The Hopes and Fears of Older Australians: for Self,Family, and Society

This study refutes negative ageist stereotypes of how older people view themselves and society by reporting on their freely expressed main hope and main fear for the future. Data were collected through a population based cross‐sectional telephone interview survey conducted in NSW in 1999/2000. Participants (n=8,881) were randomly selected community dwelling older Australians (65+). Analyses revealed that participants were more likely to express a hope than a fear, and that a sizeable proportion of their hopes and fears were focused outwardly to family, or more broadly to social and environmental issues both locally and globally. These latter hopes and fears indicate awareness, interest and concern on a wide range of issues outside self and family. Some differences by gender and age were identified but views varied considerably among individuals. These findings provide evidence to dispel the negative image of older people as a self interested undifferentiated group whose members become progressively fearful as they age, by revealing an altruistic and outwardly focused dimension.     

Money-egalitarian-equivalent and gain-maximin allocations of indivisible items with monetary compensation

Suppose that a certain quantity M of money and a finite number of indivisible items are to be distributed among n people, all of whom have equal claims on the whole. Different allocations are presented using various criteria of fairness in the special case where each player's utility function is additively separable. An allocation is “money-egalitarian-equivalent” (MEE) if each player's monetary valuation of his or her bundle is a fixed constant. We show that there is an essentially unique allocation that is MEE and Pareto-optimal; it is also envy-free. Alternatively, the “gain” of a player may be defined as the difference between how the player evaluates his bundle and an exact nth part of the whole according to his numerical evaluation of the whole. A “gain-maximin” criterion would maximize the minimum gain obtained by any player. We show that Knaster's procedure finds an allocation which is optimal under the gain-maximin criterion. That allocation is not necessarily envy-free, so we also find the envy-free allocation that is optimal under the gain-maximin criterion among all envy-free allocations. It turns out that, even though there exist allocations that are simultaneously envy-free and Pareto-optimal, this optimal allocation may fail to be Pareto-optimal, and it may also violate monotonicity criteria. Received: 30 September 1996/Accepted: 6 March 2002 The author would like to thank Professor William Thomson for a discussion on this subject; and he would like to thank the anonymous referees, who made many substantive suggestions for improving this paper – shortening it, streamlining the arguments, improving the terminology, making further ties with the literature, and improving the exposition.     

The future from the top: Presidential perspectives on planning—Part one

This is the first part of an article which will appear in three sections in one in this copy and one each in the June and August editions. The three parts make up a long article which is a distillation of a series of conversations between the author and Chief Executives of a variety of well-known U.S. films. The findings of Dr. Rosen's survey are important in that they provide an informed view of Presidential perspectives on planning.     

Early reemployment for dislocated workers in the United States

On the basis of data from field experiments, in 1993 the United States enacted legislation requiring that all states implement Worker Profiling and Reemployment Services programmes as part of their employment and training systems. Using statistical models, these programmes identify likely dislocated unemployment insurance claimants and provide them with job search assistance during the early weeks of their unemployment. All states have now implemented these systems, and early implementation results are now available.     

Environmental Controversies,Interactional Resources,and Rural Communities: Siting Versus Exposure Disputes1

Abstract Differences in the types of social conflict occuring in facility siting disputes and toxic contamination cases are compared. An ecological-symbolic perspective and the concept of strong and weak ties are used to interpret the nature of social conflict in two rural Pennsylvania communities and in cases in the literature. Overall, community solidarity appears likely to be enhanced in siting disputes and undermined in exposure situations. To explain this, two conflict paths are developed that move from the presence or absence of the hazard agent to individual perceptions, the generation of collective threat beliefs and the formation of strong ties, the emergence of alternative leadership and its relationship to official authorities, and finally the formation of weak ties. In each case, the type of community conflict results from the nature of the perceived environmental threat and the social process that threat sets in motion. Practical implications for rural community development are discussed.     

Emerging themes in distance learning research and practice: some food for thought

With the rapid spread of distance learning as a medium for delivering instruction, the practice of distance learning has outpaced research. This paper describes major themes identified in a review of selected research papers published in the past five years. Themes include the following: definitions of distance learning and why it should be studied; identification of the major learning theories on which research is based; how collaboration can be achieved via distance learning; the role that learner characteristics play in the success of distance learning systems, and issues related to measuring the effectiveness of distance learning. The authors conclude that more research is needed to identify critical success factors for distance learning.     

Reason and reparation

Conclusion Critical theory is critical because it reflects on the circumstances of its own existence. It is critical too because it takes utopia seriously, which means, in part, never short-circuiting the distance between reality and Utopia. Reparative reason, it has been argued, is no substitute for this philosophical project, but a source of support for it, one better suited to the concerns of the Frankfurt School than eros. What both reparative reason and the reparative impulse require is guidance as to the most deserving objects of our care and concern. Critical theory can provide this guidance.At least two objections to this reformulation of critical theory in light of Klein's insights into love, hate, and reparation are possible. The first would argue that reparation remains insufficiently relational, still selfish, more concerned with the satisfaction of the one who makes reparation than its object. The second objection is almost the opposite of the first, that reparation lacks what makes eros such a powerful oppositional force: not merely its selfish, demanding character, but its teleological orientation. Freed of the distorting effects of social domination, eros requires no guidance. By its very nature it seeks out the truly beautiful and good, much as Plato argued in the Symposium and Phaedrus. Such objections are, I believe, quite mistaken. They do not, however, lack insight into the issues involved.Regarding the first objection, Klein argues that we seek to make reparation out of genuine concern for the object. Reparation is truly an object-related passion, motivated by our relationship to the object, our love for it. Reparation may reduce guilt and anxiety, but this is an effect, not a cause. But, if reparation puts the object first, there is nonetheless an individualistic cast to the Kleinian account missing in Benjamin and Chodorow. For Klein, we care for others not because they are part of us, but because they are different, and we are concerned about them. In a certain limited sense the other remains an object, not in Freud's sense of an object of our drives, whose humanity is unimportant, but as a person who is distinct and separate from ourselves. This does not make reparation selfish. It does make it an expression of individuality, not its denial or transcendence.Regarding the second objection, it is true that reparation is not as autonomous as eros, and perhaps not as inherently oppositional either. But, neither is it as subject to corruption as eros (repressive desublimation), for reparation harnesses not the desire for pleasure, but guilt over the harm we have done to others. But, perhaps it was a mistake all along to try to found critical theory in eros, as though biology (Marcuse calls eros a biological basis for socialism) could take the place of critical consciousness, social opposition, or a revolutionary class. Insofar as it finds a material basis for hope for a better world in apparently transhistorical human attributes (albeit attributes that exist only within particular histories), reparation supports the Utopian project of the Frankfurt School. Reparation is, however, no deus ex machina. Historically situated human beings will have to confront the tragedy of human history on their own, a tragedy that stems, ultimately, from the way in which our fear and aggression constitute a world that requires so much reparation. It is, of course, this insight that keeps reparation from short-circuiting the path to utopia. For not only does reparation not exist apart from particular histories, but it does not exist independently of the hatred and aggression that bring it into being.