Religious belief and social policy: Part I

The nature of religious belief is briefly examined and reference is made to specifically Christian religious belief. The practical expression of this is described as four responses under stereotypical allegorical animals. The difficulties of translating religious belief into practice are alluded to and a plea is entered for a fifth response that distils a number of values from a contemplation of society that will be of relevance to it.     

The Indian family in the seventies; an integrated family policy

Social and economic stresses of urban and industrial developments are eroding the traditional closeknit Indian family structure and causing a change in values among the young people. A comprehensive program aimed at strengthening all aspects of family life is needed. This would include legislation raising the minimum age of marriage and counseling in sexual matters and family planning. In India families are still considered more important than individuals and counseling should be directed to the family as a unit. The family's needs of housing, education, health, welfare, and employment should be considered as part of a whole package program.     

Great Expectations. Part I: On the Customizability of Generalized Expected Utility

We propose a generalization of expected utility that we call generalized EU (GEU), where a decision maker’s beliefs are represented by plausibility measures and the decision maker’s tastes are represented by general (i.e., not necessarily real-valued) utility functions. We show that every agent, “rational” or not, can be modeled as a GEU maximizer. We then show that we can customize GEU by selectively imposing just the constraints we want. In particular, we show how each of Savage’s postulates corresponds to constraints on GEU.     

Social Work with Failure-to-Thrive Children and their Families: Part I: Psychosocial Factors

Summary The problem failure-to-thrive is described and a brief reviewof the main causal theories is provided. Part I of this studydetails an investigation of psychosocial factors associatedwith non-organic failure-to-thrive in 17 children (comparingthem with two contrast groups). There were significant differences between the groups (interalia) in the adverse temperamental attributes of the index children,problems in the mother's feeding of their children and otheraspects of their interactions and relationships. The mothersshowed no specific psychopathology but were socially disadvantagedin various ways. The implications of these findings—preventiveand therapeutic—are discussed.     

近三十年宪法学研究的回顾与展望(上)

中国宪法学研究经历20世纪80年代的恢复和发展之后,90年代开始反思,进入21世纪以来开始有了一定的崛起。回顾近三十年我国宪法学的研究发展状况,可以说还没有达到繁荣阶段,只是在朝着进入繁荣阶段的方向缓慢发展。尽管在主客观方面还存在着许多困难和障碍,但宪法学界正在解放思想、实事求是,努力为宪法学的繁荣开拓新的局面。展望未来,中国宪法学将更加关注中国问题,也将致力于建立完备的宪法学科体系及深入开展跨学科对话,并实现宪法学方法论的多元化。     

Characteristics of social science information: A selective review of the literature. Part I

This paper presents a review of mainly English language literature on the scope of the social sciences as understood in various countries, on the linkings between social science disciplines, on the general characteristics of social science and of social science information, on the characteristics of the primary sources and of secondary information services, on the characteristics of the flow of information, and on the characteristics of the use of social science information by social science researchers as well as by social scientists in non-research environments and non-social scientists in need of social science information, especially in decision-making processes. As far as possible comparisons are made with information in science and the humanities.     

The dynamics of elderly population redistribution: The California example

This article examines a relatively unexplored aspect of the geographic patterning of America's older population: the trends and processes of elderly redistribution at the state scale. A methodology was developed using readily available census and public health data to re-create the dynamics of recent elderly shifts within the state of California. Noteworthy features of the redistribution pattern include the consistent loss of elderly share size by heavily urbanized counties, the consistent gain of share size by suburban counties, and a recent shift in gains to northern counties rather than southern counties. Examination of components of change in each county indicates that both aging-in-place of near-elderly age cohorts and migration have contributed to the redistribution of elderly population within California, but with locationally discrete patterns. Overall, migration was more important numerically.     

