Adventures of Feminism: Simone de Beauvoir's Autobiographies,Women's Liberation,and Self-Fashioning

While The Second Sex is usually taken as Simone de Beauvoir's major theoretical contribution to feminism, in the 1960s and 1970s it was very often through her autobiographies – especially Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, The Prime of Life, and Force of Circumstance, along with novels such as She Came to Stay and The Mandarins – that her feminist ideas were most thoroughly absorbed. The autobiographies became nothing less than a guide for the fashioning of a new kind of feminine self. Where The Second Sex had intimated that a significant aspect of human liberation lay in women not losing their identity or their sense of self in those of men, it was the autobiographies which suggested and demonstrated in great detail how this might be done. In them, the rejection of conventional marriage and children was no mere slogan, but the foundation of what seemed to young female readers to be a fascinating and challenging life. In this paper, I reflect on de Beauvoir and her historical and contemporary relevance: first through reminiscence and re-reading of the autobiographies themselves; then with an historical examination of how they were read, taking Sydney, Australia, as my example; and finally by offering some reflections on subsequent feminist critique.     

The ‘Invisible Institution’ and Black Youth Crime: The Church as an Agency of Local Social Control

We examine the degree to which an individual's religious involvement significantly mediates and buffers the effects of neighborhood disorder on youth crime. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed the fifth wave of data from the National Youth Survey, focusing on black respondents given the historical as well as contemporary significance of the African-American church for black Americans. Results from estimating a series of regression models indicated that (1) the effects of neighborhood disorder on crime among black youth are partly mediated by an individual's religious involvement (measured by the frequency of attending religious services) and (2) involvement of African-American youth in religious institutions significantly buffers or interacts with the effects of neighborhood disorder on crime and, in particular, serious crime. Theoretical and methodological implications of the present findings are briefly discussed.     

OMB and the Budget Examiner: Changes in the Reagan Era

This is the first of a two-part retrospective on the role of the OMB budget examiner during the Reagan administration. Changes in the federal budget process, historical federal deficits and the inability of Congress to meet appropriation deadlines have significantly altered the role of OMB and its budget examiners, undermining the examiner's traditional role as program analyst and controler. This part focuses on the preparation of the president's budget and budget execution, and the compressed time in which OMB must respond to "top-down" budget requirements. The summer of 1987 is presented as a case study of the demands now placed on OMB.
Part Two, in the next issue, will focus on the budget examiner in the congressional budget process and in advocacy roles for the president.     

The human distribution of some barbiturate sedatives in combination with miscellaneous CNS-active drugs

This paper presents 14 cases in which the distribution of barbiturates and the hydroxylated metabolites in combination with miscellaneous CNS-active drugs was studied. In 7 of these cases the other drug present was methadone, and in the remainder dihydrocodeine, morphine, propoxyphene, amitriptyline, meprobamate, cyclizine and dipipanone, diphenhydramine and methaqualone.Amitrityline, methadone, cyclizine and dipipanone, methaqualone and diphenhydramine appeared to modify the distribution of amylobarbitone and quinalbarbitone. Likewise, the barbiturates seemed to alter the distribution of amitriptyline, propoxyphene and, in one instance, methadone.     

Toxicological investigations of six chlormethiazole-related deaths

This paper presents the toxicological findings for six coroners' autopsy cases where chlormethiazole was contributory to the cause of death. The drug, which was assayed by a gas-chromatographic procedure, was the only drug found in five of the cases.