Growing up in the culture of slenderness: Girls'' experiences of body dissatisfaction

This paper reports two group-interviews of young women aged 8 and 13 years. These young women were dissatisfied with their bodies and described ideal figures that matched the slim adult ideal. The younger girls were not dieting but were involved in helping their parents to diet. Adolescents had avoided “fattening” foods and would be concerned if they put on half a stone in weight. Eating (particularly sweet food) was used as a means of comfort and to relieve boredom by young women in both age groups. Results are similar to those of Nickie Charles and Marion Kerr (1986) who interviewed adult women. It is concluded that children as young as 8 years give accounts of body dissatisfaction that are similar to those of adult women, and that suggest acceptance of the slim adult ideal. Implications are discussed in relation to cultural influences on young women that encourage objectification and criticism of the body.     

Issue Networks and Activism

Using an investigation of a technical policy issue, this paper demonstrates the utility of employing an issue networks approach to understanding the dynamics among those concerned about the threat of earthquakes to the province of British Columbia, Canada and the state of Washington, United States. Such an approach focuses on issue emergence in the early stages of agenda building. This research demonstrates how scientific and technical expertise, in the absence of political leadership, is an unrivaled source of presumptive rights leading to key actor status within a specialized policy community. A complementary finding is that career-related rationales provide the overwhelming motivation for issue network participation.     

Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities: Reinventing Federalism for Distressed Communities

Assisting communities to stimulate investment and to createjobs as part of a federal-state-local government and private-sectorpartnership is a key intergovernmental objective of the Clintonadministration, consistent with its agenda of reinventing government.The Empowerment Zones/Enterprise Cities (EZ/EC) Program, enactedby the Congress as part of the Omnibus Budget ReconciliationAct of 1993, reflects other federalism themes as well, themesthat predate the Clinton administration. A shift in federalpolicy during the 1980s, away from places and toward persons,set the stage for the long and difficult path of the EZ/EC programthrough the Congress. During that same decade, many states enactedtheir own enterprise-zone statutes; these initiatives were partof a second federalism trend—the general resurgence ofstates. The EZ/EC program also demonstrates the persistenceof partisanship in intergovernmental programs; empowerment-zoneand enterprise-community choices announced by the presidentin December 1994 reflected Clinton's need to satisfy his traditionalDemocratic constituencies.     

Assessing the diversity of anti-establishment and populist politics in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

The more populism enters public debates, the more it needs close scrutiny. Central and Eastern Europe offers a useful context for exploring the diversity of parties identified as populist. Anti-establishment rhetoric provides a suitable conceptual starting point because of its pervasive role in the region’s political discourse. Using a new expert survey, this article details the relationship between anti-establishment salience and political positions, showing that anti-establishment parties occupy a full range across both economic and cultural dimensions and many occupy more centrist positions. Narrowing the focus to content analysis of anti-establishment parties’ thin ideology in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, it is concurrently found that for many actors (including those usually labelled as populist) anti-establishment rhetoric is indeed predominant, yet not always extensively combined with other elements of populism: people-centrism and invocation of general will. The findings are important for understanding multiple varieties of anti-establishment politics also beyond the region.     

The Adaptive Capacity of Markets and Convergence in Law: UK High Yield Issuers,US Investors and Insolvency Law

This article examines the increasing access by UK issuers of high yield bonds to US investors notwithstanding substantive differences in the approach to valuation of the issuer in financial distress in US and UK restructuring law and, therefore, in anticipated return on default. It examines the development of the market in the context of existing theories on the relationship between law and finance and suggests that previous accounts have overlooked the adaptive capacity of the finance market to legal environment and the implications of such structural adaptation for the prospects of convergence in law. Three states are identified: where the market is poorly adapted to the legal environment and reinforces other pressure for change, where the market is adapted to the legal environment and is a neutral influence on, or even dampens, other pressure for change and where both legacy and adapted structures exist, potentially pulling in different directions at the same time.