bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Negative Affect and Political Sensitivity in Crossed Categorization: Self-Reports versus EMG
Authors: Ensari Nurcan , Kenworthy Jared B. , Urban Lynn , Canales Carrie J. , Vasquez Eduardo , Kim Deanah , Miller Norman
Published: May 2004

We experimentally examined the effects of negative integral affect on preferences among the double in-group (ii), crossed (io and oi), and double out-group (oo) targets of the crossed categorization paradigm. We used insults from members of politically sensitive vs. non-sensitive out-group categories of a crossed target (Oi) to induce affect. Dependent measures included self-reports and a psycho-physiological measure of affect (facial electromyography, EMG). Under no insult, participants conformed to social desirability pressure and favorably evaluated targets with a politically sensitive out-group membership, whereas facial EMG measures indicated greater negativity toward those same targets. Negativity of self-report and facial EMG measures converged, however, when members of a politically sensitive out-group category had provided hostility-justifying insults.
Expecting to Meet a Rape Victim Affects Women’s Self-Esteem: The Moderating Role of Rape Myth Acceptance
Authors: Bohner Gerd , Lampridis Efthymios
Published: May 2004

Research has shown that women’s level of rape myth acceptance (RMA) moderates the impact of rape salience on their self-esteem. Conceptually replicating previous studies where rape salience was operationalized by presenting newspaper articles, the present study featured a realistic expectation of meeting a rape victim. Female students ( N= 82) who were either low or high in RMA expected a conversation with another woman about one of three topics: studying, the other woman’s illness (leukemia), or the other woman’s experience of having been raped. Then their collective self-esteem, individual self-esteem, and affect were assessed. In line with predictions, low-RMA women reported lower self-esteem in the rape condition than in the studying condition, whereas high-RMA participants showed an opposite effect. Although affect was generally lower in the rape condition than in the neutral condition, this effect was significantly more pronounced for low-RMA than high-RMA women. Results for the leukemia condition differed from those in the rape condition, confirming the content-specificity of the moderating effect of RMA.
Feeling Beyond Rules
Authors: Holmes Mary
Published: May 2004

The part anger plays in motivating political action is frequently noted, but less is said about ways in which anger continues to be a part of how people do politics. This article critically assesses approaches to emotions that emphasize managing anger in accordance with ‘feeling rules’. It reflects on the utility of Marxist notions of conflict as the engine of change for the understanding of how anger operates in political life. This involves understanding the ambivalence of anger and its operation within particular power relations. Shifting sets of conventions have had some continuity in discouraging women in Western nations (particularly white and middle-class women) from showing anger. But clearly, women do get angry and feminists have drawn on anger in acting politically. New Zealand feminist writings from the ‘second wave’ are taken as illustrative of the common difficulties Western feminists faced in dealing with anger. These difficulties were due to trying to juggle social conventions about femininity, the political ideal of sisterhood, and the realities of dealing with other women in often new and experimental political processes. Anger could be personalized and hurtful, but in certain cases its expression was constructive in producing more respectful relations. Exploring these cases makes it clear how anger produces, and is produced by, relations with others.
Politics as the Mobilization of Anger
Authors: Ost David
Published: May 2004

In most academic research on politics, emotions are deemed important only to the realm of subjects or citizens, not to power. Emotions are presented as a problem power has to deal with, not something with which power is itself intimately involved. This article discusses recent attempts to reintroduce emotions into political analysis and argue that they are incomplete insofar as they look only at opposition social movements, not at mainstream parties. With a nod to Carl Schmitt, I argue that anger is not something that only occasionally bursts onto the political scene, but is central to ‘normal’ politics as well. Anger is central to politics both as a diffuse, untargeted sentiment citizens experience, usually economically, and as the emotion political organizers need to capture and channel, which they do by offering up an ‘enemy’ they identify as the source of the problem. Opposition movements and parties of power alike succeed when they persuade people to accept the enemy they propose.
Where ‘angels’ and ‘wusses’ fear to tread: sexual coercion in adolescent dating relationships
Authors: Hird Myra J. , Jackson Sue
Published: May 2004

Sexual coercion of female adolescents is a major ongoing concern of feminists. This article provides a comparative analysis of a sample of New Zealand and British adolescents' narratives concerning sexuality, sexual practices and coercion within heterosexual dating relationships. The narratives suggest that sexual coercion operates through ‘normal’ heterosexuality which employs discursive dichotomies of femininity and masculinity. ‘Slut’/’angel’ and ‘wuss’/ ‘stud’ dichotomies provide an oversimplified grid from which adolescents are required to negotiate complex feelings towards their own sexuality and the expectation to engage in various degrees of heterosexual sexual activity. Heteronormativity presents heterosexual sex as different for females and males, and that these supposed differences are ‘natural’, immutable and based on biology.
Popular understandings of ‘UnAustralian’: an investigation of the un-national
Authors: Smith Philip , Phillips Tim
Published: May 2004

