What is good taste good for?

Bourdieu afflrme que le capital cultural est utile lorsque Ton veut obtenir une situation de classe supérieure, particuliérement dans certains secteurs, et n'est en fait qu'une seule chose: une culture de condition supérieure. Mais son argument, établit pour une France centralisée, est moins valable pour le Canada plus subdivisé. Cet article étudie les idées de Bourdieu sous tous leurs aspects pour un échantillon quota de Torontoniens. Les résultats suggèrent qu'un capital culturel de condition supérieure existe à Toronto, mais qu'il a peu d'effet sur les relations de classe au travail, ou le véritable capital culturel dirige la culture d'entreprise qui domine les entreprises privées. La culture d'entreprise est aussi repartie en classes et pourrait jouer un role dans la reproduction de classes qui est tres similaire a ce que Bourdieu revendique comme culture de condition supérieure.
Bourdieu argues that cultural capital is useful in gaining higher class location, especially in some sectors, and is essentially a single thing: high status culture. But his argument, developed for centralized France, is less suitable for more subdivided Canada. This paper explores Bourdieu's ideas through a quota sample of 40 Torontonians. Results suggest that high status cultural capital does exist in Toronto, but has little part in class relationships at work, where the true cultural capital is command of the business culture which dominates private enterprises. Business culture is also class stratified, and may play a role in class reproduction which is quite similar to that which Bourdieu asserts for high status culture.     

Selling good behavior

Social marketers use the tools of selling to promote good nutrition, regular checkups, and other positive behavior. Instead of preaching, they try to understand and change the complex motivations that lie behind risky activities like smoking and unsafe sex. AIDS prevention is the vanguard of social marketing in the U.S., but the practice is likely to spread for a simple reason: it works.     

The good will umbrella

The six reproductions concern a Mobil oil company public relations rationale. The artist discusses political art in a preface.     

Serving the public good

This discussion foregrounds four key issues engaged by the articles presented in this special issue: the unique challenges and opportunities of environmental education evaluation, how to think well about the evaluation approaches and purposes that best match this domain, evaluation capacity building in environmental education and action, and accountability and activist pressures on contemporary evaluation. Environmental education evaluators are encouraged to consider positioning their work in service of the public good.     

A good fit: the contribution of action learning to supervision practice

This paper discusses the value of action learning for social work supervisors. Recent years have seen renewed focus on supervision as a reflective space and some indications that the tide may be turning in regard to the dominance of managerial priorities within the supervision of direct practice. It is less evident that a similar shift is taking place for supervisors themselves and, anecdotally, many describe their own supervision as having a business focus with limited scope for reflective dialogue. While the traditional functions of supervision need to adapt to fit the responsibilities of those in management positions, it remains true that these staff provide a vital containing role within the organisational hierarchy. For that to be sustained, it is important that supervisors have space and structure within which to process the emotional, intellectual and practical challenges of their work. The integration of action learning sets within post-qualifying courses for supervisors has demonstrated a useful dual function. Firstly, they provide an effective model for group supervision, facilitating in-depth reflection on complex practice issues. Secondly, they offer managers a peer supervision forum; a safe place to explore dilemmas and share the vulnerabilities which belong to management roles as well as practice.     

'It's good to talk': The focus group and the sociological imagination

This paper argues that the critical social scientist can employ the focus group – group discussions focused by a facilitator around a particular topic or area of experience – to recast radically both the social relations and the object of the research process. I explore the potential of the focus group to cultivate the sociological imagination in both the facilitating social scientist and the participants: in Bhaskarian terms, a 'transformtional act', raising consciousness and empowering participants, rupturing rather than reproducing underlying relations of exploitation and domination. The hitherto dominant forms of focus group research are criticised as being embedded in the epistemological and methodological assumptions of positivism, behaviourism and empiricism, and in social relations which service power. The qualities of the focus group which have attracted the marketer and advertiser – access to the experiential knowledge, opinions and world-view of the participants, in a context of synergic interaction – are examined. The paper argues for an alternative, radical use of focus groups, based on the new politics of knowledge associated with movements of social resistance. The relationship between this radical conception of focus groups and both Habermas's theory of communicative action and Bhaskar's critical realism is discussed and examples of the potential for focus groups to democratise governance and service provision are offered.     

