Commentary: Problems with the Sexual Disorders Sections of DSM-5

There are a number of problems with the sexual disorders sections of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition. These problems must be understood in a historical context, namely the evolution of criteria for psychosexual disorders from DSM-II (1968) to DSM-5 (2013). There are many inconsistencies in the DSM-5 criteria for different sexual disorders. Given these inconsistencies—and the history of diagnostic criteria for homosexuality and gender identity disorder from DSM-II to DSM-5—it is possible that, like homosexuality, DSM-5 gender dysphoria could disappear from future editions of the manual. Even if that does not happen, there are numerous problems with the DSM-5 sexual disorders that require attention.     

La dimension économique de la législation protectrice de l'emploi,y compris sous ses modalités différentes: analyse sur un panel de 117 pays, 1990–2013

Les auteurs replacent l'évolution de la législation protectrice de l'emploi (y compris de durée déterminée, intérimaire et à temps partiel) dans une perspective économique en utilisant un indice de la rigueur de la réglementation établi par le Centre for Business Research de l'Université de Cambridge pour 117 pays (1970–2013). L'analyse économétrique repose sur des méthodes pour données de panel non stationnaires. Elle fait apparaître un renforcement de la protection, associé à une hausse de la part salariale dans le revenu national, une progression des taux d'activité et d'emploi et une baisse du chômage, des relations qui restent faibles cependant au regard de la tendance économique globale.     

Reviews

International Law in the Service of Soviet Anti‐Zionism

L.A. Modzhoryan, Sionizm kak forma rasizma i rasovoy diskriminatsii (Zionism as a Form of Racism and Racial Discrimination). Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya, 1979. 240 pp.

‘White Book’ Against the Jewish Emigration Movement

L.N. Smirnov and others (eds), Belaya kniga: svidetelstva, fakty, dokumenty (White Book: Evidence, Facts, Documents). Moscow: Yuridicheskaya literatura, 1979. 280 pp. 1.20 roubles.

‘Academic’ Exposition of Soviet Policy

Evgeny Primakov, Anatomiya blizhnevostochnogo konflikta (The Anatomy of the Middle East Conflict). Moscow: Mysl, 1978. 374 pp. Index.

A Report on Human Rights

Human Rights in the Soviet Union: Report of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence, Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1979. xxi+211 pp. Maps. Diagrams. Appendices.

A Monument to Polish Jewry

Moshe Mishkinsky (ed.). Galed. Measef le‐toledot yahadut polin (Galed. On the History of Jews in Poland*). Vols. 1, 2, 3, 4–5. Tel‐Aviv: Tel‐Aviv University, 1973–79.

Romanian Jewry Between the Wars

Shlomo Bickel, Yahadut Romania. Historia, Bikoret Sifrutit, Zikhronot (The Jews of Romania. History, Criticism, Recollections). Tel Aviv: The Association of Romanian Emigrants in Israel and The Groper Legacy Literary Committee, 1978. 429 pp.     

Acceptable atrocity

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (London: Little, Brown & Co., 1996). Pp.x + 622. £22.50. ISBN 0 316 87942 8     

Toward a Sociology of Nature

Although we often believe that nature stands apart from social life, our experience of nature is profoundly social. This paper unpacks this paradox in order to (1) explain sociology's neglect of the environment and (2) introduce the articles in this special issue on “the sociology of nature.” I argue that sociology's disinterest in the biophysical world is a legacy of its classical concern with tracing society's “Great Transformation” from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft: while early anthropologists studied “primitive” societies that allegedly had not yet completed “the passage from nature to culture” (Lévi‐Strauss 1963 : 99), pioneering sociologists presumed that industrialization and urbanization liberated “modern” society from nature and therefore focused their attention on “urbanism as a way of life” (Wirth 1938 ). As exemplified by the articles in this symposium, environmental sociology critiques the nature‐culture and town‐country dualisms. One of environmental sociology's core contributions has been demonstrating that nature is just as much a social construction as race or gender; however, its more profound challenge to the discipline lies in its refutation of the sociological axiom that social facts can be explained purely through reference to other social facts. “Environmental facts” are a constitutive feature of social life, not merely an effect of it.