Compassionate Listening: A Framework for Listening to the Seriously Ill

Present conceptions of listening, such as empathic or therapeutic listening, do not provide a way of alleviating the sense of being alone felt by individuals who are seriously ill or suffering in some other way. Compassionate listening, a kind of dialogic listening, provides a framework for approaching these significant listening situations that emphasizes our interconnectedness and our shared humanity and that seeks to overcome the isolation so commonly felt during serious illness.     

Response: Choice and Ethics in Listening Situations

We developed a new listening scale pertaining to how one likes to be listened to by others. Specifically, we constructed items by adapting the Listening Style Profile (LSP)-16 and a Constructive Listening subscale taken from the Facilitative Listening Scale and tested the validity of the scale against the Big Five personality traits. A survey (N = 195) suggested that (a) the factor structure of the adapted LSP-16 items yielded the expected four factors, albeit with items not loading on factors as expected in the original LSP-16; (b) the people facet of the LSP-16 is strongly correlated with a scale of constructive listening, r = .70; and (c) both the people facet of the LSP-16 and the constructive-listening behaviors scale are correlated with all of the Big Five personality traits, save for neuroticism. These listening scales showed a moderate correlation with a summary of all of the Big Five scales, known as General Factor of Personality, r = .38. Among the implications is the possibility that the more adjusted a person is, the more the person prefers to be listened to with a people-listening style or by a constructive listener.     

Introduction to Listening,Ethics, and Dialogue: Between the Ear and the Eye: A Synaesthetic Introduction to Listening Ethics

Listening is the one language activity which is used most during the day. The empirical basis for this statement has some problems, as some of it dates back a long time or is based on self-report data which may not be accurate as far as the objective proportion of time, in which listening is expected, is concerned. The current study uses classroom observation to collect data on how much listening is required in primary education and in the transition to secondary education. A sample of 48 class periods from grades 1–4 and of 18 class periods from grade 5 was taken to specify listening tasks. Results confirm earlier studies that reported listening is required in about two-thirds of instructional time. As to the source of oral information, it is still true today that the teacher out-talks the students at a considerable rate. Results are discussed with reference to listening education, and it is assumed that much needs to be done to raise awareness for the teaching of listening skills and the arrangement of an appropriate learning environment which provides for a sufficient and challenging variety of listening situations.     

Listening Otherwise: The Voice of Ethics

The issues of response and responsibility are woven into the center of dialogic ethics (Levinas, 1996, 1998, 1999; Schrag, 1986 Schrag, C. O. 1986. Communicative praxis and the space of subjectivity, Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.  [Google Scholar]; Hyde, 2001, 2006), yet quietly embedded persists a hidden but presupposed prior action-that of listening-about which the philosophy of dialogue falls, ironically, silent. The idea of the response as related to ideas of reply, answer, and reaction as well as its etymological derivation from the Latin spondere ‘to pledge’ (promise, offer, sacrifice) stresses only the speaking of an ethical actor. The act of listening is itself concealed and rendered invisible. This paper suggests that the answer to the ethical call of conscience is not a speaking, but a listening. It is, moreover, a listening otherwise that suspends the willfulness of self and fore-knowledge in order to receive the singularities of the alterity of the other. To say that ethics arises from listening is thus to subordinate speaking to a kind of listening that speaks—a listening that is awakened and attuned to the sounds of difference rather than to the sounds of sameness. Thus it's rarely a question of whether or not the voice of ethics speaks, for the voice is always speaking. The question is whether we are listening.     

Reshaping Clinical Practice for the New Millennium

In the new millennium, oppression will continue to affect social workers’ clients. This article discusses training clinical practitioners to address oppression. Drawing on poststructural, postmodern, feminist, and social constructivist theories, the article argues that to challenge oppression, clinical practice must address the dialectical relationship between private troubles and public issues while transforming professional relationships that disempower clients. The article describes a second-year MSW clinical practice sequence taught from feminist, poststructuralist, postmodern, and social constructionist perspectives, where students learn to assess the impacts of oppression, discover clients’ strengths, and respond in personal, social, and political contexts.     

A Broader Understanding of the Ethics of Listening: Philosophy,Cultural Studies,Media Studies and the Ethical Listening Subject

This study investigated the effects of Mozart's high-frequency-rich music and structured oral directions on third graders' auding and reading comprehension performance. The design was pre-post, with a control group and two experimental treatment groups. Mozart Symphonies Nos. 35, 38, 40, and 41, and four Frank Schaffer listening skills books were used with one experimental group. The second experimental group received the listening instruction without music. The control group worked assorted word searches. The Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test (Forms 1 and 2, Primary C) and the Addison-Wesley Sequential Test of Educational Progress (STEP) III (D) Listening Test (Form X) were used to measure reading comprehension and auding respectively. Instruction was administered by regular classroom teachers to intact classes for 30 minute morning periods, three times per week for eight weeks. Analysis of pretest and posttest scores from 63 students reveal that an organized instructional method using Mozart's music and oral directions significantly increases auding and reading comprehension, with music being the key independent variable.     

Marriage in the New Millennium: A Decade in Review

This review focuses on broad themes characterizing marital research in the past decade. In addition to continuing themes, such as a focus on conflict, violence, and impact on physical and mental health outcomes, we also address the impact of the Healthy Marriage Initiative on marital research and recent advances in methodology. We highlight an overarching theme that characterizes much of the literature: the importance of context in understanding marital outcomes and the impact of positive marital transactions and marital strengths. Given the increasing diversity of married couples, the attention given to context over the past decade has been timely and appropriate, providing an increasingly solid foundation for future research.     

