Checkered Expectations: Predictors of Approval of Opening a Casino in the Niagara Community

This paper reports on the findings of a survey prior to the opening of a casino in Niagara Falls, Ontario (N= 1002 adults) on approval of the casino, expectations regarding the impact of the casino, attitudes toward gambling, gambling behaviour, and demographic information. The respondents generally had a positive attitude towards gambling. The expectations of community impact clustered into 3 factors: negative social consequences (crimes, addiction), negative environmental consequences (litter, noise, traffic), and positive economic consequences (jobs, stores, income). The majority of respondents expected economic benefits from the casino as well as a decrease in the environmental quality of the city. Expectations regarding social problems were mixed with a majority expecting an increase in serious crimes, but only a minority expecting an increase in people on welfare. Covariance structure modelling revealed that a positive attitude towards gambling and expecting economic benefits were positively related to approval of the casino, and expecting social problems was negatively related to approval. Given that more than seven in ten respondents supported the opening of the casino, the expected economic benefits coupled with a generally positive attitude towards gambling, apparently outweighed concerns about problems associated with gambling.     

Intervening with At-risk Mothers: Supporting Infant Language Development

At-risk young mothers and their infants (4–7 months of age) participated in an evaluation of a parenting intervention that focused largely on language stimulation. Participants assigned to the intervention group were matched with a volunteer mentor and were encouraged to attend eleven parenting sessions (five to seven participants per group) across approximately 8 months. Participants in the control group received referrals as needed and were followed across time. Results indicated that babies of the participants in the intervention group experienced more improvement in expressive language from pretest to posttest than did babies of the mothers in the control group.     

HOW NOT TO DO SCIENCE

Douglas Marshall's critique of Donald Black states the essential issues with Black's "theory." This article is concerned with the philosophy of science background to the issues with Black's claims, and presents the core issues as they have been normally and historically understood. These include the following: that the theory is literally false, and is not defensible as an approximation; that the magnitudes to which his "geometry" refers are not magnitudes according to standard measurement theory: that the form of the theory precludes testing by correlational evidence. Moreover, the phenomena are better accounted for by cognitive rather than "pure" sociological explainers.     

The Stratification of Emotions: Some Preliminary Generalizations*

Like all valued resources, positive and negative emotions are unequally distributed in a society and constitute an important basis of social stratification. In this article, a general conceptual scheme and a more specific theory of emotions are employed to offer a preliminary explanation of the dynamics of emotional stratification. This theory attempts to explain which specific positive and negative emotions will be aroused and distributed across the social class system as well as among members of differentially evaluated social categories. The theory emphasizes the importance of repression and subsequent attribution processes as central to understanding the nature, intensity, and distribution of negative emotions among individuals in lower social classes and devalued social categories. By viewing emotions as not just reactions to the unequal distribution of other resources but, rather, as a valued or punishing resource in their own right, it becomes possible to better understand how micro‐level dynamics occurring in face‐to‐face encounters are affected by, and have effects on, meso‐level and macro‐level social structures and their respective cultures. In particular, the distribution of emotions can help account for both the processes of legitimatization of macrostructures and, at the same time, de‐legitimization of, and collective action against, macrostructures. This analysis of emotions questions much recent theorizing and commentary, often within postmodern analysis, about the authenticity of people’s emotions in contemporary society. The stratification of emotions is as real as inequality in money and power, and it has significant effects on the dynamics of human societies.     

Club Amigas: a promising response to the needs of adolescent Latinas

The Latino population in the USA is growing faster than any other group. Latinas are at risk for mental health and substance-abuse problems and school dropout. Research has shown that the ability to adapt to life in the USA while retaining one's cultural heritage is essential for successful acculturation and may increase the chances for success in school. There is strong evidence that mentoring relationships can enhance teens' social and emotional competence. This paper describes Club Amigas , a mentoring project that paired Latina college students with Latina middle-school girls. Initial quantitative and qualitative evaluations of programme effectiveness found that, as predicted, mentees' self-esteem was related to a positive commitment to their Latina identity, and that self-esteem and positive commitment to Latina identity increased over the programme year.     

Social security in Africa: a brief review

Africa is the poorest region of the world and has the youngest and least developed social security programs. Most Africans are not covered by social security programs. The high prevalence of HIV/AIDS in some sub-Saharan countries and internal armed conflicts in others have created difficult problems in some countries for social security programs. As a result, some countries do not have functioning social security programs. The social security programs that do exist in Africa are influenced by their colonial heritage, with the programs in English-speaking Africa differing from those in French-speaking Africa. Six different patterns of social security provision can be identified.