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The aim of this paper is to reflect critically on the current health promotion initiatives targeting overweight individuals in Western countries. The paper’s methodological approach is to draw on analytical findings from my and other sociologists’ empirical work on how the problems of overweight people are being defined in various settings in Denmark, England, Australia and the US. I try to illustrate how health promotion targeting overweight individuals can not only be seen as a project aimed at securing longer lives and fewer illnesses for people carrying excess fat but also a moral project that, in a more general sense, aims to tell people how they ought to live their lives. I link this moral aspect of health promotion to a) the medicalization tendency in current Western society (e.g. a growing pharmaceutical industry and its economic interest in transforming the human condition of being overweight into a treatable disorder) and b) the strong focus on individual risk today. One of the main arguments in the paper is that health in relation to overweight is primarily defined from a biomedical perspective that praises certain physical measurements of the body, as well as dominant societal values such as  self-responsibility and self-control, and that a combination of biomedicine and these dominating values can lead to health promotion becoming a problematic moral endeavour. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

By the mid-1980s, the civil justice system in many common law jurisdictions was reportedly 'in crisis', crippled by excessive delay, cost and complexity in proceedings and out of reach of ordinary people. During the next two decades, law reform commissions and other agencies were charged with identifying problems with the civil justice system and with making recommendations for its improvement. Many agencies identified legal education as a factor contributing to the perceived crisis and made recommendations for change. The rules of professional conduct governing lawyers were also considered to be inadequate to the task of reorienting lawyers towards non-adversarial collaborative ways of professional practice. This paper canvasses reforms made in respect of the civil justice systems in Australia, England (and Wales) and to a lesser extent, the United States. The majority of reforms have been procedural in nature, brought about largely through legislative intervention and judicial activism (in the form of rules of court and practice directions). The paper examines the ways in which legal education has responded to the challenges presented by civil justice reform and also identifies amendments made to relevant professional practice standards. It is argued that, despite the recommendations for reform, changes to legal education have been piecemeal and fragmented and only minor changes have been made to professional standards of conduct. The paper goes on to discuss the various ways in which to regulate the behaviour of lawyers and the reasons why reform brought about by legislation, rules of court and practice directions is not sufficient to effectively change the conduct of members of the legal profession. It highlights the importance of education and codes of conduct for lawyers. In the final analysis, neither more rules, nor changes in legal education, provide a complete solution. The answer lies in a mixed approach-some modification to procedural rules of adversarial engagement, activism on the part of judges, some rules adjustment, and better education. It is argued here that more is required of both law schools and professional associations to support two decades of procedural reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the legal protection of the journalist–source relationship from both sides and the underlying interests involved. The paper begins by analysing why the relationship deserves protection. The position of journalists at common law is analysed with a discussion of the application of the principle established in Norwich Pharmacal v Customs and Excise to journalists. The development of immunity from contempt in s. 10 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 is examined to illustrate the ideological clash between the judiciary and journalists. The impact of the Human Rights Act and decisions of the European Court of Human Rights are analysed to assess whether this will lead to a change in attitudes in the UK. Finally, the potential threat to journalists posed by compelled evidentiary disclosure in criminal cases is reviewed, with a particular look at ‘special procedure' material. The US section begins with an analysis of the law at federal level, the decisions of the Supreme Court, including the leading decision of Branzburg v Hayes, as well as the role the legislature has played. The paper then analyses protections provided at state level, with a case study of the California shield law and a review of Californian jurisprudence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Research on the mental health and service needs of homeless seniors has been scant. This paper reviews the available literature and presents findings of a Toronto survey in an effort to describe the demographics of homeless seniors, their level of impairment, and their mental and physical health needs.Methods: We searched the Medline, AgeLine, and PsycINFO databases, using the following key words: elderly homeless, elderly hostel users, and urban geriatrics. To better describe the service needs of the elderly homeless, we obtained demographic data from the Community and Neighbourhood Services Department and distributed a survey questionnaire to 11 Toronto hostel directors. The questionnaire elicited data relating to reasons for shelter use, problem behaviours, and mental health needs of those over age 65 years.Results: Although seniors represent a small percentage of the homeless population, their numbers are growing. The available literature suggests a high prevalence of psychiatric disorders and cognitive impairment in this population, with a greater proportion of older women than men having severe mental illness. Further, our survey suggests that the service needs of elderly hostel users in Toronto differ from those of their younger counterparts.Conclusion: The homeless elderly are the most vulnerable of this impoverished population. Although more research is needed to define their mental and physical health needs and ways of meeting them, their characteristics appear to be unique. Geriatric psychiatrists could play a significant role in evaluating and treating this population more comprehensively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an analysis of functionary skills and prerogatives deployed in process of framing, negotiating and establishing conditions for action in pentecostal assemblies. It is based upon overt non-participant observation and interviewing in 66 pentecostal institutions in England and Wales, Canada and the United States. Its focus is upon the crises that arise either when the prerogative of definition is contested by two or more 'special definers' or when there is a compelling resemblance of phenomena in the sacred domain to realities familiar in the profane. The skills which enable the professional functionary to sustain sacred definitions during such conflicts include competence in the sacred language, the management of laughter and the sacred gift of `discernment'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of rethinking the social meaning and uses of education. historicizing its organized firms. and seeing educational knowledge as fully cultural has required a long detour. The current revitalization, which is believed that the critical sociology of education returns to the entire discipline flourished largely not in sociology but in educational fields like curriculum. It first appeared not in the U.S. but abroad particularly in England. It did not draw sustenance from the center of' American sociological discourse but was nurtured at its periphery in European structuralist and cultural theory. The result of a combined historic exclusion and current valuation is the danger of an apparently truncated narrative and a false impression that there is no developmental history or tradition of the work presented in this article. These papers can be said to represent a third generation in critical sociology of education. They follow the first ideology critique and general theory phase and then the more education-centered. but still diffuse structuralist derivations of the middle period.