In social science the ‘national’ has been studied extensively, but comparatively little attention has been given to the ‘un-national’. The article takes up this challenge in an Australian context. Drawing on the work of Raymond Williams, investigation is centred around the keyword ‘UnAustralian’. Participants in focus groups were asked to nominate and account for what they thought of as ‘UnAustralian’ people, places, values, activities, groups and organizations. Analysis of the data revealed that two factors underpinned an attribution: incivility and foreign influence. Contemporary uses revolve around outcomes from globalization and can be contrasted with the centrality of class politics to deployments of the concept in the first part of the 20th century.
Synchronizing time for work and family: preliminary insights from qualitative research with mothers
Authors: Morehead Alison
Published: May 2004

The workplace and the home are commonly seen as conceptually separate or even opposing sites, reflecting public and private spheres that conflict when mothers (representing the home and the private sphere) carry out workplace commitments. But how temporally separate are these sites? Findings from preliminary qualitative research of employees at a hospital in Canberra highlight the inadequacies of a dualistic approach because it renders invisible the synchronized experience of time that mothers report. This ability to synchronize time does not reflect structural harmony between the workplace and the home, but rather is evidence of the work mothers must do to maintain their attachments to both.
US hate crime legislation: a legal model to avoid in Australia
Authors: Morgan Jo
Published: May 2004

Analysis of US hate crime legislation reveals a significant overall trend involving: (1) the inclusion of a notion of hate motivation on the part of the offender; (2) the provision for enhanced penalties; and (3) the identification of particular victimized groups who are listed in state and federal hate crime statutes. Whether or not a person is recognized as a hate crime victim in US statutes has been shown to be heavily influenced by the strength of social movements based on politicized identities. It is argued that this alignment problematizes the position of victims who are the targets of hate crimes yet who fail to organize on the basis of identity politics, lack political clout, have insufficient moral status, or who see hate crime legislation as an ineffective way of dealing with their particular concerns. This paper examines the barriers to achieving hate crime victim status for persons who are targeted because of their occupations or sexual orientation. The specific examples I will use are doctors and other workers in abortion clinics, sex workers and paedophiles. These widely disparate groups have been selected as examples to highlight some of the moral status, politicized identity and social movement and lobbying strength issues that are currently involved in being recognized as a victim of hate in the US. It is argued that Australia should not proceed down the track of introducing hate crime legislation. Hate crime legislation is the source of serious social disquiet and acrimony in the US. There are inequities built into the alignment between proving hate intent and the enhanced penalty approach that involve giving higher symbolic status to some bodies and not others. As the experience in the US shows, this has a dangerous potential to undermine social cohesion and community faith in equality before the law as well as creating a breeding ground of resentment.
Using the Web: a discussion of some of the non-technical factors to be taken into account when designing web sites intended to support courses taught primarily in face-to-face mode
Authors: Jensen-Lee Cathie , Falahey Annette
Published: May 2004

The face of higher education is changing with a strong (and growing) pressure on academics to incorporate web technologies into their teaching. Based on our experience with, and the student evaluation of, a web site designed to complement a traditionally delivered course, this paper offers some practical tips to academics contemplating posting teaching material onto the Web for the first time. The paper discusses some of the factors to be taken into account when determining how much material to post on the Web, includes some hints to reduce the time course coordinators may otherwise have to spend dealing with students inexperienced in web use, discusses some of the factors influencing students’ willingness to actively contribute to newsgroups and briefly identifies some of the issues requiring careful consideration in relation to pedagogy and copyright.
‘Farmers' wives’: women who are off-farm breadwinners and the implications for on-farm gender relations
Authors: Kelly Roisin , Shortall Sally
Published: May 2004

This article examines the fundamental changes that are occurring on farms in Northern Ireland. The income of the agricultural industry shows a dramatic fall every year, and the majority of farms are not viable without some other source of income. This article will demonstrate that it is women's off-farm work that now maintains the farm. The shift to occupying the breadwinner role, and supporting what has been such a traditional industry, allows us to shed an empirical light on the well-established body of research on conjugal relationships, domestic divisions of labour and women's income. Do farm women's increased resources contribute to significant renegotiation of domestic responsibilities and gender role expectations? It will be argued that the literature presumes an individualistic position. Farm households, however, require analysis at the level of the household to explore what off-farm employment by women means for gender role expectations and the division of labour within the farm family.
Who Cohabits in 2001?
Authors: Dempsey Ken , de Vaus David
Published: May 2004

