Societal Terms Research Articles

The paternal genome and the health of the assisted reproductive technology child

As a number of children born by assisted reproductive technology (ART) are increasing each year across the developed world, the health of such offspring is a matter of public concern. Does the integrity of the paternal genome impact on offspring health? In societal terms, as birth rates fall, and the Western population become unsustainable, do the benefits outweigh the costs of creating and providing for this ART conceived subpopulation? There are little data to date to answer these questions. The long-term health of such children has largely been ignored, and success measured only by early (prebirth) outcomes such as embryo quality or pregnancy. However, there are powerful paradigms such as ageing and smoking that give vital clues as to the potential impact of unhealthy spermatozoa on disease risk, mental and physical health, fertility and mortality of these offspring.

Bound to Appear: Art, Slavery, and the Site of Blackness in Multicultural America

In Bound to Appear Huey Copeland traces the late 1980s and early 1990s resurgence of aesthetic and intellectual endeavors that broached the transatlantic slave trade. Copeland’s inquiry rests on four installations from 1991 to 1993 by Renée Green, Glenn Ligon, Lorna Simpson, and Fred Wilson. Copeland cleverly mines the conceptual, generational, and contextual ties among these high-profile practitioners to assert that by evoking but refusing to visually portray enslaved black bodies in their installations, the artists redirected attention toward how this antebellum structure continues to inform viewers’ own contemporary experience. While shedding light on societal terms of enslavement and freedom, Bound to Appear offers a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives and timely, if demanding, theoretical applications.

From ‘Generation Auclert’ to ‘Generation Ockrent’: Convictions, Comparisons and Continuities

Working within the framework of Mannheim's analysis of the notion of generations, this article takes two women trailblazers, Hubertine Auclert (1848–1914) and Christine Ockrent (1944–), and situates them within their own generations, but also illustrates the confluence and contradictions as their lives and work are examined across the divide of approximately a century. It proceeds to evaluate their careers as journalists alongside their engagement, or non-engagement, with the feminist Zeitgeist of their respective times, first in the context of citizenship, secondly in relation to their respective career aspirations and ‘rayonnement’, and thirdly with regard to the implication of their location in societal and gender terms. It concludes by contrasting the two women's media impact and approach to feminism: whereas Auclert was a pioneer using her newspaper La Citoyenne as a vehicle for suffragist feminism, Ockrent has been an iconic figure for the advancement of a new generation of women multi-media journalists.

A wider innovation spectrum

Purpose – Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies. Design/methodology/approach – This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context. Findings – Innovation and sustainability. Two of the biggest buzzwords in business today. For many companies, focusing on one of these areas helps secure growth and a competitive edge. It thus stands to reason that combining innovation with sustainability might prove a real match-winner in the longer-term. A common perception equates sustainability with compliance. Small changes here and there to tick the right boxes. Corporate image receives a welcome tonic. But the impact can be much greater than that. Boosting both profits and market share are realistic goals when sustainability is used to drive innovation. Talent becomes easier to attract and retain too. Conventional wisdom has it that an innovation continuum prevails. Incremental change lies at one end with the more disruptive type at the other. Throwing sustainability into the equation demands a more systemic approach that extends the spectrum even further to reflect the scale of transformation such innovation brings. True innovation for sustainability should enhance performance in economic, environmental and societal terms. Practical implications – Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations. Originality/value – The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to digest format.

Bacteriology in British India: Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics by Pratik Chakrabarti

