How Economic Stress Impacts Risky Sex among African American Adolescents

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Given the potential for unintended pregnancy and exposure to sexually transmitted infections, both of which can have long-term deleterious health consequences,...     

Public executives: Actualization and conflict approaches

This study represents a test of Maslow's hypotheses that the management styles of self-actualized executives differ from those of less-actualized executives. The sample was drawn from among executives of seven state governments. The correlation of levels of actualization and executive behavior revealed that the more self-actualized executives were more willing to actively lobby for their decisional preferences than to simply accept decisions from superiors.     

Asymmetrical information in the provision of human services: an empirical investigation of contract failure theory

In this article, we empirically investigate the validity of the contract failure arguments as applied to a segment of the child care industry. However, prior research has focused upon actual quality differences between nonprofit and for-profit providers whereas the theory is concerned with consumers' perceptions of quality differences. In the current study, we examine both consumers′ perceptions and actual performance in testing the theory. In general, the data provide support for contract failure.     

Book Reviews

John F. Manley and Kenneth M. Dolbeare, The Case Against the Constitution: From the Antifederalists to the Present (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharp, Inc., 1987), 199 pp.

Mark Tushnet, Red, White, and Blue: A Critical Analysis of Constitutional Law (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 328 pp.

Sheldon S. Wolin, The Presence of the Past: Essays on the State and the Constitution (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 228 pp.

Peter Brown, Minority Party: Why Democrats Face Defeat in 1992 and Beyond (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1991).     

The Joys and Sorrows of Diversity: Changes in the Historical Profession in the Last Half Century

The evolution of the historical profession in the United States in the last 50 years provides much reason both for celebration and sorrow. An unprecedented amount of scholarship and teaching is being devoted to regions outside of the traditional American concentration on itself and Europe. New subjects of study—gender, race and ethnicity—have developed. At the same time, political correctness has both narrowed and distorted enquiry. Traditional fields demanding great intellectual rigor, such as intellectual and economic history, are in decline. Even worse, education about Western civilization and the Enlightenment has come to be treated with increasing disdain at colleges and universities. There has instead been a considerable expansion of cultural and women’s studies, including women’s and gender history. These have contributed greatly to the holy trinity of gender, race and class that seems to dominate history departments today. Affirmative action hiring for greater racial, ethnic and gender “diversity” has had an equally great effect on the historical profession. Many of those who were hired preferentially on the basis of past and present discrimination (either real or imagined) continue to emphasize that theme in their research and teaching, since it is their chief claim to professional legitimacy. As a purely intellectual movement, oppression studies cannot last. Any school that leaves out too much about the past is not something to hold serious minds for long. But since it in a small way supports a nationally based political spoils system of racial and ethnic preferences upon which the futures of many politicians rest, it might be expected to have a long life. This is one of the greatest challenges facing historical scholarship today. Even this pales into insignificance in the face of the looming changes in liberal arts education. History is in the process of being reduced from a requirement to an elective on many campuses. This is part of a national trend to move away from the acquisition of knowledge in favor of more broadly based skills. In this way history will suffer the same sorry fate as so much of traditional education in America.     

Plato in WeimarWeber revisited via Foucault: two lectures on legitimation and vocation

Abstract

The text that follows brings together two papers about resonances between late lectures: Weber's lectures of 1918 on science and politics as vocations, and Foucault's final courses (1980–84) on subjectivity, truth and the political. The title alludes to Foucault's 1983 discussion of Plato's political experiences in Sicily, as narrated in his Seventh Letter, juxtaposed to Weber's public interventions in Germany at the time of the foundation of the Weimar Republic. Linked to this is an exploration of the centrality in the work of both Weber and Foucault of an historical ethnography and ethology of the political, and of the forms of connectivity in our cultures between ethics, truth and government.     

From the headscarf to the burqa: the role of social theorists in shaping laws against the veil

Abstract

Opposition to the burqa is widespread in Europe but not in the United States. What explains the difference? Focusing primarily on the French case and its Belgian facsimile, we seek to underscore the role of social theorists in legitimizing bans on the full veil. Ironically, this role has been largely disregarded by Anglophone theorists who write on the veil, and who often oppose its prohibition. This article suggests that Europe tends to be more repressive towards full veils because its political process is more open to multiple theoretical representations of the phenomenon of veiling. Conversely, the United States is more open to the provocative display of religious symbols in public because the political process is pre-structured by legal conventions that tend to filter out social theory. The push to ban the burqa in France principally derives from its brand of republicanism rather than being a product of racism and Islamophobia. Of particular significance in the French case is the emphasis on reciprocity as a political principle, a principle that is elongated into an ideal of sociability by French theorists in different disciplines. The arguments of these theorists are described, their rationale is explained and the impact of their intervention on the policy process is documented. The French case, where the popular press and legislature play a major role in shaping policy towards the burqa, is contrasted with that of the United States, where the judiciary, defending religious freedom, remains the most influential collective actor. Each country has correspondingly different attitudes to democracy. In France, the mission of democracy is to extend political equality to the social realm whereas in the United States it is religion that is prioritized so as to protect that which is deemed most sacred to the individual.