Derrida’s “Indecent Objection”

Derrida’s account of forgiveness appears to oppose politics to ethics, challenging political reconciliation in the name of unconditional forgiveness. Yet at the same time Derrida seems to sacrifice ethics to politics by advancing but refusing to take the side of what he calls an “indecent objection” to reconciliation. This essay seeks to account for Derrida’s strategy and to think through some of the consequences of Derrida’s emphasis on the “impossibility” of forgiveness.     

Dimensions of mental health: Life satisfaction,positive affect,anxiety and depression

Psychological well-being and psychological distress are often regarded as distinct, if not orthogonal dimensions of mental health. Based on analyses in this paper, we consider the distinction misleading. Four dimensions seem worth measuring in general population surveys: life satisfaction, positive affect, anxiety and depression. Furthermore, one of the well-being dimensions, life satisfaction, is quite strongly correlated with a distress dimension, depression. A person is unlikely to be both satisfied with life and depressed, but may be satisfied and anxious. The paper is based on convergent validity (exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses) and divergent validity assessments of a range of widely used measures, which were included in the Victorian Quality of Life Panel Survey, 1987.     

Collective Self-Esteem and Coping Strategies among Vietnamese American Adolescents

This article reports on the “social empathy attitudes” results that were part of a larger study on empathy in college students at a large research university in the Southwest. Two hundred ninety-four students completed the Social Empathy Assessment Index (SEAI). The research hypothesis was that students of color would have higher levels of social empathy attitudes than Caucasian students. The statistically significant SEAI items suggested that Latino students identify as more collectivist and more optimistic and have higher levels of social empathy attitudes. Latinos may be more willing to help a stranger than either Caucasians or members of other racial groups.     

Waterborne Disease‐Related Risk Perceptions in the Sonora River Basin,Mexico

Waterborne disease is estimated to cause about 10% of all diseases worldwide. However, related risk perceptions are not well understood, particularly in the developing world where waterborne disease is an enormous problem. We focus on understanding risk perceptions related to these issues in a region within northern Mexico. Our findings show how waterborne disease problems and solutions are understood in eight small communities along a highly contaminated river system. We found major differences in risk perceptions between health professionals, government officials, and lay citizens. Health professionals believed that a high level of human‐waste‐related risk existed within the region. Few officials and lay citizens shared this belief. In addition, few officials and lay citizens were aware of poor wastewater‐management‐related disease outbreaks and water contamination. Finally, aside from health professionals, a few interviewees understood the importance of basic hygiene and water treatment measures that could help to prevent disease. Our results add to the literature on environmentally‐related risk perceptions in the developing world. We discuss recommendations for improving future human‐wastewater‐related risk communication within the region.     

Crime,antisocial personality and pathological gambling

To investigate the hypothesized causal relationship between pathological gambling and gambling-related illegal behaviors, 77 patients seeking behavioral treatment for excessive gambling and 32 members of Gamblers Anonymous were administered a structured interview schedule. Data on the incidence, nature and extent of both gambling and non-gambling related illegal behaviors was obtained and DSM-III (A.P.A., 1980) criteria for Antisocial personality were used as the measure of sociopathy.Of the sample, 54.1% admitted to a gambling related offense and 21.1% were charged. Results showed that 14.6% met DSM-III criteria for Antisocial Personality, Four subgroups were subsequently identified; gamblers who committed no offense (36.7%), gambling only offenses (40.4%), non-gambling only offenses (9.2%) or both gambling and non-gambling offenses (13.7%). Significantly more subjects from the gambling plus non-gambling related offenses subgroup were classified as antisocial personalities.Of pathological gamblers who committed offenses, two thirds reportedly did so as a direct consequence of gambling induced problems. Subjects reporting gambling-only related offenses showed a significant increase in antisocial features after adolescence suggesting that antisocial features emerge as a secondary phenomenon to pathological gambling behavior patterns.Acknowledgments: This study was made possible by a grant from the Criminology Research Council, Australian Institute of Criminology.     

