Feminism, Property in the Person and Concepts of Self

In this article, I examine the role of the fiction of property in the person in recent feminist debate, comparing Carole Pateman's position with those who are more sympathetic to the image of contract for feminist/anti-racist political theory, such as Charles Mills, Jean Hampton and Susan Moller Okin. I then turn to the question of selfhood. As a fiction, property in the person does not say anything regarding what it is to be a 'self'. However, I explore Balibar's rich analysis of Locke's position on identity. I then extend Balibar's analysis to argue that the fiction of property in the person is associated with an image of a self that is 'bounded' against the outside in a way that is disrupted by this view of identity.     

The Chocolate Conundrum: A Simple Simulation of a Canonical Management Problem

This article describes an exercise that simulates one of the most famous of all human management problems: the “tragedy of the commons.” Coined by Garret Hardin in 1968, the term refers to any situation in which people acting rationally to meet their individual interests wind up depleting a shared resource to the detriment of all participants. Because these patterns arise in many real‐world situations — from global warming and natural resource management to free‐rider problems in markets and organizations — this exercise may interest a broad range of negotiation scholars, teachers, and practitioners. The Chocolate Conundrum is a simple exercise that uses candy to demonstrate the tension between individual and collective interests that arises in all social dilemmas. Because these dynamics also arise in many real situations, the exercise can be a powerful teaching tool for instructors in management, public policy, sociology, economics, and many other social science disciplines. Unlike some other simulations of collective action problems, this exercise is simple to administer, requires no computation or tallying of results, and works with a broad range of audiences and group sizes.     

The development and initial validation of the dating attitudes inventory: a measure of the gender context of dating violence in men

The development and initial psychometric investigation of the Dating Attitudes Inventory (DAI) is reported. The DAI was created, to fill a gap in the literature and to measure specific masculine ideology and traditional gender attitudes that rationalize the abuse of women. Using a sample (n = 164) of male college students, a 20-item measure was developed consisting of two subscales (Rationalization of Abuse and Dominance and Control) and a total score. The 20-item DAI and other measures used for validation were completed by 216 male college students. The DAI correlated in theoretically expected ways with measures of propensity for abusiveness, relational dominance, and masculine gender role stress. A confirmatory factor analysis supported the two theorized factors of the DAI. Results of the present study offer initial support for the validity and reliability of the DAI. The authors discuss the importance of measuring masculine gender role attitudes and beliefs that support and rationalize dating violence.     

Sex work research: methodological and ethical challenges

The challenges involved in the design of ethical, nonexploitative research projects with sex workers or any other marginalized population are significant. First, the size and boundaries of the population are unknown, making it extremely difficult to get a representative sample. Second, because membership in hidden populations often involves stigmatized or illegal behavior, concerns regarding privacy and confidentiality are paramount and difficult to resolve. In addition, they often result in challenges to the validity of the data. Third, in spite of evidence to the contrary, associations between sex work and victimization are still strong, dichotomies remain prevalent, and sex workers are often represented as a homogeneous population. Drawing on three research projects in which the author has been involved-all grounded in a sex-as-work approach-as well as the work of others, this article provides several strategies for overcoming these challenges. Clear guidelines for ethical, nonexploitive methodologies are embedded in the solutions provided.     

Composition of bacillus species in aerosols from 11 U.S. cities

A PCR-based heteroduplex assay was used to determine the presence and composition of Bacillus species in 11,059 Environmental Protection Agency PM2.5 aerosol samples from 11 U.S. cities. The assay differentiated three groups: Type A containing Bacillus anthracis and very closely related, often pathogenic, Bacillus cereus and Bacillus thuringiensis strains; Type B containing other B. cereus and B. thuringiensis strains; and a third group of more-distantly related Bacillus species. Eight of the 11 cities were positive for Bacillus species in 50% or more of the samples, and the percent of aerosol samples that contained the HD Type A group ranged from 3% to 32%. Cities from the eastern half of the United States generally contained a higher frequency and broader diversity of Bacillus species than the western half of the United States. Positive samples were detected throughout the year. These results have implications for pathogen detection in environmental samples, understanding the natural evolution of new pathogenic strains, and incidence of infection caused by strains of the B. cereus subgroup.     

Framework for Analysis of Legal Mobilization: A Decision-Making Model

The American legal system, structured in an entrepreneurial mode, relies upon the individual actor to personally evaluate the burdens and benefits of invoking the law on his or her own behalf Without discounting the contribution to our understanding of legal mobilization which has been made by the access-to-justice movement, the author argues that focusing on the poor and the distribution of legal services has limited our understanding of the legal system.
The article presents an alternative analytic framework for examination of citizen use of the law. The model of legal mobilization presented focuses on demands rather than needs, on citizens rather than lawyers or judges, on decision making rather than access, and on invoking the law rather than compliance with it. Drawing on the literature and available empirical evidence, the author attempts to analytically clarify the complex process of legal mobilization by organizing relevant variables into a decision-making model that focuses on the individual actor and the factors weighed in deciding whether and how to proceed in mobilizing the law.