Invitation to the Barbecue: Political Correctness,Social Criticism and Family Therapy

Marta Lohyn and Andrew Relph were asked to read and comment on two recent works by Australian‐born social commentators: Germaine Greer's The Whole Woman and Robert Hughes Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America. As they searched for what relevance these two books could have to family therapy practice, Andrew and Marta found themselves discussing political correctness, the fear of voicing an opinion that differs from the dominant one, attitudes to the personal and the political, and the state of male‐female relationships in 2000.     

An Empirical Comparison of Probabilistic Coalition Structure Theories in 3-Person Sidepayment Games

This article reports a comparative test of the central-union theory vis-à-vis several other game-theoretic solution concepts in 3-person sidepayment games. Based on a laboratory experiment, this comparison utilizes nine games in characteristic function form. The solution concepts under test include the equal excess model, the Myerson–Shapley solution, the kernel, and two variants of the central-union theory (CU-1 and CU-2). With regard to the player's payoffs, results show that the CU-1, CU-2, kernel, and equal excess theories have essentially equal predictive accuracy and that all of these are more accurate than Myerson–Shapley. When the solution concepts are extended and coalition structure probability predictions are incorporated in the test, one version of the central-union theory (CU-2) is overall more accurate than the other solutions.     

Contest time: time, territory, and representation in the postmodern electoral crisis

Prior generations’ electoral crises (e.g., gerrymandering) have dealt mainly with political maneuverings around geographical shifts. We analyze four recent (1998–2003) American electoral crises: the Clinton impeachment controversy, the 2000 Florida presidential election, the Texas legislators’ flight to Oklahoma and New Mexico, and the California gubernatorial recall. We show that in each case temporal manipulation was at least as important as geographical. We highlight emergent electoral practices surrounding the manipulation of time, which we dub “temporal gerrymandering.” We suggest a theory of postmodern electoral crises, in which the rules of time and space are simultaneously in flux. These crises expose concerns with early American democratic theory, which was based on an understanding of “the people” as geographically and temporally unidimensional. Representative systems, therefore, were designed largely without reference to geographic and temporal complexity.     

THE AGE ONSET OF PERSONAL AUTHORITY IN THE FAMILY SYSTEM

The present research explored Williamson's position that relational patterns indicative of Personal Authority in the Family System (PAFS) occur during the fourth and early fifth decades of life. Participants were 232 university student volunteers. Individuals age 30 and above reported less triangulation with their nuclear families and less intimidation and less intimacy with their parents than the under age 30 group. These results provide some support for the view that differentiation is more clearly discernible in the fourth and fifth decades of life than in earlier years. Canonical correlations revealed that as age increases, the amount of variance accounted for by nuclear family triangulation, intergenerational intimidation, and integenerational intimacy increases, supporting Williamson's position that age is a significant factor in achieving several relational patterns indicative of PAFS.     

Wildlife conservation in urban greenways of the mid-southeastern United States

Goals related to wildlife conservation are stated or implied in many urban greenway plans, but the actual wildlife conservation value of urban greenways is unclear. We surveyed 72 km. of greenway consisting of 38 different greenway segments in six cities in the mid-southeastern United States to determine the presence or absence of red fox (Vulpes vulpes), grey fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus), and white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), and to assess characteristics of the greenways and adjacent lands that might promote or limit the presence of these species in each greenway. We focused on fox and deer because these mammals, while habitat generalists, require diverse habitats within close proximity, and are more sensitive to human disturbance and have larger territories than the majority of urban wildlife in this region. Thus, they can serve as indicator species for these habitat values in urban greenways in the southeastern United States. Field observations and scent station inventories revealed that only 18 of the 38 greenway segments had either fox or deer, 12 had only fox, 6 had fox and deer, and none had deer alone. Greenway segments with more forest cover, wider corridors, greater amounts of adjacent natural or seminatural habitat, and forest connectivity between greenways and nonadjacent natural areas were more likely to have fox or deer present. Characteristics associated with fox and deer presence were not independent of each other. Because greenways with such characteristics tend to be surrounded by less urban areas, adjacent land use is a good predictor of fox and deer presence in the surveyed greenways. Whether greenways that are beneficial to fox and deer can be developed in urban settings is strongly site specific, because the greenway variables that appear most essential to these species are often dictated by the preexisting urban form and the vegetation in the vicinity of the greenway. Because the wildlife conservation value of urban greenways depends greatly on factors external to the greenway, greenways that have fox and deer present today may be particularly vulnerable to future changes in surrounding land use.     

Compassionate,safe and rigorous child protection practice with biological parents of adopted children

There is a worldwide trend towards re‐energizing the use of adoption as a tool of child protection, primarily designed to ensure that children do not languish in care. This paper poses the question: does this trend obscure the rights of relinquishing parents? By inquiring into a specific case, and reflecting on the themes surrounding this practice, the authors suggest that rigorous practice, which attends to the permanency needs of the child, is possible while simultaneously being responsive to the human rights of the biological parents. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

CAPITAL MARKET IMPERFECTIONS, LABOR MARKET DISEQUILIBRIUM AND MIGRATION: A THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

Traditional analyses of the determinants of migration in less developed countries have focused on labor market conditions. This paper adapts a simple model to show that capital market conditions may be an important factor in individuals' migration decisions. Data from Ecuador are used to test this model, and the empirical results confirm the role of capital market imperfections—chiefly caused by financial repression—in shaping migration flows. Traditional labor market factors still matter, but the new finding may provide policy makers with new and lower-cost tools with which to affect migration outcomes.     

A cross-cultural study of body-focused hand movement

The apparently irrelevant self- or object-manipulatory behavior, otherwise known as body-focused movement, of children drawn from four cities, Adelaide, Brussels, Rome, and Sheffield, was observed while subjects performed four different tasks. Higher frequencies of body-focused movement were observed for a monologue task than for a rest task in each city. Slightly higher body-focused movement frequencies were observed for a Stroop color confusion task when compared with its color-naming control. No significant difference in self-manipulatory frequency was observed between the cities. Irrelevant clothing- and object-manipulatory behaviors were significantly more frequent for the Italian- and French-speaking children.This study would have been impossible without the assistance provided by Dr. Pierre Feyereisen (University of Louvain), Dr. Peter Smith (University of Sheffield) and Prof. M. Allessio (University of Rome).