Ideology and welfare in the UK: the implications for the voluntary sector

The UK has, over recent years, moved from a welfare state to a more market-oriented system of welfare. But the extent of this change has varied considerably according to the ideological position of local government in different parts of the country. This makes it possible within one country to assess the implications for the voluntary sector of different models of welfare. This article develops a framework for looking at different welfare ideologies and the values they espouse, with reference both to the UK and to the models that exist in other countries. It then takes four examples of UK local authorities which demonstrate the different models and examines the implications for the voluntary sector. In doing so, it examines the prospects for the voluntary sector to deliver both service and political pluralism in the future.     

Voluntary organisations and the social state in the European Community

Accurate comparison of the social welfare systems operating in the twelve countries of the European Community is inhibited by lack of information about the voluntary or non-governmental organisations which form an important element in those systems. This paper summarises available information about the scale and scope of voluntary organisations, and attempts to set them in the context of current policy debates. The changing nature of the family in Europe, the development of mixed economies in the provision of welfare, the functions of NGOs as employers and organisers of volunteering, the future of NGOs after 1992, and in the context of a steadily more open Europe are some of the themes which are preoccupying voluntary organisations in most countries of the Community. The paper refers to the inadequacy of most data on NGOs atnational level and to the consequent impossibility of constructing valid cross-national comparisons.I am grateful to the Department of Social Welfare in Dublin for sponsoring the work on which this paper is based. An earlier version was presented as a background paper at the European ConferencePartners in Progress, jointly organised by the Minister of Social Welfare and the EC Commission in Galway, Ireland, June 1990.     

Addiction to fruit machines: A preliminary study among young males

Although most sources treat gambling as an adult phenomenon, adolescent gambling is more widespread than is generally recognized, and in some cases may even be pathological. This paper outlines a preliminary study of eight adolescents addicted to playing and gambling on coin-in-the-slot machines (more commonly known as fruit machines). Factors involved in the onset of fruit machine playing are examined along with their alternative gambling activities and associated problems. The role of skill and excitement components in persistent playing are also discussed.The author would like to thank the United Kingdom Economic and Social Research Council for funding this work through a research studentship.     

Inequality and welfare evaluation of heterogeneous income distributions

This paper establishes the principles that should govern the welfare and inequality analysis of heterogeneous income distributions. Two basic criteria – the equity preference condition and the compensation principle – are shown to be fundamentally incompatible. The paper favours the latter, thereby vindicating the traditional method of dealing with heterogeneous samples. However, inequality and welfare comparisons will usually be well defined only if equivalent incomes are obtained using constant scale factors; and researchers will need to distinguish clearly between inequality of nominal incomes and inequality of living standards. Furthermore, household observations must always be weighted according to family size.     

Head movement during listening turns in conversation

In five subjects, head movement during conversation was monitored by polarised light goniometry, and recorded alongside speech and a signal proportional to peak amplitude of sound waves (peak loudness). Kinematic properties of listeners' head movements, such as amplitude, frequency and cyclicity, differentiated various conversational functions. That is, they were function-specific: symmetrical, cyclic movements were employed to signal yes, no or equivalents; linear, wide movements anticipated claims for speaking; narrow linear movements occurred in phase with stressed syllables in the other's speech (ynchrony movements); and wide, linear movements occurred during pauses in the other's speech. That, it is argued, bears upon the relation between thesignalling of communicative intentions and the synchronisation of interactional rhythm. Thus, the former appears to determine the timing and tempo of responses such as yes and no, while the latter determines the regulation of synchrony movements. The manner in which these factors interact in other conversational functions and their theoretical implications are discussed.     

