Suchergebnisse

Continuing Education and Moralization : The Social Function of the Social Psychology of Business.
The aim of the present study is to grasp the relationship between the introduction of techniques inspired by social psychology and the change -or at least the beginning of a change- in the ways of exercizing power in business. The author's observations derive from Personal participation in a program of continuing education or so-called "permanent training". The various stages of this type of training have multiplied since the adoption of the law of 1971, which, it seems, has benefited chiefly managerial and lower-level staff. The study is based on the hypothesis that these stages would be utilized, in a number of cases, as instruments of moralization, designed not so much to provide technical knowledge as to impose a new System of values, itself tied to a new style of command ("non-directiveness", "openess", "creativity", "participation", etc.).
The study focuses, in particular, on a group of lower-level staff who have in common the characteristic of being ill-suited to the posts they hold. The group includes the daughter of a military officer, judged to be too "authoritarian" in her position as head of the typing service, and a programmer of working-class origins who is uncomfortable in his dealings with both his superiors and his subordinates. The author's analysis shows that the social psychology of business probably does not have the power to transform the habitus of the people involved, and thereby to "reform" their behavior in a permanent fashion. All the same, it does possess, at the least, the power of altering their scale of values. As a result, it leads them to recognize the excellence of the new values that "modern" managers of "modern" business concerns have arrogated to themselves. This, perhaps, is the subject's main function.

The exploratory study of knowledge and representations about the « legal » in childhood and adolescence reported on in this paper takes place in a field located at the cross-roads of two research trends developed in the sixties and seventies : research on legal socialization carried out in USA and research on knowledge about law and legal consciousness done in Europe. Learning from these two fields is necessary in order to determine the object and conception of legal socialization. The choice of the verbal association method allows to embrace diverse aspects of the « legal » object of socialization and to test interpretative models used in the field of legal socialization as well as in the field of cognitive and moral development.

Cornparing the cross effects of the two major factors of the segmentation of socialization — social class and sex — is the objective of this study, based on a secondary analysis of thé French data from an international survey of youth. The date shows how the instauration of sexual differentiation takes on variable forms according to the social origin of the adolescents and thé areas of socialization (knowledge, sexual liberalism, contestation, interest in politics, attitude toward sexual divisions of work, attitude toward moral traditionalism, emotional autonomy toward parents, behavioral autonomy).

Mariana Saad, Medicine as a constituent of the new Science of the Man : Cabanis
In his first treatise and magnum opus, the Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme, P. J. G. Cabanis identifies the « science of man » as the final outcome of his thinking. He points out that this science resembles a tree whose branches are physiology, the analysis of ideas and morality. A study of the manner in which Cabanis envisioned these different branches of knowledge reveals that médecine - synonimous with physiology - is not only the portal through which an understanding of man is possible, but also another name for the science of man. To understand this, it is necessary to refer on the one hand to the central thesis of the Rapports which posits the identity of the physical and the moral, and on the other, to the way Cabanis conceives of man, as a plastic being whose specific features emerge through disease and can then be observed and investigated.

By focusing on the general ignorance concerning occupational diseases related to exposure to pesticides among farmworkers, the authors seek to understand how public policy tools used to produce knowledge may paradoxically result in the obscuring of social problems. In order to do so, they rely on recent sociological studies on the dynamics of the organized ignorance. They complete this approach by stressing the underlying moral and political implications of this state of affairs. As such, the authors demonstrate two factors contributing to the social invisibility of diseases brought about by the use of pesticides among farmworkers: the institutionalized under-recognition of chronic illnesses caused by certain forms of exposure to low doses of these toxic substances; and the under-reporting by workers of the acute effects of high dose pesticide poisoning. Adapted from the source document.

Family-books of xivth to XVIth centuries' Florence reveal that the hiring of wet-nurses had become a very common practice in high and middle-classe society of the High Renaissance. The various parameters of those practices (résidence and salary of the wet-nurse, sex and birth-ranking of the nurslings, length and modalities of the hiring, reasons for ending or interrupting the contract with nursing parents...) are then studied and lighten the parents' attitudes vs. their newborn babies. These attitudes seem highly contradictory with contemporary scientific knowledges and moral authorities' warnings, all of them favouring maternai suckling. Thus, the Florentine practice of hired wet-nursing has to be put in relation with more general cultural attitudes in urban Tuscan society, which value strongly the paternal apports in procréation and masculine patterns in the representations of kinship and filiation.

Karl Popper's social & political theories are discussed regarding their compatibility with social reform. While he advocates a radical revolution in theoretical science, since no one is harmed when theories are killed, he recommends gradual & limited intervention in applying those theories in order to compare expected results to the actual ones, with a minimum of negative consequences. This conservative political action, coupled with radical thought, is based on the limitations of human knowledge, rather than on any ideal, tradition, status quo, or dislike of violence. It is not possible to foresee all the consequences of an implemented theory. The moral problems & decisions risked by political action cannot be resolved by science. Radical & revolutionary thought, involving the acceptance, rejection, or transformation of well-understood traditions, combined with conservative, piecemeal action are especially necessary when social & political institutions require broad & fundamental changes. Modified HA.