Language Provisions Under the Voting Rights Act: How Effective Are They?*

Objectives. As the Voting Rights Act (VRA) comes up for renewal in 2007, its effects on the political incorporation of groups other than African Americans will be of key importance in any debate. Among the questions in any such discussion will be whether the language provisions of the VRA have helped enfranchise “linguistic minorities” in the United States, or whether their effect has been largely symbolic. Second, if the Voting Rights Act has had a positive impact on the participation rates of Asian Americans and Latinos, have these effects been tilted toward first‐generation immigrants—who were not the intended beneficiaries of the Act—rather than native‐born minorities? Methods. This article looks at registration and voting data from the November 1996 and 2000 Census Current Population Supplemental Voting Surveys to explore the differential impact of the Act among immigrants and the native born, and among Latinos and Asian Americans. Results. The analysis finds evidence that the language provisions of the Voting Rights Act have significant and positive effects on the voting rates of covered linguistic minorities. Conclusions. Because the voting rates of Asian and Hispanic Americans in the United States still lag behind those of the population as a whole, the effects of the VRA with respect to these groups are important considerations as Congress weighs the Act's renewal.     

Reading the rubbish dump as a heterotopia in Neill Blomkamp’s district 9

ABSTRACT

I read the rubbish dumps of Neill Blomkamp’s 2009 film District 9 in order to think about how peripheral places and communities can reframe the South African city. In the film, dumps are sites of abandonment and transformation. This doubleness exemplifies Michel Foucault’s privileged site, the heterotopia. I focus on two scenes that take up little of the film’s running time but speak to the possibilities of the dump as more than simply a space of immiseration. The scenes unsettle orthodoxies of space that define the postapartheid city and reposition the heterotopic dump at the urban centre rather than the margins.     

后现代之道:过程,解构及后殖民主义理论

本文认为亚洲的道家思想和西方的过程哲学思想之间有一种非二元的对应关系.同时,它也呼吁在西方后现代主义的两大流派--过程哲学和后结构主义之间,揭示那样一种非二元对立的"对比"关系.这两者都和庄子一样,解构了绝对的始源概念,并提出一种相对的在过程中的开端的观念.尤其是在某些后殖民主义理论当中,我们可以看到以道家概念取代从虚无中创世的神学主张的倾向.     

Why Have Child Maltreatment and Child Victimization Declined?

Various forms of child maltreatment and child victimization declined as much as 40–70% from 1993 until 2004, including sexual abuse, physical abuse, sexual assault, homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, and larceny. Other child welfare indicators also improved during the same period, including teen pregnancy, teen suicide, and children living in poverty. This article reviews a wide variety of possible explanations for these changes: demography, fertility and abortion legalization, economic prosperity, increased incarceration of offenders, increased agents of social intervention, changing social norms and practices, the dissipation of the social changes from the 1960s, and psychiatric pharmacology. Multiple factors probably contributed. In particular, economic prosperity, increasing agents of social intervention, and psychiatric pharmacology have advantages over some of the other explanations in accounting for the breadth and timing of the improvements.     

From Racial Inequality to Social Justice: The Legacy of Brown v. Board and Lessons from South Africa

This article addresses the question of why racial inequality persists in the United States after over four centuries, while South Africa has extricated itself from racial Apartheid and launched a vigorous campaign for racial justice that appears to exceed the will and capacity of the United States. It discusses the legacy of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision and its role in reducing racial inequality and fueling both defense of and attacks on racial segregation. Social justice, it is argued, is a point of view that depends on the interpretative schemas and personal positions of its advocates for its definition. Several psychological and social-structural mechanisms are presented and their roles in continuing racial inequality are proposed. Key provisions of the new South African Constitution and the Truth and Reconciliation process for adjudicating atrocities of Apartheid argue for the critical role of forgiveness and the cultural concept of Ubuntu . A brief discussion of current research in the United States suggests some ways in which this principle promises to reduce intergroup conflict and racial inequality.     

Risk Factors in Bereavement Outcome

Studies indicate that many factors that impinge on bereaved individuals can cause an elevated health risk. These include sudden unexpected death, lack of social support, concurrent crises, ambivalent or dependent personalities, age, gender, and death of a child. While any one of these factors alone can cause problems, a combination of factors poses the most major risks. This paper reviews the evidence of risks among four general categories: biographic/demographic factors, individual factors, mode of death, and circumstances following the loss.     

Health Care during Transition and Health Systems Reform: Evidence from the Poorest CIS Countries

The poorest seven countries of the former Soviet Union (CIS‐7) moved from a centralized system of health‐care funding and delivery to a range of institutional and financial arrangements. The different paths chosen have implied different results in terms of available resources, internal efficiency, health‐care inequality, and the corresponding incidence of public expenditures. This paper examines the level, composition and allocation of public spending on health, in light of the evolution of the health systems during the transition. The financial constraints experienced by CIS‐7 countries were reflected in the decrease of health‐care quality, the collapse of the already inefficient public health activities, and the increased incidence of out‐of‐pocket expenditures. These factors, alongside the increase in poverty, resulted in a decrease in health‐care utilization, suggesting that these countries may experience difficulties in achieving the health‐related Millennium Development Goals.