Book Review: Civility: Manners,Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy. By Stephen L. Carter. Harper Perennial,New York, 1998

Sociological Practice -     

Beyond Assessment: Social Work Intervention in Family Court Enquiries

Most parents or carers who separate or divorce are able to makearrangements themselves about where their children will resideand how the children’s contact with the non-resident parentwill be managed. A further group of parents or carers are ableto come to agreement with the assistance of community- or court-baseddispute resolution/ mediation services. There are times, however,when disputes cannot be resolved without recourse to the courtsand, when this happens, the court will normally request thata welfare report be prepared by a CAFCASS (Children and FamilyCourt Advisory and Support Service) practitioner. While theboundary between assessment and intervention in social workis often less than clear, the commissioning of a court welfarereport in family proceedings strongly suggests an assessmentfocus and appears to carry little expectation that the practitionershould intervene in order to meet the needs of the childrenor adults involved. This article presents recent research findingsthat illustrate ways in which CAFCASS practitioners do go beyondthe assessment role expected of them in the course of the enquiriesthey undertake. Implications for policy and practice in thisarea of social work are then discussed.     

中国的马克斯·穆勒——记季羡林先生

马克斯·穆勒是闻名于世的语言学家和印度学家.季羡林先生也是闻名于世的语言学家和印度学家.印度德里大学知名学者哈拉普拉萨德*雷易教授认为,季羡林先生在学术方面代表了自己的时代,拓宽了我们许多人的视野,使得我们能够看到佛教与印中友谊的深刻意义.他还认为,对于我们所处的这个世界,季羡林先生的贡献无论在学术进步方面还是印中关系方面,都将同样长期有所裨益.原文系英文,载于1998年8月17日印度<政治家报>文学增刊头版.今年是季羡林先生94周岁华诞,特译此文以表祝贺.文章副题系译者所拟,所附脚注亦为译者所加.     

The affluent home owner: labour market position and the shaping of housing histories

This article draws on research designed to explore aspects of social stratification within owner occupation. The research reconstructed and compared the housing, employment and family histories of two groups of home owners in two contrasting localities in Bristol. This article focuses on the top end of the owner occupied market, a neglected area in the sociology of housing, and explores the connections between bargaining power in the labour market and the shaping of housing histories. It is argued that core workers in the labour market exercise choice in the housing market within a framework of job determined constraints. These constraints are accompanied by a range of subsidies and benefits which are unavailable to the majority of households. As a consequence it is suggested that this group's housing histories are shaped by qualitatively distinct processes which go beyond the single fact that their earned incomes are relatively large.     

Dealing with Ties in Failure Time Data

In dealing with ties in failure time data the mechanism by which the data are observed should be considered. If the data are discrete, the process is relatively simple and is determined by what is actually observed. With continuous data, ties are not supposed to occur, but they do because the data are grouped into intervals (even if only rounding intervals). In this case there is actually a non–identifiability problem which can only be resolved by modelling the process. Various reasonable modelling assumptions are investigated in this paper. They lead to better ways of dealing with ties between observed failure times and censoring times of different individuals. The current practice is to assume that the censoring times occur after all the failures with which they are tied.