Theory at risk: Accounting for the excellence movement

Amidst widespread concern about educational crisis and the need for reform, the current excellence movement places a pronounced emphasis on rigor, standards, and a core curriculum of basic studies. At issue here is whether major macro-the-oretical perspectives can account for the emergence of this movement. Functional and Marxian theories do not meet this challenge well, especially insofar as they posit a tight, rational linkage between school and economy and downplay the institutional autonomy of the educational system. A status conflict approach, emphasizing middle class mobilization, offers greater insight, though it must be complemented with a recognition of constraints imposed by capitalist organization and the institutionalization of educational myths.     

Habermas and green political thought

Conclusion My principal ecocentric objection to Habermas's social and political theory has been that it is thoroughly human-centered in insisting that the emancipation of human relations need not require or depend upon the emancipation of nature. Although Habermas has moved beyond the pessimism and utopianism of the first generation of Critical Theorists by providing the conceptual foundations of the practical and emancipatory cognitive interests, he has, as Whitebook points out, also markedly altered the spirit of their project. Yet it is precisely the spirit of the early Frankfurt school theorists, namely, its critique of the dominant imperialist orientation toward the world (rather than its critique of a simplistically conceived idea of science) and its desire for the liberation of nature, that is most relevant to - and provides the most enduring Western Marxist link with - the ecocentric perspective of the radical Greens.

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Adolescent Women's Recommendations for Enhanced Parent-Adolescent Communication About Sexual Behavior

Family communication about adolescent sexual health and behavior promotes adolescent health and family connectedness. However, few studies seek the perspective of adolescents regarding their recommended strategies for family communication. Findings of a survey of female adolescent family planning patients (n = 249) indicated adolescent recommendations for better family communication included treat teen as an equal, 63%; increase parental knowledge about lifestyle and peer pressures, 61%, and improve parental listening skills, 61%. There were no statistically significant differences according to age, pregnancy history, or school enrollment status for suggested strategies for improved communication with parents. Sexually active adolescent daughters expressed interest in maintaining family connectedness and support with increased time for family activities as well as increased quality and quantity of dialogue between the adolescent girl and her parents.     

Marital Violence: Impact on Children's Emotional Experiences, Emotional Regulation and Behaviors in a Post-Divorce/Separation Situation

This study examined the mediating effects of children's emotional experiences and regulation strategies on the relationship between marital violence and children's behavioral problems following divorce/separation. Findings indicated marital violence as reported by the mothers was associated with children's internalizing problems as measured by the Achenbach Behavior Checklist. Marital violence was also associated with children's reported experience of negative emotions, with sadness and anger emerging as statistical predictors of children's behavioral problems. A weak relationship was found between emotional regulation strategies and children's behavioral problems, with the exception that direct intervention and the range of strategies used by children were positively associated with behavioral problems. Children's reported anger was also found to mediate the relationship between marital violence and children's total behavioral problems. Implications of findings for treatment of children and adolescents from separated, conflicted homes are discussed.     

Addiction to fruit machines: A preliminary study among young males

Although most sources treat gambling as an adult phenomenon, adolescent gambling is more widespread than is generally recognized, and in some cases may even be pathological. This paper outlines a preliminary study of eight adolescents addicted to playing and gambling on coin-in-the-slot machines (more commonly known as fruit machines). Factors involved in the onset of fruit machine playing are examined along with their alternative gambling activities and associated problems. The role of skill and excitement components in persistent playing are also discussed.The author would like to thank the United Kingdom Economic and Social Research Council for funding this work through a research studentship.     

