TEACHING PROFESSIONAL WRITING TO FAMILY THERAPISTS: THREE APPROACHES

The authors present three educational approaches designed to demystify the writing process and to support better writing skills among family therapists. One framework is an academic course in professional writing, another is a writing seminar for family therapy and physician trainees within a medical school setting, and the third is a 2-hour continuing education writing workshop for family therapists. Each is replicable within a variety of settings.     

LOG-PERIODOGRAM ESTIMATION OF LONG MEMORY VOLATILITY DEPENDENCIES WITH CONDITIONALLY HEAVY TAILED RETURNS

Many recent papers have used semiparametric methods, especially the log-periodogram regression, to detect and estimate long memory in the volatility of asset returns. In these papers, the volatility is proxied by measures such as squared, log-squared, and absolute returns. While the evidence for the existence of long memory is strong using any of these measures, the actual long memory parameter estimates can be sensitive to which measure is used. In Monte-Carlo simulations, I find that if the data is conditionally leptokurtic, the log-periodogram regression estimator using squared returns has a large downward bias, which is avoided by using other volatility measures. In United States stock return data, I find that squared returns give much lower estimates of the long memory parameter than the alternative volatility measures, which is consistent with the simulation results. I conclude that researchers should avoid using the squared returns in the semiparametric estimation of long memory volatility dependencies.     

Implied Preference for Seismic Design Level and Earthquake Insurance

Seismic risk can be reduced by implementing newly developed seismic provisions in design codes. Furthermore, financial protection or enhanced utility and happiness for stakeholders could be gained through the purchase of earthquake insurance. If this is not so, there would be no market for such insurance. However, perceived benefit associated with insurance is not universally shared by stakeholders partly due to their diverse risk attitudes. This study investigates the implied seismic design preference with insurance options for decisionmakers of bounded rationality whose preferences could be adequately represented by the cumulative prospect theory (CPT). The investigation is focused on assessing the sensitivity of the implied seismic design preference with insurance options to model parameters of the CPT and to fair and unfair insurance arrangements. Numerical results suggest that human cognitive limitation and risk perception can affect the implied seismic design preference by the CPT significantly. The mandatory purchase of fair insurance will lead the implied seismic design preference to the optimum design level that is dictated by the minimum expected lifecycle cost rule. Unfair insurance decreases the expected gain as well as its associated variability, which is preferred by risk-averse decisionmakers. The obtained results of the implied preference for the combination of the seismic design level and insurance option suggest that property owners, financial institutions, and municipalities can take advantage of affordable insurance to establish successful seismic risk management strategies.     

现代性批判:一种从政治哲学立场出发的考察——对恒久和普遍的美好生活原则的辩护

当前西方危机与现代性危机最深刻的症候,是在其最高知识权威的影响下,现代后期的某些学说(列奥·施特劳斯所谓的历史主义、相对主义学说)撼动了西方人的根基,人们丧失了方向感。这种理论上的危机带来的实际后果主要表现在:一种本来意义上的政治哲学所要求的普遍有效方式去解答对错、好坏问题不再可能。既然现代性的危机源于对现代政治哲学隐含的这个前提的表达,那么,现代性批判的中心课题是对现代理性主义或对理性之现代信仰的批判,它逻辑地包含了对恒久和普遍美好生活原则的辩护,试图恢复人们的自信,以便能够合理地赋予价值判断以效力。     

重庆性格和码头文化精神的扛鼎之作——莫怀戚长篇小说《白沙码头》研讨会综述

2008年9月,莫怀戚长篇小说<白沙码头>研讨会在重庆召开.与会专家学者一致认为:<白沙码头>不是一般意义上的传奇小说,其内涵深厚,信息量极大,它所展示的民间生存智慧和作家的民间艺术立场相当鲜明而感人,特别是对我们反省现实、反省历史、反省我们当代人自己具有不可替代的价值意义.     

Time, Self, and the Curiously Abstract Concept of Agency*

The term "agency" is quite slippery and is used differently depending on the epistemological roots and goals of scholars who employ it. Distressingly, the sociological literature on the concept rarely addresses relevant social psychological research. We take a social behaviorist approach to agency by suggesting that individual temporal orientations are underutilized in conceptualizing this core sociological concept. Different temporal foci—the actor's engaged response to situational circumstances—implicate different forms of agency. This article offers a theoretical model involving four analytical types of agency ("existential,""identity,""pragmatic," and "life course") that are often conflated across treatments of the topic. Each mode of agency overlaps with established social psychological literatures, most notably about the self, enabling scholars to anchor overly abstract treatments of agency within established research literatures.     

Gender and the 'New Paradigm' of Health

This article provides a critical review of literature on the relationship between gender and the 'new paradigm' of health. An overview of the feminist critique of health is given, from the Women's Health Movement of the late 1960s and early feminist debates about medicalisation, to more recent discussions about structural inequalities between men and women, eating disorders, and AIDS. I then go on to explore the feminist response to the so-called 'new paradigm' of health (an approach that emphasises health promotion, individual responsibility for health, and body-monitoring). Arguments that health promotion initiatives target women and confirm their position as principal guardians of health within the family are considered, as well as literature on the breast cancer awareness campaign. I then explore the growing body of literature on masculinity and health, and its account of the relationship between gender and current ideas about healthiness. Finally, I offer up some suggestions for the direction a new feminist critique of health might take.