The geography of metropolitan opportunity: A reconnaissance and conceptual framework

Abstract

We present a conceptual framework for metropolitan opportunity and a model of individual decision making about issues affecting youth's future socioeco‐nomic status. Decision making and its geographic context have objective and subjective aspects. Objective spatial variations occur in the metropolitan opportunity structure—social systems, markets, and institutions that aid upward mobility. Decisions are based on the decision‐maker's values, aspirations, preferences, and subjective perceptions of possible outcomes, which are all shaped by the local social network (e.g., kin, neighbors, and friends).

We also review the psychological literature on decision making. We hypothesize that the decision‐making method varies with the range of opportunities considered: Those with fewer options adopt a less considered method wherein mistakes and short‐term focus are more likely. Our review also finds empirical evidence that the local social network has an important effect on youth's decisions regarding education, fertility, work, and crime. Policy implications are discussed.     

Contextualising the Teaching of Statistics in Political Science

The teaching of quantitative research methods is an integral part of most postgraduate programmes in politics, but less common at undergraduate level. This article explores the extent to which research methods in general, and quantitative research methods in particular, form part of the curricula of Politics departments in the UK. We then discuss an approach for motivating interest in a subject that tends to be unpopular with many students. We recommend an approach that utilises the links between the general quantification of politics with the quantitative study of political phenomena, as well as a combination of basic research methods for all and more advanced student-focused training for some.     

Sustainable Colonization: Tar Sands as Resource Colonialism

Canada is one of the world’s largest petrostates, owing to large shale oil deposits, also known as tar sands, which can be found within its borders. In recent decades, as the price of crude oil has increased dramatically, corporations and the Canadian state have worked together to open the oil deposits in Northern Canada for extraction and transportation. Despite a stated commitment to environmental sustainability by the United States and Canadian governments, both have endorsed tar sands extraction and transport. Government and corporate entities have tried to reframe tar sands as “ethical oil,” yet all steps in the process involved pose tremendous ecological, social, economic, and cultural threats to First Nations communities in Canada, landowners in the Midwest and Texas, local ecosystems, and the global climate. This practice is part of a long-standing pattern of appropriating and using public and First Nations land for economic development. We argue that tar sands production on First Nations land is a practice of resource colonialism: the theft and appropriation of land belonging to indigenous people in order to access natural resources. By branding tar sands as “ethical oil” and labeling production companies as “sustainable,” the public and private sectors bound up in the extractive economy claim to provide an essential public service while misdirecting attention away from acts of colonialism that make these resources available. In this article, we examine the ways in which corporate and state entities use the discourse of sustainability as a cover for continued resource colonialism.     

Egypt versus Ethiopia: The Conflict over the Nile Metastasizes

Egypt and Ethiopia continue to oppose one another over the allocation of the waters of the Nile River basin, despite a succession of provisional multilateral agreements. Officials in Cairo insist that Egypt be guaranteed its “historic rights” to two-thirds of the river’s flow, while their counterparts in Addis Ababa demand an “equitable” distribution of water among all of the riparian countries. More important, Sudan’s shift in alignment from Egypt to Ethiopia has injected new tension into the dispute, and the sustained involvement of South Sudan, Kenya, Uganda and Eritrea heightens the likelihood that periodic crises will escalate into armed confrontations. Consequently, existing studies that offer sanguine assessments of the potential for a compromise settlement fail to address the key dynamics that drive the conflict.     

The (non) event of state terror: drones and divine violence

In this article, we interrogate how the logic of the drone reconfigures state terrorism through the politics of (in)visibility. We argue that the everyday life of the drone can be both dull and disastrous, and thus demonstrates how state and non-state terror operate around different logics of visibility and witnessing. Enhanced sight and interpretation of data wrought by drones are distinct from the politicised act of witnessing. State terrorism, however, benefits from the privatisation and depoliticisation of the witnessing of the event through a minimisation of those who appear “visible”. Further, through the language of technology and security, drones help to classify the witnessing of the event. The event produces terror without witness, and without premonition, invoking the omnipresent power of god and thus blending divine retribution with profane catastrophe. We claim that state terror seeks to: (1) limit the exposure of the state to the act of witnessing and remembrance; and (2) through the ethos of privatisation, legalistically control the narrative of violence. In our conclusion, we discuss the implications of warfare in relation to (in)visibility, memory and drones.     