In this article we report on the growth in rates of cohabiting as opposed to marriage occurring in Australia over the last decade. We examine the relationship between cohabiting and the key demographic and social factors of age, gender, religion and ethnicity. The main data sources are the findings of the 1996 and 2001 Censuses. It is argued that the spectacular growth in cohabiting in Western countries generally is linked to technological developments that allow the separation of sex and reproduction, the growth in employment opportunities for women, the declining influence of organized religion, and the growth in individualism. We are aware of the limitations of census data for understanding social and cultural processes but nevertheless argue that engaging in this type of analysis facilitates understanding issues that have significant policy as well as personal implications. These include comprehending why cohabiting relationships are less stable than marriages and what contribution, if any, cohabiting makes to falling fertility rates.
Complex equality
Authors: Armstrong Chris
Published: May 2004

Equality has become a highly controversial concept within feminism, not least because standard egalitarian accounts have been accused of neglecting both difference and also issues of real concern to feminists, such as the structure of the `domestic' sphere, contexts of power, and responsibility for domestic work. Michael Walzer's theory of `complex equality' promises a commitment to equality that deploys a much broader analytical focus, and yet is sensitive to difference. As such, it merits attention from feminists. In this article, I will begin to investigate the possibilities offered by this theory, by examining the positions it can generate on issues of domestic work and decision-making power. It will be my contention that Walzer's own position on these issues is a little abbreviated, but that a distinctive and worthwhile account can be developed merely by applying arguments he has advanced elsewhere.
Democracy online: civility, politeness, and the democratic potential of online political discussion groups
Authors: Papacharissi Zizi
Published: May 2004

The proponents of cyberspace promise that online discourse will increase political participation and pave the road for a democratic utopia. This article explores the potential for civil discourse in cyberspace by examining the level of civility in 287 discussion threads in political newsgroups. While scholars often use civility and politeness interchangeably, this study argues that this conflation ignores the democratic merit of robust and heated discussion. Therefore, civility was defined in a broader sense, by identifying as civil behaviors that enhance democratic conversation. In support of this distinction, the study results revealed that most messages posted on political newsgroups were civil, and further suggested that because the absence of face-to-face communication fostered more heated discussion, cyberspace might actually promote Lyotard’s vision of democratic emancipation through disagreement and anarchy (Lyotard, 1984). Thus, this study supported the internet’s potential to revive the public sphere, provided that greater diversity and volume of discussion is present.
From couch potatoes to cybernauts? The expanding notion of the audience on TV channels’ websites
Authors: Siapera Eugenia
Published: May 2004

The new media rhetoric, with its emphasis on radical breaks from old media, often masks the degree to which continuity goes hand-in-hand with change. Moreover, the industry’s vision of convergence ignores the competing versions of, and struggles over, the digital future. Against this background, this article focuses on an inter-media site, broadcasters’ websites, seeks to identify the changes and continuities in the notion of the audience, and interprets these in the light of inter-media competition. Using a variant of discourse analysis, which makes hyperlinks its unit of analysis, this study has identified six understandings of the audience online: spectators, fans, consumers, citizens, students, and cybernauts. These reveal that television has merely expanded online, but not really changed its understandings of audiences, suggesting that in its struggle for dominance, television has chosen to stamp the internet with the televisual, rather than making full use of the internet’s potential.
Practices for Reporting and Responding to Test Results during Medical Consultations: Enacting the Roles of Paternalism and Independent Expertise
Authors: Pomerantz Anita , Rintel E. Sean
Published: May 2004

When physicians take readings of health indices such as temperature or blood pressure, the practices that physicians and patients employ in discussing the readings both reflect and propose a set of expectations regarding the level of technical medical information the patients should acquire and understand. In this article we demonstrate how physicians’ reporting practices reflect and propose the roles of paternalism or independent expertise and how patients’ responding practices either ratify or contest the roles cast by the physicians’ practices. In contrast to the usual assumption that roles are relatively stable for individuals over the course of encounters, we treat role enactments as matters that are negotiated turn by turn in interaction. Physicians’ practices for reporting test results implicate various sets of expectations about the knowledge, interest, and responsibility state of each participant; patients employ responding practices that ratify or contest the expectations implicated by the physicians’ prior report. In each subsequent turn within the information exchange sequence, a speaker indicates (explicitly or implicitly) whether the level and kind of information being exchanged is appropriate/inappropriate and sufficient/insufficient for the participants.
Paths to Precision: Probing Turn Format and Turn-Taking Problems in Standardized Interviews
Authors: Stax Hanne-Pernille
Published: May 2004

Some scripted interview questions, built as multi-unit turns, generate a response before they reach their prescribed completion. Such ‘untimely’ interruption and premature production of responses may generate flawed data. In this article I will describe how untimely interruption also presents a problem with regard to non-scripted follow-up questions – or ‘probes’ – to closed survey items. I will try to show that some probing formats are more vulnerable than others to being interrupted before the listing of a second response option. I shall also consider the more general implications that probing format has for respondents’ understanding of ‘the ground rules’ for participating in a standardized interview. Current practices and recommendations for probing will be discussed in the light of the objective of collecting valid and reliable data.
Autism and the Social World: An Anthropological Perspective
Authors: Ochs Elinor , Kremer-Sadlik Tamar , Sirota Karen Gainer , Solomon Olga
Published: May 2004

This article offers an anthropological perspective on autism, a condition at once neurological and social, which complements existing psychological accounts of the disorder, expanding the scope of inquiry from the interpersonal domain, in which autism has been predominantly examined, to the socio-cultural one. Persons with autism need to be viewed not only as individuals in relation to other individuals, but as members of social groups and communities who act, displaying both social competencies and difficulties, in relation to socially and culturally ordered expectations of behavior. The article articulates a socio-cultural approach to perspective-taking in autism in three social domains: (1) participating in conversational turn-taking and sequences; (2) formulating situational scenarios; and (3) interpreting socio-cultural meanings of indexical forms and behavior. Providing ethnographic data on the everyday lives of high-functioning children with autism and Asperger syndrome, the article outlines a cline of competence across the three domains, from most success in conversational turn-taking to least in inferring indexical meanings. Implications of these abilities and limitations are considered for theoretical approaches to society and culture, illuminating how members of social groups are at once shaped by, and are agents of, social life and cultural understanding.
How Children with Autism and Asperger Syndrome Respond to Questions: a ‘Naturalistic’ Theory of Mind Task
Authors: Kremer-Sadlik Tamar
Published: May 2004

In light of a well-documented deficit in theory of mind found in high-functioning individuals with autism (HFA) and Asperger Syndrome (AS), this article explores HFA and AS children’s social-cognitive understanding of other people as reflected in their linguistic performance when answering mundane, everyday questions posed by their family members during dinnertime interaction. Ethnographic observations and video recordings of spontaneous interaction at home reveal that, contrary to findings in cognitive psychological research, the majority of the time the children were able to detect their interlocutors’ communicative intentions and produce relevant responses that were marked by their conversational partners as acceptable. This article proposes that this success is due in part to parents who, through different strategies, facilitate their HFA and AS children’s access to socio-cultural perspective-taking and their interlocutors’ intentions, and better their children’s communicative skills.
Positive politeness as discourse process: politeness practices of high-functioning children with autism and Asperger Syndrome
Authors: Sirota Karen Gainer
Published: May 2004

This study draws upon naturalistic ethnographic data to expand current understandings regarding the socio-communicative capabilities and challenges of children with autism spectrum disorders in mid-childhood. Affording a view of the children’s spontaneous interactions within naturally occurring family and community settings, the study explores a range of discursive resources utilized by the children to accomplish socially reciprocal positive politeness practices in tandem with others. Emphasizing contextualized deployment of politeness forms in interaction, the practice-based conception developed here construes positive politeness as a discursive process encompassing both socio-cultural and interpersonal knowledge/skills; and contributes to a perspective in which social and communicative realms are conceptualized as integrated domains of functioning.
On Sir Leon Radzinowicz Reading Michel Foucault
Authors: Maier-Katkin Daniel
Published: May 2004

This essay draws on the intriguing fact that Sir Leon Radzinowicz, the leading historian of the progressive era in relation to criminal law and its administration was at the time of his death engaged in the systematic collection and preliminary examination of the work of Michel Foucault, which he characterized in conversation as ‘disquieting’. Why should he have taken on such a project in his nineties? And what is it about Foucault that Radzinowicz might have found disquieting? By focusing on the intellectual confrontation implicit in Radzinowicz reading Foucault this article points the way to a better understanding of the ‘disquieting’ tensions that arise generally along the frontier between modern and postmodern thought in the fields of criminology, penology, criminal law and social control, which were at the center of Radzinowicz’s interest and not far from the center of Foucault’s.
Propaganda Work in Chinese Courts
Authors: Trevaskes Susan
Published: May 2004

