THE GHETTO FABULOUS AESTHETIC IN CONTEMPORARY BLACK CULTURE

With diamonds, mink, and champagne, black popular culture has, in recent years, made an audacious spectacle of conspicuous commodity consumption. Commonly termed ‘bling’, the ‘ghetto fabulous’ aesthetic of these flashy displays has prompted vociferous debate about the cultural meanings of contemporary black consumerism. Is it pathological? Subversive? Deviant? Since the nineties when it first appeared, the ghetto fabulous aesthetic has left its mark on a range of cultural productions from music videos to ghetto lit, fashion to film, walking a familiar line from defiance to bowdlerization, from raucous wild child of the streets to co-opted product tagline.

This essay explores a new cinematic genre within this repertoire, the ghetto fabulous genre of black film that has emerged to variously castigate and congratulate black investments in ghetto fabulous bling. Appearing at the close of the twentieth century, the genre reflects key shifts in the political imaginary and economic transformations of the ‘post-soul’ era. Drawing on two such texts, Barbershop (Tim Story 2002) and Barbershop 2: Back In Business (Kevin Rodney Sullivan 2004), studio films with all-black casts and directed by young African-American filmmakers, this analysis focuses on their engagement with contemporary cultural tensions over class and consumerism, their narrative containment of a transformative black politics, and their reconciliation of post-soul priorities with hegemonic discourses of the market. I argue that ghetto fabulous films are quintessential products of the post-soul era, their allegorical priorities in pointed accord with neo-liberal individualism and the promise of class transcendence. Performing crucial work of hegemonic cooptation, these texts offer archetypes of the ghetto entrepreneur and black enterprise itself as a salvational sphere for the urban poor. Reining in unruly desires, these texts draw working-class African Americans into the capitalist fold, articulating a post-soul politics that preaches black acquiescence with hegemonic discourses of advanced capitalism.     

Generalized median graphs and applications

We study the so-called Generalized Median graph problem where the task is to construct a prototype (i.e., a ‘model’) from an input set of graphs. While our primary motivation comes from an important biological imaging application, the problem effectively captures many vision (e.g., object recognition) and learning problems, where graphs are increasingly being adopted as a powerful representation tool. Existing techniques for his problem are evolutionary search based; in this paper, we propose a polynomial time algorithm based on a linear programming formulation. We propose an additional algorithm based on a bi-level method to obtain solutions arbitrarily close to the optimal in (worst case) non-polynomial time. Within this new framework, one can optimize edit distance functions that capture similarity by considering vertex labels as well as he graph structure simultaneously. We first discuss experimental evaluations in context of molecular image analysis problems—he methods will provide the basis for building a topological map of all 23 pairs of the human chromosome. Later, we include (a) applications to other biomedical problems and (b) evaluations on a public pattern recognition graph database. This work was supported by NSF grants CCF-0546509, IIS-0713489, and NIH grant GM 072131-23. The second author was also supported in part by the Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, UW-Madison and UW ICTR, funded through an NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA), grant number 1 UL1 RR025011.     

ON THE POWER BREAKDOWN OF THE NEGATIVE EXPONENTIAL DISPARITY TESTS

The generalized negative exponential disparity, discussed in Bhandari et al. (Robust inference in parametric models using the family of generalized negative exponential disparities, 2006, ANZJS, 48 , 95–114), represents an important class of disparity measures that generates efficient estimators and tests with strong robustness properties. In their paper, however, Bhandari et al. failed to provide a sharp lower bound for the power breakdown point of the corresponding tests. This was acknowledged by the authors, who indicated the possible existence of a sharper bound, but noted that they did not “have a proof at this point”. In this paper we provide an improved bound for this power breakdown point, and show with an example how this can enhance the existing results.     

