Suchergebnisse

Concurrent permanency planning policy mandates heighten the need to evaluate effective family reunification practices. This retrospective practice-based study examines positive family reunification outcomes at a New York City foster care agency. It uses a qualitative clinical data-mining methodology and the Professional Review Action Group case review model to conduct an intensive examination of 18 families' case records. Families were mandated into care for neglect, domestic violence, or substance abuse. This paper identifies family characteristics and strength-based casework practices that emerge during examination of the foster care reunification process. The family characteristics examined include (a) family attachment bonds, (b) separation anxiety, (c) reunification ambivalence, and (d) intergenerational family patterns. In addition, 3 casework practices emerge: (a) the worker's active support of resiliency in family attachment; (b) the worker's attention to the resolution of placement separation anxiety and family reunification ambivalence, and (c) the worker's attention to intergenerational family patterns. Practice implications for refinement of foster care best practices are discussed.

▪ Abstract  According to recent interpretive approaches to the study of children's socialization, meaning creation is an active process by which children playfully transform and actively resist cultural categories, and where language is viewed as social action that helps shape reality ( Gaskins et al. 1992 ). Four ways in which children's peer talk establishes and maintains peer culture are considered: (a) how children elaborate games and codes (and ritualize the basis of inclusion in the peer group) through peer talk, (b) how conflict talk functions to elaborate peer culture, (c) how identities as peer group phenomena are talked into being through peer talk, and (d) how adult culture is resisted through peer talk. Agentive goals of children's peer culture, and the role of language in achieving them, are discussed in each section. I conclude that sociolinguistics gives researchers a way to think about social competence as sets of linguistic practices (e.g., positionings, voicings, participation framework manipulations) that children enact.

In his groundbreakingNationalism Reframed,Rogers Brubaker challenges conventional understandings of nations and nationalism by advancing a distinctive, if not innovative, approach to the subject. Drawing on recent theoretical developments that problematize the realist ontology implicitly assumed in previous literatures, Brubaker calls for an institutionalist approach to the study of nations and nationalism. As he points out, nation and nationhood can be better understood not as substance but as institutionalized form, not as collectivity but as practical category, and not as entity but as contingent event (1996:18). He then employs this approach to analyze the breakdown of the Soviet Union. According to Brubaker, nationhood and nationality were institutionalized in the Soviet Union in two different modes: political-territorial and the ethno-personal. While the incongruence between these two modes led to tensions and contradictions within Soviet society, the dual legacy of such an institutionalization, manifesting itself as unintended consequences, eventually shaped the disintegration of the Soviet Union and continues to structure nationalist politics in the successor states today.

While many studies have focused on race and gender differences in monetary labor market rewards, few studies have used national samples to examine race and gender differences in nonmonetary labor process rewards. Utilizing multivariate analysis on data from the 1993 and 1997 National Employee Survey, the present study examines how race and gender interact in shaping workplace autonomy. We regress an index of autonomy on human capital, structural level variables, and race and gender interaction terms. Findings show that black and white females, relative to white males, fare worse net of controls for human capital and structural level variables. Black males fare worse than white males when controlling for human capital but this disadvantage fails to retain its significant effect when controlling for structural level variables. We conclude that contrary to some beliefs that black females have experienced greater success in the labor market as a result of affirmative action policies, black females remain hindered by the double jeopardy of race and gender.

This quantitative, cross‐national study is designed to test hypotheses linking the activities of international nongovernmental organizations to reductions in carbon dioxide emissions in the developing world. While many quantitative studies of variation in carbon dioxide emissions have been published, none have included a control for the presence of international nongovernmental organizations. We review the literature that discusses the many ways that international nongovernmental organizations work to reduce environmental degradation in developing nations. We then conduct a panel regression analysis in which we include a variable to estimate the effects of international nongovernmental organizations on carbon dioxide emissions while including variables suggested by other relevant theoretical perspectives. Our findings are quite clear in that nations with high levels of international nongovernmental organization presence have lower levels of carbon dioxide emissions than nations with low levels of international nongovernmental organization presence. We also find support for the ecological modernization hypothesis pertaining to the existence of an environmental Kuznet's curve between the level of economic development and level of carbon dioxide emissions.

