The Complexities of Political Agenda Determination: The Case of the British Coal Industry

The coal industry has provided for huge controversy since the 1970s. Much of it has focused on contraction and attempts to stop that. This article examines the efforts of two pressure groups—the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the Coalfield Communities Campaign (CCC)—seeking to manipulate the political agenda in their own favor. It examines why the two groups, though both trying to affect issues on the political agenda to meet aspirations in coalfields, met a different response. It also examines why and how the CCC was able to achieve more success at political agenda manipulation at the European, rather than the national, level.     

The Psychosocial Inventory of Ego Strengths: Development and Validation of a New Eriksonian Measure

An underexamined component of Erik Erikson's psychosocial theory is the concept of ego strengths. The eight ego strengths are present throughout the life span, but each have their ascendance in conjunction with successful psychosocial stage resolutions. Upon careful analysis of Erikson's writings, the Psychosocial Inventory of Ego Strengths (PIES) was developed to assess this component of psychosocial theory. The measure was scrutinized by several Eriksonian scholars for its face and content validity. Then, two studies were conducted among college samples in the United States and Canada. Evidence for internal consistency was shown for the eight ego strengths, as well as on overall score. Convergent validity was shown between the PIES and assessments of identity achievement, self-esteem, purpose in life, internal locus of control, and sex roles. Discriminant validity was observed in negative correlations between the ego strengths and hopelessness, identity diffusion, identity moratorium, and personal distress. Suggestions for future research utilizing this measure are given.     

Intergovernmental Growth Management: A Partnership Framework for State-Local Relations

Growth management receives strong support as a policy concept.However, there are serious political reservations concerningits implementation. The Florida Growth Management Act is anexample of a well constructed policy that relies on a partnershipapproach to state-local relations. Its implementation during1989 has brought to light the difficulties in maintaining thatpartnership, mainly due to disagreements over responsibilityfor funding the infrastructure needed to manage growth. Statewillingness to negotiate revenue sources and responsibilityis essential to strong state-local relations. The complexitiesof financing growth management threaten the viability of strongplanning policy, regardless of its rationality.     

A differential survey of the problems of privileged and underprivileged adolescents

The problems of adjustment during the midadolescent years were examined in 1298 privileged and underprivileged adolescents from the Sydney Metropolitan Area, Australia. Girls reported more problems than boys in all areas of adjustment and underprivileged adolescents more problems than the privileged group; however, a significant interaction effect was also found. Whether high-income or low-income group, the overwhelming number of problems were associated with educational adjustment and were interpreted as the reaction to pressures to achieve imposed on adolescents of this age.Received her M.A. (Hons.) and Ph.D. from Macquarie University. Member of Australian Psychological Society. Principal research interests are child psychopathology and psychology of adolescence.Received his M.A.(Hons.) and Ph.D. from Sydney University. Fellow of Australian Psychological Society. Principal research interest is psychology of adolescence.     

The scholar as artisan

In an age when there are increasing pressures on social scientists to produce knowledge that is directly relevant for dealing with problems confronting societies, it is useful to look at the scholar as an artisan. A producer-consumer relationship can then be identified. In such a relationship the kind of protection that consumers have under modern commercial codes for ordinary products should also protect them when they purchase the products of social scientists. While such protection is reasonable, it is not reasonable to have the state enforce the warranties. This might destroy the independent academy. The professoriate collectively must enforce the warranties in a guild-like manner.This essay is a revised version of a paper presented at a seminar sponsored by the International Studies Association at the Villa Serbelloni, Italy, in August–September 1971.     

Tracing the roots of social citizenship: Jane Addams’ thought between formal rights and moral obligation

The modern social citizen is a dual figure: at one and the same time a legal-universal abstraction and a particular living being with specific capacities, proclivities and attitudes. The Settlement movement from the late nineteenth century articulated and shaped both universal and particular dimensions of social citizenship. It contained the imperative of guidance of individual conscience and the modern discourse of universal social rights. The article demonstrates that it is impossible to maintain a division between, on one side, the subject of individualizing pastoral care originating in religious poor relief and philanthropy, and, on the other side, formal rights based on universalism and the modern state. The Settlement movement lies at the pathway of belief, subjective interpretation and respect for the particular person and at the pathway of factual knowledge of social patterns and large-scale policy reforms. The focus on the particular person as subject was the legacy of Christian piety, whereas the concept of universal citizen was associated with the rise of social science at the University of Chicago. We explore this paradox of the particular and the universal through the work of Jane Addams as both sociologist and founder of Hull House.     

We are all denizens now: on the erosion of citizenship

This article makes a contribution to the general theory of citizenship. It argues that there is a need for a supplementary concept of ‘denizenship’ to illustrate changes to and erosion of postwar social citizenship as famously described by T H Marshall. The first aim is to construct a more theoretically developed idea of what the concept of a ‘denizen’ means in sociological terms. In its conventional meaning, this term describes a group of people permanently resident in a foreign country, but only enjoying limited partial rights of citizenship. I label this Denizenship Type 1. By contrast, Denizenship Type 2 refers to the erosion of social citizenship as citizens begin to resemble denizens or strangers in their own societies. The argument then is that there is a general convergence between citizenship and denizenship. As such, Denizenship Type 2 provides a possible supplement to the various terms that have recently been proposed, such as flexible citizenship, semi-citizenship, or precariat to describe the attenuated social and economic status of citizens under regimes of austerity and diminished rights and opportunities. As the life chances of citizens decline, they come to resemble denizens. One illustration of this basic transition is to be found in the changing nature of taxation. This observation also allows me simply to observe that the political economy of taxation has been somewhat neglected in the recent literature on citizenship where questions about identity and subjectivity have become more dominant. As a result of these socio-economic changes, the modern citizen is increasingly merely a denizen with thin, fragmented, and fragile social bonds to the public world. The corrosion of the social, economic, political, and legal framework of citizenship offers a new slogan: ‘we are all denizens now.’