Advertising morality: maintaining moral worth in a stigmatized profession

Although a great deal of literature has looked at how individuals respond to stigma, far less has been written about how professional groups address challenges to their self-perception as abiding by clear moral standards. In this paper, we ask how professional group members maintain a positive self-perception in the face of moral stigma. Drawing on pragmatic and cultural sociology, we claim that professional communities hold narratives that link various aspects of the work their members perform with specific understanding of the common good. These narratives allow professionals to maintain a shared view of their work as benefitting society and to perceive themselves as moral individuals. As a case study, we focus on the advertising industry, which has long been stigmatized as complicit in exploitative capitalist mechanisms and cultural degradation. We draw on nine total months of fieldwork and seventy-four interviews across three US advertising agencies. We find that advertising practitioners use narratives to present their work as contributing to the common good, depicting themselves as moral individuals who care about others in the process. We analyze three prevalent narratives: the account-driven narrative, which links moral virtue to caring for clients; the creative-driven narrative, which ties caring to the production of meaningful advertisements; and the strategic-driven narrative, which sees caring in finding meaningful relationships for consumers and brands.     

Reactions of students to different settings of field experience

The study assessed Israeli students’ emotional–experiential reaction and attitude to different client populations, following a week-long experience in one of five social services settings. The study provides preliminary findings regarding the implications of first year students’ experience on their emphatic skills, a subject that generally has not received adequate scholarly attention. Using a purpose-built, self-administered questionnaire, we found students’ emotional–experiential response to their experience differed by the setting in which they were placed, being lowest in the Bedouin oriented services, intermediate among those placed in juvenile correction services, and highest in mental health, adult and child disability services. Responses were independent of all other explanatory variables, including sex, cognitive ability, previous training experience and perceptual shifts concerning the population served. We discuss possible reasons for these differences.

     

The expected bit complexity of the von Neumann rejection algorithm

In 1952, von Neumann introduced the rejection method for random variate generation. We revisit this algorithm when we have a source of perfect bits at our disposal. In this random bit model, there are universal lower bounds for generating a random variate with a given density to within an accuracy \(\epsilon \) derived by Knuth and Yao, and refined by the authors. In general, von Neumann’s method fails in this model. We propose a modification that insures proper behavior for all Riemann-integrable densities on compact sets, and show that the expected number of random bits needed behaves optimally with respect to universal lower bounds. In particular, we introduce the notion of an oracle that evaluates the supremum and infimum of a function on any rectangle of \({\mathbb {R}}^{d}\), and develop a quadtree-style extension of the classical rejection method.     

Personal reflection and experience of a Fulbright Scholar: teaching a mental health course in Vietnam’s changing culture

This paper documents the experience of developing and teaching a course on mental health for undergraduate social worker students during a semester in Vietnam. Social work is a profession at the early stages of development in Vietnam, requiring much curriculum development. There are over 40 universities with undergraduate social work education programs, but few of the faculty have had training or experience in practicing social work. The paper will summarize the main reasons for developing such a course given the current state of mental health need and services in a changing culture, as well as the current state of professional social work education and the newly established profession of social work. The author describes the contexts underlying the course—the status of social work and social work education in Vietnam, the context of mental health and mental illness in Vietnam, and curriculum adaptation to the cultural context. From this experience, the lessons learned about the role of cross-cultural critical thinking, cultural knowledge, and other strategies will be discussed about teaching a subject like mental health internationally.     

On nonlinear multi-covering problems

In this paper we define the exact k-coverage problem, and study it for the special cases of intervals and circular-arcs. Given a set system consisting of a ground set of n points with integer demands \(\{d_0,\dots ,d_{n-1}\}\) and integer rewards, subsets of points, and an integer k, select up to k subsets such that the sum of rewards of the covered points is maximized, where point i is covered if exactly \(d_i\) subsets containing it are selected. Here we study this problem and some related optimization problems. We prove that the exact k-coverage problem with unbounded demands is NP-hard even for intervals on the real line and unit rewards. Our NP-hardness proof uses instances where some of the natural parameters of the problem are unbounded (each of these parameters is linear in the number of points). We show that this property is essential, as if we restrict (at least) one of these parameters to be a constant, then the problem is polynomial time solvable. Our polynomial time algorithms are given for various generalizations of the problem (in the setting where one of the parameters is a constant).     

Links between childhood physical abuse and intimate partner aggression: the mediating role of anger expression

Research linking childhood physical abuse (CPA) and adult intimate partner aggression (IPA) has focused on individuals without sufficient attention to couple processes. In this study, 109 couples reported on histories of CPA, IPA, and anger expression. Actor-partner interdependence model (APIM) was used to examine links between CPA and revictimization and perpetration of IPA, with anger suppression as a potential mediator. Women's CPA histories were associated with more physical aggression towards and more revictimization by partners. Men's CPA histories were only associated at the trend level with their revictimization. Anger suppression fully mediated the link between women's CPA and both revictimization and perpetration of IPA. Findings suggest that women with CPA histories are more prone to suppress anger, which leaves them at greater risk for revictimization and perpetration of IPA.     

Whatever Happened to Drama? A Configurational–Comparative Analysis of Genre Trajectory in American Cinema, 1946–2013

Although usually conceived of and studied as individual types, genres are frequently combined in practice. This research examines how genres are combined in popular American films, and how the popularity of particular combinations changed between 1946 and 2013. Distinguishing between “contextual genres” (which identify a film's subject matter) and “affective genres” (which identify a film's intent), we find marked differences between the postwar and blockbuster eras of the Hollywood film industry. The blockbuster era exhibits less generic diversity than the earlier postwar era. Furthermore, the popular postwar‐era films dealt with serious subjects and were set in realistic settings. The blockbuster era replaced these with intense, nonrealistic films. We also find that the relationship between contextual and affective genres changes within industry eras, with affective genres dominating at the beginning of new periods and the popularity of contextual genres growing as the period progresses.     

100 key research questions for the post‐2015 development agenda

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) herald a new phase for international development. This article presents the results of a consultative exercise to collaboratively identify 100 research questions of critical importance for the post‐2015 international development agenda. The final shortlist is grouped into nine thematic areas and was selected by 21 representatives of international and non‐governmental organisations and consultancies, and 14 academics with diverse disciplinary expertise from an initial pool of 704 questions submitted by 110 organisations based in 34 countries. The shortlist includes questions addressing long‐standing problems, new challenges and broader issues related to development policies, practices and institutions. Collectively, these questions are relevant for future development‐related research priorities of governmental and non‐governmental organisations worldwide and could act as focal points for transdisciplinary research collaborations.