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

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

The social psychology of Adam and Eve

Conclusion I am arguing for three links between the biblical creation myth and social theory. First, I am arguing that, by exploiting the story for the social psychological ideas that can be drawn out of it, we have a rich way to appreciate the nuances of the myth. By treating Adam and Eve as a parsimonious and memorable form of sociological theorizing, we can effectively appreciate the elaborate, highly tuned, richly coherent, and subtle structure of the myth. We can answer a series of initially enigmatic questions about the logic of the story, and in the process we can bring out some of its neglected features, such as the burden in the final gift. Here empirical theory serves to clarify the hermeneutics of a powerfully appealing element of cultural life.Next, reversing the perspective, we can reveal the myth as a testable empirical theory. In this article, I can only suggest the promise of such a theory. But this operation draws out theoretical ideas about emotions - such as their dualistic and dialectical character - that are difficult to summarize elegantly without the aid of the symbolic powers of mythical narrative and that point empirical investigation in new directions.Third, there is the empirical question of the impressive resonance of the story of Adam and Eve. I am arguing that the everyday emergence and decline of emotions, in typically brief, typically inconsequential, social interactional episodes, parallels the metamorphosis described in Genesis. This parallel indicates a ground for the appeal of this creation myth wherever people structure their emotions into socially situated forms, wherever falls, literal or figurative, can lead alternatively to shame, laughter, crying, or anger. The narrative structure of everyday emotions is surely not the only nor the most important basis of the appeal of Adam and Eve, but there is a grounding for the resonance of the story, a tacit basis for its pervasive appeal, in the stories that we corporeally convey as we construct socially situated episodes of shame, laughter, anger, and crying.Something similar was argued by the English and German literary and philosophical Romantics but their claims were far more ambitious. They frequently appreciated biblical stories such as those of the Fall from paradise, the prodigal son, and the tearing of Christ from communal embrace and eventual resurrection, not as history or allegory but as proto-scientific summaries of ongoing human realities. In M. H. Abrams's review, the Romantic tendency was... to naturalize the supernatural and to humanize the divine. All the figures and events of the bible were to be seen and felt within you.My position in this essay is neither so grand nor so optimistic. I am arguing that emotions in everyday social life describe a metamorphosis of fall, chaos, and an attempt at graceful reintegration, but not that this process describes all of social life, much less all of history, nor even that it describes what is most fundamental, best, or most elevating in life, as the Romantics might have said. For Schiller, the Fall was fortunate because it led to a spiral ascent toward a paradise more grand than the one Adam lost. Our situated emotions routinely lead back to the banalities from which they emerged. Moreover, much of emotional life does not necessarily take the form of bounded narrative episodes; indeed much of what may be most important about social life, in any number of senses, is not characterized by the bouts of crying and anger, phases of shameful feeling, and moments of laughter that this essay addresses. But the story of Eden resonates elaborately in emotionally colorful moments within the mundane prose of routine interaction, just as those sensually vivid experiences are narrated in corporeally distinctive ways. Revisiting Genesis, we can grasp its wisdom reverberating through the workings of emotions in everyday social life.     

Guessing Teachers’ Differential Treatment Of High- And Low-Achievers From Thin Slices Of Their Public Lecturing Behavior

Groups of high school students and adults viewed 10-second clips of 28 unfamiliar teachers nonverbal behavior in public lecturing to their entire classrooms, and were asked to guess how these teachers would usually behave differently toward high- versus low-achievers in normal classroom dyadic interaction. The judges did not view any teacher–student interaction. As hypothesized, the students significantly (r = 0.40) predicted teachers differential behavior (TDB) as evaluated by the actual classroom students of those teachers, whereas adult judges could not guess TDB from the clips. The TDB guesses of the two groups of judges were unrelated to each other. Students expertise and implicit knowledge about covariation between distinct aspects of teacher behavior likely reflects a combination of cognitive and motivational factors, not shared by adult judges.Thanks are extended to Miri Avneri-Cohen for her helpful assistance; to Avraham Lifschitz for providing the high school sample; to Yaakov Kareev for his advice; to Mosko Alkalai for his insight; and, as usual, to Dinah Avni-Babad for her help and participation. The author is also thankful to the Editor and two anonymous Reviewers for helpful advice and suggestions.This research was partially supported by United States - Israel Binational Science Foundation Grant 1997053 to Elisha Babad and Robert Rosenthal.     

