Food Security: The Elaboration of Contested Claims to a Consensus Frame*

Abstract This article demonstrates Gamson's claim that behind the apparent agreement implied by “consensus frames” lies considerable dissensus. Ironically, the very potency of consensus frames may generate contested claims to the ownership of a social problem. Food security is a potent consensus frame that has generated at least three distinct collective action frames: food security as hunger; food security as a component of a community's developmental whole; and food security as minimizing risks with respect to an industrialized food system's vulnerability to both “normal accidents” as well as the “intentional accidents” associated with agriterrorism. We show that each collective action frame reflects internal normative variation identified here with Goffman's “keying” concept. These keys suggest power differentials in the endorsement or critique of dominant institutional practices. Each frame and associated keys reflect distinct sets of interests by collective actors, such as demands for substantively different applications of science and technology. The prognostic framing of the community food security movement coincidentally holds potential for reducing not only the accidental risks of productivist agriculture but also the uncertainty induced by the risk of terrorist exploitation of those vulnerabilities. The article explores power differentials and variable levels of oppositional consciousness as mechanisms by which keys generate contentious politics within frames while serving as potential bridges between frames. This contested ownership of food security has implications for the associated movements' and organizations' capacity to influence the structure of the agrifood system as well as the broader socioeconomic organization of rural regions.     

Missed opportunity: The NTER and sustainable development outcomes for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory

This article questions why the Labor Government has failed to fundamentally change the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) which it inherited from the Howard government, in the face of evidence which suggests that it is a development intervention unlikely to bring about sustained change. There are two major problems which this article highlights: the coercive and denigrating approach of the NTER, and its failure to address the need for Indigenous governance to drive lasting Indigenous development. Drawing on global research about the reduction of poverty and evidence about the social and economic development of native nations in other settler states, the article suggests that the NTER has been a missed opportunity for Indigenous development. Better policies would have been to address the barriers which Indigenous people identify as blocking their initiatives for development, and to support the essential work of building effective and legitimate community governance to drive development.     

Beyond Hidden Figures: Shining a Spotlight on Constructed Hierarchies of Gender,Age, and Elementary Mathematics

Gender Issues - This article focuses on conversations about gender and mathematics among other intersecting identities such as age, education level, and professional expertise. I used positioning...     

Actuarial risk assessment in child protective services: Construction methodology and performance criteria

Purpose

To prevent the recurrence of child maltreatment, actuarial risk assessment can help child protective services (CPS) workers make more accurate and consistent decisions. However, there are few published articles describing construction methodologies and performance criteria to evaluate how well actuarial risk assessments perform in CPS. This article describes methodology to construct and revise an actuarial risk assessment, reviews criteria to evaluate the performance of actuarial tools, and applies a methodology and performance criteria in one state.

Methods

The sample included 6832 families who were followed for two years to determine whether they were re-reported and re-substantiated for maltreatment.

Results

Both the adopted and the revised tools had adequate separation and good predictive accuracy for all families and for the state's three largest ethnic/racial groups (White, Latino, and African American). The adopted tool classified relatively few families in the low-risk category; the revised tool distributed families across risk categories.

Conclusions

The revised tool classified more families as low-risk, allowing CPS to allocate more resources to higher-risk families, but at the cost of more false negatives.     

II. The Conclusions and Recommendations of the Commission on the Social Studies of the American Historical Association

Abstract

Some Recent Geography Textbooks: Modern Business Geography. By Ellsworth Huntington and Sumner W. Cushing. World Book Company, Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York, 1925. viii, 352 pp. $2.00. Reviewed by: John E. Orchard

Some Recent Geography Textbooks: A Smaller Commercial Geography. By G. G. Chisholm and J. H. Birrell. Longmans, Green and Company, New York, 1924. xiv, 302 pp. $1.65. Reviewed by: John E. Orchard

Some Recent Geography Textbooks: High Lights of Geography: North America. By David Starr Jordan and Katherine Dunlop Cather. World Book Company, Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York, 1925. xv, 358 pp. $1.44. Reviewed by: John E. Orchard

Some Recent Geography Textbooks: Human Geography by Grades: Book Three. The World. By James Fairgrieve and Ernest Young. D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1925. x, 304 pp. Reviewed by: John E. Orchard

