Advancing the study of political cleavages through experimentation: Revisiting regionalism and redistributive preferences in Canada

The maintenance of welfare state policies requires citizen support for the provision of a social safety net through taxation and redistribution. Research has shown that a diverse political polity presents a risk to the welfare state; however, Canada bucks the trend and does not see citizen support for economic redistribution decline in response to immigration-based population diversity. Using Canada as our case, we argue that scholars of welfare state politics and redistribution should turn their attention to other sources of population heterogeneity in an effort to better understand how different political cleavages affect citizens’ redistributive preferences. We use an online experimental survey to manipulate the in-group identity of 500 Canadians. The survey enables respondents to identify with other in-group identities along regional, linguistic, income-group, and urban/rural characteristics. Our results find that while Canadians do have a strong baseline preference for redistributive behaviour, regional and linguistic cleavages moderate this outcome.     

Patterns and Correlates of Offender Versatility and Specialization Across a 23-Year Span for At-Risk Young Men

The authors examined patterns and correlates of offender specialization versus versatility, or more random offenses, among 206 at-risk men. Both official records and self-report data of offending from late childhood to ages 31–32 years old were used. Aggregate- and individual-level analyses indicated that the predominant offender pattern for this sample was versatility. Three correlates of offender versatility were examined (offense frequency, early onset, gang association). Aggregate-level findings consistently revealed offense frequency as a robust correlate of offender versatility, whereas individual-level findings differed among the three measures of offender versatility. The congruence of these findings with predictions from Patterson’s (1982) coercion model is discussed.     

Shopping for Men: The Single Woman Narrative

Philips adresses a relatively new genre of fiction for women readers- including works by Jane Green, Freya North, Jane Gordon, Marian Keyes and the journalist Kathryn Flett- namely, that of the working woman romance narrative. These are novels that are addressed to a generation of young women who have independent incomes, are in work and are skilled consumers. The title, 'Shopping for Men', refers both to the consumption of men as objects of romance, and to the deployment of consumer skills in order to create a man worthy of the heroine's desire. In these novels, romance and sexual desire are contingent upon the reader and heroine appreciating and valuing consumer items. Using Bourdieu's argument that distinctions of taste are integrally related to class relations, the paper suggests that 'Mr Right' in these novels is required to display an awareness of consumer labels, and an ability to purchase them that surpasses that of the heroine. Philips will suggest that, while the heroines of these narratives assume all the gains of feminism, the romantic expectations are those of traditional gender relations, and that, while the female protagonist is assumed to be a working woman with a successful career, the romantic denouement depends on a hero whose work and social status are superior to hers.     

The Role of the School Environment in Relational Aggression and Victimization

Research conducted over the last decade has documented both the high rates of and serious consequences associated with both victimization and perpetration of relational aggression. This study examines risk for involvement in relational aggression and victimization among middle school youth, evaluating both individual beliefs about violence, as well as aspects of the school environment, including interpersonal school climate and school responsiveness to violence. A sample of 5,625 primarily urban minority middle school youth (49.2 % female) participating in a violence prevention project completed measures of relational aggression and victimization as well as indicators of individual beliefs about aggression, school norms for aggression, student–teacher and student–student interpersonal climate, and school responsiveness to violence. Unlike results previously found for physical aggression, no school-level indicator of climate was related to relational aggression or victimization. However, individual beliefs about aggression and individual perceptions of the school environment were related strongly to both the perpetration of and victimization by relational aggression. These results suggest not only that individual beliefs and perceptions of the school environment are important in understanding perpetration and victimization of relational aggression, but also that risk for involvement in relational aggression is distinct from that of physical aggression. Implications for school interventions are discussed, as well as suggestions for future research.     

Gender,Nationalism and Colonial Policy: prostitution in the Jewish settlement of Mandate Palestine, 1918–1948

The aim of this article is to discuss the way prostitution was perceived during the British rule in Palestine (1918–48), analyzing the differing perspectives of the British colonial authorities and the Jewish national community. The major concerns of the civil and military colonial authorities were focused on issues of ‘social hygiene’ and the trafficking in women and children. This often involved the transfer of both legislation and discourse from the metropolis. The Jewish community, on the other hand, was concerned mainly with the evolving national project. Prostitution was seen as a ‘mixing ground’ of Jewish women and British and Arab men, thus threatening the boundaries of the national collective. Whilst the article is attentive to the importance of studying prostitution in its historical specificity, it also considers the many ways in which this case study illuminates the complex series of relationships between both colonialism and prostitution, and gender and nationalism. Women were important to the imagining of the nation not only for their symbolic power—as ‘mothers of the nation’, for example; the construction of nationalist discourses also involved focusing on ‘negative’ gendered phenomena, such as prostitution. In these ways, the article seeks to contribute to our understanding of the multiple significance of gendered categories in the process of nation-building.     

Interrogating the Look of the Gaze: Theorizing a Latina Cine-subjectivity

Abstract: This article concerns sexual object choice, transgender subjectivities and emancipatory heterosexuality as imaged in three films: The House of the Spirits (1993), I Like It Like That (1994) and Mi Vida Loca (1994). The author argues, through her examination of the three films, for cinematic ways to refocus and interrogate the look and gender of the gaze, thereby envisioning what the author theorizes as a Latina cinematic subjectivity. The idea of a Latina cinematic subject is presented in order to articulate how at particular moments in the films an autonomous Latina subjectivity is created through narrative and mise-en-scène. It is at these narrative and aesthetic moments that the characters look back at the objectifying gaze, thereby creating a cinematic sexual subjectivity for the characters and a model of agency for the culturally resistant spectator who is doing the looking. The House of the Spirits points to the contradiction of sexual object choice and female desire; I Like It Like That reveals the performative and fluid possibilities of gender, as well as the hybridity of black and Latino cultures; and Mi Vida Loca reflects the struggle for agency in Chicana heterosexual relationships and in their material lives. The author argues that the three portrayals begin important cultural work in the rethinking of sexualities, as they unthink the rigidity of monosexuality, destabilize normative conceptions of gender and reinvigorate agency and egalitarianism in heterosexual relations.     

Foreign Terrorist Fighters: managing a twenty-first century threat

In the aftermath of the Arab uprisings Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs) have emerged as a significant security challenge. Since the 1980s and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan the notion of a ‘foreign fighter’ has been closely linked, if not synonymous, with those ideologically or religiously motivated individuals who have travelled to join conflicts in Islamic lands. This article will explore the contemporary FTF movement, offering a comparison of Afghanistan in the 1980s and Syria in the contemporary period. It will explore the international community’s expansive responses to the challenge of FTFs, with special focus on the role of the United Nations.