Sort Of Way Research Articles

Registering protocols for studies of test accuracy with BJOG

Last year BJOG set up facilities for clinical researchers to register their randomised controlled trial protocols for electronic publication early in the research process. The idea was to encourage good research practice and to make it more likely that the published results reflected the truth. We are now offering the same facility for studies of test accuracy. We believe that we are the first journal to offer this facility for primary research into test accuracy. Studies of test accuracy can go wrong in all sorts of ways. Authors may fail to define the population under investigation, the test, the cutoff values or their reference standard before they start data collection. Some patients may miss some tests, undergo different ones or not get the reference standard. Finally, the results may not be analysed and presented in ways that clinicians can understand and act on. If any of these things go wrong, or get changed halfway through, it makes it almost impossible to interpret the results. The requirements for reporting test accuracy studies are widely agreed but they are more likely to be met if they are considered and published before starting. Protocol registration makes the whole research process more transparent. If sample sizes, cutoff values or reference standard definitions are altered at any stage, referees can see what has happened and judge whether it may have affected the results. If protocols never get published because editors are biased towards selecting papers with positive results, this will also be clear. To register a test accuracy protocol (PT), visit our Web site at http://bjog.allentrack.net and follow instructions. On pages 847–848, and on the Web site, we publish suggested headings for such protocols which authors are free to follow, although we do not insist on this. Protocols will be sent to referees who will use these headings for evaluation. Accepted protocols will be published electronically on BJOG online and a summary printed in the journal. We hope that the main study publication would be submitted first to BJOG and we promise to send it to referees. If their reports are satisfactory, we would normally agree to publish the study, although we cannot guarantee this at the registration stage.

Weaving the Web Reintegration: Locating Aunt Nancy in Praisesong for the Widow

Myth, of course, plays, a very important part in all of our lives, in everyone's culture. Without myth and tradition, what is there? --Julie Dash, Daughters of the Dust (29) Links to the memories, myths, and ways of stolen Africans linger in the symbols, tropes, and forms of African American writing. (1) Following in the steps of Pauline Hopkins, who fictionalized an imagined memory of Africa in Of One Blood (1903; see Gruesser), and Zora Neale Hurston, who traveled east from Florida to New Orleans in Mules and Men (1935), (2) Paule Marshall has similarly infused Praisesong for The Widow (1983) with a distinctly African presence by grounding her narrative in West African tricksters and African American myth. In Praisesong, Marshall focuses on the interior life of her protagonist Avey Johnson, paying particular attention to Avey's spiritual and psychological desires. Marshall approaches these concerns in a way that emphasizes the central role of African ways of knowing as an alternative to Western individualist values and modalities--values that, once adopted by Avey, distance her from a rich cultural heritage. The novel's mythic backdrop allows Marshall to reach beyond the material reality of race, class, and gender oppression and delve into the psychological and spiritual desires of black women. Unearthing the remnants of West African myth in Paule Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow reveals how mythical traces of the Ghanaian spider-trickster, Kwaku Ananse, emerge and function in the novel as a culturally reconnective force. The first step in understanding Ananse's web-driven presence in Praisesong involves tracing his trans-Atlantic journey from Africa to the South Carolina and Georgia Sea Islands to determine how this journey altered his name and cultural function. (3) Ananse's trans-Atlantic transformation begins in Ghana, where the Akan and Ashanti peoples view Ananse as the source of life's stories and of life itself. An endearing rogue (Newall 62), lovable but unquestionably wicked in a charming sort of way, Ananse pushes intellectual, social, and linguistic limits and stimulates intercourse between different places, discourses, and ideologies. In weaving his web of life, Ananse mediates the space between heaven and earth, advocates for humans in the presence of god and, in doing so, bridges disparate spaces and ways of knowing. Ananse's cultural function in Ghana is made clear in the oftanthologized tale Trickster Gets Sky-god's Stories (Courlander, Feldman, Rattray). In this account, we learn that there was once a time when all the stories of the world belonged to Sky God. Consequently, the people of the earth had no stories to share. To secure the tales for all to enjoy, Ananse spins a web to the heavens and asks Sky God for his trunk of stories. Sky God agrees to hand over these tales on one condition: Ananse must bring him Onini the python, Osebo the leopard, Mmoatia the fairy, and Mmoboro the hornet (Scheub 67). Frail and weak, a most unlikely contender, Ananse, in classic trickster fashion, uses his intellect and wit, not force or strength, to fulfill Sky God's request. When Ananse ascends with his captives, Sky God, somewhat surprised by his success but more pleased with his new possessions proclaims, No more shall we call them the stories of the sky-god, we shall call them Spider Stories (70). Finally, Ananse returns to earth to share the stories, now named after him, with the entire world. Even though his behavior in this tale is somewhat atypical (Ananse usually uses his abilities to satisfy his seemingly insatiable appetite), the intercessory powers and linguistic skills he displays represent important facets of Ananse's character in Ghana. During the Middle Passage, however, Ghanaian Ananse experienced a sea change that altered not only his name, but also his function in diasporic society (Wilson Harris 156). In Ghana, he was a creative culture hero while in Jamaica (and other parts of the Caribbean) he became a trickster-par-excellence (Tanna 77). …

