The New Miss India: Popular Fiction in Contemporary India

Miss New India is the title of a 2011 novel by Indian-born (now American-based) Bharati Mukherjee, which tells the story of a young woman who leaves her small-town home and family to find work in a call centre in the information technology city of Bangalore. The call centre is emblematic of a ‘new India’, in which educated young people seize the possibilities of a global labour market. This is a generation for whom colonialism is ancient history, a generation who have grown up in the aftermath of economic liberalization in India. Chetan Bhagat refers to this generation as ‘Young India’ and has written a series of best-selling novels that feature ambitious young men in the ‘new India’. There is, however, an emerging genre of similar narratives written by women and addressed to a female readership. This article discusses a range of contemporary Indian women’s popular novels and argues that, while Bhagat and his male heroes may embrace globalization and the market, the narratives written by women are more nuanced in their celebration of economic liberalization. The novels dramatize the tensions between tradition and modernity, family and independence, and suggest that these are particularly fraught for young Indian women. These texts pick up on the discourses of contemporary journalism about ‘Young India’, within the generic form of the romance, but their resolutions are repeatedly uneasy and suggest that the ‘new India’ is not an entirely comfortable space for the new Miss India.     

Educating Women: schooling and identity in England and France, 1800–1867 CHRISTINA DE BELLAIGUE; Rousseau's Daughters: domesticity,education and autonomy in modern France JENNIFER J. POPIEL

The following books are reviewed.

Women and Gender in Early Modern Wales MICHAEL ROBERTS &; SIMONE CLARKE (Eds), 2000 Cardiff: University of Wales Press. 320 pp., ISBN 0 7083 1550 X, paperback, £14.99; 0 7083 1580 1, hardback, £35.00

Women in Scotland c. 1100–c. 1750 ELIZABETH EWEN &; MAUREEN M. MEIKLE (Eds), 1999 East Linton: Tuckwell Press. 282 pp., ISBN 0 86232 046 2, £14.99

Gendering Scottish History: an international approach TERRY BROTHERSTONE, DEBORAH SIMONTON &; OONAGH WALSH (Eds), 1999 Glasgow: Cruithne Press. xxi + 280 pp., ISBN 1 873448 18 X, hardback, £20.00; 1 873448 16 3, paperback, £10.95

Women, Sexuality and War PHILOMENA GOODMAN New York: Palgrave. xii + 164 pp., ISBN 0 333 76086 7, £42.50

Revealing New Worlds: three Victorian women naturalists SUZANNE LE-MAY SHEFFIELD, 2001 London: Routledge. ISBN 0 415 2706 9, hardback, £65.00

‘Wicked’ Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa Dorothy L. Hodgson &; Sheryl A. McCurdy, 2001 Oxford: James Currey. xiii + 325 pp., ISBN 0 85255 695 0, hardback, £40.00; 0 85255 654 4, paperback, £16.95

‘I Will Not Eat Stone’: a women's history of colonial Asante Jean Allman &; Victoria Tashjian, 2000 Oxford: James Currey. xlvi + 255 pp., ISBN 0 85255 691 8, hardback, £40.00; 0 85255 641 1, paperback, £15.95

‘We Women Worked So Hard’: gender, urbanization and social reproduction in colonial Harare, Zimbabwe, 1930–56 TERESA A. BARNES, 1999 Oxford: James Currey. xlv + 204 pp., ISBN 0 85255 686 1, hardback, £40.00; 0 85255 636 5, paperback, £16.95

Women and Modernity in Weimar Germany: reality and representation in popular fiction VIBEKE RÜTZOU PETERSEN, 2001 Oxford: Berghahn Books. xvi + 184 pp., ISBN 1 57181 154 0, hardback, £20.00; 1 57181 789 1, paperback, £13.95

The Irish Women's History Reader ALAN HAYES &; DIANE URQUHART (Eds), 2001 London: Routledge. xi + 242 pp., ISBN 0 415 19914 X

The Routledge Historical Atlas of Women in America SANDRA OPDYCKE, 2000 New York: Routledge. 144 pp., ISBN 0 415 92138 4, £10.99

What American Women Did, 1789–1920 LINDA MILES COPPENS, 2001 Jefferson, NC: McFarland &; Company. ix + 259 pp., ISBN 0 7864 0899 5, £36.60

Favorite Dishes: a Columbian autograph souvenir cookery book CARRIE V. SHUMAN (Ed.), 2001 (reprinted from an 1893 edition) Champaign: University of Illinois Press. lxiii + 210 pp., hardback, $29.95; paperback, $15.00

Feminist Freikorps: the British voluntary women police, 1914–40 R.M. DOUGLAS, 1999 Westport: Praeger. xiv + 171 pp., ISBN 0 275 96249 0, hardback, US$58/£48.95     

General Versus Specific Predictors of Male Arrest Trajectories: A Test of the Moffitt and Patterson Theories

Developmental taxonomies of crime disagree on whether distinctive offender trajectories are related to common or unique risks. This study examined childhood risks of differing arrest trajectories across childhood through early adulthood (from ages 10–11 to 26–27 years) that were identified in prior work for 203 at-risk, predominantly Caucasian young men. Multivariate analyses revealed that when both distal (childhood risk factors) and proximal risk factors (deviant peer association as a time-varying covariate) were included in the model, relatively few childhood risk factors (assessed at age 9–10 years) discriminated the chronic offender groups from rare offenders (i.e., child antisocial behavior, child attention problems, parents’ antisocial behavior). Rather, deviant peer association was significantly related to levels of offending within each trajectory group (i.e., chronic and rare offender groups). No predictor differentially predicted membership in the two chronic groups, supporting the linear gradation argument. Theoretical and prevention implications are discussed.     

