Beliefs and social norms about codeine and promethazine hydrochloride cough syrup (CPHCS) onset and perceived addiction among urban Houstonian adolescents: an addiction trend in the city of lean

In the current study, we used a qualitative approach to investigate relevant beliefs and norms associated with codeine and promethazine hydrochloride cough syrup (CPHCS) consumption, initiation, and perceived addiction among 48 alternative school students who identified themselves as current CPHCS users. In general, both boys and girls believed that CPHCS addiction started during an individual's initial consumption. A majority of both groups reported that their second CPHCS event was initiated during the same or next day after their first event. Our findings suggest that friends and an innovative form of hip-hop music called "screw" are strong reinforcers of CPHCS use.     

Courage in the Telling: The Critical Rise and Fall of David Leavitt

Openly gay American fiction writer David Leavitt, who had received positive reviews for his previous novels and short story collections, was sued in 1993 over his novel While England Sleeps by English poet Stephen Spender, who claimed that Leavitt plagiarized an episode from his own 1951 memoir World Within World, and grafted pornographic fantasies onto his biography. The accusations created a homophobic backlash against Leavitt, whose career has yet to recover fully. The result is that Leavitt, who had once been viewed as the one gay writer to find a footing in the mainstream literary community, is now firmly positioned in the gay literary subgenre and his work categorized as such. This essay examines book reviews in order to illustrate the difficulties that a writer who deals with gay life frankly and unapologetically finds in being accepted by the mainstream literary establishment, no matter how normal or assimilationist he or others might perceive his work to be.     

Getting There: The Unfolding Potential of Psychoanalysis, A Personal View

Even though psychoanalysis has the potential to free the mind it can also (however unwittingly) be used to bind it. This paradoxical tendency is especially noticeable in some psychoanalytic trainings, when students can be under pressures to comply with accepted theory and practice and, in some cases, to toe the line in their training analysis and/or in their supervised cases. We therefore have to be increasingly mindful of the ways in which our training of psychoanalytic students can foster a false extension of psychoanalysis, by which the practitioner can become bound to a theory rather than be freed by it.     

Shaping the future of retail banking

The first half of this article considers recent developments in the retail banking market and, with the aid of tables, describes the present state of the market. Emphasis is placed on the increased competitiveness of the market with more institutions involved in providing more products than ever before, and with more attention being focused on the unbanked sector of the population. The second half of the article considers the factors which are most likely to influence the ruture development of the market—both external influences such as the political, economic and regulatory environment and factors which lie more directly under the control of the banks themselves, such as the introduction of new services and branching policy. The article ends by stressing the scope for individual banks to pursue distinctive policies in this market in future.     

SOURCES OF INFLUENCE AND TOPIC AREAS IN FAMILY THERAPY: TRENDS IN THREE MAJOR JOURNALS

Following Gurman (1981), this study reports on authors and topics of interest in prominent marriage and family therapy journals from 1980 through 1995. Fifteen of the 25 institutions that produced the greatest number of authors prior to 1978 continued to be among the top 25 between 1980 and 1995, and the 25 leading institutions produced 29.5% of articles from 1980 to 1995. Most authors held positions in university settings and taught in programs with a marriage and family therapy focus. Clinical issues were the most common focus of articles (61%), and one-third of all articles were research reports.     

Towards a Coherent Policy of Co–Development

This paper seeks to demonstrate the major benefits that a dedicated policy of co–development can bring to three major actors affected by immigration: receiving states, countries of origin, and the immigrants themselves. True co–development involves sustained cooperation between receiving nations and source nations in the management of both legal and illegal migratory flows. At the same time, it fosters the economic and demographic development of both the sending and the receiving country. This cooperation is based in large measure on understanding that, more than ever before, the best migration policy for developed nations is one that seeks not to block, but to smoothly regulate the circulation and re–circulation of the majority of foreigners and immigrants. As a result, Northern countries will be able to concentrate the state’s limited control resources on selected targets such as criminals, delinquents, and migrants arrested multiple times for unauthorized entry or residence. Developed nations must recognize that the vast majority of immigrants wish to retain close links to their country of origin, and with drastically improved transportation and communication links, most migrants are increasingly able to do so. Northern states should adapt policies that, for the most part, accommodate immigrants’ wishes to maintain active ties to their homeland. Such measures are generally in the best interests of the receiving countries, source countries, and of course, the immigrants themselves. The various problems faced by these three main actors regarding migration as they seek to pursue activities in their best interest is considered, followed by the advantages that a policy of co–development has for these actors: for receiving nations in terms of meeting labour force needs, reducing demographic problems, and controlling illegal immigration; and for source countries in terms of increased access to visas, increased amounts and efficacy of remittances, and the return and re–circulation of skilled and seasonal workers, and retirees. The interests of the immigrants themselves will be considered at various points throughout the discussion, in the context of the effects that the various policies of receiving and sending countries will have on them.     

Being Judged,Being Assessed: Young People’s Perspective of Assessment in Youth Justice and Education

Research from the Economic and Social Research Council programme on Pathways Into and Out of Crime prioritised young people’s ‘voices’ in exploring experiences of crime and a range of intervention services. Drawing on data from interviews with 110 young people, this paper explores their perspectives of professional assessment. Embedded within neo‐liberal youth welfare policies are a number of contradictions. Policies encourage ‘individualisation’, ‘responsiblisation’ and ‘self‐realisation’ while also needing to maintain control and regulation of ‘risky’ populations. This paper explores the implication of these contradictions through examining the experiences of young people being assessed in youth justice and education. The impact on their identities as neo‐liberal citizens is discussed in the conclusion.     

REPEATED LOBBYING BY COMMERCIAL LOBBYISTS AND SPECIAL INTERESTS

Developing a lobbying model of repeated agency, we explain previously unexplained features of the real‐world lobbying industry. Lobbying is divided between direct representation by special interests to policymakers, and indirect representation where special interests employ professional intermediaries called commercial lobbyists to lobby policymakers on their behalf. Our analytical structure allows us to explain several trends in lobbying. For example, using the observation that in the United States over the last 20 years, policymakers have spent an increasing amount of their time fundraising as opposed to legislating, we are able to explain why the share of commercial lobbyist activity in total lobbying has risen dramatically and now constitutes over 60% of the total. The key scarce resource in our analysis is policymakers' time. Policymakers allocate this resource via implicit repeated agency contracts that are used to incent special interests and commercial lobbyists to provide a mix of financial contributions and information on policy proposals. These implicit agency contracts solve both an information problem in the presence of unverifiable policy information and a contracting problem in the absence of legal enforcement. These repeated relationships, that are often described using the pejorative term “cronyism” in the popular press, may in certain circumstances be welfare improving. (JEL D72, D82, H1, P16)     

Will they stay or will they go? How network properties of WebICs predict dropout rates of valuable Wikipedians

This paper contributes to our understanding of an increasingly prevalent work system, web-based internet communities (WebICs). We are particularly interested in how WebICs are governed given the fact how different they are compared to more classical forms of organization. We study the governance of a WebIC by studying the structure and dynamics of their edit network. Given the fact that the edit network is a relational structure, social network analysis is key to understanding these work systems. We demonstrate that characteristics of the edit network contribute to predicting the dropout hazard of valuable WebIC members. Since WebICs exist only thanks to the activity of their contributors, predicting drop-outs becomes crucial. The results show that reputation and controversy have different effects for different types of Wikipedians; i.e., an actor’s reputation decreases the dropout hazard of active Wikipedians, while participation on controversial pages decreases the dropout hazard of highly active Wikipedians.