Bayesian disclosure risk assessment: predicting small frequencies in contingency tables

Summary.  We propose an approach for assessing the risk of individual identification in the release of categorical data. This requires the accurate calculation of predictive probabilities for those cells in a contingency table which have small sample frequencies, making the problem somewhat different from usual contingency table estimation, where interest is generally focused on regions of high probability. Our approach is Bayesian and provides posterior predictive probabilities of identification risk. By incorporating model uncertainty in our analysis, we can provide more realistic estimates of disclosure risk for individual cell counts than are provided by methods which ignore the multivariate structure of the data set.     

Residual analysis as a technique for specifying and optimizing predictive models

This article outlines a simple procedure for reducing the error and thus increasing the size of correlation coefficients through an analysis of residual variances resulting from the inadequacy of an assumed regression model to describe the data. Usually researchers are concerned with how well their model fits the data, but in regard to certain problems, an equally important issue is how well the data fit the model. Use of the Residual Analysis Technique provides a means whereby researchers may objectively remove extreme or deviant cases, i.e., those with large residuals, from their analysis and thereby increase the predictive accuracy of their operational models. Data from 682 urban places are examined in order to provide an example of the practical utility of this procedure.     

Avatarculture: Narrative, power and identity in virtual world environments

Drawing on the work of Raymond Williams, this paper examines avatar culture through the interplay of emergent and residual forces. A dual process is at work in the formation of cultural identities in which the enabling conditions of virtual worlds are understood alongside and in relation to pre-existing off-line phenomenon. Avatar culture confirms structure for participants, especially in relation to gender and sexuality, whilst at the same time providing a reflexive space to break with pre-existing features of social identity. Virtual environments are thus microcosms of a grounded cultural materiality that is simultaneously improvised on and transformed. With regard to the distinctive aspects of avatar culture the paper focuses on issues of narrative, representation, censorship and power relations and their formation within virtual worlds. It discusses how virtual worlds incrementally acquire a peculiar power and meaning in the lives of participants. The paper discusses the flows of social interaction in virtual environments and how intermittence best describes how users participate and withdraw from different encounters. Avatar culture binds people together temporarily and loosely and then frees them up to relocate themselves elsewhere. In this context, virtual environments might be regarded as putting structure and power into movement. The ethnographic approach adopted helps peel back the residue of social structure to reveal a virtual agency with its emerging shells of avatar-derived affiliations, tensions and conflicts.     

The Politics of Equal Opportunity

This paper reviews changes in the concept of ‘equal opportunities’ over the last twenty years and discusses the implications for women’s experiences in the workplace. The shift to notions of diversity and difference as the motif for equality initiatives reflects the right-wing critique of bureaucratic control and regulation of labour markets, embodied in 1970s' EO policies. ‘Diversity’ symbolizes the employer’s freedom from constraint in selecting and deploying the best ‘talent’ regardless of sex, ethnicity or disability. Ironically the radical feminist agenda, which asserts women’s differences from men and their potential for creating a better world, had been adapted to the concerns of liberal feminism with providing a rationale for the promotion of women into management, on the grounds that women’s nurturing capacities contribute to the diversity needed by post-modern organizations. A case study of a transnational computer and measurement systems manufacturer is used to illustrate the limited capacity of a market-driven version of diversity to dismantle the hierarchical gender order and its tendency to reinforce the ideology of competitive individualism with its white, male norms. In conclusion it is argued that we need to move beyond the ultimately limiting debate about whether women are the same as or different from men to a renewed concern with the material conditions of women’s lives and with the construction of equality initiatives which address the continuing exclusion of many women from adequate standards of living.     

Play the white man: the social construction of fairness and competition in equal opportunity policies

This paper discusses the impact of equal opportunity projects on women's employment in two public sector organisations. It examines the limitations of the emerging liberal model and assesses the likely effectiveness of alternative approaches. An Affirmative Action Program in a North American university was examined five years after its initiation. Despite standardised procedures for access to jobs and systematic monitoring, there was very little change in the degree of occupational segregation between men and women. A women's committee project in a UK university examined the present situations of women staff, with the aim of producing a strategy for change which would benefit women currently employed. This resulted in the identification of training provision, flexible working arrangements and the restructuring of job requirements as the central aspects of an alternative approach to equal opportunity policy. It is argued that, particularly in a recessionary economic climate, policies requiring employers to rethink job requirements in ways that do not exclude competent women should provide a more effective challenge to occupational segregation than liberal policies which concentrate on assessing the ‘suitability’ of individual job applicants in terms of conventional criteria.     

Children's Covid-19 writing and drawings and the existential imperative to educate for uncertainty

The Covid-19 pandemic provokes a pedagogic crisis: education is ill-adapted to accommodate multiple uncertainties in students' lives. We examine how pandemic uncertainty is registered in a global collection of writing and drawing from 4 to 17-years-old, during the 2020 lockdowns. The study engages with Biesta's (2021) philosophical work on 'world-centred education', offering empirical examples from the collection that goes beyond the immediacy of everyday lives. We identify educational implications: acknowledging students' present experiences of the world; a slowing of pedagogical tempo; supporting students to navigate desires and fears; a language for expressing uncertainty; and engaging students in ethical and existential difficulty.