Showing papers on "Value (ethics) published in 1990"

Long-term studies in ecology : approaches and alternatives

Abstract: I Overview and Alternative Approaches.- 1. Importance and Justification of Long-Term Studies in Ecology.- 2. Objective and Experiment in Long-Term Research.- 3. Retrospective Studies.- 4. The Role of Ecological Models in Long-Term Ecological Studies.- 5. Space-for-Time Substitution as an Alternative to Long-Term Studies.- 6. Ecological Experimentation: Strengths and Conceptual Problems.- 7. Additional Views Conditions and Motivations for Long-Term Ecological Research: Some Notions from Studies on Salt Marshes and Elsewhere 158.- Evaluating National Parks as Sites for Long-Term Studies.- The Value of Long-Term Experiments-A Personal View.- II Analyses, Conclusions, and Recommendations.- 8. What Questions, Systems, or Phenomena Warrant Long-Term Ecological Study?.- 9. How Can the Various Approaches to Studying Long-Term Ecological Phenomena Be Integrated to Maximize Understanding?.- 10. What Are the Difficulties in Establishing and Interpreting the Results from a Long-Term Manipulation?.- 11. How Far in Space and Time Can the Results from a Single Long-Term Study Be Extrapolated?.- 12. Are Currently Available Statistical Methods Adequate for Long-Term Studies?.- 13. How Can We Improve the Reception of Long-Term Studies in Ecology?.- 14. What Are the Tradeoffs Between the Immediacy of Management Needs and the Longer Process of Scientific Discovery?.- III Concluding Remarks.- 15. Concluding Remarks.

Signatures of the Visible

Abstract: In "Signatures of the Visible", one of America's most influential critics explores film and its culture, interrogating the relationship between the imaginative screen world and the historical world onto which it is projected. Beginning with his essay "Reunification and Utopia in Mass Culture", Jameson questions the critical-utopian potential of film in our commodified culture, where contests over value, desire, and power increasingly take place in the realm of the visual. In the postmodern world, asks Jameson, can the filmic form replace the novel as the predominant instrument for exploring social reality and social evolution? Jamesons's premise here is that of his previous literary investigations: history is transmitted through form itself, not content. By seeking the historical dimension of the visual in "Signatures of the Visible", he evaluates the power of the filmic form as a vehicle for the critique of culture and the diagnosis of social life.

The Spiritual Life of Children

Abstract: My Personal Review: I read this book from a point-of-view more interested from a theological than psychological (not that these have to be kept separate), and I suspect that EVERYONE who studies theology could benefit from listening to children describe their own spiritualities. Coles narration is occasionally insightful, occasionally annoying, always self-conscious. He interviews children alone and in groups, listening and participating in their reflections and conversations. He interviews various races and religions, including chapters on Christian, Jewish, Islamic and secular children in America, the UK, Tunisia and Israel. I found his interviews with Hopi children very provocative. The book has both intellectual and spiritual value, and I hope it is read more widely than it has been.

The power of product integrity.

Abstract: In the dictionary, integrity means wholeness, completeness, soundness. In products, integrity is the source of sustainable competitive advantage. Products with integrity perform superbly, provide good value, and satisfy customers' expectations in every respect, including such intangibles as their look and feel. Consider this example from the auto industry. In 1987, Mazda put a racy four-wheel steering system in a five-door family hatchback. Honda introduced a comparable system in the Prelude, a sporty, two-door coupe. Most of Honda's customers installed the new technology; Mazda's system sold poorly. Potential customers felt the fit--or misfit--between the car and the new component, and they responded accordingly. Companies that consistently develop products with integrity are coherent, integrated organizations. This internal integrity is visible at the level of strategy and structure, in management and organization, and in the skills, attitudes, and behavior of individual designers, engineers, and operators. Moreover, these companies are integrated externally: customers become part of the development organization. Integrity starts with a product concept that describes the new product from the potential customer's perspective--"pocket rocket" for a sporty, subcompact car, for example. Whether the final product has integrity will depend on two things: how well the concept satisfies potential customers' wants and needs and how completely the concept has been embodied in the product's details. In the most successful development organizations, "heavyweight" product managers are responsible for leading both tasks, as well as for guiding the creation of a strong product concept.

