Discursive Psychology and the “New Racism”

This paper addresses a range of theoretical issues which are the topic of recent social psychological and related research concerned with the “new racism.” We critically examine examples of such research in order to explore how analyst concerns with anti-racist political activism are surreptitiously privileged in explanations of social interaction, often at the expense of and in preference to the work of examining participants' own formulations of those same activities. Such work is contrasted with an ethnomethodologically-informed, discursive psychology which seeks to the explore how participants' talk is responsively oriented to foreclosing the same sort of critique implicitly made available in new racism research as a way for speakers to account for their own and others' activities within the controversy which that same body of research seeks to settle. More specifically, we examine how the rhetorical context of controversy surrounding race and racism is imminent to the situated activities whereby speakers provide for its relevance and not, as assumed in new racism research, some independent factor affecting that interaction. Finally, we conclude with an analysis of an episode of talk recorded in a social science interview having as its topic the nature of cross-cultural contact in which the participants take up the issue of racism as a way of managing the conflicting demands with which they are confronted in accounting for their involvement as Western expatriates living in the Middle East. Throughout our analysis of these materials, the issue of racism is approached for how it features as a participant concern, raised by speakers in the course of attending to the immediate situated interactional business in which they are engaged. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Psychological Androgyny and Children’s Mental Health: A New Look with New Measures

We evaluated Bem’s (1981, 1993) thesis that psychological androgyny—perceiving the self to possess characteristics of both genders—is associated with healthy adjustment and minimal gender-polarizing cognition. Prior studies testing Bem’s ideas have yielded ambiguous results, mainly because self-perceptions of gender-typed attributes have been inferred narrowly from self-perceptions of expressive and instrumental personality traits. We administered measures of gender identity (self-perceived similarity to a gender) that more clearly capture self-perceptions of attributes typical of a gender, and we examined conjoint influences of same-gender typicality and other-gender typicality on children’s self-esteem, internalizing problems, felt pressure for gender differentiation, and sexist ideology. Two studies were conducted with ethnically/racially diverse samples of preadolescent children in the southeastern United States. In Study 1 (N?=?305, M _age?=?10.8 years), androgynous children (i.e., children who saw themselves as similar to both genders) reported high self-esteem, evidenced few internalizing problems, and reported feeling little pressure for gender differentiation. In Study 2 (N?=?236, M _age?=?11.3 years), androgynous boys reported few sexist beliefs. Children with other patterns of gender identity (e.g., high same-gender typicality coupled with low other-gender typicality) sometimes showed similar correlates, but each other pattern of gender identity was associated with poor adjustment or strong gender-differentiating cognition on at least one dependent variable whereas androgyny never was. Results support Bem’s thesis that persons who perceive themselves as possessing characteristics of both genders enjoy mental health advantages over those who perceive themselves as possessing characteristics of only one.     

Practices and the New Ecclesiology: Misplaced Concreteness?

Abstract: Recent writing in ecclesiology has often focused on church practices and less on dogmatic accounts. Whilst welcoming this renewed awareness, there are problems in its development, demonstrated here through an analysis of the concept of ‘a practice’, and through readings of two examples of this tendency: Hütter's Suffering Divine Things and Hauerwas's With the Grain of the Universe. Resources from Thomas Aquinas are offered that might help the development of ecclesiology in this vein.     

Dis-Identity: New Forms of Identity and Psychopathology—Socioanthropological Changes and Self-Development

The passage from modernity to postmodernity deeply upset the group dimension, and, consequently, personal identity itself. Transformations involving the entire planet, socioanthropological changes our society had to cope with, are producing a change in the dynamics of identity formation and the appearance of new psychopathological figures. The loss of cohesion of the sense of belonging and the weak internalization process of the elements that form the individual identity (cultural, linguistic, religious traditions, etc.) draw an essentially uncertain and temporary existence. Drawing on some themes of subjectual group analysis theory of personality, the article proposes the concept of dis-identity as key to read ongoing psychic changes.     

Chemical and Biological Weapons in the ‘New Wars’

The strategic use of disease and poison in warfare has been subject to a longstanding and cross-cultural taboo that condemns the hostile exploitation of poisons and disease as the act of a pariah. In short, biological and chemical weapons are simply not fair game. The normative opprobrium is, however, not fixed, but context dependent and, as a social phenomenon, remains subject to erosion by social (or more specifically, antisocial) actors. The cross cultural understanding that fighting with poisons and disease is reprehensible, that they are taboo, is codified through a web of interconnected measures, principal amongst these are the 1925 Geneva Protocol; the Biological Weapons Convention; and the Chemical Weapons Convention. Whilst these treaties have weathered the storm of international events reasonably well, their continued health is premised on their being ‘tended to’ in the face of contextual changes, particularly facing changes in science and technology, as well as the changed nature and character of conflict. This article looks at the potential for normative erosion of the norm against chemical and biological weapons in the face of these contextual changes and the creeping legitimization of chemical and biological weapons.     

