Arctic political imaginaries: crafting technologies and inhabiting infrastructures

This paper seeks to address the relationship between acceptance of land use policies and differing understandings of place. Drawing on literature about technologies of the imagination and literature about infrastructure, it suggests that a synthesis of certain aspects of these two theoretical orientations produces a model that can be used to conceptually as well as practically explain the acceptance or rejection of policies. Technologies of the imagination here refer to phenomenon whose outcomes are not fully conditioned, and infrastructure acts as the underlying framework on which these technologies operate. This paper explores this relationship via a comparative case study: former Canadian federal government policy speeches; historical and contemporary popular portrayals of the ‘North’; and contemporary lived Inuit experiences at a Canadian mine site. The imaginings of space are very different between the two publics that are exposed to them: the Canadian southern audience and the Inuit northern audience. This paper proposes that this disparity and policy complex is best understood as a system that works on technologies and infrastructures as creating and being constituted by imagination. This framework explains how the gap between southern policies and northern priorities persists, and why it will continue to persist in the current political system.     

Quality of life and charges in private old people's homes in Great Britain

Over half the residents in old people's homes in Britain have their fees wholly or partly paid from the public purse. Understandably, there is considerable concern that the fees charged should be reasonable in the light of the services and facilities provided. In a recent study, local authority registration officers attempted to relate important qualitative features of private homes to the fees they charged. Taken together, these features provide a measure of the quality of life in homes. Results indicate little relationship between the charges made by homes and the measures reflecting the quality of life for residents. On the other hand, however, it was evident that the quality of life was an important consideration when registration officers made an assessment of the reasonableness of charges in homes. In short, homes assessed as having reasonable charges received higher ratings on the qualitative features. Conversely, homes judged as charging too much were much more likely to be rated poorly.     

Leaders' narrative sensemaking during LMX role negotiations: Explaining how leaders make sense of who to trust and when

This investigation supplements Leader–Member Exchange (LMX) theory by explaining how leaders make sense of whether and when to trust members throughout role negotiations. This conceptualization of leaders' trust of members describes how leaders emplot members in storylines characterized as predictably good, unpredictable, or predictably bad, and catalogs the formal communication practices indicative of those predictions. Forty working adults, who have reputations for being effective leaders, were interviewed. Constant comparative analysis revealed leaders attempted to produce stories with characterological coherence about members' character development throughout role negotiations. The Leader-to-Member Narrative Sensemaking of Trust (LMNST) concept describes how participants reported trusting and doubting (often simultaneously) their members by evoking combinations of seven narrative elements (i.e., selection, probation, escalation, confederation, jeopardy, redemption, and termination). The LMNST contributes to the leadership communication literature a way of viewing leaders' discourse about members through the lens of narrative logics.     

Addressing the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Examining Micro- and Macro-Level Variables that Affect School Disengagement and Subsequent Felonies

Abstract

This study examines the School-to-Prison Pipeline (STPP) by identifying individual legal and extra-legal variables and school-level factors that predict juvenile/criminal justice involvement using 2006–2012 matched data from education and justice systems (n?=?21,457). The role of school disengagement is also assessed, measuring unexcused absences that follow suspensions in the previous academic year. For the court-involved subsample (n?=?7349), after controlling for student behavior, demographic, and school-level factors; extra-legal racial differences remain a significant factor in determining higher counts of felonies with African American and Multi-racial students at increased likelihood (1.65 and 1.86 times, respectively for the higher latent class) of juvenile/criminal justice involvement as compared with White students. And, although White students were found to either be more disengaged or equally disengaged when compared with students of color, sharp differences in criminal justice involvement and outcomes exist by race/ethnicity. These findings suggest that addressing the STPP will require future research and focus on more than individual-level behaviors (school disengagement and school-based offenses) and attention to the impact of extra-legal variables and systemic implicit bias.     

