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Examines power dynamics between Western journalists stationed in Egypt and Israel and official press relations practitioners in the two countries.

In Sweden women account for about 60% of the long‐term cases of sickness absence. The aim of this study was to describe women's explanations as to how long‐term sickness absence arises and becomes permanent, with reference to their personal experience. Semi‐structured interviews were performed with 82 middle‐aged women who have personal experience of long‐term sickness absence. Long‐term sickness absence can be said to arise in three distinguishable "spaces": the work space, the medico‐legal space and the mental space. In the beginning, the women were positive about sick‐leave as such, which they saw as an opportunity for physical rest. But as time went on, they came to regard sick‐leave as creating a vicious circle of new problems related to inactivity and isolation. Apart from this vicious circle and chronic physical impairments, certain conditions at the workplace, at the hospital and the social insurance office transformed seemingly trivial sick‐leaves into long‐term and irreversible sickness absences

It is with some reluctance that I agreed to contribute a few remarks to conclude a learned and fruitful colloquium and to react, once again, to a wonderful exhibition on Qajar art. My reluctance is simple to explain and to justify. Such professional competencies as I have are those of a medievalist who begins to feel slightly uneasy by the middle of the fourteenth century. But, then, as a historian of the visual arts and as an individual curious about the lessons to be drawn from the making and uses of works of art everywhere and at any time, I became fascinated by the exhibition and many questions came to mind which may not be of immediate significance for the history and culture of Iran, but which have a lot to do with the arts in general.For these reasons, I shall not comment directly on the papers published in this volume, which are, for the most part, beyond my competencies, except to make two observations.

This article explores the political uses of machismo and dominant notions of masculinity as tools for constructing agendas for popular redemption in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The focus is on the life and work of Pancho Jaime (1946-1989), the most controversial and widely known independent journalist in Guayaquil. Between 1984 and his assassination in 1989, Jaime illegally produced political magazines using gossip, pornographic caricatures, and obscene language to comment on the corruption of politicians and oligarchs. Jaime's strategy was to make connections between the conduct of powerful figures in public office and the "deviant" sexuality of these same individuals. This large body of cultural material is interpreted as part of a politics of masculinity historically linked to both everyday life and local populist traditions. Analyzing images and audience responses to Jaime's grotesque visual and aggressive textual discourses, ethnographic findings are discussed in relation to concepts of vulgarity, the performance of masculinity in the public sphere and carnivalesque inversions of power.

In an attempt to reduce the occurrence of childhood sexual abuse, some state governments have passed legislation allowing the public access to sex offender registries. One of the ways this access is granted is through the world wide web (web). There is, however, limited research on the impact this type of community notification has on actual rates of child sexual abuse. This study investigates the opinions of 133 mental health professionals who work with sex offenders regard ing the implications of public sex offender registry web sites. Over 80% of the participants in this study do not believe that sex offender registry sites will affect the number of children who are sexually abused each year. Seventy percent of the respondents also believe that a listing of sex offenders on the web will create a false sense of security for parents, and over 60% of the respondents believe that sex offenders who are listed on these sites will become targets of vigilantism in their community. Implications, for future research are provided.

The question of what the relevant entities or units of analysis for studying the dynamics of R&D are is central not only for adequate characterizations of the system of scientific and technological knowledge production but also for determining the correct focus for evaluation of R&D activities. Typically, R&D performance evaluations have focused not only on the wrong thing but have looked in the wrong place. Most evaluations have been project or program based. Often this focus is misleading. This article presents a "knowledge value" framework as an alternative focus for understanding and evaluating scientific and technical work. This framework consists of two core concepts: the Knowledge Value Collective (KVC) and the Knowledge Value Alliance (KVA). On the basis of the analysis of twenty-eight case studies of research activities, the authors present a typology of KVAs and conclude that they are a better object of evaluation than discipline-based projects.

This paper outlines a three-year collaborative research project which aims to involve children and young people, as well as other stakeholders, in exploring strategies to meet the needs of children in care. In this paper we identify some research findings which indicate the importance of children participating in the defining of their needs in care, if these needs are to be responded to more effectively than has been the case in the past. We describe the aims of our three-year project and identify some of the methodological issues of implementing stage one of the project in terms of children's participation. A conceptual framework is developed to clarify issues related to children's participation in research and decision making and as a basis for deciding on appropriate research methods to employ in the first stage. Rather than merely outlining the work we have so far undertaken, we have insteadfocussed on reflecting on and analysing the theoretical and methodological challenges to researchers in implementing collaborative and participatory research in decision making with children.

Over the past few years, convergence between organic farming and processes of rural development has been progressively acknowledged and organic practices and practitioners have been effectively involved in various rural development projects. Nevertheless, organic farming's potential contribution to rural development processes has not been explored extensively in the specialized literature. This paper illustrates the manifold synergies existing between organic farming and sustainable rural development, through a specific framework of analysis built on the implicit assumption that both modern, dynamic and multifaceted organic farming systems and rural economies are 'hybrid and composite networks,' which can be analyzed according to an evolutionary perspective and to the network analysis approach. The work identifies four main points of communality between organic farming and sustainable rural development: innovation, conservation, participation and integration. All of them are critical aspects in current strategies for sustainable rural development, and, at the same time, key features of modern organic farming ideology and practices within an eu context.

