Exposure to community violence and daily feeling states among urban African American youth

This longitudinal study examined the relationships between exposure to community violence and daily feeling states among 175 6th- through 8th-grade African American students. The relationships were tested both cross-sectionally and longitudinally over the 3-year span. Four daily feeling state subscales: contented, hostile, anxious, and dysphoric were developed from a factor analysis of the 30 Experience Sampling Method (ESM) feeling states. Cross-sectionally, regression analyses indicated that exposure to violence individually predicted most feeling states and more variability in most feeling states in 7th and 8th grades. When feeling states were entered into regressions together, fewer predicted violence exposure. Longitudinally, regression analyses revealed that more variability in dysphoric feelings in 6th grade predicted exposure to violence in 7th grade, while 6th-grade hostile and anxious feelings predicted 8th-grade exposure change. Longitudinal analyses did not indicate that exposure to community violence predicted later daily feeling states. Preventive and intervention implications are addressed.     

The Tangled Webs of Westminster and Whitehall: The Discourse, Strategy and Practice of Networking Within the British Core Executive

In this paper we identify and seek to resolve a certain paradox in the existing litera-ture on networks and networking. Whilst earlier policy network perspectives have tended to emphasize the structural character of networks as durable, dense and relatively static organization forms, the more recent strategic network literature emphasizes the flexible, adaptive and dynamic quality of networking as a social and political practice. However, neither perspective has yet developed a theory of network formation, evolution, transformation and termination. In this paper, we seek to rectify this omission, advancing a 'strategic relational' theory of network dynamics based on a rethinking of the concept of network itself. We illustrate this perspective with respect to the policy process centred in and around Westminster and Whitehall, drawing on a series of semi-structured interviews with ministers and officials from four departments.     

Re-assessing the Role of Departmental Cabinet Ministers

The study of the core executive has been dominated by discussion of the Prime Ministers and Cabinet with only limited serious treatment paid to ministers. However, ministers and departments are crucial actors in the core executive. This article examines the multiple roles and varying impacts of ministers. More particularly, we initially develop a classification of ministerial roles, which builds upon, but develops, work by Headey, James and Norton. Subsequently, we use this classification to pose two key questions. Which roles do particular ministers stress? In what ways has the balance between these roles changed in the last twenty‐five years?     

Parental Monitoring Mediates the Effects of Age and Sex on Problem Behaviors Among African American Urban Young Adolescents

Adolescent delinquency, drug use and aggression remain societal concerns. These problems are more common with adolescent boys than girls, and tend to increase with age. Although a lack of parental monitoring has been found to be related to problem behaviors, the mediating role of monitoring on the relationship of sex and grade to problem behaviors has not been directly studied. This paper examined parental monitoring as a mediator of the relationship of sex and age to delinquency, drug use, and aggression in a sample of urban African American young adolescents. Our findings indicated that in general, boys and older adolescents reported higher rates of delinquency, drug use, and aggressiveness. Boys and older adolescents also indicated less monitoring by parents. Parental monitoring was found to mediate the effects of sex and grade on some of the behavioral problems.     

“Taking care”: Maintaining the self and the home in early adolescence

This paper explores young adolescents' experience of basic daily tasks: personal maintenance (e.g., grooming and eating) and household maintenance (e.g., chores and errands). Quantity of time, companionship, and subjective states in these activities were examined during one week in the lives of 401 5th–9th graders with the Experience Sampling Method (Csikszentmihalyi and Larson, 1987). Our findings show that these tasks are particularly subject to sex typing. Girls engaged in grooming more often than boys, and this time increased in the higher grades, while boys showed no age effects. Boys did more outside chores while girls did more indoor chores. Girls were also more likely to carry out household tasks with family while boys did more chores alone. An examination of subjective states during household maintenance revealed that older girls reported a greater sense of motivation and choice than younger girls, but boys' experience did not differ. Experience of maintenance as socialization for adult activities is discussed.This research was supported by NIMH grant number MH38324, Stress in Daily Life During Early Adolescence, awarded to Reed Larson.Current research interests are the effects of maternal employment on children and adolescents, and the study of day care.Current research interests are family relationships in early adolescence, interpersonal conflict and the study of daily psychological experience.Current research interests are pubertal development, precursors of eating disorders, and the effects of maternal employment on young adolescents.     

The Westminster Model and the “Indivisibility of the Political and Administrative Elite”: A Convenient Myth Whose Time Is Up?

This article argues that the principle of indivisibility in the relationship between political and administrative elites acted as a central convention of the Westminster system for much of the twentieth century. It explores how in more recent decades this principle has been challenged by the shift to a principal–agent approach. It considers the extent to which this shift diminishes the traditional Westminster model's understanding of the minister–civil servant relationship as one based on a symbiotic interdependent partnership. In its place has emerged a more universal command and control relationship that is seen as necessary to meet the demands of modern accountability and transparency. Such a change has fundamentally altered a long‐established power‐bargain between ministers and civil servants and undermined a core tenet of the Westminster model.     

“Flexible” capital accumulation in Islamic State social media

This article explores online social media produced by the neo-jihadist group “Islamic State” (IS) from a political-economic perspective. Using a framework developed by anthropologist David Harvey, it examines how IS social media operates within depoliticised neoliberal environments characterised by “flexible” regimes of capital accumulation. It explicates how IS acquires political-economic capital by evoking “spectacle”, “fashion” and a “commodification of cultural forms”. Drawing from Christian Fuchs’ informational theory, the article also considers the roles of agency and competition in accumulation processes where “knowledge and technology reinforce each other”. By revealing how IS both constitutes and is constituted by its flexible approach to social media, the article seeks to illuminate avenues for better understanding neo-jihadist ideations.