Social Work Intervention on a New Housing Estate

Summary Families moving into a new housing estate were the subject ofa controlled experiment. Half received social work assistance,half did not. The two groups showed little difference in levelsof health or satisfaction with their environment. The problemsidentified tended to be communal problems of the estate, relatedto its design and management.     

Dual citizenship or dual identity? Does ‘transnationalism’ supplant ‘nationalism’ among returning Trinidadians?

In this article we focus on the dual identities of relatively young Trinidadians who have decided to return to the island of their birth, or of their parents, while still in their thirties and forties. Highly‐educated professional transnational migrants mostly make up our sample of 36; 26 possess dual citizenship. We focus on our informants’ narratives about their transnational experiences, self‐appraisals of their dual identities and how they value dual citizenship. More generally, we ask, does transnationalism supplant nationalism among our returning informants? Unsurprisingly, the diverse responses we document do not support the commonly held explanatory relationship between return adaptations, ‘national belonging’ and the expected dominance of ‘transnational belonging’. Family relations intervene significantly, both to encourage transnationalism and to strengthen nationalism. Feelings of national belonging often accompany transnationalism. Notably, we view dual citizenship strategically and pragmatically as advantageous to the continuation of transnational practices.     

CRITIQUE DE LA THEORIE LIBERALE DU DEVELOPPEMENT

To this day, the development programs proposed for underdeveloped countries have met with little success because the economic analysis which encompasses them takes into account only the technique and data of macro-economics and ignores social relations. It is this weakness of the analysis that caused Western experts to be unaware of the effects of imperialism on the Third World, the evolution particular to underdeveloped countries that A.G. Frank called "development of underdevelopment." This evolution, characterized by the exploitation of Third World resources in the interests of the West, must be thwarted by a firmer, more independent stand on the part of the underdeveloped countries.
Les programmes de développement proposés aux pays sous-développés ont connu peu de succès jusqu'à ce jour. C'est que l'analyse économiste qui les sous-tend ne tient compte que de la technique et des données macro-économiques, ignorant ainsi les rapports sociaux. C'est la faiblesse de l'analyse qui a mené les experts occidentaux à ignorer les effets de l'impérialisme sur le Tiers-Monde, cette évolution spécifique des pays sous-développés que A.G. Frank a appelée « développement du sous-développement >>. Cette évolution, caractérisée par l'exploitation des ressources du Tiers-Monde selon les intérêts de l'Occident, doit être contrecarrée par une prise de position plus ferme et plus indépendante de la part des pays sous-développés.     

SEX DIFFERENCES IN A SOCIOECONOMIC INDEX FOR OCCUPATIONS IN CANADA

Ce travail elabore un index socio-economique pour les femmes qui sont emThe Vendeeloyeës, base sur les niveaux pridominants d'education et de revenu dans 465 professions exercees par des femmes en 1970. L'index ainsi que ses deux composantes sont alors utilisés dans une comparaison de la structure socio-économique de la main-d'oeuvre masculine et féminine qui fait usage d'un index semblable pour les hommes tel que rapporté par Blishen et McRoberts (1976). Nous avons trouve que pour les 465 professions, il y a une ressemblance tres proche entre les hommes et les femmes quant A la stratification professionnelle selon le niveau d'éducation mais qu'il y a des différences considérables reliées au sexe lorsqu'il s'agit de la stratification selon le revenu. Les moyennes des points en matiére socio-economique pour les hommes et les femmes qui sont employés étaient presque identiques mais ce résultat, loin de prouver qu'il y a égalité des sexes, souligne en fait une faiblesse de base de I'index tel qu'employé dans I'étude de la stratification des sexes. En combinant de faqon additive I'education et les niveaux de revenu pour chaque sexe, l'index dissimule le fait que les femmes ont en general tendance à toucher moins de revenu que les hommes mais elles se retrouvent dans des professions reliées à des niveaux d'éducation plus élevés. Nos résultats viennent s'ajouter a la littérature sur la discrimination des sexes dans la structure professionnelle et constituent une mise en garde contre I'usage exclusif d'index socio-économiques basés sur les professions dans I'étude de la stratification des sexes. This paper develops a socioeconomic index for employed women, based upon predominant education and income levels in 465 occupations having female incumbents in 1970. The index and its two components are then employed in a comparison of the socioeconomic structure of male and female labour forces, which makes use of an analogous index for men, reported by Blishen and McRoberts (1976). We find that, across the 465 occupations, there is a close similarity between men and women respecting occupational stratification by education level, but there are considerable sex differences in the pattern of stratification by income. Mean socioeconomic scores for employed men and women are found to be nearly identical, but this result, far from evidencing sexual equality, actually points up a basic weakness in the index as employed in the study of sexual stratification. In additively combining education and income levels for each sex, the index obscures the fact that women tend to receive generally less income than men, but are situated in occupations having relatively higher education levels. Our results add to the literature on sexual discrimination in the occupational structure and caution against the exclusive use of occupationally based socioeconomic indices in the study of sexual stratification.     

REGULATION VIA THREATS: POLITICS, MEDIA COVERAGE, AND OIL PRICING DECISIONS

Using the oil crisis of the late 1970s as a case study, we examine,the intertwined influences of public opinion and media attentionon the credibility of regulatory threats. We focus on threefactors: the intensity of public demands for regulatory intervention,the extent to which there are other competing demands on legislativeattention, and the availability of scapegoats external to theindustry. We use television news coverage of various topicsto measure these three factors. We hypothesize that firms threatenedwith potential regulation restrained price increases, with thelargest and most publicly visible firms exercising the greatestrestraint. We find that large, visible oil firms restrainedprice increases for the most important decontrolled prodicts(diesel fuel oil) when media coverage of the oil industry wasextensive. These firms exercised less restraint when the governmentwas busy with other issues or when political instability inthe Middle East offered an external rationale for oil priceincreases.