Playing Numbers Or Politics? Approaches to the Prioritisation of Development Needs in South Africa

This paper uses a case study to highlight the implicit political and developmental assumptions which underpin an indicator and index based prioritisation of developmental needs. A key issue for the successful implementation of development objectives in South Africa is the identification and prioritisation of development needs. Indicators could play an important role in terms of informing the decisions made by various levels of government. An indicator based index supported by a computerised system called the Development Indicators Monitoring System (DIMS) has been used to prioritise housing and service provision need within the province of Gauteng. The article shows that the prioritisation of areas in terms of service need is sensitive to the index construction method employed. It is argued that various choices around the index construction method depend on certain developmental assumptions which are fundamentally political choices. In particular, the choice between absolute and relative indicators of need has a considerable impact on the prioritisation of areas. However, this is not a total rejection of the use of indicators in the planning process. Rather, it is a call for the appropriate use of the tools that are available.     

Selective Authenticity: Civil War Reenactors and Credible Reenactments

This article addresses authenticity and how it is selectively used by Civil War reenactors to create credible reenactments. The Civil War provides a structured set of scenarios for reenactors to use as a backdrop for their participation. Some use this backdrop to bring objects to the forefront and others use this setting as a way to interact with an audience person to person. This research indicates that authenticity may come through on different levels for individuals participating in the same activity. An authentic experience or object is authentic because it has an important immediate meaning. The objects and narratives displayed by reenactors may be set in specific history but this does not mean that these same objects and narratives are part of that history. This paper contributes to the study of authenticity by examining groups of Civil War reenactors and where their focus of authenticity lies whether it is on authentic objects or interactions.     

Ecosystem services in managing residential landscapes: priorities,value dimensions,and cross-regional patterns

Although ecosystem services have been intensively examined in certain domains (e.g., forests and wetlands), little research has assessed ecosystem services for the most dominant landscape type in urban ecosystems—namely, residential yards. In this paper, we report findings of a cross-site survey of homeowners in six U.S. cities to 1) examine how residents subjectively value various ecosystem services, 2) explore distinctive dimensions of those values, and 3) test the urban homogenization hypothesis. This hypothesis posits that urbanization leads to similarities in the social-ecological dynamics across cities in diverse biomes. By extension, the thesis suggests that residents’ ecosystem service priorities for residential landscapes will be similar regardless of whether residents live in the humid East or the arid West, or the warm South or the cold North. Results underscored that cultural services were of utmost importance, particularly anthropocentric values including aesthetics, low-maintenance, and personal enjoyment. Using factor analyses, distinctive dimensions of residents’ values were found to partially align with the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment’s categories (provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural). Finally, residents’ ecosystem service priorities exhibited significant homogenization across regions. In particular, the traditional lawn aesthetic (neat, green, weed-free yards) was similarly important across residents of diverse U.S. cities. Only a few exceptions were found across different environmental and social contexts; for example, cooling effects were more important in the warm South, where residents also valued aesthetics more than those in the North, where low-maintenance yards were a greater priority.     

Does Human Capital Raise Earnings for Immigrants in the Low-Skill Labor Market?

We use monthly Survey of Income and Program Participation data from 1996–1999 and 2001–2003 to estimate the determinants of differentiation in intercepts and slopes for age/earnings profiles of low-skill immigrant and native male workers. Our findings provide further depth of understanding to the“mixed” picture of earnings determination in the low-skill labor market that has been reported by others. On the positive side, many immigrants are employed in similar occupations and industries as natives. Both groups show substantial wage gains over time and generally receive similar returns to years of schooling completed. Immigrants also receive substantial returns to acculturation, measured as age at arrival and English language skill. These results cast doubt on the strong version of segmented labor market theory, in which low-skill immigrants are permanently consigned to dead-end jobs with no wage appreciation. On the negative side, immigrants earn approximately 24% less than natives and are less likely to occupy supervisory and managerial jobs. Latino immigrants receive lower returns to education than do white immigrants. Furthermore, age at arrival and language ability do not explain the lower returns to education experienced by Latino immigrants. These results suggest that Latino immigrants in particular may suffer from barriers to mobility and/or wage discrimination. Whether these negative labor market experiences occur primarily for illegal immigrants remains unknown.     

The lesbian corporate experience

By means of semi-structured interviews, this study investigates the work experience of 13 lesbians employed by large corporations. The respondents, who were already discredited for being women, had to manage the further potentially discrediting information of their lesbianism. The author examines the strategies used to manage such information. Because these strategies frequently included deception, the respondents then had to design a series of counter-strategies to avoid seeing themselves as dishonest. Each woman's strategy was unique; nevertheless, certain perceptions and approaches were common to all the respondents.     

The managerial revolution,the institutional infrastructure,and the problem of human capital

InScale and Scope, A.D. Chandler explores the role of management in shaping growth and competitiveness in industrialising nations. Chandler views managers as reacting to technological and economic change rather than initiating it, giving little attention to the extent to which growth of modern management and corporate capacities were tied to the emergence of parallel structures in government and society, and the important national differences in the role of public and private sectors in the process. His failure to offer a broad and encompassing paradigm of organisational growth and change produces a celebration of ‘American exceptionalism’ and corporate bigness rather than a genuinely comparative analysis.     

Immigrants’ TANF Eligibility, 1996–2003: What Explains the New Across‐State Inequalities?1

Why did some states adopt stringent TANF‐eligibility policies toward immigrants, while others implemented more lenient rules throughout the post‐1996 welfare reform period? We use immigrant‐specific welfare rule measures to examine predominant theoretical frameworks for understanding state stringency in welfare policy. Analysis, utilizing a simultaneous equations modeling (SEM) strategy, uses annual data for all states. Results show consistent support for the median voter (primarily, the percent of liberal voters) theoretical explanation for less stringent state welfare eligibility rules regarding immigrants. While the size of the Social‐Security‐recipient population (tax capacity indicator) and perhaps unacceptable reproductive behavior (teen birth rate) relate to more stringent rules, key state economic and fiscal characteristics (i.e., per capita welfare expenditures, per capita personal income) explain less stringent TANF eligibility rules. Importantly, recent immigrant population concentration patterns (in new and traditional destination states) add to the theoretical explanation of less stringent state TANF immigrant eligibility policies.     

From margins to center? The development and purpose of participatory research

This article documents the development of the libratory stream of participatory research as experienced through the activities and connections of one of the key figures in the early development and dissemination of these ideas. It traces the developments in Tanzania in the early 1970s, through the establishment of the original Participatory Research Network to the elaboration of theoretical and political debates. It highlights the formulation and elaboration of participatory research as a contribution to social change in a variety of settings. It includes discussions of the feminist advance, the question of voice and the relationship of power to knowledge in transformative practice. It contains an extensive and historically valuable bibliography.     

Semiparametric and parametric transformation models for comparing diagnostic markers with paired design

We develop semiparametric and parametric transformation models for estimation and comparison of ROC curves derived from measurements from two diagnostic tests on the same subjects. We assume the existence of transformed measurement scales, one for each test, on which the paired measurements have bivariate normal distributions. The resulting pair of ROC curves are estimated by maximum likelihood algorithms, using joint rank data in the semiparametric model with unspecified transformations and using Box-Cox transformations in the parametric transformation case. Several hypothesis tests for comparing the two ROC curves, or characteristics of them, are developed. Two clinical examples are presented and simulation results are provided.