Utilities,preferences, and substantive goods

 People’s utility levels are meant to be measures of their well-being. Early utilitarians defined them in terms of people’s happiness. Modern economics defines them in terms of people’s actual preferences. But in ethics they have to be defined in terms of people’s informed preferences. I shall discuss the relationship between people’s desires and preferences, and that between their reasoned and unreasoned preferences. I shall argue that people’s basic desires are much the same, whereas their preferences are often very different. Finally, I shall argue, contrary to Scanlon’s theory, that the things that are good for us are beneficial to us ultimately because they satisfy our biological and psychological needs and our personal interests. Received: 8 July 1996     

Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,Transgender, and Queer Media: Key Narratives,Future Directions

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people have become a familiar presence on the media landscape. For more than half a century, scholars have examined the importance of this recognition. In this article, I extend the work of British sociologist Ken Plummer to argue that key narratives have endured in discussions of LGBTQ media. These narratives include the victim, the community, the militant/queer, and the assimilationist. In addition, this paper points toward new directions for analysis and discussion; I argue that future research should take a more nuanced approach by examining overlaps and tensions among these stories.     

Culture,Son Preference,and Beliefs About Masculinity

We examined whether endorsing hyper‐masculine attitudes positively related to the psychological well‐being of adolescent boys (N=233) in an extreme son preference community, in Tamilnadu, India. A survey with masculinity and measures of psychological well‐being was administered. We predicted that endorsement of masculinity would positively relate to personal strength, academic achievement, and positive psychological outcomes. Using regression analyses, we found that greater endorsement of masculinity predicted lower self‐reported depression (b=?.48, p<.001), lower internalized shame (b=?.48, p<.001), higher academic performance (b=.15, p<.05), and higher personal strength (b=.43, p<.001). We discuss the relevance of our findings for developing interventions to combat extreme female neglect.     

Manipulability, unanimity, anonymity and merging functions

A merging (or assessment aggregation) function (see [7]) is a rule that synthesizes several individual assessments, or numerical judgements, by creating a unique “collective” assessment. Individual i can manipulate assessment aggregation if the change in the merged assessment due to a change in i's assessment from x to y depends solely on x and y. Some assumptions on the functional form capturing this dependence are put forward and their effects on aggregation investigated under unanimity and anonymity conditions using a functional equation approach. Attention is restricted to three types of results: the merging function does not exist; it is the arithmetic mean; it is dictatorial. Received: 21 November 1997/Accepted: 31 May 1999     

Determinants of Vaginal Cleansing,Application, and Insertion in Tete Province,Mozambique, and Products Used

Objective: In this article, we review insertion, application, and cleansing as they include the use of products other than water and have a number of harmful effects. Method: In 2007, a household survey of 919 women carried out in Tete Province, Mozambique, examined 8 vaginal practices. Results: Overall, 10% of the sexually active women reported regularly using these 3 vaginal practices concurrently. Of the women who practiced insertion, 65% used natural substances. A wider variety of products was used for applying substances on the external genitalia and for cleansing purposes. Conclusions: These findings have important implications for future HIV prevention, including in the use of microbicides.     

Capitalism,liberalism, and schooling

Conclusion Clearly, Schooling in Capitalist America is not without its limitations. It is charcterized by an ahistorical treatment of the functions of education, an economistic conception of social structure, an inadequate theory of reproduction and contradiction, and a seriously inaccurate account of educational politics. Yet despite its problems, Schooling is a very important and valuable work. Bowles and Gintis are particularly successful in developing an effective critique of the liberal political economy of education, and a conceptualization of a broad theory of the dynamics of educational change that confounds all previous accounts, whether liberal or revisionist. Schooling in Capitalist America is therefore a valuable, if flawed, starting point for a Marxist research program into the history and political economy of education. Its contributions to that research program are significant, and its difficulties instructive. While Schooling therefore is not all that one could wish for, it is a significant and provocative beginning. Moreover it is model of engaged and committed scholarship that provides some understanding of what is required for the collective control of the future.     

Notions of equal,or equivalent,opportunities

We formulate and study three concepts of equity designed to capture certain notions of equal, or equivalent, opportunities. The central concept is that of a family of choice sets. Given such a family , a feasible allocation z is alternatively required to be such that (i) there is B such that each agent i maximizes his satisfaction in B at z _i , (ii) there is B such that each agent i is indifferent between z _i and the maximizer of his satisfaction in B, (iii) for each agent i there is B _i such that z _i maximizes agent i's satisfaction in the union of the B _j and z _i is in B _i . Most of the standard concepts of equity can be obtained as particular cases of these general definitions by appropriately choosing . We identify conditions on guaranteeing that the resulting allocations be efficient. We apply the definitions to economies with only private goods, and to economies with public goods.This is a revised version of an earlier paper circulated under the title of Notions of equal opportunities. Early drafts were presented at the Conference on Economic Models and Distributive Justice, held in Bruxelles and Namur, January 1987, and at the Public Choice Society meeting in Tucson, Arizona, March 1987. The author thanks the participants, in particular T. Schwartz, for their comments, and NSF for its support, under grant No. 85 11136 and 88 09822. The suggestions of two anonymous referees, D. Diamantaras, L. Gevers, and H. Konishi are also gratefully acknowledged.     

