Income, Environmental Disamenity, and Toxic Releases

The literature argues that income growth leads to increased demand for environmental quality and thus reduction in pollution. Using a utility theoretic model, we hypothesize that the income–pollution relationship should depend on the level of disamenity of the pollutant. We proxy for disamenity using the toxicity of releases. For counties in the United States, the functional relationship between income and releases depends on the level of disamenity: the form is more concave for more toxic releases. We find that environmental improvements occur at lower levels of per capita income for more toxic pollutants.     

Universal Expressive Needs: A Critique and a Theory*

This article proposes a theory of expressive needs common to all human beings, which grow out of biologically based “coarse emotions”: grief, fear, anger, shame, joy, and love-attachment. In order to locate the new theory within the framework of existing thought on the relation between culture and biology, I classify, in a provisional way, the major theorists as belonging to one of the following schools of thought: instinctivist, culturist, or humanist. The weakness of each of these positions is outlined, and the way the new theory corrects the weaknesses is described.     

Modernisierung und Demokratisierung

Most social scientists agree that democracy is essentially a product of modernity: As soon as a society follows the path of modernization, especially by implementing economic reforms, a democratic transition seems inevitable. As the complexity of society increases, the demands on the governmental performance of the state rise. Accordingly, authoritarian developmental regimes will be replaced in the long term by liberal democracies. But the causes and mechanisms between modernization and democratization are still unclear. While most studies are based on functionalist concepts, this article explores the subject from a constitution theoretical perspective. The argument is developed in four steps: In the first step, I will discuss the contributions of Parsons and Luhmann to the explanation of democratization processes. In the second step, I will give an overview of recent non-functionalist concepts for the analysis of differentiation processes. In the third step, these concepts are used in order to investigate the relation between modernization and democratization on the case of South Korea (1979–1987). This empirical study focuses on structures of inequality in the social subsystems, the carriers and motives of pro-democratic protests, and finally the temporal patterns of interaction between the South Korean democratization movement and the authoritarian regime. In the fourth step, the explanatory potential of non-functional differentiation theories for the analysis of democratization processes will be discussed.     

SEX SEGREGATION IN VOLUNTEER WORK

Sex segregation in the workplace—the tendency for men and women to work in different occupations and jobs—remains widespread. Domestic chores are also sex-typed, but the extent to which sex segregation is found in other forms of nonwaged work, such as volunteering, is unknown. One theory about the work/nonwork interface predicts a positive relation between the two types of activity: sex segregation will be just as common in unpaid labor. Another theory predicts a negative relation: waged work and nonpaid work are dissimilar. Maximum likelihood probit models with selection are used to estimate the incidence of sex segregation among volunteers in a nationally representative sample of adult Americans (N = 91,807). Men are more likely to occupy leadership positions than women. They are more likely to do maintenance work and teach or coach, while women are more likely to prepare and serve food or clothing, raise money, and "help out" at events. Sex segregation is most pronounced among those who volunteer to help young people, but negligible among volunteers advocating a cause.     

Managing Potential Health Risks from Electric Powerlines: A Decision Analysis Caught in Controversy

Over the past 20 years, several epidemiological studies have found an association between exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and health effects, including childhood leukemia and adult brain cancer. However, experts strongly disagree about whether this association is causal and, if so, how strong it is. In this article, we examine several alternatives to reduce EMFs from sources of the California power grid, including undergrounding distribution and transmission lines and reconfiguring or rephasing lines. The alternatives were evaluated in terms of the potential health risk reduction, cost, impacts on service reliability, property values, and many other consequences. Because of the uncertainty about an EMF-health link, the main effort was to determine the sensitivity of the decisions to the probability and seriousness of an EMF hazard. User-friendly computer models were developed to allow stakeholders to change the model assumptions and parameters to analyze the impacts of their own assumptions and estimates on the decision. The analysis clearly demonstrated that only four of the many concerns raised by the stakeholders could make a difference in the decision: health risks, costs, service reliability, and property values. Whether undergrounding, moderate alternatives for EMF reduction, or no change was the best decision depended on a few key factors, including the probability that EMF exposure is a hazard, the severity of this hazard, how the EMF reduction measures are financed, and the impacts on property values. While the analysis did not resolve the EMF issues, it showed that even in the most controversial settings, a little analysis goes a long way to clarifying the issues and to focus the debate.     

Cognition and Emotion? The Dead End in Self‐Esteem Research

This article suggests that studies of self‐esteem using scales have reached a dead end, and suggest alternative directions. First we show how significance tests have obscured meager results. According to reviews, this huge body of research has yielded no substantial findings. Some sub‐fields show consistent, but trivially small, effects; reviews of the entire field show none at all. Most important, the size of effects does not seem to be increasing. Three questions are raised: 1. Are new standards needed to determine when to continue or stop a given line of research? 2. Are new approaches needed alternative to standardized scales and statistical tests? 3. Should future studies of self‐esteem emphasize feeling and social components at least as much as cognitive (self‐evaluative) components? Studies of self‐esteem using interview techniques by George Brown and his colleagues suggest the need to move closer to actual data. An exploratory study that takes this direction a step further is described. We analyze social and cognitive/emotional elements second by second in discourse about topics relevant to self‐appraisal and self‐feeling.     

Semiparametric mixture models and repeated measures: the multinomial cut point model

Summary.  Suppose that we have m repeated measures on each subject, and we model the observation vectors with a finite mixture model.  We further assume that the repeated measures are conditionally independent. We present methods to estimate the shape of the component distributions along with various features of the component distributions such as the medians, means and variances. We make no distributional assumptions on the components; indeed, we allow different shapes for different components.     

From Post-Mortem to Preventive Medicine: Next Steps for Research on Child Witnesses

We propose five directions for future child witness research, inspired by recognition of the day-to-day realities of the legal system and the opportunities of psychology to react proactively to challenges child witnesses face. These directions include (1) the refinement of developmentally sensitive questioning aids that increase completeness without increasing suggestibility, (2) the development of approaches to non-disclosure and recantation, including understanding of the reasons underlying non-disclosure and the potential for building rapport and increasing trust, (3) the construction of interventions that meet mental health needs of child-victim witnesses without creating false memories or tainting testimony, (4) a focus on details of children's narratives that are often lacking, including temporal information and emotional reactions, and (5) expanding our attention beyond child sexual abuse allegations in criminal court and considering the many contexts in which child witnesses are questioned, including areas in which preferences rather than memories are elicited.     

Using the Image Exchange to Enhance Interdisciplinary Team Building in Child Welfare

A team building activity, the image exchange, was helpful to interdisciplinary teams in clarifying perceptions and opinions of participants about the roles of each discipline (child welfare, domestic violence, mental health, and substance abuse workers) at a five-day interdisciplinary training workshop. Discussion of team members’ perceptions and views provided opportunities to develop insights about misperceptions. Training in team development and role clarification provided a foundation for the development of effective interdisciplinary collaboration, which may improve interdisciplinary practice.Dr. Packard is an Associate Professor and Dr. Jones is a Professor in the School of Social Work at SDSU. At the time of writing, Ms. Nahrstedt was a Research Assistant in the School of Social Work at SDSU. This project was funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children, Youth, and Families.