Careers and redundancy

Occupational redundancy is affecting a wide range of workers including those with careers. This challenges assumptions of the inviolability of professional careers and views of careers as steady progress. Individuals’experience of redundancy shows that careers can be very disadvantageous for those who have invested in and become committed to them. Recent changes in society thus call for a revision of the existing sociological concept of career and its use in the analysis of social institutions and processes. These issues are examined by reviewing sociological references to, and analyses of, the concept and by studying the effects of redundancy on a particular group of professionals. It is argued that redundancy compels an approach which treats seriously the capacity of‘careers’to inflict psychological and social harm and to involve career holders in political struggle. The concept should retain its place in the sociology of occupations, but to realise its analytical potential, it must be firmly related to political conditions and consequences. This may justify following the commonsense rather than the sociological view and restricting its use to high-status occupations.     

Climate Change Facts,Strategies, Choices and Innovations

Canada's Action Plan is the federal response to its international obligation under the UN Framework Convention of 1992 whereby Canada must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to the 1990 level by the year 2000. The Plan is failing completely, because of its essentially voluntary nature. Overall, greenhouse gas emissions will have increased 13 per cent in Canada between 1990 and 2000, four per cent more than the population increase for that period. Five other plans studied by government agencies are projected to fail to achieve the called-for reductions in emission. An analogous plan, the Rational Energy Plan, developed by a network of nongovernment organizations, is projected to enable the federal government to achieve its obligations under the Framework Convention and also its further obligations under the 1995 Berlin Mandate. This Plan has been analyzed using the government's own analytical tools which project that it will offer Canada substantial annual increases in employment for at least ten years, more prosperous households for more than ten years, and a smaller federal deficit for at least eight years. The federal government has no viable alternative to adopting this plan as soon as practicable. This paper explains some of the needed preliminaries to introducing the Plan, together with examples of tax-shifting and of easily implemented stick-and-carrot inducements to making the Plan work in a sea of partly hostile provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Newfoundland). The Plan will not be easy to implement because of necessary changes in human habits of thinking and attitudes. A new and simple strategy for reducing fuel wastage on highways is introduced in this paper; and also the concept of extended cogeneration, the Rational Energy Plan itself being a particularly fine example.     

The nature and context of cross-border social work in Ireland

This article is concerned with mapping cross-border social work in Ireland. After a short background section on the nature of the Irish border, it evaluates and assesses the main areas of collaboration in social work. It argues that this type of work has been largely led by special project funding and is dependent on the skills, knowledge and commitment of a small number of individuals who have driven cross-border projects. Whilst there is a clear rationale for collaboration in social work programmes, it is contended that this method of working lacks an overall coherence and is in danger of disappearing when special funding programmes come to an end. The article contends that there is a fundamental desire for close co-operation, but as cross-border social work has not been embedded into the routine business of health boards and trusts the impetus is constantly undermined. It is concluded that cross-border social work programmes will remain marginal and insignificant until they are mainstreamed rather than bolted on as an afterthought to existing programmes.     

Long term planning for coal

The Interim Report of the Coal Industry Examination was published in June 1964, representing the result of Tripartite discussions between the Government, the National Coal Board and the unions. One of the principal conclusions of this report was that the government endorsed the Board's long-term ‘Plan for Coal’ as a broad strategy for the industry. It is perhaps appropriate, therefore, to review at the present time the kind of considerations which needed to be taken into account in drawing up a long-term ‘Plan for Coal’.     

Word Learning in Children Following Cochlear Implantation

An experimental procedure was developed to investigate word-learning skills of children who use cochlear implants (CIs). Using interactive play scenarios, 2- to 5-year olds were presented with sets of objects (Beanie Baby stuffed animals) and words for their names that corresponded to salient perceptual attributes (e.g., "horns" for a goat). Their knowledge of the word-object associations was measured immediately after exposure and then following a 2-hour delay. Children who use cochlear implants performed more poorly than age-matched children with typical hearing both receptively and expressively. Both groups of children showed retention of the word-object associations in the delayed testing conditions for words that were previously known. Our findings suggest that although pediatric CI users may have impaired phonological processing skills, their long-term memory for familiar words may be similar to children with typical hearing. Further, the methods that developed in this study should be useful for investigating other aspects of word learning in children who use CIs.     

The origins, early development and status of Bourdieu's concept of 'cultural capital'

The paper examines the context of the first introduction of the concept of 'cultural capital' in the sociology of education analyses undertaken in the early 1960s and published by Bourdieu in collaboration with Jean-Claude Passeron in 'Les etudiants et leurs etudes' (1964a) and Les Heritiers (1964b). It first considers the cultural contexts within which Bourdieu's thinking about culture originated--both in relation to his social origins and in relation to his intellectual training. It then examines the extent to which Bourdieu's early anthropological research in Algeria was influenced by his knowledge of American acculturation theory. It concludes that Bourdieu sought to use acculturation theory in a distinctive way--one which he articulated more confidently as he explored the relationship between agency and structural explanation in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The specific educational researches which stimulated the articulation of the concept of 'linguistic' or 'cultural' capital belonged to the period in which Bourdieu was only just beginning to refine his post-structuralist philosophy of social scientific explanation. To use these concepts now involves deploying them reflexively in accordance with Bourdieu's later thinking rather than at face value as they were first developed during the period in which he and Passeron were 'apprentice' researchers.     

Dosage-response analysis for a semi-quantal response derived from an aqueous biological assay

This paper is concerned with the interpretation of semi-quantal or graded responses in biological assay. On the basis of a model by which the various response categories represent contiguous intervals on an underlying quantitative scale reflecting time to death, a method of analysis for semi-quantal data is put forward. The results are illustrated by an aqueous assay designed to assess the toxicity of an effluent. It is confirmed that the proposed method of analysis leads to more precise estimates of the dosage-response relation than the alternative quantal response analysis of each response threshold.