122 BOOK REVIEWS Pratik Chakrabarti, Bacteriology in British India: Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics (Rochester, New York: University of Rochester Press, 2012). ISBN 978-1-58046-408-6 (HC). x + 304 pp. This detailed critical study exemplifies contemporary historical writing about medical practice. Its scope and sources are broad, its engagement with technical material is rigorous, and its arguments are consistent and largely convincing. Although focused on intersections between British India and bacteriology—primarily in its post-1890 iterations—scholars of Australasian medicine will find many points of contrast and connection with Pratik Chakrabarti’s fine text. The author’s central tenet is that the universalist claims of Pasteurian and Kochian bacteriology were patently contradicted when imported into post-1857 India. The study of microbes in the tropics was never a discrete technological and epistemological revolution. Rather, it intersected with prevailing prejudices to animate dialectic between germs and climate. In imperial thought, cultures—in both bacteriological and anthropological senses—‘behaved differently in hot climates’ (p. 10). The unifying position driving Chakrabarti’s analysis is the moral stance enabled by bacteriological research and praxis under the Raj. Germs, he insists, ‘were inescapably entwined in a moral imperial narrative of disease, filth, and putrefaction’ (p. 3). They therefore justified a paternalistic rationale for controlling India, and Indians, to render the tropical environment safer and more humane—at least in British eyes. Successive chapters overlap and occasionally leapfrog each other, addressing the promises and failings of the Pasteurian paradigm in India; implications for the geographical location of laboratories; colonial appropriation and experimentation upon local animals; wild beasts, snake venoms, and antidotes; rabies and vaccine research; and the construct of India as the natural ‘home’ for cholera. The possibility that a panacea might emerge from bacteriology— especially via vaccination and serum therapies—appealed to many Britons and Indians alike. This potential engendered an almost evangelical zeal in some officers within the predominantly white Indian Medical Service (IMS). Their conviction of doing ‘right’, both in scientific and societal terms, excused the suppression of competing claims for moral consideration among indigenous denizens of India— human or otherwise. If such imperatives helped to keep Indians Health & History ● 16/1 ● 2014 123 out of responsible medical roles until the 1930s, in the context of vivisection, ‘the notion of care for animals was concomitant with the idiom of rule’ (p. 96). Despite Chakrabarti’s frequent invocation of ‘morality’, however, I often found his usage a little vague. Nowhere in the text was his own moral frame of reference located within a wider historical, philosophical, or bioethical context (as has been done for French colonial medicine in Algeria, for instance). Readers will acknowledge that side-lining research undertaken by Indians was an undesirable feature of IMS hegemony. Yet Chakrabarti himself is ambivalent about Ram Nath Chopra’s 1930s efforts to integrate biomedical and traditional approaches to snakebite. Likewise, it is implicit in Chakrabarti’s rendering that climate does not affect the biological or pathological characteristics of microorganisms. Surely, therefore, his position should be stated explicitly when contending that ‘the close link created by the British between cholera and the tropics … internalized a fatalism in colonial medical thinking about the possibilities of the eradication of cholera from India’ (p. 198). In light of my own studies on snakes in colonial Australia, I noted that the one chapter in which ‘morality’is conspicuously absent is the one focused on serpents. Indeed, I take issue with the author’s claim that Indian snakebite research ‘reflected the characteristics of colonial science defined by the metropolis and the periphery’(p. 124). From 1865 to 1910, medical references to snakes and their venoms—and to antidotes and their innovators—provoked a rich intercolonial dialogue between India and Australia, with nary a nod to British ‘expertise’. At a conceptual level the author sets up Bacteriology in British India to challenge the agency afforded to non-human actors by Bruno Latour’s oeuvre. Much, however, is in the telling. One could readily reassemble the historical elements arrayed by Chakrabarti to fashion a tale in which germs, landscape, devices and animals—especially flies, which barely rate a mention—could prove just as active in constructing ‘tropical’ diseases as did...

Transposing Broadway: Jews, Assimilation, and the American Musical by Stuart J. Hecht, and: Hard Times: The Adult Musical in 1970s New York City by Elizabeth L. Wollman (review)

