Physical and moral regeneration after the Terror: medical culture,sensibility and family politics in France, 1794–1804

Physical and moral regeneration was one of the great aspirations of the French Revolution. Revolutionaries fashioned new cultural practices to emphasize collective rebirth and the individual citizen’s own break with a degenerate past. Often associated with radical politics, this article emphasizes regeneration’s conservative manifestations after the Reign of Terror and the Thermidorean reaction of 1794. Against the backdrop of revolutionary transformations in medical theory and practice, doctors and surgeons sought to bring new biomedical knowledge upon previous regenerative projects, arguing that unrestrained biological passions had enervated the polity and caused social disaggregation. By studying domestic hygiene and the ‘limited sensibility’ of living matter, practitioners hoped they could reverse the Jacobin excess and popular upheaval through physical and moral education. These doctors claimed that recent clinical discoveries showed that human nature was less malleable than earlier revolutionaries had believed. Therefore, greater elements of emotional and corporal self-control, taught by practitioners and internalized within the family, could heal civil society and encourage social improvement. This bio-medical programme of regeneration radiated out across three levels, moving from elite clinical theorists to a kind of ‘literary underground’ of medical practice: a hygienic regimen aimed at controlling limited amounts of vital energy in the human body; a ‘physical and moral’ rehabilitation of women to anchor them in the domestic sphere; and reproductive strategies to breed new generations of rejuvenated citizens. In their efforts to incorporate republican hygienic sensibilities within traditional law and custom, doctors helped efface revolutionary memory and contributed to the paternalistic family law of the Civil Code in 1804.     

Rangefinder Box Plots: A Note

This note introduces the rangefinder box plot, an extension of the familiar box plot.     

Physical Activity and Physical Self‐Concept in Adolescence: A Comparison of Girls at the Extremes of the Biological Maturation Continuum

This study examined differences in physical activity and physical self‐concept between the least and most biologically mature female adolescents within chronological age and academic year groups. A total of 252 British female adolescents (M age = 12.9 years; SD = .7) in Years 7–9 completed self‐report measures to assess physical activity and physical self‐concept. Percentage of predicted adult (mature) stature served as the index of biological maturation. Univariate analyses of covariance, controlling for decimal age, revealed that the least mature girls generally held higher perceptions of physical self‐concept but were no more, or less, active than the most mature girls. A subsequent meta‐analysis suggested, however, that across age and year groups the least mature girls were more active than the most mature girls.     

Skewness-Kurtosis Bounds for EGB1, EGB2, and Special Cases

An examination of the theoretical moments of a probability density function provides useful information about the flexibility of alternative distributions. Johnson and Kotz (1970), among others, consider skewness-kurtosis plots to illustratve the ability of various probability density functions to model diverse distributional characteristics. This article investigates the skewness-kurtosis plots of the exponential generalized beta of the first and second kind and some important special cases which have been used in various applications in economics, statistics, and finance.     

From C. P. Ellis to School Integration: The Social Psychology of Conflict Reduction

In this article, the authors review social psychological theories of intergroup conflict reduction. Emphasis is placed on three interrelated social conditions which facilitate conflict reduction: intergroup contact, superordinate goals, and shared identities. Bridging experimental research with real‐world studies of schooling, these concepts are applied to understanding the process of school integration. Social contexts which present conflicting parties with a new shared goal and identity, as well as opportunities to become familiar with others beyond stereotypes and anxious reactions, dramatically increase the likelihood of diffusing conflict.     

Israel, Northern Ireland, and South Africa at a Crossroads: Understanding Intergroup Conflict, Peace-Building, and Conflict Resolution

The Israeli, Northern Ireland, and South African conflicts are compared to explore the underlying nature of conflict in these three conflict zones. The nature of the state and the economy, the treatment of dissenting non-dominant groups by the state, and the role of external regional powers are examined to illustrate some of the driving forces behind the conflict in these three regions. Also, the recent peace processes are critically outlined. Finally, this article investigates how a transformational peace building process is critical to the constructive development of a participatory democracy in these three civic cultures.     

A meta-analytic review of leadership impact research: Experimental and quasi-experimental studies

In this study we set out to conduct a comprehensive quantitative research analysis of literature reporting results on the causal impact of leadership by focusing on examining what we refer to as ‘leadership interventions.’ We defined leadership interventions as those studies where the researcher overtly manipulated leadership as the independent variable through training, assignment, scenario or other means. Our focus included both examining experimental and quasi-experimental as well as lab and field studies conducted in public and private organizations. Our goal was to address a simple question: do leadership interventions have the intended impact and if so to what degree? We conducted a comprehensive review of the published and unpublished literature and uncovered 200 lab and field studies that met our criterion as leadership intervention studies. We report here the findings of a series of meta-analyzed effects comparing the relative impact of leadership interventions across intervention types, leadership theories, and several common dependent variables. Overall, leadership interventions produced a 66% probability of achieving a positive outcome versus a 50–50 random effect for treatment participants, but this effect varied significantly when assessing moderators such as type of leadership theory.     

Does size really matter?: A reexamination of Sheldon's somatotypes and criminal behavior

In the mid-20th century, William Sheldon developed the idea of somatotypes in explaining different types of criminal behavior. Sheldon defined three body types believed to be associated with criminality: mesomorphs, who are athletically fit; endomorphs, who are overweight, and ectomorphs, who are characterized by fragility and thinness. Sheldon's research implied that mesomorphic individuals were more prone to committing violent and aggressive acts. This research explores a new method of somatotyping using the Body Mass Index (BMI). What follows is an examination of prisoners from the State of Arkansas, using information provided by the Arkansas Department of Correction's database on inmates. In particular, this paper examined prisoners’ physical characteristics such as age, height, and weight in comparison to the types of crimes that these prisoners committed. The findings of this paper show that the BMI is a useful alternative to traditional somatotyping techniques; the findings also suggest that a prisoner's somatotype is associated with criminal patterns while being a meager predictor of criminality. Methodological and theoretical implications of this study are discussed.