Search results

Disaster prevention and mitigation must be based on a detailed knowledge of event probability distributions of all essential hazards and on the damage probability functions of the different classes of element at risk. Discusses the most important shortcomings in general risk analysis and shows which parameters must be considered in the evaluation of disaster potentials related to floods, windstorms, earthquakes, and industrial risks.

The burden social theorists must be willing to accept, respond to, and act upon pertains to the difficulties that predictably accompany all efforts to convey to nontheorists the unwelcome fact of heteronomy – that as actors, we are not as autonomous as we were told and prefer to assume – and to spell out what heteronomy in the form in which it has been shaping the developmental trajectory of modern societies means for professional theorists. I introduce the concept of “vitacide,” designed to capture that termination of life is a potential vanishing point of the heteronomous processes that have been shaping modern societies continuing to accelerate and intensify in ways that prefigure our future, but not on our human or social terms. Heteronomy pointing toward vitacide should compel us as social theorists to consider critically both the constructive and destructive trajectory that social change appears to have been following for more than two centuries, irrespective of whether the resulting prospect is to our liking or not. In this context, the classical critical theorists of the early Frankfurt School, especially Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, pursued what turned out to be an evolving interest in rackets, the authoritarian personality, and the administered society – concepts that served as foils for delineating the kind of theoretical stance that is becoming more and more important as we are moving into an increasingly uncertain future.

To elucidate issues involved in the problem of scale, in particular the relations, analytical and dialectical, among first-person experiences of theorist and theorist’s object-complex of individual actor, group, society, motives and causes, intended and unintended effects, and so forth, as these experiences are manifest in an aesthetics of the judicial moment of perception, and enunciated as first-person accounts directly or indirectly, of third-person accounts, sometimes via explicit but usually via virtual or even vicarious second-person accounting practices.

Discussion begins with some classical formulations by neo-Kantian theorists (Simmel, Durkheim, Weber) regarding relations of “individual and society.” Brief citations of various twentieth century responses to the problem of scale follow. Attention then becomes more intensively focused on the basic problem of first-person experience and accounts with respect to the problem of scale, using Coleman’s “foundations” work as guidepost for navigating issues of effects of cognition, consciousness, and action in still mostly obscure processes of aggregation. This leads to explication of the thesis of “impossible individuality,” in present-day theoretical contexts and in the context of post-Kantian romanticism, with special attention to Hölderlin and the feeling/knowing dialectic, Benjamin’s treatment of temporality with respect to metrics of history, and the question what it means to “theorize with intent.”

The discussion ends with some tentative resolutions and several lacunae and aporia which are integral to the current face of the problem of scale (i.e., processes of aggregation, etc.).

The discussion builds upon the work of many others, with first-person illustrations.

This paper aims to discuss the notion of carnival laughter in Bakhtin's examination of Rabelais's literary works. The paper suggests that what may be called, after Rabelais, the agélaste ethos, the ethos of the men and women without laughter, remains a strong influence in some domains of critical management studies (CMS) as well as mainstream organization theory.

The literature review discusses Russian literature theorist Mikhail Bakhtin's analysis of the writings of François Rabelais and related his concept of the agélaste to contemporary social and organization theory.

Some proponents of CMS praise the critical thinking and the outlook on society established by its foundational writers Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse. As a consequence, CMS tends to exclude the sources of joy, laughter and transgression and regard such social and human gestures and events as being frivolous and ephemeral. Therefore, CMS remains trapped within its own sphere of critical thinking and fails to address and understand significant components of everyday life.

The paper suggests that the notion of “critique” needs to be explored within the community of CMS researchers.

Discusses the concept of critique so central for both the CMS tradition of thinking and other domains of management studies in new terms.

Age-related processes are marked by physiological, psychological and social decline, threatening health, quality of life, functional status and the mobility of individuals. As the impact of demographic change also begins to affect persons with intellectual disabilities (ID), issues and needs regarding the aging process are slowly entering the field of ID research. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In the population of older people with ID, important, age-related events such as falls have prompted increasing research. Falls may lead to several negative health outcomes, require that an individual receives higher levels of care sometimes including hospitalisation and, in the worst case, hasten death. Falls also lead to psychological consequences such as fear of falling which fuels a vicious circle in which older persons afraid of falling reduce their physical activity, in turn hastening their functional decline.

Fall prevention in persons with ID is just evolving and further research is clearly necessary. This research can draw on the existing evidence from other fall prevention areas, especially the work carried out with the general older population.

As stated by Finlayson, a useful next step would be the development of a consensus on the definitions and methodology that should underpin future fall prevention research with persons with ID.