Interrogating ‘invisibilization’ and ‘instrumentalization’: women and current citizenship trends in Canada

This paper examines current citizenship discourses and practices in Canada, focusing on the implications not only of marketization, but also of growing securitization vis-à-vis citizenship, and the gendered ramifications of such developments. The repercussions of marketization and securitization and their interrelations, for women in general, as well as racialized and immigrant women in particular, are outlined and assessed. In this way, we see how women are at the receiving end of highly contradictory processes in that they are both ‘invisibilized’, in other words, rendered invisible, by the Canadian state, but are also are increasingly ‘instrumentalized’, in other words, used in strategic ways. Yet, women also challenge these trends and tactics, thereby interrogating these processes that serve to limit the terms and scope of citizenship in Canada.     

The moral purpose of US power: neoconservatism in the age of Obama

The ‘neoconservative moment’ is widely assumed to have come and gone with the George W. Bush administration. This article argues, however, that the hope that the neoconservative chapter in US foreign policy will be definitively closed under Barack Obama's administration is unlikely to be realized in practice, owing to the continuing influence that neoconservatives are able to exercise over national debates regarding the ‘moral’ use of US power in order to shape the international environment. While the moral agenda of the ‘neocons’ is often misconceived as simply a mask for the naked pursuit of the United States' material and strategic interests, this article demonstrates that this misrepresents the rationale that underpins the neoconservative perspective. Exploring the re-articulation of morality in neoconservative thought reveals the nexus that both links the neoconservative domestic agenda for political change to its foreign policy goals and also provides a framework for understanding the ‘staying power’ that neoconservatism continues to exhibit. Although the Obama presidency is widely heralded as a repudiation of this agenda, the neoconservative conception of the United States as a moral power is deeply rooted in US foreign policy traditions and is domestically allied to traditional expressions of social conservatism, which enables neoconservative ideas to continue to resonate in US foreign policy debates.     

Socioenvironmental Risk and Adjustment in Latino Youth: The Mediating Effects of Family Processes and Social Competence

The direct and mediated effects of socioenvironmental risk on internalizing and externalizing problems among Latino youth aged 10–14 were examined using prospective analyses. Participants in this study were 464 Latino mother and child dyads surveyed as part of the Welfare, Children & Families: A Three City Study. It was hypothesized that socioenvironmental risk (i.e., maternal psychological distress, maternal parenting stress, neighborhood disadvantage, and perceived financial strain) would influence later adolescent adjustment by interrupting important family processes and interfering with opportunities for adolescents to develop appropriate social competence. Using path analyses, the mediational model was compared across high and low acculturation groups. With two exceptions, the models for the high and low acculturation groups were equivalent. Results supported a mediated effect between early socioenvironmental risk and later adjustment problems for the low acculturation group through family routines and adolescent social competence. Among families high in acculturation, socioenvironmental risk effects were partially mediated through family routines and adolescent social competence. Finally, a path from gender to maternal monitoring was present in the low acculturation group model but not the high acculturation group model. Assistant professor at the University at Albany, State University of New York. She received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of North Texas. Her major research interests are risk and resiliency processes in minority youth. Assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Michigan State University. Her major research interests are the effects of microenvironmental factors in the externalizing and internalizing behaviors of European American and Latino youth. Assistant professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Michigan State University. Her major research interests are risk and protective factors in children and adolescents at-risk because of parental substance abuse.     

Confidentiality and privacy

She is a developmental psychologist and has written and lectured widely on infant and early childhood development, high risk infants, and the gifted. Most recently she has published a book on theories of development. She is a member of the editorial boards of Developmental Reviewand Infant Behavior and Development.     

Queer Black Feminism: The Pleasure Principle

In this critical personal narrative Harris explores some of the gaps between conceptions of feminist thought and feminist practice. Harris focuses on an analysis of race, class, and desire divisions within feminist sexual politics. She suggests a queer black feminist theory and practice that calls into question naturalized identities and communities, and therefore what feminism and feminist practices might entail.