Reintegrative Shaming, Shame, and Criminal Justice

This study tested the implication of reintegrative shaming theory (RST) ( Braithwaite, 1989 ) that social disapproval (shaming) has an effect on the emotions that offenders feel. Interviews were conducted with 720 participants who had recently attended a court case or family group conference in the Australian Capital Territory, having been apprehended for driving while over the legal alcohol limit. Analyses show that shame-related emotions were predicted by perceptions of social disapproval, but that the relationship was more complex than expected. Differences between the shame-related emotions may have implications for theory. Comparisons between the court cases and family group conferences were consistent with expectations that restorative justice interventions would be more reintegrative, but also showed that they were not perceived as less stigmatizing.     

Complex Questionnaires

We study a principal–agent model in which the agent is boundedly rational in his ability to understand the principal's decision rule. The principal wishes to elicit an agent's true profile so as to determine whether or not to grant him a certain request. The principal designs a questionnaire and commits himself to accepting certain responses. In designing such a questionnaire, the principal takes into account the bounded rationality of the agent and wishes to reduce the success probability of a dishonest agent who is trying to game the system. It is shown that the principal can construct a sufficiently complex questionnaire that will allow him to respond optimally to agents who tell the truth and at the same time to almost eliminate the probability that a dishonest agent will succeed in cheating.     

Maintaining family stability in the age of digital technologies: An analysis of d/Discourse informing domestic screen media practices in three US families

This article examines d/Discourses about screen media and parenting as reflected in parents' discursive construction of their decision-making processes connected with domestic media practices. The analysis focuses on three parent interviews from a dataset of 51 parent interviews conducted in three states in the USA. The article illustrates ways d/Discourses connected with health, education, ethnicity and disability that are specific to these three households intersect with d/Discourses concerning children and media. The article argues that general categories describing parenting practices overlook the microcultures of households, erasing the emotional labour embedded in processes of decision-making.     

Deliberative Disjunction: Expert and Public Understanding of Outcome Uncertainty

Many environmental and risk management decisions are made jointly by technical experts and members of the public. Frequently, their task is to select from among management alternatives whose outcomes are subject to varying degrees of uncertainty. Although it is recognized that how this uncertainty is interpreted can significantly affect decision‐making processes and choices, little research has examined similarities and differences between expert and public understandings of uncertainty. We present results from a web‐based survey that directly compares expert and lay interpretations and understandings of different expressions of uncertainty in the context of evaluating the consequences of proposed environmental management actions. Participants responded to two hypothetical but realistic scenarios involving trade‐offs between environmental and other objectives and were asked a series of questions about their comprehension of the uncertainty information, their preferred choice among the alternatives, and the associated difficulty and amount of effort. Results demonstrate that experts and laypersons tend to use presentations of numerical ranges and evaluative labels differently; interestingly, the observed differences between the two groups were not explained by differences in numeracy or concerns for the predicted environmental losses. These findings question many of the usual presumptions about how uncertainty should be presented as part of deliberative risk‐ and environmental‐management processes.     

Reactive Temperament and Sensitivity to Context in Childcare

Consistent with Biological Sensitivity to Context and Differential Susceptibility hypotheses, this study found that children who, as infants, were more temperamentally reactive were more sensitive to the quality of childcare they experienced as toddlers, but not to the amount of childcare with peers they had experienced since birth. Children with both highly positively and negatively reactive temperaments were more socially integrated when care quality was higher and less integrated when care quality was lower compared with moderately reactive children. Reactive temperament was not found to moderate relations between care quality or care duration and internalizing or externalizing behavior problems. These findings support the need to consider individual differences among children in evaluating the impacts of childcare.     

Minding the Gaps: The Role of Finnish Civil Society Organizations in the Labour Market Integration of Migrants

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - The growing role of civil society organizations (CSOs) in welfare service provision is sometimes portrayed as a threat to...     

科学史和医学史正发生着怎样的变化

1950年代科学史成为职业领域时,接受科学训练的科学史学家用语文文献学工具或者考证手段分析文本,研究大人物的科学思想。到1970年,多数西方科学史学家接受史学训练,为外行写作历史。1980年代以来,不少学者把研究从古代转到当代,采取社会学和人类学方法,研究不出名的科学家、管理者甚至患者及其家人,并对社会地位、人际关系、财富、权力、说服手段和受众进行分析。近来,科学史的研究焦点已经从普适的知识体转向科学的地方性文化。北宋学人的多才多艺、现代之前科学研究的费用、科学与文学的关系、患者及其家人对于疗效的感受等,都是值得人们结合常规进路和创新进路、智识史与社会史,深入开展研究的领域。     

科学史中的比较

史学工作不仅比较两种不同文化中的某个现象,也比较同一种文化中处于不同时期和不同地域的概念或习俗“自然”与“nature”;、“身体”与“body”,其含义并非一一对应,而且它们在中国和欧洲不同历史时期的含义也大为不同。西方天文学和医学在中国和日本的影响大不相同。因而,理解一个国家对待外国科学的态度,需要考虑政治变化、新旧方法的价值、社会组织以及学习动机之类的因素。19世纪晚期,中国人对待轮船和蒸汽机车的不同态度,反映出他们对网络技术的社会影响的认识,以及官员们高超的外交手腕。     

Negotiation as a style in child protection work

How child protection professionals orient to the work can be described as a style, and in the two teams reported on here, a style is emerging that is characterized by reaching for and inviting ongoing negotiation with families, with allied professionals and colleagues, and a reflexivity that is the result of the attention focused on the professional and the need to continually defend the work and explain to others one's point of view. Negotiation is a political concept that blends the reality of State authority with the practice of taking seriously the goals and interests of clients as well as the goals and interests of allied professionals. For these teams, this practice is rooted in an identity of service to the client, the importance of the protection of children and long‐standing motivations common to the helping professions.