Moral Equality and Natural Inferiority

This essay is a commentary upon Race and by Thomas Hill, Jr and Bernard Boxill. They argue that although Kant in his anthropological writings took blacks to be inferior, his moral theory requires that they be shown the proper moral respect since blacks are persons nonetheless. I argue that this argument is sound, because the conception of inferiority that Kant attributed to blacks does not permit showing them the proper moral respect. Imagine a defective Mercedes Benz and a Ford Pinto. These two cars are not inferior in the same sort of way. For Kant, I argue, the inferiority of blacks is more akin to that of a Ford Pinto; for he undoubtedly took blacks to be perpetual children. Chilren are persons, too; however, no one has ever supposed that moral theory applies to children in the full way that it applies to adults.

Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Containment Standard a Hot Topic

I find it amusing in a morbid sort of way that political posturing overrides the simple fact that nuclear waste isn’t going to go away. Ten thousand years or a million makes no difference. The goals are to consolidate the material; make sound policies regarding security, safety, and health; and monitor the site for a very long time.The tack that both proponents and opponents of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain have taken is disturbing in that the focus has now been shifted from the reality to the abstract (see Physics Today, Physics Today 0031-9228 57 9 2004 29 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1809086. September 2004, page 29 ). No location on this planet is perfect in every way to house this legacy. We need to get used to that and start making real plans to deal with that material in the best way we know how. Technology will change drastically before the waste reaches radioactive equilibrium. How we handle it today will be so obsolete in 100 years—never mind 10 000—that we will wonder how we got away with it. Let’s get on the stick and get this project done.© 2004 American Institute of Physics.

Anthony Pople, 1955–2003: an Appreciation

Death not only robbed Anthony Pople of more than two decades from his three score years and ten; it robbed a community dedicated to the study and promotion of western classical music, especially twentieth-century music, of one of its leading lights. Pople was a prolific thinker and doer, and quite a bit of his legacy is in the form of influence, as a teacher, of course, but also as an imaginative person of action who gave of his time and expertise in all sorts of ways – on committees, as an editor, examiner, adviser, studio producer – and, let us not forget, as a most gifted composer and performer of music. There is also the black-line legacy. His writings show, consistently, his rare talent for both clarity and depth of thought. I think he was one of those authors who wanted every piece to be special, shunning the routine as well as the speculative: and if that sentiment might remind us of the composer Alban Berg, it is no accident.

The Summer of Her Baldness: A Cancer Improvisation (review)

Reviewed by: The Summer of Her Baldness: A Cancer Improvisation Delese Wear (bio) Catherine Lord . The Summer of Her Baldness: A Cancer Improvisation. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004. 239 pp. Hardcover, $60.00. Paperback, $24.95. Interesting, I thought, when I saw the author's last name on this breast cancer memoir, wondering if and how literary/political kinship with that most acclaimed chronicler of breast cancer might be enacted in this more recent work, final e notwithstanding. As I read, however, the question of kinship faded. Catherine Lord is too original a voice to be compared to anyone else, even though her political orientation shares many similarities with that of Audre Lorde and others whose narratives link illness to power, aesthetics, sexuality, friendship, and fear. The word "improvisation" in the subtitle captures both the content and the form of the text. It indicates not only the unknown, unscripted, often surprising responses Lord (a professor of studio art) has once she is diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of fifty-one but also the format—a multifaceted, fragmented text that includes Lord's narration of what is happening, photographs of stark hospital examining rooms and medical equipment, Lord's online persona known as Her Baldness, [End Page 378] and e-mail responses from her friends. The most intriguing aspect of this improvisation is Her Baldness, a witty, quick-tempered, passionate presence who "talk[s] big" and "talk[s] a lot" (5) to an e-mail listserv she uses to tell her "audience" (4) what she's experiencing throughout the months of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Lord creates this persona in order to put the telling in her voice, to warn people to stay away from pity. . . . She made up this list so that she could be strong and proud and brave and full of energy and motion in the middle of the desolation that is cyberspace, . . . to have a place in which to write. She made up this list to create the people for whom she wanted to write. She made up this list because she needed an audience in order to stay alive. (3-4) The recipients of this list—FOCL'SRB (friends of Catherine Lord's right breast)—do not know who else is reading her messages. What they might know is that Her Baldness adds and subtracts names depending on her mood and the actions (or inactions) of the recipients and that Her Baldness is a persona who contradicts herself time and again in what she refers to as this "involuntary performance piece" (5). But Her Baldness is more than Lord's witty experiment in narration. She is also an enactment of the fluidity of identity, here the "conflicted relationship" (4) between the before-she-got-breast-cancer Catherine Lord and the postdiagnosis, bald, bolder, uncensored Catherine Lord. In fact, inhabiting the body of a bald woman takes up significant space in Her Baldness's ruminations, much like Audre Lorde's preoccupation with prosthesis. Lorde refuses to wear a prosthesis "because it feels like a lie more than merely a costume. . . . Prosthesis offers the empty comfort of 'Nobody will know the difference.' But it is that very difference which I wish to affirm, because I have lived it, and survived it, and wish to share that strength with other women."1 Her Baldness, who had a lumpectomy instead of a mastectomy like Lorde, refuses to wear a wig. In fact, as the subject heading in one of her messages announces ("WIG OUT"), she has "crossed off [her] list the possibility of a substitute, a fling, a replacement, a temporary solution that would imply a temporary problem" (43). Like the statement Audre Lorde made to the world by not wearing a prosthesis, Her Baldness does "not want to go gently back into the world of people who are afraid of looking into the eyes of someone whose chances of dying in the near future are better than theirs by a long shot. . . . Baldness becomes me, [End Page 379] in a literal sort of way, a hell of a lot better than a pink ribbon" (44). She, like Lorde, does not want to "pass" (44). Still, arriving...