Two methods in search of science

Conclusion In terms of the criteria for the growth of knowledge formulated by Popper, I have tried to demonstrate the superiority of the methodology of research program over the methodology of induction. Although the argument used Skocpol's and Trotsky's theories of revolution as illustrations, I constructed general claims organized around the contexts of discovery (induction versus deduction), justification (verification versus falsification and prediction), and scientist (external to or part of the object of knowledge). So long as philosophers of science were concerned to discover the scientific method, they could successfully compartmentalize these contexts. However, as soon as they became concerned to explain the development of scientific knowledge, they quickly discovered, as we have, that these contexts are irretrievably intertwined. So we require alternative categories for comparing methodologies. (a) Grounds of scientific objectivity I have tried to demonstrate that the method of induction stands on a false objectivity. While it claims to generate explanations that map the empirical world, it actually erects barriers to the comprehension of that world. Not the facts but methodological premises and arbitrary explanatory hunches become the hidden anchors for theoretical conclusions. The method is at odds with its aims. Paradoxically, the methodology of the research program, precisely because it is self-consciously anchored in a complex of moral values, a conceptual system, models (analogies and metaphors) and exemplars - what Skocpol refers to as blinders or heavily tinted lenses, what Lakatos refers to as negative and positive heuristics - creates a more effective dialogue with those historical patterns. Blindness comes not from pre-existing theories but from failing to recognize their necessity and then failing to articulate and defend their content. (b) Problem versus puzzle oriented science The method of induction claims to be outside and beyond theoretical traditions. Thus Skocpol reduces the classics of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim to inspirations, sources of hypotheses, and even to variables out of which a true macro sociology can be forged. Compelling desires to answer historically grounded questions, not classical theoretical paradigms, are the driving force [of historical sociology]. We select a problem that takes our fancy and induce its solutions from the facts. Since, in the final analysis there is only one theory compatible with the facts, there is no need to go through the falsification of alternative theories or put one's own theory through severe tests. The methodology of research programs, on the other hand, is concerned to solve puzzles, that is, anomalies thrown up by its expanding belt of theories, discrepancies between expectations and facts. The health and vitality of a research program depends not on the concealment, obfuscation, denial of anomalies but on their clear articulation and disciplined proliferation. Continual dialogue between theory and data through falsification of the old and the development of new hypotheses with predictions of novel facts is of the essence of a progressive research program. Trotsky's prophetic powers all originate in, even if they are not determined by his commitment to Marxism - a recognition of its anomalies and the need to solve them in an original manner. (c) Internal versus external history The method of induction regards the facts as irreducible and given, the problem is to come to an unbiased assessment of them. Science grows by the accumulation of factual propositions and inductive generalizations. This is its internal history. But the inductivist cannot offer a rational internal explanation for why certain facts than others were selected in the first place. Problem choice, as we said above, is part of the external history relegated to footnotes, prefaces, or to the sociology of knowledge. By contrast, the methodology of research programs incorporates into its internal history what is branded as metaphysical and external by inductivists, namely its hard core postulates and its choice of puzzles. What is reconstructed as scientifically rational in the one appears as scientifically irrational in the other.Although what is constituted as rational in research programs encompasses much more than the rationality of induction, nevertheless even here external forces necessarily influence the scientific process. This is particularly so in the social sciences where the object of knowledge autonomously generates new anomalies that the positive heuristic has to absorb. External forces can be seized upon as opportunities for the rational growth of knowledge, but they can also be the source of irrationality. Thus, research programs become degenerate when they seal themselves off from the world they study or when that world wrenches the research process from its hard core. Marxism is particularly sensitive to external history. Where it seeks to change the world it is more likely to be sensitive to anomalies than where it is a dominant ideology and thus more vulnerable to the repression of anomalies.Obviously the methodology of research programs has its own distinctive problems that energize its development. Is it possible to identify a single core to a research program or are there a family of cores and how does the core change over time? What is the relation between positive and negative heuristics? How easy is it to distinguish between progressive and degenerating research programs? How do we know that an apparently degenerating program will not recover its old dynamism? How does one evaluate the relative importance of progressive and degenerating branches of the same program? Is it possible to stipulate the conditions under which it is rational to abandon one research program in favor of another? Such probloems notwithstanding I hope I have made a case for the superiority of the methodology of research programs over the methodology of induction as a mode of advancing social science.

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The Modern World-Systemas environmental history? Ecology and the rise of capitalism

This article considers the emergence of world environmental history as a rapidly growing but undertheorized research field. Taking as its central problematic the gap between the fertile theorizations of environmentally-oriented social scientists and the empirically rich studies of world environmental historians, the article argues for a synthesis of theory and history in the study of longue dureesocio-ecological change. This argument proceeds in three steps. First, I offer an ecological reading of Immanuel Wallerstein's The Modern World-System. Wallerstein's handling of the ecological dimensions of the transition from feudalism to capitalism is suggestive of a new approach to world environmental history. Second, I contend that Wallerstein's theoretical insights may be effectively complemented by drawing on Marxist notions of value and above all the concept of metabolic rift, which emphasize the importance of productive processes and regional divisions of labor within the modern world-system. Finally, I develop these theoretical discussions in a short environmental history of the two great commodity frontiers of early capitalism – the sugar plantation and the silver mining complex.     