Review of Chinese Techno-Warriors: National Security and Strategic Competition from the Nuclear Age to the Information Age. By Evan Feigenbaum. [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. 339 pp. US$ 55.00. ISBN 0-8047-4601-X.]China's growing technological capability has become the topic of the day among Western officials concerned with the national security and economic competitiveness implications of China's growing prominence. The publication of a study which attempts to explain how security and competitiveness have been linked in the evolution of Chinese technology policies is therefore quite timely. The effort to locate this linkage in the development of an ideology of techno-nationalism resonates nicely with perceptions – held by many in Western capitals – of a China with a special passion for the acquisition of dual use technology and a determination to use political means to secure economic advantage. The appearance of Evan Feigenbaum's book, which rightly locates China's technological trajectory at the centre of many of the more important questions about the Chinese future, is thus to be welcomed.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the agreement between self-reported tobacco consumption and NicCheck 1^® (Dynagen Inc. Cambridge, Mass., USA) regarding smoking status and nicotine intake in a population of smokers (20.8%) and non-smokers. NicCheck 1 is a dipstick that changes colour in the presence of urinary nicotine metabolites. Smoking was assessed by self-report and NicCheck 1 in 169 males and 191 females (mean age 36.0 SD 0.7). Self-report and NicCheck 1 agreed highly on smoking status, especially in moderate to heavy smokers. With regard to nicotine intake, there was a large overlap in self-reported tobacco consumption between NicCheck 1 levels, despite a relatively high correlation coefficient between self-report and NicCheck 1 in smokers (i.e. 0.74). No effect modification by gender or BMI was found. When both methods were validated against two blood lipid parameters, self-report seemed to do equally well as NicCheck 1 in assessing nicotine intake.

AbstractWhen organizational image is being challenged, use of psychological defences may become excessive. In this paper 18 defences that appeared in an oil company during an oil spill are studied. All defences except sublimation contributed to the deterioration of corporate image. Sublimation allowed the company to take responsibility. Other defences simply put off facing the truth. The selection of defences used during crises reveals organizations' true personalities. Twelve different organizational personality types are discussed. Use of certain defences leads to the development of a neurotic personality. The case company turned out to be normally and neurotically demanding, paranoid, narcissistic and attention seeking, and normally depressive. Organizations constantly using primitive defences are borderline personalities. Excessively defensive organizations may turn psychotic. The case company's reactions to the incident were psychologically revealing. Finding defences characteristic of the company allowed us to build its eco‐psychological profile. Based on this case study an eco‐psychological profiling model is proposed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

This article focuses on problems with the definition and empirical identification of immigrant "first" and "second" generations in the United States. These loosely conceived aggregates are decomposed into a typology of distinct generational cohorts defined by age and life stage at migration for the foreign born and by parental nativity for the U.S. born. Differences in educational and occupational attainment and in language and other aspects of acculturation are then examined to consider whether the practice of "lumping" these generational cohorts together, or "splitting" them into distinctive units of analysis, is empirically supported by available evidence. The paper concludes with some thoughts on data needs and methodological considerations in the study of immigrant generations. "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages …" – William Shakespeare, "As You Like It," Act II, Scene 7.

Three difficulties confront researchers in the resilience arena. At the conceptual level, there is the need to identify resilient actions, including those that may seem to violate established norms, such as rational behavior. At the operational level, it may be difficult to model individual, group, and community behavior in a single framework. At the empirical level, it is especially difficult to gather data on resilience to specify models. The purpose of this paper is to summarize progress on all three planes. First, defines several important dimensions of economic resilience to disasters. Second, shows how computable general equilibrium modeling represents a useful framework for analyzing the behavior of individuals, businesses, and markets. Third, summarizes recent progress in the conceptual and empirical modeling of resilience, including the incorporation of disequilibria and the recalibration of key behavioral parameters on the basis of empirical data. Fourth, uses the results of a case study to illustrate some important issues relating to the subject.

