Youth and the transition to adult status: Uganda

This paper examines the transition to adult status in four ethnic groups in Uganda, including one with circumcision and one with age-sets. The formal status hierarchies and the recognized points of transition are described. Then the variations from these norms are examined to show that when one functionally becomes an adult may differ from the stated points of transition.Presented at the Nabugabo Conference, March 21–24, 1971, Methods and Problems and Strategies of Field Work, Makerere Institute of Social Research, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.Research Fellow, Sociology, Makerere Institute of Social Research, and Assistant Professor, Harvard University.     

Interpersonal trust and disaffected high school youth

The study consisted of two parts. First, a new scale of interpersonal trust for adolescents was constructed using a representative sample of 70 students from a community high school. Second, the hypothesis was tested that disaffected youth compared to the more conventional would show less interpersonal trust. Two matched groups of 57 students each were employed for the second part of the study. Results indicate that the new scale is a reliable and valid measure. Correlates of the scale disclose that trust is associated with interpersonal distance, certain developmental factors, and the quality of parent-adolescent relations. Results from the second part of the study tend to confirm the hypothesis in that greater trust scores were found among students with more conventional beliefs.This study was partly supported by NIMH Grant No. MH9210, Ford Foundation Grant No. 69-0264B, and the Jessie and C. Clement Stone Foundation.Received his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas. Currently working on personality and clinical problems of adolescents and adults.Recieved his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Plans to continue his work of program development in the area of affect education in secondary schools.Received his Ph.D. from Harvard University. Current work is in the area of community mental health.     

Perceptions of responsibility for clinical risk management: evidence from orthopaedics practitioners, practice managers and patients in an Australian capital city

The article describes a study of the perceptions of three groups--patients, orthopaedic surgeons and the surgeons' practice managers--concerning three types of legal risk associated with the duty of care: failure to follow up, failure to warn and failure to diagnose. The study found there is cause for concern about doctors' follow-up and documentation of patient care. Doctors may be unaware of the Australian courts' propensity to emphasise practitioner responsibility rather than patient autonomy. A further important result is the considerable disparity between the surgeons' views and the views of their practice managers about the duty of care. The article draws out implications for improved risk awareness and suggests further research.     

The corporate shaping of GM crops as a technology for the poor

The status of international agricultural research as a global public good (GPG) has been widely accepted since the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. While the term was not used at the time of its creation, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) system that evolved at that time has been described as a ‘prime example of the promise, performance and perils of an international approach to providing GPGs’. Contemporary literature on international agricultural research as a GPG tends to support this view and focuses on how to operationalize the concept. This paper adopts a different starting point and questions this conceptualization of the CGIAR and its outputs. It questions the appropriateness of such a ‘neutral’ concept to a system born of the imperatives of Cold War geopolitics, and shaped by a history of attempts to secure its relevance in a changing world. This paper draws on a multi-sited, ethnographic study of a research effort highlighted by the CGIAR as an exemplar of GPG-oriented research. Behind the ubiquitous language of GPGs, ‘partnership’ and ‘consensus’, however, new forms of exclusion and restriction are emerging within everyday practice, reproducing North–South inequalities and undermining the ability of these programmes to respond to the needs of projected beneficiaries.     

Citizenship in schools: the gap between theory and practice

Upon leaving school, young people are expected to play an active part as citizens in a democratic society. Are schools providing them with the tools to do this? Citizenship is taught in schools, but to what extent is it practised? Many safety issues concerning student behaviour and student conflict confront school authorities. In what ways are students learning to take responsibility for the safety of their school environments? Generally, schools in New Zealand and in comparative jurisdictions continue to operate on a traditional authoritarian hierarchical basis. Within these structures students could rightly feel that schooling is something which is ‘done to them’ rather than their being engaged as active participants. School authorities have a moral and legal responsibility to maintain a learning environment which is physically and emotionally safe and free from hostility. Traditionally reactive measures such as searching, drug testing and exclusion are used by schools with the aim of fulfilment of that duty. Research indicates that these measures have met with limited success in terms of school safety, and that in any event they may expose school authorities to challenge from students on the basis that their rights have been violated.