Reshaping Social Movement Media for a New Millennium

This article contextualizes Indymedia, the Internet-based network of Independent Media Centres (IMCs) that has developed since the 30 November protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization talks there in 1999. In a short space of time this network has become the backbone of communication for the broad coalition of groups that comprise the anti-capitalism movement. Context is sought from three perspectives: first, through a consideration of new social movement use of the Internet as a radical, socio-technical paradigm to challenge the dominant, neoliberal and technologically determinist model of information and communication technologies (ICTs). This perspective is approached through Paschal Preston's recent work on ICTs in late modernity ('Reshaping Communications: Technology, Information and Social Change', London: Sage, 2001). Second, the article regards Indymedia as the most current manifestation of radical Internet use. It examines the (inevitably) brief history of such use, exploring examples of praxis by anarchist groups, the Zapatistas and factions of the anti-capitalism movement, and assesses Indymedia's place in this history. Finally, the nature and value of Indymedia are assessed using the theoretical tools afforded by recent alternative media scholarship (Atton 2002: 'Alternative Media', London: Sage; and Downing 2001: 'Radical Media: Rebellious Communications and Social Movements', Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage): in particular, Indymedia is examined in terms of its organization, its socio-politics and its news cultures.     

Taking Adoption Issues into the New Millennium: An Introduction

The prevalence of adoption in our society and our awareness of adoption-related issues have increased markedly in recent years, due to socioeconomic and sociopolitical changes at the national and international level. Given the high incidence of adoption in the United States today, it is perplexing and unfortunate that many adoptive triad members still feel that the complexities of adoption are not fully understood. In addition, many clinicians still feel that clear and useful guidelines and training for therapy with adoptive triad members are hard to find. This introduction addresses these concerns in general in the context of discussing the different contributions included in this special issue.     

New frontiers facing urban sociology at the Millennium

The article examines some of the major challenges facing urban sociology at century's end given its traditions and lineages. These challenges arise out of the intersection of major macrosocial trends and their particular spatial patterns. The city and the metropolitan region emerge as one of the strategic sites where these macrosocial trends materialize and hence can be constituted as an object of study. Among these trends are globalization and the rise of the new information technologies, the intensifying of transnational and translocal dynamics, and the strengthening presence and voice of specific types of socio‐cultural diversity. Each one of these trends has its own specific conditionalities, contents and consequences for cities, and for theory and research. Cities are also sites where each of these trends interacts with the others in distinct, often complex manners, in a way they do not in just about any other setting. The city emerges once again as a strategic lens for the study of major macrosocial transformations as it was in the origins of sociology. Can urban sociology address these challenges and in so doing once again produce some of the analytic tools for understanding the broader transformation?     

Sexual Health for the Millennium: An Introduction

ABSTRACT

This special issue of the International Journal of Sexual Health is devoted to the issues of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and the effort by the World Association for Sexual Health to argue that the promotion of sexual health is an essential strategy for attaining those goals. Recently, the World Association for Sexual Health has published Sexual Health for the Millennium: A Declaration and Technical Document (2008). This special issue of the IJSH contains the background papers which served as a foundation for the development of the declaration and technical document. These articles argue that sexuality is a fundamental aspect of being human, that human development must be premised on the promotion of sexual health and is a basic human right for all citizens. Public policies designed to promote human development must make the promotion of sexual health an essential strategy. This special issue is designed to stimulate more interest in the Sexual Health for the Millennium: A Declaration and Technical Document, encourage further analysis and research which will support the statements in the declaration, provoke more advocacy for sexual health, and, most importantly, to stimulate sound and effective public policies to create a sexually healthier world.     

Stripping in the New Millennium: Thinking about Trends in Exotic Dance and Dancers' Lives

With the increasing presence of sex and sexuality in American popular culture, the stripping industry is undoubtedly undergoing important subcultural and organizational transition. What are the implications of these changes for the individuals involved? The current paper reviews much of the literature on exotic dance to consider the potential transformations in the organization of the sex industry and how these changes may impact the lives of those involved. Specifically, I note some key differences in the literature that suggest how exotic dance has shifted. I then pose some questions for empirical inquiry. I argue that transformations in the exotic industry are creating new opportunities and challenges for women, and may be particularly deleterious for poor and minority women. I call for sociologists to investigate the consequences of organizational transferal in sexual labor, reevaluate the dynamics of agency and exploitation, and consider the potential differential impact of these trends on poor women and women of color.     

Virtue Ethics for Social Work: A New Pedagogy for Practical Reasoning

Virtue ethics has begun to regain popularity among philosophers, and recent commentators have expressed enthusiasm vis-à-vis its appropriateness and strengths in the task of practising ethically in social work. Notwithstanding this growing interest in adopting virtue ethics frameworks, some difficulties arise when the question of how to develop social work virtues is posed. By examining the concept of reflective practice, and building from the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, this article explores how practical reasoning as a collective activity can help social work students in their moral development by developing and nurturing appropriate virtues for social work. A combination of Socratic dialogue activities, lectures and seminar work is highlighted as a potential pedagogical approach to teaching ethics and values on an undergraduate social work module at Coventry University. The approach is then appraised in the light of a set of module evaluation questionnaires distributed to students who undertook the module during the academic year 2006–2007.