Search

Porn triumphs and proliferates everywhere, from network meshes to urban contexts, from media screens to the interstices of daily life; it invades the webs of public life, overheats electronic connections and impregnates contemporary sociality with moods. It becomes an atmosphere. What are the origins, the genealogy, and the actuality of this convulsed scene from the United States? In a transdisciplinary perspective embracing sociology of the imaginary, communication sciences, porn, and gender studies, the article analyzes and interprets the passage between pornography and pornoculture as a fundamental change for our societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tocqueville Review -- La Revue Tocqueville is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Tocqueville Review -- La Revue Tocqueville is the property of University of Toronto Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The closure of Université de Moncton's sociology department in the spring of 1969 constitutes a unique event in the history of Canadian academics. In this paper, the authors examine the causes behind this closure. They present an intermingling and collision of motivations of different actors and movements in Acadian academic life during the late sixties: student associations, the young sociology professors, the professors association, the university administration, etc. Beyond being simply a historical anecdote, the closing of the sociology department symbolizes a larger political crisis, where two social conceptions compete: the administration envisaged a rational administration of the social, while the sociology students and professors wished for a society based on socialist and participative principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research done by the authors of this article is based on a phenomenological approach whereby the subjects assign importance to their interpretation of social situations that affect them. In this research, the authors sought to find out how young people see their own deviant paths. The data was obtained from the narratives of 38 male and female youths who were under judicial authority or under treatment for drug addiction. Analysis of themes and of sequences of events was the principal method used to organize the data. The article thus deals with the typical paths of juvenile deviance described by the youths themselves. Three principal types are described: 1- a continuous path of the deviant type: 2- a pleasure seeking type (continuous pleasure or increasing pleasure): and 3- a discontinuous path of deviance directed at seeking pleasure to the extent of forgetting (associated with the desire to forget, to connect with someone, to obtain revenge, or to self destruct). Events that are considered exceptional by young persons can precipitate them from a continuous path to a discontinuous one or from a discontinuous path to one that is even more fragmented. In this analysis of the various types of deviant paths, the dissatisfaction of the youths with their life experience during childhood and adolescence is all important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using rational choice theory, tile authors compared the characteristics of the actions of 16 borderline violent offenders and those of 18 narcissistic violent offenders. The results of the analyses of all phases of their violent acting out show marked differences between the two groups. In fact, the borderline violent offenders, compared to the narcissistic offenders, are more likely to have negative emotions and to encounter more problems of loneliness, lower self esteem, financial problems and difficulties with psychoactive drug intoxication. They also appear to be more driven by sexual appetite or emotions or by tile need to renew with loved ones or avoid separation from loved ones: they use physical violence more often during robberies. On the other hand, the narcissistic offenders are more prone to accept "contract" killing for a criminal organization. They seek out power or status; they try to eliminate competitors during their criminal activities. The narcissistic offenders will deny using violence while borderline offenders will explain it away by their loss of control. As well. the narcissistic offenders are more likely to resist arrest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the authors have two objectives; they studied over one thousand children of ten to twelve years in the course of several encounters. On the one hand, it was a matter of describing the emergence of behaviour disorders. On the other, the authors sought to identify the social and personal antecedents of these disorders. During the latency period, the behaviour disorders involve experimentation of relatively minor and occasional misbehaviours. Amongst these inappropriate behaviours, aggressive acts are, at that age, the dominant form of disorder. However, one can observe that these behaviours worsen over time. Also, the variety of such behaviours increases as well as their frequency and their harmfulness. If criminal activity and behaviour disorders go together, they constitute, nonetheless, relatively independent phenomena. Childhood is a crucial period in the worsening of delinquent activity while the behaviour disorders develop during the latency period. An analysis of the precursors of behaviour disorders reveals that it is easy to differentiate between boys with these disorders and those without. For example, personal deficiencies are antecedents of disorders during the latency period. In the same way, family deficiencies, inconsistent supervision, and inappropriate sanctions are the major family related factors. Frequent sanctions by school authorities and insufficient investment in school activities are also antecedents to behaviour disorders. These are followed by vagrancy, and frequenting arcades and deviant peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]