The Politics of Habitus: Publics,Blackness, and Community Activism in Salvador,Brazil

This paper explores how politics is experienced by actors who mediate neighborhood organizations and formal political institutions in the Northeastern city of Salvador da Bahia, in Brazil. It is based on a series of ethnographic interviews in 2004 among identified community leaders in the city’s poorer neighborhoods, with attention to their politics of habitus—their socially-situated modes of expression of political proclivities. While all of our informants identified themselves as Black and identified racial structures as shaping their lives, their understandings and evaluations of formal politics were divided. Those who only mediated between the neighborhood and formal institutions were critical of the world of politics and its polluting influence. Those who were also involved in mediating publics tended to experience formal politics as unjust but ultimately accessible through legitimate Black political action. This distinction helps account for the difficulty in mobilizing around a reformist political project and adds a local and political dimension to the understanding of race relations in Brazil.     

Cultural issues in disclosures of child sexual abuse

Cultural norms affect the likelihood that child sexual abuse will be discovered by an adult or disclosed by a child. Cultural norms also affect whether abused children's families will report child sexual abuse to authorities. This article explores the ways ethnic and religious culture affect child sexual abuse disclosure and reporting, both in the United States and internationally. Guidelines for culturally sensitive child abuse interviewing are provided to facilitate disclosures of abuse from culturally diverse children in formal settings.     

好汉不吃眼前亏

我当时进这家公司,是因为我一个朋友的朋友结婚生孩子,不干了。而我当时,又正想离开原来的那家小公司,换一个大单位。公司确定要我以后,我激动了好一阵子。不过,进去以后,我才发现里面的关系复杂,我的前任,也就是朋友的朋友,当时是HRDirector的心腹,而HRDirector偏偏又和HRManager一直有矛盾。让我进来,不过是HRDirector     

Entry-level jobs: First rung on the employment ladder or economic dead end?

The ability of young workers to move from dead-end jobs into higher-wage jobs which have better career prospects is greatly influenced by the individual’s characteristics, local labor market conditions, and his or her human capital. This paper examines the characteristics of entry-level jobs of young workers in the 1980s with emphasis on how education and training influence the types of jobs held. The incidence of post-school training is quite low even though all types of post-school training raise wages significantly. Company-provided training reduces the probability that a young worker will leave his or her employer, while off-the-job training increases the ability of employees, especially young women, to move out of a dead-end job.     

Defining Susceptibility for Microbial Risk Assessment: Results of a Workshop

An interdisciplinary workshop was convened by the George Washington University in June 2001 to discuss how to incorporate new knowledge about susceptibility to microbial pathogens into risk assessment and management strategies. Experts from government, academic, and private sector organizations discussed definitions, methods, data needs, and issues related to susceptibility in microbial risk assessment. The participants agreed that modeling approaches need to account for the highly specific nature of host-pathogen relationships, and the wide variability of infectivity, immunity, disease transmission, and outcome rates within microbial species and strains. Concerns were raised about distinguishing between exposure and dose more clearly, interpreting experimental and outbreak data correctly, and using thresholds and possibly linearity at low doses. Recommendations were made to advance microbial risk assessment by defining specific terms and concepts more precisely, designing explicit conceptual frameworks to guide development of more complex models and data collection, addressing susceptibility in all steps of the model, measuring components of immunity to characterize susceptibility, reexamining underlying assumptions, applying default methods appropriately, obtaining more mechanistic data to improve default methods, and developing more biologically relevant and continuous risk estimators. The interrelated impacts of selecting specific subpopulations and health outcomes, and of increasing model complexity and data demands, were considered in the contexts of public policy goals and resources required. The participants stated that zero risk is unattainable, so targeted and effective risk reduction and communication strategies are essential not only to raise pubic awareness about water quality but also to protect the most susceptible members of the population.     

Investigating the economic and demographic determinants of sporting participation in England

We provide a detailed statistical investigation into the economic and demographic factors that determine sporting participation in England. Using data from the 1997 health survey of England we fit random-effects probit models that take into account unobservable household preferences for sporting activities, as well as the economic and demographic characteristics of respondents. Our main results from the multivariate analysis are that sporting participation is positively related to household income, the educated participate in sports to a greater extent than the uneducated, there is no evidence of regional differentials in sporting participation and household preferences play an important role in the decision to participate in sports.     

Household income histories and child mental health trajectories

Although it is widely accepted that low household income is associated with worse child mental health, less is known about whether income histories, often differentiated into stable and dynamic components, also matter. Using longitudinal data from the Child Supplement of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, comprising the repeated measures of children ages 4 to 14 from 1986 to 1998 inclusive, I estimate generalized linear mixed models to evaluate the influence of household income histories on child depression and antisocial behavior over time. Results indicate that, at initial interview, low household income is associated with higher levels of depression and antisocial behavior; subsequent improvements in household income reduce child mental health problems. Further, the effect of initial household income on the rate of change in child depression attenuates as children grow older, whereas for antisocial behavior the effect of initial household income becomes stronger over time. These findings highlight the importance of understanding the ways in which children are influenced by their families' income histories.     

Intimate sexual victimization among women with protective orders: types and associations of physical and mental health problems

Intimate sexual violence was examined among a sample of women who had recently obtained protective orders against male partners using three groups: no sexual victimization (n = 368), sexual insistence (n = 114), and threatened and/or forced sex (n = 117). Differences in childhood sexual abuse as well as types of partner psychological abuse, stalking, and severe physical violence experiences were found across the groups. Multivariate analysis showed that women with no sexual victimization had significantly fewer mental health problems than women who had experienced sexual insistence and women who had been threatened or forced to have sex. Findings from this study underscore the importance of health, mental health, and criminal justice professionals assessing for a range of sexually abusive acts when working with victims of partner violence.