Reviewed by: Transposing Broadway: Jews, Assimilation, and the American Musical by Stuart J. Hecht, and: Hard Times: The Adult Musical in 1970s New York City by Elizabeth L. Wollman Laura MacDonald Transposing Broadway: Jews, Assimilation, and the American Musical. By Stuart J. Hecht. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Cloth $90. 240pages. Hard Times: The Adult Musical in 1970s New York City. By Elizabeth L. Wollman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Cloth $27.95. 288pages. In Transposing Broadway: Jews, Assimilation, and the American Musical, Stuart J. Hecht reads the musical as a model for Jews seeking to assimilate into dominant WASP America: “This is not to say that audiences attended musicals deliberately to learn the lessons of assimilation; they generally attended to be entertained. But the presence on stage of characters that, even if indirectly, represented their own identities and lives, certainly added to their ability to sympathize and enjoy” (36). In her latest monograph, Hard Times: The Adult Musical in 1970s New York City, Elizabeth L. Wollman considers an entirely different set of case studies, but like Hecht, identifies a very precise function played by these musicals: “Adult musicals allowed audience members—some of them questioning their own sexuality, some of them eager to learn something about the rapidly changing world, some of them comfortable in their own skins, some of them eager to experience some aspect of a sexual revolution they felt isolated from—to live vicariously without having to get in too deep” (221–222). Whether audiences were Gentile or Jewish, male or female, gay or straight, as Hecht and Wollman write, they experienced more than entertainment when attending American musicals at particular points throughout the twentieth century. While Hecht is a theatre scholar, Wollman is an ethnomusicologist, and these disciplinary differences translate into methodological differences. Hecht and Wollman’s choices illustrate the range of methods available to musical theatre scholars, as well as the challenges in making such choices. Hecht introduces his approach as “dramaturgical. . . . Topics are examined through the study of representative shows and analyzed according to how they work onstage for both the immediate audience and for the larger community which that audience represents” (13). Chapter two explores the use of double-couple configurations in a range of musicals from Jerome Kern’s Princess Show musicals to Guys and Dolls and West Side Story. “The primary couple in any given show reflects the societal ideals, not only of behavior, but also in terms of power. The secondary couple served a variety of functions that evolved over time, but they remained subservient to the interests of the primary couple and held lesser sway in the eyes of the audience” (19). This configuration, Hecht explains, thereby reflected traditional WASPS as well as ethnic mixing. He then considers second-generation Jewish Americans seeking assimilation as creators of musicals. Rodgers and Hammerstein established the book musical format, and the musicals they wrote, Hecht asserts, assumed that Jews and other ethnic groups sought upward mobility in American society. [End Page 92] In chapter three Hecht continues to explore upward mobility through songwriter Irving Berlin’s assimilation and rags-to-riches success story, arguing that, “Just as Berlin has shed his Russian Jewish beginnings to achieve all that America had to offer, so too could the people of Europe and all of the Pacific Rim shed their unhealthy past in favor of a fresh, Americanized future” (55). While Berlin’s music certainly promoted American values and democracy, and his wartime tours were a personal contribution to such cultural imperialism, statements like these might benefit from greater historicization and direct engagement with other scholars. Chapter four is highly structured in contrast to earlier chapters, methodically examining the plot and characters in business-themed musicals to explore insider-outsider negotiations and Jews’ and others’ pursuit of upward mobility. Chapter five focuses on the Cinderella paradigm: “Though outwardly an innocent fairy tale, when seen in societal terms the Cinderella tale pointed out economic inequities and promoted social mobility,” Hecht explains (112). Chapter six examines two musicals set at the turn of the century—Ragtime and Parade. Hecht’s study of the African-American character Coalhouse Walker in the former is especially fascinating, and...

Isobenefit Urbanism and Isotropic Societies for Visionary Futures: Equations Against Unideal Cities

The quintessence of the Isobenefit Urbanism presented here, is to offer fair, walkable and green cities. Its three cornerstones are Modernity, Humanity and Naturality, which are exposed by five principles. The latter, rather then describe The ideal city, which doesn’t exist outside our own minds, describe what a city should avoid in order to not become an unideal city. Isobenefit Cities do not aim to replace the historical town-city model, but to guide future cities growth and to replace the present, often unliveable, megacity typologies through a Modern Postmodern approach: steering the future (Modernism) by keeping diversities, cultures and history alive (Postmodernism), and considering the retroactive game between planning and citizens behaviours. In societal terms, the Isotropic approach aspires a reciprocal understating and awareness about our equality within and, especially, across societies. However, as for the urban point of view, this ambition for equality doesn’t mean an identical, global, unique culture which would signify reciprocal impoverishment.

Understanding elder abuse: a social rights perspective

Elder abuse is generally understood in terms of the types of abuse that older people can be subjected to – financial, physical, psychological, sexual, and neglect. However, these definitions often fail to take into account the broader social context in which elder abuse is allowed to occur. Older people are rarely asked about what elder abuse means to them but when they are, they define it in societal terms – social exclusion, the belittling of their views and contribution, and violation of their rights. An effective approach to elder abuse requires intervention at a societal level to combat ageism and age discrimination.

