Machiavelli’s Soderini and the problem of necessity

Drawing principally on a particular example discussed by Machiavelli, this article seeks to clarify the concept of necessity and assess the Machiavellian contentions that evil-doing is in politics often necessary and justified. The example indicates that claims of necessity are best construed as allegations that evil-doing is “indispensable.” The example also indicates that these allegations are often suspect because these typically reflect limited information and knowledge and often biases and rationalizations as well, although this is not stressed by Machiavelli. Instead, Machiavelli stresses the dangers and difficulties statesmen often confront when seeking to secure important political ends or avoid costly failures, dangers and difficulties which he believes are ultimately related to the nature of human beings and the character of political elites. With respect to the morality of evil-doing, Machiavelli is suggestive of different kinds and forms of justification. Five kinds are described, and all are found unsatisfactory.     

Arriving old: A qualitative study of elder refugee women’s self-perceptions of the first year of resettlement

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study examines eight elder women’s experiences of resettling with their family and the protective factors that enhanced their resiliency. The implications for social work include the need to assess elder refugees’ strengths, resilience, pre-resettlement functioning instead of services that might encourage integration into the dominant culture and community, and that the refugee experience is a lifelong experience that shapes and informs various stages of life.     

The senator’s tale: the development of Bremen’s bourgeoisie in the post-1945 era

Were members of the German bourgeoisie capable of forming the foundation for a new self-understanding of post-1945German society? Or did they prove to be unsuited as agents of Germany’s new beginning? This article seeks to answer these questions by focusing on historical developments in the early phase of the Federal Republic of Germany as reflected in the biography of one prominent representative of the German bourgeoisie. Theodor Spitta, who was born in 1873, was elected in 1911as a senator for life in the government of the Free Hanse City of Bremen. Spitta was an outstanding representative of a generation socialized under the last German Kaiser, a generation which perceived itself as part of a politically liberal Bremen bourgeoisie. He feared the gradual decline, indeed the disintegration of his class. None the less – or perhaps for that very reason – he committed himself to the goal of restoring a regionally specific form of bourgeois life in the city of Bremen. Although Spitta declared a ‘farewell to the bourgeoisie’ in his autobiographical texts, that did not prevent him from actively pursuing the revival of a unique urban-bourgeois ‘spirit’. This spirit was to serve as a tool in promoting Bremen’s central political goal in post-1945Germany: the preservation of the city-state’s unique status within Germany’s federal system.     

Emerging adults’ judgments about helping at home: Situational and experiential sources of variability

Judgments and decisions about household helping affect how families function, and they develop through everyday experiences. Much prior research has examined stable individual differences in prosocial orientations, but such orientations also vary within individuals. The present work examined situational and experiential sources of variability in emerging adults’ judgments and reasoning about helping at home. The research assessed judgments and reasoning about household helping in events that were either hypothetical (Studies 1 and 2) or took place in participants’ own homes (Study 2). Participants’ judgments about helping incorporated moral, personal, and social-conventional considerations and differentiated helping in one's own home from helping in another home. Participants’ past experiences with household helping predicted their judgments about helping. Findings supported the view that emerging adults’ judgments about household helping are informed by both situational considerations and personal experiences.     

‘Civic’ police and the condition of liberty: the rationality of governance in eighteenth-century England

In this article it is argued that previous attempts to understand the organization of eighteenthcentury systems of police have failed to take into account the political implications of governmental organization. Examining the office of constable in terms of the contemporary governmental imagination reveals that concerns with the independence of the officers and the need to ward against ‘corruption’ are not simply practical requirements. The unpaid, sequential nature of eighteenth-century police service was defined in terms of the classical model of civic duty, which saw active participation in government and the rotation of public office as key conditions of the free state, and as such the liberty of the citizens. This vision of freedom as a condition of freedom from dependence or domination, not an absence of interference, was instrumental in defining the way the system of police was debated and reformed over the course of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Given that ‘police’ in this period represents a much wider programme of administration than the simple control of law and order, this has implications for our understanding of the structure of eighteenth-century government in general.     

The welfare service practitioners’ perception of their power position in the user participation imperative

In the popular user participation rhetoric of social work practice, and amid the outcry for sharing power with the welfare service users when providers make service decisions, much research attention has been put on the circumstances that impeded the users’ voices, presuming that the service practitioners actually have de facto power over the service users. Based on the findings of a participatory research project conducted in Hong Kong, this paper scrutinises this presumed position of power from the service providers’ own perspective. Drawn from interviews of 47 service practitioners individually or in group, this phenomenological account is important for deciphering the conscious experiences that influence the service practitioners’ actions and reactions within participative spaces.     

Linking illicit substance misuse during pregnancy and child abuse: what is the quality of the evidence?

In most Australian states, legislation makes provision for professionals to report their concerns about the future welfare of an unborn child to appropriate authorities. The legislation establishes guidance for the implementation of family supports to minimize future child protection involvement. Given the legislation and the potential benefits, empirical research linking substance misuse during pregnancy and child protection involvement is relatively limited. We review 21 original studies linking substance misuse during pregnancy with child protection outcomes and the potential generalizability of results to the Australian context. The majority of studies reviewed were conducted in the USA and were mostly retrospective. Other differences between studies include sample sizes, comparison groups, study setting, participants’ ethnicity and pattern of drug use. In the postnatal literature, it is well established that child abuse is associated with a complex array of factors including partner, as well as broader family factors and yet, the studies reviewed focus upon maternal substance abuse without including the wider context. Given the available evidence‐based literature, it is difficult to come to definitive conclusions that can assist clinicians involved in frontline decision‐making for early intervention. Well‐designed research, accessible by antenatal health‐care professionals, is needed to adopt an evidence‐based approach to risk assessment in the prenatal context.     

