The Ossification of American Labor Law and the Decline of Self-governance in the Workplace

This article argues that the ineffectuality of American labor law and the shrinking scope of collective representation and collective bargaining are partly traceable to the law’s “ossification”—to its having been essentially sealed off for several decades from democratic revision and renewal and from local experimentation and innovation. The elements of this process of ossification, once assembled, make up an imposing set of barriers to innovation. The basic law has been cut off from legislative revision at the national level by Congress; from “market”-driven competition by employers; from the entrepreneurial and creative energies of private litigation; from variation at the state or local level by representative or judicial bodies; from changing constitutional doctrine; and from emerging transnational legal norms. Moreover, the National Labor Relations Board—the designated institutional vehicle for adjusting the labor laws to modern conditions—is increasingly hemmed in by the age of the text and the large body of judicial interpretations that has grown up over the years. The resulting statutory scheme is drastically out of date and out of sync with the needs of 21st century workers and labor markets.

Outcomes of a technology-based social norms intervention to deter alcohol use in freshman residence halls

OBJECTIVE: The authors tested a prototype intervention designed to deter alcohol use in residence halls. PARTICIPANTS: Approximately 384 freshmen participated in the study over a 2-year period. METHODS: The authors devised a feedback method that assessed residents' blood alcohol concentration (BAC) at night and allowed the readings to be retrieved the next day via the Web. Residents in an intervention hall received their BAC readings as well as normative feedback. In a comparison hall, residents could retrieve only the BAC readings. RESULTS: The authors found statistically significant hall differences, but they were small in size and not meaningful. CONCLUSIONS: Qualitative findings suggest the intervention had an overall positive impact, but the actions of a subgroup of rebellious drinkers might have obscured the effect. Social norms interventions could provoke some episodes of excessive drinking in students who find these messages objectionable. More research is needed to evaluate delayed BAC feedback.     

Social Work Values: The Moral Core of the Profession

Correspondence to Cynthia Bisman, Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010, USA. E-mail: cbisman{at}ada.brynmawr.edu Summary This paper argues that an emphasis on the profession’sknowledge base has come at the expense of attention to socialwork's values and mission. The discussion examines the relativeimportance of knowledge, values and skills in an effort to understandthe shifting emphases of the profession within a social andhistorical context. The consequences of these shifts for theprofession and for its relationship to society are also considered.Concepts from the intellectual struggles of social work andfrom an interdisciplinary perspective suggest ways to groundthe profession’s skills and knowledge in its values ofhuman dignity, service to humanity and social justice. At itscore, social work must respond to the moral imperative of caringfor the neediest among us. This entails re-claiming and buildingon the commitment of early social workers ‘to work withforces that make for progress . . . to forward the advance ofthe . . . common people’ (Richmond, 1899, p. 151). Thepaper concludes that for social work to have a future, the professionmust take pride in its moral core, define its contemporary meaningand work for the social welfare in ways that are relevant toboth social workers and non-social workers.     

The ethics of human reproductive cloning: when world views collide

Two camps in bioethics with seemingly opposing world views have staked out conflicting positions regarding the ethics of human reproductive cloning. These camps do not appear to share common concepts or ways of reasoning through which to exchange views and come to a meeting of minds about uses of this technology. Yet analysis of their respective approaches to several issues surrounding reproductive cloning, such as where the ethical limits of individual reproductive choice lie, whether the use of this technology would violate human dignity, whether it would create risks to the resulting fetuses and children that would make its use intolerable, and whether it would challenge certain core social values, reveals that they are not wholly opposed to one another. Indeed, it displays that they hold certain beliefs, values, and concerns in common. Moreover, it indicates that the different world views that they each presuppose, while flawed in certain respects, do not collide in every respect, but can be reconciled in significant ways that provide fertile ground for agreement about several issues related to human reproductive cloning.     

Integrating Research and Practice into an Interviewing Skills Project

This paper reports an approach to improving the integration of research and practice instruction by engaging students in a research project. Through the project, the students evaluate an effort to improve their interviewing and relationship-building skills. The skills-development component relies primarily on student role playing and peer feedback, and was implemented as part of a required second-year master of social work research course. Two randomized experimental evaluations of the project’s effectiveness in improving interviewing skills yielded inconsistent results. The authors describe strategies for teaching and assessing interviewing skills and for teaching research.     

Feminist Readings on Abu Ghraib: Introduction

This article examines feminist responses to mainstream media coverage of female terrorists in West Germany during 1977. Women in left-wing terrorist groups like the Red Army Faction (RAF) and ‘Movement 2. June’ (‘Bewegung 2. Juni’) inspired a gendered discourse reflecting a cultural unease about women participating in political violence, in which the media propagated notions that posited female terrorists as ‘unnatural’ women. This analysis demonstrates how different ‘Alltagstheorien’ (everyday or common sense theories) on female terrorists we find in West German media publications in the 1970s and 1980s served as a springboard for West German feminist activists to examine arguments about violence as legitimate means in their own political communities. This essay begins by briefly outlining key feminist positions on political violence that have made invisible the complex debates taking place in the 1970s. The second part of the essay uses images of female terrorists circulated by the West German media, such as the newsmagazine Der Spiegel (The Mirror), to contextualize the ‘Alltagstheorien’ the magazine propagated in an article covering RAF actions in 1977. The third and main part of the essay then examines the responses this and other articles elicited from contemporaneous feminist movement publications.     

Hercules Subdued: The Visual Rhetoric of the Kneeling Slave

The image of the kneeling slave, designed for the seal of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, then widely distributed as a cameo manufactured and distributed by Josiah Wedgwood became a powerful abolitionist icon. The image has been seen as both one of victimization and one that acknowledges the agency of the slave. While the former interpretation is understandable given the re-configurations of the image within the polemics of the Abolitionist campaign of the nineteenth century, the original image needs to be examined within the context of its construction. For this, it is necessary to explore the classical nature of the figure, particularly the representations and mythic significance of Hercules. These associations are combined with references to supplication as depicted in earlier token books, religious iconography, contemporary treatises on acting, eighteenth century treatises on gesture and rhetoric, and eighteenth century treatises on phrenology, physiognomy and ethnology. It is the complexity derived from such blending that became simplified and limited in later re-presentations where the image is used in conjunction with sentimental appeals to the benevolence of the viewer. As the classical resonances gave way to sentimental imperatives, the changing array of discourses changed not only the context which gave the image meaning, but reshaped the very image of the kneeling slave in subtle, but significant ways. The result provides us with a complex study of the dynamics of visual rhetoric.     

Sexual Coercion,Verbal Aggression,and Condom Use Consistency Among College Students

Abstract

Objective: The relationship between condom use and 2 less visible categories of intimate partner violence (IPV), sexual coercion and verbal aggression, was examined among college students. Methods: In March 2007 a random cross-sectional sample of undergraduates from the southeast region of the United States was taken to collect information about sexual coercion and verbal aggression, in addition to condom use consistency. Alcohol use was also assessed. Results: Of the 142 participants, 31.7% reported being victims of sexual coercion, and 78% reported having verbally aggressive partners. Participants who reported experiencing sexual coercion in their relationship were significantly less likely to consistently use condoms. Additionally, alcohol use before or during episodes of verbal aggression was negatively associated with condom use. Alcohol use was also significantly associated with heightened incidents of coercion and aggression. Conclusions: Results indicate that among college students, the presence of sexual coercion adversely affects condom use, as does alcohol use.