Political awareness, elite opinion leadership, and the mass survey response

Abstract: Political awareness affects virtually every aspect of citizens' political attitudes and voting behavior. Among its effects are greater attitude stability, greater ideological consistency, and greater support for a nation's “mainstream” values. Yet there exists no comprehensive explanation of why political awareness has the pervasive effects that it has. Nor is there agreement on how the concept of political awareness should be conceptualized and measured. This article addresses both concerns. First, it draws on ideas from voting, belief-system, and other studies to develop a general theory of the effects of awareness. This account centers on how citizens use cues and other information from political elites to translate their general value orientations into support for particular polices. Second, the article argues that, on both theoretical and empirical grounds, political awareness is best measured by simple tests of factual information about politics.

Adding Value to Leadership Gets Extraordinary Results

Abstract: I n 1978 James MacGregor Bums proposed a theory of leadership that has shaped new understand ings of leadership practice. According to Burns, leadership is exercised when persons with certain motives and pur= poses mobilize resources so as to arouse and satisfy the motives of fol: lowers. He identified two broad kinds of leadership, transactional and trans formative. Transactional leadership fo cuses on basic and largely extrinsic motives and needs; transformative, on higher-order, intrinsic, and, ultimately, moral motives and needs This latter point is important to understanding Bums's theory Transformative leader ship is first concerned with higherorder psychological needs for esteem, autonomy, and self-actualization and. then, with moral questions of goodness, righteousness, duty, and obligation. In his groundbreaking examination of the moral dimension in manage ment and motivation, Amitai Etzioni (1988) provides a compelling case for moral authority as a source of motiva tion and a basis for management Etz ioni acknowledges the importance of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation but goes further Ultimately, he contends, what counts most to people is what they believe, how they feel, and the shared norms and cultural messages that emerge from the groups and com;

Plural and Conflicting Values

Abstract: SECTION I: Plurality and choice Monism, pluralism, and conflict Conflict Maximization Ought and can Act and agent evaluations SECTION II: Akrasia: The unity of the good, commensurability, and comparability Courage, the doctrine of the mean, and the possibility of emotional and evaluative coherence Dirty hands and ordinary life Dirty hands and conflicts of value and desires in Aristotle's ethics Friendship and morality: some difficult relations Some problems with counter-examples in ethics

After Virtue? Accounting as a Moral and Discursive Practice

Abstract: Alasdair MacIntyre′s book After Virtue is used as the basis to reflect on possibilities for virtue in accounting and some problems in its realisation. MacIntyre advances a neo‐Aristotelean account of virtue that is grounded in practice and which focuses on the unique internal rewards of a practice. Accounting is suggested to be a practice in this sense and five possible internal rewards are identified: honesty, concern for the economic status of others, sensitivity to the value of both co‐operation and conflict, the communicative character of accounting practice, and the dissemination of economic information. Several potential problems in realising virtue are then discussed including the tendency for external rewards to dominate internal rewards, the corrupting power of institutions, and a confusion between laws (rules) and virtues.

Long-wave rhythms in economic development and political behavior

Abstract: Is economic development a "random walk" or do underlying rhythms and cycles make it possible to anticipate long-term trends? Many social scientists have rejected the notion of long-term periodicity in economic trends. Now, after extensive analysis of economic data, distinguished scholar Brian J. L. Berry has found new evidence for the reliability-- and the value-- of "long-wave" theory. In "Long-Wave Rhythms in Economic Development and Political Bahavior", Berry argues that the synchronization of long waves and growth cycles is "more than a figment of some overactive imagination". Presenting his findings graphically, he argues that there is persuasive evidence of the existence of "deterministic chaos". Applying his analysis of rates of change to the economic phenomena of prices (Kondratiev cycles) and growth (Kuznets cycles), he discovers that pairs of 25-year growth cycles are embedded within 55-year long waves. As a result, Berry concludes, two different kinds of growth cycles-- one inflationary and the other deflationary-- form a complementary pattern of alternating crises with stagflation and depression. Berry also explores the "shifting sand" of cyclical phenomena in the stock market, voting behavior, the incidence of wars, the rise and fall of great powers, and mass psychologies. While avoiding dogmatic conclusions, he offers a provocative discussion of the long-wave context of social phenomena. As he examines the American economy in long-wave context, Berry optimistically asserts that the "bust" is not inevitable. Technological advances in information transfer enable leaders and organizations to anticipate and alleviate the adverse effects of economic cycles. "Like it or not", he writes, "our lives appear to be embedded in a higher order of complexity: collectively, we are a societal organism that displays self-regulating fluctuations around a path of growth."

