The Caribbean Carretera: Race, Space and Social Liminality in Costa Rica

A single highway connects the Caribbean province of Limón to mainstream society in the highlands of Costa Rica. This paper explores the ways in which that highway affects the status hierarchy of mainstream society in Costa Rica, and how the construction of whiteness as an unexamined racial qualifier for total social incorporation constrains the perception of blacks as social liminars and blackness as a state of communitas. The argument elaborates the work of Victor Turner on ritual liminality to suggest the structural ambiguity of Afro-Latin Americans in the context of Costa Rica.     

Trade Liberalisation and the Australian Labor Party

The three most substantial decisions to reduce Australia's trade barriers — in 1973, 1988 and 1991 — were made by Labor Governments. Labor's policy shift preceded the conversion of social democratic parties in other countries to trade liberalisation. To understand why this was so, it is necessary to consider trade policy as being shaped by more than interest groups and political institutions. Drawing on interviews with the main political figures, including Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Button, this article explores why the intellectual arguments for free trade had such a powerful impact on Labor's leadership, and how those leaders managed to implement major tariff cuts, while largely maintaining party unity.     

Lay persons' versus psychologists' judgments of psychologically aggressive actions by a husband and wife

Literature assessing knowledge of and attitudes toward social issues has demonstrated that mental health professionals and lay persons often differ greatly. To add to the normative information in the field of psychological abuse and to determine whether the differences previously found between mental health professionals and lay persons extend to this field, a sample from each group rated psychologically aggressive items by a husband toward his wife. For the 102 items, psychologists were more likely to label the behaviors as "psychological abuse," but this tendency was due to psychologists considering the behaviors as either "always" or "possibly" abusive, whereas lay persons demonstrated a bimodal response pattern of rating the behaviors as "always" or "never" psychological abuse. Lay persons were much more likely than psychologists to rate items high in terms of severity level, however. The two groups used different contextual factors for determining that a behavior was psychological abuse when they initially were uncertain that it was abusive.     

Lessons from Analogical Reasoning in the Teaching of Negotiation

After two decades of spectacular growth in negotiation research, teaching,and application, it is appropriate to pause and consider how negotiatorslearn, a strikingly fundamental but infrequently examined issue. In thisreport, we present some initial and on-going research and thinking onlearning about negotiation skills, providing one view of the relationshipbetween negotiation pedagogy and negotiation practice.