“I Really Belong Here”: Civic Capacity-Building among Returning Citizens

This article focuses on unlikely movement actors whose civic engagement has been understudied: people with criminal records (“returning citizens”). We present findings from 18 months of ethnographic research with members (leaders) of Fighting to Overcome Records and Create Equality (FORCE), a civic group led by returning citizens. FORCE leaders received institutional support from Community Renewal Society (CRS), a larger faith and community-based organization, to lead a rights reform movement in Chicago. Findings suggest that FORCE leaders constructed notions of kinship, recognition, and power through civic capacity-building efforts—and that social belonging was core to such capacity-building efforts. While bonding social belonging occurred as FORCE leaders formed kinship with people facing similar social and economic marginality, bridging social belonging emerged as leaders felt recognized by CRS staff organizers, affiliates, and elected officials. Bonding and bridging social belonging enabled FORCE leaders, who faced constant social exclusion in society, to experience much needed kinship, recognition, and power. Future studies should continue to uncover how local capacity-building processes have life-changing relational effects on movement participants from socially and economically marginalized groups.     

A semi-parametric method for estimating the beta coefficients of the hidden two-sided asset return jumps

ABSTRACT

We introduce a new methodology for estimating the parameters of a two-sided jump model, which aims at decomposing the daily stock return evolution into (unobservable) positive and negative jumps as well as Brownian noise. The parameters of interest are the jump beta coefficients which measure the influence of the market jumps on the stock returns, and are latent components. For this purpose, at first we use the Variance Gamma (VG) distribution which is frequently used in modeling financial time series and leads to the revelation of the hidden market jumps' distributions. Then, our method is based on the central moments of the stock returns for estimating the parameters of the model. It is proved that the proposed method provides always a solution in terms of the jump beta coefficients. We thus achieve a semi-parametric fit to the empirical data. The methodology itself serves as a criterion to test the fit of any sets of parameters to the empirical returns. The analysis is applied to NASDAQ and Google returns during the 2006–2008 period.     

Extending Bayesian back-calculation to estimate age and time specific HIV incidence

Lifetime Data Analysis - CD4-based multi-state back-calculation methods are key for monitoring the HIV epidemic, providing estimates of HIV incidence and diagnosis rates by disentangling their...     

When women veterans return: The role of postsecondary education in transition in their civilian lives

Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess the current state of postsecondary educational settings’ outreach to military women who become students postservice. Participants: Data for the present cross-sectional study were obtained from the American College Health Association’s (ACHA) 2011–2014 National College Health Assessment II (NCHA). Methods: Demographic characteristics of the study sample were explored by calculating frequencies and percentages by military service status. Research questions were explored with Fisher’s exact test, maximum likelihood multiple logistic regression, as appropriate. Results: Women service member and veteran students received health information from their university/college less often than women students with no military experience on the following topics: alcohol and other drug use, depression and anxiety, sexual assault and relationship violence prevention, and stress reduction. Conclusions: The findings of this research identified clear gaps in service provision for women student veterans on college campuses and provided some possible models for intervention development.     

Is Sexual Abuse a Unique Predictor of Sexual Risk Behaviors,Pregnancy, and Motherhood in Adolescence?

This study tested sexual abuse as a unique predictor of subsequent adolescent sexual behaviors, pregnancy, and motherhood when in company with other types of maltreatment (physical abuse, neglect) and alternative behavioral, family, and contextual risk factors in a prospective, longitudinal study of maltreated (n = 275) and comparison (n = 239) nulliparous females aged 14–19 years old assessed annually through 19 years old. Hierarchical regression was used to disentangle risk factors that account for the associations of maltreatment type on risky sexual behaviors at 19 years old, adolescent pregnancy, and adolescent motherhood. Findings indicate that sexual and physical abuse remain significant predictors of risky sexual behaviors, and that sexual abuse remains a significant predictor of adolescent motherhood when alternative explanatory variables are controlled.     

Extreme Energy Poverty Incidence and Determinants in Nigeria: A Multidimensional Approach

Social Indicators Research - Energy poverty has emerged in recent times as a crucial aspect of poverty, afflicting the developing world in general and Nigeria in particular. Drawing from some of...     

From sex objects to bumbling idiots: tracing advertising students’ perceptions of gender and advertising

While much attention has been given to critiquing sexism and stereotyping in advertising texts, less weight is afforded to examining the gendered opinions and worldviews of the practitioners who create such texts and even less focus on such attitudes as held by advertising students—the next generation of advertisers. This paper is concerned with exploring advertising students’ attitudes towards representations of the sexes in adverts, and how this may reflect their gendered opinions more generally. Analysing individual, semi-structured student interviews (n = 12) reveals that, while there was widespread acknowledgement that sexual objectification of women in advertising remains prevalent, there was a discursive turn towards a concern for men and boys, and assertions that misandry has emerged as a concerning and unwelcome trend in advertising imagery and texts. This was bolstered by a less prevalent theme; one which lauds the figure of the “tomboy” and thereby serves to privilege the male experience.     

Self as enterprise: digital disability practices of entrepreneurship and employment in the wave of ‘Internet + disability’ in China

ABSTRACT

Situated in China’s neoliberal context and its rapid development of information communication technologies (ICTs), this study aimed to examine how disabled people in China transformed themselves into new self-enterprising subjects in the wave of ‘Internet?+?Disability.’ In order to answer this question, this study tried to develop an analytical framework to illustrate the disability practices that situated in the ICTs and neoliberal context, underpinned by the discourse of ‘self as enterprise,’ and demonstrated by the practices of entrepreneurship and employment. Based on the research design of case studies and methods that included ethnographic participant observation and in-depth interviews, this study explained how a disabled entrepreneur, Mr. Yuan, took advantage of the wave of ‘Internet?+?Disability’ to realize his dream of entrepreneurship and face the uncertainties of a precarious entrepreneurship. It also explained how Mr. Yuan’s employees achieved their dreams of employment but suffered the precariousness of enterprising subjects.     

基于经济全球化视角的中国民族企业跨文化营销战略研究

经济全球化必然伴随着国际区域经济的一体化,跨文化营销实践在这一进程中得到不断深化,并成为影响现代国际市场竞争格局的重要因素。以美国、日本等为代表的现代市场经济体,在不同文化背景下的各个海外目标市场经营取得了成功。这为我国企业开拓海外市场提供了很多有益的启示。