Adolescent Depressed Mood in a Multiethnic Sample

This research assessed whether there is an impact of race-ethnicity on depressed mood among adolescents, independent of socioeconomic status, whether gender differences in depressed mood are apparent within all race-ethnicity subgroups, and whether pubertal development influences depressed mood in a similar manner within gender and race-ethnicity subgroups. A three-stage, area probability sampling frame was utilized to select adolescents, ages 12–17 years, for an in-person interview. Depressed mood was assessed by the Children's Depression Inventory. Compared to Whites, African Americans, or Asian Americans, Latinos reported more symptoms of depressed mood, a finding that was independent of socioeconomic status. Advancing puberty was associated with depressed mood only among females, but the timing of pubertal changes, relative to ones peers, was related to depressed mood among both males and females, and among Latinos.     

Voter Disenfranchisement and Policy toward Election Reforms

How did poverty, race, population density, and other demographic characteristics affect disenfranchisement in the 2004 presidential election? I argue that there are two types of disenfranchisement: partisan disenfranchisement, which targets Democrats, and structural disenfranchisement, which targets members of low‐status groups. Drawing demographic data from the United States census in 2000, and voting data from the secretaries of state websites, I use a negative binomial regression to correlate these variables with the incidence of voter disenfranchisement as collected by the Election Incident Reporting System, for the three “swing” states of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, with the “safe” states of California and Texas as controls. The results of this analysis indicate that disenfranchisement increases with population density, Black population, Democratic loyalty, and as the margin of victory decreases. Income and education also correlate with an increase in reported incidents of disenfranchisement, but that likely reflects the failings of self‐report data.     

Risk management for targeting customs controls in developing countries: a risky venture for revenue performance?

Customs authorities in developing countries are often reluctant to forget systematic inspections for fear of risking revenue loss. Such physical inspections however, impede rather than facilitate trade. Control selectivity is therefore a key issue in customs administration reform. This paper shows how a sophisticated risk management method can facilitate trade by automatically and rationally selecting transactions, with the end result of actually enhancing revenue performance. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The arts of refusal: tragic unreconciliation,pariah humour,and haunting laughter

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates Hannah Arendt’s writings on tragic unreconciliation and pariah humour as offering creative strategies for confronting the deadening of emotion that enables people to become reconciled to what they should refuse or resist. She offers a distinctive contribution to debates on reconciliation and justice, I suggest, by articulating a tragic approach to unreconciliation. Yet Arendt recognised that tragic accounts of violence can reinforce denial and resignation. In writings on the ‘hidden tradition’ of the ‘Jew as pariah,’ Arendt suggests that humour can be an important response to tragic accounts of political violence and a strategy for awakening an emotional response in those who cannot perceive tragedies to which they have become reconciled. As arts of refusal, tragic unreconciliation and pariah humour invoke and subvert the tragic imagination to reveal possibilities for solidarity, responsibility, and transformation that challenge problematic forms of reconciliation – reconciliation to one’s role as a participant in, or bystander to abuse, reconciliation as self-abnegating assimilation, and reconciliation as compromise, scapegoating, or denial.     

‘Without Education You Can Never Become President’: Teenage Pregnancy and Pseudo-empowerment in Post-Ebola Sierra Leone

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the emergence of ‘teenage pregnancy’ as a new policy focus in post-Ebola Sierra Leone and explores how Sierra Leoneans interpret the problem of ‘teenage pregnancy’. I argue that the new policy focus is not indicative of changing or new problems. Rather, ‘teenage pregnancy’ has created opportunities for donors and the Government of Sierra Leone to continue cooperation in gender politics. At the same time, Sierra Leoneans are clearly concerned about ‘teenage pregnancy’, and many agree with sensitization campaigns that responsibilize young women and girls while downplaying structural factors that render them vulnerable to arrangements involving transactional sex.     

The most plausible pro-coercion view: requiring informed agreement while penalizing non-participation in research

In ‘(Why) should we require consent to research?’ Alan Wertheimer probes whether it is legitimate for the government to ‘coerce’ people into participating in biomedical research, including interventional biomedical research. In debating the rules that ought to govern participation in interventional biomedical research, we should distinguish two separate moral claims. First, interventional research should proceed only when the subject has given her informed agreement. Second, it is legitimate for the state to set a requirement that people participate in interventional biomedical research, and to penalize or punish those who refuse to participate. The most plausible ‘pro-coercion’ view accepts both of these claims. Though I stop short of endorsing this view, it captures important ‘pro-coercion’ and ‘anti-coercion’ intuitions.