A Genetic Basis for Social Trust?

A propensity to believe that fellow citizens will not act against our interests in social and economic transactions has been identified as key to the effective functioning of democratic polities. Yet the causes of this type of ‘generalized’ or ‘social’ trust are far from clear. To date, researchers within the social and political sciences have focused almost exclusively on social-developmental and political/institutional features of individuals and societies as the primary causal influences. In this paper we investigate the intriguing possibility that social trust might have a genetic, as well as an environmental basis. We use data collected from samples of monozygotic and dizygotic twins to estimate the additive genetic, shared environmental, and non-shared environmental components of trust. Our results show that the majority of the variance in a multi-item trust scale is accounted for by an additive genetic factor. On the other hand, the environmental influences experienced in common by sibling pairs have no discernable effect; the only environmental influences appear to be those that are unique to the individual. Our findings problematise the widely held view that the development of social trust occurs through a process of familial socialization at an early stage of the life course.     

The Resource Center for Separating and Divorcing Families: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on A Collaborative and Child‐Focused Approach to Alternative Dispute Resolution

The Resource Center for Separating and Divorcing Families (RCSDF) is a teaching model for providing interdisciplinary services to separating and divorcing families. The model was developed by the Honoring Families Initiative at the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System at the University of Denver. Services are provided by graduate and law students at the University of Denver, working side‐by‐side with a supervising licensed attorney, psychologist, and social worker. The experiential and interdisciplinary model of teaching and providing direct client services is the first of its kind in the United States. RCSDF students and staff seek to empower parents to make positive decisions about their family's future in a supportive and educational environment.

Key Points for the Family Court Community
• The current system of preparing graduate and law students for careers in family law is in need of improvement. This article provides information for educators and the family law community about the impact of interdisciplinary and experiential learning for students.
• Parents going through the transition of separation or divorce experience psychological and financial stressors that can create serious behavioral and adjustment issues for their children. The RCSDF works in a holistic manner with parents and children to minimize the levels of stress and anxiety during the transition.

     

Do Parent-Adolescent Discrepancies Predict Deviant Peer Affiliation and Subsequent Substance Use?

Recent evidence suggests parent-adolescent discrepancies regarding adolescent disclosure can provide insight into parent-child relations and adolescent adjustment. However, pathways linking discrepancies to adjustment are not well known. We tested a model linking parent-adolescent discrepancies in disclosure to adolescent substance use through affiliation with deviant peers. Using three annual waves of data from a community-based study (N?=?357; 91% African American; 53% female; M_age?=?13.13 years, SD?=?1.62 years at baseline), findings revealed that adolescent-reported secrecy and deviant peer affiliation were positively associated with substance use one and two years later, respectively, but there was no evidence of mediation. The results highlight associations of adolescent secrecy and adjustment, and the role peers play in adolescent substance use behaviors.     

‘New’ nations: resource-based development imaginaries in Ghana and Ecuador

Recently there have been increasing instances of the return of the state as the central agent of development in resource-rich nations globally. Characterised by both a rhetorical and substantive commitment to increasing control over national resource revenues, this so-called new/neo-extractivism has attracted a debate concerning the extent to which it offers a viable alternative to the imperatives of neoliberal resource extraction. Using two examples, this paper analyses the ways in which the Ghanaian and Ecuadorean states discursively imagine such structural transformations. It highlights the value in analysing the politics of language for strengthening studies of neo-extractivism.     

Legal Cynicism,Antisocial Attitudes,and Recidivism: Implications for a Procedurally Just Community Corrections

The current approach to supervising offenders in the community has produced disappointing results in terms of reduced recidivism. In response to this, a number of scholars have turned their attention to the role that community corrections officers (CCOs) may play in ensuring successful community supervision. Early evaluations of CCO training have shown promising results, yet missing from this knowledge is a consideration for the legal cynicism that may be held by offenders. It may be unreasonable to expect CCOs to change the antisocial attitudes of offenders when those negative attitudes are directed toward them. The purpose of the current work, therefore, is to integrate ideas about legal cynicism into the knowledge about effective supervision to promote a more procedurally just community corrections. Our broader purpose is to encourage a more realistic understanding of the challenges of the officer-offender relationship in order to improve the efficacy of existing models of effective community supervision practice.     

Wench Tactics? Openings in Conditions of Closure

Picking up the question of what FLaK might be, this editorial considers the relationship between openness and closure in feminist legal studies. How do we draw on feminist struggles for openness in common resources, from security to knowledge, as we inhabit a compromised space in commercial publishing? We think about this first in relation to the content of this issue: on image-based abuse continuums, asylum struggles, trials of protestors, customary justice, and not-so-timely reparations. Our thoughts take us through the different ways that openness and closure work in struggles against violence, cruel welcomes, and re-arrangements of code and custom. Secondly, we share some reflections on methodological openness and closure as the roundtable conversation on asylum, and the interview with Riles, remind us of #FLaK2016 and its method of scattering sources as we think about how best to mix knowledges. Thirdly, prompted by the FLaK kitchen table conversations on openness, publishing and ‘getting the word out’, we respond to Kember’s call to ‘open up open access’. We explain the different current arrangements for opening up FLS content and how green open access, the sharedit initiative, author request and publisher discretion present alternatives to gold open access. Finally drawing on Franklin and Spade, we show how there are a range of ‘wench tactics’—adapting gifts, stalling and resting—which we deploy as academic editors who are trying to have an impact on the access, use and circulation of our journal, even though we do not own the journal we edit. These wench tactics are alternatives to the more obvious or reported tactic of resignation, or withdrawing academic labour from editing and reviewing altogether. They help us think about brewing editorial time, what ambivalence over our 25th birthday might mean, and how to inhabit painful places. In this, we respond in our own impure, compromised way to da Silva’s call not to forget the native and slave as we do FLaK, and repurpose shrapnel, in our common commitments.     

Policies for Decent Labour Standards in Britain

Decent labour standards are a prerequisite for perceived justice and social cohesion. Insofar as they have been achieved in Britain in the past, it has been the result of collective bargaining between employers and trade unions. This has all but vanished in the private sector and, it is argued, there is no chance of its being revived. Upholding labour standards now lies in the provision of statutory individual employment rights. Experience with minimum wages provides some guidance on how these might be developed through social partnership arrangements. Once achieved, such rights amount to little without effective enforcement. Increasingly important for this is the use of the law and consumer campaigns to expose poor employment practices and complex supply chains so that offending employers can be held to account. If Britain is to avoid falling into a competitive ‘race to the bottom’ with Brexit, it must institute a robust means of implementing and enforcing decent labour standards.     

the placental body in 4D: everyday practices of non-diagnostic sonography

Feminist scholars have long argued that the pregnant body is erased – both literally and discursively – from mainstream foetal representations. Janemaree Maher argues that the placenta, as point of distinction and connection between pregnant women and foetuses, has the radical potential to refigure understandings of pregnant embodiment and subjectivity, and offer ‘a way to begin thinking through the impasse of pregnant representation’. Drawing on Maher's notion of the ‘placental body’, this article will examine the place of the placenta in the practice of non-diagnostic 4D ultrasound scanning. The analysis seeks to connect Maher's theoretical perspective, and the rich feminist literature around foetal imaging, with observational data from my study of 4D scans. I will argue that the capacity of 3- and 4D sonography to image the placenta and umbilical cord in a way that is newly intelligible to lay viewers might present an opportunity for thinking differently about the interconnections – material and social – between pregnant women and foetuses and to relocate women as the subjects of their pregnancies.