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This article analyzes the contemporary construction of male menopause as a clinical disorder. While medical interest in a male climacteric has waxed and waned over the past century, the past decade has witnessed a surge of both scientific and commercial interest in its diagnosis and treatment. In explaining why this is the case, the author suggests that shifting cultural narratives of aging and sexuality, rather than any new scientific evidence, are central to the construction of the aging male body as a pivotal site of biomedical intervention. The clinical and market success of Viagra has been critical in the development of a men's health industry, creating novel discursive and institutional structures that have fostered the medicalization of masculinity in middle and late life. The article analyzes clinical research, popular science reporting, and pharmaceutical marketing to demonstrate how the newly remedicalized male menopause has crystallized anxieties about aging in terms of biochemical de-masculinization.

Surprises occur when organizations try to exceed the limits of their capabilities. The surprises include both serious accidents and remarkable discoveries. The idea that organizations have limits sheds light on a systemic source of organizational accidents and an important and increasingly prevalent aspect of organizational life. This article discusses various organizational limits and why they exist, it reviews factors that lead organizations to exceed their limits either intentionally or inadvertently, and it points out several reasons why limit violations may be growing more prevalent. Although some organizational limits arise from fundamental characteristics of people or technological systems, nearly all organizational limits result from rather arbitrary decisions about capacities, systems, and structures. In particular, limit violations often stem from uncertain and unintentional exploration. After examining potential consequences and symptoms of limit violation, the article proposes several reasons why researchers should add limits to their agendas for future research.

The most important task of contemporary science is to serve humanity. It seems that technology develops in two different ways. On the one hand technology does everything to make human's life carefree, easy and safe. But on the other scientists do their best to solve most pressing problems so that people could once and for all forget about troubles like AIDS, cancer or Alzheimer's disease. Until tody technical progress was followed by the progress of the humanity but it seems that contemporary hi-technology left behind moral reflections of people. Michael Sandel's book e Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering is a moral reflection on those problems accompanied by technological changes. It is an attempt to establish a border that cannot be crossed – on its one side human being is still a human being but on the other one it is just an artifi- cially stimulated machine.

Migration history has made some major leaps forward in the last fifteen years or so. An important contribution was Leslie Page Moch's Moving Europeans, published in 1992, in which she weaves the latest insights in migration history into the general social and economic history of western Europe. Using Charles Tilly's typology of migration patterns and his ideas on the process of proletarianization since the sixteenth century, Moch skilfully integrates the experience of human mobility in the history of urbanization, labour relations, (proto)industrialization, demography, family history, and gender relations. Her state-of-the-art overview has been very influential, not least because it fundamentally criticizes the modernization paradigm of Wilbur Zelinsky and others, who assumed that only in the nineteenth century, as a result of industrialization and urbanization, migration became a significant phenomenon. Instead, she convincingly argues that migration was a structural aspect of human life. Since then many new studies have proved her point and refined her model.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate value for money drivers in public private partnership (PPP) schemes.Design/methodology/approachThree case studies of PPP construction projects in the UK were undertaken.FindingsPPP contracts commonly require the private agent to take responsibilities for the performance of the asset over a long term, at least for a significant part of its useful life, so that efficiencies arising from long term asset management can be obtained. The evidence is finely balanced on the usefulness of such initiatives in realizing efficiency gains, although there is clear benefit of risk transfer.Practical implicationsThe findings highlight the challenge of designing and implementing innovative partnership plans to manage public services more effectively. More emphasis needs to be placed on strategies for the transfer of risk, value for money drivers and project expertise for the successful conclusions of PPP contracts.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to the new research area of public private partnerships.

Is it possible to oppose the death penalty and still be in favor of killing tyrants? That is, I think, my own position, but the botched execution of Saddam Hussein, which looked more like savage revenge than impartial justice, made it much harder to hold on to both those views. Still, they seem to me contradictory but not incompatible. I don't believe that the state should kill people convicted of crimes against other people, even of terrible crimes. Except when it is resisting military attack or helping others who are under attack, the state should not be in the killing business; its first commitment is to the preservation of life. But a tyrant has committed crimes not simply against individuals but against the solidarity of the citizens, against the commonwealth, against the very idea of a political community. And that seems to raise the stakes; a tyrant is not an ordinary criminal.

This study uses a contingent valuation method and multiple linear regression techniques to determine the factors that could affect the willingness to pay for solid waste collection and disposal services of householders residing in the squatter and low-cost flats in the city of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. One of the main problems experienced by many developing nations is the lack of service provisions, particularly in the low-income areas. Because such conditions adversely affect the quality of life of the poor, local stakeholders' participation in social and environmental activities is necessary to resolve such socially undermining and environmentally degrading problems. In fact, tackling such a problem would require massive investment schemes by local governments. However, the governments of developing nations usually suffer from heavily burdened and stretched financial and economic resources and a high opportunity cost of funds. Therefore, society's participation is logically and realistically needed for widening infrastructure and environmental service provisions.

