Ethnomethodology and Marxism: Their use for critical theorizing

Conclusion Each theory and, ultimately, school of theorizing exposes and criticizes the theorizing of others, and at the same time contains false or misleading statements. Theory as it is must rest on some presuppositions. Thus, Marxism exposes the flaws and lies of capitalism while positing another world view-Marxism—which it does not treat critically. Marxism also provides a critique of positivistic thinking. In The Grundrisse, Marx engages in a dialogue with economists and philosophers of his day. His theory emerges out of the rejection of their theory. Ethnomethodology can be seen as critique of positivism, too. It can also tell us something about Marxism, as some of its concerns are similar, although the methods are dissimilar. At the same time, ethnomethodology denies us certain information about itself. Theorists, then, question others and not themselves. Theory can be seen as a product of inquiry; the theorist shows only the product and hides what made the product. Indeed, just as the statistician reveals a correlation between two variables and omits all the common sense reasoning that went into the process (a method of theorizing ethnomethodologists criticize), so does the ethnomethodologist or Marxist omit, to a great extent, the process of theorizing involved.Thus, while neither form of theorizing, taken literally, can be critical (for to be critical, one must sometimes suspend belief in one's own theory, bracket it, or see it as strange), either form, if taken metaphorically (and in a way that is unfaithful to Marxism and ethnomethodology), can be used for critique.The ethnomethodological and Marxist critiques of social information, as in their processual framework and their emphasis on the thinking individual, provide critiques of contemporary society and an impetus to try to change it. Links between the two schools of theorizing would perhaps help overcome the deficiencies of each mode of theorizing. Taylor, Walton, and Young advocated (although they never carried it out) building a bridge in criminology so to speak, between ethnomethodology and Marxism. The advantage would be to enable us to escape from the straitjacket of an economic determinism and the relativism of some subjective approaches to a theory of contradiction in a social structure which recognizes in deviance the acts of men (men and women) in the process of actively making, rather than passively taking, the external world.Our special thanks to Ishna Abrams, Igor Freund, and Peter Schwarzburg for their tireless assistance.     

The Interview for Decisional Abilities (IDA): a tool to assess the decisional capacity of abused and neglected older adults

We present the Interview for Decisional Abilities (IDA), a semi-structured tool for use by adult protective services (APS) workers as part of their comprehensive assessments of clients. The IDA was created in response to a Federal mandate to standardize the procedures and competencies of APS agencies with a view to improving client assessments and facilitating cross-jurisdictional research on adult mistreatment. The proximal aim of the IDA is to guide workers in gathering information on the ability of suspected victims of adult mistreatment to make decisions about the risks they face.     

Urge to Gamble in Problem Gamblers Exposed to a Casino Environment

Cue-reactivity has received increased attention in addiction research, though not for gambling in particular. We examined cue reactivity in 18 problem gamblers by accompanying them to a gaming casino and measuring their subjective urge to gamble over a 1-h period. Half of the sample was additionally exposed to a gambling-specific negative mood induction (NMI) manipulation via guided imagery. Overall, about two-thirds of the sample reported moderate to high-gambling urges during the casino exposure. Additionally, the NMI reduced cue-reactivity. Finally, gambling urges in both groups decreased over the course of the exposure sessions. These findings suggest that a majority of problem gamblers experience the urge to gamble when exposed to gambling cues and that the intensity of these urges decrease with time, especially in the presence of a gambling-relevant NMI. Cue exposure should be studied further as a potential tool in the treatment of problem gambling.     

Experiences of homelessness by people seeking asylum in Australia: A review of published and “grey” literature

This review examines the current published and “grey” literature relating to the experiences of homelessness by people seeking asylum within Australia. While many people seeking asylum have experienced homelessness during their flight, inadequate and unaffordable housing are a feature of the settlement experience for a large number of new arrivals to Australia, putting at risk their successful settlement. This study aims to explore the factors influencing access to stable housing. A systematic review of the academic literature and a search of the grey literature identified 11 articles and 20 documents related to homelessness and people seeking asylum in Australia. The academic literature included a variety of methods and approaches to the investigation of the experience of homelessness in Australia. The grey literature was more practice based, including evaluation and research reports, submissions, and newsletters. Findings suggest that experiences of homelessness are multifaceted and have a range of influences, including policy, financial stress, lack of access to education and employment, and a lack of affordable and suitable housing. Any solutions to address homelessness need to be similarly diverse. Discrimination from real estate agents and employers was also identified as a barrier to housing for many people seeking asylum, an issue that will need to be addressed at a systematic level. The lack of research published in the academic literature means that although there may be some programmes or solutions operating in the community, as demonstrated in the grey literature, this information is not being shared beyond organisation websites or subscriber lists, resulting in a lack of coherency or sharing of solutions. This review highlights the need for further attention to the factors influencing homelessness in asylum seekers, the experience of homelessness, and how these can be addressed by government and non-government led strategies and policy development.     

