Enterprising? Disabled? The status and potential for disabled people’s microenterprise in South Korea

This article explores the position, potential and scope for self-employment and microenterprise for disabled South Koreans. The chronic barriers experienced in disabled people gaining paid work suggest that self-employment and enterprise might offer a good alternative to paid work. The self-determined nature of running a microenterprise has been shown to connect with disabled people who may not conform to standardised notions of body and brain that underpin many mainstream work contexts. Despite this promise, several barriers continue to beset disabled people’s access to micro-enterprise activity; barriers ranging from Confucian precepts, to employment protections that are geared largely towards paid employment and to the lack of training, finance and business support for disabled people starting up and sustaining microenterprise in Korea. The extension of legal protections, meaningful start-up subsidies, better business support and bridges between paid work and microenterprise are all seen as important policy correctives that would better support disabled people.     

Marxist sociology and humanist sociology: Diversity, intersections, and convergence

Marxist sociology is at the intersection of Marxism and sociology; while humanist sociology is at the intersection of humanist thought and sociology. Both see sociological theory as a living, evolving activity, and both take a critical stance toward the workings of capitalism. The main difference between them is that Marxist sociology is a body of thought tied to a movement, whereas humanist sociology is a movement tied to a body of thought. Professor of Sociology, Purdue University Calumet. He is past chair of the Section on Marxist Sociology, has been a member of the AHS for twenty years, and is co-author of Crisis and Change: Basic Questions of Marxist Sociology.     

Review Essay: On the Trail of Tribal Sociology

Sociological Forum -     

Charismatic leadership in business organizations: Some neglected issues

The article reviews some of the recent literature on charismatic leadership and notes that there has been a tendency for research and theorizing to emphasize a number of issues examined by Weber to the relative exclusion of others. Those areas that have been focused upon, have tended to reflect the “applied” emphasis in much research in the field of leadership in organizations. The article takes two areas that were central to Weber's work—routinization of charisma and loss of charisma—to demonstrate that these topics can illuminate and add to our understanding of the operation of charismatic leadership in business and other formal organizations.     

ON THE MACROFOUNDATIONS OF MICROSOCIOLOGY:

Just as Collins (1981) demonstrates that microsociological presuppositions elucidate macrosociology, the reverse holds as well. Fundamental axioms are the existence of (1) a set of constraints that channel individual action and expectations and (2) obdurate, exterior realities of supraindividual entities. Expanding on these presuppositions this article proposes a set of issues that collectively help provide a macrosociological basis for interpretive microsociology: the physical limits of the built environment, temporal and spatial effects, institutional linkages, the obdurate reality of tradition, and beliefs in organizational primacy. These underline the often unrecognized centrality and legitimacy of macrosociological analysis for the development of microsociology.     

A Semi-Parametric Quantile Function Estimator for Use in Bootstrap Estimation Procedures

In this note we develop a new quantile function estimator called the tail extrapolation quantile function estimator. The estimator behaves asymptotically exactly the same as the standard linear interpolation estimator. For finite samples there is small correction towards estimating the extreme quantiles. We illustrate that by employing this new estimator we can greatly improve the coverage probabilities of the standard bootstrap percentile confidence intervals. The method does not reqiure complicated calculations and hence it should appeal to the statistical practitioner.     

“He Survives Everything”: A Latency-Aged Child with Play Disruption in the Face of Trauma and Early Object Loss

It is hypothesized that trauma and early object loss result in the arrest of the normal and healthy progression of a child's development and also disrupts a child's capacity to engage in symbolic play. In therapy, over time, with a constant object, a latency-aged child was able to re-enact early trauma and loss, make substantial gains in development, and begin to play in a symbolic and expressive way.