陶筹到文字：认知的发展

文章以远古西亚地区计数方式的演变为例来分析抽象能力的发展。陶筹表明人类计数方式最初是通过具体的一一对应的方式实现的。公元前7500年的西亚陶筹表现其所代表物品的方式却是抽象的,比如以锥形陶筹表示谷物量器。公元前3300年,人们开始用空心泥球来保存有计数功能的陶筹,以更为抽象的符号刻画在其表面来记录其内封存的陶筹。这个过程发展到最高阶段便产生了具有抽象意义的数字,随后文字也就应运而生。     

WHERE DID YOU HEAR THAT?

What happens when gossip—one of the most traditionally intimate forms of communication—“goes public” on electronic bulletin boards? We explore how impersonal trust, generated by the mode of transmission and the social context in which it occurs, alters gossip in particular and observable ways. Drawing upon exchanges about the entertainment industry that are representative of gossip on electronic bulletin boards, we find that members draw upon a variety of resources that shift gossip's verifiability from reliance on intimate social bonds and assurances of truthfulness to overt negotiations that emphasize honesty. We also observe how status and power hierarchies surrounding information are influenced by negotiated honesty. We conclude with some observations about the impact of technologies on the nature of social bonds.     

Class struggle in campaign finance? Political action committee contributions in the 1984 elections

Pluralist and class-based theories offer alternative hypotheses about the political behavior of organized interests in the United States. Using network methods and data on political action committees' (PAC) contributions to congressional candidates in the 1984 elections, we identify interest groups with politically similar behavior in an attempt to assess these perspectives concerning elites in the United States. The analysis includes corporate, labor, membership association, and nonconnected PACs. Counter to pluralist expectations, we find just two large groups—one primarily business oriented and the other primarily labor/public-interest oriented. Our findings thus support a class-based interpretation of the nature of organized interests. These findings are framed in terms of the meaning of unity and fragmentation.     

Sponsored Social Change in a Public Housing Project

Federal and local pressures have given rise to a hybrid organization that brings together disparate groups from the public and non-profit sectors to address complex social problems. This article examines one such organizational emergence of state-affiliated sponsorship. Based on data from a multi-method case study, we find that not only do members of the sponsoring organization use legitimate authority structures, existing laws, and social norms to reproduce their power, they do so with a state mandate that privileges their expertise and processes.Parts of this paper were prepared while the third author, Beth A. Rubin, was on leave to serve as Director, Sociology Program, National Science Foundation. The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect those of the National Science Foundation. P. Denise Cobb is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice Studies at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. This research reflects one part of Cobb's dissertation research that addresses how organizational actors from unequal social positions define a collective agenda and whose interests prevail when there is a lack of consensus. Her current research further examines the emergence of the university-community partnership form. She has published related work in Administration & Society and previously in Qualitative Sociology. Jon Shefner is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Global Studies Interdisciplinary Program at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. He is co-editor, with Patricia Fernandez-Kelly, of Out of the Shadows: Political Action and the Informal Economy in Latin America (2006: Pennsylvania State Press). He is currently working on a book examining the impact of globalization and democratization on the mobilization and well being of Mexico's urban poor. Beth A. Rubin is Professor of Management and Adjunct Professor of Sociology at University of North Carolina-Charlotte. Rubin publishes on economic and workplace transformation, labor unions, homelessness and social policy and social theory in leading academic journals. Her current research is on organizational commitment in the context of the new economy, inequality and industrial restructuring, organizational and workplace restructuring and time in organizations, the latter of which is represented in the forthcoming book, Research in the Sociology of Work: Workplace Temporalities, that Rubin is editing.     

Book reviews

L. Keeble and B.D. Loader (eds) Community Informatics. Shaping Computer-mediated Social Relations (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 388, ISBN 0-415-23112-4 (pbk) £18.99.

H. Dreyfus, On the Internet: Thinking in Action (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 136, ISBN 0-415228-077 (pbk).

D. Miller and D. Slater, The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000), pp. 217, ISBN 1-8S973-389-1 (pbk) £14.99.     

Assessing Family Outcomes: Psychometric Evaluation of the Beach Center Family Quality of Life Scale

There is currently a lack of reliable scales with which to assess the construct of family quality of life, particularly for families who have children with disabilities. The current work presents 2 studies, including a total of 488 families with children with disabilities, which were conducted to complete the development of a scale to assess family quality of life. The measure was refined through confirmatory factor analyses into 25 items that assess 5 domains of Family Quality of Life: Family Interaction, Parenting, Emotional Well‐Being, Physical/Material Well‐Being, and Disability‐Related Support. Each subscale was found to be unidimensional and internally consistent. An initial examination of test‐retest reliability and convergent validity is also presented. Implications for future research, scale use, and policy are discussed.     

Urban Air Quality in North-East England: Exploring the Influences on Local Views and Perceptions

We set out to explore potential influences on public views about urban air quality in two different, but geographically close, districts in North-East England via a postal survey. The neighborhoods surveyed were chosen to contrast material deprivation, proximity to industry, and two districts (Teesside and Sunderland), and the respondents within them were contrasted by their gender, age, and illness status. The strongest influences on views about local air quality were found to be proximity to industry, residence in Teesside, and, to a lesser extent, age and illness status. This suggests that neighborhood characteristics play an important role in shaping public perceptions of air quality.     

What Do the Published Figures Tell Us about Homelessness in Australia?

This paper is in two parts. An introductory section discusses the housing market in Australia in order to emphasise the fact that homelessness is not simply an individual experience. It is also a structural phenomenon driven by economic imperatives beyond the control of those most affected. The bulk of the paper is devoted to a discussion of the published figures on the level of homelessness in Australia, gathered by the national Census and by the data collection agency for the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP), the nation's main program for combating homelessness. Some problems with those figures as they are reported by the SAAP data collection agency are discussed, in particular, the under‐estimation of the level of unmet demand for accommodation. The paper concludes with a comparison between the Census and the SAAP figures, which indicates that policies for alleviating homelessness are far from achieving their aims.     

Beyond Study Abroad: A Human Rights Delegation to Teach Policy Advocacy

Advancement of human rights is a core competency in the social work curriculum. Presented is a model to teach policy practice from a human rights perspective based on a violence-against-women delegation visit to Guatemala. Postdelegation policy advocacy responses included White House and State Department briefings on the problems, including femicide. Case examples of witnessed testimony about human rights violations, including rape, femicide, and human trafficking, reflect the unique and dynamic nature of social work practice in a global context. We link Council on Social Work Education core competencies in policy practice and human rights to experiential learning strategies used by the delegation and derive lessons learned to advance human rights education for the profession.