When Being “Essential” Illuminates Disparities: Counseling Clients Affected by COVID‐19

The 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID‐19) has highlighted social disparities in the United States. This article examines how preexisting racial and ethnic disparities, exacerbated by COVID‐19, have negatively affected communities of color that tend to be overrepresented in lower socioeconomic groups, have limited access to health care and education, have an undocumented status, and work in jobs considered “essential.” Counselors are encouraged to use creative strategies to design and facilitate telecounseling and reduced‐ or no‐cost workshops in which attendees can participate safely. Specific cultural considerations, aspects of crisis management, and creative interventions that can be used with clients of color at an appropriate social distance are discussed. Counselors can also instill hope in their clients by promoting sociopolitical development. As the impact of COVID‐19 will be felt for years, it is crucial that counselors be prepared to address the needs of those disproportionately affected.     

A Decision Support System for Prioritizing Investments in an Energy Efficiency Program in Favelas in the City of Rio de Janeiro

This study proposes an integrated qualitative and quantitative assessment of expert opinions aiming at ranking a set of five shantytowns (favelas) located in the city of Rio de Janeiro. These communities are candidates for investments in an energy efficiency program implemented by the local electric utility company. The city, state, and federal governments want to eliminate domination of these areas by organized criminal gangs and present the city as a peaceful metropolis while hosting two big sports events: the soccer World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in 2016. In recent years, some favelas were chosen to be prototypes for an ambitious project to reshape Rio de Janeiro. This involves first sending in special tactics police to drive drug gangs out, then installing the Pacifying Police Unit in the favela. Once security has been established, it is possible to improve general living conditions in these areas, including by providing public services such as health clinics, formal electricity connections and cable television. The core of the energy efficiency program was to convert informal customers to formal ones, because such communities were responsible for approximately 40% of the commercial losses (stolen energy) in the city. The model specification presented in this paper was set up with ten relevant criteria for decision making, identified through an in‐depth interview with the decision maker. The relative importance of the criteria and the performance of each favela regarding each criterion were measured by the Simos method. The preferences resulting from this method were translated into a nine‐point scale. The imprecision of subjective judgment was partially compensated by using a fuzzy analytical hierarchy process. Some criteria were ordinal, such as ‘Fair Relationship with the Community’ and ‘Complexity to Rebuild the Distribution Lines’, whereas other were cardinal, like ‘Percentage of Clients in Default’ and ‘Commercial Loss Due to Energy Theft’. At the end, the model was efficient in ranking the five favelas, therefore contributing to a rational and transparent approach for capital investment in social projects. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Religion and the Acceptability of White‐Collar Crime: A Cross‐National Analysis

This article examines whether shared religious beliefs and religious social relationships (Durkheim) and belief in a personal, moral God (Stark) negatively affect attitudes toward the acceptability of white‐collar crime. In addition, using a large cross‐national sample and estimating multilevel models, we test whether effects are conditional on modernization and religious contexts characterized by belief in an impersonal or amoral God. Shared religious beliefs and the importance of God in one's life are negatively related to the acceptability of white‐collar crime. These effects, however, weaken in religious contexts characterized by belief in an impersonal or amoral God as do the effects of religious social relationships and belonging to a religious organization; modernization, on the other hand, does not have a moderating effect. In short, religious belief is associated with lower acceptance of white‐collar crime and certain types of religious contexts condition this relationship.     

自我控制的能量模型:证据、质疑和展望

自我控制的能量模型是解释自我控制的一个重要理论模型。该模型认为,所有的自我控制行为依赖一种共同且有限的能量,执行自我控制会消耗这种能量,导致自我损耗效应的产生,但能量也可以通过一些方法得以恢复和提升。该模型得到大量行为和生理层面研究的支持,但也有研究者从疲劳、情绪、动机、血糖指标、时间知觉等方面提出质疑。未来研究可从自我能量的性质、总量等角度进一步完善能量模型,同时结合我国文化探讨理想、信念、价值观对提升我国国民意志力的作用。     

Charles Darwin: Continuity,Teleology and Ideology

Climate change has mutated from being a physical phenomenon to be studied to an idea to be contested. The sites of adjudication between competing truth claims have therefore moved from the secluded academy and scientific peer review to the vociferous agora and the extended peer community. This move is illustrated here using the case of the shrinking glaciers of Mt Kilimanjaro. Both the British engineer Guy Callendar, in 1944, and the American campaigner Al Gore, in 2006, claimed that the primary cause of this glacial recession was rising world temperature. Both were passionate believers in the reality of human-induced global warming, but they had very different resources at their disposal to advance these beliefs. While Callendar's claim was revealed only to the editor of the science journal Nature, Gore's claims were visible to millions through his film An Inconvenient Truth. While the force of Callendar's claim was weighed and adjudicated by one peer reviewer, the validity of Gore's claim was tested very publicly in the British courts. Both claims about the cause of Kilimanjaro's retreating glaciers were found wanting. The paper argues that this simple, but powerful, comparison between identical claims-making drawn from two different eras of science, yet with contrasting processes of truth-adjudication, illuminates the different ‘post-normal’ world of science climate change now inhabits. The case study is used to reflect on the role of the extended peer community in establishing and validating scientific knowledge about climate change: who participates, how trust is stabilised and whether science is thereby democratised.     

Locke on testimony

ABSTRACT

There is good reason to regard John Locke’s treatment of testimony as perhaps the most important of the early modern period. It is sophisticated, well developed, pioneering, and seems to have given shape to the later debate that would occur between Hume and Reid. I attempt to do three things in this essay. First, I argue that Hume’s landmark treatment of testimony is an appropriation of that developed by Locke. Second, I suggest that understanding Locke’s view of testimony is of critical importance to Locke’s broader epistemology. Finally, I claim that Locke’s reflection on testimony is valuable in its own right in that it is not confined to isolating the conditions under which testimonial beliefs are warranted or justified. Locke’s interest is, rather, in a variety of doxastic states, or degrees of assent, that testimony may serve to ground.     

Keep the Faith,for Christ's Sake!

The central Lutheran doctrine of justification through faith served to critique the theology of the medieval Roman church but remains an important, though underutilized, theological resource today. The Lutheran emphasis on faith as trust in God's promise of mercy for Christ's sake is an important corrective to the contemporary culture of privatized faith, offering both a personal and a corporate relationship with a gracious God.     

Faith Alone: Reflections on an Adverb

In response to critics of his New Testament translation, Luther points out that they simply do not understand the grammar restrictions of language that requires the addition of the word alone in his translation of Paul's letter to the Romans. Luther also points out that they do not understand that alone in this passage is an adverb and not an adjective. This article explores the significance of the word alone (in “faith alone”) when it is considered an adverb as opposed to an adjective. As an adverb, alone resists attempts to manipulate it into a metaphysical principle. Alone as an adverb keeps faith as a living, dynamic relationship that God established and which comes to expression in the celebration of the sacrament.