Economic justice in later life: A Canadian perspective

A view of distributive or economic justice is presented. Economic justice can best be achieved through the construction and administration of social policies that promote equality of condition and opportunity such that people are able to achieve equitable outcomes based on their needs and the community's assessment of their contributions. A discussion of the income security situation of older Canadians provides an empirical vehicle for illustrating this view. The point is made that before economic justice can prevail social policies must be developed such that current levels of structured inequality are significantly moderated. Equity will be realized only when there is a shift in policy-making such that claims of citizenship take precedence over those claims based on the rights of property.     

Interpersonal communication and the dialogue of drama

SUMMARY

Because of the problems that people encounter in their everyday relationships there is a need for a greater understanding of interpersonal communication in the modern world. This article is a study of interpersonal communication based on the dialogical approach to communication which departs from the premise that communication is man's mode of existence. Communication is the way in which people reach an understanding of each other and at the same time, realise their potential as human beings through self-expression. Because of the difficulties involved in studying people in interpersonal communication, the dialogue of drama is used as a paradigm for dialogue in the real world. The insights gained should be of value in reaching an understanding of the communication problems that people experience in the course of their everyday lives.     

Trade liberalisation in Brazil: Creating or exporting jobs?

Using the growth accounting and factor content approaches, this article looks at the impact of trade liberalisation on the structure and level of employment in Brazil over the 1990–97 period. The results support the argument that trade liberalisation in developing countries have a negative short‐term impact on employment — relatively small in Brazil's case ‐ which tends to be outweighed, in the long run, by a more labour‐intensive output mix.     

Oleg Tsarev's Synthetic KGB Gems

The Crown Jewels, published in Great Britain in 1998 and the United States in 1999, is Oleg Tsarev's second book drawn from KGB archives and written in cooperation with a Western author in this case, Nigel West.1 This important, complex book has much to offer historians, especially those inclined toward archeology, for Tsarev has skillfully choreographed his version of history to dance around the facts of some very well known intelligence and espionage cases. Consequently, he deposits another dense layer of evidence to sift, sort, and evaluate. But an assessment of Tsarev's volume also leads to three major points. Admittedly, two are glimpses of the blindingly obvious,'' restated here because these fundamentals become buried under media hype. First, that new historical evidence requires careful interpretation. Second, the secrets spies gather should be evaluated within the context of national and institutional policy formulation and implementation. Third, the notion of damage'' from Soviet espionage, has been exaggerated and misunderstood, and it is now time to investigate the impact of Soviet espionage upon national and international politics. And, most relevantly, Tsarev, a former lieutenant colonel in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, also serves as a consultant to the Service's press department.     

Strategies of inheritance among Kentish fishing communities in the later Middle Ages

Anthropologists and historians have long been interested in the subject of inheritance. One area that has received considerable attention is the connections between property, production and the family. Researchers have noted the complexity of the systems used by donors and recipients whereby assets are transmitted, including matters of timing, life cycle stage and the formation of relationships. One of the most significant times is death. For the family, the death of a spouse often has severe implications for its production and reproduction, and the strategies of inheritance employed affect its subsequent history. Studies of post-mortem inheritance have primarily investigated agricultural communities. This article seeks to test their findings by exploring the links between occupation and inheritance, and between identity and inheritance with respect to the fishing families from two small late medieval Kentish towns. The exceptionally good testamentary materials for the fishermen of Lydd and Folkestone reveal the deployment of a number of post-mortem inheritance strategies. By indicating the importance of significant relations in the transference of material and symbolic capital at this critical time, the study provides a greater understanding of the role of inheritance in familial and communal replication.     

Gender-Role Stereotypes and Perceptions of Heterosexual,Gay and Lesbian Domestic Violence

Although domestic violence occurs in all types of relationships, non-prototypical cases (e.g., gay male, lesbian, female-against-male) are often overlooked. We replicated and extended previous research demonstrating that perceptions of heterosexual and same-sex domestic violence are generally consistent with gender-role stereotypes. Male and female undergraduates read one of four domestic abuse cases varying by victim and perpetrator sex and sexual orientation. Victim sex, ratherthan sexual orientation, was the most potent predictor of responses, although male-against-female violence was considered the most serious and deserving of active intervention. Domestic violence perpetrated by men or against women was judged more serious than violence perpetrated by women or against men. Perceptions that male perpetrators were more capable of injuring victims, and female victims were more likely to suffer serious injury were consistent with gender-role stereotypes.     

Political Succession in the Middle East

The following briefs were presented in a workshop on "Political Succession in the Middle East" at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 1, 2001, in San Francisco. Louis J. Cantori, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Augustus Richard Norton, Boston University, were the conveners of the Conference Group on the Middle East, which issued this report.     

Adolescent Attachment Questionnaire: A Brief Assessment of Attachment in Adolescence

The Adolescent Attachment Questionnaire (AAQ), a brief questionnaire to assess attachment characteristics in adolescents, was developed and validated in a large normative sample (n = 691) and a sample of 133 adolescents in psychiatric treatment. The AAQ is a self-report questionnaire consisting of 3 scales of 3 statements each, with Likert-type responses from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The Availability scale assesses the adolescent's confidence in the availability and responsiveness of the attachment figure. TheGoal-Corrected Partnershipscale assesses the extent to which the adolescent considers and is empathetic to the needs and feelings of the attachment figure. The Angry Distress scale taps the amount of anger in the adolescent–parent relationship. All scales demonstrate satisfactory internal reliability and agreement between scores for adolescents (n = 91) from the normative sample who completed the AAQ twice. Adolescents in the clinical sample also completed the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI); the AAQ demonstrated high convergent validity with the AAI.