The Implications of Nonvoting for Democracy in the United States

Abstract: This paper reconsiders several of the arguments normative theorists have constructed about political participation's impact on the democratic polity. Two key arguments are addressed in the context of the United States today: (1) does nonvoting pose a threat to democracy; and (2) does nonvoting cause skewed public policies? The CPS's National Election Studies, NORC's 1985 General Social Survey, and Gallup's 1987 "The People, Press, and Politics" poll indicate the first can be answered in the negative, but there may be some skews on domestic issues, particularly those dealing with spending for welfare state programs. On the other hand, nonvoters are not more egalitarian or in favor of government ownership or control of industry. Nonetheless, it would be erroneous to discount participation's worth for democratic politics because, if it makes elites pay attention to public opinion, its value is firmly established.

The Creation and Destruction of Value

Abstract: Science characteristically pursues general- izations thought to approximate eternal truths. Thus, a science of values would be expected to specify the natural laws that govern human values and their effects on action. But research in psychology suggests that values are often contextually determined, sociohistorical phenomena that can be created or destroyed by the very beings whose be- havior is guided by them. Historical change in human values changes the social institutions that embody these values and help individuals pursue them. When social institutions are transformed in this way, it becomes easy to mistake contingent, cultural truths for eternal, natural ones. Science tends to tell people that what is the case must be the case because it is the result of natural law. Applied to human values, such a message has significant normative consequences, affecting people's conceptions of what is possible and thus their aspirations and plans. The task of a "science" of values should instead be to make the historical contingency of values clear, thus encouraging discussion of what values people ought to have and what social arrangements would best contribute to the devel. opment of those values.

Good Intentions Aside: A Manager's Guide to Resolving Ethical Problems

Abstract: Good Intentions Aside addresses the theoretical and practical issues of recognizing and responding to ethical dilemmas. By looking at numerous instances in which individuals face tough moral choices at work, Laura Nash provides managers with real-world problems that make clear the link between good ethics and good business. She shows managers how to get back in touch with their commonsense standards of integrity by providing a set of conceptual tasks and practical questions that help them take a fresh look at their own business thinking. Drawing on extensive interviews with scores of managers, Nash identifies the two primary reasons why well-intentioned people do not always maintain high personal standards in the workplace: traditional management assumptions about the goals of business, and habitual patterns of problem solving that tend to obstruct ethical thinking. The solution, according to Nash, is for managers to adopt a new framework that focuses on providing value to others. By making social relationships the top priority in decision making, managers can act on their good intentions without sacrificing strong economic performance.

Identity, consciousness, and value

Abstract: The topic of personal identity has prompted some of the liveliest and most interesting debates in recent philosophy. In a fascinating new contribution to the discussion, Peter Unger presents a psychologically aimed, but physically based, account of our identity over time. While supporting the account, he explains why many influential contemporary philosophers have underrated the importance of physical continuity to our survival, casting a new light on the work of Lewis, Nagel, Nozick, Parfit, Perry, Shoemaker, and others. Deriving from his discussion of our identity itself, Unger produces a novel but commonsensical theory of the relations between identity and some of our deepest concerns. In a conservative but flexible spirit, he explores the implications of his theory for questions of value and of the good life.

Value and Justification: The Foundations of Liberal Theory

Abstract: This important new book takes as its points of departure two questions: What is the nature of valuing? and What morality can be justified in a society that deeply disagrees on what is truly valuable? In Part One, the author develops a theory of value that attempts to reconcile reason with passions. Part Two explores how this theory of value grounds our commitment to moral action. The author argues that rational moral action can neither be seen as a way of simply maximising one's own values, nor derived from reason independent of one's values. Rather, our commitment to the moral point of view is presupposed by our value systems. The book concludes with a defense of liberal political morality.