Multiple Risks,Multiple Worries,and Adolescent Coping

Summary

To describe the process that clinicians use to engage vulnerable urban adolescents in mental health counseling, the authors propose a tri-partite model of clinical engagement that takes into account: (1) consumer preference; (2) risk and worry; and (3) youth development (YD) perspectives. These conceptual lenses embody what adolescents want to talk about, their exposure to behavioral and environmental risks, and their coping and strengths. Based on responses given by urban adolescents seeking mental health services to a clinical self-assessment questionnaire (Adquest), this paper uses this tripartite model to summarize patterns of risk that service applicants experience, what they worry about, and how they cope. It explores the substructure of adolescent risk and vulnerability, through factor analysis of relevant items across a broad range of Adquest life areas, to develop a typology of adolescents by risk and worry. Patterns of coping and desire to talk across a range of life areas within this typology are described, as are the practice implications. The authors conclude that even those adolescents who most concern clinicians—because they have high environmental and behavioral risk and low worry-present many different opportunities for engagement.     

Sexual Relationships,Behaviors, and Experiences Among Bisexual Men in Mumbai,India

ABSTRACT

Objectives: This exploratory study attempted to assess a range of sexual behaviors, relationships, and related factors among a sample of bisexual men in Mumbai, India. Methods: Data collection occurred in two separate phases. First, focus group discussions were facilitated with local community members in order to finalize an interviewer-administered questionnaire. Afterward, structured interviews were conducted with a sample of 50 bisexual men using this questionnaire. Results: Participants reported a wide range of sexual behaviors and relationships with male and female partners. Conclusions: Findings have implications for future research and practice focusing on bisexual men in India,as well as their partners of all genders.     

INSTITUTIONS,HOUSEHOLD CREDIT COMPOSITION,AND THE BUSINESS CYCLE

We show that the negative effect of household credit growth on subsequent economic growth documented in the recent literature is not the same across countries. The effect is stronger in countries with weak institutions where the fraction of consumer credit in total household credit is greater. That is an important nuance as consumer credit is a sizable part of household credit in many emerging markets and its rapid buildup should be observed with the same caution as a rapid buildup in housing credit. (JEL G21, E32, E44)     

Consequences, opportunities, and procedures

This paper reflects on consequentialism which underlies the traditional normative economics. It asserts that the informational basis of normative economics should be expanded so that the intrinsic value of social choice procedures should be properly taken into account along with the value of their consequences. Three examples – the problem of fair cake division, the role of competition in the promotion of economic welfare, and bilateral trade restrictions – are invoked to pinpoint the services rendered by procedural considerations in making social welfare judgements. The Pareto libertarian paradox is also re-examined within the extended framework incorporating procedural considerations along with consequential considerations. Received: 25 March 1997 / Accepted: 8 July 1997     

Carnal Connections: On Embodiment,Apprenticeship, and Membership

This article responds to the special issue of Qualitative Sociology devoted to the author's book, Body and Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer (vol. 28, no. 3, summer 2005). Four themes are tackled: the positioning of the inquirer and the question of social acceptance and membership; the dynamics of embodiment(s) and the variable role of race as a structural, interactional, and dispositional property; the functioning of the boxing gym as miniature civilizing and masculinizing machine; apprenticeship as a mode of knowledge transmissioin and technique for social inquiry, the scope of carnal sociology, and the textual work needed to convey the full-color texture and allure of the social world. This leads to clarifying the conceptual, empirical, and rhetorical makeup of Body and Soul in relation to its triple intent: to elucidate the workings of a sociocultural competency residing in prediscursive capacities; to deploy and develop the concept of habitus as operant philosophy of action and methodological guide; and to offer a brief for a sociology not of the body (as social product) but from the body (as social spring and vector of knowledge), exemplifying a way of doing and writing ethnography that takes full epistemic advantage of the visceral nature of social life. Response to the special issue of Qualitative Sociology on Body and Soul, vol. 28, no. 2, Summer 2005.     

