Prophecy and Progress: Christianity and Dissent in Modern America

The categories of left and right, and the standard interpretive alignments of progressive Christianity with postmillennialism and of right-wing Protestantism with premillennialist fatalism in US historiography, are far from adequate. Prophetic politics, calling contemporary society to account for its ungodly ways, was widely dispersed among modern American Christians along the whole political spectrum. Moreover, there were many prophetic postmillennialists, who denounced society's iniquity while working to realize God's Kingdom, and there were reform premillennialists, who lamented a fallen world even as, paradoxically, they worked to make it more godly and less satanic.     

Presenteeism, Power and Organizational Change: Long Hours as a Career Barrier and the Impact on the Working Lives of Women Managers

This paper discusses the results from a survey on the gendered impact of organizational change and the implications for workloads and working hours. These results suggest that restructuring leads to increased workloads and that the pressure of long working hours is associated with male-dominated organizations. Restructuring is also associated with 'presenteeism' (the tendency to stay at work beyond the time needed for effective performance of the job) as fear of redundancy and uncertainty over promotion opportunities lead to a need to demonstrate visible commitment. Such presenteeism was found to be gendered: it is associated with a competitive masculine culture, it is seen by women as a form of 'male resistance' to their presence as managers and it imposes heavy costs on women as they attempt to meet the conflicting demands of work and home. This paper suggests that organizational restructuring can produce dysfunctional outcomes such as 'competitive presenteeism' (whereby managers compete over who stays longest in the office) and that such outcomes have important gender implications. It concludes that gender mix is a defining feature in how well women fit into the organization and how easily they accommodate to changes in organizational structures and managerial work.     

Estimation of local demographic variation in a flexible framework for population projections

A cohort component projection of local populations based on sex and single year of age offers great value for planning local services, but demands data beyond the detail available. Local fertility, mortality and migration schedules by age and sex must be estimated sensitively to local variation if the results are to be of greater value than simpler methods of projection. Two approaches are compared, using data for the recent past: (a) direct estimation of local area age-specific schedules of fertility, mortality and migration based on data available to the national statistical agency; (b) graduation of national schedules using only local area population estimates by age, total numbers of births, and total numbers of deaths; age-specific migration is indirectly estimated from successive population estimates. These two approaches are compared with a projection using the same rates for each area. The three projections have been implemented for electoral wards in the Fife local government area of Scotland, using the flexible framework provided by POPGROUP software. Persuasive local population projections based on standard data for standard areas are feasible without the regular publication of migration flows.     

Parameter estimation in high dimensional Gaussian distributions

In order to compute the log-likelihood for high dimensional Gaussian models, it is necessary to compute the determinant of the large, sparse, symmetric positive definite precision matrix. Traditional methods for evaluating the log-likelihood, which are typically based on Cholesky factorisations, are not feasible for very large models due to the massive memory requirements. We present a novel approach for evaluating such likelihoods that only requires the computation of matrix-vector products. In this approach we utilise matrix functions, Krylov subspaces, and probing vectors to construct an iterative numerical method for computing the log-likelihood.     

Oppression and Barriers to Service for Black,Lesbian Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence

This narrative study identified service barriers from the perspectives of 16 Black lesbian survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV). Qualitative analysis revealed diverse interrelated barriers similar to those identified by service providers in a previous study by the authors, including societal barriers such as heterosexism, and institutional barriers such as ambiguous policy. Results indicate that the theory of intersectionality is best poised to frame an investigation of the complex barriers encountered by these survivors. Results also demonstrate that although these women desire to receive services, current inequities prevent them from accessing support and further endanger, victimize, and isolate them. Strategies for improving services and reaching culturally diverse survivors are also discussed.     

Dynamics of Contention

Since its launch in Totnes 2005, the Transition Network has achieved considerable success and expansion. Here, I explore the movement's aims and organisation and discuss its evolution in relation to the obstacles it has faced. My discussion draws on both my auto-ethnographic encounters with the movement in Transition Nottingham and the 2010 Transition Network conference and the literature produced by movement actors.