal with mainly U.S. universities' LGBT/Queer student services and/or LGBT/Queer academic programs, and it considers the terminology such programs apply to name themselves. Notably, the term queer is almost absent on many of these sites, especially sites that are non-academic and provide student services. Drawing on Annamarie Jagose's Queer Theory, the author suggests that the term queer may be too threatening, too ambiguous, and too masculine to be useful in naming these programs and services. While numerous specific university sites have been explored, the essay focuses on the listings of services and programs found on two sites: University of Illinois-Chicago's site College/University Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Centers/Programs at http://www.uic.edu/org/lgbt and John Younger's Website University LGBT Programs: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies in the USA and Canada at http://www.duke.edu/web/jyounger/lbgtprogrs.html.     

An extended formulation of Arrow's theorem for k-social welfare functions

Past studies in social choice theory are generally based on the assumption that any two alternatives must be incompatible. We are concerned with the concept, k-social choice based on the assumption that just k alternatives out of p (1kp–1) are compatible. The purpose of this paper is to show an extended formulation of Arrow's theorem for k-social welfare functions.     

Social factors in facial display and communication: A reply to Chovil and others

This paper discusses the Chovil (1991) study, questioning the assumption that the notion of facial display as communication is incompatible with that of facial display as readout of motivational/emotional response. It is argued that (a) the Chovil paper oversimplifies the view of the competition; (b) social factors can facilitateor inhibit expression depending upon the nature of the emotion being expressed and the expressor's personal relationship with the other; and (c) social factors produce strong social emotions, so that any manipulation of sociality must also manipulate emotion.Preparation of this paper was supported in part by NIMH grant MH-40753 to Ross Buck, and by the University of Connecticut Research Foundation.     

Scientific management and class relations

Conclusion It has been the contention of this article that the true significance of the scientific management movement lies in what it can tell us about the engineering profession. Scientific management was not simply capitalist ideology, nor were the engineers who developed it simply the prisoners of capitalist ideology. Instead, scientific management was the product of the insertion of once-independent engineers into the complex, collective labor process in large corporations. It reflects both their inability to break loose fully from the dominant ideology and the fact that their interests as engineers were in conflict with the interests of their capitalist employers.The significance of this point, however, lies beyond the experience of turn-of-the-century shop culture engineers. For, if even as unpromising a group as the scientific managers could develop a program with implications inimical to the interests of capital, what of other, less commercialized groups? We have already seen that the early school-based engineers initiated a professionalizing project that included a claim to autonomy that was incompatible with the needs of their employers. It seems clear that the engineer's status as an employee, albeit an employee in an ambiguous position in the labor process, constitutes a basis for the development of conflicts with capitalist employers. This has been the thrust of our earlier discussion of the process of class formation. Gramsci's analysis of the situation of engineers in capitalist class relations, then, may not be without foundation:With the urban intellectuals it is another matter. Factory technicians do not exercise any political function over the instrumental masses, or at least this is a phase that has been superseded. Sometimes, rather, the contrary takes place, and the instrumental masses, at least in the person of their own organic intellectuals, exercise a political influence on the technicians.It may very well be that engineers, given a more militant labor movement, a more penetrating ideology, or a weaker capitalist class, could find themselves on the same side as more subordinate employees in conflicts with their employers.It is all the more important, then, that we understand the process by which American engineers have been domesticated. This has not happened automatically; far from it. Although there are ambiguities in the engineer's situation that make this process easier, the rapprochement of engineers with capital has had to be made. In this regard, the active intervention of business interests has been of particular importance, especially their efforts in fostering among engineers a safe variant of professionalism.Nor does this historical lesson apply only to engineers. For, there are other professional occupations that, increasingly, find themselves in situations comparable to engineers. Accountants, nurses, teachers, even certain kinds of lawyers have long been employed in large numbers by complex organizations. More recently, even doctors have begun to experience the condition of being an employee. For each of these occupations, we must avoid the easy assumption that there is something inherent in their social structural position that leads them into an accommodation with capital. On the contrary, as with engineers, we must stress the existence of real conflicts generated by capitalist relations of production, and then examine each occupation historically, asking what specific circumstances explain why its members do or do not enter into explicit conflict with their employers. However, while we must be aware of the possibility that professionals can (and sometimes do) enter into conflict with their employers, we also need to be sensitive to the complexity of the structural position of many professionals. Many professionals find themselves in positions of authority of some kind - either over subordinate workers in the case of engineers, or over clients in the case of doctors. This can be conducive to the attitude that the professionals' interests are different from those of the groups over which they have authority, or that their interests are the same as their employers'. Alternatively, as we saw in the case of engineers, this structural ambiguity may promote the formation of narrow occupational ideologies among professionals - i.e., the idea that their interests differ from those of both employers and subordinates. Therefore, while we need to be aware of the existence of employer/ professional conflict, we also need to recognize the existence of barriers to, and complexities within, the evolution of such conflicts.It is with this in mind that this article has stressed the importance of developing an adequate approach to the process of class formation. To restate briefly some of the arguments made earlier, the process of class formation in capitalist society is set in motion by the antagonisms inherent in capitalist relations of production. This is not, however, all that we need to know about the process of class formation - we also need to recognize the existence of both objective and historical barriers to this process. Nevertheless, one must be clear about what exactly these barriers are. There is, for example, an important difference between the relations of production that constitute class in the first place and workers' functions in the labor process. Similarly, one should not confuse barriers to the process of class formation with full-fledged class divisions. If we fail to distinguish among these various factors, we will be in danger of artificially placing a class barrier between engineers and other forms of wage-labor. If, on the other hand, we do make these distinctions, we will be able to account for both engineers' opposition to their employers and their domestication.

