Kids Talking About Race: Tween‐agers in a Post‐Civil Rights Era

Our research examines how American children understand and talk about how race matters in their everyday lives. We draw on interviews with 44 middle school children who attend schools in an integrated county‐wide system and find that while some use color‐blind rhetoric, most children in our study know that race matters, while they offer alternative accounts for why and how. Some explain race as social inequality, while others offer cultural accounts of racial differences. Our analysis suggests that for white children, gender matters; more girls describe racial inequality than boys. For children of color, class seems to be key, with middle‐class children giving cultural explanations, including negative evaluations of others in their own racial group. We use an intersectionality framework to analyze the alternative and complex narratives children give for their own experiences of race and race relations between peers.     

Armed masculinity,Hindu nationalism and female political participation in India

Male and female bodies as well as societal ideas defining cultural interpretations of masculinities and femininities are potent metaphors for expressing nation. This article examines two cultural expressions of nation and manliness – the Hindu soldier and warrior monk – disseminated by Hindu nationalist organizations in India. These images, among others, emerged from India's experience of British imperialism and are defined by values of martial prowess, muscular strength, a readiness to go to battle and moral fortitude. Men and women both respond to the call of a nationalism glorifying muscular warriors radiating an uncompromising moral resolve to defend their nation (us) against an easily recognizable enemy (them).

This article argues that this masculinized vision of nation carries important implications for women. Women enter this masculine environment through roles such as heroic mother, chaste wife and celibate warrior. Although divergent in their articulation at the grassroots, all three models of female behavior articulate two social themes. One, women's bodies represent national honor and two, this embodiment only works if women are chaste and virtuous. Indian feminists view such feminine activism with suspicion because the considerable empowerment women may derive from Hindu nationalist politics ultimately does not challenge the gendered power imbalances within the patriarchal Hindu family.     

Combination of multiple scores for nonparametric testing in multivariate linear regression set-up

For the problem of testing absence of x.egression under the p-variate nonparametric linear regression set-up involving m predictors, standard rank test criteria are in the form of a quadratic form in mp linear rank statistics. Different standard tests correspond to different choices of one system of scores for each variable. In this paper we propose two test criteria which are based on simultaneous choice of more than one system of scores for each variable. The criteria are obtained by applying the union-intersection technique in two different ways. It turns out that for either criterion the use of several systems of scores for each variable results in an improvement in the asymptotic power.     

Cross-country disparities in skill premium and skill acquisition

Skilled individuals are rewarded more in poor than in rich countries. Why aren't more individuals acquiring skills in poor countries? We document that the unemployment rate of the skilled net of that of the unskilled decreases with a country's level of development. Using a matching model of occupational choice and skill acquisition, we quantify the role of barriers to enter entrepreneurship for these unemployment rates, skill premium and acquisition. The cross-country correlation between skill premium and acquisition decreases by 45% when each country's gap to the US in the entrepreneurship barrier is decreased enough to even the unemployment differential.     

Strategic Assessment Model (SAM): A Multiple Criteria Decision Support System for Evaluation of Strategic Alternatives*

The evaluation of strategic alternatives is a particularly difficult task. This difficulty is due to the complexities inherent in the evaluation process and the lack of structured information. The evaluation process must consider a multitude of relevant information from both the internal and external environments of the organization. Various analytical and normative models have helped decision makers utilize large volumes of information in strategic evaluation; however, most of these models have some limitations. We present a multiple criteria decision support system, called strategic assessment model (SAM), that addresses some of the limitations inherent in the existing models. SAM captures the decision maker's beliefs through a series of sequential, rational, and analytical processes. The environmental forces—decomposed into internal, task, general opportunities, and threats—are used along with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), subjective probabilities, the entropy concept, and utility theory to enhance the decision maker's intuition in evaluating a set of strategic alternatives.