What's So “Special” About Airport Authorities? Assessing the Administrative Structure of U.S. Airports

An ample academic literature discusses airports' utility as economic development anchors for metropolitan areas, yet very little is known about the administrative apparatus of these important local government enterprises. To better understand airport structure and management in the United States, directors of primary airports were surveyed. Based on this national survey, the administrative structure and position of airports with regard to local government—i.e., special district or functional department—were examined to determine the place these entities occupy on the local government management landscape, as well as the implications of retaining airport authorities in studies of special-purpose governments. This essay concludes that airport authorities do not follow the conventional form and function of special-purpose governments. Consequently, analyses of special-purpose governments should exclude airport authorities because these nonconforming entities may cloud rather than clarify our true understanding of special-purpose governments.     

Reviving the Kansai cotton industry: engineering expertise and knowledge sharing in the early Meiji period

This article analyses the acquisition and application of new cotton spinning technologies in Japan in the early Meiji period, and the ways in which this knowledge helped to mobilise existing resources of human and financial capital. It focusses on the early development of three pioneering firms, the Hirano, Amagasaki and Settsu companies, all of which after 1918 became part of Dainihon Spinning, one of the ‘Big Three’ textile firms of prewar Japan. By looking at the ways in which these companies diffused technical and other expertise, secured finance, and addressed the problems that had confounded earlier initiatives, it shows how technological knowhow from outside the Osaka region was a key factor that enabled the mobilisation of the capital and expertise of business and personal networks in Kansai, and in the process rebuilt the region's traditional predominance in cotton production, laying the foundations for the industry's global competitiveness.     

After representation: recent discussions of the relation between language and literature

It is argued that contemporary discussions of literary representation - organized around the category of experience and its structuralist critique - are misleading. First, it is shown that although literary experience does not provide a foundation for representation, such experience is, nonetherless, not merely a chimera projected from an unacknowledged ‘grammar’. Second,it is shown that literary representations have conditions of possibility which are not reducible to language as it is conceived in structuralist theory.In conclusion, it is argued that if literary representation has no single foundation in experience or in language, then general theories of representation must give way to a more piecemeal ‘rhetoric’of literary capacities.     

Impact of early intervention for youth with problematic sexual behaviors and their caregivers

ABSTRACT

Targeting broad implementation of early intervention services has a high potential for impact given the prevalence of child sexual abuse committed by youth and the low recidivism rate following effective interventions. This multisite quasi-experimental study examined the outcomes for 320 youth ages 10–14 years and their caregivers who participated in community-based problematic sexual behavior – cognitive behavior therapy (PSB-CBT). Significant reductions in PSB with a large effect size (e.g. t(126)?=?11.69, p?<?.001, d?=?2.08) were found. No site differences were found, despite racial and regional diversity. Nonsexual behaviour problems, emotional problems, and trauma symptoms also significantly improved. Positive outcomes extended to caregivers. Recommended next steps include rigorous strategies for examining the impact of widespread implementation of evidence-based early intervention programmes on the prevention of sexual abuse, complemented with thoughtful efforts to develop and implement policies and procedures that improve the safety and well-being of all children in the community.     

Jurisdiction and Scale: Rent Arrears,Social Housing,and Human Rights

This article draws on the recent work of Mariana Valverde on jurisdiction and scale to frame a study of the interaction between mandatory possession proceedings brought by one particular type of social housing provider – housing associations – and national as well as human rights law. It was the explicit political choice to focus social housing provision on housing associations, as opposed to local authorities, which opened up the mandatory possession jurisdiction. The essence of the argument is that, despite the apparent incommensurability of these different scales and jurisdictions, they are able to accommodate each other quite happily. Two sets of texts are used to develop this argument. First, consideration is given to the legal technicality through which mandatory possession proceedings might be challenged. Second, we draw on data from a study of housing associations practices and policies on the use of one particular mandatory ground of possession for rent arrears, demonstrating the way in which scale and jurisdiction, political rationality and technologies intertwine.     

Mother Abuse: A Matter of Youth Justice,Child Welfare or Domestic Violence?

International evidence suggests that in advanced welfare states the abuse of parents, most particularly mothers, by their (most frequently male) adolescent children is increasingly prevalent. In the United Kingdom, however, child‐to‐mother abuse remains one of the most under‐acknowledged and under‐researched forms of family violence. Although it is an issue shrouded in silence, stigma, and shame, the authors' work in the youth justice sphere, focusing on interventions to deal with anti‐social behaviour, suggests that adolescent violence toward mothers is a topical and prevalent issue. We identify different ways of conceptualizing it in the policy realms of youth justice, child welfare, and domestic violence. The behaviour of both child/young person and mother is constructed in ways which inform the assignment of blame and responsibility. The paper highlights the silence that surrounds the issue in both the policy and wider academic spheres, hiding the failure of service providers to respond to this very destructive form of intimate interpersonal violence.