What’s Sex (Composition) Got to Do with It? The Importance of Sex Composition of Gangs for Female and Male Members’ Offending and Victimization

Sex composition of groups has been theorized in organizational sociology and found in prior work to structure female and male members’ behaviors and experiences. Peer group and gang literature similarly finds that the sex gap in offending varies across groups of differing sex ratios. Drawing on this and other research linking gang membership, offending, and victimization, we examine whether sex composition of gangs is linked to sex differences in offending in this sample, further assess whether sex composition similarly structures females’ and males’ victimization experiences, and if so, why. Self-report data from gang members in a multi-site, longitudinal study of 3,820 youths are employed. Results support previous findings about variations in member delinquency by both sex and sex composition of the gang and also indicate parallel variations in members’ victimization. These results are further considered within the context of facilitating effects such as gender dynamics, gang characteristics, and normative orientation.     

‘My Neighbour Drinks Clean Water,While I Continue To Suffer’: An Analysis of the Intra-Community Impacts of a Rural Water Supply Project in Mozambique

Rural water planners assume the positive impacts of community water projects are spread evenly across the population. We test this assumption by looking at the distribution of benefits within communities that received handpumps in rural Mozambique. Using survey and qualitative data we analyse the characteristics of those groups who benefited from the handpumps and also explore household decision-making processes. Handpump use was determined by distance, availability of other sources, perceptions of water quality, political affiliation, and wealth. We argue that the handpumps reinforced existing social divisions related to income and political affiliation and created new geographic divisions within communities.     

Property Rights and Forest Commons

Although property rights have been linked to a variety of positive social outcomes at the macro‐level, less research focuses on how property rights affect the benefits that actors receive at the micro‐level. This article examines property rights to a common‐pool resource (CPR) that are asymmetrically allocated among users, and presents a theoretical argument that property rights affect the allocation of resource benefits in two important ways. First, users with extensive property rights receive more benefits than users with limited property rights. Second, users with the power to influence how community rules are enforced—for example, landholders and ethnic majorities—more effectively define and defend their property and thus receive disproportionate CPR benefits compared to users with similar levels of property rights, but with less power. Using household‐level survey data in Bolivia, Kenya, Mexico, and Uganda, collected after a period of property rights decentralization, the empirical analysis finds support for these propositions. We conclude that power critically moderates the effects of property rights on the commons.     

“It’s Better to Overreact”: School Officials’ Fear and Perceived Risk of Rampage Attacks and the Criminalization of American Public Schools

In recent decades, highly-publicized school rampage attacks with multiple victims have caused widespread fear throughout the United States. Pulling from in-depth interviews with school officials (administrators, counselors, security and police officers, and teachers), this article discusses officials’ perceptions of fear and risk regarding rampage shootings and how this relates to their justification for and acquiescence to the expansion of punitive discipline and increased security. Data collected in this study provide additional understanding of the causes of enhanced discipline and security from the perspective of those tasked with administering school safety in the wake of Columbine. Utilizing insight from moral panic theory, the findings suggest that, when the genuinely high potential cost of school massacres fused with an exaggerated perception of their likelihood and randomness, school rampage attacks came to be viewed as a risk that could not be tolerated and must be avoided at nearly any cost.     

The Science of happiness

正A maverick Chinese psychologist and his U.S.colleague discuss how to make China happier In the introduction to his 2004 book The Geography of Thought:How Asians and Westerners Think Differently…and Why,U.S.social psychologist Richard E.Nisbett describes how a"brilliant young student"from China prompted him to switch his focus to cultural psychology with the statement:"you know,the