WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE? THE NATURE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THEISTIC BELIEF

Theism is often supposed to be distinguished from atheism by the heavy weight of metaphysical belief that it carries. This paper argues that this is not as illuminating a way of distinguishing the theist's from the atheist's outlook as is often supposed. The key divergence consists not so much in matters of theoretical belief or philosophical argument as in practical differences in affective response and in the adoption of certain models for living. Two characteristically religious virtues, humility and hope, and two distinctively religious responses, awe and thanksgiving, are discussed in order to illustrate this. The paper's conclusion, while not denying a cognitive core to theism, argues that warranted assent to the metaphysical truth of God's existence cannot be a precondition for theistic hermeneusis and praxis. 1     

A FIELD STUDY OF APPLICANT REACTIONS TO EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES: DOES THE RECRUITER MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

Previous cross-sectional field and laboratory research has provided mixed results as to whether recruiter characteristics and behaviors influence applicant reactions to employment opportunities. The present research was conducted to examine the effect of recruiter characteristics using a pre-post study design in a naturally occurring setting. In addition, the effects of several potential moderators on recruiter influence were tested. Results indicated that recruiter characteristics had an impact on perceived job attributes, regard for job and company, and likelihood of joining the company. There was little evidence that the effect of recruiter characteristics was moderated by selected applicant, job, or interviewer variables.     

ASKING AND INSISTING AFTER A REFUSAL: HOW DO 6- TO 7-YEAR-OLDS PROCEED?*

What changes take place in request production between the ages of 6 and 7? In other words, what do children ask for, whom do they ask, and how do they formulate their requests? Twenty children, native French-speaking children divided into 2 age groups (6 and 7 year old) were asked to complete 2-character comic-strip stories where the hero either made a request to a friend or an enemy. Requests were for action or for information. In both age groups, children tend to use the direct form and embedded imperatives more often when the hero addressed a friend. Hints were employed more frequently when addressing an enemy. Requests for action were expressed primarily in both groups through direct requests, embedded imperatives and hints, whereas requests for information tended to take form of question directives. Surprisingly, 6-year-olds produced more indirect requests than the 7-year-olds, and particularly produced more question directives and hints. Reformulations in the 6-year-old group consisted of repeating the first request, whereas the 7-year-old group evidenced clear ability to produce a variety of reformulations. These results form the basis for a psychological interpretation of earlier findings. Discussion enters on children's ability to link linguistic form of request to the social features of production situation.     

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ABSENTEEISM AND TURNOVER: A FUNCTION OF THE MEASURES?

Several investigations have examined the relationship between absenteeism and turnover. These behaviors have been variously found to be correlated positively, negatively, or not at all. The present investigation studied this relationship using multiple measures of both absenteeism and turnover. The findings showed that different types of relationships were present depending on the measures used. A search for invariant relationships, using mutually exclusive models, does not seem useful. The absenteeism-turnover relationship appears to be a variable process over time, people, situations, and measures.     

PERCEPTIONS OF TRUST AND EMPLOYEES’ ATTITUDES: A LOOK AT NIGERIA’S AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION WORKERS

This study examined the attitude reactions to trust among coworkers and between employees and management. Sample included 296 extension personnel drawn from two Agricultural Development Programs in southwest Nigeria. Exploratory principal component factor analysis showed that the perceptions of trust have the dimensions of: management-affective, coworkers-affective, management-cognitive, and coworkers-cognitive. Based on a hierarchical regression procedure, coworkers-cognitive trust was unrelated to group cohesion and affective commitment, and coworkers-affective, management-affective and -cognitive trusts were related to cohesion and affective commitment. Quit intentions was predicted by coworkers-cognitive, management-affective and -cognitive trusts, and not by coworkers-affective trust. Implications of the results are discussed.I would like to appreciate the efforts of Helen Asishana and T. Amore during the data collection phase of this study. Also, the author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