Societal Statistics by virtue of the Statistical Drake Equation

The Drake equation, first proposed by Frank D. Drake in 1961, is the foundational equation of SETI. It yields an estimate of the number N of extraterrestrial communicating civilizations in the Galaxy given by the product N=Ns×fp×ne×fl×fi×fc×fL, where: Ns is the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy; fp is the fraction of stars that have planetary systems; ne is the number of planets in a given system that are ecologically suitable for life; fl is the fraction of otherwise suitable planets on which life actually arises; fi is the fraction of inhabited planets on which an intelligent form of life evolves; fc is the fraction of planets inhabited by intelligent beings on which a communicative technical civilization develops; and fL is the fraction of planetary lifetime graced by a technical civilization.The first three terms may be called “the astrophysical terms” in the Drake equation since their numerical value is provided by astrophysical considerations. The fourth term, fl, may be called “the origin-of-life term” and entails biology. The last three terms may be called “the societal terms” inasmuch as their respective numerical values are provided by anthropology, telecommunication science and “futuristic science”, respectively.In this paper, we seek to provide a statistical estimate of the three societal terms in the Drake equation basing our calculations on the Statistical Drake Equation first proposed by this author at the 2008 IAC. In that paper the author extended the simple 7-factor product so as to embody Statistics. He proved that, no matter which probability distribution may be assigned to each factor, if the number of factors tends to infinity, then the random variable N follows the lognormal distribution (central limit theorem of Statistics). This author also proved at the 2009 IAC that the Dole (1964) [7] equation, yielding the number of Habitable Planets for Man in the Galaxy, has the same mathematical structure as the Drake equation. So the number of Habitable Planets follows the lognormal distribution as well. But the Dole equation is described by the first FOUR factors of the Drake equation. Thus, we may “divide” the 7-factor Drake equation by the 4-factor Dole equation getting the probability distribution of the last-3-factor Drake equation, i.e. the probability distribution of the SOCIETAL TERMS ONLY. These we study in detail in this paper, achieving new statistical results about the SOCIETAL ASPECTS OF SETI.

Post-normal science in postnormal times

Post-normal science (PNS) was a herald of postnormal times. For Functowicz and Ravetz contemporary issues in which ‘facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent’ necessitate PNS. PNS deals with the postnormal character of contemporary challenges by bringing the contextualised insights of non-scientific stakeholders to bear through the formulation of ‘extended facts’. However, while the contextual content of ‘extended facts’ caters to the indeterminate character of postnormal issues this remains in tension with an implicit assumption that outcomes reflect the quality of the ‘facts’ informing them. This paper takes the claim that postnormal times involves ‘that we abandon…ideas of ‘control and management” seriously by arguing that science should be the servant of outcomes framed in, primarily, societal terms, rather than the other way around. This argument is illustrated using the example of fashioning an effective response to climate change.

Contested Identities: gendered politics, gendered religion in Pakistan

In Pakistan, the self-serving use of Islam by more secular elements alongside politico-religious ones facilitated the latter's increasing influence and the conflation and intricate interweaving of Islam and Pakistani nationhood. A paradigm shift under Zia's martial law revamped society as much as state laws, producing both religiously defined militias and aligned civil society groups. Examining the impact on women of fusing religion and politics, this paper argues that women become symbolic markers of appropriated territory in the pursuit of state power, and that the impact of such fusing, different for differently situated women, needs to be gauged in societal terms as well as in terms of state dynamics. Questioning the positing of civil society as a self-evident progressive desideratum, the paper concludes that gender equality projects seeking reconfigurations of power cannot be effective without vigorously competing in the creation of knowledge, culture and identity.

Is There a Global Society?