This article explores the nature and function of trials and sentencing rallies as mediums of propaganda in Chinese criminal court work. It looks at trials and rallies as two means through which courts project images and messages outwards to a community of onlookers, spectators and participants. The theatrics of adjudication and sentencing carry images and messages about the State, order, legitimacy and the consequences of punishment. The educative and deterrence tasks of the court in trials and sentencing rallies are therefore perceived as part of a wider program of social control and socialization in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The main period under examination is a pivotal stage of legal history in the PRC, the first years of the post-Mao reform period in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This examination of trials and sentencing rallies will show that despite the two-decade long push to effect a new modernist legal culture based on professionalism, regularity and bureaucratic rationality, criminal justice practices in China have continued to rely on the crude theatrics of expressive punishment that have been employed since the days of revolution.
Penal Identities in Russian Prison Colonies
Authors: Piacentini Laura
Published: May 2004

This article explores imprisonment in contemporary Russia. Throughout the 20th century prisoners were central to the maintenance of the Soviet Union through forced labour and political correction that operated within a centralized system of management. It is argued that since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, no generally accepted penal ideology has emerged to replace Marxism/Leninism and the function of imprisonment in Russia in the early 21st century is thus unresolved. Findings gathered from four prison colonies in Smolensk, western Russia and in Omsk, Siberia show that rehabilitation is the most widely claimed task of imprisonment, but that practices undertaken in its name vary sharply. The contemporary penal practices have been characterized as new ‘Penal Identities’. The specific nature of these identities is explained as a consequence of several developments: the decline of prison work, the location of the regions in relation to the central prison authority and the permeability of the prison system to western influences.
Criminal Fine Enforcement in Israel
Authors: Einat Tomer
Published: May 2004

Over the last three decades, the Israeli Criminal Justice System has begun to focus on the search for alternatives to imprisonment in order to reduce the number of prisoners, be it for economic reasons or in an attempt to find options for more appropriate punitive and rehabilitative methods. The criminal fine, one of the main alternatives to the prison sentence, combines a number of features that systematically conform to the demands of an intermediate sanction. Despite its advantages, none of the penal aims of the fine are achieved if it is not paid. An effective use of the criminal fine is based on an effective and efficient enforcement system. An attempt has been made in this article to explore and analyze the development and present administration of the Israeli Criminal Fine Enforcement System, qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate Israeli magistrates’ attitudes and practices regarding the use of the criminal fine and introduce various improvements.
The ethics of the birth plan in childbirth management practices
Authors: Shaw Rhonda
Published: May 2004

This article is an exploration of the ways in which maternal subjectivity is negotiated and defined in the context of the act or process of giving birth. As such, it is offered as a contribution to and discussion of recent feminist evaluation of childbirth management systems. Written from the partial perspective of my own experiences of pregnant and maternal embodiment, the article considers whether the ethic of the birth plan is a satisfactory representation of consumer needs and participation in contemporary maternity care. By way of a selective personal account of various models of consumer-orientated and woman-centred childbirth management services that exist in Australia and New Zealand, I draw on ideas from feminist theories of corporeality and the dialogical tradition of social thought in order to rethink the ethical encounter between the labouring woman or consumer and her care provider or practitioner.
From Political to Realist Essentialism
Authors: Stone Alison
Published: May 2004

This paper re-examines debates surrounding Irigaray’s ‘essentialism’, arguing that these debates have generated a widespread assumption that realist essentialism is philosophically untenable and that Irigaray must therefore be read as a non-realist, merely ‘political’, essentialist. I suggest that this assumption is unhelpful, as Irigaray’s work shows increasing commitment to a realist form of essentialism. Moreover, I argue that political essentialism is internally unstable because it aims to revalue femininity and the body as symbolized, thereby reinforcing the traditional conceptual hierarchy of the symbolic over the corporeal. I reinterpret Irigaray’s own work as moving away from her earlier political essentialist project of revaluing symbolic femininity, towards the realism of her recent thought, which urges us to revalue and transfigure real, sexually differentiated, bodies by pursuing their cultural expression and enhancement. I aim to show that Irigaray’s recent work is philosophically coherent and sophisticated, and that it opens up the possibility of a radical and transformative kind of realist essentialism.
Who are these Guys?
Authors: Singer Jane B.
Published: May 2004

The people who claim membership in a profession and delineate its attributes do so at least in part to justify inequality of status, as well as to limit and control access to that status. The key role of the professional can be fulfilled only by people with particular training, skills and judgement, and it is crucial that the distinction between practitioner and layperson be clearly recognized by all parties. This article suggests that online news workers fundamentally challenge the already-disputed concept of journalists as professionals. It identifies and explores key aspects of that challenge across the cognitive, normative and evaluative dimensions of the sociological construct of professionalism, with the goal of laying the groundwork for empirical investigation into the issues raised.
Scowling at their Notebooks
Authors: Matheson Donald
Published: May 2004