The Tyranny of the Customer and the Cost of Consumerism: An Analysis Using Systems and Psychoanalytic Approaches to Groups and Society

This paper argues that an organizationaldiscourse on consumerism is replacing a prior discourseof dependency. This discourse encourages, and isencouraged by, economic rationales for behavior and ismarked by the collapse of many complex societal rolesinto the simpler category of customer.Moreover, practices emergent from consumerism andeconomic rationalism often act as organizational andsocial defences against anxieties about theuncertainties and changes occurring in a worldincreasingly dominated by global markets where thecustomer is sovereign. Six workinghypotheses are proposed to explain the operation of these new socialdefences. Evidence in support of these hypotheses comesfrom collaborative action research projects in which theauthor is involved. The argument moves toward a consideration of the new consumerprovider pair which, it is proposed, has becomea major signifier within the consumer discourse andwhich might be considered as a transitional pair indealing with widespread organizationalchange.     

“Marrying off” children as a developmental stage

Conclusion Marrying off the children is an important developmental stage in adulthood. Part of the very long and complex stage described by Erik Erikson as Generativity vs. Stagnation, this stage, like many earlier life stages, can be understood to give rise to a normative adult crisis that is destabilizing and anxiety-provoking. The marriage of one's offspring requires an ongoing transformation of parental narcissism, part of a developmental process that is intrinsic to parenthood. Issues of selfesteem are revived and reworked during this period. Traditional theory looks to oedipal rivalry or drive conflict of some kind to explain the anxiety at this time. An expanded understanding of narcissism, provided by Kohut and Elson has given us a broader view of these phenomena.The experience of hurt and sadness at a time when there is reason to celebrate can be a profoundly lonely and bewildering experience. As informed clinicians we can alleviate some of the loneliness and guilt about these feelings by understanding the challenge to the self that the marriage of adult children may represent.     

The voluntary sector in ‘the information society’: a study in division and uncertainty

At a time of rapid social, political and economic change in Britain, voluntary and community groups are being encouraged to assume a more prominent role in general welfare provision. Accordingly, their need to know has never been more acute. Yet the information environment of the voluntary sector is also in a state of flux and transition. Profound changes in the institutional world of information provision hold significant implications for the way voluntary and community groups seek and disseminate information. In this paper these structural changes are outlined and the findings presented of an extensive investigation into information needs and usage in the voluntary sector.     

Individual irrationality and social welfare

Individual preferences inconsistent with personal welfare caused neither by ignorance nor by a positive consideration for the welfare of others are defined as (welfare) irrational. Sources of irrationality (rigid adherence to moral principles, excessive fear of danger, excessive tempetation of pleasure, revenge, inertia, faulty telescopic faculty, the fallacy of diminishing marginal utility of utility, etc.) are discussed. An evolutionary explanation of irrationality is suggested and some implications for individual decision and social policy indicated.I am grateful to two anonymous referees for comments.     

Welfare reform and the subject of the working mother: “Get a job,a better job,then a career”

Until 1996, poor single mothers in the United States could claim welfare benefits for themselves and their children under the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program if they had no other source of income. With the 1996 passage of the Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), paid work and work-related activities became a mandatory condition for receiving aid. At the same time, the law promotes marriage as a route out of poverty. Using a feminist reinterpretation of Althussers concept of interpellation, I turn to Job Clubs, mandatory week-long workshops that teach job search skills, to analyze the citizen-subject generated by front-line representatives of the state in the context of this new legislation. Based on participant-observation, I conclude that while PRWORA ostensibly promotes both marriage and paid employment, Job Club trainers enforced a masculine worker-citizen subject through the deployment of three discursive strategies. These discursive strategies 1) promoted paid work over welfare-receipt as both a pragmatic and moral choice, 2) posited an individual-psychological account of womens welfare receipt, and 3) portrayed parenting skills as marketable skills. In the conclusion, I speculate that current welfare reform efforts require the generation of a self-reproducing worker-citizen and that workshops like Job Club become a site in which the existence of this autonomous citizen is affirmed.     

