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The article analyzes the sick role in the text of Edith Wharton's 1911 novel, "Ethan Frome." Readings include Wharton's account of illness through a framework by Talcott Parsons, exploration of the socially constructed nature of roles in illness and examination of social context, particularly power relations with the frame of the story. The sick role as portrayed by Wharton is not the social fact later conceived by Parsons, but a social construct with no determinate reference beyond that which the local community is willing to grant it. The third reading of the novel examines the social context, particularly the power relations, within which this story of illness has been constructed. Wharton's work has received both popular and critical acclaim. In recent years, feminist scholars have given her works increased attention for their detailed and accurate depictions of the restricted lives of women around the turn of the last century. Wharton rejected the popular genre of her day, the female domestic novel and the male pastoral. Instead, she examined the tensions within social bonds and between individuals and society.

In this paper we propose a macro level model for analyzing the creation of deviance rules. We begin by placing the phenomenon within the context of the social factist and social definitionist sociological traditions, identifying the insights and difficulties the social problems literature presents for explaining deviance rule creation. We suggest that the theoretical difficulties can be resolved by placing the process within a sociology of knowledge framework. The consequent dialectical model of deviance designation is based on the assumption that society is composed of a number of general interests in varying degrees of conflict with prevailing definitions of deviance representing outcomes of previous contests. This balance or accommodation becomes vulnerable with the introduction or increase in strain which is a potential resource for interest groups desiring a new definition. The outcome of the ensuing conflict is seen as dependent on the ability of the combatants to employ resources in the battle. We conclude by identifying the advantages the model has for studying the deviance rule creation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cites the rationality used to explain the number of casualties in history, with reference to the bombing of Hiroshima, the Nazi executions, torture camps, and death as a result of radiation exposures. Need to commemorate the lives, and deaths of these persons.

An examination of the field of biotechnology, which, the authors write, will change the direction of the genetic sciences. And, the business of biotechnology will promote, and probably co-opt and alter the science of molecular biology. In such a situation, `publish or perish' now an indicator of academic success, will take on the additional dimensions of the `profit or perish' business ethic.