Rural Community Satisfaction and Attachment in Mass Consumer Society1

Abstract Previous models of community satisfaction and attachment have not included personal economic attitudes and behaviors as independent variables. Their inclusion is theoretically justified when residents of communities are viewed as consumers in a larger social/economic context first and residents of a particular community second. As locally-oriented economic processes—once part of the community experience—were removed to nonlocal markets, local economic and demographic attributes became less important to rural residents' experience of community. In two rural communities with extreme scores on a service center viability index, satisfaction with employment and location of employment are important predictors.     

MODERN SCIENCE: Institutionalization of Knowledge and Rationalization of Power

This essay explores the relationship of scientific knowledge to political and economic power. By comparing intellectual production to economic production, the author identifies three preconditions for a knowledge discourse to achieve monopoly domination or hegemony in its market sector or cognitive domain. First, the knowledge discourse must be perceived as specialized; that is, as a unique product or service. Second, it must be credently represented as useful to dominant groups. Finally, it must achieve institutionalization. Ethnographies of scientific discourse and practice, as well as social histories of science, provide data relevant to this model. Such studies reveal the rhetorically constructed character of scientific knowledge, and hence its openness to social and political influence. But these studies also show how scientists strive to standardization; that is, they seek to render their somewhat ad hoc activities in the laboratory into replicable and reputable public accounts. The norms and techniques of this locally created standardization emerged historically, mainly in the form of objectivity and numeracy. These standards in turn serve politically to demarcate legitimate scientists from amateurs and quacks, thereby satisfying the first precondition of the model—that to be successful a knowledge discourse must be perceived as specialized. Cognitive boundaries enabled social boundaries-chiefly the marking of distinctions between disciplines and the organization of their practitioners into professional guilds. Through the creation and enforcement of such distinctions, product identification, market allocation, and oligopolization were secured. These processes also required investment capital to sustain intellectual production. Thus, to institutionalize their disciplines and themselves in research universities and specialized scientific-administrative centers, practitioners sought to demonstrate their utility to potential clients and patrons. Along the way, the disciplines became more instrumentally oriented, their concepts, methods, and topics shaped to conform to the requirements of professionalization and institutionalization. The very language of science also changed in accordance with its new emphases. The close institutionalized affinity of cognitive, political, and economic interests was largely established in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The new, institutionalized, scientific knowledge and the new, rationalized, statist and corporate     

Abstracts

Beal, E. W. Current trends in the training of family therapists.
Bryson, R. B., Bryson, J. B., Licht, M. H., & Licht, B. G. The professional pair.
Cromwell, R. E., Olson, D. H. L., & Founier, D. G. Tools and techniques for diagnosis and evaluation in marital and family therapy.
Hartley, D., Roback, H. B., & Abramowitz, S. I. Deterioration effects in encounter groups.
Jones, W. P. Some implications of the sixteen personality factor questionnaire for marital guidance.
Kelly, G. F. The counselor and human sexuality.
Mace, D., & Mace, V. The selection, training, and certification of facilitators for marriage enrichment programs.
Masters, W. H. & Johnson, V. E. Principles of the new sex therapy.
McConnell, L. G. An examination of the counselor's skills when counseling with sexual problems.
Meyer, J. K. Training and accreditation for the treatment of sexual disorders.
Robertielle, R. C. The decline and fall of sex.
Rubin, Z., & Mitchell, C. Couples research as couples counseling.
Sager, C. J. The role of sex therapy in marital therapy.
Whittaker, J. K. Causes of childhood disorders: New findings.     

Your picture is your bait: use and meaning of cyberspace among gay men

The Internet is seen by many as a form of cyberspace or environment in which to interact and socialise. This research project drew from the data of a quantitative and qualitative study of gay men in Perth, Western Australia. We examined gay men's usage patterns of chat rooms and other social aspects of the Internet to meet sexual partners. We then reviewed in detail the meanings gay men have for the various Internet environments, and the range of friendship, relationship, casual, or esoteric sex-seeking goals. We argue that gay men view and engage with the Internet differently from how they view and engage with other more traditional gay spaces. This different approach influences how interaction between the men, either online or face-to-face, progresses and how assumptions and expectations are built. This has implications for how sexual health promotion interventions determine the appropriate role and relationship they have with these online social spaces.     

Conducting research on violence in Asian American communities: methodological issues

Conducting culturally competent research is a challenge as the United States becomes increasingly multicultural. When conducting research on violence in Asian American communities, researchers need to consider how culture, race, and ethnicity influence definitions of concepts, and methodological issues such as research designs, sampling, developing and translating instruments, ethical issues, recruiting research participants, supervising and training interviewers, and disseminating findings. Examples from the authors' research studies on community violence in the Khmer community, domestic violence in the Chinese American community, and dating violence in Asian American groups are extrapolated to highlight various themes. A commitment to a research program that collaborates with the community under study and cultural experts is vital at every stage of the research process.     

On Being Unemployed and Being a Victim of Crime—A Commentary

In a paper illustrating the shifting ground of Australian criminological debate Braithwaite and Biles claim the results of the National Crime Victim Survey (showing the unemployed have higher victimization rates for certain crimes: breaking and entering, peeping and assault, than ‘the wealthy’ or ‘the poor’) amount to a refutation of ‘a long tradition of radical criminology’. This tradition is portrayed as ‘crime is a manifestation of working class rebellion against the ruling class’. It is argued that this belated entry into confrontation with marxist oriented radical criminology, evaded for so long, is to be welcomed. However certain formal requirements: properly reading, representing, documenting and referencing ‘the radical critique’ are essential for theoretical advance. On these criteria the Braithwaite and Biles paper is deficient and distorted. The results of the victimization survey bolster rather than deny adequately represented radical critiques.