The Virtues of Participation without Power: Campaigns,Party Networks,and the Ends of Politics

Following Francesca Polletta's call to reconsider participatory democracy in a new millennium, this article analyzes and makes a normative case for institutional and partisan forms of participation without decision making. I draw on field research and interviews conducted over the last decade on Democratic Party campaigns to argue against contemporary denunciations of partisanship and critiques of institutional participation by radical democrats. First, this article discusses the opportunities available for citizens to participate in electoral politics. Volunteering is often limited to fund‐raising and instrumental voter contacts given the constraints of electoral institutions. Although campaign volunteerism is a fundamentally limited form of civic engagement, institutional and partisan participation has democratic value. Campaigns are institutionally linked to political parties that offer distinct moral, ideological, and policy choices to citizens. Recent analytical and empirical work shows that contemporary political parties are constituted by relatively coherent networks of civil society and social movement organizations that devote considerable resources to electoral politics to shape primary and general election outcomes and advance their agendas in governance. This reveals electoral participation to be tightly linked to larger partisan dynamics and institutional sites of power.     

Socio-psychological barriers for peace making and ideas to overcome them / Barreras sociopsicológicas para la paz e ideas para superarlas

Intensive and violent intergroup conflicts that rage in different parts of the world are real. These conflicts center over disagreements focusing on contradictory goals and interests in different domains and must be addressed in conflict resolution. It is well known that the disagreements could potentially be resolved if not the powerful socio-psychological barriers which fuel and maintain the conflicts. These barriers inhibit and impede progress towards peaceful settlement of the conflict. They stand as major obstacles to begin the negotiation, to continue the negotiation, to achieve an agreement and later to engage in a process of reconciliation. These barriers are found among both leaders and society members that are involved in vicious, violent and protracted intergroup conflicts. They pertain to the integrated operation of cognitive, emotional and motivational processes, combined with a pre-existing repertoire of rigid supporting beliefs, world views and emotions that result in selective, biased and distorted information processing. This processing obstructs and inhibits the penetration of new information that can potentially contribute to facilitating progress in the peace-making process. The paper elaborates on the nature of the socio-psychological barriers and proposes preliminary ideas of how to overcome them. These ideas focus on the unfreezing process which eventually may lead to cessation of adherence to the repertoire that supports the continuation of the conflict, its evaluation and arousal of the readiness to entertain of alternative beliefs that support peace making.     

Male Honor and the Ruralization of HIV/AIDS in Michoacán. A Case of Indigenous Return Migration in Mexico

The purpose of this text is to analyse the motives of seasonal migrant workers for attempting to get their wives pregnant when they return to Mexico. The meanings attributed to paternity, pregnancy and rearing are analysed from the perspective of the migrant worker and his wife. Ethnographic research was conducted in several Purépecha communities in Michoacán, supported by interviews with indigenous, who travelled to the United States for periods of up to three years, and with their wives, who stayed in Mexico. The migrant workers interviewed consider pregnancy and the paternity derived from it as an important means of male legitimization and sexual control of their wives, particularly valid in their rural communities of origin, where they know they are absentee males. When they return to Mexico they seek sexual relations for reproductive purposes, since they fear their wives will have extramarital relations in their absence. From these findings, it was considered necessary to implement sexual and reproductive health policies with pluri‐ethnic and gender approaches that take into account male beliefs and practices regarding paternity and pregnancy in a rural context. The development of sensitizing policies aimed at migrant males during their stays in Mexico is recommended.     

The Tempo of Sexual Activity and Later Relationship Quality

Rapid sexual involvement may have adverse long‐term implications for relationship quality. This study examined the tempo of sexual intimacy and subsequent relationship quality in a sample of married and cohabiting men and women. Data come from the Marital and Relationship Survey, which provides information on nearly 600 low‐ to moderate‐income couples living with minor children. Over one third of respondents became sexually involved within the first month of the relationship. Bivariate results suggested that delaying sexual involvement was associated with higher relationship quality across several dimensions. The multivariate results indicated that the speed of entry into sexual relationships was negatively associated with marital quality, but only among women. The association between relationship tempo and relationship quality was largely driven by cohabitation. Cohabiting may result in poorer quality relationship because rapid sexual involvement early in the romantic relationship is associated with entrance into shared living.     