Quantum Equilibrium and the Role of Operators as Observables in Quantum Theory

Bohmian mechanics is arguably the most naively obvious embedding imaginable of Schrödinger's equation into a completely coherent physical theory. It describes a world in which particles move in a highly non-Newtonian sort of way, one which may at first appear to have little to do with the spectrum of predictions of quantum mechanics. It turns out, however, that as a consequence of the defining dynamical equations of Bohmian mechanics, when a system has wave function ψits configuration is typically random, with probability density ρgiven by |ψ|2, the quantum equilibrium distribution. It also turns out that the entire quantum formalism, operators as observables and all the rest, naturally emerges in Bohmian mechanics from the analysis of “measurements.” This analysis reveals the status of operators as observables in the description of quantum phenomena, and facilitates a clear view of the range of applicability of the usual quantum mechanical formulas.

Comunicação, informação e participação popular nos Conselhos de Saúde

Este trabalho discute a participação popular nos conselhos de saúde e o papel da comunicação e da informação nesse processo procurando entender de que maneira diferentes atores sociais ali presentes agem e interagem com o objetivo de deliberar, fiscalizar e interferir no funcionamento do Sistema Único de Saúde. A nossa hipótese é a de que as relações sociais assimétricas ali presentes determinam os alcances e os limites comunicacionais e informacionais dificultando a participação popular e, simultaneamente, o exercício do controle público.

Guy Mountfort, 1905–2003

Guy Mountfort, 1905–2003

Counseling the Culturally Diverse: Theory and Practice, 4th ed.

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book Forum: PsychotherapyFull AccessCounseling the Culturally Diverse: Theory and Practice, 4th ed.ARMANDO R. FAVAZZA, M.D., M.P.H., ARMANDO R. FAVAZZASearch for more papers by this author, M.D., M.P.H., Columbia, Mo.Published Online:1 Jun 2004https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.161.6.1137-aAboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail This hefty tome looks, feels, and reads like a textbook for graduate students in counseling psychology. Obviously, since this is its fourth incarnation, it has been very successful, and it is generally accepted as the best book in the field. The keys to its success are simple: it is comprehensive, clearly written, neatly divided into 20 chapters ending with sections on implications for clinical practice, and contains many clinical vignettes that balance the theoretical material.The book starts slowly, with a discussion of the “superordinate nature” of multicultural counseling, the politics of counseling and therapy, and sociopolitical considerations of trust and mistrust. Much of this section can be summed up by the authors’ contention thatthe power of racism, sexism, and homophobia is related to the invisibility of the powerful forces that control and dictate our lives. In a strange sort of way, we are all victims. Minority groups are victims of oppression. Majority group members are victims who are unwittingly socialized into the role of oppressor. (p. 72)Despite this ominous start, the book moves on to clinical material that really is quite practical. The authors argue correctly that a counselor/therapist dealing with culturally diverse clients needs to be adaptive and not tied down to traditional approaches, although I couldn’t help but chuckle at the suggestion that change-agent outreach programs may involve shooting basketball and playing billiards with clients. Thank God we psychiatrists have patients who, unlike clients, would most likely swoon or run away at the suggestion that we shoot a few hoops together. Just imagine the possibilities of such a scenario in the hands of the comedian Larry David in a episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm! But I digress.The section of the book that most fascinated me was on white racial identity development. Here the authors explore the responses of different people to the question, “What does it mean to be white?” In fact, I plan to spend an entire session of my cultural psychiatry seminar asking the residents to answer this question. The authors note thatwhiteness is transparent precisely because of its everyday occurrence and because Whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, average, and ideal.…Persons of color find White culture quite visible because even though it is nurturing to White Euro-Americans, it may invalidate the lifestyles of multicultural populations. (p. 239)As a resource book for teaching about clinical competence, the book is terrific. Ideally, all psychiatrists should be familiar with the book’s contents, but I seriously doubt that, after a mind-numbing day of 15-minute medication management visits, there are many psychiatrists who have the will and strength to read this lengthy tome. More’s the pity, because through years of personal experiences I have learned that our pills tend to be more efficacious and our patients more compliant when we pay attention to cultural facts. If you go about things the right way, it’s amazing sometimes what can be accomplished in 15 minutes.By Derald Wing Sue and David Sue. New York, John Wiley & Sons, 2003, 507 pp., $80.95. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited ByOrganic consumerism: A comparison between India and the USAJournal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Vol. 53 Volume 161Issue 6 June 2004Pages 1137-a-1138 Metrics PDF download History Published online 1 June 2004 Published in print 1 June 2004