Police Budgeting: Winning Strategies

Based on a national survey of police chiefs with a follow-up focus group, this article discusses budgetary strategies that police departments used to be successful in budgeting. The strategies include: using crime and workload data judiciously; capitalizing on sensational crime incidents; effectively getting the message out; carefully mobilizing interest groups; strategic planning; playing the federal grants game; working closely with the chief executive and elected officials; and involving all departmental staff levels in budgeting.     

Application of Structured-Light 3-D Scanning to the Documentation of Plastic Fingerprint Impressions: A Quality Comparison with Traditional Photography

Plastic fingerprint impressions found at crime scenes are often too delicate for collection, leaving photography as the best option for documentation. However, traditional photography techniques can be inadequate in documenting minute 3-D details due to limitations of the camera and lighting conditions. This study investigated the feasibility of applying commercially available structured-light 3-D scanners in the documentation of plastic prints. Attempts were made to develop a procedure to extract curvature features from 3-D scanned fingerprints and flatten the friction ridge features into two-dimensional (2-D) images to allow direct comparison with the traditional photography in the CSIpix^® Matcher and NFIQ 2.0 software. Two 3-D scanners were evaluated a Dentsply Sirona inEos X5^® and an Artec Space Spider. In this study, 3-D scanners demonstrated robustness as well as efficiency in the collection of plastic fingerprint impressions in select substrates. One of the developed methods utilizing a discrete geometry operator and convexity features outperformed traditional photography, achieving higher software detection scores in minutiae count and match quality, while traditional photography could not always capture enough high-quality minutiae for comparisons, even after digital enhancement.     

A Developmental-Ecological Model of the Relation of Family Functioning to Patterns of Delinquency

Person-centered approaches to understanding delinquent and criminal careershave identified several distinct pathways or patterns of delinquent behavior(Gorman-Smith et al., 1998; LeBlanc and Kaspy, in press; Loeber et al.,1991; Loeber et al., 1993). In addition, research suggests that there maybe etiological variations that correspond to these different pathways(Gorman-Smith et al., 1998). That is, there may be different configurationsof risk factors associated with different types of delinquent and criminaloffending. If this is so, understanding these relations can have importantimplications for intervention and prevention. However, there have been fewstudies that examine how the configuration of risk factors may vary inrelation to different delinquency pathways. The current study brings aperson-centered analysis to examine how patterns of family functioningrelate to patterns of offending. In addition, this study contextualizesthese relations by examining how these relations vary as a function ofcommunity setting. This study expands upon previous research that hasidentified four basic patterns of delinquent behavior among a sample ofminority male adolescents living in poor urban neighborhoods (Gorman-Smithet al., 1998).     

The placement of the human eyeball and canthi in craniofacial identification

An accurate understanding of the spatial relationships between the deep and superficial structures of the head is essential for anthropological methods concerned with the comparison of faces to skulls (superimposition) or the prediction of faces from them (facial approximation). However, differences of opinion exist concerning: (i) the position of the eyeball in planes other than the anteroposterior plane and (ii) the canthi positions relative to the bony orbital margins. This study attempts to clarify the above relationships by dissection of a small sample of adult human cadavers (N = 4, mean age = 83 years, s = 12 years). The most notable finding was that the eyeballs were not centrally positioned within the orbits as the more recent craniofacial identification literature expounds. Rather, the eyeballs were consistently positioned closer to the orbital roof and lateral orbital wall (by 1-2 mm on average); a finding consistent with the earlier anatomical literature. While these estimation errors are small ipsilaterally, several factors make them meaningful: (i) the orbital region is heavily used for facial recognition; (ii) the width error is doubled because the eyes are bilateral structures; (iii) the eyes are sometimes used to predict/assess other soft tissue facial structures; and (iv) the net error in facial approximation rapidly accumulates with the subsequent prediction of each independent facial feature. While the small sample size of this study limits conclusive generalizations, the new data presented here nonetheless have immediate application to craniofacial identification practice because the results are evidence based. In contrast, metric data have never been published to support the use of the central positioning guideline. Clearly, this study warrants further quantification of the eyeball position in larger samples and preferably of younger individuals.     

Spontaneous dissection of the distal obtuse marginal coronary artery: a rare cause of sudden death

Spontaneous coronary artery dissection is a rare cause of acute myocardial infarction and sudden death. It typically, but not always, occurs in healthy postpartum women without traditional risk factors for atherosclerosis. Moreover, the site of dissection usually involves the proximal, major coronary arteries: left main coronary artery and/or the left anterior descending artery, and in men, more often the right coronary artery. We report a case of sudden death caused by dissection of the obtuse marginal branch of the left circumflex artery, in a 49-year-old man, a very rare site of fatal coronary dissection.     

SOCIAL PROGRAM INNOVATION AND DISSEMINATION: A STUDY OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE PROCESSES

The dissemination of social program innovations that have been demonstrated to be effective through rigorous evaluation is an important issue. The classical dissemination framework emphasizes the position that programs implemented with fidelity to the original model are most likely to produce the positive outcomes demonstrated in the model's evaluation phase. However, critics suggest that local programs that are extensively modified are more likely to meet local goals and, therefore, are more likely to be sustained within the organization. The present research examined the implementation, effectiveness, and routinization of seven innovations replicated in a nationwide sample of organizations. The innovations were diverse in both content and implementing context and were located in a variety of sites, including schools, courts, prisons, police departments, and social service agencies. The results suggest that the innovations were replicated with acceptable levels of fidelity to the disseminated program models, and that higher-fidelity implementations tended to be more effective than those implemented with lower fidelity. The implications of the findings for social program dissemination policy are discussed and the authors propose an expansion of Berman's contingency model of innovation dissemination.