Polygyny and reproductive behavior in sub-saharan Africa: A contextual analysis

In this paper I examine the effect of polygyny on aggregate reproductive behavior. I argue that within countries there exist different polygyny regimes, each exhibiting a unique reproductive pattern. Using the 1988/1989 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS1) data, I identify three distinct regimes: low-polygyny, mid polygyny, and high-polygyny regimes. The results of the bivariate and multivariate analyses reveal strong differences in reproductive preferences and behaviors across polygyny regimes. High-polygyny regimes, for instance, maintain a value orientation that favors and encourages high reproductive performance. The force of this pronatalism operates equally for men and women; but whereas men in this regime attain their reproductive goals by marrying multiple wives, women attain theirs by maximizing their reproductive capabilities. This maximization occurs through early initiation of sexual/reproductive activity, universal marriage and minimal interruption of marriage, nonuse of contraception within a union, and a positive attitude toward high fertility.     

Social Indicators Research and Health-Related Quality of Life Research

The aim of this essay is to build a bridgebetween two intersecting areas of research,social indicators research on the one hand andhealth-related quality of life research on theother. The first substantive section of thepaper introduces key concepts and definitionsin the social indicators research tradition,e.g., social indicators, positive, negative,input and output indicators, social reports andquality of life. After that, there is asection reviewing some historical origins andmotives of social indicators researchers,beginning roughly with Jeremy Bentham's`felicific calculus' and ending with the searchfor a comprehensive accounting scheme capableof measuring the quality of human existencewith social, economic and environmentalindicators.Results of eleven surveys are reviewed whichwere undertaken to explain happiness on thebasis of levels of satisfaction thatrespondents got from a dozen specific domainsof their lives, e.g., satisfaction with theirjobs, family relations and health. On average,for the eleven samples, we were able to explain38% of the variance in reported happiness fromsome subset of the predictor variables. Satisfaction with one's own health was never the strongest predictor of happiness inany sample. In five of the eleven samples,satisfaction with one's own health failed toenter the final explanatory regression equationfor lack of statistical significance. Theresults in this section of the essay show thatdifferent groups of people with different lifecircumstances, resources and constraints usedifferent mixtures of ingredients to determinetheir happiness.After examining some research revealing therelative importance of people's satisfaction with their health to theiroverall happiness, I consider some studiesrevealing the importance of people's self-reported health to their overallhappiness. Self-reported health is measuredprimarily by the eight dimensions of SF-36.When a variety of additional potentialpredictors are entered into our regressionequation, 44% of the variance in happinessscores is explained, but only one of the eightdimensions of SF-36 remains, namely, MentalHealth. The latter accounts for a mere four%age points out of the total 44. Thus,self-reported health has relatively little tocontribute toward respondents' reportedhappiness, and its measured contribution issignificantly affected by the number and kindsof potential predictors employed.Two approaches to explaining people'ssatisfaction with their own health areconsidered. First, using the same set ofhealth-related potential predictors of overallhappiness, we are able to explain 56% of thevariance in respondents' satisfaction withtheir own health. Then, using MultipleDiscrepancies Theory, we are able to explainabout 51% of the variation in satisfactionwith one's own health scores for 8,076undergraduates, with highs of 76% for a sampleof Finnish females and 72% for Korean males.Accordingly, it is reasonable to conclude thatif one's aim is to explain people'ssatisfaction with their own health, thepotential predictors assembled in MDT canprovide quite a bit and sometimes even moreexplanatory power than a reasonably broad setof measures of self-reported health.In the penultimate section of the essay it isargued that there are good reasons forcarefully distinguishing ideas of health andquality of life, and for not interpreting SF-36and SIP scores as measures of the quality oflife. It is suggested that we might all bebetter off if the term `health-related qualityof life' is simply abandoned. However, sincethis is unlikely to happen, it is stronglyrecommended that researchers be much morecareful with their usage of the phrase andtheir interpretation of purported measures ofwhatever the phrase is supposed to designate.