Willa Cather's Lost Boy: "Paul's Case" and Bohemian Tramping

TERRELL SCOTT HERRING Willa Cather's Lost Boy: "Paul's Case" and Bohemian Tramping Put on your slumming clothes and get your car Let's go sightseeing where the high-toned people are Come on, there's lots of fun in store for you See how the other half lives on Park Avenue Let us hide behind a pair of fancy glasses And make faces when a member of the classes passes Let us go do it, they do it Why can't we too? Let's go slumming, nose thumbing, on Park Avenue Irving Berlin, "Slumming on Park Avenue" (1937) ILLA CATHER ALWAYS HAD A SPECIAL INTEREST IN BOYS, but it certainly wasn't sexual. Turn-of-the-century typologies of male adolescence, however, anxiously circulated alongside typologies of (homo)sexual perversion. The paramount instance of this connection occurs in child psychologist G. Stanley Hall's widely popular Adolescence (1904), an encyclopedic overview of "boyology" that practically invents its subject matter ex nihih. Hall argues throughout that "adolescence is a new birth, for the higher and more completely human traits are now born" (xiii); yet various disorders—neuroses, psychoses, and abnormal morphologies—frequently mar the individual's journey Arizona Quarterly Volume 60, Number 2, Summer 2004 Copyright © 2004 by Arizona Board of Regents issN 0004-1610 88 Terrell Scott Herring to adulthood proper. "The momentum ofheredity often seems so insufficient ... so that every step of the upward way is strewn with wreckage of body, mind, and morals" (xiv). As a result, we cannot simply negleet arrested developments, shrug our shoulders, and invoke the folk wisdom that "boys will be boys," for natural bodily changes potentially engender unnatural tendencies. "There is not only arrest," Hall ominously warns his readers, "but perversion, at every stage, and hoodlumism , juvenile crime, and secret vice seem not only increasing, but develop earlier in years in every civilized land" (xiv). In a lightning-quick logical twist, particular acts crystallize into peculiar identities: juvenile delinquency is but a step removed from juvenile delinquents.1 The adolescent, however, was not the only novel type to find itself inclined to perversion, criminality, and abnormal development; these traits also typify the late nineteenth-century white middle-class homosexual male. In a well-known claim, Foucault characterizes the emergent homosexual as "a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood , in addition to being a type of life, a life form, and a morphology, with an indiscreet anatomy and a possibly mysterious physiology" (43). Just as Adolescence makes the mysterious pubescent body intelligible, so it was the sexologist's goal to make this mysterious body discernible, to make it speak the inverted soul. Consequently, no matter how diligently he may hide or deny them, the homosexual's desires invariably voice themselves through this loquaciously "indiscreet" body. Ifyou are looking for a physically and psychically imbalanced, vice-ridden pervert , you know him when you see him. And given widespread rumors about the prevalence of homosexuality in adolescence, this pervert is oftentimes an arrested—and arresting—young lad. Take, for instance, the opening moments of Willa Cather's 1905 short story "Paul's Case: A Study in Temperament," one of the first literary attempts to question turn-of-the-century discourses on perverse sexuality and male adolescence. "Always smiling, always glancing about him," Paul lives his days in constant paranoia, "seeming to feel that people might be watching him and trying to detect something" (222). These fears are not unwarranted, since Pittsburgh High's faculty and his father have just verbally pounced upon the adolescent like "a miserable street cat set at bay by a ring of tormentors." In their attempts to make sense of—to specify—Paul's particularity, the elders force the adolescent to account for his hoodlumism, "his various misdemeanors" WiIk Cather's Lost Boy 89 (221). Yet throughout this grand after-school "inquisition," we hear only one direct quote from the boy: "? don't know,' he replied, ? didn't mean to be polite or impolite, either. I guess it's a sort of way I have of saying things regardless'" (222). Judging from his claim that he didn't intend to "be polite or impolite," it appears...

A rounded dozen.

Welcome to a new series in which we invite distinguished psychiatrists from around the world to select the 12 books they have found valuable in shaping their ideas and influencing their clinical practice. I must be candid. I was totally won over to the intrinsic worth of doing such an exercise when I was invited to contribute to the '10 books' series of the British Journal of Psychiatry. I had to think long and hard but the effort was exhilarating. I discovered in an odd sort of way the figures who have proved central to the development of my career. Peter Tyrer, the Editor of the British Journal, graciously encouraged me to imitate the 10 books column. Hence the 'rounded dozen' concept. (I had immense difficulty confining myself to 10 books when I had to make my selections and thought a couple of extra places would not go amiss!) I am delighted that a dear friend and mentor, the eminent German psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and family therapist, Helm Stierlin, acepted my invitation to launch the new column. His 'essay' is not only replete with fascinating psychiatric history but also reveals a colleague who is able to maintain an eager curiosity about the nature of our marvellous profession and a willingness to alter his way of thinking in the light of new conceptual and empirical knowledge. I commend his essay to you and hope you are as inspired by it as I am. I shall be inviting other eminent psychiatrists to prepare a 'rounded dozen' but welcome any suggestions from the readership for potential contributors. Sidney Bloch Editor