Before, during and after: realism, reflexivity and ethnography

In this paper we argue that what is missing from many ethnographic accounts is a recognition that dilemmas inevitably emerge for the researcher before they make contact with the research setting, during the process of ethnographic research, and subsequently in the lengthy time taken to unravel the theoretical importance of the research after the fieldwork has ended. Using a comparison of two ethnographies as case studies, and by recourse to a realist methodology, such dilemmas are, we argue, overdetermined by many non‐observable social structures that influence the everyday research process. We argue that specific mechanisms determine both the process and the outcome of the ethnographic journey in the before, during and after stages of research. For example we demonstrate how biography and the wider process of institutional knowledge production are two key resources that influence research practice. We use the term pragmatic realism as a means to reflect upon some of the connections between the dilemmas of research and real structures in these three stages.     

Radclyffe Hall, E. Lynn Harris, and Franz Kafka: Christianity, Queerness, and the Politics of Normalcy

This essay examines Christian tropes in three queer texts: Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness (1928), E. Lynn Harris's Just As I Am (1994), and Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (1915). At issue are the linkages between queer theory and literature, on the one hand, and Christian paradigms, on the other hand. This essay considers whether, insofar as they deploy Christian tropes, these texts sustain a politics of the normal that inevitably subvert queer-positive representations.     

Self-Esteem,Locus of Control,and Suicide Risk

Abstract

Past research suggests that African American clients in need of mental health services are less likely to be properly diagnosed and receive appropriate treatment compared to White Americans. It has been further suggested that this may be even a greater problem for those who are both African American and female. In the current study, 2 groups of hospitalized clinically depressed females (92 African American females; 99 White females) were administered the Self-Esteem Rating Scale, Internal Control Index, and Suicide Risk Scale. Results indicated more similarities than differences between the two groups. For instance, there were no differences in locus of control or suicide risk between groups. In addition, although there were differences in self-esteem between groups, self-esteem was the best predictor of suicide risk within groups (White, R² =42%; African American, R² = 19%). African American females possessed higher self-esteem than White females (p = .05). For African American females age and self-esteem were positively correlated (r = .27, p =.01). Clinically depressed females could benefit from treatment focusing on improving self-esteem within a context of multicultural sensitivity.     

Sexual Function in Women with Deep Endometriosis: Correlation with Quality of Life,Intensity of Pain,Depression, Anxiety,and Body Image

Objectives: We evaluated sexual function, quality of life and perceived body image of women with deep endometriosis in comparison to that of healthy women. Methods: The sample consisted of 41 women with deep endometriosis and 40 healthy women without endometriosis. Sexual, psychological and pain evaluation were performed. Results: The study evidenced that deep endometriosis has a significant impact on sexuality and body image. Conclusions: An integrated and patient-centered approach to medical and psychological and sexual issues is suggested.     

SCHOOLS,SKILLS, AND SYNAPSES

This paper discusses (a) the role of cognitive and noncognitive ability in shaping adult outcomes, (b) the early emergence of differentials in abilities between children of advantaged families and children of disadvantaged families, (c) the role of families in creating these abilities, (d) adverse trends in American families, and (e) the effectiveness of early interventions in offsetting these trends. Practical issues in the design and implementation of early childhood programs are discussed. (JEL A12)     

The critique of intelligent design: Epicurus,Marx, Darwin,and Freud and the materialist defense of science

A new version of the age-old controversy between religion and science has been launched by today’s intelligent design movement. Although ostensibly concerned simply with combating Darwinism, this new creationism seeks to drive a “wedge” into the materialist view of the world, originating with the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus and manifested in modern times by Darwin, Marx, and Freud. Intelligent design proponents thus can be seen as challenging not only natural and physical science but social science as well. In this article, we attempt to explain the long history of this controversy, stretching over millennia, and to defend science (especially social science) against the criticisms of intelligent design proponents – by defending science’s materialist roots.

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WAGES,RENTS, AND HETEROGENEOUS MOVING COSTS

The model of compensating differentials in regional labor and land markets was formalized by Roback (1982) . The model interprets regional differences in constant quality wages and rents as compensating firms and residents for inter‐regional differences in amenities. This paper extends the Roback model to allow for moving costs which vary among a city's residents and businesses. This modification of the model generates new interpretations of regional differences in rents and wages. The theoretical results suggest that the interpretation of inter‐city rent and wage differentials as compensating is misguided, that such differentials are inappropriate as weights in Quality of Life (QOL) comparisons, and stresses the importance of local housing market parameters in the determination of these differentials. The importance of amenities is retained, but housing supply becomes the main other determinant of regional rents. Housing supply was ignored in the literature following on Roback's initial insight. We show that interactions between amenities and housing supply will bias QOL rankings. Finally, we support the empirical importance of heterogeneous moving costs by demonstrating the effects of exogenous supply constraints on local housing prices. (JEL R31)