To abolish the law of castes: merit,manhood and the problem of colour in the Puerto Rican liberal movement, 1873–92

Abstract

This article traces the involvement of three men of low social rank and partial African ancestry in the evolution of liberal politics in Puerto Rico during the final decades of Spanish colonial rule. In both literary and political writings Ramón Marín, Sotero Figueroa and Francisco Gonzalo Marín argued that social equality should be at the centre of colonial reforms. Yet they construed the question of equality as a matter of unfettered manhood – all men to be judged on their merit not on their rank – rather than as a politics of racial solidarity. Rather than characterize this emphasis as ‘silence’ on matters of race imposed by elite liberalism, this article seeks to understand this egalitarian variant of Puerto Rican liberalism on its own terms. It situates these authors within three overlapping contexts: a colonial state that was ambivalent about race; a liberal movement built on fragile alliances that included artisans and men of lower-middle status; and complex local systems of social acceptance and exclusion that shaped these writers' own identities as men in public and private.     

The effect of community organisations’ participation and existence on self-rated health in China: evidence from China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study

Using the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study cross-sectional survey in 2011 with an 80.51% response rate, an endogenous logit model is adopted to account for the relationship between social capital and self-rated health and the heterogeneity from gender, age and marital status on individual self-rated health status. Consequently, social capital at both individual and community levels is found to be positively correlated with better subjective self-rated health status. Furthermore, the social capital’s marginal effect of the male, high-income groups, the married are larger than that of the female, rural residents, low-income groups and the divorced. In addition, interclass correlation value from the partition of the fixed and random effect of social capital is significantly, ranging from 3.0 to 5.49%, indicating a significant proportion of the total variance in self-rated health that can be explained by community-level differences.     

Localization of Marxism in China and the Construc-tion of China’s Modernity

现代性在中国的生成与建构,是与马克思主义中国化历史地联系在一起的;中国现代性的建构,也历史地确定了马克思主义中国化的起点、任务与方向。马克思主义中国化的理论任务就是要求确立以建设为核心的观念、以促进人与社会的全面发展为主旨的马克思主义理论话语系统,构造一套符合全球化时代要求、有利于中华民族复兴及长治久安、并具有自检与防御机制及能力的开放性的社会、政治与文化体系。     

Arrow’s theorem of the deductible: Moral hazard and stop-loss in health insurance

The logic of Arrow’s theorem of the deductible, i.e. that it is optimal to focus insurance coverage on the states with largest expenditures, remains at work in a model with ex post moral hazard. The optimal insurance contract takes the form of a system of “implicit deductibles”, resulting in the same indemnities as a contract with full insurance above a variable deductible positively related to the elasticity of medical expenditures with respect to the insurance rate. In a model with a predefined ceiling on expenses, there is no reimbursement for expenses below the stop-loss amount. One motivation to have some insurance below the deductible arises if regular health care expenditures in a situation of standard health have a negative effect on the probability of getting into a state with large medical expenses.     

‘Growing Old’ in Shelters and ‘On the Street’: Experiences of Older Homeless People

Homelessness among older people in Canada is both a growing concern, and an emerging field of study. This article reports thematic results of qualitative interviews with 40 people aged 46 to 75, carried out as part of a mixed-methods study of older people who are homeless in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Our participants included people with histories of homelessness (n = 14) and persons new to homelessness in later life (n = 26). Interviews focused on experiences at the intersections of aging and homelessness including social relationships, the challenges of living on the streets and in shelters in later life, and the future. This article outlines the 5 main themes that capture the experience of homelessness for our participants: age exacerbates worries; exclusion and isolation; managing significant challenges; shifting needs and realities; and resilience, strength, and hope. Together, these findings underscore the need for specific programs geared to the unique needs of older people who are homeless.     

The scrapbooking detective: Frederick Porter Wensley and the limits of ‘celebrity’ and ‘authority’ in inter-war Britain

Frederick Porter Wensley was one of Scotland Yard's ‘Big Four’ detectives, head of the Metropolitan Police Criminal Investigation Department and responsible for establishing the Flying Squad. On his retirement in 1929, he used the two bound scrapbooks of press clippings and photographs he had collated to document his personal life and career to inform his 1931 autobiography Detective Days and serialized press articles. Through examining the interaction of material between scrapbooks and autobiographical writings, this article explores how Wensley constructed his post-retirement persona as ‘celebrity detective’ from a canny understanding of what had made him a commercial subject for the press. It argues that Wensley recast his life to promote his own successes at the expense of a narrative of police unity, providing a vehicle for him to suggest further changes to the structure of the police force without official sanction. By juxtaposing this against tightening legislation on police communication with journalists during the inter-war period under the Official Secrets Acts, this article demonstrates how the ‘celebrity’ that Wensley sought to occupy was increasingly regarded as irreconcilable with police ability to effect ‘impartial’ regulation, anticipating the concerns raised by the 2012 Leveson Inquiry into the Culture, Practice and Ethics of the Press. The article thus charts a turning point in defining the relationship between police and press.