Progress and Cumulation in the Sociology of Religion: A Symposium

Mark Chaves: Introduction to the Symposium N.J. Demerath III: Diagnosing the Reverend Dr. Dumpty “After the Fall” Mary Jo Neitz: Eve, Lilith, and the Sociology of Religion: Comments on Zald Robert Wuthnow: Practice and Progress in the Study of Religion Mayer N. Zald: Where Are We in the Sociological Study of Religion? Continuing the Conversation     

Mutant Spiritualities in a Secular Age: The ‘Fasting Body’ and the Hunger for Pure Immanence

This article will explore the ‘return of the repressed’ of secular materialism, in the form of ‘mutant spiritualities’, with a particular focus on the significance of the fasting body, once an accepted product of ascetic spiritual practice, and now cultivated by those seeking a range of experiences; including the anorexic, the model or celebrity trading in beauty and elegance, and those in search of a new age spiritual enlightenment. I argue that further exploration of the range of contexts in which the fasting body is cultivated reveal that what is desired is a lost experience of the body as an expanded field of energetic confluences, an assemblage of affects in the manner of Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘body without organs’. Such an experience of the body is termed as expanded, light and even ecstatic by those following fasting regimes, in that it overcomes the experience of the body as ‘heavy’, burdensome or limiting. The word ecstasy derives from the Greek ‘ekstasis’, meaning to stand outside oneself. Through a textual analysis of web content of cyber communities dedicated to these food practices, I suggest that fasting expresses a hunger for ‘self transcendence’ as pure immanence, that is both subversive of secular materialism and limited by narcissistic pathology.Jo Nash, PGDip Ed, PhD (Psychotherapy Studies), MA., BA (Hons) has taught on the Masters in Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Sheffield since 1998 and became Course Director in October 2001. Before becoming an academic she worked in mental health services for over 15 years as a student nurse, social worker, advocate, trainer and researcher. She is currently working on a series of essays on the application of psychodynamic theory to the study of social processes, in relation to new spiritualities, religion and political processes, and gender and mental health. Correspondence to Dr Jo Nash, Mental Health Section, School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield. Regent Court, 30 Regent Place, Sheffield, UK: S1 4DA. J.T.Nash@shef.ac.uk She can be contacted by email at J.T.Nash@shef.ac.uk     

Experimental studies of sequential selection and assignment with relative ranks

We study a class of sequential selection and assignment problems in which a decision maker (DM) must sequentially assign applicants to positions with the objective of minimizing expected cost. In modeling this class of problems, we assume that on each period the DM is only informed of the rank of the present applicant relative to the applicants that she previously observed and assigned. We first present the optimal decision policy that we subsequently use as a normative benchmark, and then report results from three experiments designed to study sequential assignment behavior. In comparing the aggregate results from all three experiments to the optimal decision policy, we identify a systematic bias, called the middleness bias, to over‐assign applicants to intermediate positions. The results also reveal a strong bias for early applicants to be over‐assigned to important positions. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Case for Non‐Biased Intelligence Testing Against Black Africans Has Not Been Made: A Comment on Rushton,Skuy, and Bons (2004)

This reply reviews the conceptual, methodological, and statistical foundations of Rushton, Skuy and Bons' article in this journal that compared Black Africans, Whites and East Indians on the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices, and concluded that the Raven's is an unbiased test. Through a technical re‐analysis of both the internal and external validity criteria for test bias using data reported in the Rushton et al. paper, we demonstrate that the Raven's Matrices test is in fact biased against Black Africans. We take issue with several additional elements of Rushton et al.'s study, including the use of non‐equivalent groups in test samples. We briefly review Rushton's racial‐realist research agenda and show that the assumption of test bias is central to advancing that agenda. Industrial/organizational and occupational psychologists should critically analyze and re‐evaluate the science employed in Rushton's racial‐realist research and also should better understand the ethical and social implications of accepting his reports of research findings on test bias and White–Black IQ differences as established scientific facts.     

Jealousy,Shame, and the Rival

This essay is a critique of the two chapters on jealousy in Jerome Neu's book A Tear is an Intellectual Thing. The rival — as anobject of both fear and hatred — is of central importance in romantic jealousy, but it is here argued that the role of the rival cannot be fully understood in Neu's account of jealousy and that shame (not noted by Neu) must be seen as central to the concept of jealousy if the role of the rival is to be fully understood.     

Counseling Transgendered,Transsexual, and Gender‐Variant Clients

The emergent consciousness and political activism within the transgender community has important implications for the field of counseling. In the current paradigm, the focus has shifted from using surgical and hormonal interventions and thereby enabling transgendered persons to “pass” within the traditional gender binary of society to affirming the unique identities of transgendered persons. To prepare counselors, counselor educators, and counseling supervisors for this important challenge, the authors describe the evolving nature of the transgender community, discuss mental health issues and counseling interventions for use with transgendered clients, and present a case study detailing the progression of counseling with 1 transgendered client.     

People with intellectual disabilities on probation: an initial study

The two studies in this paper aim to investigate the prevalence and characteristics of people with intellectual disabilities in the probation service in England. Study one screened the abilities of a sample of 70 probationers in one single probation service. Study two compares a sub‐set of these to an equal number of control participants in order to further investigate the characteristics of those with intellectual disability on probation. Nearly 6% of service users appeared to have an intellectual disability, and 11% fell into the bottom 5% of the general population in terms of their intellectual and social functioning. We conclude that a significant minority of those in the probation service have an intellectual disability or similar needs. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.