Divorce,living arrangements,and material well-being during the transition to adulthood in rural Malawi

In this paper, we use longitudinal data to investigate how parental death and divorce influence young women’s own experience of divorce in Malawi, a setting where women marry relatively early and unions are fragile. We find that maternal death and parental divorce are positively associated with divorce for young women but, after controlling for socio-demographic and marital characteristics, only the association with maternal death remains statistically significant. Maternal and paternal death are both strongly associated with women’s post-divorce living arrangements, which in turn affects their material well-being. This finding suggests that divorcing at a young age shapes the subsequent life chances of women; although some women return to their parental home and may have the opportunity to reset the transition to adulthood, other women begin their 20s as head of their own household and with considerable material disadvantage.     

“It’s like this Myth of the Supernegro”: resisting narratives of damage and struggle in the neoliberal educational policy context

As pathologizing, racialized, and patriarchal rhetoric undergirds neoliberal education reform, deficit narratives characterize the education of Black youth. Such narratives present deep challenges for educational policy and community-based educational spaces. This article explores the ways in which community-based educators resist narratives of damage and struggle in their own personal and professional narratives in order to prevent the cycle of deficit-oriented discourse that follow Black youth through myriad educational spaces. By situating the narratives of community-based educators within a broader policy context shaped by race, class, and gender, this article illustrates the challenges that arise for community-based educators that seek to frame Black youth beyond deficit narratives and who avoid framing themselves as heroes and saviors of Black youth.     

A study of significance of racial and athletic identification on educational perceptions among African American male college athletes

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze the racial and athletic identities of African American male college athletes to determine how the identities might impact the athletic and educational potential and performance of this specific group of college athletes. The study revealed that participants who responded negatively to a poor athletic performance were more likely to have lower levels of academic self-concept. In contrast, college athletes who highly identified with their racial group were more likely to have higher levels of academic self-concept. Overall, the findings reveal the intricacies and complexities of being an African American college student and athlete at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) in the US. As such, the article details the implications of the findings as they relate to African American culture, American sports culture, and higher education realities.     

Congregational Composition and Explanations for Racial Inequality Among Black Religious Affiliates

Prior research suggests that congregational characteristics are associated with the racial attitudes of Black churchgoers. This study examines the relationship between congregational diversity and beliefs about the Black/White socioeconomic gap among Black religious adherents. Drawing upon pooled data from the General Social Survey and the National Congregations Study, we fit binary logistic regression models to estimate the association between congregational diversity and the explanations of Black/White economic inequality among Black religious adherents. Findings from our study reveal that congregational diversity is one factor that accounts for intragroup differences in racial attitudes among Black religious affiliates. Relative to Blacks that attend religious services in overwhelmingly Black congregations, Blacks that attend religious services in congregations that are overwhelmingly White are significantly less likely to attribute Black/White socioeconomic gaps to a lack of educational opportunities. Our study demonstrates that congregational diversity is a source of intragroup variation in racial attitudes among Black religious affiliates, which may attenuate the ability of such congregations to bridge racial divisions.     

Almost the same stories: narrative patterns in EU treaty referendums

ABSTRACT

The article analyses narratives that favoured or opposed European integration in three referendum debates held during the constitutional process of the 2000s: in France and the Netherlands in 2005 (Constitutional Treaty) as well as the first vote in Ireland on the Lisbon Treaty in 2008. In all debates examined, speakers used similar narratives of European integration. While most narrative patterns have transnational character, however, they are also remarkably country-specific. They depend on the specific cultural context and the social positions of the speakers articulating them.     

Engaging with Comparative Risk Appraisals: Public Views on Policy Priorities for Environmental Risk Governance

Communicating the rationale for allocating resources to manage policy priorities and their risks is challenging. Here, we demonstrate that environmental risks have diverse attributes and locales in their effects that may drive disproportionate responses among citizens. When 2,065 survey participants deployed summary information and their own understanding to assess 12 policy‐level environmental risks singularly, their assessment differed from a prior expert assessment. However, participants provided rankings similar to those of experts when these same 12 risks were considered as a group, allowing comparison between the different risks. Following this, when individuals were shown the prior expert assessment of this portfolio, they expressed a moderate level of confidence with the combined expert analysis. These are important findings for the comprehension of policy risks that may be subject to augmentation by climate change, their representation alongside other threats within national risk assessments, and interpretations of agency for public risk management by citizens and others.     

The Role of Local Context in the Cross‐border Acquisitions by Emerging Economy Multinational Enterprises

This paper explores the role of local context in cross‐border acquisitions by emerging economy multinational enterprises (EMNEs). It argues that the importance of local context has remained despite the increased global integration of the world economy. Hypotheses are tested using data on Indian acquisitions hosted in 70 countries over an eight‐year period. Results, which are consistent across number and value of cross‐border acquisitions, show that the local context in host countries offers contrasting benefits. Emerging economy multinational enterprises exploited these benefits by embedding in host countries through acquisitions. The acquisition strategy is conventional in the motives underpinning internationalization, but novel in its geographical clustering of host countries, and idiosyncratic owing to the EMNE's ability to draw on home country embeddedness. The paper develops theoretical implications and extends the concept of embeddedness, treating it as a series of internalization or quasi‐internalization decisions across a variety of local contexts by multinationals.     

Generating a smallest binary tree by proper selection of the longest edges to bisect in a unit simplex refinement

In several areas like global optimization using branch-and-bound methods for mixture design, the unit n-simplex is refined by longest edge bisection (LEB). This process provides a binary search tree. For \(n>2\), simplices appearing during the refinement process can have more than one longest edge (LE). The size of the resulting binary tree depends on the specific sequence of bisected longest edges. The questions are how to calculate the size of one of the smallest binary trees generated by LEB and how to find the corresponding sequence of LEs to bisect, which can be represented by a set of LE indices. Algorithms answering these questions are presented here. We focus on sets of LE indices that are repeated at a level of the binary tree. A set of LEs was presented in Aparicio et al. (Informatica 26(1):17–32, 2015), for \(n=3\). An additional question is whether this set is the best one under the so-called \(m_k\)-valid condition.