Search results

This chapter addresses the question of how we might best characterize the morale of mothers of children with disabilities. Views of this question have undergone substantial evolution over the past quarter century (Turnbull & Turnbull, 2002). Early writers on the topic emphasized negative impacts on the family. Farber (1959) characterized the birth of a mentally retarded child as a tragic crisis that over time impeded the family from developing normally. Olshansky (1962) described the typical reaction of parents to a child with mental retardation as long-term demoralization, which he termed “chronic sorrow.” These assertions were then followed by empirical studies suggesting high levels of depression in mothers of children with disabilities (Cummings et al., 1966; Gath, 1977). Gath (1977), for example, compared two groups of parents with and without children with disabilities on a researcher developed measure of psychological distress and found significantly higher levels in parents of children with disabilities. She titled her report, “The impact of an abnormal child upon the parents,” seeming to imply that emotional distress, perhaps even mental illness, was the most characteristic impact. This literature also appeared to imply that the cause of parental distress was univariate, that is, the child’s disability uniquely caused it. Early studies of parental distress selected child variables as the sole predictors of emotional distress (e.g. Beckman, 1983). Turnbull and Turnbull (2002) reviewed this literature and described this historical phase as pathogenic.

Since November 29, 1975, when President Gerald Ford signed the original bill entitled the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA), school services for disabled children have been a major component of public school administration in America. The ethical awareness and the legal complexities engendered by this legislation have required school superintendents nationwide to develop expertise, provide leadership, and wrestle with budgetary issues in accommodating and providing equal opportunity for these children. Subsequent amendments to the federal legislation, coupled with state initiatives expanding opportunity, have created an endless array of conditions requiring pervasive knowledge of special education and sharply honed administrative skills. In particular, the 1997 amendments to the IDEA expanded the law beyond merely requiring access; it furthered an emphasis on outcomes and educational performance, and helped clarify the concept of inclusion.

The work of George Santayana belongs simultaneously to North American and European traditions of social thought. Although an important figure of the Western tradition, Santayana is not well known among sociologists. The main purpose of this chapter is to introduce Santayana's social thought to sociologists, and especially to those interested in interactionist and interpretivist theory. I pay particular attention to the concepts of psyche, domination, and dramatic sympathy. I also analyze how some of Santayana's concepts fare when compared to those by Mead and radical interactionism.

The attention-based view (ABV) of the firm highlights the role of decision makers’ attention in firm behavior. The ABV vastly improves our understanding of decision makers’ focus of attention; how that focus is situated in an organization’s procedural and communication channels; and how the distribution of the focus of attention among decision makers participating in those procedural and communication channels affects their understanding of a situation, their motivation to act, and, ultimately, their behavior. Significant progress has been made in recent years in refining and extending the ABV. However, the role of individual differences in the capacity to read other people’s desires, intentions, knowledge, and beliefs – that is, the theory of mind (ToM) – has remained on the sidelines. The ToM is a natural complement to the ABV. In this study, we explore how the ToM allows for an understanding of the advantage that organizations have over markets within the ABV.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

As Lorna Jowett and Stacey Abbott have pointed out, the US TV serial Supernatural owes much of its success to the way it combines horror with family drama, strengthening the affective involvement of viewers in the lives of its protagonists, the monster-hunting Winchester brothers. The notion of home – presented variously as a domestic, feminine space from which the Winchesters and their compatriots are excluded; a mobile and contingent space of masculine bonding; and a hybrid space which allows for self-expression outside prescribed gender norms, but which also holds the potential for danger – is central.

Heather L. Duda has pointed to the ways monster hunters are excluded from the normative institutions of their societies, and this is certainly true of the Winchesters, who live in their family car and are unable to maintain ‘normal’ homes. Later seasons give them a home in the form of an underground bunker, not designed as a domestic space, but nonetheless a place where their hypermasculine behaviours can be relaxed. This chapter examines the tensions that emerge in this apparent move from a traditional narrative of the home as feminine space under threat to something more ambivalent, where masculine identity itself may be in danger.

Various achievements of Australia in the field of applied ethics from the 1980s to 2016 are outlined. The review covers academic scholarship, research and teaching; the ethics of business and actions to build ethics into the structures of enterprises. This follows the 3-fold categorization developed by De George (2012). A brief account of the formation and history of the Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics is included, as is a selection of scandals involving Australian organisations. Australia is shown to have made a significant contribution to the academic discipline of applied ethics and to have been aware of its position, distant from the English-speaking West and in the midst of nations of the global south.

Our Dublin correspondent telegraphed last night: