Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow

ABSTRACT

Drawing on social histories of rumour, this article challenges notions of white and Afrikaner homogeneity which persist in the scholarship on late and post-apartheid South Africa. In so doing, it demonstrates the revisionist potential of rumour as a historical source, while reinserting class in a scholarship which privileges race as salient historical feature. The article focuses on Arrie Paulus, apartheid South Africa’s most prominent white trade unionist, infamous as the personification of working-class racism. Yet this defender of race-based privilege and staunch Afrikaner nationalist was haunted by a rumour: Paulus, it was whispered, was not actually white. The rumour circulated in reform-era South Africa and persists in the post-apartheid present. By examining the rumour surrounding Paulus’s racial and ethnic origins in terms of the functions it fulfilled within the particular contexts in which it appeared, this article exposes longstanding tensions around the politics of class characterizing Afrikaner society since the 1970s.     

Testosterone, Smiling, and Facial Appearance

In a study of possible links between testosterone and dominance, 119 men and 114 women provided saliva samples for testosterone assay and posed smiling and not smiling for portrait photographs. Expert judges viewing the photographs found smaller smiles among high than low testosterone men, with less zygomatic major (raising the corners of the mouth) and orbicularis oculi (raising the cheeks and crinkling around the corners of the eyes) muscle activity. Naive judges viewing individual photographs gave higher potency ratings to smiling high testosterone men than smiling low testosterone men. Naive judges viewing photographs grouped into high and low testosterone sets gave higher potency and lower goodness ratings to high than to low testosterone men, regardless of whether they were smiling. Among women, judges found only slight relationships between testosterone and facial appearance. The pattern among men of less smiling with higher testosterone levels fits with research linking testosterone to face-to-face dominance.     

Family,marital, and occupational satisfaction for recovering pathological gamblers

This paper describes the efforts of a private gambling treatment program to conduct a retrospective study of pathological gamblers treated in a publicly supported residential program. The Johns Hopkins Center for Pathological Gambling treated approximately 100 pathological gamblers nationwide from 1979 to 1983 in its residential component. Twenty-six gamblers were assessed regarding their recovery status with specific focus on family, marital status and occupational satisfaction. It was hypothesized that the more satisfied patients would display lower frequencies of gambling and that gambling frequency was dependent upon the level of satisfaction. Thirty-one percent of these gamblers reported abstinence. Regression analyses indicated that the recovery of pathological gamblers as measured by frequency of gambling is significantly influenced by job satisfaction, and moderately influenced by marital status and family life satisfaction. Consequently, these factors should be addressed by mental health professionals in research and treatment of pathological gambling.     

Effects of Risk and Time Preference and Expected Longevity on Demand for Medical Tests

Despite their conceptual importance, the effects of time preference, expected longevity, uncertainty, and risk aversion on behavior have not been analyzed empirically. We use data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to assess the role of risk and time preference, expected longevity, and education on demand for three measures used for early detection of breast and cervical cancer—regular breast self-exams, mammograms, and Pap smears. We find that individuals with a higher life expectancy and lower time preference are more likely to undergo cancer screening. Less risk averse individuals tend to be more likely to undergo testing.     

Using Transfer Procedures to Teach Tacts to a Child with Autism

This applied study attempted to evaluate a combination of transfer procedures commonly used to teach tacts to children with autism. A receptive to echoic to tact transfer and an echoic to tact transfer procedure were combined during 5-min instructional sessions to teach tacts to a seven-year-old vocal child with autism. A multiple baseline design across three sets of ten tacts was used. Without the teaching procedure, the child acquired no target tacts. With the 5-min teaching procedure implemented first with Set 1 then with Sets 2 and 3, respectively, the child acquired thirty new tacts over sixty teaching sessions. The results have wide application for children with and without autism who need instruction to learn tacts.