Long‐Term Contribution of Immigration to Population Renewal in Canada: A Simulation

We analyze the direct and indirect demographic contribution of immigration to the foreign‐origin composition of the Canadian population according to various projection scenarios over a century, from 2006 to 2106. More specifically, we use Statistics Canada's Demosim microsimulation model to assess the long‐term sensitivity to immigration levels and the frequency of mixed unions of the share of immigrants in Canada and of persons who have at least one ancestor who arrived after 2006. The results of the simulations show that the population renewal process through immigration happens at a fast pace in a high immigration and low fertility country such as Canada. Under the scenarios developed, immigrants who entered after 2006 and their descendants could form the majority of the population by 2058 at the earliest and by 2079 at the latest and could represent between 62 percent and 88 percent in 2106. They also show that mixed unions are a key element of the speed at which the changes are likely to occur in the long run.     

The Nature of the Political Reconsidered

I present an immanent, and explanatory, critique of reflections on the nature of politics and of power within political science. I argue that these reflections are problematic, to the extent that they presuppose an actualist conception of the political, and that this is generated by an empiricist way of thinking on the one hand and a constructivist way of thinking on the other. I show how re‐defining politics, power, and the political on the basis of a dialectical critical realist ontology resolves these problems and, thereby, allows us to understand the conditions for social change and the relationship between the political and the economic. My argument has two, important implications: first, that the proposal that those who study politics professionally should celebrate philosophical diversity is dangerous–at least if it makes it difficult to sustain a distinct, emancipatory form of political inquiry; and, second, that the nature of social reality justifies the need both for specialized forms of inquiry, such as politics and economics, and integrative forms of inquiry, such as political economy.     

Boon or bust? Heidegger,disability aesthetics and the thalidomide memorial

Disability Studies has begun to interrogate the aesthetics of disability, both in terms of artwork and sensuous apprehension more generally. The present paper is a contribution to this burgeoning literature. Here I seek to demonstrate what the aesthetics of Martin Heidegger offer to that project. I do so in three stages. I begin by reviewing some relevant disability studies literature, highlighting some general themes in Disability Studies’ recent engagement with ‘the aesthetic’, widely defined. Next, I turn to the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger, to add some further philosophical depth to this project. In third and final section, I apply Heidegger’s aesthetics to the recently unveiled thalidomide memorial, to demonstrate the empirical worth of his analysis of artwork. I conclude with suggestions for future Disability Studies.     

Transparency in Europe: A Quantitative Study

In recent years, European pharmaceutical regulators have increasingly committed to heightening access to raw safety‐related data as part of a wave of transparency initiatives (e.g., providing public Internet‐mediated access to clinical trials data). Yet, the regulators—who are under significant pressure—have not yet benefited from a systematic review of this new policy. In seeking to inject much needed evidence, this article explores the effects of new transparency policies designed to promote meaningful communication of risks and benefits to patients. Results of a cross‐national European survey with respondents from Great Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, France, Germany, and Sweden (N = 5,648) shed light on how patients and the public are likely to react to the regulators’ new transparency policies. The findings demonstrate clear national variations in how European citizens are likely to react and emphasize the need to develop evidence‐based, reasoned transparency policies that integrate benefit‐risk communication. The authors conclude by providing six specific recommendations, informed by the study, that seek to improve the European transparency model both within the medical field and across health, safety, and environmental policy domains.     

The dragon is not always red: the extreme right and ultra-nationalism in Wales

By focusing on the ultra-nationalism of the recently defunct Welsh Defence League (WDL), which in turn had a direct influence on the formation of its more infamous relation the English Defence League, this paper re-examines the long-entrenched discourses of competing nationalisms in Wales. By doing so, it highlights a tendency to emphasise only left-leaning cultural and linguistic nationalist types in that country's historiography, as opposed to the more violent, albeit minority, racist/new racist varieties to be found amongst recent extreme right groupings. Such extreme right antipathy in Wales is not Anglophobic but is directed rather at the ‘substantial numbers of immigrants and minorities … [who] have arrived as a result of empire and its postcolonial aftermath’, particularly those who are Islamic. By taking this new perspective on a heretofore generally ignored, but by no means insignificant Welsh subaltern group, this work further underlines the theoretical difficulties in understanding nationalism(s) generally. More importantly, the paper concludes by tracking the newer and smaller far right groups to have emerged in Wales in the wake of the WDL's collapse. It argues that these derivative groups and the far right ideology which they represent are likely to remain marginalised but still need to be monitored closely.     

Exact moments of the symmetric cubic assignment statistic

Hubert (1987Assignment Methods in Combinatorial Data Analysis) presented a class of permutation, or random assignment, techniques for assessing correspondence between general k-dimensional proximity measures on a set of “objects.” A major problem in higher-order assignment models is the prohibitive level of computation that is required. We present the first three exact moments of a test statistic for the symmetric cubic assignment model. Efficient computational formulas for the first three moments have been derived, thereby permitting approximation of the permutation distribution using well-known methods.