Quasi-orderings and population ethics

Population ethics contains several principles that avoid the repugnant conclusion. These rules rank all possible alternatives, leaving no room for moral ambiguity. Building on a suggestion of Parfit, this paper characterizes principles that provide incomplete but ethically attractive rankings of alternatives with different population sizes. All of them rank same-number alternatives with generalized utilitarianism.This paper was presented to the conference Incommensurability and Value, Château du Baffy, Caen, April 1994, and an earlier version was presented at the Applied Ethics Centre of the University of British Columbia. We are indebted to John Broome, whose comments inspired this paper, Alan Gibbard, James Griffin, Peter Hammond, Adam Morton, Klaus Nehring, and conference and seminar participants for comments and suggestions. Financial support through a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada is gratefully acknowledged     

Utility, informed preference, or happiness: Following Harsanyi's argument to its logical conclusion

Harsanyi (1997) argues that, for normative issues, informed preferences should be used, instead of actual preferences or happiness (or welfare). Following his argument allowing him to move from actual to informed preferences to its logical conclusion forces us to use happiness instead. Where informed preferences differ from happiness due to a pure concern for the welfare of others, using the former involves multiple counting. This “concerning effect” (non-affective altruism) differs from and could be on top of the “minding effect” (affective altruism) of being happy seeing or helping others to be happy. The concerning/minding effect should be excluded/included in social decision. Non-affective altruism is shown to exist in a compelling hypothetical example. Just as actual preferences should be discounted due to the effects of ignorance and spurious preferences, informed preferences should also be discounted due to some inborn or acquired tendencies to be irrational, such as placing insufficient weights on the welfare of the future, maximizing our biological fitness instead of our welfare. Harsanyi's old result on utilitarianism is however defended against criticisms in the last decade. Harsanyi (1997) argues, among other things, that in welfare economics and ethics, what are important are people's informed preferences, rather than either their actual preferences (as emphasized by modern economists) or their happiness (as emphasized by early utilitarians). The main purpose of this paper is to argue that, pursuing Harsanyi's argument that allows him to move from actual to informed preferences to its logical conclusion forces us to happiness as the ultimately important thing. The early utilitarians were right after all! Since I personally approve of Harsanyi's basic argument, I regard myself as his follower who becomes more Catholic than the Pope. (It is not denied that, in practice, the practical difficulties and undesirable side-effects of the procedure of using happiness instead of preferences have to be taken into account. Thus, even if we ultimately wish to maximize the aggregate happiness of people, it may be best in practice to maximize their aggregate preferences in most instances. This important consideration will be largely ignored in this paper.) The secondary objective is to give a brief defence of Harsanyi's (1953, 1955) much earlier argument for utilitarianism (social welfare as a sum of individual utilities) that has received some criticisms in the last decade. The argument (e.g. Roemer 1996) that Harsanyi's result is irrelevant to utilitarianism is based on the point that the VNM (von Neumann-Morgenstern) utility is unrelated to the subjective and interpersonally comparable cardinal utility needed for a social welfare function. Harsanyi's position is defended by showing that the two types of utility are the same (apart from an indeterminate zero point for the former that is irrelevant for utilitarianism concerning the same set of people). Received: 29 May 1997 / Accepted: 3 November 1997     

“We're Not Old!”: Older Women's Negotiation of Aging and Oldness

This article is based on participant observation research at a seniors' center in central Canada in which the writer sought to acquire an understanding of how older adults define, interpret, and negotiate their realities and identities. Through activity and group membership, the center members — the majority of whom are single, older women between the ages of 50 and 90 — seek to distance themselves from the category of “old” and the accompanying ageist stereotypes. Striving to establish and preserve their precarious membership in the “not old”, center members struggle to reconcile their belief and experience of older adulthood as a time of activity, health, and happiness with their ever-present fear of declining health and the realities of widowhood and the loss of youthful attractiveness.     