Major Accomplishments and Future Directions in Early Childhood Mainstreaming

Abstract: Major accomplishments and future directions in the concept and practice of early childhood mainstreaming are discussed. A convergence among the three major themes of influence of (a) public policy, (b) educational practice, and (c) developmental principles and research are noted in relation to the value of fully mainstreamed programs. Specific discussions focus on the topics of implementation, the perspectives of parents, and the development of friendships and peer relations in mainstreamed settings. The importance of establishing a developmental framework and collaborating with the early childhood community are emphasized.

Rhetoric, textuality, and the postmodern turn in sociological theory

Abstract: During the past decade the "rhetorical turn" has become an important intellectual movement in the human sciences. It has become a commonplace that social and cultural reality, and the social sciences themselves, are linguistic constructions. Not only is society viewed increasingly as a text, but scientific texts themselves are seen as rhetorical constructions. In this rhetorical view, reality and truth are formed through practices of representation and interpretation by rhetors and their publics. This view can be located in the contexts of poststructuralism, critical rhetoric of inquiry, and the social construction (and reconstruction) of science. All these tendencies of thought reject the simple of bifurcation of reason and persuasion, or of thought and its expression. Instead, knowledge is viewed as poetically and politically constituted, "made" by human communicative action that develops historically and is institutionalized politically. In this view, realistic representations become true descriptions not by correspondence to noumenal objects, but by conformity to orthodox practices of writing and reading. Thus theories can be seen as the practices through which things take on meaning and value, and not merely as representations of a reality that is wholly exterior to them. Indeed, insofar as a theoretical representation is regarded as objectively true, it is viewed in that way because its methods of construction have become so familiar that they operate transparently (Shapiro 1988, p. XI). For example, if we

Individual Freedom as a Social Commitment

Abstract: (a) as a central value in social appraisal, and (b) as an undetach able product of social arrangements. For normative analysis of con temporary society, this perspective has, I believe, some significant merits over other approaches (e.g. utilitarian calculus). And it can also have far-reaching implications on the assessment of social institutions and public policy. While I shall try to discuss the basic ideas underlying individual freedom seen as a social commitment, my primary concern in this article is with the practical relevance of this view. I shall attempt to illustrate the implications of this view with actual real-life problems. Many of the examples chosen will involve economic phenomena. This will be so not just because I happen to be primarily an economist by profession (though often taking the liberty of jumping into ethical debates), but also because I believe that economic analysis has some thing to contribute to substantive ethics in the world in which we live. Some of the most distressing problems of social ethics are deeply economic in nature. In this context, perhaps I would be forgiven for

Explaining Administrative Process: Normative, Positive, and Critical Stories of Legal Development

Abstract: Answers to these questions abound in the legal literature. In an influential article, Stewart argues, for example, that much of modern American administrative law is constructed to facilitate pluralist participation in administrative decision-making. More recently, Sunstein (1986) has argued that administrative law is designed to promote the republican value of deliberative rationality and to limit the influence of special-interest pleading. Indeed, the legal literature bristles with claims concerning the purposes of administrative process and processes, ranging from "fairness" to "efficiency" and utilizing a host of other ideas as well-"openness," "accountability," "legitimacy," and "rationality," to name but a few. There has been little attention to the structure of these claims. This

Aristotle and the Value of Political Participation

Abstract: What value should we place on political activity? Is it intrinsically valuable, engaged in for its own sake as part of the good life, as essential to complete development as a human being? Is it, on the other hand, an evil to be avoided at all costs or at best engaged in as a necessary means toward other, nonpolitical goals? Where did Aristotle stand on this issue? He is often seen as supporting the view that politics and political activity belong to the good life itself. This appears implicit, for example, is his doctrine that man is a political animal, in his concept of political rule as the alternation of ruling and being ruled among equals, and in his definition of citizenship as having a share in deliberative and judicial office.' On the other hand, there are parts of Aristotle that appear to support withdrawal from politics or at least reluctant participation. In both Ethics, he argues for the supremacy of philosophical contemplation and clearly prefers the life of the philosopher over the life of the statesman, arguments that are repeated in the Politics. Leisure, not political activity, is the ethical goal to be pursued by his ideal state. If someone of outstanding ability appears, the virtuous citizen will willingly surrender power to him, without, it appears, any loss of virtue or happiness.2 As we shall see, neither of these interpretations is wholly sustainable, and each, as Aristotle himself might have said, has something to contribute to the truth. Aristotle does not reject the whole of ethical and political life in favor of philosophy; but neither is he a wholehearted advocate of political participation as essential for happiness.

