Book reviews: Rewriting Christine

THE BOOK OF THE CITY OF LADIES by Christine de Pizan. Translated by Earl Jeffrey Richards. Persea Books, 1982.

COMIC WOMEN, TRAGIC MEN: A STUDY OF GENDER AND GENRE IN SHAKESPEARE by Linda Bamber. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982. 211 pp. ($18.50)

THE UNDISCOVERED CONTINENT: EMILY DICKINSON AND THE SPACE OF THE MIND by Suzanne Juhasz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983.

REGINA by Leslie Epstein. Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, New York. 251 pp. ($13.95). Avon Books ($3.95).

MORE WORK FOR MOTHER: THE IRONIES OF HOUSEHOLD TECHNOLOGY FROM THE OPEN HEARTH TO THE MICROWAVE by Ruth Schwartz Cowan. Basic Books, New York, 1983. 219 pp.     

Editing daphne du maurier

The author of this article edited all Daphne du Maurier's work for nearly forty years, from 1943 until she published her last book in 1981. The article discusses the qualities which made her a best seller, whose books are read and studied in universities all over the world, and provides insights into her skill as a writer, and into the links between her books and her own life. It describes how author and editor worked together, and seeks to throw light on du Maurier's complex and often contradictory personality. There are also quotations from her letters, published here for the first time. Because of the author's particular relationship with du Maurier, the article gives a new and personal insight into how so many world-famous books came into being.     

W.B. Gallie,T.H. Marshall and the contested concepts of fairness and citizenship: examining the parameters of debate in Newport City Council’s Fairness Commission and citizens’ views on fairness

The paper examines Newport City Council’s Fairness Commission’s (NFC) understanding of fairness, alongside a survey of Newport citizens’ views on fairness. These views focus on two parameters of debate identified by the NFC – equality versus differential treatment, and the accountability and transparency of decision-making – reflecting competing interpretations of the political concept of fairness, and as explored by W.B. Gallie. Moreover, these contested interpretations also have a profound bearing on post-1945 debates about citizenship instigated by T.H. Marshall. While many contemporary policy-recommenders and politicians reject Marshallesque social rights to citizenship, dismissing these rights as encouraging so-called passive conceptions of citizenship emphasising unconditional individual entitlements to local services, the views of Newport citizens tend to broadly support these rights. These rights are distinct from ‘active’ conceptions, emphasising the values of interdependency and reciprocity, and citizens’ obligations to positively participate in community life which then underpin conditions for receiving entitlements.     

The Challenge of Strengthening Nonprofits and Civil Society

The Winter Commission Report was centrally concerned with improving the performance of state and local governments. Since the issuance of the commission’s report in 1993, the delivery of services by state and local government has been substantially changed by the growing role of nonprofit organizations in providing public services and representing citizen interests. As a result, state and local governments and nonprofit agencies are faced with complex governance challenges. The central argument of this paper is that despite the dramatic changes in the relationship between government and nonprofit organizations in recent years, the key tenets of the Winter Commission report—the need for improved training and education, greater transparency and accountability, more emphasis on performance, and improved citizen engagement—remain deeply relevant in improving the governance of the public services in an increasingly complex policy process and service delivery system at the state and local levels.     

Genetic differentiation between and within Northern Native American language groups: an argument for the expansion of the Native American CODIS database

The National Research Council recommends that genetic differentiation among subgroups of ethnic samples be lower than 3% of the total genetic differentiation within the ethnic sample to be used for estimating reliable random match probabilities for forensic use. Native American samples in the United States’ Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) database represent four language families: Algonquian, Na-Dene, Eskimo-Aleut, and Salishan. However, a minimum of 27 Native American language families exists in the US, not including language isolates. Our goal was to ascertain whether genetic differences are correlated with language groupings and, if so, whether additional language families would provide a more accurate representation of current genetic diversity among tribal populations. The 21 short tandem repeat (STR) loci included in the Globalfiler® PCR Amplification Kit were used to characterize six indigenous language families, including three of the four represented in the CODIS database (i.e. Algonquian, Na-Dene, and Eskimo-Aleut), and two language isolates (Miwok and Seri) using major population genetic diversity metrics such as F statistics and Bayesian clustering analysis of genotype frequencies. Most of the genetic variation (97%) was found to be within language families instead of among them (3%). In contrast, when only the three of the four language families represented in both the CODIS database and the present study were considered, 4% of the genetic variation occurred among the language groups. Bayesian clustering resulted in a maximum posterior probability indicating three genetically distinct groups among the eight language families and isolates: (1) Eskimo, (2) Seri, and (3) all other language groups and isolates, thus confirming genetic subdivision among subgroups of the CODIS Native American database. This genetic structure indicates the need for an increased number of Native American populations based on language affiliation in the CODIS database as well as more robust sample sets for those language families.Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/20961790.2021.1963088 .     

Salience,Food Security,and SNAP Receipt

Household food insecurity status in the United States is ascertained by a battery of close‐ended questions. We posit that the monthly nature of benefit receipt from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) creates experiences of food hardship, which become salient in the context of SNAP receipt, and in turn exert influence on the response to food security questions. We test this hypothesis by examining answers to a 30‐day food security module in relation to when SNAP benefits are received. We find that for SNAP households near the end of or at the beginning of the benefit month, the probability of being classified as food insecure increases by 11 percentage points, over a baseline of 42 percent. We also find that the probability of responding affirmatively to any of the first five items in the module increases during this time. We discuss the importance of these findings for the estimation of food security and its implication on program evaluation.