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The Practice of Multimodal Approaches, the Challenge of Cross-Cultural Communication, and the Search for Responses

The development of multimodal approachespresents an opportunity for human beings to increasetheir competence in managing complexity, while at thesame time brings a challenge of cross-culturalcommunication. Some claim that two approaches have beenproposed for tackling this challenge: an approach offrameworks and an approach ofdiscourse. Some go further to contenddropping frameworks and taking up discourse. This paper argues that, if it istrue that there exist these two approaches, neither theframeworks nor the discourseapproach alone is sufficient. It is suggested thatresearchers and practitioners may be better equipped byparticipating in discourses with and among frameworks.Employing three metaphors, this paper proposes that, inthe way force-fields andconstellations require and imply each other, both frameworks anddiscourse are necessary for human beings to act as aPeircian fiber-cable in socialproblem-solving.Requests for reprints should be addressed to Zhichang Zhu, Department of Information Systems, Lincoln School of Management, Lincoln LN6 7TS, United Kingdom.     

Policies over time and pareto optimality

This paper is concerned with sequences of policies that occur over time in voting models and planning procedures. The framework for our analysis includes assumptions that are satisfied by models in the corresponding literatures, together with other standard assumptions for microeconomic analysis that involve time. The starting point for our analyses is the prespective that results from combining the following (widely held) views: 1) certain voting models and planning procedures can be interpreted as being non-tatonnement or sequential processes (where each policy in the sequence that is generated is actually experienced by voters or consumers) and 2) an alternative being Pareto optimal in any given period (temporal Pareto optimality) is the appropriate efficiency criterion only if the alternative is the final outcome from a tatonnement process-and that, otherwise, one should examine the efficiency of the entire path (using intertemporal Pareto optimality). Our first observation about the planning literature is that is has (by and large) neglected the efficiency criterion that is appropriate for the discrete-time procedures that can be interpreted as non-tatonnement or sequential processes-and that, what's more, such trajectories will (in general) fail to meet this criterion. Our second observation identifies some results that can be used to establish that some of these trajectories will at least be ultimately intertemporally Pareto optimal. In our discussion of voting theory, we review Buchanan's opposition to requiring (social) choice consistency for voting procedures-and his argument for this position on (Pareto) efficiency grounds. We then consider voting procedures that can be interpreted as non-tatonnement or sequential processes and arrive at the conclusion that, in these cases, (i) majority rule cycles are intertemporally Pareto inefficient and (ii) achieving intertemporal Pareto optimality requires choice consistency. We then go on to show that related observations apply to Kramer's normative conclusions about his dynamical model of political equilibrium — and identify some further references where similar observations apply. In the final part of our discussion of voting models, we arrive at the further conclusion that, in the most relevant cases, a trajectory that stays in the temporal Pareto set is not necessarily more desirable (on efficiency grounds) than one that doesn't.This paper has been improved by helpful comments and suggestions that have been provided by Kenneth Arrow, an anonymous referee, and the editor who handled the paper.Peter Coughlin gratefully acknowledges financial support provided by (i) National Science Foundation Grant No. SES-8409352, and (ii) the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford (with support from National Science Foundation Grant No. BNS-8700864 and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation).     

