A (macro) sociology of fear?

A proper sociological approach to fear is of both empirical and theoretical significance in understanding late modern society. Normally fear has been explored psychologically, as one of the emotions, but recently a sociology of emotions has begun to emerge. Furthermore, there have also been attempts to examine fear macro‐scopically, arguing for the existence of a distinctive ‘culture of fear’ in contemporary societies. Furedi's argument to this effect is explored here, suggesting the need for a more systematic theorising of fear in its social contexts. Via an analysis of the elementary characteristics of fear, a model is constructed of the ‘parameters of fear’. This model serves as a guide to the classes of phenomena within which fear is constituted and negotiated. It is also used to further examine the virtues and failings of ‘culture of fear’ approaches to fearfulness in modern societies.     

Regulating Land Development: Local Market Structures and Structured Markets

Current rounds of economic restructuring together with the changing priorities accorded to agricultural production are leading to significant shifts in rural property and tenure relations. This paper analyzes these processes with reference to rural Britain; it reports on empirical evidence collected in the county of Buckinghamshire in southeast England. Two significant types of new rural land development are considered—small-scale industrial units arising out of the conversion of agricultural buildings and golf course developments and their ancillary leisure-based activities. Post-war productionist forms of regulation and particularly established types of agricultural tenure are now being modified by farmers and nonagricultural interests committed to the development of rural land. New demands and market structures are requiring more diversity and flexibility by which land is owned, occupied, and used. These emergent, more flexible macro tenures are based on new sets of social and political alliances between farmers, developers, and local planning systems. Agricultural land is increasingly being viewed as a capital rather than as a productive asset associated with more volatile and regionally defined markets whose regulation is formative.     

Mapping water quality by local scoring

The mean density of bacteria in a water body is commonly monitored using quantal assay. This paper describes the use of local scoring in estimating the spatial distribution of mean density from quantal assay results at a set of point locations. An application to estimating the mean density of fecal conform bacteria in a coastal pond is presented. Model diagnostics based on a parametric bootstrap are also presented.     

Socially Responsible Roles of Professional Ethics: Inclusivity,Psychotherapy and ‘the Protection of the Public’

The remit of the apparatus of professional ethics in the field of psychotherapy can be appropriately expanded so as to make the profession more socially responsible and thereby contribute to the ‘protection of the public’ that is said to be the main purpose of statutory regulation. Using ideas culled from the sociology of the professions, political theory and ethical discourse, it is proposed that ethical psychotherapy cannot take place if its overall social framework is itself profoundly unethical. Inclusivity and diversity are reframed as ethical professional practices. Questions of wealth, gender, sexuality and ethnicity are not only ‘social’ or ‘political’—they are also part of a morally imaginative expansion of what we mean by professional ethics. Attention is paid to the dangers of self-righteousness and moral tyranny.     

It's a Difference,but Is It Significant?

Clinical significance, statistical significance, the CBT monoculture, the politics of service provision, and the search for additional ways to be effective.     

Nondictatorially independent pairs

Suppose that social welfare function f satisfies the Pareto condition and has complete and transitive values. On a domain satisfying the free quadruple property, if the outcome set X has m< outcomes, then the set of pairs of distinct alternatives on which f satisfies both independence and nondictatorship contains at most the fraction 2/m of all pairs. On a domain satisfying the free six-tuple property, if X is a subset of Euclidean space then the set of pairs on which f satisfies both independence and nondictatorship has Lebesgue measure zero.Campbell's research was financed by the National Science Foundation, grant SES 9209039.     

Institutional Ethnography and Experience as Data

Experience, as concept, is contested among feminists as to its epistemological status, thus its usefulness in knowledge claims. Institutional ethnography (Smith 1987) is a feminist methodology that nonetheless relies fundamentally on people's experience. Not as Truth, nor the object of inquiry, but as thepoint d'appui for sociological inquiry. This article offers a demonstration of institutional enthnography using observational and interview data that show experience as methodologically central to a trustworthy analysis. A moment in the work lives of nursing assistants in a long-term care setting is captured by a participant observer. The analysis produces two lines of argument. One is methodological; it is argued that nursing assistants' experiences are an entry into the social relations of the setting that, when mapped and disclosed, make those experiences understandable in terms of the ruling arrangements permeating both the organization and their own experiences. The other argument is substantive; the inquiry uncovers how a quality improvement' strategy in a long term care hospital in Canada is reorganizing caregivers' values and practices toward a market orientation in which care appears to be compromised. Use of experience as data in this approach holds the analysis accountable to everyday/everynight actualities in a lived world.     

The context of correctness: A comment on rushton

According to Philippe Rushton, the equalitarian fiction, a scientific hoax that races are genetically equal in cognitive ability, underlies the politically correct objections to his research on racial differences. He maintains that there is a taboo against race unequaled by the Inquisition. I show that while Rushton has been publicly harassed, he has had continuous opportunities to present his findings in diverse, widely available, respectable journals, and no general suppression within academic psychology is evident. Similarly, Henry Garrett and his associates in the LAAEE, dedicated to preserving segregation and preventing race suicide, disseminated their ideas widely, although Garrett complained of the equalitarian fiction in 1961. Examination of the intertwined history ofMankind Quarterly, German Rassenhygiene, far right politics, and the work of Roger Pearson suggests that some cries of political correctness must be viewed with great caution.Preparation of this paper was not supported by any grant, foundation, political, or religious organization.specializing in the history of psychology and psychological aesthetics.