Neither ‘family’ nor ‘corporate’ farming: Australian tomato growers as farm family entrepreneurs

For the past two decades there has been much debate about the future of family farming. The basic question on which this debate has turned is whether current pressures on family farm systems should be understood as symptomatic of a terminal condition, in which farmers are replaced progressively by corporate ownership; or whether family farms will persist as a social formation, albeit increasingly subsumed by off-farm interests. Using evidence from the Australian processing tomato sector, this article documents the changing social and economic formation of ‘family farming’. We argue that in this industry, the appropriate way to describe farmers is through the deployment of that a new category of farming; farm family entrepreneurs. This phrase is coined to describe the situation where family units remain at the social and economic heart of farm ownership and operation, but in the context where they relate to their land-based assets through legal and financial structures characteristic of the wider economy. As this article explores, this formation seems to represent an accommodating modus operandi for farm units within neo-liberal agricultural governance. Nevertheless, however, this duality of family-based structures and capitalist entrepreneurialism inevitably provokes a series of tensions, whose resolution requires a variety of organizational strategies to be put in place.     

From critical sociology to public intellectual: Pierre Bourdieu and politics

By the late 1990s, Pierre Bourdieu had become the primary public intellectual of major social scientific status at the head of the anti-globalization movement that emerged in France and in other Western European countries. This article discusses how Bourdieu became a leading public intellectual, a role that seems to contrast with his early years as a professional sociologist. It explores what seemed to change in Bourdieu’s activities and outlook as sociologist and what seems to have remained constant. It identifies several institutional conditions that seemed necessary for Bourdieu to be able to play the kind of public intellectual role he did in his later years. Bourdieu’s movement from a peripheral position to a central location in the French intellectual field, the changing character of the field itself, the growing influence of the mass media in French political and cultural life, the failures of the French Socialists in power, a cultural legacy of leading critical intellectuals in France, a unifying national issue of globalization, and the political conjuncture in 1995 all intersected in ways that opened a path for Bourdieu to choose new and more frequent forms of political action. His responses to that combination of factors at different moments reveal both a striking continuity in desire to preserve the autonomy of intellectual life and a change in view and strategy on how best to do that. The article concludes with a brief evaluation of Bourdieu’s public intellectual role.     

Risk Compensation or Risk Reduction? Seatbelts,State Laws,and Traffic Fatalities*

Objective. The risk compensation hypothesis suggests that drivers enjoying greater safety will drive more recklessly and thereby impose greater risks on nonoccupants. We provide a test of the risk compensation hypothesis in the context of state seatbelt laws and belt use rates. Methods. Fixed‐effects models with policy and demographic variables are estimated using annual state data from 1985 to 2002 to test the effect of seatbelt laws and seatbelt use rates on logged fatality rates for occupants, pedestrians, motorcyclists, and all nonoccupants in separate models. Results. Contrary to the risk compensation hypothesis, the results indicate that both occupants and nonoccupants enjoy greater safety due to state mandatory use laws and increased safety belt use rates. Conclusion. Overall, seatbelt laws and the higher belt use these laws induce do not increase nonoccupant risk exposure. If anything, these laws and the accompanying increase in belt use result in safer driving behavior.     

Refugee Children in Wales: Coping and Adaptation in the Face of Adversity

This article aims to makes a contribution to redressing a methodological and theoretical imbalance in existing research on refugee and asylum‐seeking children. It draws on two qualitative studies from Wales with children and young people. The samples include unaccompanied minors and children living with families as well as both children who are supported in the asylum system and those who have been granted refugee status. The focus on ecological post‐migratory stressors and coping processes that young people identify as being integral to their well‐being and, once granted status, to how they adapt to settlement includes a selective study of some of the sources of resilience referred to in the children's talk. Recognising the interplay between individual and environment leads to a discussion of both personal attributes and collective cultural identities.     

On the Evolution of Competitive Balance: The Impact of an Increasing Global Search

The Coase theorem maintains that where free-market precepts exist, the allocation of property rights does not impact the distribution of resources. An application to Major League Baseball suggests that institutions such as free agency and the reverse-order amateur draft would not impact player distributions and therefore would not impact competitive balance. The present study finds that the distribution of wins is generally consistent with the precepts of the Coase theorem and therefore suggests a course for those who wish to alter the level of competitive balance: Major League Baseball should increase its focus on expanding the size of its labor pool. (JEL O15 , L83 , C22 )     

Working with Deaf People

Whilst 17% of the population experience some degree of hearing loss, sociology has largely neglected the study of services to this group. This article attempts to move the debate from a sociology of the deaf community to a sociology of deafness that includes an examination of how professionals define the needs of hearing impaired people. Despite differences between different constructions, deafness workers offer a combination of social work, information, and interpreting services. Practice rules have been developed by deafness workers to control workloads, and to work in their preferred way. This article is based on a multi-layered approach with a contextual analysis, a survey of 123 deafness workers, 32 semi-structured interviews, and my own personal experience of deafness work.     

The Farm Crisis and Mental Health: A Longitudinal Study of the 1980s1

Abstract This paper examines rural/urban differences and trends in mental health during the farm crisis of the 1980s in a large panel sample from a midwestern state. A community research perspective, which attributes differences to life styles, culture, and community context, is contrasted with an economic stress perspective, which focuses on individual differences in economic circumstances as determinants of rural-urban differences in mental health. Survey samples from 1981, 1986, and 1989 are used to examine differences among seven categories of community type. Multiple regression analysis of the trend and panel data provide support for both the individual economic distress and community context models.