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Substantive Issues (substantive + issues)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	80%

Selected Abstracts

A Conscious and Inclusive Family Studies

JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND FAMILY, Issue 1 2000
Katherine R. Allen
I argue that family scholars must take bolder steps to engage the tensions between our heritage of positivist science and its postmodern challenges. I also argue that constructing theories, utilizing research methods, and examining substantive issues should be relevant to the diversity of the families we study and to ourselves as members of families. I offer examples of developing an informed reflexive consciousness to broaden the rationalist foundation that dominates family scholarship. For a more inclusive, balanced, and invigorated family studies, our subjective experiences and commitments as researchers should be acknowledged, confronted, and integrated. A family studies that is responsible to our readers, students, selves, and the people whose lives we study requires that we engage the critical intersections of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and age as they define family diversity. [source]

Russia's Role in the Six-Party Negotiations

PACIFIC FOCUS, Issue 2 2004
Seung-Ho Joo
The second nuclear crisis over North Korea's nuclear issue erupted in the winter of 2002,2003. With the convening of the six-party talks in August 2003, an imminent military showdown of the U.S. and the DPRK was postponed, and Russia for the first time was allowed to participate in a multinational conference on North Korea's nuclear issue. How then did Russia gain a seat at the six-party negotiating table? What are Russian contributions at the six-party talks? What are Russian views on the North Korean nuclear issue ? These are the main questions this paper will address. After three full sessions, the six-party talks are still in impasse. To date, Russia's contributions in resolving the substantive issues have been most noticeable in the format and procedural matters of the six-party talks. Russia's drawing the "red-line" and "saber-rattling" contributed to the convening of the six-party talks as well. Russia's role in the six-party negotiations has been quite visible and positive, but failed to bring a breakthrough in the deadlocked U.S.-DPRK relations. For now, Russia is funneling its diplomatic efforts to create a favourable atmosphere for dialogue and compromises between the U.S. and the DPRK, and will continue to pursue the limited foreign policy objective in the foreseeable future. [source]

Policy Consulting and Public Policy

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 1 2000
John Francis Martin
The changing nature of governance in Australia over the last two decades has given rise to a broad range of new strategies to review the development and delivery of government policies and programs. Key factors affecting the relationship between citizens and the state have been the deregulation and liberalisation of the Australian economy, with its focus on the market for the delivery of services, once the exclusive domain of public sector organisations. The increased use of consultants over this period is an example of governments going to the market for professional services. Effective policy development and review by consultants requires that they be well versed both in the substantive issues surrounding the policy field as well as in the process required to properly frame and evaluate these issues. [source]

What can the Social Sciences Contribute to the Study of Ethics?

BIOETHICS, Issue 2 2002
Empirical, Substantive Considerations, Theoretical
This article seeks to establish that the social sciences have an important contribution to make to the study of ethics. The discussion is framed around three questions: (i) what theoretical work can the social sciences contribute to the understanding of ethics? (ii) what empirical work can the social sciences contribute to the understanding of ethics? And (iii) how does this theoretical and empirical work combine, to enhance the understanding of how ethics, as a field of analysis and debate, is socially constituted and situated? Through these questions the argument goes beyond the now commonly cited objection to the over-simplistic division between normative and descriptive ethics (that assigns the social sciences the ,handmaiden' role of simply providing the ,facts'). In extending this argument, this article seeks to establish, more firmly and in more detail, that: (a) the social sciences have a longstanding theoretical interest analysing the role that a concern with ethics plays in explanations of social change, social organisation and social action; (b) the explanations that are based on the empirical investigations conducted by social scientists exemplify the interplay of epistemological and methodological analyses so that our understanding of particular substantive issues is extended beyond the conventional questions raised by ethicists, and (c) through this combination of theoretical and empirical work, social scientists go beyond the specific ethical questions of particular practices to enquire further into the social processes that lie behind the very designation of certain matters as being ,ethical issues'. [source]

Gender Equality and Gender Differences: Parenting, Habitus, and Embodiment (The 2008 Porter Lecture),

CANADIAN REVIEW OF SOCIOLOGY/REVUE CANADIENNE DE SOCIOLOGIE, Issue 2 2009
ANDREA DOUCET
S'appuyant sur un projet de recherche d'une durée de quatre ans concernant des pères canadiens dispensateurs de soins de première ligne ainsi que sur deux projets récents sur la première année de soins prodigués au nourrisson, l'auteure attire l'attention sur plusieurs questions théoriques importantes pour l'étude de l'égalité des sexes et de la différence entre les sexes au sujet de l'éducation des enfants. Elle propose d'abord de transférer le centre d'intérêt, qui porte en ce moment sur les travaux domestiques, vers les responsabilités familiales et communautaires. Elle soutient ensuite que le terrain politique à la base de l'étude du maternage et du paternage exige de la clarté sur la façon dont les chercheurs interprètent l'interaction constante entre l'égalité et les différences. Finalement, elle défend l'idée voulant que les responsabilités parentales, étant donné qu'il y a eu certains changements au cours du temps, demeurent influencées par le genre parce qu'elles sont profondément enracinées dans l'habitus et dans la personnification dans des contextes spatiaux et temporels spécifiques. Drawing on a four-year research project on Canadian primary caregiving fathers, as well two recent projects on the first year of parenting, this article highlights several theoretical and substantive issues in the study of gender equality and gender differences in parenting. First, I call for shifts from a focus on domestic tasks toward domestic and community-based responsibilities. Second, I argue that the political terrain underpinning the study of mothering and fathering calls for clarity on how researchers interpret the constant interplay between equality and differences. Third, while there has been some change over time, parental responsibilities remain gendered because they are deeply rooted in habitus and embodiment across specific spatial and temporal contexts. [source]