Book Reviews

Abstract

The Other Victims: First-Person Stories of Non-Jews Persecuted by the Nazis by Ina R. Friedman. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1990. 176 pages. Reviewed by Samuel Totten.     

Roots and routes: tracking form and history in African diasporic narrative and performance

Much Black diasporic scholarship is beholden to one or the other of these two claims: the first locates Africa as origin, by way of anthropological verification and corroboration, while the other tends to erase it in the name of an anti‐essentialist articulation of hybridity and creolisation. The consequence of their self‐representations within the binary discourse of essentialism and anti‐essentialism is that each portrays itself as being in conceptual opposition to the other. In this article, I suggest that this binarism is a false one and attempt to chart a path out of these two paradigms by destabilising and undermining their binary self‐positioning. I argue for a model that at once transcends this binarism and takes care of the ‘deficiency’ of each model; the model I propose simultaneously foregrounds Africa in a non‐essentialising manner and recognises the trajectories and transformations of history in the reading of African diasporic narrative and performance. I suggest that we deploy the concept of genre in the reading of these narratives because genre at once inscribes origin as discursive and thus erases the fixity and truth claims of singular origins, while simultaneously disclaiming and de‐authorising any notions of singular determinations. I consolidate this suggestion with a genre‐based reading of Derek Walcott's Dream on Monkey Mountain.     

Working with Violence,the Emotions and the Psycho‐social Dynamics of Child Protection: Reflections on the Victoria Climbié Case

In recent years, attention to the psychological and emotional aspects of doing child protection has been largely ignored in the literature and squeezed out of understandings of welfare practices. This paper argues for the establishment of a coherent psycho‐social perspective at the core of social work education and practice and in inter‐professional child protection work more generally. Central to this must be recognition of the complexities of service users, especially the challenges of working with resistant and often hostile ‘involuntary clients’ and the impact of violence and other health, safety and contamination fears on the capacities of workers and professional networks to protect children. These issues are grounded in a critical analysis of the Victoria Climbié case and the Laming report into her horrific death which, despite its strengths, presents rational and naïve solutions to what must be understood as often irrational and inherently complex psycho‐social processes. A psycho‐social reading of the case permits us to explain the unexplainable in how Victoria's abuse was missed. The general implications of these arguments are drawn out for education, training and practice.     

Humanitarian work psychology: The contributions of organizational psychology to poverty reduction

Achieving the MDG goal of reducing world poverty by 50% by 2015 requires the cooperative effort of many disciplines. To date the discipline of organizational psychology has not played as significant a role as it might in this endeavor. With the recent establishment of the Global Task Force for Humanitarian Work Psychology, this discipline signaled its commitment to the global effort. Organizational psychology offers to bring its expertise to poverty reduction: its ability to assess needs and capacity, develop partnerships with stakeholders, bring about and manage change, and systematically review, evaluate, monitor and revise high level mandates, policy development, program implementation and consultation on personnel issues. Its successes as practitioners-scientists in private enterprise will enhance its credibility for success in the public sphere. The article reviews the research and practice of some of the organizational psychologists presently engaged in poverty reduction and how humanitarian work psychology might enhance the efforts of anti-poverty organizations.     

The national provident fund model: An analytical and evaluative reassessment

Both earlier and current analytical perspectives on appropriate modes of delivering retirement provision have tended to underestimate both the inherent adaptability and the developmental potentialities of the national provident fund (NPF) model. The essence of this model is found in the welfare salience of the possibility of synergy between the NPF's direct (retirement provision) and indirect (development finance institution) roles in developing political economies. Diffusion is found to be important in the development of the NPF model from Asian origins and in its subsequent retention in a limited number of states. NPF "success stories" are few in number but potentially significant given their regional concentration and impact, the latter currently underlined by further expansion and development of existing NPFs and by recently renewed prospects for regional diffusion of the model. Further examination of the significantly enhanced welfare outcomes achieved through the creative utilization of existing NPFs underlines the potentiality for NPF-led development within "pillarized" retirement provision.     

The Training of Statisticians

Harold Hotelling, Chairman of the Committee on the Teaching of Statistics* * Members of the Committee: Harold Hotelling, (Chairman), Professor of Mathematical Statistics and Associate Director, Institute of Statistics, University of North Carolina; Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Division of Statistical Standards, Bureau of the Budget, Washington, D. C.; Dr. Walter Bartky, Dean of Arts and Sciences. University of Chicago; Dr. Milton Friedman Associate Professor of Statistics, School of Business, University of Chicago; Dr. Paul G. Hoel, Associate Professor of Mathematics, University of California, Los Angeles. of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, has prepared this brief-summary of the Committee's report to the Board of Directors of IMS. Professor Hotelling will discuss the subject more fully in “Symposium on Probability and Statistics” to be published by the University of California Press. The Committee's report will be published in full in “The Annals of Mathematical Statistics”.

     

Women's sexual working models: an evolutionary-attachment perspective

In three studies, we developed and validated a self-report measure of women's sexual working models. In a pilot study we created an initial version of the Women's Sexual Working Models Scale (WSWMS), administered it to an exploratory sample of 470 women, and identified its 5-factor structure. Study 1 confirmed the 5-factor structure in a new sample: (1) Fostering commitment; (2) Evaluating a sexual partner's suitability; (3) Promoting frequent sexual activity through positive affect; (4) Restricting sexuality through shamefulness; and (5) Negative emotions that signal incompatibility with relationship goals. In Study 2, 444 Israeli women completed the WSWMS. Confirmatory factor analysis provided cross-national evidence for the generalizability of the underlying factor structure of the WSWMS.     

Editorial

AStA Advances in Statistical Analysis -     

Modeling immunogenecity data to establish screening bioassays cut point

The response of immunogenecity anti-drug antibody (ADA) generally includes biological and analytical variability. The nature of biological and analytical variations may lead to a variety of symmetric and asymmetric ADA data. As a result, current statistical methods may yield unreliable results because these methods assume special types of symmetric or asymmetric ADA data. In this paper, we survey and compare parametric models that are useful for analyzing a variety of asymmetric data that have rarely been used to calculate assay cut points. These models include symmetric distributions as limiting case; therefore, they are useful in the analysis of a variety of symmetric data. We also investigate two nonparametric approaches that have received little attention in screening cut point calculations. A simulation study was conducted to compare the performance of the methods. We evaluate the methods using four published different types of data, and make recommendations concerning the use of the methods.     

Beyond (But Including) the CEO: Diffusing Corporate Social Responsibility throughout the Organization through Social Networks

Chief Executive Officers and other organizational leaders can affect how corporate social responsibility initiatives are perceived in their organizations. However, in order to be successful with regard to promoting CSR, leaders need to have strong network competencies and to move beyond charismatic leadership. In this paper we offer a critique of charismatic leadership as it relates to CSR, posit that the intellectual stimulation brought about by transformational leadership is more important in this regard, propose that internal and networking is a leadership competence highly relevant to CSR, and emphasize the importance of working through highly credible opinion leaders in promoting CSR.