Construction of Status and Referential Structures

Beliefs about diverse status characteristics have a common core content of performance capacities and qualities made up of two features: hierarchy (superior/inferior capacities) and role-differentiation (instrumental/expressive qualities). Whatever the status characteristic, its more-valued state tends to be defined as superior and instrumental, and the less-valued state tends to be defined as inferior but expressive. We account for this in terms of the typification of differences in behavioral inequalities and profiles that emerge in task oriented social interaction. Status construction theory argues that new configurations of the states of a nonvalued discriminating characteristic, status values, and status typifications of actors possessing these states arise from a similar process. The theory we present here makes new predictions on the construction and institutionalization of status characteristics and generalized beliefs about the relation of status characteristics to social rewards, called referential structures. This theory, we argue, integrates micro and macro elements in a way that may be applicable to explaining the social construction of cultural objects more generally.     

Sociology and the Two Faces of Human Rights

This article begins with a reference to Turner and Water’s debate over a foundational versus constructionist approach to human rights. Noting some scope for complementarity between the two, it moves on to consider a different divide; human rights discourse as the driver of expressive and expansive social movements; and human rights practice as deployed in the interests of power and control. The former is explored in relation to rights, recognition and ‘cosmopolitanisation’, and the latter in relation to closure, deficit and false universals. A return to the classics is suggested as one route to furthering analysis and understanding of both perspectives.     

THE FEMINIST CRITIQUE IN EPISTEMOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE: QUESTIONS OF CONTEXT IN FAMILY THERAPY

Family therapy's neglect of social context as a factor in its continuing distortion of women's issues has led feminist critics to wonder if systems-based psychotherapy truly serves women. Rather than heralding the demise of family therapy, however, the feminist critique is here taken to open up concerns central to the epistemological discussion underway in the field. At first, these have to do with the functions of "punctuation,""boundary" and "closure" in systemic epistemology. Later, the central question becomes that of the place given to context in systems epistemology generally, as well as family therapy in particular. Several implications of a more lively interest in context for family therapy's work are explored. These are discussed with respect to women's issues, clinical epistemology, and the challenge to raise novel questions in family therapy.     

Canada as a family

This article examines Wilden's theory of the ‘Imaginary Canada’ by studying the social construction of Canada according to two major Toronto newspapers from 1976 to 1980. Their dominant metaphor sees Canada as a marriage threatened by separation. From this metaphor all the arguments which are advanced for Canadian unity can be generated. Other less common metaphors represent Canada as a structure, a parent with several children, a body, a group of cooperative equals, or a property-owner with a dependent. They function rhetorically to shock the reader, or to supplement the dominant metaphor at its weak points. In most respects the data support Wilden's theory, although it is unclear how far the ‘Imaginary Canada’ succeeds in masking the inequalities which exist. La théorie du Canada imaginaire de Wilden est examinée à travers une étude des analogies qu'emploient les Canadiens anglais pour défendre la Confédération contre le mouvement indépendantiste québécois. L'indépendance du Québec leur paraît semblable à la rupture d'une famille, dans laquelle le Québec est ou la femme du Canada anglais ou un(e) des dix enfants. Parfois ils perçoivent les provinces comme un groupe d'amis ou d'alliés ou comme les parties d'un corps. Dans chaque cas on tire la même conclusion: que le Canada est légitime et doit rester uni. D'autres conclusions que Ton eût pu tirer de ces analogies, et d'autres analogies qui pourraient mener à d'autres conclusions, ont générale-ment été supprimées. Les analogies populaires ont done pour fonction d'unir le Canada anglais, de légitimer la structure politique et économique actuelle, et de supprimer la conscience populaire de ses inégalités et de son oppression. Les analogies multiples sont probablement plus efficaces à cet égard que ne pourrait l'ètre une simple analogie. La recherche ne révéle pas à quel point ces analogies ont pour effet de répandre la fausse conscience. Elle ne saurait résoudre cette imprécision dans la théorie de Wilden, tandis qu'elle confirme le reste de sa thèse.     

Future trends in world trade (A review of the Lima target)

In March 1975, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization held an important conference at Lima to discuss ways of speeding up the industrialization of developing countries. Various targets were formulated by the conference to achieve further growth in the developing areas of the world, which could have far-reaching implications not only for the developing countries, but also for the developed. The whole structure of world trade could be radically changed by the year 2000 and, as the authors of this article argue, the likely growth of various industries could be altered significantly over the next 25 years.     

The Elusive Market: Privatization, Politics and State–Enterprise Reform in China

Although China's largest state–owned enterprises (SOEs) are destined to remain state–owned for the immediate future, recent reforms have affected these SOEs' property rights and ownership structures. Moreover, the government's insistence that privatization is not implied by present reform programmes is increasingly contradicted by actual developments and managers' attitudes at the enterprise level. This article explores some of the political and organizational tensions created by this present phase of SOE reform.     

Promotion to Partner in Professional Service Firms

A shift away from up-or-out, theconventional promotion system in professional servicefirms, has been explained as part of a wider set ofchanges in internal labor market arrangements andmanagement methods. This is investigated empirically in a sample oflarge partnerships in one profession. Up-or-out was usedby less than one-third of the sample of firms but iscommon among the largest firms. Internal reforms to the professional firm do not fully explainits rarity; up-or-out appears to be adaptable to newforms of management and internal labor market policies.This raises a number of questions about the utility of theoretical explanations of how professionalservice firms work or are changing.