Consequentialist demographic norms and parenting rights

This paper extends the author's recent work on dynamically consistent consequentialist social norms for an unrestricted domain of decision trees with risk to trees in which the population is a variable consequence — i.e., endogenous. Given a form of ethical liberalism and ethical irrelevance of distant ancestors, classical utilitarianism is implied (provided also that a weak continuity condition is met). The repugnant conclusion that having many poor people may be desirable can be avoided by denying that individuals' interests extend to the circumstances of their birth. But it is better avoided by recognizing that potential parents have legitimate interests concerning the sizes of their families.That action is best, which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers. Francis Hutchison (1725).An abiding interest in concepts of optimality for the choice of population has been stimulated by frequent discussions with Partha Dasgupta. This paper was presented at the seminar on Distributive Justice and Inequality at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, May 1986. I am grateful to the audience for their helpful comments, especially Maurice Salles and Patrick Suppes, and especially to John Weymark for carefully reading and suggesting distinct improvements to the earlier version.     

The geography of corporate production: Urban,industrial, and organizational systems

This paper examines how the territorial organization of corporate production — the extent to which firms connect places in the city system through intraorganizational relationships of ownership and control — is shaped by urban, industrial, and organization factors. Specifically, we study the determinants of the dispersion of corporate production facilities in the U.S. urban system. We analyze the number of U.S. cities and states in which the largest 500 industrial corporations operated plants in 1964 as a function of the characteristics of the location of the corporate headquarters, the predominant industries in which their plants produce, and their organizational structure. We find that corporate dispersion is shaped by some of the same factors that have been shown to organize the market-based territorial division of labor — the size and functional specialization of cities and the locational requirements of industry. But in addition, organizational attributes — a firm's industrial diversity, its age, and the extent to which it is controlled by families as opposed to managerial coalitions — also influence its geographic dispersion.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1983 annual meetings of the American Sociological Association in Detroit, Michigan.     

Books vs. articles: Two ways of publishing sociology

Sociologists tend to publish either in the form of articles in scholarly journals or in the form of books. This paper attempts to show that not only do specific university departments have scholarly cultures emphasizing one or the other, but that structural and demographic factors — such as location, public or private status, and size — are correlated with each. Book departments tend to be found at exclusive private universities in or near big cities on both coasts, while article-producing departments tend to be in land grant universities in the South and Midwest. Recognizing that such publication decisions are not purely scientific in nature but are also partially socially constructed ought to allow us to have more diversity in how departments structure their scholarly cultures.     

The constancy of crime hypothesis: Historical evidence from Plymouth Colony

In extending Durkheimian thought on the relationship between deviance and social order, Erikson (1966) advanced the constancy of crime hypothesis, maintaining that the volume of deviant behavior remains stable over time. Erikson's data for Essex County do show remarkable stability for the years 1651–1680 in the reported offender rate. However, Essex County represents a very limited test of the hypothesis. We present comparative historical data for the entirety of Plymouth Colony, 1633–1679, finding that change—not constancy—best characterizes the evidence. The lack of unequivocal support for the hypothesis suggests a need for its rethinking. Several such possibilities are briefly discussed.We wish to thank our colleagues David L. Smith, Charles J. Dudley, Michael Hughes, Richard Schuster, Alan C. Acock (Sociology), A. Roger Ekirch (Department of History) and the anonymous reviewers ofQualitative Sociology for their helpful suggestions on a prior version of this paper. The research was made possible by a small project grant from VPI & SU, and we gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Catherine L. Hammond in completing the investigation.     

From ‘sustainable rural communities’ to ‘social sustainability': giving voice to diversity in Mangakahia Valley, New Zealand

Despite widespread interest in the notion of sustainability, little progress has been made towards an understanding of its social dimensions. Nonetheless, the concept of ‘sustainable rural communities’ is embedded in popular, policy and academic discourses, where the needs of ‘rural communities’ are usually equated with those of farm families. Our ethnographic research in Northland, New Zealand illustrates the diverse interests to be found within ‘rural communities'. Interviews and participant observation were undertaken between August 1995 and July 1996 in the Mangakahia Valley. The increasing divergence in the ethnic, class and occupational makeup of the population has brought with it complexities in terms of what can be said to contribute to ‘sustainable rural communities'. We suggest that ‘sustainable rural communities’ be treated as a folk category, and instead, social science discourse should resort to the broader concept of social sustainability, which will have a locally defined content, not a universal definition, but will include elements of livelihood, social participation, justice and equity.     