Some Recent Geography Textbooks: First Lessons in Geography. By Philip A. Knowlton. The Macmillan Company, New York, 1924. vi, 257 pp. Reviewed by: John E. Orchard

Some Recent Geography Textbooks: The Story Key to Geographic Names. By O. D. von Engeln and Jane McKelway Urquhart. D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1924. xvi, 279 pp. Reviewed by: John E. Orchard

The War for Southern Independence, being vol. VI of The History of the United States. By Edward Channing. The Macmillan Company, New York, 1925. 645 pp. $4.75. Reviewed by: B. B. Kendrick

Ethics and Citizenship. By John W. Wayland, Head of the Department of History and Social Science, State Teachers College, Harrisonburg, Va. The McClure Co., Staunton, Va., 1924. 251 pp. $1.85. Reviewed by: H. W. Schneider

History of the 151st Field Artillery. (Minnesota in the World War, Volume I.) By Louis L. Collins. Edited by Wayne E. Stevens. Minnesota War Records Commission, St. Paul, 1924. xxv, 427 pp. Reviewed by: Elbridge Colby

History of the Philippines. By David P. Barrows. The World Book Company, Yonkers, New York, 1924. xiv, 406 pp. $1.60. Reviewed by: Paul V. Shaw     

Work–family conflict and crossover in volunteer emergency service workers

Abstract

A growing literature indicates that organizational and work demands place pressure on the partners and families of volunteer workers as it does on paid workers. This study evaluated a conceptual model integrating work–family conflict and stress crossover theoretical frameworks, to investigate the mechanisms by which emergency service volunteer work, specifically, predicts outcomes for the partners of volunteers. Matched data from 102 couples in which one partner was an Australian emergency services volunteer – firefighter, ambulance officer or emergency rescue volunteer – were analysed using structural equation modelling analyses. Findings suggested that one mechanism by which inter-role conflict related to partner adjustment was through elevated withdrawn marital behaviour and decreased intimacy reported by the couple, which indirectly affected partners’ distress. This finding regarding withdrawn behaviour appears to be novel and may also be applicable to paid workers. Alternative mechanisms involving role overload and angry marital behaviour were not supported. These findings extend limited research which has adapted organizational theory to understand processes affecting volunteer workers, and advance conceptual accounts of the mechanisms through which the partners and families of workers are impacted by inter-role conflict.     

Swear(ING) ain't play(ING): The interaction of taboo language and the sociolinguistic variable

Swearwords influence social evaluation of a speaker in a variety of ways depending on social context (Jay & Janschewitz (2008), The pragmatics of swearing. Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture, 4(2), 267–288). Little attention has been paid to the role of linguistic variation in social perceptions of swearing, however. This paper presents two experiments that test the role of sociolinguistic variation in the social evaluation of swearing. Experiment 1 is a variant categorization task, in which participants categorized acoustically ambiguous swearwords and phonetically matching neutral and nonwords as ending in either “-ing” or “-in.” Results suggest that swearwords led participants to hear “-ing” on ambiguous items. Experiment 2 is a matched-guise task in which listeners heard a passage featuring a mix of swearwords and neutral “-ing” words in one of four conditions: fully velar (All-ing), fully alveolar (All-in), only swearwords as velar (Swear-ing), or only neutral words as velar (Swear-in). Participants rated speakers on Likert scales (Schleef et al. (2017), Regional diversity in social perceptions of (ING). Language Variation and Change, 29(1), 29–56). Participants again displayed a tendency towards hearing “-ing” on swearwords. As a result, responses to the Swear-in guises were similar to those for the All-ing guises. The consequences for our understanding of swearing, sociolinguistic perception and cognition, and style, are discussed.     

Treatment For Suicidal Thoughts and Behavior: A Review of Family‐Based Interventions

The purpose of this article is to review the scientific evidence on the effects of family based interventions for suicidal ideation and behavior. We conducted an extensive search of electronic databases using a comprehensive search strategy. This search resulted in 16 studies that tested 13 interventions for treating suicidal ideation and behavior using family based interventions. Of the interventions identified, three yielded an overall improvement in suicidal ideation and behavior while an additional three interventions produced partial improvement in mental health symptoms. These studies targeted suicidal ideation and behavior in youth or adolescents while no studies examined family interventions for adults with suicidal ideation and behavior. The limitations of these studies and the need for additional research are examined.