Silent citizenship among Asian Americans and Latinos: opting out or left out?

In his classic study, Who Governs?, Robert Dahl interpreted the patterns of political assimilation of ‘white ethnic’ immigrants and their children during the mid-twentieth century as a hopeful sign of the potential of democratic pluralism in the USA. While acknowledging that immigrant groups faced discrimination and structural barriers that might lead them to be silent, Dahl predicted that social mobility and assimilation would eventually erase these deficits in political participation among immigrants. Building from Dahl's analysis, we investigate the extent to which pluralism in the USA can and does work the same way for immigrants who are also racial minorities. We highlight factors that can lead these groups to become silent citizens, including lack of legal status, lower levels of political mobilization by institutions, and discrimination as structural impediments to minority participation. Our findings suggest that both resources as well as structural impediments structure the political behavior of Asian Americans and Latinos, determining whether they are vocal citizens or silent citizens.     

Are inputs sometimes outcomes? Some thoughts on definition in distributive justice

This paper argues that the central concepts of justice theory (e.g., inputs and outcomes) have not been well defined and that this lack of precision in definition has led to subsequent ostensible inconsistencies in empirical findings. We offer definitions of both inputs and outcomes in a manner that facilitates more formal theoretical formulations and specifies a functional relationship between the two. In addition, the concept of relevance is discussed. This discussion highlights the difference in determinations of what is relevant to an outcome and the moral desirability of the distribution rule producing those outcomes. We suggest that the perception of what is relevant to the production of an outcome and how much it should be weighted is a source of potential conflict and/or disagreement between groups who are allocators or recipients of resource distributions. The potential disjuncture between what is considered relevant and what is considered moral in terms of allocation decisions is a potential source of dissatisfaction and feelings of injustice across groups. The discussion also suggests that it is not simply a difference in rule preference across groups that may lead to negative feelings regarding allocations but even when groups agree on the rule they may not agree on either the factors to be included in the assessment of relevance or on the morality of the distribution resulting from such assessments. Finally we introduce the concept of exchange domain as a mechanism for facilitating theoretical development.     

Stressed,depressed, or bewitched?

Mental illness is an important cause of disability in sub-Saharan African countries and is rarely covered in health-related development activity. This article examines the close relationship between mental illness, religion, and culture, referring to the authors' experiences in Zimbabwe as an example. They emphasise the importance of gaining a sympathetic understanding of the religious beliefs and social contexts of psycho-social distress states, rather than simply translating concepts and ideas developed in the societies of Europe and North America.     

Academic-community collaboration,gender research,and development: pitfalls and possibilities

Collaboration has become a watchword for development practitioners and theorists. Yet collaboration or partnerships between academics and community-based researchers and activists have often proved difficult. This is particularly true for partnerships with smaller, grassroots community researchers, who are generally less resourced than their academic partners. This paper focuses on such partnerships in gender research, with the aim of reflecting on past problems as well as successes in order to develop strategies for making such projects more truly collaborative, rather than a minefield of broken promises and unspoken (and sometimes spoken) resentments.