Perceived Social Support and Early Adolescents’ Achievement: The Mediational Roles of Motivational Beliefs and Emotions

Although a bulk of literature shows that perceived social support (PSS) influences academic achievement, the mechanisms through which this effect operates received little empirical attention. The present study examined the multiple mediational effects of motivational beliefs (competence beliefs and subjective value) and emotions (anxiety and enjoyment) that may account for the empirical link between PSS (from parents, peers and teachers) and mathematics achievement. The participants of the study were 238 grade 7 students (average age = 13.2 years, girls = 54%, predominantly native Dutch middle class socioeconomic status). A bootstrap analysis (a relatively new technique for testing multiple mediation) revealed that the motivational beliefs and the emotions, jointly, partially mediated the effect of PSS on achievement. The proportion of the effects mediated, however, varied across the support sources from 55% to 75%. The findings lend support to the theoretical assumptions in the literature that supportive social relationships influence achievement through motivational and affective pathways.     

Genetic and environmental contributions to stability and change in levels of self-control

Purpose

There has been an emerging body of research estimating the stability in levels of self-control across different sections of the life course. At the same time, some of this research has attempted to examine the factors that account for both stability and change in levels of self-control. Missing from much of this research is a concerted focus on the genetic and environmental architecture of stability and change in self-control.

Methods

The current study was designed to address this issue by analyzing a sample of kinship pairs drawn from the Child and Young Adult Supplement of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (CNLSY).

Results

Analyses of these data revealed that genetic factors accounted for between 74 and 92 percent of the stability in self-control and between 78 and 89 percent of the change in self-control. Shared and nonshared environmental factors explained the rest of the stability and change in levels of self-control.

Conclusions

A combination of genetic and environmental influences is responsible for the stability and change in levels of self-control over time.     

Poverty in Bangladesh: Measurement,decomposition and intertemporal comparison

This article, using the methodology developed by Foster, Greer, and Thorbecke to measure and decompose poverty, provides estimates of the levels of poverty in rural and urban areas in Bangladesh. It investigates in the context of Bangladesh, the most powerful effect of poverty in terms of a shortfall in food for daily calorie intake by the poor. It provides intertemporal comparison of poverty and its decomposition among subgroups. It also makes comparisons between the results obtained in this study with those currently available. The results of the study show a significant improvement in poverty situations in rural areas from 1982 to 1986. The article also discusses the policy implications of its findings.     

Organization design and effectiveness: a study of anti-crime organizations in Hong Kong

There are various methods of designing organizations to adjust to the needs of the circumstances, clients and administrators. The literature on organizations highlighted various aspects as it developed and the emphasis shifted over time. Different approaches were tried in two cases in Hong Kong where organizations were designed to deal with specific problems of corruption and organized crime. While the social approach appeared to be more sensitive to the needs of the target group, the institutional approach emerged as a more effective option. In designing organizations, it is necessary to consider the social and psychological aspects, but the nature of structure, stability of environment and regularity of procedures have a profound impact on the effectiveness.     

The role of parliament in South Africacs foreign policy development process: lessons from the United States' Congress

For most democracies across the world, legislative engagement in foreign policy development has traditionally been limited to ratification of international agreements and oversight of the executive. While the Parliament of South Africa tends to adhere to this traditional approach, deferring to the executive on matters of foreign policy, this paper argues that a collaborative approach between the legislative and executive branches as articulated in the South African constitution must rather form the basis of South Africa's foreign policy development process. Moreover, by comparing the parliament of South Africa, a legislature with limited policy influence, to the United States’ Congress, a policy making legislature, it becomes clear from Congress that political will in employing constitutional power is the most important factor in ensuring legislative engagement in foreign policy decision making.     

State,Citizenship and Religious Community: The Case of Indian Muslim Women

Thos article argues that granting citizenship rights to the minorities cannot help to instil a sense of confidence in them to participate as equal citizens in the public sphere. Rather the state has to create necessary conditions both through institutional mechanisms as well as through creating a democratic and egalitarian environment where those rights can be enjoyed. A liberal democracy can accommodate both individual as well as group rights and allow for legal pluralism by desisting from imposing any law that can result in the loss of identity for a minority group. But at the same time a liberal democracy is to ensure that individual rights are not jeopardised while safeguarding the minority rights. If particularistic demands do not conflict with basic individual liberty and dignity, they can and should be accommodated within the universalistic framework of citizenship.     

Fighting for the rule of law: civil resistance and the lawyers' movement in Pakistan

Pakistan, sometimes referred to as ‘the most dangerous place on earth’, is not typically thought of as a place where popular nonviolent resistance could take root, much less succeed. Citizen apathy, poor governance, and fear of regime repression and terrorist violence are barriers to effective civic activism inside Pakistan. Yet, over the past two years, Pakistan's authoritarian ruler was ousted and its independent judiciary restored following a massive grassroots campaign led by lawyers. The ‘men in black’, whose insistence on the rule of law and embrace of nonviolent struggle captured the hearts and minds of millions of Pakistanis, helped transform the country's political landscape in unexpected ways. The successes tallied by this nonviolent movement, this article will argue, can be attributed to the large-scale non-cooperation and civil disobedience that pressured two successive Pakistani regimes – one authoritarian and one democratic – to yield to its demands. Unity and mass participation, nonviolent discipline, and the creative use of nonviolent tactics were three key ingredients of success. While instability and Islamist extremism continue to plague Pakistan, the lawyers' movement highlights the steadily growing strength of Pakistani civil society have a potential to influence democratic change in the country.     

This other and other others

This paper offers an alternative understanding of the relationship between feminist ethics, time and otherness. Rather than suggesting a feminist ethics should simply be for ‘the other’, or that feminist ethics is always futural (dedicated to that which is not yet), the paper suggests that ethics involves responding to the particular other in a present that carries traces of the past, as well as opening up the future. It is through responding to particular others (where particularity is not understood as a characteristic of another, but as a mode of encounter) that we face and face up to ‘other others’. The relationship between ‘this other’ and ‘other others’ suggests an intimacy between the particular and the collective, between the face-to-face of an encounter and political economies, and between feminist ethics and politics. Indeed, the paper concludes by suggesting that the ethical and political imperatives of feminism are aligned precisely given that collectivity is an effect of the work that has to be done to get closer to this other and, with her, other others. This other and other others collect together in the making of a feminist ‘we’. Such a ‘we’ can be embraced only through a willingness to struggle with and for others who are faced in the present (a facing that is indebted to a past that cannot be left behind), and an openness to the future, as the promise and hope of what we might yet become.