Individuals' Estimates of the Risks of Death: Part I—A Reassessment of the Previous Evidence

It is widely argued that individuals have biased perceptions of health and safety risks. A reconsideration of the best-known evidence suggests that this view is the erroneous result of a failure to consider the implications of scarce information. Our findings imply that the hypothesis that people make unbiased estimates of hazard rates fails to be rejected by the very data that were initially used to reject it. Thus, we are able to reconcile the alleged existence of widespread bias in risk perception with other findings that such bias is less apparent in the case of job-related hazards. The seeming bias in estimating population-average death rates and the lack of such bias in assessing job risks are two manifestations of the same behavior, which is the optimal acquisition of costly information.     

The dynamics of social exclusion

Much mainstream analysis of the dynamics of social exclusion is concerned with the changing circumstances of households, using panel and cohort studies. However, changes in these circumstances are mediated by institutional processes and can be adequately explained only if the interactions of institutional and household strategies are taken into account. This is also a precondition of sound inferences for policy. These interactions may involve feedback loops and cumulative change: these require analysis as dynamic systems. The article explores how such dynamic systems can be modelled. It proposes a toolkit that brings together qualitative and quantitative modelling techniques, checks them against empirical data and roots their interpretation within an action frame of reference.     

Exercising moral agency in the contexts of objective reality: toward an integrated account of ethical consumption

This paper engages with two contrasting approaches to conceptualising and studying consumer behaviour that appear to dominate existing research on consumption. On one hand, agency‐focused perspectives take an individual consumer to be the primary author of practice and a basic unit of analysis. On the other hand, socio‐centric paradigms focus on the social roots of consumption activities and the wider societal contexts in which they take place. The need to provide a more balanced view of consumption phenomena has been acknowledged, yet not adequately acted upon. This paper begins to fill this gap through relevant theoretical and empirical contributions. First, we provide a critical review of the dominant theoretical perspectives on consumption in general and ethical consumption in particular, highlight their key ontological assumptions and explain how they preclude a fuller understanding of the ways in which consumer practices are moulded and shaped. Taking a critical realist approach, we then present the findings from qualitative analysis of consumers' ethical food practices to empirically demonstrate the role of human agency and social structure in creating and shaping ethical consumption. Thus, by means of theoretical analysis and empirical research this paper responds to the call for a more comprehensive understanding of consumption and provides a consolidated account of consumer behaviour which acknowledges and explains the complex ensemble of individual and systemic powers in which consumer practices are contained.     

Institutional readiness for integrated watershed management: The case of the Maumee river

Is there such a thing as “institutional readiness” for integrated watershed management? One element of readiness is the ability of managers with watershed-related responsibilities to identify the policy and management objectives of potential partners. The geographic areas encompassed by large watersheds are under the overlapping jurisdictions of many agencies and organizations from each sector (public, non-profit, and private) as well as private landowners. Developing a watershed-based institutional atlas is a promising strategy for coping with this jurisdictional complexity. The authors examine the potential for developing such an atlas in the Maumee River watershed of Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan, and they assess other signals of readiness and partnerships in progress in the basin.     

The social adjustment of children of low intelligence: Part III 1

This article examines the dilemmas faced by undocumented immigrants within the criminal justice system vis-à-vis the immigrant detention center and the resulting implications for social work. It explores the new realities for undocumented immigrants in the United States, including an explanation of state policies that have led to the criminalization of immigrants. The criminal justice and homeland security responses to undocumented immigrants, including the trend toward the privatization of immigration detention centers are analyzed. Finally, the implications of these trends for social work practice are discussed.     

Why I am not an Individualist

In his defence of emergence, David Elder‐Vass assumes that my hermeneutic position represents a form of individualism. Although a common reading of my position, the claim that I am in individualist is incorrect; I, too, recognize the centrality of collective phenomena to social reality. In fact, there is a close convergence between emergence and the hermeneutic sociology I advocate. However, there also remains an important divide between us. Despite his care to avoid reification, Edler‐Vass descends into ontological dualism, conceptualizing society in terms of structure and agency.