WHOSE RIGHTS,AND WHAT's THE DIFFERENCE? A CRITIQUE OF BETH SINGER'S “HUMAN RIGHTS: SOME CURRENT ISSUES”

Abstract: In this article I argue against the rights‐based framework defining the abortion debate, and do so by considering the views of Beth Singer, a philosopher whose work conveys a broadly pragmatist formulation of traditional rights‐based language. Although Singer's schema presents a fruitful vantage point from which to consider the abortion question through the discourse of rights, even Singer's use of the language of rights ultimately fails adequately to address the subject. I challenge Singer's view by taking up John Dewey's concept of reflective morality, elucidated in his 1932 Ethics.     

‘THE TURBAN IS NOT A HAT’: QUEER DIASPORA AND PRACTICES OF PROFILING

This article examines two facets of post 9–11 South Asian organizing in the US – that of South Asian queer diasporics and of Sikh Americans. Ironically, South Asian queer diasporic subjects are under even greater duress to produce themselves as exceptional American subjects, not necessarily as heteronormative but as homonormative, even as the queernesses of these very bodies are simultaneously used to pathologize populations of terrorist look-a-like bodies. As contagions that trouble the exceptionalisms of queer South Asian diasporas, male turbaned Sikh bodies, often mistaken for Muslim terrorist bodies, are read as patriarchal by queer diasporic logics and placed within heteronormative victimology narratives by Sikh American advocacy groups focused on redressing the phenomenon of ‘mistaken identity’. Both the queer diasporic and Sikh American logics are indebted to visual representations of corporeality. Hence, I re-read these bodies as affectively troubling – generating affective confusion and indeterminancy – in terms of ontology, tactility, and the combination of organic and non-organic matter. Reading turbans through affect challenges both the limits of queer diasporic identity that balks at the non-normativity of the turbaned body (even as it avows the pathological racial-sexual renderings of terrorist bodies) while simultaneously infusing the ‘mistaken identity’ debates with different methods of comprehending the susceptibility of these bodies beyond heteronormative victimology narratives.     

TO MAKE SPANISH A SACRED LANGUAGE: WRITING AND THE CRYPTO‐JEWISH ALLEGORY IN SABINA BERMAN’S LA BOBE

The prominent Jewish‐Mexican author Sabina Berman explores her relationship to Judaism in the semi‐autobiographical novel La Bobe (1990; Bubbeh, 1998) via a loving portrait her grandmother. Undeterred by her Ashkenazi background, Berman employs a Crypto‐Jewish allegory in her portrayal of the grandmother. Through this allegory, Berman is able to restructure Jewish identity as female centered and mouldable. The allegory also opens up a tradition of women’s religious knowledge and prayer that becomes the foundation of the narrator’s future as a Jewish‐Mexican writer. In her narrative, Berman argues for a spiritual identity based not on strict observance of ritual form but on the devotion with which the rituals are undertaken, be they the transmission of a sacred text, the performance of domestic chores, or the writing of stories and plays.     

OAKESHOTT ON THE CHARACTER OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: NEED THERE BE A CONFLICT BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION?

Michael Oakeshott reflected on the character of religious experience in various writings throughout his life. In Experience and Its Modes (1933) he analyzed science as a distinctive “mode,” or account of experience as a whole, identifying those assumptions necessary for science to achieve its coherent account of experience in contrast to other modes of experience whose quests for coherence depend on different assumptions. Religious experience, he thought, was integral to the practical mode. The latter experiences the world as interminable tension between what is and what ought to be. The question, Is there a conflict between science and religion? is, in Oakeshott's approach, the question, Is there a conflict between the scientific mode of experience and the practical mode? Insofar as we tend to treat every question as a practical one, these questions seem to make sense. But Oakeshott's analysis leads to the view that scientific experience and religious experience are categorically different accounts of experience abstracted from the whole of experience. They are voices of experience that may speak to each other, but they are not ordered hierarchically. Nor can either absorb the other without insoluble contradictions.