Finding Love: Passion,Intimacy, and Commitment in the Relationships of Gay Men

This paper identifies the stages of gay male relationships through a qualitative analysis of the interviews of 12 gay men within the context of the Sternberg ( 1986 ) three component model of love. Four stages were identified: Confrontation with sexuality: Preparing for intimacy, Exploration of Sexuality: Engaging with passion, Experimentation with Relationships: Uniting intimacy and passion, and Formation of Committed Relationships: Integrating passion, intimacy, and commitment. Confrontation with Sexuality was a necessary first step before forming intimate relationships, as it provided a context for the second stage of Exploration of Sexuality, where passion could be explored. Once sexuality had been explored, Experimentation with Relationships was the next stage which involved uniting passion with intimacy, often including a period of experimenting with the types of relationships that are usually explored much earlier for heterosexuals. Finally, the fourth stage of Formation of Committed Relationships was identified which involved the integration of passion, intimacy, and commitment. The therapeutic implications of these results are elaborated by an analysis of these stages in clinical cases.     

The Social Vulnerability Scale for Older Adults: An Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analytic Study

The Social Vulnerability Scale (SVS), a 22-item informant report of vulnerability to exploitation and, in particular, financial exploitation of older adults, was administered to 266 respondents who assessed the social vulnerability of a significant other aged 50 years or over, either a person with dementia or other neurological condition (n?=?116), or a healthy adult (n?=?150). Exploratory factor analysis in the combined sample revealed a 15-item two-factor solution labeled gullibility and credulity. Stability in factor structure was established in an independent sample (n?=?123) using confirmatory factor analysis, and sound reliability (internal consistency) and validity (known-groups) were demonstrated. The SVS15 is a potentially useful instrument for assessing older adults' vulnerability to exploitation.     

WHAT IS THE MULTITUDE?

Nicholas Brown and Imre Szeman continue their conversation with Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. (See ‘The Global Coliseum: On Empire’ in Cultural Studies, 16.2, (March 2002), p. 177–192). In this new interview they press the authors of Empire and Multitude on questions that have arisen both out of their own involvement with the theoretical issues generated by Empire and from new areas opened up by Multitude. Why is the multitude not a class? How can the unity of a political project be maintained in the multiplicity of the multitude? Is democracy still a project for the future? Can a political subject constitute itself outside the structure of sovereignty? In other words, what is the multitude?     

Racial Social Work

Racial social work is defined by its four alternative models: For One Race Only, For One Race Mainly, Cosmopolitanism, and Egalitarianism. The construct and its conceptual models can be used as guides to curriculum modification and practice innovation. The user of a model must be willing to accept its underlying assumptions and implications for school objectives, educational policy, curriculum structure, and course content. The social ill addressed by racial social work is racism, and the population is composed of those abused by racism. Embracing the construct can signal another turning point in the history of social work.     

In the sovereign machine: sovereignty,governmentality, automaticity

Abstract

This essay explores a series of sovereign ‘machines’ – slaves, puppets, automata – in political theory from Benjamin to Agamben. It is now well-documented that the philosophical question of ‘the machine’ – of whether a complex system requires a human operator or whether it can function autonomously – is also a crucial political question that haunts every discussion of sovereignty from Hobbes onwards. However, my wager in what follows is that this machine is not just a metaphor for a metaphysical situation – whether it be rationality (Hobbes), bureaucratization (Weber), neutralization (Schmitt), historicism (Benjamin) or governmentality (Foucault) – but a material phenomenon that carries transformative political promise and threat. To summarize the argument of this essay, I contend that ‘sovereign machines’ like slavery (Aristotle, Hegel, Kojève, Agamben), puppets, automata or clockwork (Descartes, Hobbes, Schmitt, Benjamin, Derrida), lens, optics and mirrors (Hobbes, Kantorowicz, Benjamin, Lacan, Foucault) and so on do not merely reflect but change our understanding of the causal relationship between sovereignty and governmentality, decision and norm, exception and rule. If the self-appointed task of the modern political theorist has so often been to obtain or regain sovereignty of, or over, the machine – to jam its gears – I seek to expose what the later Derrida calls the ‘machine’ of sovereignty itself. In conclusion, I argue that political theory’s attempt to reveal or retroactively invent the sovereign person at the heart of the machine only ends up revealing the sovereign machine at the heart of the person. What – if anything – is really inside the machine of sovereignty?     

Public Attitudes toward Partisan and Neutral Symbols in Post-Agreement Northern Ireland

Using original data from the Northern Ireland Life and Times survey, this article assesses public attitudes toward key issues of symbolism intimately connected with the Northern Ireland conflict and peace process. It uses public attitudes toward the symbolic expressions of Northern Ireland's politico-religious blocs as indicators of the extent of intercommunity tolerance in the delicate post-Belfast Agreement period. Survey questions on attitudes toward flags, including the idea of a new flag for Northern Ireland; loyalist and republican murals; and memorials to the dead of the conflict, including the idea of a memorial for all of the victims of the conflict, reveal that partisan attitudes toward communal symbols of identity and commemoration persist, despite macro-level political changes heralded by the 1998 peace accord. It is argued that the consociational design of the Belfast Agreement facilitates the perpetuation of the single-identity politics of Irish nationalism and Ulster unionism. In this context, public attachment to partisan symbols remains strong.     

Fictions and Facts about Parents and Parenting Older First-Time Entrants to Foster Care

Knowledge about the parents of older first-time entrants into foster care is embedded in fictions created by media images, anecdotal stories of professionals in the child welfare system, as well as reports and observations of youths who have experienced foster care. Even though there are caring and effective nonrelatives who are foster parents, the public perception of non-relative foster parents is sometimes quite negative. In order to separate some of the facts from some of the fictions about the parents/caregivers of older first-time entrants to foster care, this article will describe the parents and relative caregivers (grandparents and others) of older first-time entrants to foster care in an urban public welfare agency by examining maltreatment data.