Race/ethnicity and sex in U.S. occupations, 1970–2010: Implications for research,practice, and policy

We used census data on the civilian non-institutional adult population to analyze trends in labor force participation by race/ethnicity and sex in U.S. occupations from 1970 to 2010 in decennial periods. We examined these data for the main effects and interactions of race/ethnicity and sex across the total labor market and within 35 detailed occupations. Results from a log-linear analysis revealed that, as a whole (across race/ethnicity), more women participated in the labor force from 1970 to 2010. The proportions of working racial/ethnic minorities to both the population and the people in the labor force increased across all decades except for Black men. Although White (Caucasian) men continuously comprised the largest racial/ethnic–sex group working across five decades in absolute numbers, their percentage of the total working population declined from 1970 (54%) to 2010 (37%). In our analyses of 35 occupations, significant sex differences within racial/ethnic groups emerged. Overall, with some exceptions, Asian men and women and White women were more likely to be absorbed into occupations typically associated with professional status whereas Black, Hispanic, and American Indian men and women were more likely to be absorbed into occupations typically associated with low skill, low wages, and low status. Implications for the role of psychologists in future research, practice, and policy are discussed.     

John S. Harding,Victor Sōgren Hori,and Alexander Souci,eds. Wild geese: Buddhism in Canada

Both Buddhism and Marxism have strengths and weaknesses in helping us to understand human experiences and social problems. Rather than trying to create a synthesis of the two perspectives, I attempt to discern the elements in each which can help us experience better lives and be more effective political activists. Buddhism identifies those understandings and practices which lead to greater happiness and less suffering in response to existential challenges that we all must face as mortal human beings, irrespective of the particular family, society, or historical era that we live in. But while Buddhism captures certain basic aspects of universal human experience, it does not take account of the interaction or dialectic between humans qua social beings and the relatively permanent social structures that humans both reinforce and challenge in the course of history. The latter is the province of a radical social theory, such as Marxism. At the same time, however, Marxism does not address the ways in which, at an experiential level, life causes suffering and anguish irrespective of the social context.     

Conflict,consensus, and liberty in J. S. Mill’s representative democracy

The relationship between representative democracy and conflict in John Stuart Mill’s political philosophy has been interpreted in very different ways. While some scholars claim that Millian democracy is incompatible with political conflict, others identify in Mill a radical political agonism that would offer a non-consensual model of deliberative democracy. This paper argues that neither of these views is exactly accurate: although he highlights the centrality of conflict in political life, Mill believes that democratic deliberation presupposes a minimal level of consensus regarding the formal value of democracy’s basic principles, viz. the principles of individual freedom and equality. Initially, I shall reconstruct the relationship between conflict and consensus in Mill’s conception of representative democracy. I shall then investigate his association of representation and advocacy and show that Mill’s encomium on political conflict was influenced by Guizot’s work. Finally, I shall explain how a democratic debate riven with conflict is conducive to individual freedom.     

Affective Honesty and Compassion Come in Many Forms: Discussion of “Love (and Hate) With the Proper Stranger: Affective Honesty and Enactment,” By Holly Levenkron,L.I.C.S.W.

Holly Levenkron's work with her patient, Ali, beautifully illustrates one way that a creative analyst makes superb use of her own experience to communicate and negotiate with great affective honesty. Holly's analytic style emphasizes the effective use of a particular kind of self-disclosure and a way of thinking about intersubjectivity and enactment associated with the contemporary Relational movement. Yet, it may be Holly's personal willingness to allow the analytic relationship to profoundly destabilize and influence her that most engages Ali in their work.

An imaginary analytic scenario is described with an analyst, Dr. X, who like Holly is destabilized by Ali but whose thinking about intersubjectivity and enactment emphasizes an empathic immersion in Ali's experience of the analytic relationship. In contrast to Holly, Dr. X focuses primarily on grasping and interpreting the adaptive strivings that animate Ali's differently organized subjective world.

The underlying capacity to acknowledge and use the analyst's own version of the patient's issues may also characterize analyses such as that of the hypothetical Dr. X—in style that are more explicitly “interpretive” (less confrontative) than Holly's work. These two contrasting approaches highlight the wide range of ways to think about intersubjectivity, enactment, and affective honesty in the analytic process.