Family budgets and public money: spending fostering payments

In this second of two papers based on a study of payment issues within foster care, the focus is on expenditure. It is argued that the hybrid public/private nature of fostering gives rise to contradictory pressures for carers, including the status of maintenance payments as both part of family budgets and a form of delegated public expenditure. For example, carers are required in principle both to spend fixed amounts upon foster children and to treat them in like fashion to their own children. In this paper, the issue of ‘like treatment’ is explored, along with the significance of payment for ‘children who foster’ and for relationships between carers and foster children. Also examined are the challenges presented by differences between carers’ material circumstances and those of birth families, especially when reunification is planned. Overall, the paper seeks to show how the handling of expenditure becomes closely entwined with inter‐personal dynamics within foster care.     

CROSS-BORDER ACQUISITIONS AND BOARD GLOBALIZATION IN THE WORLD'S LARGEST TNCS, 1995–2005

Because of their size, power, and undemocratic nature, the cross-border activities of the world's transnational corporations (TNCs) are of particular interest to sociologists. Previous research shows that over the past decade the boards of directors of the world's largest TNCs have become more multinational, in other words are increasingly composed of individuals from different countries. During the same period there was also a dramatic increase in the number of cross-border TNC mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Anecdotal evidence suggests a connection between cross-border acquisitions and the increasingly multinational composition of TNC boards, and this study explores that relationship using data on the 148 largest TNCs and commercial banks. We find that a cross-border acquisition almost always results in a more multinational board of directors, that multinational boards are more likely to do cross-border deals, and that once a board becomes multinational it stays that way. The evidence also shows that multinational boards are concentrated in Europe, suggesting another dynamic between the integrating forces of the European Union and its TNCs. Because the results show increasing cross-national contact between the corporate elites who serve on multinational TNC boards, the results also provide some support for claims about the recent emergence of a "Transnational Business Class" or "Transnational Capitalist Class," at least in Europe, although it is recognized that more study is needed to make the case that such a class is forming.     

Affective and aesthetic dimensions of contemporary social movements in South West England

The paper examines contemporary social movement activity within South West England. It is argued that much social movement analysis has been too nation‐state orientated, that it has too readily framed diverse contemporary practices within a narrow, politically reductive and instrumentally rational frame. Increasingly, aesthetic and affective dimensions of everyday life must be examined if any coherent theoretical account of such activity is to be offered. Altering relations between states and their citizens in a global age and the emergence of an extended civil society are linked to a weakening of the capacity of nation states to manage identity formation. A series of excursuses link theoretical analysis of the expressive dimensions of the region's social movement activity, to these more extended global transformations.     

The derivation of a brief Student Nurse Stress Index

The lack of an adequate measure of perceived sources of stress for student nurses led to the construction of the Student Nurse Stress Index (SNSI). Responses from 235 first-year student nurses to 35 items from the Beck and Srivastava Stress Inventory (Beck, and Srivastava, 1991), and 15 new items, were subjected to exploratory factor analysis using principal components analysis and oblimin rotation. A reliable 22-variable solution with a simple oblique structure including Academic load, Clinical sources, Interface worries, and Personal problems factors was obtained in this initial sample, and confirmed at an exploratory level in a further independent validation sample of 188 first-year students. Confirmatory factor analysis established the four-factor model in the first sample, but required that three variables load onto more than one factor. This more complex four-factor model was confirmed using independent data from the validation sample, and the total invariance of factor loadings and factor covariances of this more complex four-factor model was established in both data sets simultaneously using multi-sample techniques. The SNSI shows cross-sample factor congruence, good internal reliabilities, and concurrent and discriminant validity across a range of reporting conditions.     