Editorial

Editorial

Designing for scale and differentiation

Naïve pictures of the Internet frequently portray a small collection of hosts or LAN's connected by a "cloud" of connectivity. The truth is more complex. The IP-level structure of the Internet is composed from a large number of constituent networks, each of which differs in some or all of transmission technologies, routing protocols, administrative models, security policies, QoS capabilities, pricing mechanisms, and similar attributes. On top of this, a whole new structure of application-layer overlays and content distribution networks, equally diverse in the sorts of ways mentioned above, is rapidly evolving. Virtually any horizontal slice through the current Internet structure reveals a loosely coupled federation of separately defined, operated, and managed entities, interconnected to varying degrees, and often differing drastically in internal requirements and implementation. Intuitively, it is natural to think of each of these entities as existing in a region of the network, with each region having coherent internal technology and policies, and each region managing its interactions with other regions of the net according to some defined set of rules and policies.In this paper, we propose that a key design element in an architecture for extremely large scale, wide distribution and heterogeneous networks is a grouping and partitioning mechanism we call the region . Furthermore we postulate that such a mechanism can provide increased functionality and management of existing unresolved problems in current networks. The paper both describes a proposed definition of the region concept and explores the utility of such a mechanism through a series of examples. We claim that there is significant added benefit to generalizing the idea of the region .

The discussion section

As a medical author, I find the discussion sections of original scientific articles hard to write. Judging by the papers we receive at the BJOG, I am not alone. For most papers, the background and methods almost write themselves, and, although the results may be tough to get, they are usually fairly easy to write down. In contrast, the discussion requires original thought, a new literature search and often many revisions to make it useful. Perhaps, this is why many are overlong, badly organised and some barely intelligible. Some authors also appear to think that this is the place to repeat the results, put in material they could not find space for elsewhere and to deliver themselves of personal opinions unrelated to the topic of the paper. This editorial is for them. The discussion section is designed to help the reader see how the results fit in with previous work and to indicate the implications for future practice and research. It is not a place to try to ‘sell the paper’. Docherty and Smith1 recently suggested that discussion sections should be structured in the same sort of way as abstracts, arguing that this would impose discipline on authors and reduce speculation. The BJOG editors think using Docherty and Smith's subheadings in the final paper is going too far, but we do encourage authors to follow their general structure (Table 1). Experienced authors usually do this already. A good technique for beginners is to use the five headings while writing the first few drafts and remove them before the final revision. The discussion should open with a statement of the principal findings. This should not be a restatement of the results, but rather should simply say in words what has been found. For example ‘We have shown that the abc allele causes xyz disease’. If there are weaknesses in the paper this opening phrase may be qualified. For example, ‘…the abc allele appears to cause xyz disease’ or even ‘…the abc allele appears to be associated with xyz disease’. The key requirement of this opening sentence is that it should be an accurate statement of the main findings. A factual description of the strengths and weakness of the study should follow. This is the point to remind readers if the study is original or not and to tell them of a strong study design, large sample size, strict diagnostic criteria or superior laboratory methods. It is also the place to come clean and admit the study's weaknesses. If the design was weak, the sample size smaller than planned, patients did not comply well with treatment or a laboratory assay was done in a suboptimal way, an honest description of this strengthens the paper. The next section should compare the present findings with those of previous related studies. If they are similar, explain why the confirmation is worth reporting and if they differ, speculate why the differences may have occurred. This is also the point to compare the strengths and weakness of the present study with earlier ones. When all these qualifications have been got out of the way, it is time to describe the implications of the study for intended readers, whether scientists, clinicians, policymakers or patients. For most clinical articles in BJOG, the intended readers will be clinicians and clinical researchers, but for some scientific articles, they will be basic scientists in the same discipline. The discussion should end by reminding readers what unanswered questions remain and what further research is needed. It is much more useful to give a specific statement of what you think should be done, than to make a platitudinous call for unspecified further research. If the results indicate that further studies are impossible or unnecessary, say so and shut up. Following Docherty and Smith's headings will make writing the discussion section easier and increase the impact of your paper for readers. It will also please the editors, which may increase its chance of acceptance.

Why Lacan?

