Disability Beyond Stigma: Social Interaction, Discrimination, and Activism

This article critiques the assumptions about the nature and meaning of disability advanced in social-psychological writing, suggests the origins of these assumptions, and proposes a return to a Lewinian/minority-group analysis of the situation of people with disabilities. It concludes by placing the articles in this issue of the Journal of Social Issues in context and by presenting questions in need of further exploration.     

After The History of Sexuality: German Genealogies With and Beyond Foucault

Thomas N. Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (1977), xxiv+395 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, £18.80).

Jack Richard Censer, Prelude to power: the Parisian radical press, 1789–1791 (1976), xiv+186 (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, £10.00).

Jürgen Hein, Dorfgeschichte (1976), ix+151 (J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart, DM 10.80). (The Rural Story) Peter Zimmerman, Der Bauernroman (1975), vii+277 (J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart, DM 45.00). (The Peasant Novel)

Royden Harrison, Gillian Woolven and Robert Duncan, The Warwick Guide to British Labour Periodicals 1790–1970 (1977), xxiii+685 (Harvester Press, Hassocks, £26.50).

James J. Sheehan (ed. ), Imperial Germany ( 1976), 282 (Croom Helm and New Viewpoints, New York and London, £7.50).

Maurice Spiers, Victoria Park, Manchester: A Nineteenth‐Century Suburb in its Social and Administrative Context (1976), xiv+104 (Manchester University Press, for the Chetham Society, Manchester, £7.60).

Asa Briggs and John Saville (eds.), Essays in Labour History, 1918–1939 (1977), 292 (Croom Helm, London and Archon Books, Hamden, Conn., £7.50).

Alex Hall, Scandal, Sensation and Social Democracy: the SPD Press and Germany, 1890–1914 (1977), ix+267 (Cambridge University Press, £9.00).

D. E. R. Watt, A Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Graduates to A.D. 1410 (1977), xlii+607 (Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, £30.00).

Daniel Guérin, Class Struggle in the First French Republic: bourgeois and bras nus, 1793–1795 (1977), zv+295 (Pluto Press, £6.60, paper £3.60).

Jennifer M. Brown (ed.), Scottish Society in the Fifteenth Century (1977), xxii+274 (Edward Arnold, £11.00).

H.‐U. Wehler, Bibliographie zur modernen deutschen Sozialgeschichte and Bibliographie zur modernen deutschen Wirschaftsgeschichte (1976) 269 and 242 (UTB Vandenhoeck, Göttingen, paperback DM 14.80 each). (Bibliography of Modern German Social History; Bibliography of Modern German Economic History.)

Susan Reynolds, An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns (1977), xiii+234 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, £7.95).

Roger Moore, The Emergence of the Labour Party 1880–1924 (1978), viii+216 (Hodder and Stoughton, £7.50, paperback £3.50).     

Introduction: Beyond the Great Divergence

Was today’s alternative model of development universal in the eighteenth century? By comparing what was then mainstream economic development with today’s alternative model, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (hereafter, The Great Divergence) reminds us that development has many possibilities. Like many of us who are familiar with the classic research models for the origins of Western European capitalism, Pomeranz, on encountering evidence betraying the paucity of advocates for the “European miracle” and the backwardness of early modern England and Europe, was irresistibly impelled to reassess this period. What he found was a decline in environmental resources relative to the growing population in the preindustrial world—an issue that can hardly be said to be economic; rather, for the moment, let us acknowledge it as arising from the demand for plant and animal resources. The Great Divergence asserts that in the eighteenth century, when timber had not yet been completely replaced by coal, four major products of the land—food, fuel, fiber and building materials—were facing increasing demographic pressure, which people in Europe, especially England, and in China, especially the lower Yangzi Delta (Jiangnan), and even in Japan and India, were all trying to deal with, and to which they all responded by choosing a labor–intensive path. This raised output and satisfied the environmental resource needs of a growing population. In the end, however, The Great Divergence lets the cat out of the bag, holding that environmental pressures were considerably relieved in England in the mid- to late eighteenth century, due to the industrial revolution sparked by its coal and iron and the abundant supply of land-intensive products imported from the New World; England then abandoned its labor-intensive path and took the road of industrialization, in which capital and labor made up for shortage of land. With the advent of the industrial revolution, Pomeranz’ doubts about Eurocentrism automatically come to an end; the nineteenth century becomes a dividing wall. The concept of development that takes environmental resources—including land—as existing merely for demand and consumption takes its fixed form in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the stage in which economic development reigned supreme and industrialization proceeded through plunder and rapine.     

Gender and Emotion: Beyond Stereotypes

Stereotypes about gender and emotional expression tend to be imprecise and misleading. They fail to acknowledge situational, individual, and cultural variations in males' and females' emotional expressiveness. They also tend to generalize across emotional intensity and frequency, as well as across different modalities of emotional expression, e.g. verbal vs. behavioral modalities. Moreover, they tend to exaggerate the extent of gender differences in emotional expression. I argue that when gender differences in emotional expression do occur, they can be traced to social processes such as dissimilar gender roles, status and power imbalances, and differing socialization histories of males and females. These processes may predispose some males and females to express emotions differently in some cultures and in some contexts. To support this argument, I present data from two studies, one showing that the amount of time fathers spend with their children relates to the gender stereotypic nature of their children's emotional expressiveness; and the other showing that gender differences in emotional expressiveness are culturally specific in a sample of Asian international, Asian‐American, and European-American college students. Finally, I note the potentially destructive limitations imposed by stereotypes on males' and females' interpersonal functioning as well as on their mental and physical health.     

