ALIGNING ACTIONS: TYPES AND SOCIAL DISTRIBUTION*

Research on aligning actions requires a clearer understanding of what types of aligning actions exist. A typology of aligning actions is described which is based on three criteria: temporal focus (retrospective or prospective), claim made (concerning the actor's responsibility or the act itself), and the desirability of the event involved. The typology is shown to incorporate the aligning actions already discussed in the literature and to suggest new possibilities. Using this typology, a number of propositions are offered suggesting how aligning actions are used by actors with differing levels of interpersonal power, as relfected in their gender and age.     

On Factors And Components: A Comment on Nicholson and Yeates

Un article recent par Nicholson et Yeates sur l'ecologie factorielle de la ville de Winnipeg met en lumiere une difficulte courante dans la litterature - c'est-a-dire une confusion entre la methode des composantes principales et celle de l'analyse factorielle. Elles ne sont point identiques. Puisque les deux auteurs ne precisent pas lequel de ces deux modeles statistiques ils ont utilise, leurs resultats sont difficiles d'interpretation. Cependant, nous sommes portes a croire qu'ils auraient employe la methode des composantes principales. Si c'est le cas, leurs conclusions ne sont pas directement comparables a celles des autres études, puisque la plupart des autres chercheurs oeuvrant dans ce secteur ont favorise l'analyse factorielle. En dernier lieu, l'auteur suggere un ensemble de regies a respecter dans la production des rapports de recherches se rapportant a des etudes factorielles et a des etudes de composantes.
A recent article by Nicholson and Yeates on the factorial ecology of the city of Winnipeg illustrates a problem not uncommon in the literature - a confusion between the method of principal components and the principal factor procedure. They are not the same. Since the authors do not clearly state which of the two statistical models they employed, their results are difficult to interpret, although the available evidence suggests that they did use a principal component solution. If so, their results are not directly comparable to those reported by others, since most other investigators in the area have used the principal factor procedure. Finally, a set of rules for the reporting of component and factor studies is suggested.     

Evolving Narratives About Childhood Sexual Abuse: Challenging the Dominance of the Victim and Survivor Paradigm

This research project explored the ongoing process of constructing a narrative, following childhood sexual abuse. Twenty‐two men and women aged 25–70 were interviewed about their childhood sexual experiences with adults using narrative inquiry methodology. These experiences occurred in different social and historical contexts, when the theoretical understandings and treatment of the issue of child sexual abuse were significantly different from the present. Many factors made disclosure even more difficult then than it is now including: respect for authority; rigid gender roles; the taboo surrounding sexual issues; lack of supportive adults; and lack of language to describe what was happening. Participants told four differing narratives about their experiences: narratives of silence; narratives of ongoing suffering; narratives of transformation; and narratives of transcendence. These narratives were examined in relation to the changing social and historical context and the current dominance of the victim and survivor paradigm in the child sexual abuse literature.     

Exploring Perceptions of the Food Environment Amongst Congolese,Somalis and Zimbabweans Living in Cape Town

In low and middle‐income countries, the nutrition transition to highly processed, high‐sugar diets has been extraordinarily rapid. Yet in these same settings, obesity and hunger are often experienced within a single household. As part of a broader study of cross‐border migrants’ experiences of maternal and infant nutrition in Cape Town, in this article I explore the individual and collective meanings associated with foods in a specific migrant context, as well as their connections to changing food environments in Cape Town, South Africa. While there was relative silence over food scarcity, the food environment seemed to present constraints to dietary diversity. The migrants’ views and experiences suggest the relevance of improving the accessibility and affordability of already desirable, nutrient dense foods.     

Colorstruck: Skin Color Stratification in the Lives of African American Women

This paper examines the stratification among African American women by skin color on indices such as education, income, and spousal status. How racial and colonial ideologies situate whiteness and blackness as symbolic representations in relation to one another and the subsequent systems of discrimination that develop from those ideologies is the crux of the theoretical argument in this paper. Infusing the concept of constructed notions of beauty into this racial paradigm further elaborates this process for African American women. I hypothesized that light-skinned women would have higher educational attainment, higher personal incomes, and would be more likely to marry high-status husbands than would darker-skinned women. Even when controlling for background variables, all three of the hypotheses are confirmed and the significance of skin color, particularly the privileging of lightness, is demonstrated.