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).     

Inclusive Governance and “Minority” Groups: The Role of the Third Sector in Wales

Following the establishment of a national legislature in Wales in 1999 the third sector has entered into a pioneering cross-sectoral partnership with the Welsh government. This paper presents the results of a research project that has studied the new structures of devolved governance through the expectations and participation of voluntary organizations representing three marginalized or minority groupings: women, disabled people, and those from an ethnic minority background. The findings reveal that despite varying levels of expectation expressed by minority voluntary groups, active engagement of minority groups in policy making has been a feature of the Assembly's first months. Nevertheless, formidable challenges face both sectoral partners in the new system of governance, not least in creating organizational structures that facilitate partnership working in the devolved polity.     

The development of a capacity for concern in antisocial children: Winnicott's concept of human relatedness

Winnicott's refreshing view of clinical practice includes the unique notion that delinquency is a sign of hope. Several of Winnicott's interpersonal concepts fit together to develop this thought: holding environment, capacity for concern, the use of the object, and hate in the counter transference. In this paper these four concepts are described and the case of a ten-year-old antisocial youngster is used to illustrate Winnicott's thinking and tie some of his illusive ideas into a difficult but familiar kind of practice situation. The therapeutic approach used was a mixture of case management and play therapy. What is different however is the way in which the therapist interpreted the youngster's behavior and stimulated his rich fantasy life.     

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.     

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).     

The context of correctness: A comment on rushton

According to Philippe Rushton, the equalitarian fiction, a scientific hoax that races are genetically equal in cognitive ability, underlies the politically correct objections to his research on racial differences. He maintains that there is a taboo against race unequaled by the Inquisition. I show that while Rushton has been publicly harassed, he has had continuous opportunities to present his findings in diverse, widely available, respectable journals, and no general suppression within academic psychology is evident. Similarly, Henry Garrett and his associates in the LAAEE, dedicated to preserving segregation and preventing race suicide, disseminated their ideas widely, although Garrett complained of the equalitarian fiction in 1961. Examination of the intertwined history ofMankind Quarterly, German Rassenhygiene, far right politics, and the work of Roger Pearson suggests that some cries of political correctness must be viewed with great caution.Preparation of this paper was not supported by any grant, foundation, political, or religious organization.specializing in the history of psychology and psychological aesthetics.     

Physiographic gestures as decoding facilitators: Three experiments exploring a neglected facet of communication

There is a dearth of studies exploring the role of gestures in the communication of experience, i.e., events external to the speaker; whereas much research has been concerned with gestures as expressions of attitudes and emotion. This state of affairs has tended to reinforce the premature assumption that gestures serve functions quite different from those of speech. Three experiments reported here were designed to investigate this neglected role examining specifically, physiographic gestures (pgs). A variety of tasks were devised; information pertaining to each being recorded on videotape and presented under varying modal conditions. It was found that pgs do contribute to the communication of events external to the speaker. Possible mechanisms are discussed.This is a more extensive version of a paper entitled A Clarificatory Paper on the Role of Gestures in Communication, presented at the British Psychological Society London Conference, 1977, Imperial College.     

A characterization of strategy-proof voting rules for separable weak orderings

We consider the problem of choosing a subset of a finite set of indivisible objects (public projects, facilities, laws, etc.) studied by Barberà et al. (1991). Here we assume that agents preferences are separable weak orderings. Given such a preference, objects are partitioned into three types, goods, bads, and nulls. We focus on voting rules, which rely only on this partition rather than the full information of preferences. We characterize voting rules satisfying strategy-proofness (no one can ever be better off by lying about his preference) and null-independence (the decision on each object should not be dependent on the preference of an agent for whom the object is a null). We also show that serially dictatorial rules are the only voting rules satisfying efficiency as well as the above two axioms. We show that the separable domain is the unique maximal domain over which each rule in the first characterization, satisfying a certain fairness property, is strategy-proof. I am grateful to Professor William Thomson for helpful comments and suggestions. I also thank Professor John Duggan, Christopher Chambers, and seminar participants in Department of Economics, University of Rochester. I thank anonymous referees for their detailed comments and suggestions that helped me a great deal to develop the earlier version of this paper. All remaining errors are mine.     

The power of a cohesive subgroup within a voting body

We examine the power of a subgroup within a voting body as a function of its size and cohesiveness. The measure of cohesiveness is the probability that an arbitrary member of the subgroup will vote the same way as the leader of the subgroup. All voters are assumed to vote independently, and those not in the subgroup vote for or against with probability 1/2 in each case. The power of the subgroup is the probability that its vote differential exceeds the vote differential of the members of the body not in the subgroup. Tradeoffs between relative subgroup size and its follow-the-leader probability are considered.     