The role of intimate others in medical decision making.

Abstract: Individual autonomy has been a fulcrum of bioethical debate since the 1950s and 1960s, and a guiding idea behind a diverse body of bioethics literature. Dominant ideas, such as individual autonomy, pose the risk of creating conventional categories of thought to which society becomes wedded. Such categories may ignore central aspects of moral experience, thereby fostering illusions that become difficult to dispel. Intimate associations are one domain of moral experience that may elude the world of value delimited by a traditional autonomy model.

Composition Theory in the Eighties: Axiological Consensus and Paradigmatic Diversity.

Abstract: In 1979, in a CCC article, I discussed four conflicting views about the ends of teaching composition, views which I called "philosophies of composition." Adapting the perspective of M. H. Abrams in The Mirror and the Lamp, I asserted that composition teachers, textbooks, and curricula could privilege any element in a communicative transaction and generate a "philosophy" of composition. I need here to summarize that article briefly. Readers familiar with it are invited to skip the next three paragraphs. If one privileges the text in a communicative transaction, I said, one adopts a formalist philosophy of composition. If the writer, an expressive philosophy. If the external reality, a mimetic philosophy. If the reader, a rhetorical philosophy. Each philosophy represents a view of the "end" composition values. Formalists value specified formal features, most often correctness at the sentence level, but conceivably a privileged style of sentence or a structure for a paragraph, or even the five-paragraph format for a paper. Expressivists value openness, honesty, sincerity, originality, authentic voice, and personal topics for writing. Mimeticists value accuracy of information, sound logic, and "truth" in prose (perhaps the best illustration being a "traditional" technical writing class). Finally, rhetoricists value "effectiveness," audience awareness, per-

Music as Culture: Toward a Multicultural Concept of Arts Education

Abstract: What is "music"? What is "painting"? What is "dance"? According to The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy,1 music and painting (and so on) are a priori "fine arts." Hence, the nature of music is considered to lie in "works of art" generally and in "classics" particularly: that is, works deemed noteworthy on the basis of their "established status as enduring points of reference in our culture."2 Thus, to E. D. Hirsch and his colleagues, the value of music and painting (and so on) is twofold: they "are not just occasions for private appreciation and enrichment ... but also indispensable symbols of our national existence. ... not just objects for private pleasure and contemplation, but essential symbols that have helped define what we collectively are."3 Included among Hirsch's indispensable symbols of American life (posited as information that "every American needs to know") are the following: Debussy's La Mer, Picasso's Guernica, Rodin's The Thinker, Bach's Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring, Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," and "The Road to Zanzibar," starring Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Dorothy Lamour.4 To many people, Hirsch's concepts have the ring of "common sense." Indeed, people frequently conceive music, painting (and so on) in terms of products, pieces, objects, or works and will no doubt continue to do so for some time. Moreover, it would be difficult to deny Hirsch's claim that people use "art" to embody and transmit "culture": "the sum of attitudes, customs, and beliefs that distinguishes one group of people from another."5 The proof of this lies in the fact that although every culture has something we might reasonably call "music," for example, music is not a unitary phenomenon. People do not immediately understand, appreciate, or enjoy "the music" of other cultures. On the contrary, people within cultures and between cultures frequently speak in terms of "our" music and "their"