A NOTE ON SAMPLING DESIGNS FOR RANDOM PROCESSES WITH NO QUADRATIC MEAN DERIVATIVE

Several authors have previously discussed the problem of obtaining asymptotically optimal design sequences for estimating the path of a stochastic process using intricate analytical techniques. In this note, an alternative treatment is provided for obtaining asymptotically optimal sampling designs for estimating the path of a second order stochastic process with known covariance function. A simple estimator is proposed which is asymptotically equivalent to the full‐fledged best linear unbiased estimator and the entire asymptotics are carried out through studying this estimator. The current approach lends an intuitive statistical perspective to the entire estimation problem.     

Background and Adjustment Capacity of Sexually Abused Girls and their Perceptions of Intervention

The main objective of the study was to understand the adjustment capacity of sexually abused girls in the age group 13–18 years in Kolkata, India. The study also attempted to understand how the sexually abused girls perceived the psychological interventions, i.e. individual and group counselling, which they had received. A group of 120 sexually abused Indian girls and 120 non‐sexually abused Indian schoolgirls residing in Kolkata Metropolitan City and its suburbs were studied. Findings revealed that the majority of the sexually abused girls came from nuclear and poor families (93.3%) with a low educational background. More than two‐thirds (73.3%) were lured with promises of job prospects, marriage and a better life and then abused sexually. Emotional and social adjustment capacity of sexually abused and non‐sexually abused girls differed significantly (p < 0.05). Overall, the perception of more than two‐thirds of the sexually abused girls of the rehabilitation homes they lived in was found to be positive. Further, the girls who reported they gained considerably from counselling had a better adjustment capacity compared to those who reported they did not benefit from counselling. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nonparametric Phase-II monitoring for detecting monotone trend based on inverse sampling

Recently, Mukherjee and Bandyopadhyay (J Stat Plan Inference, 2011, doi:10.1016/j.jspi.2011.02.017) introduced some partially sequential tests for detecting liner trend among the incoming series of observations when a training sample is available a-priori. Their work is very useful in econometric or environmental monitoring under certain situations. The present work is intended for generalization of their tests for any monotone trend. We develop two nonparametric tests for the identity of some unknown univariate continuous distribution functions against monotone or unidirectional trend in location. One of these two tests is based on usual ranks and the other is based on sequential ranks. These are typical nonparametric tests for monitoring structural changes. Performance of the two tests are compared using asymptotic studies as well as through some numerical results based on Monte-Carlo simulations. An illustration is offered using a real data on monthly production of certain beverage.     

A response-adaptive design in crossover trial

In the present work, whenever the response variables are binary, we frame an adaptive allocation rule for a two-treatment two-period crossover design in the presence of possible carry-over effects. The proposed rule is a combination of the play-the-winner and randomized play-the-winner rules. We study various properties of the proposed rule through asymptotics and simulations. Some related inferential problems are also considered. The proposed procedure is compared with some possible competitor.     

Measures of Deprivation and their Meaning in Terms of Social Satisfaction

This paper proposes relative and absolute measures of deprivation using social satisfaction functions. The relative (absolute) measure gives us the amount by which social satisfaction can be increased in proportional (absolute) terms by redistributing incomes equally. We also demonstrate the existence of a relationship between summary indices of deprivation (including the Gini coefficient, the maximin index, the coefficient of variation and their absolute counterparts) and social satisfaction.     

Elderly health care: diverse cultural implication

ABSTRACT

Cultural diversities, histories, communities and nations are intricately intertwined with experiencing old age. Individual and/or household culture, norms and expectations precede the decision-making process for health-seeking behaviour that influences elderly people’s choice and use of health-care services. This study addresses the understanding of this issue among migrant Bangladeshi elderly women from culturally and linguistically diverse background, residing in North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India. Accordingly, data were collected through purposive sampling from 104 elderly women, all aged above 65. Processed data highlighted inconvenience – related to (language) pronunciation, socio-economic status, traditional health beliefs, understandings and practices, and reliance on alternative medical amenities.