Jean-Michel Rabaté. The Cambridge Companion to Lacan. Cambridge University Press, 2003. xxviii + 287 pp. $35.00. Jacques Lacan is the type of intellectual that people love to hate. His style, first of all, is notoriously difficult due to its obscurity and convolution. His concepts and terms, in addition, are intentionally unstable, never finished, and always open to further revision by the master himself or his often erstwhile disciples. And his wit, although sometimes very funny in an academically Marx- brothers sort of way, is more often ponderously self-regarding and too clever by half. Finally, although he promotes himself as the true follower of his master, Freud—whose other followers got him wrong—Lacan's work represents rather a decided break with Freudian psychoanalysis than its definitive fulfillment. Why Lacan, indeed? Jean-Michel Rabaté's Cambridge Companion to Lacan answers this basic question of the skeptical Anglo-American intellectual, and in raising even more interesting and pertinent ones, makes a major contribution to Lacan studies. Before continuing with my analysis of this volume's achievements, however, I will outline Lacan's major contribution to the theory of the human subject. Lacan begins his work in psychiatry and then psychoanalysis not with neurotic patients but with psychotic ones. Basing himself on the phenomena of their madness, Lacan articulates a general theory of the human subject. First of all, Lacan proposes three registers (or dimensions) in which the human subject defines itself: the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. The Imaginary can be exemplified by what Lacan designates as the mirror stage of childhood development. During the period between six and eighteen months, Lacan argues, when the child jubilantly discovers his or her self-image in the mirror, the child also receives a model of wholeness and perfection that is both false or misleading and alienating in the end. Supported by the primary caregiver while viewing his or her own mirror image, the child, still unable to master completely his or her various bodily functions and muscular movements, beholds an image of totality that appears masterfully still or at the command of the child's every whim. Such a specular mirage haunts the child ever after with an ideal image (or its projected fantasized gaze); the child can never hope to measure up to in its life no matter what it may do. [End Page 136] The Imaginary, then, is the dimension of aesthetic fascination and mis-recognition. But what makes this dimension possible, of course, is the presence and action of the Symbolic; in this instance, as manifested by the primary caregiver supporting the child as it gazes into the apparatus of the mirror. The Symbolic is principally what plays this supportive and in fact formative role in all of our lives; that is, it is language (in the largest sense of a rule-governed combinatory system of exchange and communication) and its institutions, such as the law, the family and the social order, generally. The primary caregiver commanding ("Look! See!) the child to regard itself in the mirror as the child is being held up to do so would be the simplest version of this Symbolic agency of language. The production, distribution, and operation of structures in society, as theorized by Levi-Strauss' anthropology (derived as it is from Saussure's structuralist linguistics), would be the more sophisticated version of the Symbolic Order. All the formal rituals that structure otherwise irresolvable contradictions into livable if repeatable oppositions—those of the family and kinship system, of the legal system, of politics and communication, of religion and cultural life at large—this anthropological dimension of human existence is what Lacan means primarily by the Symbolic. It is, as he nicknames it, "the Big Other." It implants its psychology (neurotic or psychotic mentality) into each subject via the delegations of the family and society's communication mechanisms, particularly those of spoken discourse. "The unconscious is structured like a language" and it is "the discourse of the Other...

Translating Ireland Back into Éire: Gael Linn and Film Making in Irish

Without films in Irish all the work done for the language in the schools, on the radio and by voluntary organisations is doomed to ultimate failure no matter how effectively it is done. Films in Irish, anonymous booklet published in 1950 by the Comhdhail Naisiunta na Gaeilge The translator invades, extracts, and brings home. George Steiner, After Babel THE language revitalization organization Gael Linn is rightly famous for its embrace of modern technology in its work trying to revive Irish as Ireland's vernacular tongue. (1) While its traditional music label is perhaps the most widely known of these initiatives, equally important were its forays into film making. Here I offer a short examination of these forays, focusing on the newsreel series Amharc Eireann (A View of Ireland, 1956-64) and on George Morrisson's two films, Mise Eire (I Am Ireland, 1959) and Saoirse? (Freedom?, 1961). Two aspects of these films are particularly important; one is their Griersonian character--and I will explain John Grierson's ideas about cinema--and the other is their quality as translations, translations of a mostly English-speaking country into a series of Irish-speaking images. Gael Linn seemed to visualize film as something that was social and nation-building rather than commercial, an orientation that went against the otherwise capitalist-oriented development policies of the Lemass government. In this regard its film production strongly resembled those of the National Film Board of Canada and the film units of the United Kingdom's General Post Office and Empire Marketing Board, all of which were at some point run by Grierson. That Gael Linn sought to put this idea of film into action through the use of translation brings to light some interesting tensions in the role of translation in Ireland's ongoing process of cultural definition. A mixture of the progressive/social-democratic and the nostalgic/conservative are, we will see, problems that plague both the language revitalization movement and the Griersonian idea of cinema. Thus, these Gael Linn films, far from being merely a cine-historical curiosity, are in fact embodiments of deeply paradoxical moments in both film history and Irish history. John Grierson (1898-1972) was an extremely influential figure in documentary cinema, though his legacy is a contradictory one. Born in Scotland, he first came to international prominence when he ran the film units of the Empire Marketing Board (1926-33; hereafter EMB) and the General Post Office (1933-38; hereafter GPO), both in the UK. This period is loosely known as the British Documentary Movement, and Grierson oversaw the production of a number of films that stand as monuments of documentary, such as Drifters (EMB, John Grierson, 1929), Song of Ceylon (EMB, Basil Wright, 1933) and Night Mail (GPO, Basil Wright and Harry Watt, 1936). Grierson went to Canada in 1938, charged with surveying the country's film production; he subsequently became the first head of the National Film Board of Canada, whose original brief was primarily the production of wartime propaganda films. He also consulted on film commissions in New Zealand and Australia, and did film work for UNESCO from 1946 to 1948. Overall Grierson's vision involved a socially oriented, non-commercial model for film, a model that was closely linked to strong government and national unity. He was influenced by Soviet cinema, whose important figures such as Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevlod Pudovkin saw film as a means to consolidate and unify the new, postrevolutionary state. Although many of the films made under his supervision (or by people influenced by his vision) were overly earnest or idealistic about working-class life, excessively dry, and vaguely patronizing in that educational-documentary sort of way, many Grierson-era films are also wonders of modernist aesthetics. Night Mail, for instance, features an editing style heavily influenced by Soviet film of the 1920s, a score by Benjamin Britten, and a W. …

