Regulating Land Development: Local Market Structures and Structured Markets

Current rounds of economic restructuring together with the changing priorities accorded to agricultural production are leading to significant shifts in rural property and tenure relations. This paper analyzes these processes with reference to rural Britain; it reports on empirical evidence collected in the county of Buckinghamshire in southeast England. Two significant types of new rural land development are considered—small-scale industrial units arising out of the conversion of agricultural buildings and golf course developments and their ancillary leisure-based activities. Post-war productionist forms of regulation and particularly established types of agricultural tenure are now being modified by farmers and nonagricultural interests committed to the development of rural land. New demands and market structures are requiring more diversity and flexibility by which land is owned, occupied, and used. These emergent, more flexible macro tenures are based on new sets of social and political alliances between farmers, developers, and local planning systems. Agricultural land is increasingly being viewed as a capital rather than as a productive asset associated with more volatile and regionally defined markets whose regulation is formative.     

The Epistemic Culture of Homebrewers and Microbrewers

Homebrewing and microbrewing have been growing in popularity during the last few decades. One way this phenomenon can be analyzed is through the culture of knowledge production. We use the subfield of science and technology studies (STS) to examine homebrewing and microbrewing in this light. Early STS was interested in the social construction of scientific facts within daily practices of scientists. Through these early studies, STS revealed not only the process of scientific fact creation but also existence of “epistemic cultures.” Our study investigates the epistemic culture of homebrewers and microbrewers. Analysis of this epistemic culture was accomplished through use of in-depth interviews with homebrewers and microbrewers at several regional sites. Three major themes emerged from the data: home space as lab; the art and science of beer brewing; and brewing as “friendship”. These themes establish a foundation for understanding the shared epistemic culture existing between homebrewers and microbrewers.     

Activating adult allies from a rural community on lesbian,gay, bisexual,transgender, and queer student issues in school using photovoice

Purpose: Many students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ) face hostile school environments that can negatively impact their mental health and education. This study involved a photovoice project where high school students from a gay-straight alliance in the rural southeastern United States took photographs that depicted the issues LGBTQ students were facing and then exhibited their photographs and stories to individuals from the school system and local community to promote awareness, dialogue, and action. Methods: Twenty adults who attended the photovoice exhibit responded to an online survey about their experiences with the intervention. Results: Eighty-five percent of adults reported that the intervention made them think about issues they had not previously considered, including the struggles LGBTQ youths face, gender issues, and living in a rural community. Common emotions experienced at the intervention included feeling excited, concern for the youths, and proud of the youths. Furthermore, 81% of the adults indicated that they would take action or behave differently as a result of the intervention, including supporting and affirming LGBTQ students, using gender-neutral and -inclusive language, and confronting bias in themselves and others. Conclusions: Photovoice is a promising strategy for LGBTQ students to activate adult allies in their community.     

Cancer Risk Assessment with Intermittent Exposure

Applications of methods for carcinogenic risk assessment often focus on estimating lifetime cancer risk. With intermittent or time-dependent exposures, lifetime risk is often approximated on the basis of a lifetime average daily dose (LADD). In this article, we show that there exists a lifetime equivalent constant dose (LECD) which leads to the same lifetime risk as the actual time-dependent exposure pattern. The ratio C = LECD/LADD then provides a measure of accuracy of risk estimates based on the LADD, as well as a basis for correcting such estimates. Theoretical results derived under the classical multistage model and the two-stage birth-death-mutation model suggest that the maximum value of C, which represents the factor by which the LADD may lead to underestimates of risk, will often lie in the range of 2- to 5-fold. The practical application of these results is illustrated in the case of astronauts subjected to relatively short-term exposure to volatile organics in a closed space station environment, and in the case of the ingestion of pesticide residues in food where consumption patterns vary with age.     

