Transnationalism and Relationships with ‘Home’ among Women in the East Timorese Community in Melbourne

This article focuses on transnationalism and long distance nationalism among East Timorese women in Melbourne, Australia, in the post independence period. It explores the relationships these women have with East Timor and how they engage in transnational practices. It examines the community's self-perception as East Timorese in Australia and their engagement with East Timor, particularly during the 2006 unrest there. Despite being in a liminal position living between two cultures, their country of origin and the country they reside in, most women (even those who rarely visit East Timor) still identify as ‘East Timorese’. I discuss the challenges with returning ‘home’, and how this affects the community's ‘imaginings’ of East Timor. The community retains a predominantly idealistic view of East Timor, but this is increasingly complemented by a nuanced understanding of the challenges faced by their presence ‘at home’.     

Cultural Underpinnings of Special Education: Implications for Professional Interactions with Culturally Diverse Families

This article identifies certain cultural assumptions that underlie special education policy and practice in the United States, and argues that unawareness of cultural relativity contributes to considerable cross-cultural dissonance in working with families from diverse backgrounds. With regard to policy, the article argues that, despite an ideal of parental participation, the medical note on which the law is based frequently results in misunderstanding between professionals and parents who do not share the same value system. Three aspects of such misunderstandings are explored: The way disability is defined, the power accorded to professional expertise, and the commitment to the decontextualized language of objective science. With regard to practice, the article further identifies four areas of parent-professional dissonance: Beliefs about parenting styles, education goals, family and community concerns, and the pragmatics of communication. Explicit awareness of cultural relativity is recommended as an essential step towards reciprocal relationships with families from diverse backgrounds.     

How Incentives Increase Inequality

Abstract. We determine the optimal level of bonuses in the case of Co‐production between an agent and multiusers. There is Co‐production when the outcome is the result of both the agent's effort and the user's effort and type. Paying bonuses to the agent encourages him to vary his effort according to the user he meets. This variety in the agent's effort results in an increase in inequality. Hence, the optimal level of bonuses is muted when the principal cares about equality among users. This is typically the case in education or health.     

Nonparametric Estimation of the Geometric Vitality Function

Recently, Nair and Rajesh (2000 Nair , K. R. M. , Rajesh , G. ( 2000 ). Geometric vitality function and its application to reliability . IAPQR Tran. 25 ( 1 ): 1 – 8 . [Google Scholar]) proposed a measure to describe the failure pattern of components/devices in terms of the geometric mean of the residual life. This measure find applications in modeling life time data. In the present work we provide a nonparametric kernel-type estimator for the geometric vitality function, both in the case of complete and censored samples. The properties of the estimator, under certain regularity conditions, are studied. The performance of the estimator is compared with the empirical estimator using a real data set and simulation studies are carried out using the Monte Carlo method.     

Sliced inverse regression for survival data

We apply the univariate sliced inverse regression to survival data. Our approach is different from the other papers on this subject. The right-censored observations are taken into account during the slicing of the survival times by assigning each of them with equal weight to all of the slices with longer survival. We test this method with different distributions for the two main survival data models, the accelerated lifetime model and Cox’s proportional hazards model. In both cases and under different conditions of sparsity, sample size and dimension of parameters, this non-parametric approach finds the data structure and can be viewed as a variable selector.     

The impact of a culturally enhanced drug prevention program on drug and alcohol refusal efficacy among urban African American girls

This study examined the utility of the Specific Event Drug and Alcohol Refusal Efficacy scale (SEDARE) as an outcome of a culturally enhanced drug abuse prevention program for urban African-American girls in early adolescence. The SEDARE captures the perceived likelihood that youth will use drugs and alcohol in specific situations. Ninety-two girls participated in the program. Girls in the intervention group had higher drug refusal efficacy as measured by the SEDARE than girls in the comparison group. Girls varied in situations they perceived they could refuse drugs and alcohol. Findings are discussed with implications for drug abuse prevention programs for urban African-American girls.     

Ethnic identity, neighborhood risk, and adolescent drug and sex attitudes and refusal efficacy: the urban African American girls' experience

This study examined the impact of ethnic identity and neighborhood risk on drug and sex attitudes and refusal efficacy among early adolescent urban African American females (n = 175). The model also predicted a moderating relationship of ethnic identity on neighborhood risk for drug and sex attitudes and refusal efficacy. Data were collected as part of a larger drug education program and analyzed via hierarchical multiple regression. The analyses controlled for household structure and menarche. Results indicated a direct relationship of higher ethnic identity and higher sexual refusal efficacy, higher disapproval of drug use, and lowered intentions to use drugs. Neighborhood risk was directly related to lower disapproval of drug use. There was a small moderating effect of ethnic identity on neighborhood risk for intention to use drugs. Findings provide support for prevention programs for African American youth that seek to reduce risk behaviors by increasing ethnic identity, particularly in low resource communities.     

Latin America and the crisis (points for the balance of a decade)

The decade of the 1980s was catastrophic for the countries of Latin America because of profound transformations in the world economy, which started in the 1970s, the wilting of the state development programs that were imposed after World War II, and the collapse of socialism with the incipient transition to market economies. The crisis started because of the erosion of the world economic system as constituted under the Bretton Woods agreement; the drastic drop in the economic growth of market economies; the increased costs of living and the deterioration of the environment; the decrease in industrial capacity; and the emergence of transnationalization of production. In Latin America, the economic models that had been in place without solving underdevelopment became even more obsolete (import substitution, internal trade, and the role of the state). The crisis of socialism and the rapprochement of eastern European countries to western Europe also affected Latin America (e.g., Germany cancelled 30 mine exploration projects in Bolivia due to investments in East Germany). The structural readjustment policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank resulted in currency devaluations, redistribution of government funds, elimination of various subsidies, reduction of public debt and social expenditures, reduction of public employment, and payment of external debt. The result was more inflation (in Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, and Argentina, inflation rates were 683.7%, 157.1%, 100.1%, and 326.2%, respectively, between 1980 and 1986), unemployment, and poverty in the lost decade of the 1980s. After 1982, state expenditures on roads, education, hospitals, and nutrition declined by 40% in Mexico. Even though most countries returned to democracy in the region, this was at the cost of the increased role of the military and the transnationals. The grand parties collapsed and in Venezuela, Mexico, and Colombia authoritarian tendencies survived into the 1970s degrading democracy. The states' socioeconomic regulatory role has to be redefined.