Features of the demography of Palestine

The objections which Dr Bromberger raises against official vital statistics in Palestine are considered by the author in this paper, and Dr Bromberger's methods of estimation are carefully examined. While defects in the statement of ages and some under-registration of Moslem deaths are admitted, the conclusion is reached that there is no inherent inconsistency in the published figures, and that any errors would not affect the differential rates of growth of the Arab and Jewish populations.     

It's a rave new world: estimating the prevalence and perceived harm of ecstasy and other drug use among club rave attendees

The use of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA or "ecstasy") appears to be increasing worldwide, with "rave" attendees being one high-risk population. To date, however, only one study has collected ecstasy use information from rave attendees in the United States. To address this limitation, we collected self-report drug use information from 70 adult "club rave" attendees within the Baltimore-Washington corridor in April and May 2002. Data collection was scheduled between 12 A.M. and 5 A.M. Participation rates were high, with 85 percent of the club rave attendees completing the interview. Eighty-six percent of the respondents reported lifetime ecstasy use, 51 percent reported 30-day use, and 30 percent reported using ecstasy within the two days preceding the interview. While past-year ecstasy users were comparable to non-users with respect to a host of demographic and drug use variables, non-ecstasy users were significantly more likely than past-year users to perceive risks associated with the regular use of alcohol and ecstasy. Not surprisingly, non-ecstasy users were significantly more likely than past-year users to perceive harmful long-term physical and psychological effects associated with ecstasy ingestion. These findings suggest that rave attendees may be an important population for ecstasy-related prevention efforts.     

Time,history and the making of the industrial middle class: the story of Samuel Smith

This article uses the politics of time to explore the making of the industrial middle class. It argues that anxieties about the decline of industry and the future of liberalism at the end of the nineteenth century fuelled a small explosion in life writing, prosopography and popular history. Accounts combined anecdotes about everyday life and reminiscences of the great civic age in a network of texts that attempted to recreate the associational life of the industrial middle class and present it as the foundation of national progress. However, slips in time between retrospection, nostalgia, memory and history reveal the complexity of late-Victorian anti-industrialism and the tensions in liberalism between a political culture that was inclusive and open and a social world that was not. The article combines a deep reading of the autobiography of the cotton magnate and liberal politician Samuel Smith alongside popular local history and collective biography. In so doing it shows how life stories were consciously composed as history, intent on shaping the provincial middle class as a historical force at a time of uncertainty about the future of industry and of liberalism.     

Trust Relations in High-Reliability Organizations

Workplace trust has been recognized by researchers and practitioners alike to be an important component of an effective safety culture. However, despite this, the concept of trust as it relates to safety has been underresearched, particularly within high-reliability organizations. This article examines the importance of trust relations and their concomitant impact on safety culture within the specific context of high-reliability organizations using relevant literatures. The article then explores the implications of high and low trust situations for safety through case studies conducted within the nuclear and offshore industries as exemplars of organizations operating within high-reliability sectors.     

Reviews

Ramsay MacMullen, Roman Social Relations 50 B.C. to A.D. 284 (1974), ix+212 (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, $8.95).

Georges Duby, The Early Growth of the European Economy: Warriors and Peasants from the Seventh to the Twelfth Centuries (1974), x+292 (Weidenfeld &; Nicolson, £4.00).

M. K. Ashby, The Changing English Village: A History of Bledington, Gloucestershire in Its Setting 1066–1914 (1974), xxiii+425 (The Roundwood Press, Kineton, £5.50).

Jan de Vries, The Dutch Rural Economy in the Golden Age 1500–1700 (1974)) xv+316 (Yale University Press, New Haven, £7.50).

Lawrence Stone, Family and Fortune: Studies in Aristocratic Finance in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1973), xviii+315 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, £4.50).

Roger Thompson, Women in Stuart England and America. A comparative study (1974), x+276 (Routledge &; Kegan Paul, £4.25).

Elizabeth Isichei, The Ibo People and the Europeans: The Genesis of a Relationship ‐to 1906 (1973), 207 (Faber &; Faber, £4.50).

Conjoacture Economique, structures sociales. Hommage &; Ernest Labrousse (1974), 547 (Mouton, Paris, 140 fr.).

Colin Lucas, The Structure of the Terror: the Example of Javogues and the Loire (1973), xvi+411 (Oxford University Press, £9.00).

Martha Vicinus, The Industrial Muse. A Study of Nineteenth Century British Working‐Class Literature (1975), x+357 (Croom Helm, £6.95).

David J. Pivar, Purity Crusade: Sexual Morality and Social Control, 1868–1900 (1973), x+308 (Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, £5.50).     

Communities of practice: Legitimacy not choice

Communities of practice has emerged as an alternative to other current sociolinguistic models such as speech communities and social networks, particularly in the area of language and gender. The valorization of non‐linguistic behaviours as adding further explanatory power to sociolinguistic models is timely: it has often been implicit in linguistic study (through ethnography) but rarely been given recognition. However, the types of self‐constituting communities of interest to sociolinguists are not the same as the communities of learning studied by Lave and Wenger (1991) and Wenger (1998) . If this construct is to be useful to sociolinguists, then the mechanisms by which it models access, gate‐keeping and its internal hierarchy need development. Using Eckert's (2000) Belten High data, and other work on adolescent talk, it is argued that gaining legitimate peripheral participation is a matter of sanction from within the hierarchy. Individuals do not have open access to communities based solely on their desire to be part of that community and to take part in its practices. While practices may define the community, the community determines who has access to that practice.     

The roles of social housing providers in creating ‘integrated’ communities

ABSTRACT

Cohesion and integration agendas in Britain can be characterised by localisation of ‘race relations’ responsibilities and the importance of local institutions in shaping neighbourhoods has been acknowledged. However, little is understood about the roles of housing providers in integration initiatives. Indeed, research on housing and race has experienced a lull in the 2000s. Thus, this paper aims to examine how social housing providers negotiate their positions and are complicit in constructing a certain vision of community. It draws on interviews from the ESRC Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE)’s work in the ethnically diverse neighbourhoods of Cheetham Hill (Manchester), Newham (London), Butetown (Cardiff) and Pollokshields and Govanhill (Glasgow). The paper makes three arguments: first, that race and ethnicity as facets of ‘integration’ have been subsumed into broader agendas, yet remain implicit in community building; second, that housing organisation practices are often detached from local meanings of community and prioritise exclusionary activities focusing on behaviour change and, third, that the roles of housing organisations in constructing ‘integrated’ communities are highly variable and localised, influenced by the history and contemporary dynamics of place.