Religion and the Secularization of Bioethics

Abstract: The occasion of this special supplement on religion and bioethics serves to remind me, once again, that the field of bioethics as we now know it is a creature of its time and history. It grew up during the 1960s and 1970s in an era of affluence and social utopianism, in a culture that was experimenting with an expansive array of newly found rights and unprecedented opportunities for personal freedom, and in the context of a national history that has long struggled to find the right place for religion in its public life. For medicine it was a time that combined magnificent theoretical and clinical achievements with uncommonly difficult moral problems, many of them bearing on the self-identity and goals of medicine. The story of contemporary bioethics turns on the way in which those problems intersected with, and whose understanding was shaped by, that larger temporal and social context. The most striking change over the past two decades or so has been the secularization of bioethics. The field has moved from one dominated by religious and medical traditions to one now increasingly shaped by philosophical and legal concepts. The consequence has been a mode of public discourse that emphasizes secular themes: universal rights, individual self-direction, procedural justice, and a systematic denial of either a common good or a transcendent individual good. Let me, if I may, use myself as an illustration of this trend, as well as an example of some considerable uneasiness left in its wake. When I first became interested in bioethics in the mid-1960s, the only resources were theological or those drawn from within the traditions of medicine, themselves heavily shaped by religion. one way, that situation was congenial enough. I was through much of the 1960s a religious person and had no trouble bringing that perspective to bear on the newly emergent issues of bioethics. But that was not to be finally adequate for me. Two personal items were crucial. My religious belief was by then beginning to decline, and by the end of the decade had all but disappeared. My academic training, moreover, was that of analytic philosophy, and I wanted to bring that work to bear on bioethics. Was it not obvious, I thought, that moral philosophy, with its historical dedication to finding a rational foundation for ethics, was well suited to biomedical ethics, particularly in a pluralistic society? Just as I had found I did not need religion for my personal life, why should biomedicine need it for its collective moral life? The answer to that last question has been less obvious than I originally thought. If my life has been, in a way, relieved by the absence of religion as a guiding force, I cannot say that it has been enriched or that I am a better person for that, Nor can it be said, I think, that biomedical ethics is demonstrably more robust and satisfying as a result of its abandonment of religion. To say that of course is not to make a case for the validity of religion, which must be made on its own merits, not on its potential contribution to bioethics. Some nineteenth century thinkers, we might recall, came to think that, although religion was false as a way of understanding the world, it was socially useful to sustain as a source of discipline and political stability. There was always something slightly cynical in that view, and doubly so because it was meant to strengthen the hand of those in authority. Nonetheless, it is not necessary to entertain such a position to recognize that, whatever the ultimate truth status of religious perspectives, they have provided a way of looking at the world and understanding one's own life that has a fecundity and uniqueness not matched by philosophy, law, or political theory. Those of us who have lost our religious faith may be glad that we have discovered what we take to be the reality of things, but we can still recognize that we have also lost something of great value as well: the faith, vision, insights, and experience of whole peoples and traditions who, no less than we unbelievers, struggled to make sense of things. …

The Italian Alternative: Flexible Organization and Social Management

Abstract: Since the beginning of this century, industrial organization in the Western world has been dominated by ideas, principles, and values developed primarily in the United States. The startling success of mass production techniques, exemplified by the Ford assembly lines of the model T car and used throughout American industry to help the American war effort in the last World War, were compelling reasons for the spread of an American "model" of industrial organization based on large-scale, mass-producing, integrated firms. Speaking of an American model is, of course, an oversimplification. For a long time (and even now), for example, large industrial firms supplying mass markets have coexisted with small firms supplying limited market niches (Granovetter, 1984) in what has been called "economic dualism" (Berger and Piore, 1980). Yet the contribution of small firms to the American economy is quite limited. Only 25.3 percent of its industrial labor force worked in plants with less than one hundred employees in 1977, compared to 58.4 percent in Japan, in 1978 (Granovetter, 1984) and 50.5 percent in Italy, in 1971 (Weiss, 1984). It is also the mass-scale model of production that was (and still is) idealized by many economists as the "modern" sector of the industry as opposed to the "traditional" sector of small firms. And it is the "modern" rather than the "traditional" sector that has typically attracted most of the interest of teachers and researchers of management and organization. The model is driven by the basic value of rational, economic efficiency achieved by the systematic application of Adam Smith's principles of division of labor, specialization, and standardization, which were refined by Taylor early in this century. The application of these values and principles had several consequences. It led to a search for mass markets, which was helped by the standardization of consumers' tastes (Sabel and Zeitlin, 1982), and the development of railroads (Chandler, 1977). There was a drive toward vertical integration to control supplies and distribution. There was also a drive on the part of management to control more and more a labor force reluctant to accept the de-skilling inherent in Smith and Taylor's principles (Noble, 1986).

