Search results

In a world that glorifies power, the lives of the powerless serve as context for testimonies of salvation that in their pretentiousness more often reinforce the reputation and self-esteem of the powerful hero than transform the lives of the oppressed. Whereas these types of popular human-interest stories may raise awareness of the conditions surrounding the powerless, they do little more than advance the notion that these individuals are without hope and must rely solely on the generosity, resources, and leadership of the powerful populations by which they are exploited. We seek to offer a contrasting perspective in this chapter. That is, we present a framework that challenges messianic notions of leaders of ineffectual populations and presses forth with the idea that powerlessness is a more common condition than feeling powerful and that only the powerless can alter their destiny.

The current paper seeks to bring the political perspective to gender differences in promotion decisions, a phenomenon with great longevity in research and practice. Specifically, the degree to which gender role‐congruent and counterstereotypical influence behavior is related to liking as moderated by political skill.

Using a sample of n=136, these hypotheses were tested in retail organizations in the Northeast and Southwest.

Political skill significantly moderates the relationship between ingratiation and liking, such that use of ingratiation was positively related to liking when women were high in political skill. However, the relationship between assertiveness and liking was unchanged by political skill level and was unrelated to liking. Liking was consistently found to be positively related to promotability ratings.

Questionnaire data collection is used exclusively; however, the subordinate and supervisor data were collected at two different times.

The results are relevant for employees in that they imply a need for them to be cognizant of their behavior as it relates to social role expectations and for supervisors to understand the factors that could contribute to lower ratings.

The current results suggest that gender role‐congruent influence behavior is positively related to socially relevant evaluations (i.e. liking); thus, women whose behavior is consistent with social expectations may be more positively evaluated.

This study provides a political explanation for differences in women's promotability and also investigates mechanisms that may be related to reducing promotability disparity.

LISA (Library and Information Science Abstracts on CD‐ROM) will no longer be produced by SilverPlatter; it is being replaced by Bowker‐Saur's LISA Plus. The two products are compared with regard to the user interface software, particularly from the aspects of functionality and ease of use. It is concluded that, from this viewpoint, the change may not be an entirely welcome one.

Measures of risk employed in mental health settings in the last 20 years have consisted of clinical scales that comprise both historical and clinical factors. Examples of such tools include the widely used HCR‐20 (Webster et al, 1997), SVR‐20 (Boer et al, 1997) and VRS (Wong & Gordon, 2000). Such tools are time‐intensive and, in the main, completed by an independent rater. At present there is a lack of systems to guide teams to investigate salient risk factors related to mental state and violent offending that inform treatment effectiveness, change and, ultimately, risk assessment decisions. This paper describes the application of such a system. The Standard Goal Attainment Scaling for Sex Offenders (GAS‐S) (Hogue, 1994) has been modified for use with violent offenders and is presented herewith. Application of the tool to the Violent Offender Treatment Programme (VOTP) is discussed, alongside its potential usefulness in informing risk assessment and the effectiveness of treatment intervention.

This paper explores four works of contemporary fiction to illuminate formal and informal regulation of sex. The paper’s co-authors frame analysis with the story of their creation of a transdisciplinary course, entitled “Regulating Sex: Historical and Cultural Encounters,” in which students mined literature for social critique, became immersed in the study of law and its limits, and developed increased sensitivity to power, its uses, and abuses. The paper demonstrates the value theoretically and pedagogically of third-wave feminisms, wild zones, and contact zones as analytic constructs and contends that including sex and sexualities in conversations transforms personal experience, education, society, and culture, including law.

This chapter examines the differing ways in which the criminal responsibility of children has been understood in English and Australian common law. The doctrine of “doli incapax” has for many centuries worked to establish a presumption in law that children between the ages of around 10 and 14 are incapable of forming criminal intent, unless it can be shown that they are capable of ‘guilty knowledge’ about their actions. In this approach, children are presumed to be ‘naughty’ until it can be shown that they are ‘bad’. However, events such as the murder of James Bulger in 1993 have led to the abolition of the doctrine in the UK, and its questioning in Australia. The chapter will outline how and why the law’s distinction between adults and children in relation to crime has become unstable, and explain the implications of the legal conception of childhood for the sociology of childhood more broadly. It will also explore how a closer look at the history of the doli incapax presumption sheds considerable light on the central and active role played by the judiciary and the legal profession, as opposed to other social and professional groups, in the development of a particular legal construction of childhood.