Sexual Abuse by Design: an examination of the issues in learning disability services

This paper is based upon ideas developed by the authors during their past 6 years work on issues of sexuality and sexual abuse in a wide variety of learning disability settings in Britain. The paper argues that some features of service design in themselves make sexual abuse more likely to occur. It suggests ways of reducing risk, which should work alongside the more usually suggested educative approaches to individuals and groups of vulnerable people.     

The NFC buy-out—A new form of industrial enterprise

When the Conservative Government's plans for floating the National Freight Company, Britain's biggest road freight business, on the Stock Exchange were delayed by economic factors, senior management in the business put together a scheme to buy NFC. In what became Britain's largest employee buy-out, with over 10,000 employees and pensioners putting up £6·187m of the purchase price, a new form of industrial enterprise was created. In this article Sir Peter Thompson, leader of the buy-out team and now Chairman of the National Freight Consortium plc, describes the background to the buy-out, the complex financial, legal and communications activities involved, and the way in which employee-involvement has become an integral part of the operation of what has proved to be a commercially successful business providing exceptional returns on investment.     

The advantages and disadvantages of different social welfare strategies

This paper presents a framework for consideration of change in or reform of social welfare systems. The author describes characteristics of the approaches to providing social welfare most commonly used in North America and western Europe. These include social insurance, employer mandates, individual mandates, voluntary arrangements (tax expenditures), means-tested programmes, and universal programmes (demogrants). He then evaluates each of the approaches in terms of its ability to achieve a set of social and economic objectives. The social protection objectives include treating people with dignity and respect, assuring complete coverage, equitably distributing costs and benefits, and operating efficiently to lower overhead. The objectives important to promoting a healthy economic environment include encouraging individual saving and work effort, fostering government fiscal responsibility, and facilitating smooth market functioning. The author concludes that there is no one correct way to organize social welfare systems, that each approach has strengths and weaknesses, and that different societies will attach different priorities to different objectives. Thus, as social goals change, we may expect that the particular mix of approaches used will also evolve and change over time.     

Hanging tongues: A sociological encounter with the assembly line

This study reflects approximately nine weeks of participant observation on an assembly line in the slaughter division of a large beef processing plant in the Midwest. Couched within a symbolic interactionist perspective, it focuses on the day-to-day activities of assembly line workers. It examines the sociological aspects of the workers' interaction on the job, how they coped with the danger, strain, and monotony of the work, and how they developed consumer spending norms which virtually trapped them in the plant. It also examines how the workers attempted to maintain their sense of self-worth despite the demeaning and dehumanizing aspects of their jobs.     

Ethnic Conflict and Healthcare: Cultural Dimensions of the Healthcare Delivery Crisis in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina

The internecine conflict that erupted in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992 was only one episode in hundreds of years of ethnic tension that also produced culturally rich communities. The city of Mostar once known for its interethnic tolerance is now torn between Croatians and Muslims living together in what has been described as an armed truce. This is especially well demonstrated in the failure to rebuild the regional healthcare system, even as the health status of the population continues to deteriorate. Nonetheless this failure provides an opportunity to begin a dialogue that can lead to well being through both improved healthcare and enhanced civility.     

The emergence of Dutch casinos: A case study of mismarketing?

Ostensibly, the approval of legalized casino type gambling in the Netherlands was intended to combat illegal and uncontrolled gambling. Very early on, however, the plan conceived and implemented by the Netherlands Parliament demonstrated serious mismarketing strategies and tactics. The new legal casinos were appealing to people other than those engaged in illegal gambling, in particular foreign tourists and local high rollers. This paper attempts to analyze the ultimate process of goal displacement, as the state casino industry allowed economic objectives to supplant desires to utilize legal casinos primarily as controls over illegal gambling.