Vulnerability to Friends’ Suicide Influence: The Moderating Effects of Gender and Adolescent Depression

This paper examines whether severity of depression reduces or intensifies the relationship between friends’ suicide attempt and adolescent's own attempt to commit suicide, and whether there are gender differences in this interrelationship. Using logistic regression and data from a nationally representative sample of adolescents studied at 2 points in time, this study yielded significant findings. First, friends’ suicide attempt and adolescent depression each predicts adolescent's own attempt to commit suicide, and these effects are similar for both boys and girls. Second, highly depressed adolescents are less likely than low- or nondepressed adolescents to attempt suicide when their friends attempt suicide, and this relationship is observed mainly among adolescent boys. Finally, for adolescent girls, depression reduces the relationship between friends’ suicidal attempt and adolescent's own attempt but this effect is not statistically significant. These results are discussed in light of their theoretical importance and policy implications.Professor of Sociology at San Diego State University. Has published in the areas of crime/delinquency, drug use/abuse, intergenerational processes, and psychosocial stress. Recent publications have appeared in Western Criminology Review, Social Psychology Quarterly, Sociological Inquiry, Journal of Adolescent Research, and Youth and Society.     

Citizenship: Towards a feminist synthesis

A synthesis of rights and participatory approaches to citizenship, linked through the notion of human agency, is proposed as the basis for a feminist theory of citizenship. Such a theory has to address citizenship's exclusionary power in relation to both nation-state ‘outsiders’ and ‘insiders’. With regard to the former, the article argues that a feminist theory and politics of citizenship must embrace an internationalist agenda. With regard to the latter, it offers the concept of a ‘differentiated universalism’ as an attempt to reconcile the universalism which lies at the heart of citizenship with the demands of a politics of difference. Embracing also the reconstruction of the public-private dichotomy, citizenship, reconceptualized in this way, can, it is argued, provide us with an important theoretical and political tool.     

Social Support, Risk-Level and Safety Actions Following Acute Assessment of Suicidal Youth

The purpose of the pilot study was to examine the interrelationship between social support, risk-level, and safety actions for 2 groups of suicidal adolescents (50 attempters and 50 ideators), who had presented for an acute assessment at an outpatient mental health service. A social support model was proposed in which it was thought that information related to patients' social support would impact upon the types of risk-level and safety actions made by clinicians. Data was collected from a total of 100 patient files, utilizing the acute assessment reports (e.g., reports assessing risk of self-harm). Findings show that groups differed significantly on indices of negative support severity, positive support, and risk-level. Limited support was found for the proposed social support model. Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.     

Sex trafficking and the mainstream of market culture

The majority of analyses of the international trade in women focusses on the rôle of organised crime groups in the supply and delivery of women across borders and into the local sex trade. This paper (a) attempts to locate the demand for traded women in a broader analysis of changes in the political economy of developed studies and (b) more specifically situates the trade in women in relation to the new-found centrality of sex in the mainstream of popular culture.     

“A View You Won’t Get Anywhere Else”? Depressed Mothers, Public Regulation and ‘Private’ Narrative

The existence of ‘postnatal’ or maternal depression (PND) is contested, and subject to various medico-legal and cultural definitions. Mothers remain subject to complex systems of scrutiny and regulation. In medico-legal discourse, postnatal distress is portrayed as a tragic pathology of mysterious (but probably hormonal) origin. A PND diagnosis denotes ‘imbalance’ in the immediate postnatal period, although women experience increased incidence of depression throughout maternity. Current treatment patterns emphasise medication and tend to elide the perspective of the individual sufferer in favour of a blanket disease model. I emphasise the need for a feminist reassessment of maternal distress and the means available to ‘testify’ to its forms, and argue for PND to be analysed in biopolitical terms, perhaps as a ‘habitus’ materialising the low status and pervasive privatisation of Western mothers.

Law, Gender and Sexuality: The Making of a Field

The papers in the following section arose from a roundtable discussion organised by the AHRC Research Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality, titled ‘Law, Gender and Sexuality: The Making of a Field’. Participants in the roundtable were asked to reflect on the challenges confronting law, gender and sexuality (LGS) as an area of research and scholarship, and to ask what benefits, possibilities, risks and dangers accompany the establishment of a research terrain. The papers address such questions as ‘what is a field and how is it made?’; ‘has LGS attained the status of a field?’; ‘what does it mean to locate oneself within the field of LGS?’; and ‘what is the relationship between feminism and LGS?’. They also consider possible future directions for the field of LGS. Together, the papers provide a variety of differing, and sometimes conflicting, perspectives on the developing body of intellectual and political activity that might be labelled ‘law, gender and sexuality’.