Attributes that Differentiate Children Who Sip Alcohol from Abstinent Peers

Sipping alcohol during childhood may be a marker of differentiation as regards children’s future risk of underage drinking; yet very little is known about alcohol use when it occurs among elementary school-aged children. The purpose of the present study is to examine alcohol sipping behavior in a sample of third-grade school children to learn whether sipping is associated with attributes that could increase children’s likelihood of further underage drinking. We collected telephone interview data from 1,050 mothers and their third grade children (mean age 9.2 years; 48.2 % male) residing in the Southeastern United States. The majority of mothers were White non-Hispanic (69.02 %) or Black non-Hispanic (21.3 %); most (85 %) lived in households shared with fathers or other adult caretakers. We hypothesized that children who sip alcohol would score lower than abstinent peers on indicators of competence and score higher on indicators of exposure to alcohol-specific socialization by parents and peers. A multivariate model controlling for frequency of parent alcohol use and demographic covariates showed that children who had sipped alcohol were significantly less likely than abstinent peers to affirm indicators of competence and significantly more likely to affirm indicators of exposure to alcohol specific socialization by parents and by same age peers. These preliminary findings suggest that developmental attributes associated with risk of underage drinking begin to differentiate at least as young as middle childhood. Research is needed to test prospectively for continuity between alcohol risk attributes present in middle childhood and future alcohol use.     

Associations Between Adolescents’ Perceived Discrimination and Prosocial Tendencies: The Mediating Role of Mexican American Values

Experiences with perceived discrimination (e.g., perceptions of being treated unfairly due to race or ethnicity) are expected to impact negatively youths’ prosocial development. However, resilience often occurs in light of such experiences through cultural factors. The current longitudinal study examined the influence of perceived discrimination on the emergence of Mexican American adolescents’ later prosocial tendencies, and examined the mediating role of Mexican American values (e.g., familism, respect, and religiosity). Participants included 749 adolescents (49 % female) interviewed at 5th, 7th, and 10th grade. Results of the current study suggested that, although perceived discrimination was associated negatively with some types of prosocial tendencies (e.g., compliant, emotional, and dire) and related positively to public prosocial helping, the associations were mediated by youths’ Mexican American values. Directions for future research are presented and practical implications for promoting adolescents’ resilience are discussed.     

The Greying Periphery—Ageing and Community Development in Rural Romania and Bulgaria

The impact of ageing on community well-being has been part of the policy discourse in the West, but it is a relatively new problem for the post-socialist countries in Eastern Europe. This study focuses on the patterns of ageing in rural Romania and Bulgaria, offering a holistic view of vulnerabilities, including persistent rural disadvantages, ageing in the countryside and the post-socialist transformation. Aggregate statistics and community case studies reveal the links between demographic processes and community development. This paper contributes to the country-specific analysis of the ageing European periphery in the context of social cohesion as a fundamental European goal.     

Power and property: commercialization,enclosures, and the transformation of agrarian relations in Ethiopia

The transnational agrarian social movement Vía Campesina is campaigning to have the United Nations negotiate and implement a Declaration, and eventually an International Convention, on Peasants' Rights. This article analyzes the origins and demands of the campaign and the place of the claimed rights in international law. Peasant organizations hope to follow in the footsteps of indigenous peoples' movements that participated in the negotiations preceding the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The peasants' rights campaign has succeeded in linking its demands to discussions of the right to food in the United Nations, where concern is growing over the approach of the 2015 target for realizing the Millennium Development Goals, in particular the halving of the numbers of people suffering from hunger. The campaign is likely to face stiff resistance from powerful UN member states, but could achieve substantial advances even if the path to a convention is difficult or never completed.     

Peru: Letters from Shepherds’ union bulletin

Peasants And Poverty, A Study of Haiti by Mats Lundahl. London: Croom Helm; New York: St Martin's Press; 1979. Pp. 699; £19.95

Rural Sociology in the Soviet Union. Its History and Basic Concepts by Terence M. Cox: London: C. Hurst &; Co., 1979. Pp. 106, £7.50.

Peasant Farming in Muscovy by R. E. F. Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Pp. xii + 289, 11 plates. £10.50

Rural Rebels: A Study of Two Protest Movements in Kenya by A. Wipper, Nairobi, London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Pp. xiv + 363. £7.25.

Food Aid and the Developing World by Christopher Stevens, London: Croom Helm, 1979. Pp. 224. £9.95

Research in Economic Anthropology: a research annual Volume 2, edited by George Dalton. Connecticut: Jai Press Inc., 1979, Pp. xi + 390.