In this piece we will consider the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty as it relates to critical psychology & also discuss the possibility of its use as a theoretical framework for empirical studies. We will focus specifically on Merleau-Ponty's concepts of perception & embodiment & ask what these may add to perspectives within critical psychology. In terms of these concepts, Merleau-Ponty offers a radically different view of perception from that which is common in mainstream psychology, along with a radically different view of human embodiment. Given this, we believe that many of his ideas are important for critical psychology & could give it an alternative direction. Phenomenological perspectives are also of use in critical, empirical studies, & here we use the concepts of perception & embodiment to reassess the literature on anorexia nervosa. It is our contention that these concepts allow us to rethink the embodied nature of anorexia, particularly in terms of the way that the body is conceptualised in the clinical literature, but also the absence of a notion of the lived body from some feminist accounts.

Based on findings from a series of in-depth interviews with returned migrant workers, recruiters, and government officials in Thailand, this paper extends the analysis of the Thai international labor migration institution. The article discusses conceptual models developed to help explain three main modes of overseas labor recruitment used by Northern Thai workers in three sub-districts. These are authorized recruitment and two types of unauthorized recruitment that differ according to whether the migrant pays for the recruitment at the time of migration or works off the recruitment costs with the overseas employer after arrival in the destination country. A gender perspective is used to examine why women and men choose a particular type of recruitment. Several factors are shown to shape male and female migrants — recruitment choices, including gendered labor demand among overseas employers, financial resources available to potential male and female migrants, a desire for "safe" working and living environments among some young women, and differences in social networks and previous overseas migration experience for men and women.

The dominant, positivist, approach to the study of culture and national security specifies `culture' as an independent variable. It assumes that culture, and the study of culture, are uncontaminated by the politics of national security. This formulation contrasts with the dominant understanding of `culture' in the humanities, where culture and power are viewed as constituting a `nexus', and where politics is claimed to shape cultural knowledge, including knowledge about culture, as much as the other way around. I demonstrate the utility of the `nexus' approach by exploring the origins of Gabriel Almond's `political culture' research. I show that Almond built on ideas that originated in national security work, that he enjoyed an intimate relationship with national security agencies, that his scholarship tracked US foreign policy concerns, and that it was part of a broader Cold War cultural formation. `Political culture', thus, was not pure of the politics of national security. I conclude by raising some questions about the `purity' of the present literature on culture and national security.

AbstractMany common bacterial pathogens have become increasingly resistant to the antibiotics used to treat them. The evidence suggests that the essential cause of the problem is the extensive and often inappropriate use of antibiotics, a practice that encourages the proliferation of resistant mutant strains of bacteria while suppressing the susceptible strains. However, it is not clear to what extent antibiotic use must be reduced to avoid or reverse an epidemic of antibiotic resistance, and how early the interventions must be made to be effective. To investigate these questions, we have developed a small system dynamics model that portrays changes over a period of years to three subsets of a bacterial population— antibiotic‐susceptible, intermediately resistant, and highly resistant. The details and continuing refinement of this model are based on a case study of Streptococcus pneumoniae, a leading cause of illness and death worldwide. The paper presents the model's structure and behavior and identifies open questions for future work. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper explores the reality of patriarchal privileging and resistance within a society which has undergone dramatic change over the past twenty-five years. Using Foucault's ideas of power and resistance (1980; 1988; 1989) and Connell's ideas of the patriarchal dividend (1995 a and b) it first explores these key concepts. It then draws together a wide range of empirical evidence to document the ongoing reality of patriarchal privileging in the world of paid work and the family in Ireland. It then however identifies and illustrates fourteen analytically different types of resistance including the creation of an alternative power base in the family; facilitating the emergence of new child rearing structures; naming the 'enemy within'; naming aspects of culture which are not 'woman friendly'; whistle blowing; targeting key structures; negative power etc. It concludes by suggesting (drawing on Acker, 1998) that although the institutional structures reflect the needs and wishes of powerful men, choices can still be made by individual men and women.

His massive textbook, Economics: A New Introduction, is in many ways the culmination of Hugh Stretton's work as a theoretician of the social sciences. From his first major publication in 1969, The Political Sciences, Stretton has wrestled with two major issues. One has been the nature of the social sciences, particularly the role of moral ideas in shaping the theory and practice of social inquiry. The second has been the relationship between social theory and social practice, particularly in terms of policy development. His first book was the most 'academic'. Since then he has written more in response to the problems of the age than out of a desire to solve merely academic questions. Hence his involvement in issues of housing, the environment and, during the last decade and a half, economic policy. One of his favourite techniques has been to use 'speculative history', providing alternative futures to illustrate what he believes to be the consequences of particular policy choices.

A growing number of firms have begun work toward the development of innovative systems that consume fewer resources, reduce waste, enhance productivity, while creating new market opportunities. However, all of this environmentally friendly innovation occurs under varying types/levels of regulation and the role of such regulation is still debatable. To date, little research exists that investigates the relative importance of market-driven versus regulatory actions in influencing environmental technological innovation. This article presents a model of the antecedents of environmentally conscious technological innovation under high and low amounts of regulation. The authors present four abbreviated case studies undertaken as part of a larger U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-funded study that describe environmentally conscious product and process innovations in high and low regulation environments. The authors use the case studies to examine the extent to which the data support our model. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of our findings.