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This paper argues that the knowledge society metaphor is an uncritical transposition from the knowledge economy. It examines three different approaches to the former. These include the idea of the well-informed citizen, the institutional arrangements and social expectations for being knowledgeable, and the role of the Internet in providing critical underpinnings of a knowledge society. All three approaches are found to be seriously deficient. The paper suggests that a knowledge-aversive culture may be a better metaphor, as the social processes creating a high degree of knowledge specialization in the workplace may serve to increase ignorance in the broader society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that attitude is an invalid predictor for behavior in the issue of environmental protection. This paper contends that the environment is a domain in which attitudes do not predict behaviors very well. After reviewing evidence of low association, the author argues that the findings are not a result of poor methodology. Rather, the environment is a synthetic macro-category that does not fulfil any of the three criteria that are necessary for strong associations between attitudes and behavior. The paper goes on to argue that the attitude-behavior model misconceives the social structural basis of most environmental impacts and should be replaced with a more macro approach that focuses on collective actions. To this end, the author reconceptualizes environmental public opinion so that its potential impact on political debates can be addressed. With the amount of research devoted to environmental attitudes and attitude change, one might expect that these would be modestly if not strongly related to behavior.

This article explores the employment of the elements of civil religion to legitimate the American development of and reliance on atomic weapons. The nuclear monopoly was viewed as a `sacred trust,' the result of the United States' uniqueness and proof of its special destiny. As the claim of the U.S. to uniqueness was undermined before the whole world, the nation's special destiny was associated particularly with its technological superiority. It is argued that the absence of a similar civil religion in Canada tied to the bomb helps account for the different Canadian response to the Soviet nuclear threat. Where the priestly mode of civil religion is celebratory, affirmative and culture building, the prophetic mode is challenging and judgmental. It is virtually impossible to establish direct causal connections between civil religion and the unfolding of the arms race. However, connections between the two can be established by two indirect means. The plausibility of the civil religion-arms race link can be further enhanced by an understanding of the difference between Canadian and American responses to the Soviet threat. Nuclear censorship replaced the free exchange of scientific information, and the public was left largely uninformed about a device that seemed impossible to understand.