Abstract  The Emory‐Obed Watershed in Tennessee, like many other rural areas throughout the United States, is experiencing changes in economic activities and social values associated with natural resources. Informed by the interactional approach to community development, this effort strove to build community capacity so community members could more fully govern their life according to their values and interests. We utilized key informant and focus group interviews to gain information about the watershed and to obtain different perspectives on resource‐related issues. Data from key informant interviews led to the selection of a geographic community in which a community of interest was nurtured throughout a year involving monthly meetings, a community assessment and submission of a development grant application. It was found that gaining entry into the community and building trust among participants, and between participants and researchers, were critical in this in‐place participatory community research. Lessons drawn from this experience applicable to similar efforts are discussed.

Often, youth in the foster care system have traumatic experiences associated with abuse and separation from their biological family. These experiences may lead to emotional, psychological, and behavioral problems that challenge the new adoptive family dynamic. This article introduces the Respite and Recreation (R & R) program in a Midwestern area. R & R combines faculty, staff, and graduate students from a local University, local community resources, and staff from a local adoption agency to provide recreation, respite, and professional support services for children with special needs and their adoptive parents. The R & R program provides the adopted children with structured recreation programs for their growth, the parents with a break from stress, and volunteer students with opportunities to incorporate their academic learning into real life situations. Service learning programs such as the R & R also provide university faculty with excellent opportunities to conduct action research.

The question of whether family structure consequences on school achievement are the same across racial and ethnic groups is examined using longitudinal data on 10,606 teens from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Based on life course theory, this article uses indicators of the family structure trajectory, such as family structure duration in adolescence and the number and timing of family changes, to predict self-reported grade point average (GPA) and to examine differences in effects among non-Hispanic White, Black, and Hispanic adolescents. Results show that the negative effects of time lived with a single mother and nonparents are reduced for Black and Hispanic adolescents, whereas having a recent family change leads to a larger drop in GPA for Blacks. Racial variation in stress, social support, and school functioning explain most race differences. For minority adolescents, negative consequences of family structure are largely attenuated by race-specific social supports and educational advantages.

This article explores the development of Islamic democratic thought over the past two centuries. Triggered by the European encroachment on Muslim lands and fueled by a sense of frustration precipitated by centuries of decline and backwardness, democracy continues to be a controversial concept seen by some Islamists as the therapy for Muslim sickness and by others as the illness itself. The main cause of the disagreement has been the definition of the concept: those that defend it see it as a set of procedures aimed at curbing the tendency to abuse political power and those that reject it see it as a philosophy that undermines the Islamic faith and threatens the Islamic way of life. The article argues that, even though the intellectual debate has to a large extent been settled in favour of the defenders of democracy, the main obstacle hindering democratization in Muslim lands continues to be an external one.

This article is based on a recently completed study of fertility decision-making in Victoria, Australia. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 100 women, it explores how dominant discourses of mothering influence women in their life decisions about children. While much research indicates that all women negotiate dominant ideals of good mothering, our findings suggest that such stereotypes need to be further broken down, since women with and without children respond to different aspects of such ideals. For women who have children, images of the 'good mother' are less prevalent than pragmatic concerns about how to manage mothering. Women without children, in contrast, understand mothering as all-encompassing and potentially overwhelming. These findings suggest that Australian women share ideals and assumptions about mothering with their counterparts in the United Kingdom and the United States, but they also point to an increasing gap between how mothering is viewed and how it is practised.

The role of the classic text in the social sciences has come under fire in recent years. The authority of classics has been challenged on the grounds that they conceal a variety of ideological assumptions, tensions and discontinuities as well as being far removed from our experience of contemporary life. Drawing on Gadamer's account of the 'classical' in Truth and Method, the article contests these views, arguing that classic texts are a source of intellectual vitality and should not be jettisoned. Following the introduction the article divides into two main sections. The first deals with the issue of authorship, arguing that while 'names' remain intrinsic to sociology, attention should remain with the text. The second employs Gadamer's ideas to show why classic texts persist. The claim that subsequent historical horizons elicit from the text truths that continue to resonate is illustrated with Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

Cristina Alzaga:
Indoor Prostitution: The Parlour as a Social Space

This article presents a sociological hermeneutic analysis of the lived everyday working world of Danish indoor prostitutes. It draws upon observations and interviews, as well as documentary and experiential data, produced during a six-month period of ethnographic fieldwork at a Copenhagen massage parlour, where the author served as "telephone lady". The article uncovers the social order (nomos) of this life world, its social relations and shared interpretations as well as organizational traits and practical-corporeal terms. It also discusses the variety and multidimensionality of the relations between prostitutes and clients. The article seeks to uncover the meanings of the distinct experiential dynamics and work experiences that take form within this particular working universe, and examines their contradictory relations to the dominant views and accounts of prostitution in the outside world, including the views pre¬sented by mainstream research on prostitution.

Through an examination of four sites of contention in Ecuador, this study explores the impacts of transnational campaigns on domestic organizations and community groups while holding constant the focus of conflict, the construction of an oil pipeline. The international organizations verified local claims, enabled access to international venues such as conferences and investor meetings, and influenced the financing of future large-scale projects. Yet, the transnational campaigns unintentionally emphasized environmental conservation at the expense of local dignity-in-life claims, resonated only with select groups, and potentially undermined domestic networking building. The Northern campaigns emphasized World Bank standards that were arguably weak on environmental protection, especially when compared to the environmental justice demands arising in the oil hubs. Indeed, community participation, environmental health regulation, and economic redistribution may be better achieved through grassroots efforts that target the state, rather than through transnational engagement dependent on international bodies and concerns.