Making a Place for Alternative Technologies: The Case of Agricultural Bio‐Inputs in Argentina

This article characterizes the ways in which the actors in charge of designing and implementing public policies intervene to promote the emergence of alternatives to problematic technologies. It is based on a case study conducted in Argentina that focuses on initiatives to promote the development of biological agricultural inputs in the context of increasingly controversial chemical inputs. The study spotlights the political, institutional, and semantic efforts made by policy makers and public administrations to ensure these new inputs find their way into organizations and onto their agendas. Their work consists in attenuating the boundaries between chemical and biological inputs, and reducing opposition by creating categories and organizations that downplay potential dissension and highlight the possible coexistence of technological paradigms. Contrary to what the injunctions of technological substitution suggest, we show that putting alternative technologies on the public agenda depends largely on their inclusion in institutional and regulatory infrastructures originally designed for technologies that are likely to decline. More broadly, it relies on the construction of continuity between the two types of technologies.     

Patriarchal unions = weaker unions? Industrial relations in the Asian garment industry

This paper explores how gender ideologies shape industrial relations in the Asian garment industry. Drawing on ethnographic research, it illustrates how widespread norm perceptions of acquiescent women and assertive men reinforce patriarchal, authoritarian unions. Even if privately critical, women may be reluctant to protest if they anticipate social disapproval. Such beliefs reinforce patriarchal unions, curbing women workers’ collective analysis, engagement, and activism. This weakens the collective power of labour to push for better working conditions. Tackling norm perceptions and building more inclusive unions may help strengthen the labour movement.     

An assessment of sexual health risk behaviors among female youth in juvenile detention

This study investigated the association between risky sexual behavior and drug use among female youth sentenced to a regional juvenile detention center. Preincarceration behavioral health risk data were collected from a modified version of the Youth Risk Behaviors Surveillance Survey completed by respondents. Almost all of the 105 participants had been detained before their current sentence, more than half of them were sexually active before the age of 13, and 70% had smoked marijuana or drank alcohol by age 14. A regression analysis was conducted to determine if preincarceration sexual health risk behaviors were significant enough to predict continued risk behaviors related to pregnancy, disease prevention, and substance use. Findings indicate that youth detention-based prevention programs should emphasize sexual and drug-risk reduction strategies as a means to reduce risky behaviors for this population.     

Preventing violence through hip hop: an evolutionary perspective

ABSTRACT

For decades Hip Hop cultural practices have been disparaged for allegedly inciting and being responsible for the eruption of urban violence. This assumption, likely built upon pre-existing biases regarding the street culture and ethnic minorities where Hip Hop emerged, ignored how some of the genre’s main elements – particularly freestyle rap, breakin’ or breakdancing and graffiti tagging – initially served the purpose of providing at-risk youths with real alternatives to direct physical violence in their day-to-day lives, and continue do so today. It has also ignored broader analogies with other cross-cultural and cross-species manifestations of similar practices that have served for millennia as effective mechanisms for reducing the likelihood of potentially lethal violence. By presenting these manifestations – namely song dueling and mark making – in comparative terms with Hip Hop’s freestyle song and dance battles and tagging territorial contests, this article seeks to highlight the relevance and potential of Hip Hop for preventing violence while also suggesting a common evolutionary backdrop within the context of strategies aimed at minimizing intraspecific aggression.     

A Grand Coalition for the Euro: The Second Merkel Cabinet,the Euro Crisis and the Elections of 2013

This article argues that the reaction of the second Merkel government to the sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone was conditioned by informal and formal policy commitments that were put into place by the preceding CDU/CSU and SPD Grand Coalition after the financial crisis of 2007/08. The decisions were shaped by a cross-party consensus among Christian Democrats and Social Democrats about the causes for the good performance of the German economy in the past decade. Both parties also shared the determination to save the euro and to preserve the integrity of the Eurozone. As a result, an informal Grand Coalition emerged in 2011/12 which shaped Germany's policy reactions during the euro crisis down to the details. One important consequence of this development was that the euro bailout measures and the ensuing reforms of the institutional framework of the Eurozone did not become decisive issues during the Federal elections of 2013, despite their unpopularity among the voters.     

Remittances and Working Poverty

Abstract

This article shows that the level and the predictability of remittances reduce working poverty in receiving economies through their effects on labour market dynamics. It takes advantage of the new cross-country dataset (ILO, KILM 7th edition) containing information on the share of individuals working for less than US$2 per day. To identify the main impacts, the article proposes a novel approach to deal with the endogeneity of remittances and migration. In addition, the results are robust to the possible error in measuring working poverty, to the potential attrition bias, and to the presence of various control variables.     

Pain,pleasure and bridal beauty: mapping postfeminist bridal perfection

Despite renewed media attention on the wedding, and the emphasis that this pays to bridal performance, feminist analysis of wedding culture has made few inroads. Accounts are needed that understand women's experience of the wedding day, the narrative of becoming the bride, and the way this takes place against a backdrop of postfeminist ambivalence, where traditional wedding practices are re-fashioned through discourses of (consumer) choice and empowerment. In this article, we draw on qualitative data collected with five married women from the Netherlands, who spoke to us about their wedding day and their experience of being/becoming brides. We show how retraditionalisation shapes a new romaticisation of wedding day storytelling, constructed through transformation and the experience of beauty. In analysing these narratives, we show how postfeminist bridal perfection comes to anchor the subjective and affective power of ‘the wedding’ in contemporary culture.     

Perceptions of Dishonesty: Understanding Parents’ Reports of and Influence on Children and Adolescents’ Lie-Telling

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Previous studies suggest parents lack knowledge regarding child and adolescent lie-telling; however, no study to date has examined children’s and...