From Pillar To Postmodernity - the Changing Situation of Religion in Belgium

Abstract: The "pillarized" structure of Belgian society has been a frequent topic for research, but sociologists began to notice that major changes were taking place in the 1960s. In particular, decline in church attendance in Belgium was accelerating rapidly, and a style of "pick and choose" Catholicism was emerging. This pattern has been interpreted in terms of secularization on the collective and individual levels. Changes in the institutions of the Catholic Church converged with these changes in personal beliefs and practice. By contrast, many organizations associated with the Catholic pillar have survived relatively unscathed, albeit at the cost of deemphasizing their specifically Catholic identity. Indeed, the new emphasis on the generally Christian character of institutions is proving ideologically attractive. This is interpreted as evidence of declining faith in some of modernity's central values and assumptions as well as of evidence of a postmodern disposition to affirm the value of Gemeinschaft, emotion, ritual, and pilgrimage. In short, a "bricolage" of popular Catholicism is retaining the commitment of 80 percent of Belgians and, thereby, demanding a revision of crude theories of secularization.

Materialist and Postmaterialist Values and Social Structure in the Nordic Countries: A Comparative Study

Abstract: The discussion on political value change in advanced industrial society is related to the value dimension which Ronald Inglehart has conceptualized as the materialist/postmaterialist dimension. According to Inglehart, the "silent revolution" is a gradual value change from materialist to postmaterialist values, from giving greatest priority to values which reflect a preoccupation with physical sustenance and safety values towards a heavier emphasis on belonging, self-expression, and quality of life values. The explanations for the value change rest on two hypotheses which Inglehart labels the scarcity hypothesis and the socialization hypothesis. The scarcity hypothesis is based on the assumption that an individual's values reflect the socioeconomic environment. People tend to place high priority on whatever needs are in short supply. The scarcity hypothesis is, as Inglehart remarks, very similar to the diminishing marginal utility theory in economics. As the basic economic and physical security of individuals is met, values reflecting these needs are given a lower priority in relation to other, conflicting values.' From this perspective we would expect that changes in economic conditions would almost immediately cause change in value priorities. A prolonged period of economic growth and high prosperity would lead to postmaterialist values, whereas economic decline would lead to the opposite. According to the scarcity hypothesis, strong period effects should be present with regard to different generations' value priorities. The socialization hypothesis contradicts somewhat the scarcity perspective. The relationship between socioeconomic factors and individual value priorities is not one of immediate adjustment. Early socialization tends to have an impact on adult social and political values. The socialization perspective is based on the notion of a basic human personality structure which tends to crystallize before the time an individual reaches adulthood. According to this hypothesis there will be a sizable time-lag between changes in the socioeconomic environment and changes in the political value profile. Ten to fifteen years after a change in economic conditions, the age cohorts that had spent their formative years in prosperity would enter the electorate. Although Inglehart emphasizes that the theoretical framework behind the "silent revolution" is based on both hypotheses,2 most of his theoretical discussion is based on the socialization perspective, which he more specifically relates to Abraham Maslow's well-known theory of a need hierarchy underlying human motivation. Maslow's theory is based on the assumption that people tend to fulfill needs in hierarchical order. Greatest

An Encyclopaedia of Indian archaeology

Abstract: "An Encyclopaedia of Indian Archaeology" is a significant reference work on archaeology in India. It is an authoritative work of permanent value in which the knowledge and expertise of Indian archaeologists from the Archaeological Survey of India, universities and other institutes have been pooled together under the editorship of the late A. Ghosh, former Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India. The "Encyclopaedia" has been planned in an ambitious manner; it is not merely an alphabetical listing of entries with sketchy information on topics. Volume 1, which deals with certain broad subjects relating to Indian Archaeology, is divided into twenty chapters, alphabetically arranged. Each chapter is further divided into sections and subsections containing independent and self-contained essays. For example, in the chapter on "Cultures," detailed information can be found on various cultures in India; the chapter on "Basis of dating" contains articles on archaeological dating, archaeomagnetic dating, 14C radio-carbon dating, numismatic dating, palaeographic and epigraphic dating, thermoluminescent dating, etc. For those interested in getting further information on the subjects and in looking into the original sources and references, each entry also carries an exhaustive bibliography. Volume II is the Gazetteer. It contains basic data and information on all the explored and excavated sites in India along with reference to published reports and/or notices on each.