The displaced and dispossessed of Darfur: explaining the sources of a continuing state-led genocide

The millions of survivors who fled from attacks to Sudanese-controlled displacement camps and the refugee camps in Chad are the living ghosts of the Darfur genocide. The 1948 Genocide Convention incorporates extermination by mass killing and elimination through forced migration as two distinct elements of genocide. Genocide scholars and public discourse emphasize extermination by killing, but they give far less explanatory attention to the elimination processes that the Genocide Convention describes as 'deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction'. (Article II United Nations 1948.) In Darfur, understanding the latter processes requires theoretical attention to the history of food, water, and famine and detailed methodological attention to temporal processes of displacement. We demonstrate how intentional state-led attacks on food and water massively dislodged Black Africans in Darfur from February 2003 to August 2004. The political leadership of the Sudanese state dehumanized and forcibly displaced Black Africans from their homes in Darfur to camps where they largely remain, not only through mass killings and rapes, but also by destroying life-sustaining access to food and water, leading to the genocidal elimination of group life in this region.     

Risk Taking in Late Adolescence: Relations Between Sociomoral Reasoning,Risk Stance,and Behavior

This study explored relations among late adolescents' sociomoral reasoning about risk taking, risk stance, and behavior. One‐hundred and thirty‐two participants (18–20‐year‐olds) were surveyed about their own risk stance (Avoidant, Opportunistic, Curious, Risk Seeking) and behavior in three realms (Alcohol Use, Drug Use, Reckless Driving), and sociomoral reasoning about hypothetical risk taking in a baseline scenario with no social domain information and a final scenario that highlighted the moral (i.e., harmful consequences for others), conventional (i.e., sociolegal consequences), personal (i.e., personal prerogative), and prudential (i.e., harmful consequences for self) domains bearing on risk taking. The complex relations among sociomoral reasoning about risk taking, risk stance, and behavior are discussed in terms of social domain theory and dual‐process theories of risk taking.     

Long‐Term Population Decline in Europe: The Relative Importance of Tempo Effects and Generational Length

It has recently been suggested that an end to further increases in the mean age of child‐bearing in Europe (ending the negative tempo effect on fertility) would have a substantial effect on population dynamics in terms of slowing population aging and decline and weakening the negative momentum affecting population size over the coming decades. On the other hand, stable population theory suggests that under sub‐replacement fertility conditions, a longer mean length of generations implies slower shrinking, and thus a relatively larger population in the very long run. This note compares the relative importance of the two effects analytically and with data for the 15‐country European Union. It also considers whether an increase in the mean age of childbearing will decrease the quantum of fertility. This question is highly relevant in the context of the effects of possible policies aiming to influence the tempo of fertility rather than the quantum directly. The results show that for the coming 200 years the effect of tempo changes clearly dominates, with the effect of a shorter mean length of generation only becoming visible thereafter. Even small tempo‐quantum interactions can overwhelm the generation‐length effect.     

Guestworker programs: Evidence from Europe and the United States and some implications for U.S. policy

Mounting concern in the United States over increased illegal migration from Mexico during the past decade has generated a heated policy debate and led to a number of proposals as to how the U.S. government should deal with the problem. Among these has been a call for a temporary worker program similar to the U.S.-sponsored Bracero Program (1942–1964) in which over 4 million Mexican workers were recruited to perform temporary agricultural labor in the southwestern United States. This article considers the implications of such a program by examining the social and economic effects of previous guestworker programs in the United States and western Europe from the perspective of both sending and receiving societies. Particular attention is paid to the efficacy of these programs in promoting temporary as opposed to long-term immigration of foreign workers as well as their developmental impact on sending countries.Now at 2405 Rayburn House Office Building, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington DC 20515.     

Freedom of information,privacy, and official secrecy: The evolution of federal government information policy concepts

At present, the ‘freedom of information’ concept has particular appeal to various democracies seeking to realize or refine a popular right to government information. The American experience with this construct provides both a significant theoretical model and a legislative realization of this idea. However, drafting imperfections and political tampering with the policy purpose of the Freedom of Information Act are apparent in the legislative history of the Federal statute and, hopefully, can be avoided by other nations pursuing this type of law. In addition, the United States has developed privacy of information and has sought to reconcile it and official secrecy with the ‘freedom of information’ concept. While the former is regarded as a valuable symbiont the latter appears to be a dangerous competitor to the effective realization of ‘the people's right to know’.     

Behavioral activation and rehabilitation

Rehabilitation from a mental or physical disorder can become complicated when patients feel overwhelmed by symptoms and unable to make progress. Newer behavioral approaches have been developed that can help these patients. This article describes behavioral activation techniques designed to address depression.     

SELECTIVE ATTENTION AND LEARNING

What do we notice and how does this affect what we learn and come to believe? I present a model of an agent who learns to make forecasts on the basis of readily available information, but is selective as to which information he attends to: he chooses whether to attend as a function of current beliefs about whether such information is predictive. If the agent does not attend to some piece of information, it cannot be recalled at a later date. He uses Bayes' rule to update his beliefs given attended‐to information, but does not attempt to fill in missing information. The model demonstrates how selective attention may lead the agent to persistently fail to recognize important empirical regularities, make systematically biased forecasts, and hold incorrect beliefs about the statistical relationship between variables. In addition, it identifies factors that make such errors more likely or persistent. The model is applied to shed light on stereotyping and discrimination, persistent learning failures and disagreement, and the process of discovery.     

Prevention of methamphetamine abuse: can existing evidence inform community prevention?

Little research exists on effective strategies to prevent methamphetamine production, distribution, sales, use, and harm. As a result, prevention practitioners (especially at the local level) have little guidance in selecting potentially effective strategies. This article presents a general causal model of methamphetamine use and harms that reflects the available findings from either research specific to methamphetamine or from alcohol and other illegal drugs, and suggests prevention approaches and strategies that communities might use based upon research evidence and experience. Community methamphetamine prevention can use the public health and safety perspective applied to other substance abuse prevention. Analyses of the complex system of intermediate variables that interact to affect methamphetamine use and harms suggest that multiple reinforcing prevention interventions may have the greatest potential effectiveness.     

MOTIVATION AND MANAGEMENT CONTROL SYSTEMS

The importance of motivation in the managerial control process has been well noted in the accounting literature. However, despite its emphasis on motivation, the accounting literature says little about the specific relationships between motivation and accounting control systems. This paper will present an explicit, systematic statement of these relationships by means of a detailed comparison and synthesis of two previously unrelated models. One is a conventional accounting model of control, and the other is a comprehensive behavioral model of motivation. Our aim is to integrate behavioral concepts with accounting applications in order to work towards solutions of important problems involving motivation and management control systems.