An Attentional Application of Socioemotional Selectivity Theory in College Students

Socioemotional selectivity theory posits that emotions become increasingly salient as individuals approach endings. Recent findings have linked the theory with biases in information processing in the context of aging. However, these studies all confounded advancing age and the motivational impact of endings. This study represented an attempt to disentangle the effects of large age differences from those of endings on the processing of emotional information by investigating differences in attention to emotional stimuli between college seniors and college first‐years. Seniors represented a group approaching the social ending of graduation from college and first‐years served as a comparison group not facing an ending. Following recent findings in the literature on aging, it was hypothesized that seniors would selectively avoid negative images in an effort to better regulate their emotions in the face of this social ending. First‐years were found to spend a significantly larger portion of their time viewing sad faces than did seniors. Seniors also exhibited significantly higher levels of positive affect than did first‐years. These findings are discussed within the context of emotion regulation in the face of impending endings across the lifespan.     

Careers and redundancy

Occupational redundancy is affecting a wide range of workers including those with careers. This challenges assumptions of the inviolability of professional careers and views of careers as steady progress. Individuals’experience of redundancy shows that careers can be very disadvantageous for those who have invested in and become committed to them. Recent changes in society thus call for a revision of the existing sociological concept of career and its use in the analysis of social institutions and processes. These issues are examined by reviewing sociological references to, and analyses of, the concept and by studying the effects of redundancy on a particular group of professionals. It is argued that redundancy compels an approach which treats seriously the capacity of‘careers’to inflict psychological and social harm and to involve career holders in political struggle. The concept should retain its place in the sociology of occupations, but to realise its analytical potential, it must be firmly related to political conditions and consequences. This may justify following the commonsense rather than the sociological view and restricting its use to high-status occupations.     

Climate Change Facts,Strategies, Choices and Innovations

Canada's Action Plan is the federal response to its international obligation under the UN Framework Convention of 1992 whereby Canada must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to the 1990 level by the year 2000. The Plan is failing completely, because of its essentially voluntary nature. Overall, greenhouse gas emissions will have increased 13 per cent in Canada between 1990 and 2000, four per cent more than the population increase for that period. Five other plans studied by government agencies are projected to fail to achieve the called-for reductions in emission. An analogous plan, the Rational Energy Plan, developed by a network of nongovernment organizations, is projected to enable the federal government to achieve its obligations under the Framework Convention and also its further obligations under the 1995 Berlin Mandate. This Plan has been analyzed using the government's own analytical tools which project that it will offer Canada substantial annual increases in employment for at least ten years, more prosperous households for more than ten years, and a smaller federal deficit for at least eight years. The federal government has no viable alternative to adopting this plan as soon as practicable. This paper explains some of the needed preliminaries to introducing the Plan, together with examples of tax-shifting and of easily implemented stick-and-carrot inducements to making the Plan work in a sea of partly hostile provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Newfoundland). The Plan will not be easy to implement because of necessary changes in human habits of thinking and attitudes. A new and simple strategy for reducing fuel wastage on highways is introduced in this paper; and also the concept of extended cogeneration, the Rational Energy Plan itself being a particularly fine example.     

The nature and context of cross-border social work in Ireland

This article is concerned with mapping cross-border social work in Ireland. After a short background section on the nature of the Irish border, it evaluates and assesses the main areas of collaboration in social work. It argues that this type of work has been largely led by special project funding and is dependent on the skills, knowledge and commitment of a small number of individuals who have driven cross-border projects. Whilst there is a clear rationale for collaboration in social work programmes, it is contended that this method of working lacks an overall coherence and is in danger of disappearing when special funding programmes come to an end. The article contends that there is a fundamental desire for close co-operation, but as cross-border social work has not been embedded into the routine business of health boards and trusts the impetus is constantly undermined. It is concluded that cross-border social work programmes will remain marginal and insignificant until they are mainstreamed rather than bolted on as an afterthought to existing programmes.     

Validation of an inferential approach for the measurement of illegitimacy

An inferential model which utilizes surname comparisons in inferring legitimacy status is developed and validated. Criterion validation is employed to assess the level of agreement between the inferential approach and the conventional reporting procedure. Data for the analysis are based on a sample of birth certificates contained in files of the National Center for Health Statistics for calendar year 1973. Results indicate that despite excessive error within some categories of the control variables, the inferential method is generally adequate to obtain reliable estimates of illegitimacy.