Online Campaigning in Russia: Evidence from the 2011 State Duma Election

Despite the continuing growth of internet use in Russia, there remains little systematic analysis of online election campaigning. This article presents an in-depth, multi-method analysis of party and candidate online activity during the 2011 State Duma election campaign—arguably Russia's first ‘internet election’—to ascertain the extent to which new social media is changing politics in Russia. The main findings indicate that the internet did indeed help to level the competitive playing field during the election campaign period, but despite the growing number of internet users, the overall level of online engagement remained weak.     

Distal Humerus Morphological Variation and Sex Estimation in Modern Thai Individuals,

Due to differential preservation, it is necessary to develop sex estimation methods on varied anatomical regions, including the distal humerus. Sexually dimorphic differences of the medial epicondyle angle, olecranon fossa shape, trochlear extension, and trochlear constriction have been documented in several non-Asian groups. This study examines distal humerus morphological variation in 616 modern Thai individuals (f = 198; m = 418) 18–96 years old and tests the methods on a hold-out sample of 152 individuals (f = 91; m = 61). The results indicate that population-specific binary probit regression performs the best (74.1–100%), followed by composite scoring (77.0–90.1%), binary logistic regression (63.3–92.2%), and univariate sectioning points (37.7–90.1%). Age minimally effects the expression of the medial epicondyle angle in males, and trait scoring is susceptible to high intra- and interobserver error. While demonstrating relatively high sex biases, distal humerus morphology can be used to estimate the sex of Thai individuals when more sexually dimorphic regions are absent.     

International Trust and Public Opinion About World Affairs

This study argues that citizens base their opinions about world affairs in part on generalized beliefs about how much their nation can trust other nations. Using original data from a two-wave panel survey and a cross-sectional survey, we show that Americans hold stable, internally consistent, and largely pessimistic generalized beliefs about whether the United States can trust other nations. We find that social trust, political trust, partisanship, and age influence this form of trust, which we call international trust. We then demonstrate that international trust shapes whether Americans prefer internationalism to isolationism, perceive specific foreign nations as unfriendly and threatening, and favor military action against Iraq. The role of international trust in shaping opinion may be consistent with theories of low-information rationality, but competing interpretations are also plausible.     

Managing economic crises: The role of the state in Bahrain and Kuwait

Bahrain and Kuwait adopted sharply divergent responses to the economic crisis in the Gulf during the 1980s. The Bahraini government reduced the level of state intervention in the local economy, opened up opportunities for private investment and relied on the operation of the unregulated market; Kuwait's government, on the other hand, imposed a greater degree of state supervision over domestic economic affairs and expanded central planning to allocate resources to the most profitable enterprises. Two influential bodies of neo-Marxist writing on the state—the state-derivation school and the writings of Claus Offe—have difficulty accounting for these differences. A more adequate explanation for Bahraini and Kuwaiti policy can be formulated in terms of the strength of each country's indigenous rich merchant community relative to that of the ruling family/central administration and the political activities of the labor movement in each amirate. Fred H. Lawson is associate professor, Department of Government, Mills College, Oakland, CA 94613. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1982 and has also taught at the University of North Carolina and Smith College. His most recent publications include “Political-economic trends in Ba'thi Syria: a reinterpretation,”Orient 29 (December 1988) and “Libéralisation économique en Syrie et Irak,”Maghred/Machrek 128 (April–May 1990). He is currently exploring the connection between class conflict and foreign policy in contemporary Syria and Iraq.