‘Mutual Obligation’ and ‘New Deal’: Illegitimate and Unjustified?

It is now commonplace for governments in Western countries to require the unemployed to work in exchange for their unemployment benefits. In this article I raise some serious doubts about the most promising and philosophically interesting defence of this argument, which relies on the ‘principle of reciprocity’. I argue that it is seriously unclear whether the obligations imposed on welfare claimants by ‘workfare’ schemes are legitimate and justified according to the principle of reciprocity. I do this by reconstructing the arguments for the obligations of the unemployed put forward in both the United Kingdom and Australia.     

Do Choices Affect Preferences? Some Doubts and New Evidence

When testing for the existence of choice‐induced changes in preferences, one is faced with the combined problem that the preferences are measured imperfectly and that the choice reflects the true preferences. The upshot is that the choice yields information about any measurement errors, implying that the choice may predict a change in measured preferences. Previous studies have neglected this effect, interpreting a change in measured preferences as a change in true preferences. This paper argues that the problems with previous studies can be mitigated by eliciting more information about the preferences of the participants prior to the choices. The paper reports results from a novel experiment, where the evidence does not support the existence of a choice‐induced change in preferences.     

Appropriating the Didjeridu and the Sweat Lodge: New Age Baddies and Indigenous Victims?

The article focuses upon the New Age and new age Pagan appropriation of the Aboriginal Australian didjeridu and the American Indian sweat lodge tradition. Against a background of colonialism, it addresses the issues that surround the dissemination of information concerning indigenous culture and knowledge among individuals involved in the New Age and new age Pagan movements via academia, Western fiction, and the Internet. Further, by looking at the representation of the 'Other' by the West, it explores the effects of such portrayal upon Western perceptions of indigeneity and upon indigenous people's perception of themselves. Issues, such as indigenous agency, inter- and intra-cultural appropriation, the lack of New Age and new age Pagan involvement in indigenous politics, and the arguments that surround the question who should teach indigenous knowledge and to whom, are also addressed.     

Environmentalism and Political Participation: Toward a New System of Social Beliefs and Values?

This study examines the social beliefs and values of the Spanish population with regard to environmentalism. A questionnaire on environmental beliefs was produced and administered to two sample groups. The first group, to be called "activists" (comprising 86 subjects), is characterized by belonging to one or other environmental organization. The other, termed "nonactivists" (comprising 410 subjects), is composed of people not belonging to any environmentalist organization. We conclude that, as in other Western countries, environmentalism has moved from being a set of beliefs held by a small group of people to becoming a central element in the system of beliefs characterizing our society. In other words, the beliefs of the environmentalist movement are being gradually built into a new ideology. However, we found differences between activists and nonactivists, which we interpret both in terms of Milbrath's theoretical model and as contradictions of postmodernist culture.     

The New Rhetoric’s Inheritance. Argumentation and Discourse Analysis

This paper aims at showing how the New Rhetoric’s insights allow for an integration of argumentation studies in linguistic investigation, and more specifically in discourse analysis. Claiming that argumentativity is a constitutive feature of discourse, it endeavors to explore logos as both reason and language by analyzing patterns of reasoning in their discursive actualization. In this approach, the attempt at influencing the audience’s representations is analyzed in the complexity of a discourse explored in its formal and socio-institutional dimensions.

The Craik-O’Brien-Cornsweet effect: New varieties and their theoretical implications

New visual displays related to the Craik-O’Brien-Cornsweet effect are presented and their relevance for theories of the effect is assessed. The displays include a luminance cusp that does not induce the standard effect, an illusory chessboard, a brightness variant of the impossible staircase, and a display in which brightness varies with stimulus motion. Theories of the effect are grouped within the nonisomorphistic, the cognitive, and the mechanistic approaches. The nonisomorphistic approach is criticized as being seriously incomplete. Existing cognitively oriented proposals are criticized as inadequate. Mechanistic theories are divided into integration theories, which model the visual processing stages with standard mathematical operations such as differentiation and integration, and filling-in theories, which stress the processing dynamics of interconnected neural networks. The reported variations of the Craik-O’Brien-Cornsweet effect support the latter class of theories.