Public good and private good valuation for waiting time reduction: a laboratory study

In a laboratory experiment, subjects were endowed with money and waiting time. Preferences for waiting time reduction were elicited with salient rewards both as a private good and as a public good. The allocations of the public good that were theoretically predicted by the Nash equilibrium and the Lindahl equilibrium, respectively, were computed from the individual private good valuations and compared with the subjects?? actual contributions. We found a significant positive correlation between private good valuations in terms of willingness-to-pay and public good valuations in terms of voluntary contributions. Group contributions to public waiting time reduction significantly exceeded the non-cooperative prediction and were close to the socially optimal level. However, for a majority of subjects, the Lindahl equilibrium was not able to predict the observed contributions.     

What's good and good for you? A personal review of selected nonprofit periodicals

We depart from the standard book review style here to include a more informal critique. A busy, top-level nonprofit manager shares her perspective on five journals.     

Developing Social Firms in the UK: a contribution to identifying good practice

Social firms and related enterprises are developing rapidly in the UK as a means of providing employment for disabled people. This study examined the kind of enterprise that will best meet the aspirations of disabled people. A telephone survey identified the range of enterprises describing themselves as social firms, and examined their develop ment and operation. Alongside the survey, focus groups with disabled people and interviews with carers explored perspectives on the values that should underpin social firms. The results suggest that indicators of good practice include: user/worker participation in the firm's development and operation; the availability of expert advice to enable informed choice about payment, with payment at the minimum wage rates or higher for those who choose this; opportunities for workers to develop to their full potential; a workforce comprising disabled and non-disabled workers; the involvement of carers and local socio-economic agencies in developing the social firm.     

When good is good: A virtuous circle of self-efficacy and flow at work among teachers

Abstract

The objective of this study was to extend the channel model of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, 1990) by including self-efficacy as predictor of the challenges-skills combination, and of the flow experience itself, based on the predictions of social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1997, 2001). We conducted a two-wave longitudinal study among 258 secondary school teachers. Results, first, showed that the channel model of flow, including self-efficacy as antecedent of flow, fitted better the data. Secondly, it was observed that the more self-efficacy the more flow frequency and higher levels of challenge and skills which, in turn, predicted flow over time. Moreover, the influence of self-efficacy on flow over time was mediated by subjects' perception of the challenges and skills combination. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of integrating flow theory into the social cognitive theory.     

Are unions good for productivity?

This paper presents a critical view of the thesis, associated with Harvard analysts, that unions ‘cause’ higher productivity. It is argued that the research results of this controversial literature are to be regarded with considerable skepticism, not least because of the limited empirical and theoretical content of the underlying model. I am indebted to Andy Barnett for his helpful comments on this paper. The usual disclaimer attaches.     

When good Cdk5 turns bad

The cyclin-dependent kinase-5 (Cdk5) is critical to normal mammalian development and has been implicated in synaptic plasticity, learning, and memory in the adult brain. But Cdk-5 activity has also been linked to neurodegenerative diseases. Could a single protein have opposing effects? A new study shows that production of a neuronal protein capable of regulating Cdk-5 activity can turn Cdk-5 from "good" to "bad." The findings may have implications for the development and treatment of conditions like Alzheimer's disease.     

Feeling good about recycled hearts.

The chair of the Massachusetts Task Force on Organ Transplantation sets forth the public policy issues at stake.     

The role of beliefs,trust, and risk in contributions to a public good

This paper experimentally investigates if and how beliefs, trust, and risk attitudes are associated with cooperative behavior. By applying incentivized elicitation methods to measure these concepts, we find that beliefs about others’ cooperation and trust are positively correlated with cooperation in a public goods game. However, even though contributing to a public good resembles a situation of making decisions under strategic uncertainty, elicited risk preferences do not seem to explain cooperation in a systematic way.