Four models of the public sphere in modern democracies

Theory and Society -     

Engendering the sociology of expertise

This paper delineates areas of research for the emergent sociology of expertise. We review how expertise has been studied in the sociology of professions, sociology of work, and sociology of science and technology, and we show the contribution that intersectionality can make in understanding processes of gendering expertise.     

TigerPlace, A State-Academic-Private Project to Revolutionize Traditional Long-Term Care

The Aging in Place Project at the University of Missouri (MU) required legislation in 1999 and 2001 to be fully realized. An innovative home health agency was initiated by the Sinclair School of Nursing specifically to help older adults age in place in the environment of their choice. In 2004, an innovative independent living environment was built and is operated by a private long term care company, as a special facility where residents can truly age in place and never fear being moved to a traditional nursing home unless they choose to do so. With care provided by the home care agency with registered nurse care coordination services, residents receive preventative and early illness recognition assistance that have markedly improved their lives. Evaluation of aging in place reveal registered nurse care coordination improves outcomes of cognition, depression, activities of daily living, incontinence, pain, and shortness of breath as well as delaying or preventing nursing home placement. Links with MU students, faculty, and nearly every school or college on campus enrich the lives of the students and residents of the housing environment. Research projects are encouraged and residents who choose to participate are enjoying helping with developing cutting technology to help other seniors age in place.     

College Men's Health in Practice: A Multidisciplinary Approach

Abstract

After a needs assessment indicated that male students underutilized campus health services, the San Francisco State University Student Health Service developed a coordinated complement of outpatient health services for men. The authors review their experience in developing, implementing, operating, and evaluating this ongoing clinical service. The needs assessment and subsequent program evaluation data suggest that male students on a large, culturally diverse, urban campus would respond favorably to targeted, multidisciplinary health initiatives that incorporate the principles of health promotion and disease prevention.     

Sustaining transitions from welfare to work: the perceptions of employers and employment service providers

Successive Australian Governments have sought to improve the capacity of the employment service system to build jobseekers' skills and capabilities and to promote transitions from income support to paid work. Yet despite these efforts, many jobseekers experience only short periods of employment, moving repeatedly between joblessness and positions with low skill requirements, low pay and few or fluctuating hours. This article explores ways to achieve more sustained transitions from welfare to work for disadvantaged jobseekers. We draw on data from a qualitative study of employment service providers who assisted jobseekers into work and the managers in the organisations that employed them. These informants' perspectives underline the importance of improving the quality of jobs that require low levels of skills and experience and demonstrate some ways employers and employment services can better work together and provide more enduring and effective forms of support.     

Mobilization and Meaning: Toward an Integration of Social Psychological and Resource Perspectives on Social Movements*

This paper presents a model of the mobilization of people into movements that is compatible with a resource mobilization perspective on social movement organizations as the unit of analysis, but substitutes a cognitive social psychology based on attribution theory and the sociology of knowledge for the incentive model typically used in this perspective. We focus on the problem, neglected by resource mobilization theorists, of explaining the translation of objective social relationships into subjectively experienced, collectively defined grievances. On a macro level, our model gives independent causal weight to ideology without discounting the role that resources also play in defining group goals. On a social psychological level, we identify three distinct organizational strategies–conversion, coalition, and direct action–for mobilizing persons as participants and examine some cognitive and organizational consequences of each strategy. We conclude that incorporation of a more adequate social psychology of individual participation is not only compatible with the organizational focus and emphasis on rationality of the resource mobilization perspective, but can provide important insights into problems both social movement theorists and social movement organizers see as significant.