The concept of globality is today commonly used to describe a condition characterized by the existence of a single sociopolitical space on a planetary scale. Such a global realm is believed to have resulted from the gradual dissolution of boundaries brought about by intensified exchange and increased interconnectedness between territorially bounded and distinct societies. But while there is a broad agreement to the effect that it is necessary to posit a distinct global level of analysis in order to be able to explain and understand a wide range of phenomena which transcend the boundaries of individual states, the social ontology of this purportedly new domain remains largely unexplored. Arguably, unless we are able to make sociological sense of what goes on in this domain, the very notion of globality and all that goes with it will be of little analytical value to the social sciences (see for example Rosenberg 2005). In this context, one important question has recently been raised by Mathias Albert (2007), who has asked “whether the tools of social theory―or, more specifically, theories of society―are applicable to the global realm.” Implicit in this question is that we need to be able to conceptualize the global in societal terms in order for other sociological concepts, like those of differentiation and rationalization, to become applicable in a theoretically fruitful way. Yet the concept of society has proven difficult to use with reference to the global realm. As I shall suggest, the theoretical difficulties we encounter when we try to apply modern theories of society to the global realm are indicative of the extent to which our conceptions of human association have been nationalized , rather than of any limitations intrinsic to the global realm itself. As I would like to argue, as a consequence of conceptual nationalization, we …

Reproductive medicine -- an African perspective [editorial

No Abstract. South African Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Vol. 13 (2) 2007: pp. 36-37

Creating a Science of the Web

Understanding and fostering the growth of the World Wide Web, both in engineering and societal terms, will require the development of a new interdisciplinary field.

Performance management and corporate social responsibility: the strategic connection

Business performance is examined and critically discussed, incorporating a framework by linking measurement and its management operationally and strategically in order to create an impetus for success. Corporate social responsibility is defined and placed in its contemporary business context, highlighting the importance of stakeholder dialogue for the development of the added value dimensions, both in economic and societal terms. The synergy and relationship between strategic performance and corporate social responsibility, in a good ethical climate, are expounded and exposed as a vehicle for galvanizing management action leading to business excellence and stakeholder satisfaction. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

After the Storm: Crisis, Recovery and Sustaining Development in Four Asian Economies

After the Storm: Crisis, Recovery and Sustaining Development in Four Asian Economies. Edited by K. S. Jomo. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2004. Pp. 318. This volume brings together a set of papers written on selected themes of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, with emphasis on the four countries most adversely affected by the crisis - Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and South Korea. Although much has been written about the Asian crisis, this book is unique in its attempt to analyse post-crisis policy-making in political and societal terms, going beyond the narrow confines of pure economic analysis. It also provides considerable new insights into the debate on the role in the recovery process of the standard Keynesian expansionary policies as against the structural adjustment policies advocated by the IMF. The volume opens with a comprehensive editorial introduction which traces the key policy trends during the pre-crisis era and economic adjustment following the onset of the crisis, followed by a preview of the ensuing chapters. Chapter 2 by Joseph Lim examines the role of premature financial sector liberalization and capital account opening in the making of the crisis against the backdrop of the conventional wisdom on sequencing of liberalization reform. It also takes a critical look at the policies recommended by the IMF in the aftermaths of the crisis and highlights the virtues of the Keynesian reflationary policies in the subsequent recovery. In Chapter 3, C.P. Chandrasekekhar, Jayati Ghosh, and Smitha Francis dwell on the silent features of the rapidly evolving global financial system and the need for an international framework for debt workouts with view to cushioning emerging market economies against the danger posed by unregulated capital flows. Andrew Rosser (Chapter 4) probes the political economy of financial sector liberalization in Indonesia in the 1980s and how the haphazard and partial nature of the reform process contributed to the vulnerability to the crisis. Jonathan R. Pincus and Rizal Ramli (Chapter 5) provide an analytical narrative of how capital flights, in combination with domestic financial fragility, set in train the corporate collapse in Indonesia, ultimately paving the way for state control over a larger share of the industrial and financial sectors. Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker (Chapter 6) examine crisis management and recovery in the Thai economy. Chapter 7 by K. S. Jomo is a synthesis of his previous work on the role of capital controls in crisis management in Malaysia. Chin Kok Fay (Chapter 8) studies Malaysia's bank restructuring and its role in the recovery process. Jang-Sup Shin (Chapter 9) analyses the role of Keynesian policies in the recovery process in South Korea against the backdrop of a critical assessment of the IMF-led structural adjustment reforms implemented in the aftermaths of the crisis. The final chapter by M. Mustafa Erdogdu examines the role of the capacity of the state, evolved over four decades during the pre-crisis era as part of the state-led industrialization strategy, in crisis management in South Korea. As is the case with most edited volumes, a major structural limitation of the book is its lack of cohesion. The introductory chapter raises the reader's expectation that the book, as a whole, would provide a careful examination of a number of important issues relating to the choice and formulation of crisis management policies, the recovery process and future growth trajectory of the economies under study. Unfortunately, the ensuing chapters do not live up to this expectation. The volume reads more like an ad hoc collection of papers written by the contributing authors at their own choice, rather than a systematic compilation of chapters of individual contributions commissioned with a central theme. Some of the key issues listed in the introductory chapter with a view to guiding the reader, in particular, the prospect for regaining pre-crisis growth dynamism by the crisis-affected countries and the implications of the crisis for the mainstream advocacy of the East Asian Miracle as a preferred model for emulation by other countries, are not mentioned even in passing, let alone analysing it systematically, in the ensuing chapters. …

