应当重视医生“公共人”的角色定位

“经济人”的价值理念刺激了医疗行业的逐利行为,我国公立医院公益性淡化已然是事实,医生的“公共性”日渐缺失.医患之间的信任危机从来没有像今天这样严峻,很重要的原因是医生的价值取向的迷失.医生确实面临多价值选择冲突,但过分强调“经济人”特性,而忽视公共性的重要,已然导致了种种恶果.所以,应当重视医生“公共人”的角色定位.医生和医院要回归对医疗职业本性的认识,让医生成长为“为了人类的幸福和自身的完美而工作”的“公共人”,让医院回归“为社会公众谋取利益,追求社会效益目标”的公益性.     

应当重视医生“公共人”的角色定位

“经济人”的价值理念刺激了医疗行业的逐利行为,我国公立医院公益性淡化已然是事实,医生的“公共性”日渐缺失.医患之间的信任危机从来没有像今天这样严峻,很重要的原因是医生的价值取向的迷失.医生确实面临多价值选择冲突,但过分强调“经济人”特性,而忽视公共性的重要,已然导致了种种恶果.所以,应当重视医生“公共人”的角色定位.医生和医院要回归对医疗职业本性的认识,让医生成长为“为了人类的幸福和自身的完美而工作”的“公共人”,让医院回归“为社会公众谋取利益,追求社会效益目标”的公益性.     

Publics and Populations: The Politics of Ancestry and Exchange in Genome Science

While researchers collect and assemble relevant populations for genome studies, they are also, along with project designers and managers, interested in assembling publics. The public holds significant symbolic and discursive appeal for large-scale genome science. This is particularly the case in projects that collect or study aspects of human genome variation where histories of biological racism continue to cast a shadow over the promises of genomic medicine. In one of Canada's first large-scale biobanks, French Canadians, who are understood as a genetically close or homogenous population, are contrasted with what are referred to as ‘immigrants’ and ‘Québecers from various ethnic and racial backgrounds’ in public engagement and consultation forums. These latter groups, thought to provide a form of diversity, both in their views and their biology, are harnessed in the consultation practices as well as in the branding of the biobank. Within the local area of sample collection, the already constructed and available ways to categorise groups provide a powerful frame to narrate the relationship between the public and genome science. The process of making and consulting niche publics not only naturalises particular narratives of national belonging but also enables forms of exchange and sharing in international genome science. Just as assembling populations forms a central component of genome science, displays of publicness are integral for economies of exchange in genome science.     

Gentrification and Urban Children’s Well-Being: Tipping the Scales from Problems to Promise

Gentrification changes the neighborhood and family contexts in which children are socialized-for better and worse-yet little is known about its consequences for youth. This review, drawn from research in urban planning, sociology, and psychology, maps out mechanisms by which gentrification may impact children. We discuss indicators of gentrification and link neighborhood factors, including institutional resources and collective socialization, to family processes more proximally related to child development. Finally, we discuss implications for intervention and public policy recommendations that are intended to tip the scales toward better outcomes for low-income youth in gentrifying areas.     

The Role for Public Funding of Faith-Based Organizations Delivering Behavioral Health Services: Guideposts for Monitoring and Evaluation

The paper reviews policies promoting faith-based organizations' (FBO) participation in publicly-funded programs since the Charitable Choice statute was enacted during the Clinton administration and then additional faith-based initiatives were implemented by the Bush administration. The paper focuses on research findings on FBO participation in publicly-funded human service programs under these policies. It then proposes a framework for evaluation to assess the appropriateness of public funding for behavioral health services delivered by FBOs, in order to address: (1) the programmatic and systemic effects resulting from the infusion of new players from the faith community, and the consequences to the profile of services and who gets served; and (2) the content and effectiveness of faith-infused services as a basis for identifying interventions appropriate for public funding. The analysis considers classification issues, theoretical bases of measured effects of faith-infused services, and the transferability of faith-based interventions across religious and secular applications in order to satisfy constitutional issues and client choice.     

Composition in distributional models of semantics

Vector-based models of word meaning have become increasingly popular in cognitive science. The appeal of these models lies in their ability to represent meaning simply by using distributional information under the assumption that words occurring within similar contexts are semantically similar. Despite their widespread use, vector-based models are typically directed at representing words in isolation, and methods for constructing representations for phrases or sentences have received little attention in the literature. This is in marked contrast to experimental evidence (e.g., in sentential priming) suggesting that semantic similarity is more complex than simply a relation between isolated words. This article proposes a framework for representing the meaning of word combinations in vector space. Central to our approach is vector composition, which we operationalize in terms of additive and multiplicative functions. Under this framework, we introduce a wide range of composition models that we evaluate empirically on a phrase similarity task.     

Is it even worth it? The effect of loss prospects in the outcome distribution of a public goods dilemma

Contributions to public goods are premised on the expectation that the collective will realize benefit in excess of the value of required contributions. However, past research has focused on public goods of fixed and known value, for which the added value of the produced public good is obvious. Research has largely ignored public goods whose eventual value is uncertain at the time contribution decisions are made. Two studies explored the effects of outcome variance on individuals’ contributions to a public good and their reasons for contributing. Contributions were negatively affected by loss prospects in the distribution of possible outcomes. Further, loss prospects directly discouraged contributions because of loss aversion, and indirectly discouraged contributions by fueling fears that others would not contribute. The negative effects of loss prospects were stronger when social uncertainty was low. Implications for social dilemma research and the effective management of collective action are discussed.     

Preaching,Sexuality, and Women Religious

Abstract

This paper addresses how the role of the prophetic is contested by examining ecclesial conflict in the Catholic Church as exemplified in the Vatican critique of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the social ministries and lobbying efforts of NETWORK’s “Nuns on the Bus.” Drawing on the fields of homiletics, biblical studies, public theology, and feminist theology, we examine patterns of prophetic discourse and defend the work of the nuns as prophetic in that their work bears witness to the reign of God in everyday contexts. Binary patterns such as church/world, ordained/lay, sacred/profane, male/female, privileged/marginalized are ultimately inaccurate and unhelpful. We argue that the prophetic must be shaped and discerned by the lived experiences of the whole people of God but privileging the experiences of those on the margins. We invite readers to think of the role of the prophetic beyond the pulpit and into the public sphere.