Jerald Wallulis - Böcker

Examines the impact of the loss of expectations of permanent employment and enduring family relationships on individuals today and explores how changes in the collective endeavor to provide security could help.Since 1973, the median family income in the United States has remained static, in marked contrast to the period from 1947 to 1973, when it actually doubled. Downsizing and corporate restructuring have produced widespread worries about employment, health-care coverage, and pension benefits. The American dream of a well-paid, permanent job, upward mobility, secure home ownership, and greater prosperity for one's children is for many today a remote, even romantic notion. Perhaps equally unrealistic is the expectation of sharing the American dream with the same marriage partner for all of one's adulthood.The New Insecurity contrasts this new insecurity with a more secure past, when there were career ladders, factories stayed at home, and marriages lasted. But it also places it in a wider historical context, tracing it back to the docile bodies of Michel Foucault and the constant minds of Gerhard Oestreich at the very beginnings of the modern army. "Fight, don't flee," the command given then, has changed, according to the advice of business manuals today, to "don't stay too long" and "keep your options open." Jerald Wallulis offers a framework for understanding this individual uncertainty, arguing that today's challenges to traditional life planning are not momentary, nor will the free-floating economic anxiety disappear when the next "real" economic recovery comes.But Wallulis also makes the case that the envied security of past generations did not depend on their prospects for long-term, full-time employment alone. It was also made possible by the development of social insurance programs designed to provide protection against unemployment, disability, and old-age indigency. This book emphasizes the contribution of the "insurance state" to the achievement of individual security and explores how programs of income assistance could protect the individual against the strong income fluctuations so prevalent in the new job market.

Examines the impact of the loss of expectations of permanent employment and enduring family relationships on individuals today and explores how changes in the collective endeavor to provide security could help.Since 1973, the median family income in the United States has remained static, in marked contrast to the period from 1947 to 1973, when it actually doubled. Downsizing and corporate restructuring have produced widespread worries about employment, health-care coverage, and pension benefits. The American dream of a well-paid, permanent job, upward mobility, secure home ownership, and greater prosperity for one's children is for many today a remote, even romantic notion. Perhaps equally unrealistic is the expectation of sharing the American dream with the same marriage partner for all of one's adulthood.The New Insecurity contrasts this new insecurity with a more secure past, when there were career ladders, factories stayed at home, and marriages lasted. But it also places it in a wider historical context, tracing it back to the docile bodies of Michel Foucault and the constant minds of Gerhard Oestreich at the very beginnings of the modern army. "Fight, don't flee," the command given then, has changed, according to the advice of business manuals today, to "don't stay too long" and "keep your options open." Jerald Wallulis offers a framework for understanding this individual uncertainty, arguing that today's challenges to traditional life planning are not momentary, nor will the free-floating economic anxiety disappear when the next "real" economic recovery comes.But Wallulis also makes the case that the envied security of past generations did not depend on their prospects for long-term, full-time employment alone. It was also made possible by the development of social insurance programs designed to provide protection against unemployment, disability, and old-age indigency. This book emphasizes the contribution of the "insurance state" to the achievement of individual security and explores how programs of income assistance could protect the individual against the strong income fluctuations so prevalent in the new job market.

Changing Social Science is both a description of and prescription for the current unease in the social sciences. It brings together articles by philosophers, sociologists, and political scientists who advocate changing the way social science is conceived and practiced. Focusing on the thought of past and present critics and proponents of critical inquiry-especially on the critical theory of Jürgen Habermas and on the disciplines of political science and sociology-collaborators on this volume support a critical form of social and political inquiry, outline its main characteristics, and examine its foundations, options, and unresolved problems.The book is divided into section on reflexivity, methodology and explanation, and criticism and advocacy. From an introductory overview of the collection of articles and an account of the central issues in critical inquiry, discussions ensue on the methodological inadequacies and political implications of naturalist approaches to social and political inquiry; the nature and foundations of interpretive approaches to social science; the role, nature, and limits of causal explanations and causal theories of human action; the role of values in research and theory; and defenses and criticisms of the normative aspirations of both Habermas's critical theory and of critical social science in general.

Philosophy of Religion for a New Century represents the work of nineteen scholars presented at a conference in honor of Eugene T. Long at the University of South Carolina, April 5-6, 2002. This volume is a good example of philosophy in dialogue; there is both respect and genuine disagreement. First, an account of our present situation in the Philosophy of Religion is given, leading to a discussion of the very idea of a 'Christian Philosophy' and the coherence of the traditional concept of God. The implications of science and a concern for the environment in our concepts of God are carefully examined. A discussion follows on the possibility of speech about God and silence about God. Since much of modern European philosophy is concerned with the 'Death of God' theme, the positions of Nietzsche and some of his twentieth-century interpreters are presented. There are presentations on Feminist Approaches to Philosophy of Religion, and Comparative Religion is examined in relation to cultures and the demands of rationality. The volume concludes with a critical dialogue on the relation of Religious Discourse to the Public Sphere. Developing global awareness has led to significant change in