Editorial note

The paper addresses the recent flurry of beauty pageants as reintegration rituals which specifically aim at the symbolic integration of some stigmatized embodied identities: Miss HIV (Botswana, Uganda, Nigeria, Zimbabwe but also Russia), Mr or Ms AIDS (Kenya) and the most recent Miss Landmine (Angola, Cambodia). Common reactions to such events betray a most uncomfortable moral quandary: people seem torn between condemnation, repulsion and a very hesitant acknowledgement of the stated aim of positive re-integration. The paper explores this moral discomfort through its relations to a number of unresolved issues: the ambiguous status of beauty, the complex relationships between stigma and (its lack of) public representation, the multiple uses of beauty pageants as integrative rituals and the importance of beauty practices as a means to re-create meaning and dignity in distressing circumstances. Contestants’ interviews make it clear that they use the beauty pageants as one of the few – or maybe the only – site allowing for personal, social and political affirmation. The necessary collective dimension of these affirmations is linked to the socio-cultural and political contexts of countries just re-emerging from armed struggle.     

Valuation effects of corporate strategic transactions in the cleantech industry

This paper investigates capital market reactions to announcements of corporate strategic transactions in the clean technology, or cleantech, industry. Using the event study method in a multi-country setting, we exploit a dataset of 328 hand-collected announcements of mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and asset disposals that took place between 2001 and 2011. We provide strong evidence of significant wealth gains from cleantech deals. On average, cleantech companies earn significantly higher abnormal returns than non-cleantech companies, confirming the beneficial idiosyncrasies of the cleantech industry. These high premia are likely driven by government interventions that are believed to be a necessary pre-condition for development of clean technology. Alternatively, the premia are commanded by the acquisition of cutting-edge environmental innovations and the positive credibility spillover inherent in cleantech deals.     

Modeling uncertainty in macroeconomic growth determinants using Gaussian graphical models

Model uncertainty has become a central focus of policy discussion surrounding the determinants of economic growth. Over 140 regressors have been employed in growth empirics due to the proliferation of several new growth theories in the past two decades. Recently Bayesian model averaging (BMA) has been employed to address model uncertainty and to provide clear policy implications by identifying robust growth determinants. The BMA approaches were, however, limited to linear regression models that abstract from possible dependencies embedded in the covariance structures of growth determinants. The recent empirical growth literature has developed jointness measures to highlight such dependencies. We address model uncertainty and covariate dependencies in a comprehensive Bayesian framework that allows for structural learning in linear regressions and Gaussian graphical models. A common prior specification across the entire comprehensive framework provides consistency. Gaussian graphical models allow for a principled analysis of dependency structures, which allows us to generate a much more parsimonious set of fundamental growth determinants. Our empirics are based on a prominent growth dataset with 41 potential economic factors that has been utilized in numerous previous analyses to account for model uncertainty as well as jointness.     

Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gays Among American and Dutch Adolescents

Attitudes toward lesbians and gays vary across national populations, and previous research has found relatively more accepting attitudes in the Netherlands as compared to the United States. In this study, we compared beliefs about and attitudes toward lesbians and gays in samples of Dutch and American heterosexual adolescents, utilizing survey data from 1,080 American adolescents (mean age = 15.86 years) attending two schools and from 1,391 Dutch adolescents (mean age = 16.27 years) attending eight schools. Findings indicated the Dutch participants were more tolerant of lesbians and gays, after adjusting for the gender, age, and racial/ethnic minority status of the participants. However, between-country differences were attenuated by accounting for the beliefs about lesbians and gays that participants used to justify their attitudes. American participants were more likely to justify their attitudes using beliefs related to social norms and religious opposition, while the Dutch participants were more likely to justify their attitudes using beliefs related to individual rights and the biological/genetic basis of homosexuality. The results suggest that the relative importance of particular beliefs about lesbians and gays to attitudes at the group level may be context dependent but also that certain beliefs are salient to attitudes across national contexts.     

Maternal Monitoring,Adolescent Disclosure,and Adolescent Adjustment Among Palestinian Refugee Youth in Jordan

The role of parenting (adolescent‐perceived maternal solicitation of information and control), and child‐driven processes (adolescent disclosure and secrecy) in parental knowledge of adolescents' activities, norm‐breaking, and anxiety were examined among 498 poor Palestinian youth (M = 15 years) living in refugee camps in Jordan. With family relationships and demographic background controlled, greater adolescent disclosure and less secrecy about activities, but also more maternal control and solicitation, were associated with greater maternal knowledge. Greater dispositional secrecy was associated with greater norm‐breaking and generalized anxiety, but parental control and parental solicitation were not. In addition, both gender and maternal control moderated the effects of disclosure on norm‐breaking. Differences between these findings and research with Western samples are discussed.     

The implementation and the cultural adjustment of functional family therapy in a Dutch psychiatric day-treatment center

Because of the increasing severity of adolescent problem behavior, evidence-based practices are becoming of interest as an alternative to traditional treatment with the behavior problems of adolescents in juvenile justice settings. Despite interest in evidence-based practices, questions exist regarding whether or not evidence-based intervention models can be successfully transported to cultures other than those in which they were developed. This article describes the transportation process of an American evidence-based family therapy (Functional Family Therapy [FFT]) into the service delivery system of a psychiatric day treatment center for juvenile delinquents in Amsterdam. The characteristics of FFT that make it cross-culturally sensitive are discussed. Results from the changes in service delivery suggest FFT can be successfully implemented in international settings with adjustments to make the model fit the culture(s) of The Netherlands without changing the model of FFT itself.     

The Tale of Two Obamas

In this paper I trace the tensions between structure and agency, the racial and the postracial, as they intersect and clash in the body of Barack Obama, and the US Presidency more broadly. These tensions are examined in the context of contemporary neoliberal political economy and its hyper-extenuated condition, neo-neoliberalism. Finally, the condition of postraciality is read through a critical analysis of the writings of Shelby Steele on Obama and a conceptualization of Obama the Person and Obama the Phenom.     

Occupational segregation by hours of work in Europe

This article quantifies the levels of occupational segregation between part‐time and full‐time work using data from the European Labour Force Survey for 15 European countries. It also attempts to identify some of the determinants of segregation through regression analysis using three groups of indicators (quantity of employment, quality of employment and institutional factors). Occupational segregation by hours of work is generally higher for males than for females and is also higher for young workers versus adult workers. It is also found that segregation for men is correlated with the quantity of employment, while variables from all three groups of indicators are important for adult women and young workers.     

Notes and Comments the Amsterdam Auction

The Amsterdam auction has been used to sell real estate in the Dutch capital for centuries. By awarding a premium to the highest losing bidder, the Amsterdam auction favors weak bidders without having the implementation difficulties of Myerson's (1981) optimal auction. In a series of experiments, we compare the standard first‐price and English auctions, the optimal auction, and two variants of the Amsterdam auction. With strongly asymmetric bidders, the second‐price Amsterdam auction raises substantially more revenues than standard formats and only slightly less than the optimal auction.     

Organizational diagnosis in practice: a cross-classification analysis using the DEL-technique

In this paper, an empirical research about organizational diagnosis in The Netherlands is presented. The main research question is whether the usage of the kind of conceptual organizational diagnosis model and computer support in diagnosing problem situations is contingent upon background characteristics of management consultants and their agencies. The DEL-technique was applied to test a number of propositions among 72 respondents of a random sample of 300 Dutch consulting agencies. The results indicate that size of an agency, educational specialization, and work experience are important characteristics with respect to their usage of conceptual organizational diagnosis models. Computer support was not found to be dependent on management consultant and agency characteristics in the specific hypothesized relationships.