Starboy and I

I know people have the right to fictionalize in all sorts of ways about the future-for instance, by the year 2010 we can vacation on the moon or hold a wedding on Mars. These scenarios might only be extrapolations, but we can write them into books as if they were facts. However, the past is more popular for fabrication, at least in China, where there's an endless stream of novels and TV series featuring romances and intrigues set in imperial palaces. The closest thing to this in America would be westerncowboy fiction. Clearly, the length of a country's history makes a difference. China has a vast amount of history that can be fictionalized, while America has only a couple of hundred years, and most of that is documented in detail. Documentation gets to be pretty important when you remember how many versions of history China has had during those same couple of hundred years. These different versions have given Chinese writers more leeway to fictionalize. So a foreigner who observes Chinese history from the outside must feel bewildered. And not just foreigners: even Chinese people feel distanced from their history. For one simple reason: a lot of history is treated vaguely, with big words covering a great many details, and when you lose the details, the fascination of history is gone. I'm not attempting to write a serious, in-depth analysis. I'm just writing about a friend of mine, about his background and his talent for fabrication, which I greatly appreciate. His name is Starboy. I'm told that three days after his father's wedding, in 1949, someone gave his father a boat ticket to Hong Kong. Because he couldn't find a second ticket, he gave up on Hong Kong and stayed on the mainland, where he and his wife raised three children, including Starboy. After the Cultural Revolution, the common fiction in China was expressed this way: "If my grandfather (or parents or whoever) had left the mainland in 1949, it would have been a different story." From there, switch to Shanghai in 1981, when Starboy was thirty-one years old. By then I had known him for more than ten years, but never once had I heard him fictionalize his parents like that. He made up a different story: "I just pretend my father returned from Hong Kong to the motherland in 1950." That's the way he is-someone who thinks like a writer

Mao, missä sä oot? Kiinan kulttuurivallankumous Suomen 1960-luvun keskusteluissa by Pirkko-Liisa s> Kastari (review)