The rescission of behaviors: Inconsistent responses in adolescent sexuality data

In longitudinal survey research, certain questions can be rescinded illogically. For instance, respondents who at Time 1 report having had sexual intercourse may at Time 2 report never having done so. This paper reports measurement techniques and analyses of these types of inconsistencies from an ongoing longitudinal adolescent sexuality project. Inconsistencies in intercourse, masturbation, and other sexual behaviors are reported and compared to rates from other studies and other less sensitive behaviors within the same study. Three conclusions are presented: (1) inconsistencies should be considered a natural part of any longitudinal survey process and should be incorporated into the response model; (2) inconsistency rates in these particular data support the contention that adolescent sexuality data of appropriate quality for analytical purposes can be obtained; and (3) inconsistency rates in fact contain substantive information concerning the processes under consideration.     

ALTERNATIVE COLLECTIVE-GOODS MODELS OF MILITARY ALLIANCES: THEORY AND EMPIRICS

How should the defense activities of allies be aggregated to determine the alliance-wide level of defense? Two alternative models–best shot and weakest link–are contrasted with simple summation of defense spending or manpower for aggregating allies' defense efforts. We extend the joint product model to include these methods of aggregation, and devise an empirical procedure to test between best-shot and weakest -link models. We apply this test to four alliances: Triple Alliance (1880–1914), Triple Entente (1880–1914), Warsaw Pact (1963–1987), and NATO (1961–1987). The testing procedure can be applied to other collective choice situations.     

Rural studies: Modernism, postmodernism and the ‘post-rural’

In response to Philo [(1992b), Neglected rural geographies: a review. Journal of Rural Studies8, 193–207), who calls for rural studies to take the study of ‘others’ more seriously, we argue the need to take postmodernism more seriously. The paper focuses upon the production of knowledge about rural areas by academics. In the narrative that we provide here, the ‘rural’ had a strong presence until Pahl's critique of the rural-urban continuum which both diminished the status of the rural and emphasised the role of class in shaping particular spaces. Newby and his colleagues applied class analysis to agriculture, likewise undermining the significance of the rural. Further applications of general social theory, such as the political economy and restructuring approaches, show how modernist rural studies seem to be fighting a losing battle to posit the indispensability of the significance of the urban-rural division as an explanation; articulating and rearticulating the divide within a whole range of processes: economic, social and cultural. Rural social scientists have woven this modernist narrative, but, as Philo shows, one effect has been the neglect of certain social groups, cultures and identities. However, in contrast to Philo, we argue that a rather fundamental reassessment of social scientific approaches to the rural is required if these ‘neglected others’ are to be satisfactorily considered. We believe a ‘sociology of postmodernism’ would offer a more reflexive perspective on the processes which give rise to ‘the rural’. We thus call for an end to the use of universal or global concepts such as ‘rural’ (or the ‘urban’) and for a concern with the way places are ‘made’. This will entail a focus on ‘power’ as certain actors impose ‘their’ rurality on others. We term this the study of the ‘post-rural’.     

The probability of degenerate maximum-likelihood estimates with randomly truncated survival data

We study the nonparametric maximum-likelihood estimator of the marginal distribution function in bivariate data with truncated sum (Woodroofe 1985), and calculate the probability that it will assign zero probability to a range of observed values. We show that in a simple artificial model with uniform intensity in both variables the probability may be expressed using recursive formulae, and that large-sample approximations valid under weak regularity conditions show good agreement with as few as 20 observations. In the uniform-intensity model, the probability of degenerate estimates is rather small, being just over 5% with a dataset of 20 observations and falling below 1% with 125 observations. However, in a model of transfusion-associated AIDS in 125 children and adults (Kalbfleisch and Lawless 1989), the probability of degenerate estimates is much larger—about 30% with 20 observations and 3% with the actual 125 observations. This is largely because both the infection and incubation density are increasing over time. Such a pattern makes the condition for degeneracy, i.e., relatively high observed intensity at extreme values of each variable, much more likely.     

A robust test for asymptotic independence of bivariate extremes

We show that the existing tests for asymptotic independence are sensitive to outliers. A robust test is proposed. The new test is made stable under contamination through a shrinkage scheme. Simulations show that the new test performs well in the presence of contaminated data while maintaining good properties when there is no contamination. An application to real data shows the added value of our new robust approach.