This article examines the understanding of newswriting within British print news journalism and, in particular, the practice’s management of the role of language in the news. Its material comprises journalists’ reflections on their practice in metatexts such as memoirs and textbooks. The article draws on phenomenological sociology and Bourdieu’s theorization of the censorship of ways of speaking within the journalistic community to show how writing tends to appear in journalists’ discussions of the job in ways that reduce the force of its challenge to journalism’s self-understanding. It concludes by suggesting that the habits of thinking about writing in British journalism stand in the way of any substantive reflexivity within British news practice or any reorientation of the practice in response to critiques of the active role of journalism in constructing understanding of society.
Theory Consolidation in the Study of Journalism
Authors: Traquina Nelson
Published: May 2004

This article attempts to contribute to a better theoretical understanding of news. Based on an examination of the vast body of literature known as the study of journalism, three points of consensus are identified and tested through a comparative case study analysis of the news coverage of an issue, VIH/AIDS, in four different countries (the United States, Portugal, Spain and Brazil) during a period of three months (October–December, 1993). The data show that news is ‘event-oriented’, that official sources dominate news, and that proximity is a basic news value of the members of this ‘interpretive community’ who are today called journalists.
The Preliminary Reference Process
Authors: Nyikos Stacy A.
Published: May 2004

Litigant desistment, i.e. voluntary litigant implementation of an ECJ ruling in a preliminary reference case that preempts the necessity for a national court decision, is a common - yet often overlooked - strategic behavior new to the study of the ECJ, national courts and the preliminary reference process. The hypotheses directed at predicting and investigating when such litigant behavior occurs are an outgrowth of the ‘implementation prejudice’ that national courts will overwhelmingly apply ECJ decisions in their rulings, which changes the opportunity structures of litigants. Understanding when litigants desist not only expands general knowledge concerning the underinvestigated implementation stage but also arguably could have important implications for our understanding of the evolution of ‘high’ court legitimacy.
The Legislative Impact of the European Parliament Under the Revised Co-Decision Procedure
Authors: Kasack Christiane
Published: May 2004

This study analyses the legislative impact of the European Parliament (EP) under the revised co-decision procedure. I develop a model with adoption by Council and Commission as dependent variables and relative amendment importance, time of adoption, the amendment’s position in the legislation and internal parliamentary unity as independent variables. The results of my logistic regression question the common expectation that Co-decision II has increased the EP’s power. On the contrary, the rate of amendment adoption remains unchanged. The Commission’s influence during the second reading has, however, diminished. Furthermore, the study shows that the chance of an amendment made in the first reading being reintroduced increases in line with its adoption by the Commission and its non-adoption by the Council.
Asylum Destination Choice
Authors: Neumayer Eric
Published: May 2004

This article examines what explains the relative attractiveness of West European countries as a destination for asylum seekers. Individuals coming to Western Europe in order to lodge an asylum application are modelled as utility maximizers who choose the destination country that offers the highest net benefit. This benefit is seen as a function of economic attractiveness, generosity of welfare provisions, deterrent policy measures, hostility towards foreigners and asylum seekers, existing asylum communities, colonial and language links as well as geographical proximity. Results from a large dyadic panel over the time period from 1982 to 1999 demonstrate the impact that these fundamental determinants have on asylum destination choice. The implications of the results for the ongoing debates over fair burden-sharing are complex because they provide arguments for two conflicting interpretations of burden-sharing as either financial side payments or the physical reallocation of asylum seekers.
Partial Theories
Authors: van Vleet Krista
Published: May 2004

Gossip is intertwined with the practice of ethnography both in the collection of evidence and in the retelling of stories about other people. Yet ethnographers have directed scant attention to gossiping in particular cultural and linguistic contexts or to its methodological and epistemological implications. Drawing on fieldwork in a small community in the Bolivian Andes, I investigate gossiping as a social practice and narrative genre in which bonds of intimacy and claims to knowledge are intertwined with discourses of envy and progress. Not simply engaging in private, ‘idle’, conversation, gossipers blur the assumed boundaries between local ideals and national ideologies as they ‘theorize’ about (and dialogically produce) relationships and events. Ethnographers are no less embedded in the contingencies of interactions than their interlocutors, which raises the thorny issues of the practices and politics by which they come to present and evaluate the validity of ethnographic claims.
Climbing invisible ladders
Authors: Arborio Anne-Marie
Published: May 2004

