We are all in this together. Terrorism and the physician executive.

The threat of bioterrorism striking America is no longer a threat. It's real. Take a look at how the anthrax-laced letters and future acts of terrorism impact physician executives. Also consider some ways to prepare your physicians for a bioterrorism emergency.     

Evaluation of a major financial incentive for in-home energy conservation

A mail questionnaire methodology was utilized to provide baseline data on consumers' reactions to the Canadian Oil Substitution Program (COSP). COSP is a major financial incentive, operated by the Canadian government, designed to stimulate conversions of oil-fired home hearing systems to alternative energy sources.The results provide a snapshot of consumer reactions one year after the COSP incentive was first introduced. Specific results include the motives for and barriers to off-oil conversion; the importance of COSP, relative to other conversion motives; and the size and characteristics of the oil-user group who are resistant to converting off-oil heating. Implications for program management and directions for future research are discussed.     

Ruth Benedict's Original Wartime Study of the Japanese

Abstract  Benedict's classic work on Japanese society, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946). is still cited frequently in studies on Japanese society and culture, despite the fact that it is now nearly 50 years since it was published. However, although this book has exerted enormous influence on subsequent generations of scholars, her research into the work on the Japanese that preceded the writing of Chrysanthemum . is virtually non-existant. This paper first traces the process through which Benedict progressed during her war-time study of cultures at a distance. It then examines the eventual report she wrote on the Japanese and the significance of this report. Benedict's report, which stresses the importance of "giri to one's name" within the code of Japanese ethics but devotes very little space to the discussion of "shame". raises questions about the excessive attention devoted to repetitive references concerning her depiction of Japan as a "shame culture" by numerous social scientists.
As this paper demonstrates through a consideration of her background research, the importance placed on the concept of "shame culture" by others was not shared by Benedict herself.     

Continuous Violent Conflict as a System of Authority*

This paper analyzes how authority can be maintained by structuring reality through continuous violent conflict. Using Lewis Coser's reformulation of Simmel's propositions on fostering continuous conflict as a raison d'être in sect-like struggle groups as a general frame of analysis, the Stalinist case is then examined in order to evaluate systematically these propositions in a societal context and to specify the morphology of violence as a method of conflict. By examining a societal context, it is noted that instability in the social structure not only can be a condition for the legitimacy of a problematic political leadership and system, but also simultaneously be a consequence of a form of preventive punitive sanctioning, whereby potential threats, both persons and alternative courses of action, are eliminated before they become present dangers. In turn, an official definition of reality, justifying leadership and system, is constructed through the public documentation of a conspiracy, which employs invented categories to demonstrate ideological continuity and fabricates pseudo events to demonstrate indispensability in fulfilling necessary functions. This public documentation of a conspiracy is then used as a facade for a larger plan of social prophylaxis that implicates the public as well as the police in ferreting out tangible and visible enemies to till the invented categories in the pseudo events. As public complicity conjoins with the official definition of reality, commitment to the leadership and system is acquired.     

Demographic Predictors of Consistency and Change in Heterosexuals' Attitudes toward Homosexual Behavior over a Two-Year Period

This study investigated demographic predictors of consistency and change in heterosexual people's attitudes toward homosexual behavior. A nationally representative sample of Australian men and women were recruited via random digit dialling in 2004 through 2005. Participants completed annual computer-assisted telephone interviews over the next five years. Questions about attitudes toward male and female homosexual behavior were assessed at Wave 1 (2004–2005) and Wave 3 (2006–2007) of the study. The majority of the sample reported tolerance of both male and female homosexual behavior (with women slightly more tolerant than men). Multivariate analyses showed that those who regularly attended religious services were more likely to consistently disapprove of homosexual behavior and more likely to change from tolerant to disapproving. Among those who were initially tolerant, younger respondents and those with higher educations were less likely to become homophobic. The results of this study show that individual attitudes toward homosexual behavior are open to change, particularly toward a more tolerant position. Religiosity appears to be consistently associated with the development and reinforcement of homophobic tendencies.     

Protecting Clients From Harm: The Role of Continuing Professional Education

Abstract

In the absence of professional regulation and in the context of a changing and competitive environment, the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) encourages member commitment to self-regulation and continuing professional education (CPE). Continuing professional education is promoted as the platform upon which the credibility of the entire profession of social work and the maintenance of high-quality standards of practice rest. High practice standards are integral to the protection of vulnerable people from potential unethical, inappropriate and harmful practice. The present article asserts that Australia's changing and competitive environment, driven by prevailing ideologies and policies, has an impact on social work practice and is harmful to vulnerable clients. In order to protect vulnerable clients from harm and to maintain high standards of practice, the AASW's CPE programme arguably needs to include topics that enhance professional knowledge of current ideologies and policies and their impact on social work practice and clients.     

Using social media dialogically: Public relations role in reviving democracy

This article explores how technology and our recent access to, and abundance of, information, are affecting democracy, and the role of public relations professionals in a post mass media society. The article reviews pros and cons of new technology, discusses how public relations can improve, democracy using dialogue, communitarianism, and Long Now thinking, and discusses how to actually, use social media dialogically. The article argues that as public relations revives its conceptualization of, relationship, communication professionals also benefit democracy and society as a whole.     

The queering of Swan Lake: a new male gaze for the performance of sexual desire

This essay argues that, by re-gendering the ballet classic Swan Lake, choreographer Matthew Bourne has also queered it. He thrusts center stage an unstable relationship between two male characters, and in so doing, de-centers the conventionally fixed categories of sex, gender and sexual desire. He also forces a long-simmering relationship between homosexuality and dance out of the closet and into mainstream popular culture. Applying Mulvey's theory of spectatorship and Butler's theory of gendered performance, the essay describes how viewers may be intrigued, rather than repulsed, by the ambiguities surrounding Bourne's portrayal of sexual identity.     

The Intersecting Roles of Consumer and Producer: A Critical Perspective on Co-production, Co-creation and Prosumption

The terms 'co-creation', 'co-production', and 'prosumption' refer to situations in which consumers collaborate with companies or with other consumers to produce things of value. These situations sometimes appear to blur the traditional roles of 'producer' and 'consumer'. Building on Marx's distinction between 'use value' and 'exchange value', we argue that, when consumers perform tasks normally handled by the company, this does not necessarily represent a fundamental change in exchange roles or economic organization. We then argue that, when individuals who are traditionally defined as 'consumers' produce exchange value for companies, this does represent a fundamental change.