The 'stance' in the poetics of Paul Celan

This article deals with the ethics of Paul Celan's poetics, presenting and analysing his notion of 'Stehen'.

Unconscious Vigilance: Worldview Defense without Adaptations for Terror, Coalition or Uncertainty Management

Individuals subtly reminded of death, coalitional challenges, or feelings of uncertainty display exaggerated preferences for affirmations and against criticisms of their cultural in-groups. Terror management, coalitional psychology, and uncertainty management theories postulate this “worldview defense” effectas the output of mechanisms evolved either to allay the fear of death, foster social support, or reduce anxiety by increasing adherence to cultural values. In 4 studies, we report evidence for an alternative perspective. We argue that worldview defense owes to unconscious vigilance, a state of accentuatedreactivity to affective targets (which need not relate to cultural worldviews) that follows detection of subtle alarm cues (which need not pertain to death, coalitional challenges, or uncertainty). In Studies 1 and 2, death-primed participants produced exaggerated ratings of worldview-neutral affective targets. In Studies 3 and 4, subliminal threat manipulations unrelated to death, coalitional challenges, or uncertaintyevoked worldview defense. These results are discussed as they inform evolutionary interpretations of worldview defense and future investigations of the influence of unconscious alarm on judgment.

Cultured responses: the production of social capital in faith based organisations

The theoretical concept of ‘social capital’ has been increasingly invoked in connection to religion by academics, policy makers, charities and Faith Based Organisations (FBOs). Drawing on the popularisation of the term by Robert Putnam, many in these groups have hailed the religious as one of the most productive generators of social capital in today’s societies. In this article, we examine this claim through ethnographic material relating to Faithworks, a national ‘movement’ of Christians who provide welfare services within their communities. We claim that to apply the term ‘social capital’ in a meaningful sociological manner to FBOs requires a return to Pierre Bourdieu’s use of the term in order to refuse to extricate it from the practices in which it is enmeshed.

NHS Inquiries: A Time Series Analysis

This article provides a time series analysis of NHS public inquiries and inquiries related to health against the background of recent policy changes which are centralizing hazardous incident investigations within agencies such as the Healthcare Commission.

Extended contact effects as a function of closeness of relationship with ingroup contacts

Using survey data from Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland (N = 428), the authors examined the effects of extended contact via different types of ingroup contacts (neighbors, work colleagues, friends, and family members) and tested whether closeness to ingroup contacts moderated the effects of extended contact on outgroup trust. Results demonstrated that extended contact effects varied as a function of the relationship to ingroup contacts, and that extended contact interacted with closeness ratings in predicting outgroup trust. Consistent with hypotheses, extended contacts via more intimate ingroup relationships (i.e., friends and family) were overall more strongly related to outgroup trust than extended contacts via less intimate ingroup relations (i.e., neighbors and work colleagues). Moreover, within each level of intimacy extended contact was related to outgroup trust only at high, and not at low, levels of rated closeness to ingroup contacts. The theoretical contributions, limitations and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Strategies for critical reflection in international contexts for social work students

International contexts provide social work students with the opportunity to develop knowledge of international social work, global citizenship and cultural competency. While these contexts are powerful sites of learning, there is a need to ensure that this occurs within a critical framework. The paradigm of critical reflection is used to facilitate this and has been popular in international programs. In this article, we develop this further by describing critically-reflective techniques and providing examples used in a pilot exchange program between a social work school in the UK and in India. The potential implications of these strategies for social work education are discussed. © The Author(s) 2012

Nash equilibria of network formation games under consent

We investigate the Nash equilibria of game theoretic models of network formation based on explicit consent in link formation. These so-called “consent models” explicitly take account of link formation costs. We provide characterizations of Nash equilibria of such consent models under both one-sided and two-sided costs of link formation. We relate these equilibrium concepts to link-based stability concepts, in particular strong link deletion proofness.

An Examination of Volunteer Motivation in Credit Unions: Informing Volunteer Resource Management

Volunteer recruitment and retention is a problem that most credit unions experience. Research suggests that knowledge of volunteer motivation can inform volunteer management strategies. This paper uses a survey approach to determine whether current volunteers in credit unions in Northern Ireland are more motivated by the actual act of volunteering, by the output from the volunteering activity (including altruism) or because the volunteering activity increases their human capital value. Altruistic reasons are found to be the most influential, with the act of volunteering also scoring highly. This knowledge should inform volunteer recruitment programmes and internal appraisal processes as management can reinforce messages that provide positive feedback to volunteers on the social benefits being achieved by the credit union. This will further motivate current volunteers, ensuring retention. When motivation was analyzed by volunteer characteristics we found that older volunteers, retired volunteers and volunteers who are less educated are more motivated in their role. There was little evidence that individuals volunteer to improve their human capital worth.