REVIEWS 373 was something more than a combination of big capital and the priest in cassockand steel helmet portrayedin Kari'scartoons. I like the fact that Smolander, in his analysisof strainsthat were constantly tending to emerge in Finnish Conservatism,employs my favouriteloan word in the Finnish language, namely dilemma. To cap the Social Democrats, who argued that the welfare state was a condition of economic growth, the Conservatives reversed the scenario and saw powerful economic growth as the condition for the creation of the welfarestate. So farso good. But then the dilemma emerged. Voices on the sideline like Tuure Junnila's were for long pointing out that the taxation for the welfare state would recoil negatively upon economic growth. Even the youthful Conservatism of Juha Rihtniemi began to feel alarmed. Raimo Ilaskivi found a way out by insisting upon a wage policy that rewardedindustriousnessand training.In his argumentation,the welfarestate was not a means for producing the dreaded economic equality all Conservatives feared. It was, on the contrary,the best means of holding off Socialismby preventing larger-scale reconstructionsof society and the economy through state action. Ilaskivi saw a compromise being engendered between a Conservatism that accepted the welfare state and a Social Democracy that accepted the market economy. This has come to be, though I should myself fiercely argue that the compromise has left certain key aspects of the welfare state in Finland definitelyin the lurch, as a resultof the fact that the taxpayer has in recent yearshad to bale out a bankingsystemthat could not endure the mistakesof the market. Though allthisgoes beyond the period atwhich Smolandercloseshisbook, his text gives insightful features of what was to come in so many fields of political endeavour. Finlandis not, afterall, Sweden. The Finnish Conservatives have had to strugglenot merely againstCommunism but have also had to cope with a powerfulAgrarianism.Here again let the guide be Ilaskivi,who, in I965, lambasted his own party for not caring enough for the developed areas of Finland,while engaging in rhetoricabout the undeveloped parts.His type of thinking was, thirtyyears later, to take Finland into the EU and into acceptance of the convergence criteriaof the EMU, cost whatever it might for social policy. And Agrarianism,a supporter of a somewhat differenttype of welfare state, has failed to stem the remorselessshift of population intojust a few growth centres. By now, things have become pretty consensual but in a quiescent sortof way. Appended to Smolander's text is a very well-structuredEnglish summary translatedby Anya Pitkanen. University ofTurku, Finland GEORGE MAUDE Kastari, Pirkko-Liisa.Mao, missd sd oot? Kiinankulttuurivallankumous Suomen ig60-luvun keskusteluissa. Bibliotheca Historica, 65. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Helsinki, 2001. 47I pp. Illustrations.Notes. Bibliography. Index. FIM i6o.oo. PIRKKO-LIISA KASTARI's book, Mao,missasdoot? ('Mao, where artthou?')is an account of an aspect of Finnish politics very different from the developing 374 SEER, 8o, 2, 2002 consensual styledescribed inJyrkiSmolander's workabouttheimpactofthe folkhemmet philosophy on the Finnish ConservativeParty (see review, pp. 372-73). Bothtextsactuallydealwiththe influenceof foreignexamples uponthepoliticalmoodinFinland,butthecaseofSwedenetalwasshownas bindingtheFinnishpoliticalpartiesmorecloselytoeachother,whilethecase of Mao'sChina,inparticular throughtheimageof theCultural Revolution, I966 and all that, served a protestpolitics in Finlandthat never even crystallized into the formationof a distinctMaoistparty.The problemsof temporizing throughparticipation in a systemof formalpoliticsthusnever aroseforthosediverseindividuals in Finlandwhowereattracted to Maoism. Whiletheyremained Maoists,theyremained outsiders. Whatwasin it?Letit be saidrightawaythatneithertheFinnishMaoists northepublicingeneralinFinland knewverymuchaboutwhatwasgoingon inChina.Andthisapplied,too,totheolderendoftheFinland-China Society, whichwasfoundedbeforeMaoismtookon itsworld-beating stance.Those morespecifically drawnto theSocialism oftheChineseRevolution would,in theirturn,havebeen astonished to learnthatthe sympathetically discursive MaoofEdgarSnow'sportrayal (I 937) had,betweenI958 andI96I, launched a GreatLeapForward thatresultedin thedeathsof atleastthirtymillionof his fellow-countrymen. Accordingto otheraccountsmentionedin Kastari's book,themadMaowasalsowillingto provokea globalnuclearwarevenat theriskofhavingFujiancaughtupinit.WhentheCultural Revolutioncame on, onlyrathergarbledversionsofitscruelties becameknowninFinland. Yet something ofitsappalling nastiness didfilterthrough. Anembarrassed silenceinthisquestionfellupontheFinnishestablishment at the Kekkonen-Karjalainen level.An evenmoreembarrassed silencewas evidentamongthe rulingcasteof the FinnishCommunistParty,as Antti Kovanen(mentioned in a footnotebyKastari) revealedin 1970 inanintense littlebookon the crisisof Communism. Whatdrovebothgroupsto silence waslesstheknowledge ofthecruelties perpetrated inChinathanthefactthat ontheworld-stage itwastheSovietUnionthathadbecomethemajorMaoist target.In consequence, by thetimeof theCultural RevolutionthesympathizerswithMaoismin Finlandconsistedof a variedassortment of individuals whotendedto findthepoliticalatmosphere in Finlandunimaginative in the restraint ofitsgoals. Inevitably, therefore,thiswasa revoltthathadmuchto do withyouth.I wellremember thetimewhenascionofFinnishacademia gotupinameeting of hisownbourgeois partyandwavedMao'sbookofpreceptsin thefacesof an astonishedpartyexecutive.This was the superficial side of the protest againsttheelders,withonlya shadowoftheinfiltration strategies ofthemore committed Maoists...

Indian MBA Students' Perceptions of Ethics & Society: A First Level Analysis

The objective of this study is to understand where MBA (PGP) students stand on issues. The study was driven by a need to understand the students better so as to be able to design courses on business ethics and human values more effectively. In the context of an increasingly competitive environment for admission to top business schools like the IIMs, being able to keep track of the changing values and beliefs of our students will also be of use in other aspects of programme design.A questionnaire to measure Perceptions and Attitudes about Business and Society consisting of 37 items and 17 items on Religious and Spiritual Beliefs was developed for this study. The questionnaire was administered to 175 first-years students and 146 second-year students of HM Bangalore. It was also administered to 51 students of a private management institution affiliated to Bangalore University.The students on the whole appear to be idealistic when confronted with general statements but put in a bind when required to make trade-offs between potentially conflicting factors. They are caught between ideals ami the world as it is. They come out as somewhat self-centered and individualistic but not in a vicious sort of way. They are clearly performance-driven and have imbibed much of the ethic of modern capitalism. IIMB students are found to fall in three clusters - one cluster willing to do anything for performance, another ethical but practical and a third aggressive moralists.Compared to other management students, IIMB students are more business-oriented, self-orientedand performance-oriented. They are also much more willing to do whatever it takes to make a business successful and less questioning of the ethicality of issues. At the same time they are more idealistic as far as bribery or conduct are concerned.By the end of the first year of the MBA programme and summer training at IIMB, the students have less belief in the social responsibility of business (or just a greater faith in unbridled capitalism). They are more willing to do whatever it takes to make a business succeed, whether it be sifting through a competitor's garbage or breaking apart a competitor's product to study its working. At the same time, they see a slightly larger space for personal conscience and values than before.Women are more sensitive than men to human issues. They are less tolerant of unethical behaviour. They see a higher role for conscience and individual values. They are more particular about what is acceptable, whether it is in the realm of advertising or business intelligence. While believers in God are less willing to accept the primacy of maximising shareholder wealth over all other goals, they are at the same time less hesitant to bribe.Implications are drawn for the teaching of business ethics and further research.