Predatory,developmental, and other apparatuses: A comparative political economy perspective on the Third World state

Disappointment over the contributions of Third World state apparatuses to industrial transformation and the increasing intellectual dominance of neoutiliarian paradigms in the social science has made if fashionable to castigate the Third World state as predatory and rent seeking. This paper argues for a more differentiated view, one that connects differences in performance to differences in state structure. The incoherent absolutist domination of the klepto-patrimonial Zairian state are contrasted to the embedded autonomy of the East Asian developmental state. Then the internal structure and external ties of an intermediate state — Brazil — are analyzed in relation to both polar types. The comparative evidence suggests that the efficacy of the developmental state depends on a meritocratic bureaucracy with a strong sense of corporate identity and a dense set of institutionalized links to private elites.     

An Exploratory Study of “Parasites” in Taiwan

Deriving from Parasite Single proposed by Yamada (1997), parasites in this study is redefined as those who live with and financially rely on their parents in terms of living expenses after school graduation. The current study adopts the logit model and utilizes the data from the 1999 to 2000 Taiwan Panel Study of Family Dynamics to investigate the determinants of parasites. The finding reveals that gender, age, marital status, and the value of filial piety are significantly different between parasites and non-parasites. Moreover, gender, monthly income, age and marital status are determinants of the probability of being parasites.     

Video lottery gambling: Effects on pathological gamblers seeking treatment in South Dakota

Fifty-eight pathological gamblers receiving treatment for addictive illness in two South Dakota hospitals were assessed for types of gambling and grouped into three categories; 15 video lottery only (VLO), 36 video lottery mixed (VLM), and 7 not video lottery (NVL). There were 51 male and 7 female respondents, with a mean age of 38.2. We hypothesized that video lottery would be the predominant type of gambling on several dimensions: level of recent activity, most money lost on one occasion, and number of DSM-IV criteria met. Of all gamblers, 87.9% had pathological involvement with video lottery. Video lottery gambling accounted for the highest level of recent activity. In the VLM group, video lottery gambling led to greater single-occasion monetary losses. In addition, significantly more DSM-IV criteria were met in the VLM group for video lottery gambling than for other forms of gambling these subjects had engaged in. Results indicate that video lottery gambling is the predominant type of gambling behavior engaged in by gamblers seeking treatment for addictive illness in South Dakota. We propose that these findings could be associated with the availability and stimulus differences between video lottery and other gambling types.The authors would like to thank Larry Atwood, Chemical Dependency Counselor at Keystone Treatment Center in Canton, S.D., for his assistance with data collection.     

Minimal treatments and problem gamblers: A preliminary investigation

In view of the increasing popularity of minimal intervention treatments for problem drinking, a self-help manual for people who wish to reduce or stop gambling was prepared. Twenty-nine (ACT residents) who responded to advertisements for help with problem gambling were allocated to either of two minimal treatments, Manual (only) and Manual & Interview. On average, clients from both groups reduced the frequency of their gambling sessions, frequency of overspending, and amount spent per week in the first three months and next three months after first contact, but expenditure per session increased from three to six months, after an initial improvement. There was no evidence that a single in-depth interview added to the effectiveness of the manual.This project was funded by a grant from the Australian National University Faculties Research Fund.     

The VFW — A case study in the “iron law of oligarchy” and goal displacement

The iron law of oligarchy is applied to the VFW. Using participant observation and qualitative interviews, membership of the VFW is dichotomized into a leadership oligarchy and a drinking membership. Opinions of members of the two groups about the purposes of the organization and about each other are documented. An historical analysis traces the change in organizational goals over time from promoting nationalism, fraternalism, and special benefits for members to political advocacy of veterans' rights.     

Intransitivities in multidimensional spatial voting: period three implies chaos

It is well known that multidimensional spatial voting can involve intransitivity and cycles, resulting in outcomes anywhere in the policy space. These results are typically referred to as the chaos theorems. In this paper, I show that the connection between non-equilibrium spatial voting and chaos is not merely semantic, but is theoretic. Using symbolic dynamics, I show that if a three-cycle intransitivity among social choices exists, then cycles of all lengths greater than three are possible. This result is then used to establish the three conditions of sensitive dependence on initial conditions, topological transitivity, and dense periodic points, demonstrating the formal connection between multidimensional spatial voting and chaotic nonlinear dynamics.     

Disagreement point monotonicity,transfer responsiveness,and the egalitarian bargaining solution

This paper provides an axiomatization of the egalitarian bargaining solution. The central axiom used (together with some standard properties of bargaining solutions) in this characterization is a transfer responsiveness condition. First, it ensures that no transfer paradox can occur if bargaining power is transferred from one agent to another by decreasing one agent's and increasing the other agent's component of the disagreement point. Second, the extent of external effects of such a transfer is limited by requiring that agents not involved in the transfer neither gain more than the winner nor lose more than the loser of the transfer. Journal of Economic Literature Classification No.: C78.I thank William Thomson whose comments on an earlier version led to substantial improvements.