Book reviews

Nathan Glazer Ethnic Dilemmas Harvard, Harvard University Press. 1985

Giddens, Anthony The Constitution of Society, Berkeley, University of California, 1985, pp.XXXVII, 402. Notes, glossary, diagrams, bibliographic notes and index.

Jeremy Rifkin Declaration of a Heretic. Boston. London, Melbourne and Henley, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985, pp.X,140.

Ted Benton The Rise and Fall of Structural Marxism: Althusser and his Influence, New York, St.Martin's Press, 1984, pp. VII,259.

Raymond L. Garthoff Détente and Confrontation Washington, The Brookings Institution, 1985, pp.XVI,1126.

Joseph J. Collins The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. A Study in the Use of Force in Soviet Foreign Policy, Massachusetts/Toronto, D.C. Heath and Company/Lexington, 1986, pp. XV, 195.

Jan Shipps Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition, Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1985, pp.211.

Robert Jay Lifton Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans: Neither Victims nor Executioners, New York, Basic Books, 1985, pp.478     

Estimating the National High School Dropout Rate

Recent interest has focused on the high school dropout rate as one indicator of the national education picture. Empirical estimates of this "rate" vary considerably, because these estimates are poorly defined. This article reviews some of the current measures and presents a new measure of the high school dropout rate--the proportion of high school students who drop out in a defined period of time (1 year). The estimates show that the national yearly high school dropout rate was about the same in 1985 as it was in 1968. Improvement has occurred, however, since 1968 for specific racial groups as well as for some grade levels.     

Psycho-social impacts of terrorism and organized crime: The counterfinality of the practico-inert

The phrase, the counterfinality of the practico-inert is from Sartre with reference to implications of modern technology as a shorthand for that enormous properly human and anti-natural power of dead human labor stored up in our machinery — an alienated power, which turns back on and against us in unrecognizable forms and can symbolize the massive dystopian horizon of organized crime as well as individual terrorist praxis (Jean-Paul Sartre (1948).Situations II. Paris: Gallimard).     

Coherent decision analysis with inseparable probabilities and utilities

This article explores the extent to which a decision maker's probabilities can be measured separately from his/her utilities by observing his/her acceptance of small monetary gambles. Only a partial separation is achieved: the acceptable gambles are partitioned into a set of belief gambles, which reveals probabilities distorted by marginal utilities for money, and a set of preference gambles, which reveals utilities reciprocally distorted by marginal utilities for money. However, the information in these gambles still enables us to solve the decision maker's problem: his/her utility-maximizing decision is the one that avoids arbitrage (i.e., incoherence or Dutch books).     

Comparing developmental outcomes for children in care with those for other children in Canada

This study assessed the test–retest reliability and convergent validity of single items from the Assessment and Action Record (AAR), from Looking After Children (Ward, 1995). It also compared developmental outcomes of 43 children cared for by a Canadian child welfare agency and those of an approximate comparison group of 1,600 children from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (Statistics Canada, 1995). High and low reliability and validity were found for different AAR items. The children in care had worse outcomes than the comparison children on indicators of educational success and negative behaviour, but not on measures of identity, social and family relationships, or prosocial behaviour.     

The Future of Environmental Justice Research: A Response to Gould and Weinberg

Sociological Forum -     

A Significant Shift: A Pentadic Analysis of the Two Rhetorics of the Post-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church Regarding Homosexuality

This paper argues that, since the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), there has been a significant shift in the rhetorical stance of the Roman Catholic Church toward homosexuality in which the pre-council rhetoric, which condemned both act (i.e., homosexual behavior) and actor (i.e., the homosexual) has been replaced by two distinctly different rhetorics: a moral rhetoric, which continues the Church's long-standing condemnation of homosexual acts as sins, and a pastoral rhetoric, which argues that homosexuals should be ministered to and embraced. A Burkean pentadic analysis is used to define how the two rhetorics differ from each other and from the earlier rhetoric. The three major influences (i.e., Scripture, Tradition, and Catholic theology/philosophy) that have shaped, and continue to shape, the Church's position regarding homosexuality are described. Some of the socio-political implications of this shift are emphasized.     

Circuit optimization via sequential computer experiments: design of an output buffer

In electrical engineering, circuit designs are now often optimized via circuit simulation computer models. Typically, many response variables characterize the circuit's performance. Each response is a function of many input variables, including factors that can be set in the engineering design and noise factors representing manufacturing conditions. We describe a modelling approach which is appropriate for the simulator's deterministic input–output relationships. Non-linearities and interactions are identified without explicit assumptions about the functional form. These models lead to predictors to guide the reduction of the ranges of the designable factors in a sequence of experiments. Ultimately, the predictors are used to optimize the engineering design. We also show how a visualization of the fitted relationships facilitates an understanding of the engineering trade-offs between responses. The example used to demonstrate these methods, the design of a buffer circuit, has multiple targets for the responses, representing different trade-offs between the key performance measures.