Dilemmas of Environmental Planning in Post‐Urban New Jersey*

Objective. New Jersey's state land‐use plan, designed to preserve open space by directing growth to urban centers, rests on the assumption that nature (the “environment”) and the urban constitute separate objective spheres, such that nature can be preserved as an end in itself. Through a spatial transformation that de‐populated the cities and suburbanized the countryside, however, the urban and the environmental have become overlapping discursive categories, each expressing the absence of the other, and raising serious dilemmas for environmental planning. Methods. This article uses Census data to document the extent of New Jersey's urban and racial transformation over more than half a century, and examines county and municipal reviews of the state's proposed land‐use plan to document the resulting contradictory interpretations of nature articulated in political debate over state‐plan implementation. Results. The attempt to forge a statewide consensus on environmental and open‐space preservation has been stymied by the contradictory perspectives of urban and suburban constituencies, whose responses focus on the urban rather than the environmental implications of proposed land‐use controls. State planners seeking political support for environmental protection find themselves embroiled in often vitriolic debates about urban and suburban lifestyles, with implicit racial subtexts, and about the legitimacy of state intervention perceived as supporting antithetical values. Conclusions. Contrary to the state's attempt to separate the urban and the environmental, the route to environmental protection in New Jersey may lie through urban revitalization.     

Can ranking techniques elicit robust values?

This paper reports two experiments which examine the use of ranking methods to elicit ‘certainty equivalent’ values. It investigates whether such methods are able to eliminate the disparities between choice and value which constitute the ‘preference reversal phenomenon’ and which thereby pose serious problems for both theory and policy application. The results show that ranking methods are vulnerable to distorting effects of their own, but that when such effects are controlled for, the preference reversal phenomenon, previously so strong and striking, is very considerably attenuated.

Consumer Privacy: Balancing Economic and Justice Considerations

Consumer privacy is at the center of an ongoing debate among business leaders, privacy activists, and government officials. Although corporations face competitive pressures to collect and use personal information about their customers, many consumers find some methods of collection and use of their personal information unfair. We present a justice theory framework that illustrates how consumer privacy concerns are shaped by the perceived fairness of corporate information practices. We describe a set of global principles, fair information practices, which were developed to balance consumer privacy concerns with an organization's need to use personal information. We conclude by discussing three alternatives for implementing fair information practices with particular attention to the Internet: government regulation, industry self-regulation, and technological solutions .     

An instance of reverse heaping of ages

This note reports on an interesting example of reverse heaping of ages for data from the Saudi Arabian social insurance system. Peaks occur for the number of workers at ages corresponding to years of birth ending in zeroes and fives, while there are troughs at such ages for the average monthly wages. Such troughs almost certainly are the result of workers with less education using a rounded year of birth, and, correspondingly, such workers would tend to have lower earnings.     

Social Distress Theory and Teaching About Homelessness: A Retrospective Analysis

This paper provides a retrospective analysis of our course:“Hamelessness in the United States: An Interdisciplinary Approach.” It analyzes how such a course reveals social distress on two distinct levels: course content and course process. We deploy the concepts, tenets and insights of social distress theory to provide a retrospective analytical framework for the course. In addition, we extend the theory by presenting two corollaries to it and show how the literature on homelessness provides alternative connections among the major elements ofsocial distress theory. Thus, we raise new questions for the theory to consider. We also make recommendations for potential teachers of courses on homelessness.     

From Manitoba to the Memel: Max Sering,inner colonization and the German East

Whereas most of the debate surrounding the ‘colonial roots' of the Holocaust has centred around the German genocidal campaign against the Herero in south-western Africa, a much more direct and continuous story emerges when one traces the flow of ideas from the North American western frontier to the German East. In the 1880s, the agrarian economist Max Sering travelled throughout America and Canada, and came to formulate a settlement programme modelled upon what he saw there as the answer to Germany's ‘Polish problem', and indeed to virtually all the ills of modernity. From 1886 to 1914 Sering provided the intellectual ammunition for the Prussian programme of inner colonization, the purchase of land from Poles and the settlement of German ‘colonists' in the provinces of Posen and West Prussia. During the First World War, Sering's views, along with Germany's, would radicalize, as he drew up plans for the settlement of two million Germans in Latvia. Although the Nazi biological racist Darré would reject Sering's assimilationist thinking, the ‘spatial planner' Meyer would see to it that the legacy of a German way of seeing the East as a colonial empire would find its final and most radical application during the Second World War.     

The Role of Evaluator-Victim Relationships in Children's Evaluations of Peer Provocation

Second-, third-, fifth-, and sixth- grade children evaluated two hypothetical target peers in three provocation scenarios which differed as to the intent of a provocative act (Ambiguous, Accidental, Hostile). In addition to age and gender, evaluator-victim relationship was manipulated with children portrayed as being in a best friend, an acquaintance, or an enemy relationship with the victim, while the agent of the provocation was an unfamiliar peer. Evaluations were assessed in terms of attributions of aggressor's intentions, behavior response of the victim, evaluator's liking for victim, and evaluator's affect. Results indicated that older children evaluated aggressor's intentions and victim's behavior response more negatively than did younger children. Further, attributions of aggressor's intent significantly predicted the victim's subsequent behavioral response. Evaluator's affect was reported to be more negative when evaluating hostile provocation compared to accidental or ambiguous provocation and evaluators in acquaintance and enemy relationships with the victim reported liking the victim more after the provocation than before it occurred. Results are discussed in terms of the social relational and social situational influences on children's evaluations of peer interactions and the need to integrate these contextual factors in children's person perception research.     

Estimation of relaxation time distributions in magnetic resonance imaging

Magnetic resonance imaging techniques can be used to measure some biophysical properties of tissue. In this context, the T₂ relaxation time is an important parameter for soft‐tissue contrast. The authors develop a new technique to estimate the integral of the distribution of T₂ relaxation time without imposing any constraint other than the monotonicity of the underlying cumulative relaxation time distribution. They explore the properties of the estimation and its applications for the analysis of breast tissue data. As they show, an extension of linear discriminant analysis is found to distinguish well between two classes of breast tissue.     

Mass media content as cultural theory

Scholars often examine mass media as operating within one of several specific theories. Studies examine press operations to determine the governing theory. This article proposes an approach in which mass media act to develop and disseminate informal cultural theories that govern institutions. These theories are derived from the primary culture within which mass media operate. Disagreements over the role and function of mass media, such as the renascent NWICO debate, revolve around cultural differences. With culture as a foundation, the press serves to define social components and institutions, even itself, and the relationships between them.     

A theoretical perspective on “fear” as an organizational motivator for initiating public relations activities

This exploratory study identifies the correlation between perceived fear and the public relations activities of an organization. A survey of forty public relations professionals in Florida confirms that fear is a critical causal factor that motivates an organization to initiate or undertake public relations activities. The effect of fear on the public relations activities of an organization differed by public relations area. In addition, there was a gap between perception and actual public relations activities. Crisis and issues management were the areas most affected by perception, but in application media relations was the most practiced.