Young People who have Sexually Abused: What do they (and their parents) want from Professionals?

This article presents the findings of a small scale qualitative study of user perspectives in the adolescent sexual aggression field. Twenty four service users who had received intervention from nine different specialist providers completed a structured questionnaire about their experiences of professional involvement. Both young people who had sexually abused and parents identified the kinds of professional intervention which they found useful, as well as practices that they experienced as unhelpful. Young people and their families alike were found to value supportive interventions which gave them an opportunity to gain insight into the nature of sexual abuse as well to address their own feelings about their problems.     

Young Children as Wayfarers: Learning about Place by Moving Through It

This article describes the walking and moving of young children around places. It is based on an ethnographic study of children aged between 24 and 36 months visiting a museum. Drawing on Ingold's (2007) concept of wayfaring, the author argues movement through place creates embodied, tacit ways of knowing and experiencing the world. This embodied and tacit knowledge is not well‐accounted for in dominant models of how young children learn. In this study, wayfaring both enabled the children to learn about places and routes, and led to the development of traditions, in which collective meanings and actions were attached to particular locations.     

Improving Weight of Evidence Approaches to Chemical Evaluations

Federal and other regulatory agencies often use or claim to use a weight of evidence (WoE) approach in chemical evaluation. Their approaches to the use of WoE, however, differ significantly, rely heavily on subjective professional judgment, and merit improvement. We review uses of WoE approaches in key articles in the peer‐reviewed scientific literature, and find significant variations. We find that a hypothesis‐based WoE approach, developed by Lorenz Rhomberg et al., can provide a stronger scientific basis for chemical assessment while improving transparency and preserving the appropriate scope of professional judgment. Their approach, while still evolving, relies on the explicit specification of the hypothesized basis for using the information at hand to infer the ability of an agent to cause human health impacts or, more broadly, affect other endpoints of concern. We describe and endorse such a hypothesis‐based WoE approach to chemical evaluation.     

Indigenous Resource Management Plans: Transporting Non-Indigenous People into the Indigenous World

The paper explores the degree to which Indigenous groups perceive that resource management plans they develop are able to help deliver outcomes they seek through formal planning systems. It does this by a case study of practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. Some Indigenous groups are concerned they are being encouraged to devote considerable effort to production of major planning documents for use in interaction with environmental agencies, yet in practice, such plans can appear to have a limited role in bringing about desired change or affecting wider planning processes. The research contributes a New Zealand dimension to this international debate.     

Accounting for the Performance of Environmentally Significant Behavior: The Symbolic Significance of Recycling

The scientific community has pronounced climate change unequivocal and its consequences disastrous. Yet Americans' behavioral response to the global social problem of environmental degradation has been largely confined to the individual act of recycling. This article examines why Americans are not doing more to address climate change and other environmental issues. Taking a cognitive sociological perspective, I describe how Americans think about environmental issues and pro‐environmental behavior. I draw on Swidler's concept of a “cultural tool kit,” to examine the cultural narratives Americans use to account for the small amount of pro‐environmental behavior they perform. The act of recycling functions as a synecdoche for pro‐environmental behavior in general, allowing individuals to over‐claim the significance of a modest amount of pro‐environmental behavior. I argue that Americans' failure to engage with environmental issues at a collective level is rooted in the individualized culture of American environmentalism.     

Understanding Care Leavers in Russia: Young People's Experiences of Institutionalisation

Abstract

Care leavers in Russia represent one of the most disadvantaged groups in society. However, they have rarely been the focus of welfare policy debate and they receive little or no support in their independent living. This paper presents the findings of a survey of Russian care leavers. The emphasis is on care leavers' experiences of the Russian institutional care system, and the issues that impacted on their postcare transition to adulthood. A number of factors were found to influence the wellbeing of care leavers, including placement instability, institutional isolation, poor education, stigmatisation of care leavers, relationships with “houseparents”, and supportive and often challenging friendships. Findings are discussed in relation to debates about the degree and nature of institutional care of children in Russia and elsewhere.     

RACIALIZING CULTURE IS ORDINARY1

This article engages a discussion of Raymond Williams claim that culture is ordinary to explore some of the ways in which racializing culture is embedded in everyday interactions and processes of identification that found subjectivity. It argues that there is a pressing need for social policy analysts to come to grips with the mechanisms through which ‘culture’ comes to be racialized and an object/subject of governance and suggests that current, high-profile articulations of the ‘problems’ of multiculturalism, profoundly hinder such a development.     

Biologically Motivated Cancer Risk Models

A two-stage dose response model is proposed for use in cancer risk assessment. The model assumes that transformation probabilities and cellular dynamics are exposure- and time-dependent.