Knowledge/Power/Resistance

Francis Bacon’s famous metaphor that knowledge is power has been the intellectual springboard for many scholars to offer misleading observations about the inordinate authority and power of knowledge. Among the important implications that Bacon derives from his metaphor is the assertion that individuals provided with experimental skills and practical knowledge are those most entitled to hold executive office, rather than the aristocracy of blood. In this essay, we critically analyze Michel Foucault’s ambivalent version of the closeness of knowledge, power and authority.     

Images of national character

The Faculty of Political and Social-Cultural Sciences.     

Social stratification: Individual importance and social welfare

A method to estimate a household's social status in a stratified society is described. We do not leave it up to the respondents what is to be understood by status, as most methods do, but define it as the weight of the household with respect to social welfare. In order to operationalize this individual relative importance concept we measure and utilize the individual welfare evaluations. Our empirical results for a data set collected in the Boston area in 1983 show the dependency of social status and social stratification on individual characteristics. A comparison made with some other methods shows the feasibility of our approach.     

The Open Architecture of European Human Rights Law

The evolution of the European human rights regime is often described as the development of an integrated order with the European Convention of Human Rights as its governing 'constitutional instrument'. It is argued that the regime is better regarded as pluralist - characterised by a heterarchical relationship between its constituent parts that is ultimately defined politically and not legally. The emergence and workings of this pluralist order are traced through the interaction of the European Court of Human Rights with domestic courts in the European Union. These cases not only show conflicts over questions of ultimate supremacy but also significant convergence and harmony in practice. The analysis of the factors leading to this convergence indicates that central characteristics of pluralism – incrementalism and the openness of ultimate authority – have contributed significantly to the generally smooth evolution of the European human rights regime. This suggests a broader appeal of pluralist models as alternatives to constitutionalism in the construction of postnational authority and law.     

Networking to support suicide survivors

This paper is the first report on a national program for increasing bereavement support for suicide survivors in the Flemish region in Belgium. A Working Group consisting of representatives of a wide variety of mental health institutions, social programs, and suicide survivor groups in the area determined that a program developing networks between the services seems to hold the greatest promise for both an increase in the number of services available and an improvement in the quality of services offered.