Estimation of the Intensity Parameter of the Germ‐Grain Quermass‐Interaction Model when the Number of Germs is not Observed

The Quermass‐interaction model allows to generalize the classical germ‐grain Boolean model in adding a morphological interaction between the grains. It enables to model random structures with specific morphologies, which are unlikely to be generated from a Boolean model. The Quermass‐interaction model depends in particular on an intensity parameter, which is impossible to estimate from classical likelihood or pseudo‐likelihood approaches because the number of points is not observable from a germ‐grain set. In this paper, we present a procedure based on the Takacs–Fiksel method, which is able to estimate all parameters of the Quermass‐interaction model, including the intensity. An intensive simulation study is conducted to assess the efficiency of the procedure and to provide practical recommendations. It also illustrates that the estimation of the intensity parameter is crucial in order to identify the model. The Quermass‐interaction model is finally fitted by our method to P. Diggle's heather data set.     

Soil and its influence on rural drought migration: insights from Depression-era Southwestern Saskatchewan, Canada

This article investigates linkages between soil conditions, farm-level vulnerability, adaptation, and rural migration during periods of drought. It begins by reviewing existing literature on climate adaptation in agricultural populations and on relationships between soil and rural migration. This is followed by a detailed case study of rural migration patterns that emerged in the Swift Current district of Saskatchewan, Canada, during a period of extended droughts and severe economic conditions in the 1930s. Using a combination of secondary literature, interviews with surviving first-hand observers and GIS modeling, the study shows how the interacting effects of household indebtedness, social capital, government relief programs, and farm-level soil quality helped stimulate population loss in many rural townships across the study area. The study focuses particularly on the role played by differential soil quality across the Swift Current district and how farms situated on sandier soils were typically more sensitive and vulnerable to drought than those situated on clay soils. Higher-than-average rates of population loss were associated with townships containing areas of poorer quality agricultural soils, an association replicable using GIS software and existing soil and population datasets. The findings from the case study are discussed within the context of the broader existing literature, and suggestions are provided on future directions for research, planning, and modeling to assist planners and policymakers concerned with rural adaptation and migration.     

Social work,poverty, and child welfare interventions

The relationship between children's material circumstances and child abuse and neglect raises a series of questions for policy, practice, and practitioners. Children and families in poverty are significantly more likely to be the subject of state intervention. This article, based on a unique mixed‐methods study of social work interventions and the influence of poverty, highlights a narrative from practitioners that argues that, as many poor families do not harm their children, it is stigmatizing to discuss a link between poverty and child abuse and neglect. The data reveal that poverty has become invisible in practice, in part justified by avoiding stigma but also because of a lack of up‐to‐date research knowledge and investment by some social workers in an “underclass” discourse. We argue, in light of the evidence that poverty is a contributory factor in the risk of harm, that it is vital that social work engages with the evidence and in critical reflection about intervening in the context of poverty. We identify the need for fresh approaches to the harms children and families face in order to support practices that engage confidently with the consequences of poverty and deprivation.     

Modelling the Telecommunication Pricing Decision

The local telecommunication pricing decision on residential, business, and private lines is modeled. This study demonstrates that when regulators use a weighted sum linear goal programming model to determine prices, adjustments can be made to Ramsey prices that reflect the regulators’ concerns about the trade-off of fairness with efficiency. An actual example shows that when regulators’ preferences were taken into account, residential prices were 14 percent lower than efficient optimal Ramsey prices.     

Uneven Divestment of the State: Social Reproduction and Sex Work in Neo-developmentalist Argentina

Abstract

Sex work has been identified as an important dimension of the ‘survival circuits’ which have developed in the majority world in the context of neo-liberalisation, as a response to the deepening misery of the Global South. Yet while much research has explored the role of sex work in contexts of ‘neo-liberal’ regimes of capital accumulation, few have paid sustained attention to sex work in regimes which are not purely ‘neo-liberal’. Drawing on data with sex workers across 10 cities in Argentina gathered between 2007 and 2014, this article examines multiple spaces of sex workers' lives, including the workplace, the home, and the state in a context of what has been dubbed ‘neo-developmentalism’. It argues that sex work contributes multiple forms of value and subsidies for the state and capital. First, sex work provides a subsidy in the form of the provision of ‘employment’; second, female sex workers provide unwaged reproductive labour in the family; and third, in the labour movement. Yet despite these three contributions to the reproduction of the working class and therefore of capital, the state undermines sex workers' capacities through violence and sustained repression. The article concludes that the neo-developmentalism has led to ‘uneven divestment of the state’ in the reproduction of particular sections of the working class, namely those outside the formal and ‘productive’ sectors.     

Bingo Regulation and the Feminist Political Economy of Everyday Gambling: In Search of the Anti-Heroic

Abstract

This paper uses bingo—a lottery-style game particularly popular with older working-class women—to take forward feminist political economy debates about the everyday. It highlights consumption and regulation as key to research on everyday political economy, and aims to contribute to studies of gambling as a marker of the everyday within critical political economy. Rather than seeing gambling primarily in terms of vernacular risk-taking, however, it argues that gambling is also a pathway into exploring other, more self-effacing political economies—of entertainment, fundraising, sharing, and ‘having a laugh’. Focusing on three key areas of regulatory dispute (over how to win bingo; who can participate; and what defines the game), the research suggests that players and workers are (re)enabling the diverse, plural nature of bingo as a political economic formulation—involving winning; entertainment; fundraising; care; flirting; and playful speculation—in the face of technological and legal processes aiming to standardize the game’s meaning as commercial gambling.     

Transforming gender roles in domestic and caregiving work: preliminary findings from engaging fathers in maternal,newborn, and child health in Rwanda

This article draws on Promundo and RWAMREC's programmatic experiences in Rwanda of implementing MenCare+, a gender transformative approach to engaging young and adult men (ages 15–35) in caregiving, maternal, newborn, and child health, and sexual and reproductive health and rights. We present initial results from fathers' groups with more than 600 men, including the impact of participation in these groups on men's participation in care work. The results confirm the importance for practitioners' planning strategies to engage fathers to think beyond men's token participation in care work, to use father participation as an entry point to truly transform gender dynamics within the home. The article provides practical lessons learnt to guide other organisations interested in working with men to transform norms around fatherhood and care work.     

Devalued, deskilled and diversified: explaining the proliferation of the strip industry in the UK

This paper looks beyond the debates that focus on the objectification of the female body to examine the question as to why strip clubs have proliferated and found a permanent place in the night-time economy in the UK. Using empirical qualitative and quantitative data from the largest study into the strip industry in the UK to date, we challenge the common assumption that 'demand' is responsible for the rise in erotic dance. Instead, we argue that the proliferation of strip clubs is largely due to the internal economic structures of the industry which have developed partly in response to the financial crisis beginning in 2008. First, we argue that clubs profit from individual dancers through an exploitative system of fees and fines, rendering a strip club business a low cost investment with high returns and little risk to club owners. Second, we note that the last decade has seen diversification of the industry accompanied by deskilling and devaluing of dancing and dancers' labour. Third, we demonstrate that despite the negative effects of these changes on workers, there has been an expansion of the industry as the ability to make profit, even during a financial crisis was ensured through the transferral of risk to workers. Overall, we suggest that far from proliferating as a response to demand, the industry has maintained its market presence due to its ability to establish highly financially exploitation employment relationships with dancers at a time of economic fragility.