Using Household Expenditure to Develop an Income Poverty Line

Income and expenditure measures are commonly used to establish poverty lines representing, respectively, the availability of cash resources and the standard of living approaches to measuring the extent and composition of poverty. Using UK data we compare these two measures and show how they might be combined. Although overall poverty rates are similar whichever measure is used, the relativities they imply for different types of household differ considerably. There is little overlap between income and expenditure poverty and very few households are both income–and expenditure–poor. The concept of poverty as constraint on choice or constrained expenditure is then defined as the absence of spending on durable goods and luxury items. Using logistic regression, income thresh–olds associated with the observed levels of constrained expenditure are derived for different types of household. Assuming all income is spent, these thresholds define a poverty line below which expenditure is severely constrained. The extent to which social assistance rates limit or prevent household expenditure is also estimated. The method and the estimates illustrate the value of exploring the links between income and expenditure in the measurement of poverty, drawing attention to the limitations of the data, and identifying future research needs.     

‘How come I don’t get asked no questions?’ Researching ‘hard to reach’ children and teenagers

This article discusses two related areas of research practice with children and young people that have received less attention in the literature than they might. The first is working with children and teenagers for whom the traditional, discursive nature of interview‐based research is less accessible. The second is the disinclination of researchers to report on difficulties in the research process. As researchers, we scanned the literature for assistance for some of the problems we encountered, with little reward. In describing everyday problems (and some of our – still developing – solutions) we hope to encourage more dialogue on the uncomfortable realities of the research process, and how we might improve research practice, making it a more fruitful exercise for researchers, and a more enjoyable one for children and teenagers.     

"We don't forget the old rice pot when we get the new one": discourses on ideals and practices of women in contemporary Cambodia

Drawing on microlevel research with men and women of differing ages living in rural and urban Siem Reap (home to the global heritage and tourist site of Angkor), this article focuses on the key discourses and practices that men and women draw on to (de)stabilize putatively traditional ideals of Cambodian womanhood and to (re)situate them in the contemporary period. Mapping the complex ways that people represent, make sense of, and respond to prerevolutionary cultural norms of female behavior in a very different era (with particular, though not exclusive, attention paid to mobility and education), the article demonstrates how deeper ideological changes concerning women’s relationship to Khmer tradition will have to accompany the surface reordering of Cambodian gender relations if equality between women and men is to be achieved. Until then, the ideal woman in contemporary Cambodian society is ultimately one who can creatively negotiate and balance the multiple demands placed on her by society, family, and self.     

TOO MANY MEN? SEX RATIOS AND WOMEN'S PARTNERING BEHAVIOR IN CHINA

The relative numbers of women and men are changing dramatically in China, but the consequences of these imbalanced sex ratios have received little attention. We merge data from the Chinese Health and Family Life Survey with community-level data from Chinese censuses to examine the relationship between cohort- and community-specific sex ratios and women's partnering behavior. Consistent with demographic-opportunity theory and sociocultural theory, we find that high sex ratios (indicating more men relative to women) are associated with an increased likelihood that women marry before age 25. However, high sex ratios are also associated with an increased likelihood that women engage in premarital and extramarital sexual relationships and have had more than one sexual partner, findings consistent with demographic-opportunity theory but inconsistent with sociocultural theory.     

Toward an effective treatment system for adolescents with substance use disorders: The role of the states

A 2002 national expert panel found that the treatment system for adolescents with substance use disorders was inadequate and underdeveloped. The panel recommended immediate improvement in five areas: youth-serving agency collaboration, treatment system financing, workforce development, the implementation of evidence-based practices, and family involvement in all aspects of treatment. In 2004, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT), part of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), designed the State Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment Coordination Grant program (SAC) and implemented it in 2005 to address the critical need in the field. This paper reviews the adolescent substance use disorders treatment system, discusses selected drivers for change and the design of the SAC grant program, and summarizes some of the program's results. Both quantitative and qualitative data analysis document that substantive systems development occurred within each of the sixteen grantees and that federal–state partnerships are useful in creating systemic change.     

User Beware: Concerning Findings from the Post 2011–2012 U.S. Internal Revenue Service Migration Data

Population Research and Policy Review - The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) makes publicly and freely available period migration data at the state and county levels. Among their uses, these...