Theory at risk: Accounting for the excellence movement

Amidst widespread concern about educational crisis and the need for reform, the current excellence movement places a pronounced emphasis on rigor, standards, and a core curriculum of basic studies. At issue here is whether major macro-the-oretical perspectives can account for the emergence of this movement. Functional and Marxian theories do not meet this challenge well, especially insofar as they posit a tight, rational linkage between school and economy and downplay the institutional autonomy of the educational system. A status conflict approach, emphasizing middle class mobilization, offers greater insight, though it must be complemented with a recognition of constraints imposed by capitalist organization and the institutionalization of educational myths.     

Ordinal Bayesian incentive compatible representations of committees

We consider the problem of strategic manipulation for decision schemes that provide an adequate representation (in some sense) of the distribution of power within a committee. Strategy-proof representation is very restrictive: it implies that the committee contains exactly one minimal winning coalition. So we introduce the weaker concept of Ordinally Bayesian Incentive Compatible representation and prove the existence of such representations for weak games under some conditions. Finally, constructing examples, we show first how necessary these conditions are—including the use of chance in the voting procedure — and second that we cannot avoid Condorcet's paradox.     

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.     

The discursive origins of Israeli separatism: The case of the Arab village

Conclusions We should note, however, that the achievements of the control system cannot in and of themselves explain the success of the discourse on the Arab village. Indeed, with the benefit of hindsight, one must acknowledge today that what the control system produced was a secondary order reality at best, a representation superimposed over, and obscuring other social realities. It never managed (nor did it try) to stop the proletarianization of peasants. It never managed (though it did try) to put an end to illegal construction and de-facto urbanization. It did not even manage to repress the emergence of grass-roots national political organization in the villages. More often than not, its sole achievement was to obscure official (and academic) perception of these processes. Thus, one often finds nowadays settlements to which the term village is officially applied, while their physical structure already merits urban status. Urbanization took place in the villages regardless of the designs of planners, and this fact alone is enough to demonstrate how discourse detached them from reality. This was also why, in 1976, Orientalists and government experts were completely taken by surprise, when the committee for national direction (composed of village mayors!) organized mass demonstrations to protest government plans to confiscate more Palestinian lands. The events of this day, later known as land day, signaled the emergence of rural Palestinians as a national political force to be reckoned with. Quite contrary to what the notion of hamula struggle led them to believe, experts discovered that the villages were an effective mobilizing ground for national political action.I think it is precisely the dubious character of the achievements of the control system, arising from the systematic blindness inculcated by discourse, which demonstrates that these achievements were indeed of secondary importance in comparison with what was the raison d'etre of the control system and the discourse on the Arab village: their premier achievement was to reproduce the separatist character of Israeli identity. The origins of the control system were diverse indeed: they included divide and conquer practices developed by Arabists; land planning practices; modernization discourse formulated in response to immigration; cooptation strategies developed by the Labor party for electoral purposes; bifurcation of the labor market by Jewish labor unions. There is no one person or group responsible for these. What organized all these diverse practices together was the specific rationality of the control system. This rationality was not an economic one, nor political, nor scientific, nor was it given in any of these practices. It was identical with Israeli identity and the procedures that separate it from its other. This is why Israelis still adhere to the control system and the discourse on the Arab village, even though they fail to predict Palestinian behavior or control it (i.e., it was not their goal to begin with).It is ironic that the discourse on the Arab village would reach the height of its prestige just as the achievements of the control system were evaporating. The conjunction of these two events cannot be explained by the Weberian view of power as the realization of a will, i.e., by focusing on the interest of Jews in maintaining control over Palestinians. Such a view leads to an unavoidable contradiction: If the action of participants in the discourse and the control system is based on their interests, why are they unable to recognize their failure? And if they are not capable of monitoring their own interests, how were they able to create a coherent and effective control system? The answer is that their action is circumscribed by what discourse and the control system permit them to grasp, and this understanding is indeed both limited and enabled by the premier achievement of discourse and the control system: a position of a Western-modern Israeli subject, strictly demarcated from that of the traditional-Oriental rural Palestinian. Power is not so much exercised to realize an Israeli interest, as it is constitutive of the very self-understanding that underlies this interest, a self-understanding predicated on the rejection of the Orient and its exclusion.In this sense, this article merely provides the rough outlines for a future debate on the origins and nature of Israeli separatism. Such a debate has scarcely begun, but implicit understandings of separatism are implicated in the contemporary political debate in Israel. The mainstream of Israeli political thought tends to treat the separation between Jews and Palestinians as a taken-for-granted fact, a direct consequence of Zionism as a nation-building project. Others, on the political left, question this assumption and suggest that separatism should be understood as an institutional system erected in response to certain economic, military, or political interests, a system based on the control and exploitation of Palestinians by Jews.I think both positions limit the debate about separatism. By ignoring the cultural side of separatism, its character as an identity that requires a permanent effort of constitution, they supply an alibi for intellectuals and academics. These can continue using their disciplines and discourses, and even present these as sufficiently detached for a critique of Israeli politics, without examining their role in the reproduction of a separatist identity. Moreover, if separatism is understood merely as control over Palestinians, thus ignoring its side as the subjection of Jews, the consequence is that the distinction usurped by the Israeli upper class is mis-recognized. This class can continue to present its taste, values, and style of life - all those cultural arbitraries that are marked by the double exclusion of the Orient and the diaspora - as the sacred cultural consensus of Israeli society. It was my aim in this article, on the contrary, to demonstrate that separatism informs the core of Israeli culture, and thus the intellectual tools to understand it and fight it can not be taken from among what it consecrates.     

