Equity,inclusion, and antiblackness in mathematics education

ABSTRACT

Despite decades of equity- and inclusion-oriented discourse and reform in mathematics education, Black learners in the U.S. continue to experience dehumanizing and violent forms of mathematics education. I suggest that equity for Black learners in mathematics education is a delusion rooted in the fictions of white imaginaries, contingent on appeasing white logics and sensitivities, and characterized at best by incremental changes that do little to threaten the maintenance of racial hierarchies inside or outside of mathematics education. Moreover, the forms of inclusion offered up in equity-oriented discourses and reforms represent contexts of containment and enclosure that keep Black people in their same relative position. Refusal is suggested as a strategy for Black learners to resist the anti-Black character of mathematics education, and as a first step in actualizing forms of mathematics education that are worthy of Black learners.     

Estimation of seroprevalence, rape, and homelessness in the United States using a social network approach

The authors have developed and tested scale-up methods, based on a simple social network theory, to estimate the size of hard-to-count subpopulations. The authors asked a nationally representative sample of respondents how many people they knew in a list of 32 subpopulations, including 29 subpopulations of known size and 3 of unknown size. Using these responses, the authors produced an effectively unbiased maximum likelihood estimate of the number of people each respondent knows. These estimates were then used to back-estimate the size of the three populations of unknown size. Maximum likelihood values and 95% confidence intervals are found for seroprevalence, 800,000 +/- 43,000; for homeless, 526,000 +/- 35,000; and for women raped in the last 12 months, 194,000 +/- 21,000. The estimate for seroprevalence agrees strikingly with medical estimates, the homeless estimate is well within the published estimates, and the authors' estimate lies in the middle of the published range for rape victims.     

State versus Market: Contending Interests in the Struggle to Control French Accounting Standardisation

The paper concerns the struggle between different interest groups to control or significantly influence the objectives, institutional arrangements and processes of French accounting standardisation. Its particular focus of interest is the state agency established to deal with standardisation, namely the National Accounting Council, the Conseil National de la Comptabilité (CNC), and its predecessors. The period addressed spans from 1941 to the present, marked by the first attempt to implement a national accounting code, adoption of the initial post-war code in 1947 and subsequent revisions.The paper identifies and examines the role played by the French state in establishing an institutional structure for accounting standardisation and in seeking to influence operation of that structure as a means to achieve a concertation of diverse social and economic interest groups with an interest in accounting standards. The objective for the process from the viewpoint of the state has been seen as the intended dominance of certain interests of state over other interests, whether public sector or otherwise. In the course of time, the dominant interests of the state have changed in the face of changing expectations about the role of financial accounting and reporting in the financial life of France. The role of the state is seen to have come under increasing pressure from private sector interests in France and externally. Particular attention is given to the 1996–8 major reforms to the CNC and associated new regulatory structure.The possibility is assessed of whether and under what terms the French approach to accounting standardisation can be sustained, grounded as it is in a profound attachment by the state to the values of the Etat colbertiste.     

The American sociologist: Characteristics in the 1990s

This article describes the characteristics, theoretical preferences, and political orientations of sociologists in the United States. The findings are the most representative of their kind reported to date. Other professional groups, such as psychiatrists, have been studied over time (Gallagher, 1977; Gallagher et al., 1987; Gallagher et al., 1990), but studies of sociologists have been almost non-existent. In fact, there has only been one study of this nature conducted in the 1990s, and that one sampled only sociologists whose names appeared on the membership list of the American Sociological Association (Sanderson and Ellis, 1992). However, that sampling frame did not provide a representative cross-section of American sociologists because it excluded the large proportion of sociologists who are not members of the ASA and who probably are systematically different than members. It is ironic that sociologists who intensively study the characteristics of all sorts of groups know so little about themselves. That is a major reason why this project was undertaken.     

Dispositifs d’intermédiation marchande et politique des marchés. La modernisation du marché des fruits et légumes en France, 1950-1980

As this study of experiments with organizing the fruit and vegetable market from the 1950s till the end of the 1970s shows, there were alternatives to the principle of distribution, for instance: the modernization of traditional wholesale marketplaces (carreau) or the establishment of veilings (marchés au cadran) controlled by producers. After exposing the rationale underlying each of these arrangements, the empirical conditions are examined for actually modernizing markets. Attention is drawn to the factors that weigh on players in the market, in particular the tensions, on the one hand, between homogenization and concentration and, on the other hand, the singularity of products and transactions.     

From pension funds to piggy banks: (Perverse) consequences of the Stability and Growth Pact since the crisis

As part of their strategy for economic and monetary union, European governments committed themselves to fiscal discipline – particularly by placing limits on annual deficits and on public debt. Subsequently, and as they sought to respond to the “current crisis”, they embraced the view that only if public finances were kept under control would sustainable recovery be possible. Rules of fiscal governance were strengthened. To help them meet these rules, the governments of many member States of the European Union made changes to their pension systems or to funds they had established specifically to pay the costs of population ageing. The intention was not to cut retirement benefits or to improve the efficiency of the relevant pension schemes and institutions. Rather, it was to free up resources immediately. Funded pension schemes and pension funds were treated like “piggy banks” that were raided when times became hard. Moreover, the policies pursued succeeded in meeting their objectives only because the system of national accounts according to which outcomes are judged does not recognize the way in which most of the fiscal gains are matched by future fiscal liabilities.