Dealing with Conflict in Local Planning: Reflections from Australian Planners

Planners routinely deal with issues involving conflict, regularly engaging with people who may be upset, angry and at times aggressive. Yet planners are not conflict resolution specialists and their role is not necessarily to act as mediator. The level of conflict they experience can be stressful and challenging. This paper reports on interviews conducted with local government planners in Melbourne, Australia, in which they discuss their experience with conflicts and reflect on their preparation for this challenging aspect of their profession. The results indicate the need for more emphasis on training in a range of personal and professional behaviours within planning education.     

Discrimination that Travels: How Ethnicity Affects Party Identification for Southeast Asian Immigrants*

Objectives. The critical importance of party identification as a determinant of vote choice is well documented. Given the increasing diversity of the population in the United States, it is critical that we understand the process of socialization into the political system for immigrant groups. It is especially important that we should be able to distinguish differences in socialization within a group. Methods. Using a framework developed by Cain, Kiewiet, and Uhlaner (1991) , we use newly available data to test their assertions about the development of party identification in Asian‐American immigrants. Results. Looking at a sample of foreign‐born Asian Americans, we find that critical differences can exist within groups. Conclusions. The differences within groups have an important effect on the development of party identification for those immigrants.     

Depressed and Well Mothers' Emotion Interpretation Accuracy and the Quality of Mother—Infant Interaction

The inadequate parenting associated with mothers' depression may be related to mothers' problems in interpreting infants' emotional expressions. The relations between depressed and well mothers' accuracy at interpreting babies' facial expressions and the quality of the mothers' interactions with their infants were examined. In partial support of our hypotheses, depressed mothers' level of depressive symptoms was associated with less accuracy, especially regarding positive emotions. Contrary to expectations, depressed mothers did not differ from well mothers in terms of their emotion accuracy. Furthermore, depressed mothers' accuracy at interpreting infants' emotions was not significantly related to the quality of their interaction with their infants; in contrast, well mothers' accuracy for infants' negative emotions was associated with better interaction quality. These findings provide new information about depressed mothers' emotional interpretations and their parenting. The different pattern of findings for depressed and well mothers suggests that other mediating factors are important, which are discussed.     

Children's Eyewitness Memory: A Modern History and Contemporary Commentary

This article provides a modern historical overview of child eyewitness research, as well as an evaluative commentary on the field, with special emphasis on children's eyewitness memory and suggestibility in child sexual abuse cases. Four historical periods are reviewed: the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s (to date). Examples of legal cases that inform scientific research are described, discussion of relevant laws is presented, and a review of selected studies is offered. It is concluded that although we have learned a great deal about children's eyewitness memory and suggestibility over the last few decades, simple answers are evasive and much more research is needed.     

What Collins's The Sociology of Philosophies Says about Sociological Theory

In Collins's latest book, we see an attempt to apply his sociological theories to the history of philosophy. While Collins's macrosociology of knowledge provides important insights into the role of conflict in an intellectual field, his microsociology is more problematic. In particular, Collins's micro theory ignores the fundamental importance of social interpretations. This leads him to use a vague and unproductive notion of emotions. Nevertheless, we can usefully apply Collins's findings to sociological theory itself. As in philosophy, we see the same competitive appropriation and elaboration of accumulated intellectual capital and the same struggle over the limited resources necessary to intellectual production, especially over what Collins calls the intellectual attention space.     

On the age-sex composition of the population that would result from given fertility and mortality conditions

This article presents new formulas for calculating the eventual sex-ratio and the eventual age-sea composition of the population that would result from given fertility and mortality conditions. These formulas provide more accurate methods and are more widely applicable than earlier methods. The application of the formulas is illustrated through the use of available data on fertility and mortality conditions in the United States in 1964.     

The Strategic Role of Third‐Party Marketplaces in Retailing

Retailers are increasingly adopting a dual‐format model. In addition to acting as traditional merchants (buying and reselling goods), these retailers provide a platform for third‐party (3P) sellers to access and compete for the same customers. We investigate the strategic rationale for a retailer to introduce a 3P marketplace. Our analysis provides insights into the growing prevalence of 3P marketplaces. We show that by committing to having an active 3P marketplace, the retailer creates an “outside option” that improves its bargaining position in negotiations with the manufacturer. This can explain the increasing prevalence of such marketplaces. On the other hand, the manufacturer would prefer to eliminate the retailer's outside option and should seek to limit or prevent sales through 3P marketplaces. This is consistent with actions that several manufacturers have taken to limit such sales. Interestingly, if the manufacturer fails to eliminate sales of competing products through the 3P marketplace, then the best strategy for the manufacturer is to allow the retailer to dictate the terms of their contract. This is because a powerful retailer will rely less on its outside option in generating profit, and therefore it will increase the fees charged to 3P sellers and soften the competition between 3P sellers and the manufacturer. The decrease in competition will lead to an increase in the value of outside option of the manufacturer and improve its profit. Additionally, we find that the presence of a 3P marketplace benefits consumers, but this benefit diminishes as the retailer becomes more powerful.     

How to Analyze Survey Data Pertaining to the Time Bind, and How Not to Analyze Such Data

This note considers various ways of analyzing survey data pertaining to a central thesis of The Time Bind (Hochschild, 1997), and it comments on the particular analysis presented by Brown and Booth (2002). The following kinds of problems will be discussed here: (1) problems pertaining to the measurement of concepts, (2) problems pertaining to the selection of the data to be analyzed, and (3) problems pertaining to the selection of the statistical models to be used in the analysis. Appropriate methods for dealing with each of these three kinds of problems are introduced and described in the present note. When these appropriate methods are compared with the particular methods applied by Brown and Booth (2002), we find fault with the latter methods. Our attention in this note is focused on the analysis of data pertaining to a central thesis of The Time Bind , but the general approach presented here can also be applied more generally to study other theses of interest in the social sciences.