Stability of voting games

This paper generalizes the result of Le Breton and Salles (1990) about stable set (far-sighted core of order 1) for voting games to far-sighted core of arbitrary order. Let m be the number of alternatives, n be the number of voters and G(n,k) be a proper symmetric simple game in which the size of a winning coalition is greater or equal to k. It is shown that the far-sighted core of order d for G(n,k) is nonempty for all preference profiles and for all n and k with n/(n–k)=v ¹ iff m(d+1)(v–1).This paper is part of my dissertation. I am grateful to my thesis advisor Leonid Hurwicz for his guidance and encouragement. I would like to thank Edward Green, Lu Hong, James Jordan, Andrew McLennan, Herve Moulin and Marcel Richter for their very helpful suggestions. Especially a referee and Maurice Salles made many good comments. Of course, any errors that remain are the sole responsibility of the author.     

Emotional Climate in a European Problem Area: East Berlin and West Berlin Three Years After Reunification

In autumn of 1992, three years after the unification of Germany, during a period of violent attacks against foreigners, 120 students from East Berlin and West Berlin and 20 foreign students living in West Berlin answered the Emotional Climate Questionnaire developed by de Rivera and Fernandez-Dols. Foreign respondents expressed a positive attitude toward their government/state and believed in prosocial behavior to a greater extent than respondents from East Berlin and West Berlin. Whereas East Berlin students disagreed only somewhat with statements in favor of selfishness and egoism, West Berlin students strongly disagreed with them. We attribute the differences that were found in the answers of the foreign students to their national values. In addition, we regard the differences between the emotional climates of East Berlin and West Berlin as reflecting a climate of instability among East Berliners. We interpreted selfishness as a kind of polarized behavior indicating a climate of instability. A factor analysis revealed 5 factors of an emotional climate: Nation's Future, Just World, Reactive Egoism, Scepticism, and Basic Egoism. The concept of emotional climate is discussed on the basis of the current data.     

Pushing the Limits: An Interview with Shelley Tremain

Shelley Tremain, the 1997-1998 Ed Roberts Postdoctoral Fellow at the World Institute on Disability and the School of Public Health of the University of California at Berkeley and editor of Pushing the Limits: Disabled Dykes Produce Culture, is interviewed by Cathy Marston and Dawn Atkins. The interview covers Tremain's work with disabled dykes in Canada, raising awareness in queer communities about disability (and in disability communities about queer issues), research issues such as the social model of disability and problems with labels separating out learning and mental disabilities from physical disabilities, problems dealing with being an academic with a disability, and Tremain's suggested readings for those interested in doing more work on the intersection of queer and disability issues.     

First Contact: Queer Theory, Sexual Identity, and “Mainstream” Film

This paper begins by raising questions about the role of queer theory in media critique, centering on a discussion of four recent mainstream mass-circulation films with significant lesbian and/or gay content. It is asserted that these films operate within accepted discourses on sexuality that require both the notions of public self-disclosure and of the truth of the hetero/homo binary. The methods used by media productions to disseminate that discourse from a lesbian/gay point of view are discussed in terms of the implications of such mass-circulation films being for many persons a first contact point with that discourse.     

“Lost Childhood”—Lessons from the Holocaust: Implications for Adult Adjustment

This paper was written in memoriam to the one and a half million children murdered during the Holocaust; in celebration of the tiny percentage who survived; in honor of their rescuers, the Righteous Christians and in meeting our own responsibility as survivors to bear witness.     

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.     

Privacy and privilege: Patients', professionals', and the public's rights

Conflict between the individual's right to privacy and the public's right to know is increasing as insurance companies and other third parties are demanding more information about patients and clients and data banks are storing it for retrieval and later use. Social workers are ethically bound to protect the privacy of their relationships with patients and clients and the confidentiality of their communications. But there are situations in which the obligation to society is deemed greater than the individual's right to privacy, and even in states in which their patients' and clients' communications are granted privilege by law, the social worker can be required by law to divulge confidential information or risk being held in contempt of court. This paper will discuss the individual's right to privacy, privilege and its exceptions, and present examples of court decisions related to these issues.