The day care clinic as container

He is co-author (with Mara Sidoli) of Incest Fantasies and Self-Destructive Acts in Adolescence,to be published by Transaction Publishers.     

Local actors and international regionalism: The case of the Sea of Japan zone

The Sea of Japan Zone (SJZ) is an area that has been shaped essentially by transnational relations between the localities of western Japan, northeastern China and the Russian Far East. The emergence of this new type of space, based on interlocal cooperation, is a significant aspect of what could be called the ‘new’ regionalism, i.e. the polymorphous and multicen‐tred movement that is affecting international relations today as opposed to its more rigid version of the late 1950s. The shape of the new regionalism reflects the transformation of international relations in general: this particular regionalization process, that gave shape to the SJZ, is linked to the transnationalization of local actors. The idea of creating the SJZ, in the late 1960s, was first an external answer (interlocal cooperation) to an internal problem (uneven development in Japan). It became a reality some twenty years later as Russian and Chinese localism eventually converged with Japanese localism. Despite important domestic differences the need for local actors around the Sea of Japan to look outside for better development conditions made the synergy possible. It produced a new regional entity that needs to be defined and, for that purpose, that could be compared to other transnational zones in East Asia or even in Europe. Their common characteristic appears to be a functional approach to regional cooperation.     

The transportation-credit mortgage: a post-mortem

Abstract

Over the past decade, public housing has become the nation's “housing of last resort.” This article examines the emergence of this social role and describes the conditions of resident economic and social distress that have accompanied it. In this context, the article also evaluates the problem assessment and recommendations of the National Commission on Severely Distressed Public Housing, which released its final report in August 1992. This evaluation is used as the basis for proposing a new social role for public housing defined around the concept of social capital.

The commission correctly identified concentrations of resident distress, such as high proportions of extremely poor and female‐headed families, as a major problem facing distressed public housing. However, the recommendations of the commission were much less satisfying. Rather than confronting directly the tenant selection policies that have produced these aggregations of resident distress, the commission held to an unrealistic optimism that social services and economic development initiatives could relieve these conditions. For changes in public housing tenant selection policies to occur, an alternative social role for public housing must be defined. Under this alternative role, a primary objective of the public housing program would be to give residents access to social capital. Such an approach would ensure that families of the working poor are integrated with the nonworking poor in public housing developments, thereby fostering those sinews of community connection and trust the essential features of social capital and the sources of hope and opportunity.     

The probability of casting a decisive vote: The effects of a caucus

We study the effects of caucus formation upon a voting process with the aid of a Pólya-Eggenberger probability model. The model contains a parameter interpretable as cohesiveness between voters in a voting body. We examine relationships among members' voting power, satisfaction, and group cohesiveness. We also explore the likelihood of a distortion of opinion resulting from the caucus.     

Features of nuptiality in the border zone

"This article is limited to an analysis of some characteristics of nuptiality in the municipalities in the northern border zone of Mexico, based on the classification of the population by age and sex [and] by marital status...contained in the 1980 Census.... Nuptiality in the border zone is not only distinguished from that of the country as a whole, but also in relation to the states in which the municipalities comprising it are located." (SUMMARY IN ENG)     

WMD: The Career of a Concept

The danger posed by “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD) was the Bush administration's chief justification for invading Iraq. Amid the din of the chorus that ceaselessly repeated this phrase in 2002–2003, hardly anyone stopped to ask: what is “WMD” anyway? Is it not a mutable social construct rather than a timeless, self-evident concept? Guided by Nietzsche's view of the truth as a “mobile army of metaphors [and] metonyms… which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically,” we present a history of the metonym WMD. We describe how it was coined by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1937, and subsequently how its meaning was “transposed” and “enhanced” throughout Cold War arms negotiations, in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and in US domestic law. We also discuss how, in the run-up to the Iraq war, “WMD” did not merely describe an Iraqi threat; it was rather “embellished poetically and rhetorically” in ways that produced and inflated the threat.     

Homeland Security: The Difference between a Vision and a Wish

The U.S. government is considering how it should reorganize for homeland security. Consequently, attention has focused on the new Office of Homeland Security (OHS). Much debate focuses on two issues related to OHS: (1) whether the OHS should be a separate executive agency; and (2) whether the OHS director has sufficient authority to direct changes in policies and resource allocation of other departments and agencies. The authors believe the emphasis on these areas of interest is misplaced as measures of the eventual success of the OHS. Rather than focusing on these political issues, this article outlines several questions about how the OHS might approach its complex mission and highlights some organizational and bureaucratic realities that are likely to survive the debate over placement of the OHS within the executive branch and the authorities of the OHS director. This article concludes with a discussion of some organizational tools that the OHS or any coordinating office will require to fulfill its mandate.     

The socio-territorial belonging in a cross-border area: a sociological approach

This paper presents a case study carried out in the Italian town of Gorizia and the Slovenian town of Nova Gorica. These two towns used to belong to the same nation, whereas now they are separated by a national border. Since their separation, their history and social processes have taken different paths, but the two towns are located along the same border area. The research focuses on the sense of socio-territorial belonging in the Gorizia and Nova Gorica residents towards their respective town, country and Europe. A particular type of qualitative interview with photos was applied: the bipolar photo elicitation.     

The determinants of democracy: a sensitivity analysis

Public Choice - Numerous studies—operating with diverse model specifications, samples and empirical measures—suggest different economic, social, cultural, demographic, institutional and...     

The conservative political logic: a discourse-theoretical perspective

In contrast to other core constituents of modern politics, conservatism has not been the object of much discursive-constructivist rethinking. Inspired by Laclau’s work and by Glynos and Howarth’s discourse-theoretical development of the notion of logics, this article sets out to identify the conservative political logic. Conservative politics, it argues, articulate demands as conservation, envisaged as a process of ensuring the desirable continuity of the social order between past, present and future, in opposition to a (demand for) change that is argued to constitute a dislocatory threat to the continuity of the social order. The conservative political logic interpellates citizens as members of that threatened social order, and presents conservative politics as the way to protect this threatened social order. Building on a critical discussion of dominant approaches to conservatism, the article proposes to identify the more formal logic that structures conservative rhetoric as an alternative for a substance-based ideological definition of conservatism. The distinctiveness of the discourse-theoretical perspective on conservative politics becomes more pronounced as the article moves on to argue that conservatism discursively constructs changes as threats to the social order, and, finally, shows how conservative politics discursively construct and reproduce the social order they (cl)aim to conserve.     

Anti-Minotaur: The Myth of a Sociological Morality

Recently Philip Gorski has argued that sociology can help us answer moral questions such as how to live and how to organize societies. Gorski rejects “value-free sociology” and the distinction between factual statements and value judgments, but actually factual statements and value judgments are distinct and sociology can be value-free.  The practice of value-free sociology is ethically imperative, even, if we are to be honest with our audiences and if we are to fulfill our vocation as sociologists.