“I'm Not Supporting His Kids”: Nonresident Fathers' Contributions Given Mothers' New Fertility

The authors examined whether nonresident fathers provide informal support to their children and whether support stops if their ex‐partner goes on to have a child with a new man. A logistic regression analysis of longitudinal survey and administrative data for 434 women who received welfare in Wisconsin showed that fathers are less likely to provide informal support when their ex‐partner has a child with a new partner. Alternative models that control for unobserved characteristics suggest somewhat different results, providing stronger evidence of declines in support that can be shared across family members than in support that can be directed to a particular child.     

Accuracy of Inferring Self- and Other-Preferences from Spontaneous Facial Expressions

Participants?? faces were covertly recorded while they rated the attractiveness of people, the decorative appeal of paintings, and the cuteness of animals. Ratings employed a continuous scale. The same participants then returned and tried to guess ratings from 3-s videotapes of themselves and other targets. Performance was above chance in all three stimulus categories, thereby replicating the results of an earlier study (North et al. in J Exp Soc Psychol 46(6):1109?C1113, 2010) but this time using a more sensitive rating procedure. Across conditions, accuracy in reading one??s own face was not reliably better than other-accuracy. We discuss our findings in the context of ??simulation?? theories of face-based emotion recognition (Goldman in The philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience of mindreading. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006) and the larger body of accuracy research.     

The effect of visualization method on the performance of simulated microsurgery tasks

The operating microscopes may be a significant cause of fatigue and discomfort in surgeons. The need for the microscope to be placed over the operating field forces surgeons to remain at the microscope's eyepieces at an uncomfortable posture for the entirety of the surgery. This study compared the effects on microsurgical task performance for four visualization methods: a monocular microscope, a binocular microscope, a three-dimensional (3D) flat-panel television display and a two-dimensional (2D) flat-panel television display. Eleven subjects each performed two microsurgical tasks and their performance was documented by video camera. The statistical analysis performed indicated utilization of the microscope as a visualization method increased subject performance. No significant difference in performance between the 2D and stereoscopic visualization methods.     

Risk factors for incident carpal tunnel syndrome: results of a prospective cohort study of newly-hired workers

Carpal tunnel syndrome is one of the most costly upper extremity disorders in the working population. Past literature has shown an association between personal and work factors to a case definition of carpal tunnel syndrome but little is known about the combined effects of these factors with the development of this disorder. Few studies have examined these associations in longitudinal studies. The purpose of this paper is to identify risk factors for incident carpal tunnel syndrome in a longitudinal study of workers across a wide range of occupations.     

Child poverty and family policies across eighteen wealthy Western democracies

While a good deal has been written about the potential value of family policies in reducing child poverty in Western countries, few cross-national quantitative studies have been carried out on this topic. This article uses ordinary least squares regression analysis on panel data from 18 Western democracies from 1987 to 2007 to test the significance of family policies and other welfare policies on child poverty rates. It extends existing research on the relationship between family policies and child poverty by utilizing a broader data-set in terms of time, countries, and child poverty measures. The main finding is that all three of the main family policies studied – child cash and tax benefits, paid parenting leaves, and public support for childcare – correlate significantly with lower child poverty rates. Somewhat surprisingly, disability and sickness insurance also correlates significantly with lower child poverty in nearly every model and test. These findings provide valuable insight for future research and policy-making in the area of child poverty.     

Introduction: Special issue on Global Lesbian Cinema

This article offers a brief introduction to this special issue on Global Lesbian Cinema. This issue particularly highlights the importance of recognizing lesbian discourse as a separate, related piece of the discourse of queer transnational and global cinema. Subsequently, brief summaries of the eight articles of this collection are provided.