City Life: Rankings (Livability) Versus Perceptions (Satisfaction)

I investigate the relationship between the popular Mercer city ranking (livability) and survey data (satisfactions). Livability aims to capture objective quality of life such as infrastructure. Survey items capture subjective quality of life such as satisfaction with city. The relationship between objective measures of quality of life and subjective measures is weak (correlation of about 0.4). Trust is highly correlated with both, objective livability (0.8) and subjective satisfaction with city (0.65). I postulate to pay more attention to subjective indicators of quality of life. After all, what matters is what we perceive, not what is out there.     

(Un)doing feminism in (post)-Yugoslav media spaces

This paper engages in a mixed-method study combining the bibliographic method, textual media analysis of women’s magazines from different periods during and after Yugoslav socialism, and qualitative focus group interviews to map out the complex trajectories of feminism spanning a period of forty-something years. Its goal is to see how socialist and post-socialist media representations of women’s experiences correspond with feminist or post-feminist values in the former Yugoslavia and today. Engaging in a genealogical exercise and critical reading of the sources of data listed above, I aim to mark out some of the differences between the contexts of then and now, in order to make it more possible to reassess the potential for rethinking feminism as emancipatory politics in the present.     

Shanghai(ed) Babies

Chick lit's emphasis on choice, agency and conspicuous consumption has been linked to the impact of Anglo-American neoliberalism. This paper argues that the similarly themed global chick lit, springing up in developing countries and ex-communist countries in recent years, works in tandem with the economic policies of global capitalism that breaks down national/geographical borders and promises a desirable world order of universalized choice and freedom. More than just the Western commodities and Western-defined and locally endorsed values of beauty and femininity, the global chick lit propagates the idea of a neoliberal, global sisterhood of chic, empowered, consumerist and individualistically minded women who find freedom through consumption and progress in following Western commodities and values. Here geopolitics and biopolitics combine together to aid the expansion of Anglo-American neoliberal ideas. This paper uses Shanghai Baby as an example of the global chick lit in China, a hitherto unexplored market. Set in China's most Westernized city, this novel portrays a new generation of young, urban, professional Chinese women who celebrate material pleasure and increased sexual agency in the context of China's market liberalization and the influx of global capital. While reflecting the impact of neoliberalism, the global chick lit also hints at the gaps between the local and the Western and the uneven nature of economic development, thus setting into greater relief the inherent race and class hierarchies and exclusions behind the neoliberal rhetoric of universalized choice and freedom.     

Contents Volume 21 (2002)

Volume Contents

Contents Volume 21 (2002)     

Evaluation of the role ofMicrovelia douglasi atrolineata (Bergroth) (Heteroptera: Veliidae) as predator of the brown planthopperNilaparvata lugens (St?l) (Homoptera: Delphacidae)

Summary The biology of the veliid bugM. d. atrolineata, its predatory behavior, and the effects of plural hunting were studied to evaluate its role as a predator of the brown planthopperNilaparvata lugens in the Philippines. The probability of planthoppers falling onto the water surface and provision of habitat continuity was measured by a sticky trap placed at the base of rice hills in a greenhouse and in paddy fields. The developmental period of immature stages combined was 21 days. If given prey, females laid 25 eggs on the average during an adult life span of 18 days. Starved adults could survive for only 3–5 days. The functional response to prey density was sigmoid, and the maximum number of prey killed was 7 per day. Prey feeding was completed in 12–36 min. The percentage of successful prey attacks averaged 5–8%, decreasing with higher (and larger) developmental. stages of prey, but adult prey were found the soonest. Plural hunting increased the probability of capturing prey by as much as 2.5 times that by individual hunting. Late-instar nymphs, which may be more active, fell from rice hills in a greenhouse more than early-instar nymphs, and the number falling increased with density. In the field the percentage of planthoppers falling to the water in 1 day varied considerably, from 1% for nymphs in one field to 67% for adults in another field. On the basis of work described above and given the high density of veliid predators in flooded paddy fields of tropical Asia,M. d. atrolineata is considered one of the most important natural enemies of the brown planthopper.     

Contens Volume 22 (2003)

Population Research and Policy Review -     

(Re)circulating Foreign Bodies

This paper situates Richard Fung's auto-ethnographic video Sea in the Blood within the context of the personal illness narrative as a mode of political resistance which emerged alongside the movements of feminist health activism and global HIV/AIDS activism. I argue that as a critical illness narrative, which reads the experiences of transnational travel and migration in and through a narrative of illness, race, and sexuality, Sea in the Blood disrupts the genres of both the personal illness narrative and the imperial travel narrative while resisting the assimilative pull of what Charles L. Briggs calls the “political economy of communicability.” Specifically, I argue that Fung resists cultural and political absorption using three primary strategies: the symbolics of blood, the juxtaposition of illness and travel narratives, and the tactics of misalignment, or the self-conscious use of contradictory narratives and competing modes of representation. Through these strategies, Sea in the Blood is installed as a form of revolutionary activism which comments on the historical pathologization of foreign bodies, and exposes the ways in which the medicalization of race underwrites the medicalized history of sexuality. Accordingly, Sea in the Blood inaugurates what might be thought of as a politics of incommunicability through the sensuous and metaphorical re/circulation of foreign bodies.     

Contents Volume 20 (2001)

Volume Contents

Contents Volume 20 (2001)     

Multiple discrepancies theory (MDT)

A fairly thorough account of multiple discrepancies theory (MDT) is presented, with a review of its historical antecedents and an examination of its strength in accounting for the happiness (H) and satisfaction (S) of nearly 700 university undergraduates. Basically, MDT asserts that H and S are functions of perceived gaps between what one has and wants, relevant others have, the best one has had in the past, expected to have 3 years ago, expects to have after 5 years, deserves and needs. MDT explained 49% of the variance in H, 53% in global S and 50% or more in 7 out of 12 domain S scores. The domains studied were health, finances, family, job, friendships, housing, area, recreation, religion, self-esteem, transportation and education.     

Larval movement ofLasioderma serricorne (F.) (Coleoptera: Anobiidae) in a plane

Summary The mean maximum change in position of larvae ofLasioderma serricorne (F.) at 30°C, 60% RH increased by 0.290 cm/day, their mean position at the end of a 24 hour period increased by 0.245 cm/day. The linear distance from the point of origin was equal to approximately one third of the total distance moved. Either density or high numbers increased the rate of movement.