Structure, Agency, and Context: The Contributions of Geography to World-Systems Analysis

The interaction of geography and world-systems theory has created two groups of work. The first body of work uses world-systems theory as its theoretical framework with minor levels of critique or change. The second body of work attempts to inform world- systems theory by explicitly including a geographical perspective. Human geographers attracted to world-systems theory provide a perspective that highlights the role of agency in what is widely perceived to be a rigid structuralist approach. Key geographical concepts of region and place are viewed as social constructs created within an overarching context of structural imperatives. By conceptualizing places, states, and the macroregions of core, semiperiphery, and periphery as geographical scales, the role of agency in creating and maintaining the important structures and institutions of the capitalist world-economy, such as hegemony, is illustrated. The geographer's interest in the creation of geographical scales results in analysis of the dynamism of the contemporary world-system.     

Career Adaptability in Childhood

Childhood marks the dawn of vocational development, involving developmental tasks, transitions, and change. Children must acquire the rudiments of career adaptability to envision a future, make educational and vocational decisions, explore self and occupations, and problem solve. The authors situate child vocational development within human life span and life course development paradigms and career development theory. They then consider the theoretical origins of career adaptability and examine it as a critical construct for construing vocational development. Two models derived from career construction theory offer guides for research and counseling practice designed to foster development through work and other social roles.     

Does Australia Have a Filipina Brides Problem?

This paper challenges the assumption that Australian-Filipina marriages are prone to high rates of marital breakdown; and the belief that the incidence of Australian-Filipina marriages is sufficiently large to warrant the introduction of restrictive immigration policies for Filipinas. First we set the problem of Filipina bride migration in perspective by viewing it in the wider context of Australian immigration patterns — something that has been largely neglected in the discussion so far. Then we review the evidence on marital breakdown and show that Filipina-Australian marriages have been more successful than is commonly assumed. Finally, we consider the standard explanation of the breakdown of Filipina-Australian marriages in terms of ‘cultural differences’. Our conclusion is that much of the discussion has been based on implicit racial and sexual prejudices, rather than factual evidence.     

A FAMILY THERAPIST RATING SCALE*

This article reports the development of a scale for evaluating family therapist skills. The scale includes ten items within each of five skill categories. All items were found to discriminate significantly between videotaped segments of effective and ineffective family therapist skills. Also all skill categories discriminated significantly between experienced and inexperienced family therapists. The interrater reliability and internal consistency of the categories were also judged to be acceptable. Suggestions are presented for uses of the scale in therapist training research.     

Church-based organizing as participatory research: The northwest community organization and the pilsen resurrection project

Participatory research (PR) is a method of social investigation, an educational process and a process of collective action. Few examples of PR in the urban United States currently exist. Church-based community organizing’s process of systematically identifying values and concerns as a way of building relationships based on personal and social knowledge is fundamentally similar to the key characteristics of PR. Two examples of church-based organizing in inner city Chicago neighborhoods are the Northwest Community Organization and the Pilsen resurrection Project. Identification of such church-based organizing efforts as PR may help identify additional urban United States examples of PR, but also raises questions as to the role of the academic and the practical value of PR for community groups.     

Estimation of trade-offs with capture-recapture models: A case study on the lesser snow goose

Trade-offs between traits such as fecundity or survival are fundamental to much of our understanding of the evolution of life histories. There has been much renewed interest and controversy concerning methods for estimating trade-offs, in the wild or in captivity, and with or without experimental manipulations. In this paper, we assess the general question of the utility of modern capture-recapture methods as a robust tool for estimating trade-offs in natural populations. We present results from analyses of two forms of trade-offs: the cost of present reproduction on future survival and the cost of present reproduction on the probability of breeding in the future. We apply the methods to data from a long-term study of a snow goose population, and generally discuss the advantages and potential problems with various approaches.