Linking Local Food Systems and the Social Economy? Future Roles for Farmers' Markets in Alberta and British Columbia*

Often organized as grassroots, nonprofit organizations, many farmers' markets serve as strategic venues linking producers and consumers of local food while fulfilling multiple social, economic, and environmental objectives. This article examines the potential of farmers' markets to play a catalyst role in linking local food systems to the social economy in western Canada. We used the Delphi method of inquiry to solicit and synthesize perspectives on the future role of farmers' markets within local food systems and the social economy from farmers' market vendors, market managers, and policy and government representatives in each province. We found that negotiations over the definition of local food systems, the dynamics of supply and demand relationships, and perceptions of “authenticity” affect the positionality of farmers' markets in relation to other marketing channels within regional food systems. Stakeholders engaged in this Delphi inquiry strategized ways to scale up local food systems beyond current limits while also maintaining the “authentic experience” offered by farmers' markets that has helped to fuel increased consumer interest, demand, and growth. Results confirm the need for further investigation of the relationship between the social economy, infrastructure, and authenticity in the development of local food systems.     

Predictors of employment among sheltered homeless women

The effect of homelessness on the psychological and physical health of women is damaging and long lasting. Understanding of the personal factors that enable homeless women to secure employment and re-enter mainstream society is of utmost importance. A sample of homeless women residing in a US Midwestern nonprofit treatment and transitional living shelter for homeless women and their children were surveyed regarding the extent to which life satisfaction, social self-efficacy, and hopeful thinking predicted women's expected capabilities to obtain employment above and beyond social support provisions, while controlling for participants' age, ethnicity, and education level. Findings failed to reveal that social psychological (i.e., life satisfaction and social self-efficacy) and intrapersonal (i.e., hope) variables predicted homeless women's job procurement self-efficacy above and beyond perceived social support. The social support provision of social integration and younger age significantly predicted women's self-efficacy to secure employment. Implications of results for social justice initiatives and interventions are discussed.     

An audit of received international business corruption literature for logic,consistency, completeness of coverage

This analysis of International Business (IB) corruption literature identifies gaps and inconsistencies in how corruption is perceived or deliberated in top academic journals. The reviewed articles tend to focus on one of the three key themes of IB corruption (Contributing factors, Consequences, and Combating) and are categorised into the six sub-domains of the IB framework. The content of the articles is categorised into the respective themes and discussed in relation to underpinning theories and key constructs. The process is intended to be less a synthesis of the literature than an audit revealing that IB corruption research is weakened by tendencies to: 1) Be siloed within its subtheme and to not cross-tie to work in other key themes—this issue is very severe in the Combating theme; 2) Have a short-term focus that disregards the cumulative effects of total graft, and; 3) Asymmetrically focus (predominantly) on the supply side of corruption. These finding suggest several avenues for further research.     

Islamophobia and the Problematization of Mosques: A Critical Exploration of Hate Crimes and the Symbolic Function of “Old” and “New” Mosques in the United Kingdom

Most scholarly studies have tended to focus on the building of new and proposed mosques, and in particular how they are sites of conflict and contestation symbolic of wider “problems” associated with Muslims and Islam in the United Kingdom. This study focuses on an overlooked aspect within this, the extent to which attacks on mosques that are neither new nor proposed perform a similar symbolic function. Presenting new empirical evidence from research undertaken with ten mosques across the United Kingdom that had been targeted for attack, we begin by exploring the existing literature on the problematization of mosques using the lens of critical Islamophobia studies to do so. Setting out what is known about attacks on mosques in the British setting, empirical findings from the research are used to illustrate the type and manifestation of attacks experienced, going on to consider the drivers and catalysts for them. Exploring the similarities and differences between the conflict and contestation associated with new mosques and the attacks on mosques that are not new, this study concludes that some resonance exists in the symbolic function mosques continue to serve in the community. In conclusion, the significant resonance between Islamophobically motivated attacks against mosques with those against the individuals is considered.     