Based on a field study combining biographical interviews and direct observation, this article examines the types of ‘career’ available to French hospital staff working under the title ‘ aidesoignante’ (nurse’s aide) but exercising a variety of duties in different establishments and wards. Whether their careers lead them to practise as ‘quasi-nurses’ where they perform nursing tasks without having the status and remuneration of a nurse, or to fulfil diverse functions in a variety of working conditions within a ‘horizontal career’, they testify to the ambiguities of this occupation: it holds an intermediary location within the paramedical hierarchy, yet it is difficult to move up from it to the level above; it is a devalued job, yet it has some value for those who practise it in the light of their past occupational and social trajectories; it is an occupation whose very fuzziness helps the institution to adjust staff numbers and skills according to its own needs. Under such conditions, the mobility of aide soignantes between differentiated posts enables them to make the best of difficult working conditions and to ‘make a career’ for themselves without changing their official status.
The Governance of Security in Weak and Failing States
Authors: Dupont Benoît , Grabosky Peter , Shearing Clifford
Published: May 2004

This article seeks to identify means of strengthening social control and conflict resolution in weak and failing states. It begins by discussing the governance of public security in stronger states, and identifies three basic forms of engagement between state and non-state institutions that may contribute to the co-production of public security: coercion, sale and gift. The article then seeks to identify institutional arrangements that might be transplanted to those settings where conventional state institutions of security may be in decline, or non-existent. It also suggests how new institutions might be invented in settings where states may be dysfunctional or otherwise lacking in capacity. It develops a typology of security provision, including auspices that are public; public under private arrangements; collective or voluntary; private/national; private/international; and criminal. By identifying new mechanisms for the governance of security, it may be possible to arrest the deterioration of states, or at least provide for a modicum of internal security. The article concludes with a discussion of the Zwelethemba model of peacemaking and peacebuilding that is being developed in South Africa.
The persistent offenders debate:
Authors: Soothill Keith , Ackerley Elizabeth , Francis Brian
Published: May 2004

Using birth cohort conviction records, this study estimates that around 640,000 males and 54,000 females aged 46 years or under had been ‘persistent offenders’ at some point in their lives. These figures represent 4.7 per cent and 0.4 per cent of the relevant male and female population respectively. Both male and female offenders who are first convicted at a young age are much more likely to become persistent offenders than their older counterparts. While young male offenders are at much greater risk of becoming persistent offenders than females, young female offenders are becoming increasingly more like males. It is vital that gender differences are not neglected. While the proportion of young offenders who become persistent is increasing, the proportions are fairly stable for offenders aged 20 and over. However, the numbers of both general and persistent young offenders show recent dramatic falls not evident among older offenders. For males aged 20 and over, the numbers are largely stable, while the numbers fall much less sharply for these older females. The present climate of focusing on younger offenders, especially persistent ones, may be having the desired effect of reduced numbers, but it is important that the ongoing situation with these older offenders is not overlooked.
The Human Rights Responsibilities of the World Bank
Authors: Oestreich Joel E.
Published: May 2004

This article proposes a model for understanding the appropriate role of intergovernmental organizations in the promotion of human rights, using the World Bank as an example. Most critiques of the Bank’s record on human rights fail because they implicitly treat the institution as a pseudo-governmental agency, with the authority to choose among competing social goals. It is more accurate and instructive to see it as similar to a large corporation, with clear but limited responsibilities to society. As such it is obligated to consider human rights only when they are directly impacted by projects. The article then examines the Bank’s human rights policies. Both in its direct policies and its emphasis on ‘governance’ reform, the institution is acting as we would expect from a corporation in the same situation. Its failures to live up to even its stated guidelines reinforce the need to understand its organizational nature.
Anger, Ethnicity, and Claiming Rights
Authors: West-Newman Catherine Lane
Published: May 2004

Political anger in New Zealand is anger in a postcolonial society. The emotions that circulate around perceptions of injustice and inequality, and which are framed through constructions of ethnic difference, significantly colour social and political life. In New Zealand, historical processes of colonization and settlement have created conjunctions of ethnic identity which shape the law and may ultimately determine when and how human rights legislation is used in this society. The search for justice in relations between Maori and Pakeha in New Zealand involves anger, played out in a variety of social, political and legal contexts. Members of the two principal ethnic groups become angry about many of the same things but in ways whose difference reflects the differences of ethnic identity.
News Media Consumption among Immigrants in Europe
Authors: Christiansen Connie Carøe
Published: May 2004

