FROM STRATEGIZING TO NONINTERVENTION: TOWARD IRREVERENCE IN SYSTEMIC PRACTICE*

Within the field of marriage and family therapy, a debate has emerged regarding issues of control and noninstrumentality Concerned with the limitations inherent in the idea of power, many therpists/theoreticians have suggested the adoption of a less instrumental position. Oscillating processes, such as the swing from power to nonistrumentaliyth, are inevitable in the emergence of any discipline and are useful to the extent that these processes do not become so symmetrical that they induced rigidity in thinking. Therapists must be able to act unconstrictingly; However, they must also take responsibility for their actions. Believing too strongly in either strategizing or nonintervening in the therapeutic process can be constraining to say the least. This article will offer a new position called “irreverence” in the therapeutic process of systemic therapy.     

Digital Ethnography for Sociology: Craft,Rigor, and Creativity

Qualitative Sociology - This special issue gathers empirical papers that develop and employ digital ethnographic methods to answer core sociological questions related to community, culture, urban...     

The Computer Analysis of Factorial Experiments: In Memoriam—Frank Yates

The responses to a recent paper by Dallal in this journal are evaluated by reference to the ideas of Frank Yates. It is concluded that much unnecessary complication has been introduced into the computer analysis of linear models by (1) the imposition of constraints on parameters, (2) neglect of marginality relations in forming hypotheses, and (3) confusion between the form of noncentrality parameters and hypotheses.     

RESCUE AND REDEMPTION

In The Body Impolitic, Herzfeld (2004) develops a theory of the ‘global hierarchy of value’, according to which traditional artisans are discursively constructed as socially and economically subordinate to contemporary global capital. A pivotal consideration in understanding such discursive formations, Herzfeld suggests, is the identification of the agents through whom that discourse takes shape and becomes entrenched. Here, we advocate a parallel consideration of ‘designers,’ the professionals trained in the urban metropole and who often mediate between the aesthetic sensibilities of a global cosmopolitan elite and the parochial practices and menial labour of artisans. Drawing on the history and literature of the field of design within India and on fieldwork conducted between 2002 and 2009 with traditional block-print artisans in Rajasthan, we claim that dominant narratives within the field of design – narratives in which artisans and traditional craft are preserved or ‘rescued’ by designers – contend even today with the more politically charged Gandhian narrative in which traditional craft and livelihoods ‘redeemed’ the newly independent state from the threat of industrialization and the simple mimicry of Western societies. The conscious professionalization of ‘design’ by the developing state and the concomitant incorporation of a particular moral code within that emergent, predominantly middle-class profession operationalize designers as agents of a global hierarchy according to which artisans' bodies and labour are assigned a specific value.     

Social Utility Theory: Guiding Labeling of VNRs as Ethical and Effective Public Relations

Social utility theory suggests that labeling video news release (VNR) source material is the ethical decision (Wulfemeyer & Frazier, 1992 Wulfemeyer, K. T. and Frazier, L. 1992. The ethics of video news releases: A qualitative analysis. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 7: 151–168. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]), yet the persuasion knowledge model predicts that the effectiveness of VNRs will decrease as people become aware of this PR tactic (Friestad & Wright, 1994 Friestad, M. and Wright, P. 1994. The persuasion knowledge model: How people cope with persuasion attempts. Journal of Consumer Research, 21: 1–31. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Our study found that positive and negative effects were heightened when subjects read about VNRs and viewed a labeled VNR in a newscast. These subjects were most likely to recognize the VNR story source and least likely to perceive the story as credible. Neither reading nor labeling affected evaluations of the VNR message or featured company.     

Beyond Symptoms: Crime Prevention And Community Development

Crime and crime prevention are currently ‘hot’ political and social issues. Fuelled by public calls for ‘solutions’, the responses by politicians and planners are typically ‘quick‐fix’ with emphasis on management of particular problems as, and where, they arise. We argue for longer term strategies aimed at dealing with the political, social, economic and cultural factors associated with crime. In doing so, we explore the potential of community development to contribute to crime prevention, particularly ‘community’ or ‘street’ crime and violence. Theoretical and practice intersections between community development and certain crime prevention approaches are identified – notably those which link crime and violence with dis‐empowerment, poverty, inequality, exclusion, the learning of violence within families and communities, and lack of opportunity for children and young people to develop their potential. We conclude that there is plenty of evidence to support the view that community development processes should be used more frequently in crime prevention programmes.     

Employer Verification Mandates and Infant Health

Population Research and Policy Review - In recent decades, several states have enacted their own immigration enforcement policies. This reflects substantial variation in the social environments...     

Embodied Technological Change and Tests of the Internal-Adjustment-Cost Hypothesis

Standard unit-root and cointegration tests are sensitive to atypical events such as outliers and structural breaks. In this article, we use outlier-robust estimation techniques to examine the impact of these events on cointegration analysis. Our outlier-robust cointegration test provides a new diagnostic tool for signaling when standard cointegration results might be driven by a few aberrant observations. A main feature of our approach is that the proposed robust estimator can be used to compute weights for all observations, which in turn can be used to identify the approximate dates of atypical events. We evaluate our method using simulated data and a Monte Carlo experiment. We also present an empirical example showing the usefulness of the proposed analysis.     

HEADS UP! A nested intervention with freshmen male college students and the broader campus community to promote responsible drinking

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism developed several guidelines for effective interventions in dealing with problematic college student drinking, including targeted individual interventions paired with broader campus community involvement. The project Heads UP! combines these suggestions in an effort to intervene with high-risk first-year male college students. The objective of the program is to reduce campus alcohol-related negative events and prevent these high-risk students from developing dangerous drinking patterns throughout college. The project provides an environment that supports students in actively following the goals outlined by the intervention, and it actively impacts the overall campus by helping students make responsible drinking decisions. Promising results are forthcoming, and the authors encourage other universities to design and adopt similar campus-supported programs nested within the broader campus community that target high-risk populations on campus.