Re‐framing the Analysis: A 3‐dimensional Perspective of Prisoners’ Children's Well‐being

This article highlights three dimensions to understanding children's well‐being during and after parental imprisonment which have not been fully explored in current research. A consideration of ‘time’ reveals the importance of children's past experiences and their anticipated futures. A focus on ‘space’ highlights the impact of new or altered environmental dynamics. A study of ‘agency’ illuminates how children cope within structural, material and social confines which intensify vulnerability and dependency. This integrated perspective reveals important differences in individual children's experiences and commonalities in broader systemic and social constraints on prisoners’ children. The paper analyses data from a prospective longitudinal study of 35 prisoners’ children during and after their (step) father's imprisonment to illustrate the arguments.     

Never easy to say “sorry”: Exploring the interplay of crisis involvement,brand image,and message appeal in developing effective corporate apologies

This study examines how the interplay among crisis involvement, brand image, and message appeal impacts the effectiveness of an apology in the context of a corporate crisis. To determine apology effectiveness, a 2 (crisis involvement: high vs. low) × 2 (brand image: symbolic vs. functional) × 2 (message appeal type: emotional vs. informational) experimental design was employed. The results demonstrate that the three-way interaction is significant, especially in the low-crisis involvement condition. The study concludes with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications and directions for future research.     

Colonialism,Decolonisation, and the Right to be Human: Britain and the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees

The Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees is central to scholarship on refugee and asylum issues. It is the primary basis upon which asylum seekers make their claims to the majority of host states today and, as a key text of the human rights framework, has come to be associated with the very idea of a universalised rights-bearing human being. Yet British asylum policy today is characterized by efforts to limit access to the right to asylum. Many scholars believe this is because asylum seekers today are different, in character and number, to previous cohorts of applicants. This article goes back to the founding of the refugee rights regime and investigates the exclusions of colonized peoples from access to the right to asylum. Using Chimni's concept of the “myth of difference”, the article demonstrates that asylum seekers have long existed outside of Europe, and that their exclusion from international rights has been both longstanding and intentional. This historical sociology suggests that the basis for critical work on the issue of asylum policy today must be one which takes colonial histories into account.     

Scientific justification of social policies: concepts of language and immigrant integration

Population mobility, globalisation, and the Internet contribute to the change of immigration patterns and the emergence of new kinds of identities and integration strategies. It is necessary to re-examine the heuristic significance of this field's key concepts in order to ensure that relevant and theoretically sound knowledge consistently informs integration policies, measures, and programmes. This paper focuses on the concepts of language and maintains that a narrow-utilitarian approach to the issue of language and integration may thrive due to uncritical acceptance of an instrumentalist view on language as a means of communication and/or a social marker together with an essentialist concept of identity that stems from the sociolinguistic tradition. However, this conceptual framework does not correspond to the complexity of the integration process in a contemporary society. The present paper aims to contribute to the field of language and immigrant integration via outlining an alternative approach to language grounded in the ideas of Humboldt, Potebnja, and Vygotsky (language as a creative force, a worldview, and a mediating tool) and discussing its potential for addressing the issue of integration in contemporary conditions.     

The city in the country: Growing alternative food networks in Metropolitan areas

Alternative food networks (AFNs) are commonly defined by attributes such as the spatial proximity between farmers and consumers, the existence of retail venues such as farmers markets, community supported agriculture (CSA) and a commitment to sustainable food production and consumption. Focusing upon processes rather than attributes, this paper identifies two place-based processes that both promote and constrain the emergence and development of AFNs. Urbanization and rural restructuring are critical to the development of AFNs. AFNs are not a “thing” to be described, but rather emerge from political, cultural and historical processes. The interactions of urbanization and rural restructuring produce AFNs that are differentiated and marked by uneven development that does not necessarily support all farmers participating in the network. This indicates both the fragility and the dynamism inherent in AFNs that are tied to metropolitan development and change. Paradoxically, increasing urban demand for seasonal, and organic produce grown ‘close to home’ and the processes of rural restructuring which emphasize small-scale sustainable family farming and its direct food linkages to cities do not necessarily enable all farmers to consistently make a living from season to season. Evidence for these claims comes from an in-depth, qualitative case study reliant upon participant observation, in-depth interviews and draws from a statewide farmer survey and a regional consumer survey in Washington State.     

Evaluation of trace evidence in the form of multivariate data

Summary.  The evaluation of measurements on characteristics of trace evidence found at a crime scene and on a suspect is an important part of forensic science. Five methods of assessment for the value of the evidence for multivariate data are described. Two are based on significance tests and three on the evaluation of likelihood ratios. The likelihood ratio which compares the probability of the measurements on the evidence assuming a common source for the crime scene and suspect evidence with the probability of the measurements on the evidence assuming different sources for the crime scene and suspect evidence is a well-documented measure of the value of the evidence. One of the likelihood ratio approaches transforms the data to a univariate projection based on the first principal component. The other two versions of the likelihood ratio for multivariate data account for correlation among the variables and for two levels of variation: that between sources and that within sources. One version assumes that between-source variability is modelled by a multivariate normal distribution; the other version models the variability with a multivariate kernel density estimate. Results are compared from the analysis of measurements on the elemental composition of glass.     

Sexual Behavior,Sexual Knowledge,and Sexual Attitudes of Emerging Adult Women: Implications for Working With Families

The purpose of this study was twofold: first, to examine the sexual behavior of emerging adult women in relation to their sexual knowledge, sexual attitudes, and perceptions of their parents' sexual attitudes; and second, to discuss the implications of this research in working with young adult women. Three hundred and sixty-four college-age women were administered the Sexual Experiences Inventory, Miller-Fisk Sexual Knowledge Questionnaire, and the Hendrick Sexual Attitude Scale. Ninety-six percent of the sample reported primarily heterosexual behavior. Sexual knowledge of participants was not related to their reports of sexual behavior. The sexual attitudes of college-age women and their perceptions of their parents' attitudes toward sexual behavior were found to relate positively to participant sexual permissiveness and sexual practice. The implications of these findings were discussed in relation to working with families and providing effective interventions to reduce unsafe sexual practices among emerging adult women.     

Communicative Openness in Adoption,Knowledge of Culture of Origin,and Adoption Identity in Adolescents Adopted From Romania

Eighty adolescents (39 male, mean age = 15.74 years) adopted from Romanian institutions in early childhood rated their own and their adoptive parents’ communicative openness, their knowledge of Romanian culture, and positive and negative feelings concerning birth parents, being placed for adoption, and being adopted. Adolescents were moderately comfortable talking about their adoptions but perceived their parents to be very comfortable. Nearly 40% reported no familiarity with Romanian culture. Youth with more familiarity with Romanian culture were more communicatively open and had more positive adoption identities. Greater communicative openness was also associated with more positive adoption identities. Gender and age at adoption differences are reported.