Pills,Periods, and Postfeminism

Since the English translation of Elsimar Coutinho's Is Menstruation Obsolete? in 1999 and the introduction of cycle-stopping birth control pills in 2003, US women are increasingly advised that menstruation is not necessary for good health. The most widely distributed source of such messages is direct-to-consumer advertisements for birth control pills. The most recent television ads for Seasonique, the leading brand of cycle-stopping contraceptive in the US, minimize the pill's contraceptive function and focus instead on their effectiveness in reducing the frequency of menstruation. A close reading of these commercials reveals them to be an integral part of an emerging postfeminist media culture that attempts to solidify a new, neoliberal subjectivity for women. This subjectivity imposes an idealized, docile, non-menstruating feminine body, ready for full-time participation in the neoliberal economy.     

Temperament and the Development of Conscience: The Moderating Role of Effortful Control

In this longitudinal study we examined whether two components of effortful control, behavioral control, and executive function moderated the relation between temperament and conscience development. Temperament was assessed when participants were two years of age, and three temperament groups were formed: inhibited, exuberant, and low reactive. At 4.5 years of age, children's behavioral control and executive function were assessed. Moral behavior, emotionality during an empathy film, and false-belief understanding were measured at 5.5 years of age as components of conscience. Results indicate that inhibited children may benefit most from higher levels of effortful control. Inhibited children with higher levels of behavioral control performed better on false-belief understanding tasks whereas inhibited children who scored higher on executive function tests reported less emotional response to the evocative film. Finally, as a group, inhibited children exhibited more moral behavior than exuberant and low reactive children.     

Web of Deception: Misinformation on the Internet

Abstract

“Serials Spoken Here” has reports on a symposium on “The Transition to Open Access Scholarship” held at the University at Albany, New York, and the 2004 North Carolina Serials Conference, both held in April 2004.     

Bayesian discrete latent spatial modeling of crack initiation in orthopaedic hip replacement bone cement

In this paper, we propose a spatial model for the initiation of cracks in the bone cement of hip replacement specimens. The failure of hip replacements can be attributed mainly to damage accumulation, consisting of crack initiation and growth, occurring in the cement mantle that interlocks the hip prosthesis and the femur bone. Since crack initiation is an important factor in determining the lifetime of a replacement, the understanding of the reasons for crack initiation is vital in attempting to prolong the life of the hip replacement. The data consist of crack location coordinates from five laboratory experimental models, together with stress measurements. It is known that stress plays a major role in the initiation of cracks, and it is also known that other unmeasurable factors such as air bubbles (pores) in the cement mantle are also influential. We propose an identity-link spatial Poisson regression model for the counts of cracks in discrete regions of the cement, incorporating both the measured (stress), and through a latent process, any unmeasured factors (possibly pores) that may be influential. All analysis is carried out in a Bayesian framework, allowing for the inclusion of prior information obtained from engineers, and parameter estimation for the model is done via Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques.     

Comparing the Lifestyles of Victims,Offenders, and Victim-Offenders: A Routine Activity Theory Assessment of Similarities and Differences for Criminal Incident Participants

Abstract

Drawing on routine activity theory, this paper examines a sample of college students involved in criminal assault to assess whether victims, offenders, and those who are both victims and offenders show similarities on demographic, social activity, neighborhood, exposure, illegal activities, and alcohol and drug use variables. This research tests previous claims that criminal victims and offenders have numerous shared characteristics and behaviors. For all three groups a wide range of sophisticated measures of lifestyle are used to predict the likelihood of involvement in criminal incidents of assault. Victimization risks are primarily explained by indicators of individuals' exposure to offenders. Likelihood of offending is most usefully explained by demographics and participation in other illegal behaviors. Being both a victim and offender of assault is explained by a more complex set of indicators, encompassing a wide range of factors. Based on these results it appears that, for the crime of assault, victims, offenders, and victim-offenders are three distinct groups, identifiable by varying lifestyle measures. Results provide moderate support for routine activity theory and strongly support the need for refined measures of lifestyle when assessing criminal incident involvement.     

“Hookups”: Characteristics and correlates of college students' spontaneous and anonymous sexual experiences

This study focused on a specific risky practice common among contemporary college students: the hookup. Hookups are defined as a sexual encounter which may or may not include sexual intercourse, usually occurring on only one occasion between two people who are strangers or brief acquaintances. The aim of this study was to determine the relative importance of a variety of social and psychological predictors in understanding differences among undergraduate students who had never hooked up, those who had hooked up without sexual intercourse, and those who had hooked up with sexual intercourse. Analyses revealed that, as predicted, social, individual, and relational psychological variables helped to explain the variance among college students' varied hookup experiences. By examining the full range of sexual involvement characteristic of the casual sexual phenomenon of hooking up within a multivariate model, we were able to achieve a more differentiated understanding of college students' casual sexual experimentation.     

Lionel Smith in Barbados, 1833–1836: imperialist and abolitionist rhetoric in emancipation-era Caribbean governance

After 20 years of service in the British Army in India, Sir Lionel Smith, KCB (1777–1842) was appointed Governor of Barbados and Governor General of the Windward Islands in order to enact the abolition of slavery in the West Indies. During his three-year tenure, Smith relied on two major rhetorical strategies to advocate for the rights of free Afro-Barbadians and enslaved/apprenticed people. In general, Smith invoked utilitarian arguments, derived from his experience in India, when presenting free Afro-Barbadian men’s demands for equal voting rights, but also resorted to a more humanitarian mode, characteristic of abolitionist rhetoric, when arguing for judicial system reforms that would benefit enslaved and apprenticed people. This essay analyzes the ways in which Smith’s positions resonated with or diverged from those of the Colonial Office, and from those of Barbadian people of color, based on correspondence with the Colonial Office, including two documents written by free men of color, and one by an apprentice. Although Smith was eager to apply the British colonial policy he experienced in India to the impending social changes in the West Indies, the Colonial Office was not as willing to draw these parallels, responding more enthusiastically to Smith’s use of abolitionist rhetoric.     

Interdisciplinary Applications: Providing a Past for “Bodies That Matter”: Judith Butler's Impact on the Archaeology of Gender

Recent archeological work on gender and sexuality has drawn on Judith Butler's discussions of abjection and gender performance in ways that promise to contribute to explicating these concepts. Representations of the past have the potential to lend the illusion of time depth, and thus cultural legitimacy, to contemporary social phenomena. Initially, feminist scholarship in archaeology did not critically interrogate gender. Consequently, it could be used to reinforce static, natural, and binary representations of gender in reconstructions of the past and their use in conservative ways in the present. Recently, some archaeologists have begun to focus on the regulatory modes through which gender was produced and reproduced in prehistoric communities. Archaeological work has been especially successful in examining the material dimensions of gender performance, thus addressing one of the repeated criticisms of this concept. The authors of this essay provide an overview of this recent archaeological writing with an emphasis on the ways it draws on, critiques, and extends the work of Judith Butler.