gendering markets,gendering food: women,law and markets in the New York City food system, 1800–1840

This paper is a response to scholars who have called for exploring and interrogating new strategies of data collection and new approaches to more traditional methods, such as interviewing in the context of the internet. Drawing on feminist standpoint theory, ‘reflexive email interviewing’ is proposed as a method for feminist research. The method is illustrated using a recent case study of email interviews with self-identified women who are members of World Pulse, an online community that aims to unite and amplify women’s voices worldwide. Through this case study, issues of power and resistance in the researcher/researched relationship and of participant reflexivity are interrogated. Lastly, criteria for reflexive email interviewing are proposed, including 1) strategies to interrogate and disrupt power hierarchies within the research process, 2) researcher reflexivity as a continuous part of the research process, and 3) continued invitations for participants to directly reflect on and respond to the research process. Reflexive questions are offered for researchers to use during research design and in each phase of their research process to ensure reflexivity is achieved.     

What Kinds of Trade Liberalization Agreements Do People in Developing Countries Want?

One of the most striking developments in the global economy in the past decades is the rapid proliferation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs), with many of them concluded among or with participation of developing countries. On the presumption that current popular debates on trade policy are not so much about whether citizens want free trade but rather what kinds of trade liberalization they want, we examine individual trade policy preferences with regard to PTAs that can vary in content along several dimensions. To that end we carried out conjoint choice experiments embedded in representative surveys in three developing countries that differ strongly in income levels, political system, and trade liberalization history: Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Vietnam. We conceptualize trade policy preferences as preferences over the scale and scope of trade liberalization, environmental and labor standards, and labor market access (migration). Two main findings emerge. First, non-economic considerations, such as sympathy/antipathy toward particular countries and environmental and labor rights concerns influence citizens’ preferences at least as much as factors based on standard economic logic. Second, preferences over particular facets (attributes) of trade liberalization, that is PTA content, are surprisingly consistent across countries, despite strong differences in macro-economic and political context.     

The alluring voice/the allure of film (theaters): the formation of the voice in the Japanese cinema of the prewar period

Abstract

Kitada Akihiro provides a historical overview of film presentation as a transient business, its migration into dedicated cinemas, and the concomitant rise and fall of benshi film explainer culture, as silent film incorporating a narrative developed out of simplistic ‘moving pictures,’ only to be gradually replaced by ‘talkies.’ He does so by following the career of Tokugawa Musei, one of the most prominent benshi of the 1920s and 1930s, from beginning to end; in describing the changes in audience composition and expectations, he outlines the transition from the showman-like VOICE「声」 to the more ‘talkie’-like voice «声».     

The application of immunoblotting to the phenotyping of group-specific component

A sensitive immunoblotting method for the routine detection of group-specific component (GC) from fresh serum, and from control and casework bloodstains has been developed. GC phenotypes were separated in a thin layer polyacrylamide gel by isoelectric focusing, transferred to nitrocellulose by a rapid capillary blotting procedure, and detected using a double antibody enzyme immunoassay. This method is capable of phenotyping 8 ng of GC extracted from bloodstains, a four-fold increase in sensitivity when compared to immunofixation and silverstaining. A total of 2424 casework bloodstains have been analysed and GC phenotypes identified in 78% of samples. The method is suitable for use in routine laboratories and is more sensitive than other methods for GC phenotyping of casework bloodstains.     

Conflict between Explicit and Tacit Public Service Bargains in U.K. Executive Agencies

Public service bargains (PSBs) define rewards, competencies, and loyalties for civil servants. They involve both explicit and tacit agreements with politicians. The article suggests that these two kinds of bargain may not be closely coordinated with one another, and can become “loosely coupled,” operating and evolving with relative independence. This is particularly likely when there is conflict between rational‐actor preferences and institutional expectations about political‐administrative behavior. Such a trade‐off can be managed by “decoupling” the explicit and tacit PSB, so that they operate differently in public and in private. Loose coupling results in inconsistent PSBs that are resistant to change, whereas decoupling highlights the compliance costs that actors face when securing cultural legitimacy for their bargains. These arguments are illustrated by the long‐term development of “Next Steps” agencies in the United Kingdom, where a marked disjuncture has emerged between the stated and practiced PSB.     

President Donald Trump: A Case Study of Spectacular Power

Donald Trump's election as president certainly startled many, though not all political observers. In this article, I offer my own observation that Mr Trump's election represents a developmental progression of America's electoral system from a political process to an entertainment process. The effect of the office of the president now is to distract and entertain. I will aim to convince readers that his election as America's president is not an anomaly, but rather represents how the politics of image and representation now work as an everyday event and should be treated as part of a reality that we should now take for granted.     

A Bottom‐Up Theory of Public Opinion about Foreign Policy

If public opinion about foreign policy is such an elite‐driven process, why does the public often disagree with what elites have to say? We argue here that elite cue‐taking models in International Relations are both overly pessimistic and unnecessarily restrictive. Members of the public may lack information about the world around them, but they do not lack principles, and information need not only cascade from the top down. We present the results from five survey experiments where we show that cues from social peers are at least as strong as those from political elites. Our theory and results build on a growing number of findings that individuals are embedded in a social context that combines with their general orientations toward foreign policy in shaping responses toward the world around them. Thus, we suggest the public is perhaps better equipped for espousing judgments in foreign affairs than many of our top‐down models claim.