Toward an Integrated Understanding of Dreams

In this paper four different schools of dream analysis—classical, object relations, modern psychoanalytic, and self-psychological—are described, compared, and contrasted. Each approach is then applied to an analysis of the first dream reported by a patient. As each interpretations is accurate and useful in understanding this patient's psyche, it is concluded that an integrated framework should be used in dream analysis.     

What's Playing in the Organizational Theater? Collusive Relationships in Management

This article takes as its point of departureconcepts derived from couple therapy to betterunderstand collusive relationships in organizations. Aswe examine these dysfunctional workplace relationships— these interpersonal gridlocks —four main types of collusive superior subordinateinteraction patterns are identified — thenarcissistic, the controlling, the paranoid, and thesadomasochistic — and the consequences of each such dyad in organizationsare explored. In conclusion, the paper presents a numberof recommendations on how to recognize the presence ofsuch collusive arrangements (taking leadership behavior as a point of departure) and suggestspreventive steps that can be taken.     

Beyond Identity Politics

The author details the reasons why he has reached the conclusion that LGBT people have seen the limits of identity politics—that sexual object choice alone is not sufficient to connect a community and by extension a movement—and he calls for a new stage in political organizing linking people of progressive political philosophies, bridging the various social identities.     

Reforming Poor Women: The Cultural Politics and Practices of Welfare Reform

This article employs participant observation and interviewing at a community-based job readiness program operating under welfare reform to explore how attempts at cultural retraining (that is, bringing presumably deviant behavior in line with dominant cultural norms) are delivered, received, and interpreted by welfare-reliant women. This study finds that poor women—the targets of these reforms—largely resist cultural retraining, but, ironically, assert its usefulness for welfare-reliant women generally. These ethnographic data support and expand upon previous interview and focus group studies that have encountered the same attribution paradox among welfare-reliant women.     

Applicability of standards for evaluations of educational programs, projects and materials in an international setting

This paper starts with a short discussion of the book Standards for Evaluations of Educational Programs, Projects and Materials by the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation (McGraw-Hill, 1981). It then goes on to examine the usefulness in countries other than the United States of these standards and argues that evaluation of “programs” is more complicated and more politically biased than evaluation of “projects” and “materials.” In Europe, evaluation of educational programs (school systems) has proved to be highly correlated with the overriding objectives of different political parties, e.g., conservative, liberal, socialist, whereas educational policy in the United States is less bound to political parties, varying rather from case to case. In order to show how generally agreed upon educational goals can be interpreted according to different values, the author has reanalysed some studies of mean achievement in reading comprehension and science for 10- and 14-year-old students in 15 countries (IEA Project, 1973). The rank order of these countries is changed if, instead of national mean achievement, one takes proportion of students under a minimum level or above a prescribed top level as the criterion. Also the national (program) standard is evaluated in terms of between-school variance in results and in proportion of single-school units with exceptionally low or exceptionally high mean results. The conclusion is that the book on standards for evaluations of educational programs provides a good checklist of prerequisites for a reliable and valid evaluation. However, it is also concluded that—due to differences in values of program outcomes—such standards do not guarantee that the result of the evaluation will be indisputable.     

Using a Lag Schedule of Reinforcement to Increase Response Variability in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders

Lag reinforcement schedules have been shown in previous research to be an effective intervention for teaching verbal and nonverbal response variability to individuals with developmental disabilities. In more recent research, variability itself has been considered a reinforceable behavior in its own right (Susa & Schlinger, The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 18, 125–130, 2012). Lag x schedules of reinforcement can be used to teach variability by using contingencies that require responses to differ from previous responses. The present study extended Susa and Schlinger’s, The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 18, 125–130, (2012) research by using 3 social questions instead of 1 in a random rotation and included probes to test for generality. A changing-criterion design was used to evaluate the results with one 11-year-old female participant diagnosed with autism. During baseline, the participant provided little variability, with rote responses. During the Lag 1 and Lag 2 phases, appropriate variable verbal responding increased with the use of echoic prompts, visual aids, and an error correction procedure. Further, the results also showed that the participant learned to vary her responses by demonstrating the ability to emit 11 novel prompted responses and 13 spontaneous responses.In addition, the participant was able to retain the skills learned in a maintenance probe conducted 4 weeks postintervention.     

