Female Tourists, Casual Sex, and HIV Risk in Costa Rica

This paper describes the involvement of young female tourists who visit rural Costa Rica with gringueros (i.e., local men who actively seek relationships with foreign women), and explores the implications of these relations, which gringueros see as outlets for sexual adventure, for sexual behaviors that could contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS. The findings highlight the need to use tourism-related locales to implement HIV/AIDS awareness strategies targeted at women tourists, gringueros, and other local youth.

International Funding of NGOs in India: Bringing the State Back In

This article seeks to understand how the Indian state exercises control over transnational ties between foreign and domestic actors by examining the national legislative practices that determine receipt of foreign funds and the data on foreign funding flows to NGOs (a database of more than 18,000 associations). The article shows how legislative practices of democratic states serve to reduce foreign influence. Issue characteristics are also shown to determine state response to externalization, blocking transnational ties in “high politics” areas such as minority claims. Finally, within state imposed restrictions, religious rather than secular organizations remain dominant transnational actors in India. The study contributes evidence to suggest that contrary to the arguments of world polity theory and many transnational social movement scholars, states continue to remain powerful actors limiting transnationalization.

Professional Women, Good Families: Respectable Femininity and the Cultural Politics of a “New” India

This study of professional software women in urban India examines practices of respectable femininity and discourses of the Indian family to understand the changing and abiding aspects of a seemingly new national culture. Colonial and nationalist constructs of the Indian home, and the middle-class women who protected that home, continue to powerfully shape everyday articulations of national belonging, even as they are transformed through individual negotiations and a global economy. Drawing from extensive interviews and ethnographic work, this paper analyzes the interplay of gender, class, and nation in contemporary urban India as individualized, gendered efforts to accumulate symbolic capital.

The crisis of neoliberalism and the future of international institutions: A comparison of the IMF and the WTO

The current crisis of neoliberalism is calling into question the relevance of key international institutions. We analyze the origins, nature, and possible impacts of the crisis through comparing two such institutions: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Both originated in the post-World War II U.S.-led hegemonic order and were transformed as part of the transition to global neoliberalism. We show that while the IMF and the WTO have been part of the same hegemonic project, their distinct institutional features have put them on significantly different trajectories. Historical differences in the two institutions’ systems of rules have placed the IMF in a more vulnerable position than the WTO, which provides clues to the future contours of global economic governance.

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The once and future information society

In the late twentieth century, many social scientists and other social commentators came to characterize the world as evolving into an “information society.” Central to these claims was the notion that new social uses of information, and particularly application of scientific knowledge, are transforming social life in fundamental ways. Among the supposed transformations are the rise of intellectuals in social importance, growing productivity and prosperity stemming from increasingly knowledge-based economic activity, and replacement of political conflict by authoritative, knowledge-based decision-making. We trace these ideas to their origins in the Enlightenment doctrines of Saint Simon and Comte, show that empirical support for them has never been strong, and consider the durability of their social appeal.

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The inverse plurality rule—an axiomatization

Under the ‘inverse plurality rule’, voters specify only their least preferred alternative. Our first result establishes that this rule is the only scoring rule that satisfies the minimal veto condition (MV). We then prove that the inverse plurality rule is characterized by MV and the four well known conditions that characterize scoring rules; namely, Anonymity (A), Neutrality (N), Reinforcement (RE) and Continuity (CO). Our new characterization result is related to the characterizations of approval voting and of the widely used plurality rule. We finally show how the axiomatization of the inverse plurality rule can be extended to the axiomatization of elementary scoring rules (vote for t-alternatives scoring rules). We are indebted to two anonymous referees for their most useful comments.

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Informalization and contemporary manners: The Wouters studies

This is a discussion of two books by Cas Wouters, Sex and Manners: Female Emancipation in the West 1890–2000 (London: Sage, 2004), and Informalization: Manners and Emotions since 1890 (Sage, forthcoming 2007, English version).

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The scoring rules in an endogenous election

Plurality rule is mostly criticized from being capable of choosing an alternative considered as worst by a strict majority. This paper considers elections in which the agenda consists of potential candidates strategically choosing whether or not to enter the election. In this context, we examine the ability of scoring rules to fulfil the Condorcet criterion. We show for the case of three potential candidates that Plurality rule is the only scoring rule that satisfies a version of the Condorcet criterion in two cases: 1) when preferences are single-peaked and, 2) when preferences are single-dipped.

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Constructing Union Motherhood: Gender and Social Reproduction in the Los Angeles “Justice for Janitors” Movement

The literature recognizes the need for unions to change their strategies in order to organize women but whether these strategies reinforce or undermine gender inequality is insufficiently examined. An ethnography of the Los Angeles Justice for Janitors movement demonstrates how women can mitigate unequal gender relations tied to social reproduction through unions. Secondary documents, participant observation and in-depth interviews with Latina/o immigrant janitors and with union staff show how women janitors constructed a union motherhood that undermined the invisibility and devaluation of caregiving generally performed by women. As they moved into union leadership, women worker leaders made caregiving more visible in union practice and recognized its value in the way they framed a broader unionism for the family. Attention to how unions contend with social reproduction extends our understanding of the consequences of union renewal for gender inequality.

