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By 1950, the US foreign policy objective of containing the perceived irresistible expansion of Soviet power was tied to the strategy of nuclear deterrence. Acceptance of deterrence by Americans depended on the credibility of the view that, even if US threats to counter Soviet provocations by employing atomic bombs led the Soviets to respond in kind, the results would not be catastrophic. But what would a Soviet nuclear assault hold in store for the American people? This question posed the problem of how the theater of WWIII -- US society under nuclear bombardment -- should be envisioned. Here, the response to this question produced by civil defense planners in the mid-1950s is analyzed: the Cold war conception of nuclear reality, an interpretation of US society under nuclear attack designed to sustain the view that Americans were capable of confronting a nuclear emergency through their own efforts. Modified AA

Considers the annual testing of the plans of the civil defense community for managing a nuclear attack, "Operation Alert," and the futility of these exercises given the nature of nuclear warfare.

The concepts of "media logic" & "media culture" are explored as they are used in David L. Altheide's & Robert M. Snow's Media Worlds in the Postjournalism Era (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1991). Media logic is a form & process of communication that generates a framework of assumptions on which media artifacts & strategies are conceived. Through the vehicle of media logic, all social institutions have been transformed into media institutions or the media culture. The concept of media logic rests on four propositions: (1) modern media are oriented toward rational means-end communications; (2) modern media require rapid dissemination of information at low cost; (3) audience expectations require media information to be accurate, current, & entertaining; & (4) media information must be dependable & relevant. It is argued that all of these claims are mistaken. The media culture thesis rests on spurious, unsupported claims as well, eg, the proposition that the media have caused the death of organized journalism. In Media Logic and Culture: Reply to Oakes Altheide (Arizona State U, Tempe) & Snow repeat their premise that electronic communications have changed all aspects of US culture, reiterate the distinction & importance of media logic & media culture, & critique Oakes's suggestion that the infrastructure of politics continues to work as usual. D. Generoli

An examination of the moral demands that training programs in personal sales impose on sales personnel, the tensions these demands produce in the work world of the salesperson, & the ways the personal sales industry & sales personnel themselves respond to these tensions, based on analysis of training materials produced in the US by the Life Insurance Marketing & Research Assoc & other documentary & interview data collected in 1987 & 1989 from life insurance sales agents in NY & Pa. It is argued that the life insurance industry expects its agents to endeavor to act as if they were professionals & prove their professionalism to the prospect. The industry responds to the discrepancies between the ideal of professional service inculcated in training programs & the realities encountered by the sales force in the field by means of three strategies: a philosophy of financial security that enables the agent to endure the psychic stress & metaphysical emptiness of life in personal sales; sales conventions, which are carefully staged productions designed by the industry as rituals of recognition that celebrate the virtues of the service ideal, reinforce a commitment to its principles, & reward agents who measure up to its requirements; & a sales force ethic of toughness, imperturbability, & nonchalance that endows agents with the iron-clad defenses & hardened sensibilities required to act with poise & affability in the face of insult & humiliation. Modified AA

Training programs in life insurance sales are investigated, with focus on how training programs define the sales process, & concomitantly form the identity of the salesperson. The bipolar character of the sales process is demonstrated: ie, sales is both a strategic interaction driven by the maximization of commissions & the performance of a service driven by fiduciary obligations to clients -- along with the dual identity of the salesperson -- who is conceived both as a ruthless opportunist & as a service professional. It is argued that the bipolar conception of the sales process & the dual identity of the salesperson generate antinomies that are irresolvable in principle. Modified AA