The socioeconomic institutions of organizing: Origin, emergence, and reproduction

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the development of a theory of (organizing) institutions primarily relevant for capitalistic market Economics, a theory which significantly improves our general ability to describe, explain and predict organized or organizational action. Six basic institutions—or infrastructures for human (interaction (the market, the corporation, the (social) movement, the association, the circle and the clan)—are deduced, defined and also finally put together in the form of a repertoire of ideal types. Moreover, two meta-institutions (the state, the anarchy) are added to this initial repertoire of six institutions to allow for the introduction of what could be regarded—at least from some premises—as a more general (i.e., societal) level.     

The Third Shift: Gender and Care Work Outside the Home

Caregiving remains women's work far more than men's. Although women and men often attribute this difference to nature, this paper argues for the importance of structure, especially in employment. At least to some extent, women's employment—especially in jobs similar to men's—reduces the care work they do for kin, if not for friends. Examining the different amount and meanings that women and men—like Euro-Americans and African Americans—ascribe to care work, I suggest we view such care work as a survival strategy as well as a demanding labor of love. In this context, recent social policies should be seen as not only privatizing care but also producing growing inequality as well as a vacuum of care.     

To transfer or to destroy

The transfer problem is by now well understood. In an important book Chichilnisky-Heal provide an example of a related paradox — the destroy paradox — in the context of a Walrasian stable economy. It is evident, however, that the paradox depends on the underlying data — tastes, preferences, and net export positions — of the economy. This paper gives necessary and sufficient conditions on the underlying data of a globally Walrasian stable Leontief economy for the occurrence of this paradox. The relationship between the transfer and destroy paradoxes in an economy with Leontief preferences is explored.I am grateful to John Donaldson, Duncan Foley, Giulio Ponte corvo, participants in the Colgate-Hamilton Economics workshop and especially, an associate editor and an anonymous referee of this journal for helpful comments. The usual disclaimers apply.     

Racial differences in urban neighboring

Despite mixed expectations generated by existing theories and evidence, this analysis documents clear racial differences in urban neighboring behavior. Using data from a survey of Nashville, Tennessee, residents, we show that blacks interact with their neighbors more often than whites do, and in a greater variety of ways. The only noteworthy similarity between the two groups is the positive impact of neighboring on feelings of community affect. Overall, our results support the view that neighbor relations — like other kinds of informal participation — have helped blacks cope with constrained social opportunities and provided them with access to resources unavailable through formal institutional channels.Revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco, August 1989.     

Nonmanipulable voting schemes when participants' interests are partially decomposable

Recent papers by Barberá and Peleg and by Zhou have established that the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem remains valid when individuals are restricted to reporting only reasonable preferences. We present a theorem that covers situations in which, as in Barberá-and-Peleg and Zhou, preferences may be restricted to reasonable ones, but in which, additionally, it may be known in advance that some dimensions of the social decision do not affect all the participants — i.e., in which the social decisions are partially decomposable into decisions that affect only subsets of the participants. As in the previous theorems, the conclusion of this new theorem is that nonmanipulable voting schemes must be dictatorial.An early version of this paper was delevered at the 1989 NBER-NSF Conference on Decentralization at Cal Tech; comments by the conference participants are appreciated, as are comments by James Schmitz.     

A social comparison perspective of treatment seeking by the homeless

The homeless will readily list ailments they claim to have, yet they will also claim that such ailments are not a problem and do not warrant treatment. In an attempt to understand this apparentparadox, data from a sample of homeless individuals were re-analyzed from a social comparison perspective. It was hypothesized that increased entrenchment in homelessness (increased isolation from nonhomeless environments and further involvement in the homeless environment)—operationalized by longer time spent on the street and a greater number of street friends—would lead homeless individuals to alter their perceptions of what constitutes a problem worthy of treatment. Results supported this hypothesis, in direction, and in almost all tests conducted. The involvement of adaptation level theory in such a social comparison process and the implications for intervention and treatment are discussed.