Brief Report: Thin Slices of Racial Bias

The present work examined the detection of racial bias through thin slices of nonverbal behavior. Thirty Black and 30 White American judges rated the nonverbal behavior displayed by White individuals from 20-seconds of silent videotape of an interaction with either a Black or a White confederate. Correlations between judges nonverbal ratings and targets scores on a response latency measure of racial bias (i.e., Implicit Association Test, IAT) as well as on a self-report racial bias measure (i.e., Affective Prejudice Scale) were obtained. Results revealed that relative to White judges, Black judges nonverbal behavioral ratings were better predictors of both White individuals IAT and explicit racial bias scores, but only if those targets were engaged in an interracial dyad. The results are consistent with recent research finding that subtle forms of racial bias leak through nonverbal behavior, as well as with work noting the predictive accuracy of judgments made from thin-slices of nonverbal behavior.Jennifer A. Richeson and J. Nicole Shelton. Jennifer A. Richeson, Dartmouth College; J. Nicole Shelton, Princeton University. This research was supported by a Rockefeller Center Faculty Fellowship from Dartmouth College awarded to JR, as well as a research grant from Princeton University awarded to JNS. We thank Sue Paik, Lisa Pugh, Kurt Peters, and Leigh Poretzky for help with data collection and stimulus preparation.     

The design of organizations and the right to act

Recent innovations in the structure of formal organizations suggest possible directions for the design of schools to bring about high achievement. The structure of output-driven in contrast to administratively-driven schools is described, and designs are described which address both the goal of high achievement and the goal of reduced inequality.An earlier version of this paper was presented as the author's Sorokin Lecture at the annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society, Boston, March 1993.     

On Being a White Person of Color: Using Autoethnography to Understand Puerto Ricans' Racialization

This article uses autoethnography to make larger conceptual/theoretical points about racial/ethnic identity categories for Puerto Ricans in the United States. I utilize Puerto Rican-ness to illustrate the limitations of U.S. race and ethnic constructs by furthering racialization analyses with seemingly contradictory categories such as white and people of color. I contrast personal experiences to those of racial/ethnic classificatory systems, the American imagery of Puerto Ricans, and simplistic, political identifications. Travel, colonial relations, intra-ethnic coalitional possibilities, and second-class citizenship are all aspects that expand on the notion of racialization as classically utilized in sociology and the social sciences. Although this is not a comparative study, I present differences between racial formation systems in Puerto Rico and the U.S. in order to make these points.     

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 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.     

Building a National Lottery: reviewing British experience

The launch of the United Kingdom's National Lottery at the end of 1994, was one of the most significant developments in both the funding of Britain's cultural sector and the British gambling sector since 1946. Thus in the 1995 financial year National Lottery ticket sales exceeded £5 billion of which 28% went to five specified good causes. This paper presents an overview of the National Lottery's launch and growth to date using published material and data. The lottery's establishment and regulatory regime are discussed, together with its impact in terms of both economic activity and the wider betting and gaming market within the UK. The National Lottery is then considered within the broader international context, and the incoming Labour Government's restructuring plans aimed at creating a People's Lottery are discussed. Thus the paper provides an overview of the development of a major new national institution.     

The Effect of a Family Policy Reform on Mother’s Pay: A Natural Experiment Approach

All parents in Norway with children aged one to three, who do not attend publicly subsidised day care, are entitled to a cash-for-care (CFC) subsidy. Studies have shown that the reform has reduced mothers labour supply. In this paper we analyse wage effects of the reform. We put forward a framework for evaluating reforms when reforms are uniformly and equally accessible nation-wide. First, running a simple Difference in differences (DD) analysis, results suggest that the CFC reform has reduced the mothers wages. However, after controlling for the age of the child effect, by running a triple difference approach, we no longer find any evidence of negative wage effects.This revised version was published online in May 2005 with corrections to the authors name and to the heading of table A2.