Retssikkerhed som rationalitetsmyte: Administrativ praksis inden for det sociale klagesystem

The Notion of Legal Rights as a Rationalized Myth:
 Administrative Proceedings in the Social Appeals System 
 
 The social appeals system is expected to safeguard the legal rights of Danish citizens, a task it shares with other bodies that deal with complaints about public decision-making. However an ethnographic inquiry into the actual proceedings of the appeals system reveals that this objective is rather ambiguous. The notion of legal rights does not provide officials with a common set of guidelines regarding the criteria for social casework. This is illustra-ted in the article by a case concerning the rights of immi-grants to choose a permanent residence. The case was followed in two different organizational settings, regional and national. Different conceptions of the basic goal of the appeals system seem to prevail in these settings. At the regional level, emphasis is on safeguarding the (human) rights of individuals. At the national level, more attention is paid towards securing a general state of legal unifor-mity. The concept of legal rights therefore fails to offer a sociological understanding of the administrative procee-dings of the appeals system. The article suggests that the notion of legal rights may instead be seen as a rationalized myth, a term taken from the new institutionalism. As such, legal rights do not refer directly to actual proceedings, but are exceedingly important in explaining and legitimizing the presence of the appeals system in more general societal terms.

A cost benefit analysis of an enhanced seat belt enforcement program in South Africa

Objective: To examine whether a program to increase the wearing of seat belts in a South African urban area would be worthwhile in societal terms. Design: A cost benefit analysis...

Norwegian Strategic Culture after World War II

This article details the changes in Norwegian strategic culture, comprising grand strategy and practice, following the end of the Cold War. Throughout the Cold War, Norwegian security and defence policy was characterized by broad, non-politicized consensus. Basic elements of this grand strategic perspective were the smallness of Norway, the people defence and allegiance to the UN. Doctrines focused on survival, with the army as the lead service. Close ties were maintained between the military and societal elites, and the military was seen just as much in societal terms, namely as an employer in scarcely populated areas, as it was in defensive terms. The changes in strategic culture over the past 10–15 years have been uneven, partly driven by internal and external changes in discourse, but over recent years probably as much by changes in practice. The first post-Cold War years witnessed the emergence of an alternative grand strategic representation, focusing on international operations rather than on invasion defence. Mindful of the impact on local communities of a reduced military presence, politicians long resisted any change, but after years of resistance the alternative grand strategy was embraced by the armed forces, leading to the creation of a rapid reaction force and increased emphasis on special task forces. International experience is now considered positive, even necessary, for a military career. Furthermore, whereas general conscription was gradually undermined because of the way in which it is practised, new civil–military ties were forged through the practice of providing military personnel training that was interchangeable with regular education. It now seems that military practice, as well as the specialized military discourse, has outpaced the broader Norwegian discourse on the use of military means. Nevertheless, the tension between global and local concerns remains unresolved.

The nature of noise in society

Noise is unique among pollutants. It is, for example, the only pollutant commonly defined in subjective, psychological terms: ‘‘unwanted sound.’’ Ironically, noise experts work almost entirely in objective measures-sound pressure, sound power, Leq, Ldn, etc. This paper suggests that between the science and engineering of acoustics and the psychology of sound perception, in the societal and social context, lies the true nature of noise–its causes and effects. Enriched by contacts with tens of thousands of individuals over the past 8 years, the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse is working to redefine noise in societal terms. In understanding the nature of noise, the concepts of civility, sovereignty, environmental quality, quality of life, and connectedness to others are much more helpful than ‘‘unwanted sound.’’