Paying for the Dream of Public Ownership: Case Studies on Corruption and Privatization in China

The proceeding of privatization is a tradeoff between short-term equality and long-term efficiency. Under the existing structures of enterprise management and government powers, enterprise managers are likely to conspire with government officials to decide the way of ownership transformation and share the benefits from there. The transformation of ownership will enhance the efficiency of the company. Corruption indeed presses ahead the transformation of company ownership, whereas inequality is also aggravated during the process. Case studies are provided to demonstrate the relationship between corruption and privatization in China. Corruption and inequality are what the country pays for their dream of public ownership in 1950s. Equality, efficiency and maintaining current social and political structure cannot be achieved simultaneously during enterprise restructuring.

Bringing the body back into theory and methodology

This is a discussion of a book by Kathryn Linn Geurts, Culture and the Senses. Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002; and a book by Judith Farquhar, Appetites. Food and Sex in Post-Socialist China, Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2002.

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Gender and Value Orientations—What’s the Difference!? The Case of Japan and the United States

This paper analyzes gendered social identity in Japan and the United States, countries with comparable postindustrial economic systems but distinct cultural traditions. Using national surveys (1995), we find gender differences in value orientations to be neither systematic nor consistent. They often disappeared after controlling for demographic and human-capital variables, though not so often for Japan. Other variables proved more important predictors of values than gender, although in different ways in Japan and the United States. We conclude by reassessing the use of the term gender in social research and the cultural meaning of gender relations by addressing the feminist concerns with issues of gender location.

Gender Perspective in Cross-Cultural Couples

This article explores gender perspective in clinical work with couples whose romantic choices fall across cultural, racial and religious lines. A conceptual framework is presented to track the dimensions of differences between the two partners in intercultural couples (collective vs. individualistic). The article illustrates how emotional expressiveness, continuum of autonomy, gender differentiation, and sexuality play out in intimate cross-cultural relationships. It also shows how the embedded, culturally assigned gender beliefs and roles are addressed in treatment. Examples from the author’s clinical work are presented throughout the article.

Gender and Transnational Gossip

Transnational social networks powerfully shape Mexican migration and enable families to stretch internationally. In an atmosphere of such high dependence on social networks, it would be rare for families not to be affected by the opinions of others. This article analyzes this often-overlooked aspect of social networks, gossip. I analyze gossip stories prevalent for one type of migrant family, those in which parents and children live apart. Drawing on over 150 ethnographic interviews and observation with members of Mexican transnational families and their neighbors in multiple sites, I describe both parents’ and children’s experiences with transnational gossip. I show that in a transnational context, gossip is a highly gendered activity with different consequences for men and women. Although targeting both women and men, transnational gossip reinforces the expectations that mothers be family caregivers and fathers be family providers even when physical separation makes these activities difficult to accomplish.

On the influence of extreme parties in electoral competition with policy-motivated candidates

We study and compare equilibrium platforms in models of unidimensional electoral competition with two and four policy motivated parties. We first analyze the plurality game, where the party getting the most votes is elected and implements its proposed platform. Restrictions on the set of credible announcements are needed to get existence of equilibria. Comparing equilibria with two and four parties, we obtain that moderate parties react to the introduction of extreme parties by proposing the same or more extreme equilibrium platforms. We then study the proportional system, where the policy implemented is a weighted sum of the proposals, with the voting shares as weights. Here, the existence of extreme parties leads moderate ones to choose more centrist platforms. We finally test the robustness of our results with respect to, first, the enlargement of the strategy space to entry decisions and, second, to asymmetric distributions of voters' blisspoints.

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Chinese Property Law (Rights in rem) in the Civilian Tradition

The legal transitions of private ownership from being admitted limitedly to being protected equally with public ownership, and of the peasants’ right on rural lands from a contractual right to the right in rem, are almost the same process of social reform. And in the interaction of social development and legislation, the law has taken on an increasing role in social transition.

Bringing the Material Back In: Understanding the U.S. Position on Climate Change

This paper analyzes how natural resource interests have been translated into political outcomes in the form of American climate change policy. Incorporating data about natural resource use and national decision-making, this paper concludes that comprehending fully political decisions about global climate change in the United States requires us to recognize how land-use interests in the growth machine are translated into political outcomes. The findings of this paper suggest that, in order to understand social phenomena more fully, sociologists must recommit to studying the conjoint constitution of natural resources and social processes.

Spillover Impacts of a Reproductive Health Program on Elderly Women in Rural Bangladesh

This paper extends the program evaluation literature by investigating intra-household externalities generated by a reproductive health program, administered as a quasi-control experiment in rural Bangladesh. Although the program targeted only mothers and children in randomly selected treatment areas, using a reduced form demand approach and data from Matlab Health and Socio-economic Survey of 1996, we found a significantly positive spillover impact of this reproductive health program on the health of the never-targeted elderly women.

Do Reservation Wages Really Decline? Some International Evidence on the Determinants of Reservation Wages

Using cross-country data, we investigate the determinants of reservation wages and their course over the jobless spell. Higher unemployment benefits lead to higher reservation wages. Further, again consistent with the basic search model, repeated observations on the same individual provide scant evidence of declining reservation wages.

Attachment-informed Supervision for Social Work Field Education

Supervisory relationships present a new population for the application of attachment theory, and conceptualization of attachment-informed supervision training offers a new direction for study. This paper presents an 8-month model of supervision training for social work field instructors of MSW students. The training’s design incorporates primary attachment concepts with an understanding of the supervisory working alliance and parallel process. An overview of the in-person and on-line pilot training is presented, including perceptions from the participants regarding the training’s usefulness. This training program has implications for effective social work field education, and recommendations are suggested for future attachment research on supervision.