Touristic authenticity,touristic angst,and modern reality

The tourist has become the symbol of a peculiarly modern type of inauthenticity. This paper explores the criticisms that have been directed at the reality experiences of the tourist. In so doing, the following inexhaustive typology of touristic realities is developed: 1) the first-order or true tourist, 2) the second-order or Angst-ridden tourist, 3( the third-order or anthropological tourist, and 4) the fourth-order or spiritual tourist. Each of these types represents a progressively more intense search for reality through travel. Each is, however, criticized for participating in its own form of inauthenticity.After exploring the reality experiences and criticisms of each of these travellers, the paper turns the tables on the cultured despisers of tourism to argue that perhaps the lowly first-order tourist is not so inauthentic after all. True, this traveller may not be having a real heroic adventure, but such is not the goal. Rather, the reality experienced by the first-order tourist is a pleasurable liberation from the normal concerns of everyday life which simultaneously reaffirms commitment to that reality. Quite frequently the first-order tourist is less concerned about having a real experience in the visited place than in experiencing family and friendship relationships-relationships completely ignored by the anti-touristic tourists in their search for authenticity in someone else's reality.The author would like to thank Peter L. Berger, Harry C. Bredemeier, Warren I. Susman, and M. Kathy Kenyon for their comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper. This research was supported in part by NIMH grant no. 5 T32 NH14660.     

The Chicago School,So-Called

Many sociologists believe in the myth of a Chicago School, a unified and coherent body of thought and research practice carried on at the University of Chicago from the 1920s through the 1960s. Chicago never constituted such a coherent system and is better understood as a school of activity, a group of people who cooperated in the day-to-day running of a major department.     

Interagency Collaboration with High-Risk Gang Youth

This study examines the process of collaboration between agencies working with high-risk gang youth. Using semi-structured interviews with direct practitioners and observations of a collaborative event at a juvenile prison, this theory-generating study examined the strengths of and barriers to collaboration between adolescent-serving agencies. Practitioners indicated the importance of communication and cooperation as elements of a successful collaboration. In practice, however, these elements were often replaced by premature termination of collaborative arrangements, blaming other agencies for failure of youth, and diffusion of responsibility (passing the buck). This study proposes agency fear as a factor separating desired from actual practice, and proposes potential causes and outcomes of agency fear.     

Voice and Identity in a Bicultural/Bilingual Environment

Researchers have noted that with the onset of adolescence, girls' voices become muted and school achievement drops. Girls learn that the expression of strong feelings leads to distance from others, and that full use of their bodies and minds cause others discomfort. Self-esteem suffers and girls become at risk for destructive behaviors. Most studies have been done with middle class Caucasian girls. Those few studies done with young girls of color speak of girls on the margin who seem to resist losing their voices and their self-esteem. This article describes a study involving 5th–8th grade girls participating in an Advisory group program at a grammar school in a predominantly Mexican community of a large city. Group sessions were taped and analyzed for common themes including voice and self-esteem. Focus was directed to the influence of the bicultural/bilingual environment in analysis of group content. Implications for practice are included.     

Evaluation of the Late Nite Basketball Project

The author's research team evaluated the Late Nite Basketball Project, an innovative recreational gang diversion program. Data were collected from in-depth interviews of over 100 gang members, family members, and staff and then analyzed using qualitative methodology. Reported benefits included: fun, jobs and scholarships, skill-building workshops, reduction of inter-gang violence, and formation of new relationships. Key recommendations included: institutionalization; expansion of services to younger children, girls, and non-athletes; linkage to suburban leagues; establishment of peer-counseling; increased parental involvement; improved selection, training, and ongoing support for staff; and improved integration with other programs.It's hard to shoot someone after you play ball with him (a gang member and participant in the Late Nite program)The project was funded by The Office of the Mayor, Salt Lake City and assisted by research assistants—Mark Beecher, Laurie Wilson, Vicki Windes, Susan Wrathall and Lee Wright, all of the Graduate School of Social Work, University of Utah.     

Ich und Du, a “Two-Person” Therapeutic Relationship: A Discussion of Herbert Strean's “Resolving Some Therapeutic Impasses by Disclosing Countertransference”

This article discusses the essential features of a two-person or relational approach to dynamic psychotherapy. An historical perspective on the development of the relational model, based on the theories of Martin Buber and Otto Rank, is offered and integrated with modern and post-modern interpersonal and relational theories. The relational model is compared with what Herbert Strean labels a two-person psychology in his article Resolving some therapeutic impasses by disclosing countertransference.     

