Shapiro,A.C.: Multinational Financial Management

RJB Review of Journals and Books

Shapiro, A.C.: Multinational Financial Management     

C. Wright Mills,Pessimistic Radical*

C. Wright Mills was a radical, critical of United States society and of sociology as practiced in this country. His criticisms were especially provocative given the ideological atmosphere of the 1950s and 1960s. His writings on stratification were very influential, with several of them having a mass readership. Mills viewed the United States as a society dominated by irresponsible elites and alienated masses. Sociology, he felt, had abdicated its responsibility for showing how larger social forces shape individual lives. While pessimistic about the possibility of fundamental social changes, Mills nevertheless urged intellectuals to use their skills to bring about a society where reason and democracy would prevail. Though marginalized within the profession during his life, he helped inspire the development of a critical perspective within sociology.     

Elder Abuse Detection and Intervention: A Collaborative Approach by B. Brandl,C. B. Dyer,C. J. Heisler,M. J. Otto,L. A. Stiegel,and R. W. Thomas

Mediation has recently been developed in America to help seniors deal with their disputes. Some Long Term Care Ombudsmen and their volunteers have also been trained in mediation for use in institutional conflicts. This paper suggests that elder mediation, through its voluntary, non-coercive process, has the potential for enhancing elder rights, providing an acceptable form of minimal social intervention, and contributing to the prevention of elder abuse at early stages of relational conflicts between elders and their carers.     

Interview with Susie Orbach,Ph.D., C.S.W.

An interview with Susie Orbach highlights the trajectory of her career and current thinking on body image issues and eating disorders. Dr. Orbach’s work in this area as a clinical social worker, psychoanalyst, best-selling author and social activist has spanned three decades. In this interview she reflects on her earlier books, Fat is a Feminist Issue and Hunger Strike: An Anorectic’s Struggle as a Metaphor for Our Age, and discusses her current work and perspectives within the context of contemporary culture.     

Assimilation of Chinese-Americans in Washington,D. C.*

Chinese-Americans in Washington, D. C. were studied to show their present assimilation into American society. Two contradictory hypotheses on the pace of assimilation of Chinese-Americans were tested. We found that higher socioeconomic attainment had an insignificant effect on the Chinese American's centrifugal tendencies when the effects of education were controlled. This finding, therefore, contradicts the notion that the achievement of occupational or economic success motivates Americanization. The evidence showed that education exerted sizable effects on the absorbing of Chinese-Americans, while the Chinese friendship tie served to sustain the Chinese subculture. Overall, most Chinese-Americans have preserved their key cultural values. The relatively slow pace of assimilation among Chinese-Americans was attributed to their subsocietal structure, which is a consequence of the difference in racial and cultural distinction from American whites, as Warner and Srole (1945) hypothesized.     

J. McNutt,C. Guo,L. Goldkind,S. An: Technology in Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action,Voluntaristics Review

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

Artificial Experiments on Society: Comte, G.C. Lewis and Mill

The success of the experimental physical sciences in mid-Victorian Britain brought to prominence the question whether artificial social experiments—as distinct from those offered by the ordinary course of social life—were feasible. Influenced in part by Comte's writings, such authoritative figures as J.S. Mill and C.G. Lewis argued that social issues were not subject to experimental investigation. Their arguments are examined here in order to raise, for further discussion, the problem why social experimentation in general was so often firmly resisted during the period.