A diversity of patterns: 10-year trajectories of men and women diagnosed with psychosis for the first time. A time-geographic approach

People with severe mental illness face a different ‘interventional’ landscape compared to some decades ago, when mental hospitals were dominant, in Sweden as well as in the rest of the Western world. The aim of the research reported in this article was to follow men and women diagnosed with psychosis for the first time over a 10-year period, and to explore what interventions they experienced. The interventions, here defined as “spheres”, were either community-based or institutional. A third sphere represents no interventions. Based on data from registers and using a time-geographic approach, the individuals were visualised as 10- year trajectories where their transitions between the different spheres were highlighted. The results show a great diversity of trajectories. Two main categories were detected: two-spheres (community-based and no interventions) and three-spheres (adding institutional interventions). One third of the population experienced only community-based interventions, with a higher proportion of men than women. Consequently, more women had institutional experience. Two sub-categories reveal trajectories not being in the interventional sphere in a stepwise manner before the 10th year, and long-term trajectories with interventions in the 10th year. The most common pattern was long-term trajectories, embracing about half of the population, while one-fifth left the institutional sphere before the 5th year.

In Search of a Long-Term Development Path for China: Starting from Differences between Assigning Responsibility and Contracting

The “third sphere” born of the interacting of a market economy with a centralized state, and of a system of market contracting 合同 with administrative “assigning responsibility” 发包/承包, has become a key characteristic of the new political-economic system of Reform China. It has imported the private enterprise market economy of the modern West, but has also retained the (revolutionary) tradition of a socialist party-state and its ownership of the principal means of production. Its administrative system resembles more and more the modern West’s (Weberian) bureaucratic system, but it has also retained the traditional imperial Chinese “centralized minimalism” and “parcelized despotism” characteristics. It cannot be grasped by the either/or dualistic opposites mode of thinking, but can only be understood in terms of the combining and interacting of dualistic opposites. The combination may be understood as one concrete and substantive meaning of the officialized term of a “socialist market economy.”

Concluding Remarks to Part 3

Chapter 15 summarizes the chapters which addressed the third sphere, the relationship of labor to the political community. It reiterates that since Israel was established, the labor market’s borders have become ever more porous, while the borders of the national (Jewish) political community have remained firm: the Jewish nationalism which guides government policy is as strong as ever. NGOs, drawing on a discourse of human rights, are able to assist some non-citizens but this discourse also resonates with the idea of individual responsibility: the State is no longer willing to support “non-productive” populations, who are now being shoehorned into a labor market which offers few opportunities for meaningful employment, and is saturated by cheaper labor intentionally imported by the State in response to powerful employer lobbies. These trends suggest a partial reorientation of organized labor’s “battlefront”, from a face-off with capital to an appeal to the public and state.

Labor Representation outside Union Structures

The first of five chapters which address the third sphere, organized labor’s relationship to the wider political community, Chapter 11 explores the development of labor representation outside classic union structures. Following the weakening of organized labor’s links to political parties and the influx of groups of workers who have no historical ties with the political establishment and in some cases are not even citizens, workers are finding new ways of bringing their demands into the political arena. The chapter focuses on the Workers Advice Center which made a partially-successful move from NGO to classic union, and on Kav Laoved, a workers’ rights organization. It suggests that such organizations reflect a change in the nature of labor representation as elected representatives are replaced by “experts in the field” and a focus on advancing case law through targeted legal struggle and lobbying – a transformation that has engendered representative organizations with hybrid identities.

From responsibility for oneself to shared responsibility

The article presents various links between business and ethics. The idea of responsibility, used to describe legal, economic and ethical aspects, forms the main, unifying thread. The author employs it to analyze three spheres of human activity. The first sphere, the subjective one, concerns self-responsibility, when individuals are striving to satisfy their own needs and to achieve happiness. The second, the encounter with the Other, embraces two meanings: responsibility for and towards the Other. The third sphere, the social one, extends the idea of responsibility onto the historical community we belong to. The concept of co-responsibility is not confined to our life span, but it embraces the future generations as well. The author pinpoints an important element in creating the foundations of a given community, i.e., regulations that form its basis, especially the principle of justice, encompassing the distribution of goods. Many contemporary authors underline this ethical, political and economic aspect (Rawls, communitarians, Ricoeur, Habermas). The main thesis the author would like to substantiate is as follows: in business activities, the ethical conduct of an individual is not sufficient. It needs to be broadened to encompass other perspectives since contemporary societies are based on the multidimensional idea of co-responsibility.