Evidence for a common dissociative-like reaction among addicts

A questionnaire was designed to test selected aspects of the author's General Theory of Addictions (Jacobs, 1982). Data were collected from groups of compulsive gamblers, alcoholics, and compulsive overeaters, and compared with the responses to the same questionnaire obtained from normative samples of adolescents and adults. The more inclusive term, compulsive gambler, has been used throughout, since the sample of gamblers in this study included an inpatient subgroup who had been diagnosed as pathological gamblers, as well as a subgroup of Gamblers Anonymous members who had not been clinically evaluated. Findings support the author's theoretical position that, when indulging, different kinds of addicts will tend to share a common set of dissociativelike experiences that differentiate them from nonaddicts. This has been termed a state of altered identity.     

Skirting the Instrumental Paradox: Intentional Belief Through Narrative in Latin American Pentecostalism

Research on the dramatic growth of Pentecostal Christianity in Latin America has centered on the idea that participation in Pentecostalism is a cultural strategy with which poor Latin Americans overcome substance abuse, step out of crime and violence, and address conjugal conflict. However, such intentional belief violates the idea of the relative autonomy of culture, and sociologists have generally thought that such an attempt would be self-defeating—falling to what is referred to as the instrumental paradox. Here I argue, with reference to data from fieldwork with Pentecostal men in Caracas, that three aspects of narrative—the play of canonicity and particularity, the predication of intention and agency, and the predication of temporality—permit actors to skirt the instrumental paradox.     

Engaging with a Mental Health Service: Perspectives of At-Risk Youth

Studies suggest that only a small number of young people with diagnosable mental health difficulties are referred for treatment. Of these a significant proportion fail to engage in treatment or terminate prematurely. This situation is exacerbated when the young people are homeless or at risk of homelessness, and considered to be at-risk. With this at-risk population the process of engagement is likely to be a critical aspect of successful interventions. Using qualitative methodology, at-risk clients of a mental health service (n = sixteen) were interviewed, and four primary themes crucial to the engagement process were identified. The data indicated the importance of considering the young person and their multifarious life-experiences; the attractiveness and accessibility of the service; and the follow-up offered by the service provider. The implications for mental health services that provide counseling for young people are discussed.     

Emotional Climate in a European Problem Area: East Berlin and West Berlin Three Years After Reunification

In autumn of 1992, three years after the unification of Germany, during a period of violent attacks against foreigners, 120 students from East Berlin and West Berlin and 20 foreign students living in West Berlin answered the Emotional Climate Questionnaire developed by de Rivera and Fernandez-Dols. Foreign respondents expressed a positive attitude toward their government/state and believed in prosocial behavior to a greater extent than respondents from East Berlin and West Berlin. Whereas East Berlin students disagreed only somewhat with statements in favor of selfishness and egoism, West Berlin students strongly disagreed with them. We attribute the differences that were found in the answers of the foreign students to their national values. In addition, we regard the differences between the emotional climates of East Berlin and West Berlin as reflecting a climate of instability among East Berliners. We interpreted selfishness as a kind of polarized behavior indicating a climate of instability. A factor analysis revealed 5 factors of an emotional climate: Nation's Future, Just World, Reactive Egoism, Scepticism, and Basic Egoism. The concept of emotional climate is discussed on the basis of the current data.     

Creating Accessible Queer Community: Intersections and Fractures with Dis/Ability Praxis

This article explores the intersections and fractures that disability theory and activism present to queer community. The authors begin by drawing upon a multiple axis approach from feminist theory, then discuss the problem of defining disability and queer. They then explore the intersections and fractures of these identities and theories, hoping to raise awareness among queer activists and scholars and introduce them to conceptual and practical tools. In particular, disability studies offers a way to reconceptualize and ground theory and practice in the messiness of real bodies and to make visible the mythic normate against which cultural Others are defined.     

The context of correctness: A comment on rushton

According to Philippe Rushton, the equalitarian fiction, a scientific hoax that races are genetically equal in cognitive ability, underlies the politically correct objections to his research on racial differences. He maintains that there is a taboo against race unequaled by the Inquisition. I show that while Rushton has been publicly harassed, he has had continuous opportunities to present his findings in diverse, widely available, respectable journals, and no general suppression within academic psychology is evident. Similarly, Henry Garrett and his associates in the LAAEE, dedicated to preserving segregation and preventing race suicide, disseminated their ideas widely, although Garrett complained of the equalitarian fiction in 1961. Examination of the intertwined history ofMankind Quarterly, German Rassenhygiene, far right politics, and the work of Roger Pearson suggests that some cries of political correctness must be viewed with great caution.Preparation of this paper was not supported by any grant, foundation, political, or religious organization.specializing in the history of psychology and psychological aesthetics.