Mobilizing Gender to Promote Peace: The Case of Machsom Watch

The binary model that presents women as peaceful and men as warfaring is a common conception of war and peace. Despite increasing levels of gender equality in most spheres of public life and decreasing gender segregation in institutions in many parts of the world, the associational link of men to war and women to peace remains widespread. Focusing on the Israeli women??s peace organization, Machsom Watch, this article uses a content analysis of interactions between Machsom Watch activists, soldiers and Palestinians to examine how gendered political opportunity structures affect and are affected by interactions between individuals, organizations and institutions. The paper highlights the contradiction between Machsom Watch??s form as a women-only organization and their framing and report language, which is non-gender specific. I argue that this contradiction emerges from their strategic negotiation of the gendered political opportunity structure as well as their culturally bounded experiences of gendered interactions and embodied gender norms. More generally, I argue that by understanding political opportunity structures as being bound by cultural norms that create distinct sets of opportunities and constraints for different groups of people, scholars can better understand the particular manifestation of social movement action and thereby more fully account for human agency in social and political structures. Additionally, this paper encourages social movement scholars to understand social movement framing as both a product of political opportunities and constraints as well as an influence in the formation of the political opportunity structure.     

Hindsight,foresight and insight: The challenges of longitudinal qualitative research

This paper describes a UK based longitudinal qualitative study following approximately 100 young people over 9 years. It provides an overview of the research design, methods of data collection and analysis as well as reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of the strategies employed. We focus on the value of a devolved research design, complementary cross-section and temporal analytic approaches and the effects of being involved in a longitudinal study on researchers and participants. The paper aims to contribute to a growing understanding of the practical, ethical and epistemological challenges presented by longitudinal qualitative methods, and highlights those challenges that are specific to this method as well as those which are amplified by this kind of approach.     

Associations among Maternal Behavior,Delay of Gratification,and School Readiness across the Early Childhood Years

This study examined the developmental pathways from maternal behavior to school readiness within a sample of 1007 children, with a specific focus on the mediating role of delay of gratification (DoG). Maternal behavior across the first 36 months of age was explored as a predictor of children's DoG at 54 months as well as their behavioral and academic competence in kindergarten. Results support sensitivity as a predictor of children's DoG and indicate significant associations between DoG and teacher‐reported externalizing behavior, social skills, and academic skills. Moreover, DoG partially mediated the associations between maternal sensitivity and school readiness skills, with the highest percentage of mediation reported for social skills. Findings indicate maternal sensitivity and DoG as potential targets for efforts aimed at enhancing school readiness among young children.     

East African Population Census 1948 Some Problems of Planning

The effects of nonresponse can be reduced by simulating an increase in the number of recalls. The procedure consists in adding to the addresses of current surveys the nonresponse addresses from similar recent surveys.     

Parameter estimation in nonlinear regression models 1

Fisher information contained in record values, inter-record times and their concomitants from a sample of fixed size is derived in general and explicit expressions are deduced for some specific known bivariate classes of distributions. A comparison between fixed sampling and inverse sampling schemes with equal number of records and concomitants is also carried out. We also consider parameter estimation based on bivariate records and a small simulation study is done.