Virtues,Values and Victims: Toward a Theory of Social Problems

Abstract

The area of social problems has suffered from inadequate definitions, largely because there is no serious application of theory to the problem. An examination of epistemological issues reveals three distinct approaches: the virtues approach, based on objectivity, the values approach, based on subjectivity, and the victims approach, based on a dialectical relationship of object and subject. The implications of these epistemologies for social problems are assessed, and the necessity of an ethical position is demonstrated. Finally three social problem issues are defined: issues of human survival, of human community, of human dignity.     

Gender and insult in an Italian city: Bologna in the later Middle Ages

There are few studies of insult in later medieval Italy. This article aims not only to fill that gap, but also to show the value of applying one branch of modern linguistics to the evidence for medieval insult. The overall aim is to study the particularly gendered aspects of insult: what words and actions could men and women use against their own gender and against the other? The copious judicial archive of Bologna allows for extensive study of this phenomenon. The article falls into three parts: first, establishing the general pattern of insult; second, examining closely the strongest male term of insult; and finally investigating the practice of ‘doorscorning’, by which the doors of victims’ houses were defiled. To interpret the findings, methodological approaches are borrowed from anthropology, medieval legal theory and modern linguistics.     

Green Citizenship

This paper first describes the influence that environmentalism and ecologism have had upon thinking about citizenship before, second, moving on to discuss conventional models of citizenship and potential models of Green citizenship. The discussion focuses on the competing moral discourses that inform our understanding of citizenship and concludes by arguing in favour of an eco-socialist citizenship model that would embrace, on the one hand, an ethic of co-responsibility by which collectively to achieve the just distribution of scarce resources and, on the other, an ethic of care through which to negotiate the basis for human interdependency.     

Exploratory Analysis of Factors Associated with Participation in Self-Directed and Traditional Marriage and Relationship Education

Although self-directed marriage and relationship education (MRE) has the potential to reach a larger or different audience than traditional MRE, little has been done to examine the characteristics of self-directed MRE participants. This study examined whether various individual, couple, family, and sociocultural context variables predicted participation in both self-directed and traditional MRE programs. A series of logistic regressions were conducted on a cross-sectional data set. Different factors predicted participation for each intervention. For self-directed programs, factors predictive of involvement included older age, religiosity, higher education, being more self-regulated, having a neurotic partner, more open relationship boundaries, a history of divorce, more relationship problems, and more family-of-origin problems. A wider range of factors predicted participation in traditional programs. Some factors increasing odds for participation in one intervention decreased odds in the other. Implications for MRE are discussed. This study provides evidence that some higher risk couples may choose self-directed MRE over more traditional programs.     

Correlates of sexual experience among university students

It was hypothesized that males experiencing erectile and/or ejaculatory difficulties would exhibit higher levels of hostility, intrapunitiveness, submis‐siveness, be more sensitive to rejection, and perceive their fate as being dictated largely by external forces (locus of control), when compared to a control group. Similar differences were predicted between the dysfunctional males and their wives. Further predictions were made concerning differences between wives of the dysfunctioning males and the control wives. The sample of 19 dysfunctioning males and their wives were compared with a sample of 25 control males and their wives. All were Israeli Jews. The predicted differences between patients and controls were found for all variables except submissiveness. Sensitivity to rejection and the guilt subtest were particularly important predictors. Patients' wives and control wives differed only in aspects of hostility. The patients were also more sensitive to rejection than their own wives and regarded women to be significantly lower in status. Suggestions for further research and clinical implications of these results are discussed.     

Bayesian Interval Estimation for the Difference in TPRs and FPRs of Two Diagnostic Tests with Unverified Negatives

We derive Bayesian interval estimators for the differences in the true positive rates and false positive rates of two dichotomous diagnostic tests applied to the members of two distinct populations. The populations have varying disease prevalences with unverified negatives. We compare the performance of the Bayesian credible interval to the Wald interval using Monte Carlo simulation for a spectrum of different TPRs, FPRs, and sample sizes. For the case of a low TPR and low FPR, we found that a Bayesian credible interval with relatively noninformative priors performed well. We obtain similar interval comparison results for the cases of a high TPR and high FPR, a high TPR and low FPR, and of a high TPR and mixed FPR after incorporating mildly informative priors.     

Rank-based test procedures for interaction in the two-way layout with one observation per cell

New aligned-rank test procedures for the composite null hypothesis of no interaction effects (without placing restrictions on the two main effects) against appropriate composite general alternatives are developed for the standard two-way layout with a single observation per cell. Relative power performances of the two new aligned-rank procedures and existing tests due to Tukey (1949) and to de Kroon & van der Laan (1981) are examined via Monte Carlo simulation. Extensive power studies conducted on the 5 × 6 and 5 × 9 two-way layouts with one observation per cell show superior performance of the new procedures for a variety of interaction effects. Simulated critical values for the new procedures are provided in settings where the number of levels for each of the factors is between 3 and 9, inclusive.     

Police forces in late medieval Italy: Bologna, 1340–1480

Police forces (birri) in Italian cities in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were composed of outsiders, non-natives, employed on short-term contracts, usually of six months’ duration. There was therefore a huge circulating pool of these patrolmen, sergeants and constables, moving from city to city. These groups have been little studied, and are often assumed to be vile, odious and little better than criminals. This article draws on surviving records in one city of northern Italy (Bologna), to analyse the composition of these groups and especially their cosmopolitan, international memberships, which grew consistently across the period before tailing off towards the end of the fifteenth century. The article uses frames of reference from migration studies, particularly the large Balkan migrations of the fifteenth century, and from identity studies, to chart and assess the trajectory and reception of non-Italians among these groups. The article thus extends what is known about the integration of migrants in late medieval Italy, goes beyond what is known about the documentation of identity in the Middle Ages and raises questions about the quality of policing provided by multinational groups.     

Efficient crossover designs in the presence of interactions between direct and carry-over treatment effects

Crossover designs, or repeated measurements designs, are used for experiments in which t treatments are applied to each of n experimental units successively over p time periods. Such experiments are widely used in areas such as clinical trials, experimental psychology and agricultural field trials. In addition to the direct effect on the response of the treatment in the period of application, there is also the possible presence of a residual, or carry-over, effect of a treatment from one or more previous periods. We use a model in which the residual effect from a treatment depends upon the treatment applied in the succeeding period; that is, a model which includes interactions between the treatment direct and residual effects. We assume that residual effects do not persist further than one succeeding period.A particular class of strongly balanced repeated measurements designs with n=t² units and which are uniform on the periods is examined. A lower bound for the A-efficiency of the designs for estimating the direct effects is derived and it is shown that such designs are highly efficient for any number of periods p=2,…,2t.