Divorce,Custody, and Visitation:

This paper discusses children's perceptions of the divorce experience. Specifically, it illuminates children's perceptions of divorce, custody, and visitation. Custody and visitation arrangements have been made on the basis of what is believed to be in the best interests of the child. However, the viewpoint of the child is seldom considered in decisions concerning custody and access. Moreover, a negligible amount of empirical research has explored the child's interpretation of custody and visitation. This paper is an attempt to redress this imbalance. Findings based on in-depth interviews with 40 children and teenagers reveal a preference for the post-divorce family structure and more flexible visitation arrangements. Moreover, the feasibility of father and joint-custody is addressed.     

Ministers,Feminism, and Abortion:

The attitudes of male ministers in an Eastern state are examined with respect to attitudes toward the proper roles of women, legalized abortion, and the proposed Human Life Amendment to the Constitution. Doctrinal orthodoxy is found to be the strongest predictor of attitudes toward abortion and the Human Life Amendment. However, having an employed wife has borth direct and indirect effects on these attitudes, affecting abortion attitudes in a "pro-choice" direction. Importantly, the wife's employment status is exogenous to the model, as such employment outside the home is not predicted by any religious variable.     

Biology,Gender, and Politics:

This paper analyzes the application of the biopolitical perspective to explanations of gender differnces in political participation. Using the heuristic device of a causal model, two endocrine-based mechanisms proposed in political science literature are examined: 1) the linking of male androgens with more assertive kinds of political involvement; and 2) the linking of menstruation with cyclical mood changes and political behavior and attitudes. After a review of pertinent biological, psychological and political science literatures, both explanations are rejected. In the concluding section, an interactive biobehavioral paradigm is outlined, and several examples are suggested for further exploration of biological factors in political behavior and gender.     

Review Essay: Sociology and Knowledge: Trust, Truth, and Troth

Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge , by Karin Knorr Cetina.
Social Mechanisms: An Analytic Approach to Social Theory , edited by Peter Hedström and Richard Swedberg.
A Watched POT: How We Experience Time , by Michael G. Flaherty.     

Review Essay: Analyzing Emotions: Prisms,Transferences, Rituals,and Histories

Sociological Forum -     

Aging,Health, and Social Policy:

Seven major turning points in the evolution of U.S. aging policy are identified and reviewed: (1) the Social Security Act (2) the Great Society (3) the federalization of Old Age Assistance (4) the enactment of comprehensive social services (5) Social Security improvements (6) New Federalism, and (7) medical cost-containment policies under Medicare and Medicaid. In the 1980s, significant and growing problems of uninsurance and underinsurance for health care have re-emerged. Simultaneously, state Medicaid programs are characterized by their increasing variation and inequities, while there has been a decline in access for the poor. The future of aging policy will be decided in the context of four socio-demographic realities: (1) population aging (2) trends in mortality and morbidity (3) the relationship between income and health, and (4) aging as a woman's issue. The article concludes with a call for a recommitment to the public interest and to public solutions which affirm that health care is an inalienable right.     

Coordinating Theory,Evidence, and Practice:

Concern about the harmful effects of industrial toxins has resulted in growing numbers of citizens fighting against toxic exposure in their communities. This paper describes key concepts derived from theories used to examine collective action in response to the threat of toxic exposure. These concepts are defined, synthesized into a theoretical framework, and illustrated. The framework provides an organizing perspective that social workers can use to respond to the problem of toxic exposure. The framework is one step toward advancing theory and research for organizing communities to respond to toxic exposure and other social problems when collective action is a viable response.     

Religion,Spirituality, and Thriving: Transcendent Narrative,Virtue, and Telos

A theory is proposed to explain how religion/spirituality (R/S) is related to positive youth development and thriving. The concept of telos is employed to define thriving as continued growth through strength‐based living that leads to contributing to one's communities and living out one's ethical ideals. Virtue development is proposed as a primary process by which R/S promotes thriving. Virtues are defined as hybrid personality units emerging when characteristic adaptations are given meaning by a transcendent narrative identity. R/S contributes to virtue formation through the ideological, social, and transcendent contexts embedded within religion by providing opportunities to grow both the characteristic adaptations and transcendent narrative identities necessary for virtue formation in youth and, ultimately, thriving. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Women,Development, and Public Policy:

No abstract available for this article.     