Beyond Difference: A Biologist's Perspective

This piece addresses some of the challenges to social scientific thought originating from the field of evolutionary psychology and from social scientists committed to making biological arguments an important component of the sociological discussion of gender. I provide my own biological perspective on these contemporary discussions, noting especially the different kinds of explanatory value one can expect from particular kinds of argument. I also call for the application of stricter scientific standards to arguments about the evolution of sex differentiated human behaviors. I introduce some basic genetic concepts, such as the norm of reaction, which focus attention on the interaction between genes and environment during intra-generational development. Finally, I challenge the idea that there is a necessary correlation between hormone levels and reproductive behavior in vertebrates.     

尼泊尔-印度关系：传统与现实

尼印传统关系中,友好与合作是主流,但“控制与反控制”的较量也时常影响双边关系的发展。两国的地缘位置、传统联系、战略关切、民族主义、国内政治以及中国因素始终是影响双边关系的重要因素。尼印《和平友好条约》、边界划分、边境管理、贸易不平衡、水资源的利用与管理以及经济援助等问题是目前两国间存在的主要问题。在印度对尼政策更加积极与务实的背景下,双边关系的未来发展取决于两国能否彼此照顾对方的安全关切。     

论语言符号的任意性和象似性的互动关系

语言学家从未间断过对语言符号形成因素的研究,并试图解决由此产生的语言符号的第一性是任意性还是象似性这一问题.事实上,语言符号的任意性和象似性并非是非此即彼的对立关系.从历时和共时的角度研究语言符号的生成,可以得出结论:二者在语言词汇形成的过程中是互相补充,共同作用,缺一不可的互动关系.     

Joint Reviews: Judgement Day and Beyond

Correspondence to Jill Humphrey, Adoption and Family Finding Unit, 3 Unthank Road, Norwich NR2 2PA, UK. E-mail: jill.humphrey.socs{at}norfolk.gov.uk Summary Joint Reviewers are the central regulators of social servicesauthorities in England and Wales. This article explores howreviewers arrive at their judgements about the performance ofsocial services authorities and how these authorities respondto Joint Review reports and recommendations. It also offersa framework for evaluating the costs and benefits of Joint Reviewswhich enables us to appreciate the ambivalence which local authoritystaff harbour towards their central regulators.     

Radical Interactionism: Going Beyond Mead*

George Herbert Mead argues that human society is comprised of six basic institutions—language, family, economics, religion, polity, and science. I do not believe that he can be criticized for making institutions the cornerstones of a society, but he can definitely be criticized for his explanation of how our basic institutions originate, how these institutions operate in society after their inception, and how they later change, modifying society in the process. The problem with Mead's explanation of these three critical matters is that he based them on his principle of “sociality” rather than on the principle of “domination.” If Mead's principle of sociality is replaced by the principle of domination and his notion of the “generalized other” is replaced by the notion of the “phantom community,” then most of these problems can be largely solved. Thus, in this paper, I will not only point out the key problems in Mead's theory of society, but I will also offer solutions to them based on the notions of domination and the “phantom community.” The end product is a “radical interactionism” that surpasses Mead's original interactionism in identifying the part that both domination and the composite “other” play in every known human society—big and small, and past and present.     

The Construction of a Simple Book

A book is made for a horse race, and punters place their bets. The problem considered here is how the bookmaker should construct his book. Before this can be solved, it has to be determined how the punters will react to any proposed book. Much of the detailed discussion is confined to a race with two horses, though some results apply in the general case. The punters' problem is solved using a utility function, special attention being paid to the case of constant risk-aversion. Two solutions are provided for the bookmaker's problem, dependent on whether it is desired to maximize expected gain, or achieve the same gain whatever horse wins.     

Beyond Symptoms: Crime Prevention And Community Development

Crime and crime prevention are currently ‘hot’ political and social issues. Fuelled by public calls for ‘solutions’, the responses by politicians and planners are typically ‘quick‐fix’ with emphasis on management of particular problems as, and where, they arise. We argue for longer term strategies aimed at dealing with the political, social, economic and cultural factors associated with crime. In doing so, we explore the potential of community development to contribute to crime prevention, particularly ‘community’ or ‘street’ crime and violence. Theoretical and practice intersections between community development and certain crime prevention approaches are identified – notably those which link crime and violence with dis‐empowerment, poverty, inequality, exclusion, the learning of violence within families and communities, and lack of opportunity for children and young people to develop their potential. We conclude that there is plenty of evidence to support the view that community development processes should be used more frequently in crime prevention programmes.     

Beyond Power Discourse: Alienation and Social Work

Correspondence to Michael Lavalette, Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work Studies, University of Liverpool, Eleanor Rathbone Building, Bedford Street South, Liverpool. E-mail: M.Lavalette{at}Liverpool.ac.uk Summary This paper argues for the relevance of the Marxist concept ofalienation to the development of an emancipatory social workpractice. As the concept has often been misinterpreted withinthe social work literature to refer primarily to a psychologicalstate, the first part of the paper seeks to establish the materialbasis of the theory as developed by Marx, and identifies fourkey aspects of alienation—from the product of labour,from the labour process, from our ‘human nature’and from our fellow human beings. Alienation theory is thenapplied to the experience of both social workers and serviceusers and it is argued that the notions of loss of control (inthe case of social workers) and powerlessness (in the case ofservice users) have greater explanatory power, and provide afirmer basis for a radical practice, than currently fashionablepower discourses, derived from postructuralism, which oftenmirror the individualism of the New Right approaches they seekto challenge. Finally, examples are given of the ways in whichthe concept of alienation might contribute towards the developmentof a new, emancipatory social work, central to which is likelyto be the development of more collective approaches.