This study examines how demobilisation and reintegration processes affected the roles and status of women ex-combatants after the liberation war in Zimbabwe. The success of post-war demobilisation and reintegration depends on the formulation and implementation of programmes that recognise the contributions of women and treat them as a differentiated mass with specific aspirations. In disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) processes after most wars, the roles of women in the conflicts and their post-war needs are ignored or not adequately addressed. Their critical roles and contributions in the conflict and its resolution are rarely recognised. The vital contribution that women fighters made in Zimbabwe's liberation struggle between 1962 and 1979 has gone largely unsung. Through extensive interviews with female ex-combatants, this article argues that the absence of a gender-sensitive demobilisation and reintegration policy resulted in the marginalisation and exclusion of women ex-combatants in the military, social, political and professional spheres. What then, it asks, are the lessons that can be learnt from Zimbabwe's experience of demobilisation and reintegration?

Why are some communities more civically engaged than others? Why do some communities provide services with volunteer labor whereas others rely primarily on government provision? When communities provide both volunteer and paid labor for the same service, how do they motivate and organize those volunteers? This article addresses these questions through quantitative tests of prevailing explanations for levels of civic engagement (e.g., education, TV viewing, urbanization) and qualitative analyses of case studies of three medium-sized cities in Japan, focusing particularly on the service areas of firefighting and elder care. The statistical analyses demonstrate that current explanations that rely on individual characteristics cannot predict or explain volunteer participation at the community level of analysis. Using the case study data, a model is developed to predict therate of volunteer participation in a community.It is concluded that the practices of governmental and social institutions—how well they legitimize, fund, and organize volunteers—determine the rate of volunteer participation in a community.

This study concentrates on the autobiographical texts of five less well-known refugees, all of whom came to Britain as children and four of whom came unaccompanied, with a focus on representations of the family in their texts. Using examples of common themes in autobiographical texts of former members of the Kindertransport, such as language acquisition and evacuation procedures, the author investigates representations of the changing relationship towards birth family and continental culture as well as foster family and British culture. She argues that the successful narration of a life story is not only a part of the positioning process between different family and cultural circles, but also a part of a successful acculturation. By reconstituting or constituting one's life story, one can accommodate the different voices of analysis and anecdote, theory and experience. The case is made for including the analysis of texts by former child refugees in less specific fields such as migration studies and autobiographical theory.

This paper reviews an empirical study into corporate reputation strategies in large UK organizations. It considers what is meant by corporate reputation and its role in the strategic marketing communications mix. The findings confirm not only that over the past decade planning and implementation of reputation strategies has become a dominant focus of those concerned with corporate governance but also that the organizational communicator now perceives his or her role as one of guardian of that reputation. It notes further, that between academics and practitioners alike there remains much confusion over the terms reputation and image; are the two one and the same? The findings have implications not only for senior management but also for the development of communication strategies aimed at enabling an organization to gain a competitive advantage in an increasingly overcrowded market place. Evidentially corporate reputation has developed more and more in the UK context – and is now recognized by enlightened management as a key weapon in organizational strategy formulations.

In this study, we investigate the daily relationships between returns on individual stocks and their corresponding futures contracts in Australian, Hong Kong, and United Kingdom markets. We find that, at the beginning of the life of a futures market, autocorrelation of futures returns is similar to that of individual stock returns. As the market becomes mature, the autocorrelation of futures returns behaves differently from the autocorrelation of stock returns. Through the linkage between return autocorrelations and trading volume, we find that a larger trading volume depresses the return autocorrelation and shrinks the differences of return autocorrelation between stock and its futures. In addition, futures trading volume has more significant impact on the patterns of return autocorrelations than the stock trading volume. The effect is non-linear in the sense that it is much more prominent during high futures trading periods. Summary of these findings suggests that the difference of return autocorrelations between an individual stock and its futures contract is due to low trading activities of futures.