A Blueprint for Full Collective Flood Risk Estimation: Demonstration for European River Flooding

Floods are a natural hazard evolving in space and time according to meteorological and river basin dynamics, so that a single flood event can affect different regions over the event duration. This physical mechanism introduces spatio‐temporal relationships between flood records and losses at different locations over a given time window that should be taken into account for an effective assessment of the collective flood risk. However, since extreme floods are rare events, the limited number of historical records usually prevents a reliable frequency analysis. To overcome this limit, we move from the analysis of extreme events to the modeling of continuous stream flow records preserving spatio‐temporal correlation structures of the entire process, and making a more efficient use of the information provided by continuous flow records. The approach is based on the dynamic copula framework, which allows for splitting the modeling of spatio‐temporal properties by coupling suitable time series models accounting for temporal dynamics, and multivariate distributions describing spatial dependence. The model is applied to 490 stream flow sequences recorded across 10 of the largest river basins in central and eastern Europe (Danube, Rhine, Elbe, Oder, Waser, Meuse, Rhone, Seine, Loire, and Garonne). Using available proxy data to quantify local flood exposure and vulnerability, we show that the temporal dependence exerts a key role in reproducing interannual persistence, and thus magnitude and frequency of annual proxy flood losses aggregated at a basin‐wide scale, while copulas allow the preservation of the spatial dependence of losses at weekly and annual time scales.     

Using Bayesian graphical models to model biases in observational studies and to combine multiple sources of data: application to low birth weight and water disinfection by-products

Summary.  Data in the social, behavioural and health sciences frequently come from observational studies instead of controlled experiments. In addition to random errors, observational data typically contain additional sources of uncertainty such as missing values, unmeasured confounders and selection biases. Also, the research question is often different from that which a particular source of data was designed to answer, and so not all relevant variables are measured. As a result, multiple sources of data are often necessary to identify the biases and to inform about different aspects of the research question. Bayesian graphical models provide a coherent way to connect a series of local submodels, based on different data sets, into a global unified analysis. We present a unified modelling framework that will account for multiple biases simultaneously and give more accurate parameter estimates than standard approaches. We illustrate our approach by analysing data from a study of water disinfection by-products and adverse birth outcomes in the UK.     

Toddlers Involve Their Caregiver to Help Another Person in Need

Three experiments with 18‐ to 35‐month‐old children (n = 169) studied toddler–caregiver interactions when being confronted with another person in need. In particular, we explored whether toddlers would request their caregiver to help a needy other when they are not able to help themselves. Children observed another person who needed help to accomplish a task, but were either not able to provide help as the object was out of reach (Experiment 1) or because an obstacle prevented children from interacting with the other person (Experiments 2, 2b). The experiments revealed the same developmental trend with 2.5‐year‐olds selectively involving their caregiver to help the needy other. The results are interpreted in terms of toddlers’ motivation to see others helped and with respect to their developing ability to actively involve others to regulate their emotions.     

Opening the Book

Open access book publishers often face different challenges than their counterparts in journal publishing. In particular, the funding models and discovery solutions that work for journal articles may not always function as well for books. Charles Watkinson of the University of Michigan Press answered questions about recent activities in these two areas. University of Michigan Press has participated in Knowledge Unlatched, a platform that allows a large network of libraries to financially support the open access publication of books from several publishers. In order to enhance discovery of these titles and learn more about their use, the press has also begun participating in the new Open Access eBooks on JSTOR program.     

Signal extraction goodness-of-fit diagnostic tests under model parameter uncertainty: Formulations and empirical evaluation

We present a time-domain goodness-of-fit (gof) diagnostic test that is based on signal-extraction variances for nonstationary time series. This diagnostic test extends the time-domain gof statistic of Maravall (2003 Maravall, A. (2003). A class of diagnostics in the ARIMA-model-based decomposition of a time series. Memorandum, Bank of Spain. Available at http://www.bde.es/servicio/software/tramo/diagnosticsamb.pdf [Google Scholar]) by taking into account the effects of model parameter uncertainty, utilizing theoretical results of McElroy and Holan (2009 McElroy, T., Holan, S. (2009). A local spectral approach for assessing time series model misspeci?cation. Journal of Multivariate Analysis 100:604–621.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). We demonstrate that omitting this correction results in a severely undersized statistic. Adequate size and power are obtained in Monte Carlo studies for fairly short time series (10 to 15 years of monthly data). Our Monte Carlo studies of finite sample size and power consider different combinations of both signal and noise components using seasonal, trend, and irregular component models obtained via canonical decomposition. Details of the implementation appropriate for SARIMA models are given. We apply the gof diagnostic test statistics to several U.S. Census Bureau time series. The results generally corroborate the output of the automatic model selection procedure of the X-12-ARIMA software, which in contrast to our diagnostic test statistic does not involve hypothesis testing. We conclude that these diagnostic test statistics are a useful supplementary model-checking tool for practitioners engaged in the task of model-based seasonal adjustment.