In recent years, especially with the advent Digital Broadcasting Satellite (DBS) technology, transnational media has become central in the consumption of news by immigrant populations. This has received some attention as a factor associated with the lack of integration into their new societies. The present article demonstrates that diaspora as an analytic term is indeed relevant for observations and empirical investigations of media practices among contemporary immigrants, leaving room for questions of multiple belonging with implications for everyday life. According to recent data, people with migrant experience tend to seek news very broadly. Extensive news media consumption, desire for more international news than found in the national television channels, and a critical stance towards the news from these channels, are also part of the picture. A diaspora perspective transforms the prospect presented by observers and journalists, worried about integration processes, and prompts considerations that immigrants are also emigrants.
Things That Make Kids Smart: A Vygotskian Perspective on Concrete Tool Use in Primary Literacy Classroomsa
Authors: Bomer Randy
Published: May 2004

In this study, writing and reading workshops are viewed as sites for the employment of tools, for learning what to do with concrete objects, where even material things with no language in them can make one smarter and able to do new things. This ethnographic study of a multi-age primary classroom in the USA (with children aged five to eight) yielded data that included field notes and videotape. Data were analyzed within a Vygotskian framework to determine the affordances, both intended and unintended, of the varied concrete tools the teacher placed in the classroom. Emphasis is placed upon the ways these tools are designed to mediate culturally-sanctioned states of mind. Complications arise when children import motives from other contexts and use the tools for interactions and activities not sanctioned by the teacher and school. Consistent with activity theory, tools are examined as being situated within actions, discourses, and activity systems.
Social Policy and People with Intellectual Disabilities in Poland
Authors: Otrebski Wojciech , Northway Ruth , Mansell Ian
Published: May 2004

The past decade has been a time of great political, social and economic change within Poland. Such changes have affected the lives of all citizens including those with an intellectual disability. However, within the English language literature there is little published concerning the impact of changes in social policy on this group of people and the extent to which their quality of life has been enhanced. This article thus considers the difficult relationship between quality of life and social policy, provides an overview of key policy developments within Poland (both general and disability specific), and outlines some ways in which they have impacted on the lives of people with intellectual disabilities. It is suggested that further research is required before clear conclusions can be drawn. Areas for service development and research are thus proposed.
Secondary Healthcare and Learning Disability
Authors: Cumella Stuart , Martin David
Published: May 2004

Many people with learning disabilities live shorter lives and have poorer health than the rest of the population. This results in part from less access to healthcare, and several studies have evaluated ways of improving primary healthcare for this group. Much less attention has been paid to the experiences of people with a learning disability in general hospitals. This exploratory study used consensus development conferences of people with a learning disability, their supporters, family, professionals and managers. It was reported that hospitals frequently failed to communicate with, provide emotional support for, or adapt to the specific needs of patients with a learning disability. Hospital staff noted that community services failed to provide information about patients, and that hospital staff lacked training in communicating with people with a learning disability. Fieldwork identified a range of solutions to deal with these problems, most of which involved incremental changes in hospital and community health procedures.
Different Visions, Different Visuals: a Social Semiotic Analysis of Field-Specific Visual Composition in Scientific Conference Presentations
Authors: Rowley-Jolivet Elizabeth
Published: May 2004

This study proposes a social semiotic analysis of visual communication in a scientific research genre, the conference presentation. It focuses on the spatial and temporal visual resources available in this genre to create texture and cohesion, and examines how logical relations, discourse structure and rhetorical claims are expressed visually in this particular communicative context. By comparing how three different scientific disciplines – geology, medicine and physics – exploit these resources in field-specific ways, it shows that visual communication in science is deeply embedded in disciplinary practice and varies in response to the type of data investigated, the methodology and epistemology of each field. The data used for the study and recorded on video film comprise over 2000 visuals (slides and transparencies) projected during 90 presentations given at international scientific conferences.
The Pareto Efficiency and Expected Costs of k-Majority Rules
Authors: Dougherty Keith L. , Edward Julian
Published: May 2004

Several authors have analyzed the optimal k-majority rule based on a variety of criteria. Buchanan and Tullock argued that, in constitutional settings, the criterion should be that all changes meet the Pareto criterion; otherwise the status quo should be preferred (we call this the BT criterion). They then asserted that unanimity rule would be the preferred voting rule in this setting. In parliamentary settings, they claimed that a near majority rule would be preferred because it minimizes the sum of decision costs and external costs. This article investigates both claims in an N-voter, two-alternative setting. We show the conditions under which unanimity rule is less likely to select BT preferred alternatives than other k-majority rules and prove that the difference in performance can be negligible when Nis large and certain weak conditions are met. Furthermore, if we define external costs as the expected number of losers from a BT-inferior vote, then external costs become negligible for a range of supermajority rules. This implies that unanimity rule and a range of supermajority rules should be equally preferred when decision costs are added. Finally, we show that the external cost function can actually increase for certain populations. Many of the broader conclusions should also hold for multiple alternatives.