Navigating Social Class Roles in Community Research

This paper describes the first author's attempt to collect data in a homeless shelter without attending to her role in the social class hierarchy of the organization. The author's egalitarian approach towards the homeless clients, and her lack of involvement in "staff-only" activities, transgress the social class norms within the organizational structure. While the author is successful in gaining the trust of the homeless clients, her approach alienates shelter staff, especially those in the higher echelons of the social hierarchy. The concepts of classism, world views, and Social Identity Theory, are utilized to discuss the dilemma faced by researchers who want to challenge, or work outside, a setting's status quo.     

The Role of the Child in Adult Development

This paper provides theoretical and empirical support for the view that children play a large and often underappreciated role in adult development. Fifty parents and teachers were asked to discuss occasions when they learned something valuable from a child or when a child changed them in some significant way. Adults reported that children can cause them to (a) shift their values or priorities, (b) integrate memories or experiences previously disowned or repressed, (c) become more creative and cognitively flexible, or (d) look at the world with more wonder, awe, or curiosity. Werner's concept of genetic stratification (H. Werner, 1957) and Labouvie-Vief, Chiodo, Goguen, Diehl, and Orwoll's concept of dynamic intersubjectivity (G. Labouvie-Vief, L. M. Chiodo, L. A. Goquen, M. Diehl, & L. Orwoll, 1995) are used to explain the results.     

The human first hypothesis: identification of conspecifics and individuation of objects in the young infant

How do infants individuate and track objects, and among them objects belonging to their species, when they can only rely on information about the properties of those objects? We propose the Human First Hypothesis (HFH), which posits that infants possess information about their conspecifics and use it to identify and count objects. F. Xu and S. Carey [Cognitive Psychology, 30(2), 111-153, 1996] argued that before the age of 1 year, infants fail to use property information. To explain their results, Xu and Carey proposed the Object First Hypothesis (OFH), according to which infants under 1 year of age have only the general concept of physical object to identify and count objects. We show that infants have a more extensive knowledge of sortals than that claimed by the OFH. When 10-month-olds see one humanlike and one non-humanlike object, they successfully identify and count them by using the contrast in their properties, as predicted by the HFH. We also show that infants succeed even when they make a decision based on differences between two close basic-level categories such as humanlike objects and doglike objects, but fail when they have to use differences within the human category. Thus, infants treat "human" as a basic sortal, as predicted by the HFH. We argue that our results cannot be accounted for by general purpose mechanisms. Neither the strong version of the OFH and its explanation in terms of object indexing mechanisms [A. M. Leslie, F. Xu, P. Tremoulet, & B. J. Scholl, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2(1), 10-18, 1998] nor explanations in terms of task demands [T. Wilcox & R. Baillargeon, Cognitive Psychology, 37(2), 97-155, 1998] are sufficient to explain our results.     

Child,parent, and peer predictors of early-onset substance use: a multisite longitudinal study

The purpose of this study was to identify kindergarten-age predictors of early-onset substance use from demographic, environmental, parenting, child psychological, behavioral, and social functioning domains. Data from a longitudinal study of 295 children were gathered using multiple-assessment methods and multiple informants in kindergarten and 1st grade. Annual assessments at ages 10, 11, and 12 reflected that 21% of children reported having initiated substance use by age 12. Results from longitudinal logistic regression models indicated that risk factors at kindergarten include being male, having a parent who abused substances, lower levels of parental verbal reasoning, higher levels of overactivity, more thought problems, and more social problem solving skills deficits. Children with no risk factors had less than a 10% chance of initiating substance use by age 12, whereas children with 2 or more risk factors had greater than a 50% chance of initiating substance use. Implications for typology, etiology, and prevention are discussed.     

Industry,innovation and social values

Remaining important tasks in finding and developing new drugs and vaccines for HIV/AIDS, malaria, cancer and other diseases require continued industry research and development. Industry’s research and development pipeline has produced drugs that have saved AIDS victims previously facing certain death, but still no cure nor vaccine is yet available. Experience with the process of research and development indicates that it requires more than a decade of development to produce a new drug with costs in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Intellectual property protection is critically important in assuring that drug development continues. Partnerships between industry and the public sector have increased access to new therapies in developing countries and promise to enhance access to both patented and generic medicines in the future. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an international conference, “The Ethics of Intellectual Property Rights and Patents,” held in Warsaw, Poland on 23–24 April, 2004. This paper was prepared with the assistance of Maciej Gajewski, Policy Research Analyst, International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (IFPMA).     

Faithful Aging and the Development of Character

The author tests the kinship of the concepts faithful aging, the centerpiece of her book, The Art of Growing Old: A Guide to Faithful Aging (1998), and development of character, central to James Hillman's book, The Force of Character and the Lasting Life (1999). Faithful aging is assessed in characters from two plays: Graham Greene's The Potting Shed and Robert Anderson's I Never Sang for My Father. Finally, Saussy reflects on the development of character as a theological issue.     

The Web and the Quilt: Alternatives to the Heroic Journey Toward Spiritual Development

This paper poses a feminist challenge to stage models of spiritual development and suggests alternative metaphors to the common image of a heroic journey. Women's spirituality is typically more intuitive and relational than rational and individualistic and to express this, we employ metaphors of the web and the quilt. Support for the relevance of these metaphors comes from the spiritual autobiography of Jane Goodall, an anthology of African American women's writings about spirituality, and two qualitative research investigations of older women's spirituality. We conclude with an autobiographical account of our own spiritual development and engage in a dialogue-on-the-page in which we respond to each other's narratives.     

The case for responsibility of the IT industry to promote equality for women in computing

This paper investigates the relationship between the role that information technology (IT) has played in the development of women’s employment, the possibility of women having a significant influence on the technology’s development, and the way that the IT industry perceives women as computer scientists, users and consumers. The industry’s perception of women and men is investigated through the portrayal of them in computing advertisements. While women are increasingly updating their technological skills and know-how, and through this process are entering some positions in the workplace traditionally occupied by men, these achievements are not mirrored in their social and occupational status. The computer industry and higher education have worryingly low numbers of women, while the possibility of women influencing the development of computer technology is just emerging in feminist research. This paper argues that, though the IT industry, through their self-regulatory codes, subscribes to equal treatment of sexes, races and persons with disabilities, the industry nevertheless paints a stereotyped picture of inequality when portraying men and women in computer advertisements. As long as such a perception of women prevails within the industry, it will stand as a barrier to women having equal access to computer technology. If advertisements influence the way society perceives major social constructs and issues, then the computing industry has a social responsibility to portray men and women in an equal and non-stereotypical fashion. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the ETHICOMP98 Conference, Rotterdam, Holland, March 1998.     

Global Inequality and International Institutions

This article considers the links between international institutions and global economic justice: how international institutions might be morally important; how they have changed; and at what those changes imply for justice. The institutional structure of international society has evolved in ways that help to undercut the arguments of those who take a restrictionist position towards global economic justice. There is now a denser and more integrated network of shared institutions and practices within which social expectations of global justice and injustice have become more securely established. But, at the same time, our major international social institutions continue to constitute a deformed political order. This combination of density and deformity shapes how we should think about international justice in general and has important implications for the scope, character, and modalities of global economic justice. Having laid out a view of normative development and where it leads, the article then examines why international distributive justice remains so marginal to current practice.