People,Productivity, and the Pentagon:

No abstract available for this article.     

Symposium: Neuroergonomics, technology, and cognition

This symposium describes collaborative research on neuroergonomics, technology, and cognition being conducted at George Mason University and the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) as part of the Center of Excellence in Neuroergonomics, Technology, and Cognition (CENTEC). Six presentations describe the latest developments in neuroergonomics research conducted by CENTEC scientists. The individual papers cover studies of: (1) adaptive learning systems; (2) neurobehavioral synchronicity during team performance; (3) genetics and individual differences in decision making; (4) vigilance and mindlessness; (5) interruptions and multi-tasking; and (6) development of a simulation capability that integrates measures across these domains and levels of analysis.     

Good,Bad, and Captive Samaritans:

This paper adds-in pregnancy and consent to the abortion debate in the context of good samaritan arguments initiated by Judith Jarvis Thomson. Drawing upon legal and medical definitions, the abortion issue is reframed as the right of a woman to consent to what will be done to her body by the fetus rather than her right merely to choose what to do with her own body. This argument shifts abortion rights from the right to decisional autonomy established in Roe to the right to bodily integrity affirmed by samaritan case law. As a result, we see why women who are pregnant without their consent, in effect, are captive samaritans, a status unsubstantiated by either legislative statutes or legal precedents. Recasting abortion as a response to nonconsensual pregnancy opens new grounds guaranteeing women's reproductive rights.     

Women and Alcohol,Tobacco, and Other Drugs:

Increased number$ of women in the work force provide opportunities for services for problems with alcohol, tobacco and other drugs (ATOD) that are long overdue. Drawing from the contributions of wellness programs, and Ihe research and literature on women, this paper describes how to more effectively reach and assist women at risk of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs by broadening Employee Assistance Programs.     

Abjection and Organization: Men, Violence, and Management

This paper explores case material to show theextent to which non-organizational experiences ofviolence can shape subsequent behavior withinorganizations. These connections are not commonlyconsidered either in the study of organizational behavioror of managerial practice, because behaviors from otherarenas, adaptations, and responses, can be reproducedmany years away from the source of anxiety. These behaviors are widespread, patterned, cyclical,and carry an inevitability about them that cannot bemodified simply by changing behavior alone. The paperconcentrates on examples where the extent ofpathological behavior is easilyseen, but the processes whichsurface are common mechanisms of ordinary human behaviorand more attenuated experiences of violence withinorganizations operate similarly. These processes are discussed through the work of objectrelations theorists, Julia Kristeva, and recenttheorists of masculinity, arguing that bureaucraciesseek to deny the emotional dimension of their behaviorand decision-making which creates emotion as an abject phenomenon,denied but present, ever potentially resurgent, neveraddressed as reality. Men are caught up in this web ofsocietal and organizational denial because of their traditional dominance in formalorganizations and the historical association ofmasculinity and rationality, compounded by the dynamicsof male psychology. However traditional symbolicassociations between men and physical violence introduce aproblematic contradiction, and societal, cultural, andorganizational arrangements tend to support andfacilitate the psychodynamics of denial which deals with this contradiction by producing narcissisticand addictive responses. This is illustrated by adiscussion of film, novel, and biographical data. Thepaper finally argues that men in organizations need to come to terms with the unacceptable inthemselves and their experience in order to break thiscycle of reproduction of dysfunctionalbehavior.     

Nudity and Framing: Classifying Art,Pornography, Information,and Ambiguity

Drawing on 45 interviews, this paper addresses how people interpret and make sense of nude images within popular culture. I suggest that the nude image resides comfortably in three familiar and bounded frames: art, pornography, and information. These frames clearly provide the reader with cues that aid his/her interpretation of the nude as well as his/her evaluation of the nude. A fourth frame is under construction this is the commodified frame used in selling products and magazines. Older adults refuse to address the acceptability of this frame; younger adults believe it to be a bounded category close to the other three. Age distinguishes between the kinds and amounts of cultural work that people do in deciding the acceptability of the frames that contain nude images.