Increasing the Complexity of Young Adolescents’ Beliefs About Poverty and Inequality: Results of an 8th Grade Social Studies Curriculum Intervention

Poverty and economic hardship remain a reality for many of America's children. Although the causes of poverty are varied, Americans strongly endorse individual responsibility as a primary cause. Because beliefs about poverty originate in childhood and adolescence, intervention efforts targeting young people may be particularly effective in shifting attitudes about the poor and policies designed to help the disadvantaged. To test this proposition, the current study evaluated the efficacy of a 1-week 8th grade social studies curriculum focusing on poverty and inequality. Study participants were upper middle-class youth enrolled in multiple sections of a Social Studies course taught by a single teacher. Participants had little direct contact with marginalized groups such as poor and homeless individuals in their communities. Students (N=66) completed a survey assessing their attitudes and beliefs about poverty and poor people prior to, and 1 week and 6 months post-instruction. Results indicated that the curriculum was partially effective in increasing the complexity of students' beliefs about poverty. Students were more likely to emphasize fatalistic causes and less likely to list individualistic causes for poverty following instruction than before, but rarely emphasized structural causes for poverty and rated individual effort as the most influential factor in determining one's success. Implications of the study findings for curriculum efforts targeting young adolescents' reasoning about economic inequality and inequity and directions for future studies are discussed.     

Parental Knowledge and Youth Risky Behavior: A Person Oriented Approach

Most studies isolate the effects of one knowledge-related behavior on youth outcomes. This study explores the relationship between subgroups of mother–youth dyads that use specific combinations of parental knowledge-related behaviors and youth risky behavior. Using a sample of 796 rural 6th graders (53 % female), we assessed mother and youth reports of maternal knowledge, active parent monitoring efforts, youth disclosure, parental supervision, and the amount of parent–youth communication to identify five knowledge latent classes: High-Monitors, Maternal Over-Estimators, Low-Monitors, Communication-Focused, and Supervision-Focused. Delinquency, antisocial peers, and substance use were associated with increased odds of membership in the Supervision-Focused class, relative to the High Monitors. Membership in the Low Monitors and Maternal Over-Estimators classes was associated with unhealthy attitudes towards substances and for Low Monitors, substance use. The discussion focuses on the value of using a person-oriented approach to understand parental knowledge and risky behavior during early adolescence and intervention implications.     

The global farms race: land grabs,agricultural investment,and the scramble for food security

In a widely read paper, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, World Bank and others propose systematic property rights formalization as a key step in addressing the problems of irresponsible agricultural investment. This paper examines the case of Cambodia, one of a number of countries where systematic land titling and large-scale land concessions have proceeded in parallel in recent years. Cambodia's experience exemplifies the challenges of the ‘formalization fix’ – the proposition that property formalization constitutes a preferable front-line defense against land grabbing – and highlights formalization's uneven geography as an issue that has yet to generate adequate discussion internationally. Three dimensions of Cambodia's less-than-successful formalization fix efforts stand out: (1) the spatial separation of systematic land titling and agribusiness concessions that emerged during the 2000s and has only recently begun to be addressed; (2) the deployment of property formalization as a means of land grabbing, especially when applied selectively and unevenly; and (3) the political arena of efforts to legitimize ‘state land’. The paper questions the formalization fix as a policy solution, and argues for both greater spatial transparency in property formalization efforts throughout the global South, and greater attention to the problem of unmapped state land in general.     

Saying all the right things? Gendered discourse in climate-smart agriculture

Amidst debates about the role of ‘climate-smart agriculture’ (CSA), the intersection of concerns about climate change and agriculture offer an opportunity to consider how gender is considered in global policymaking. The latest module in the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, World Bank and International Fund for Agricultural Development Gender and Agriculture Sourcebook – ‘Gender and Climate Smart Agriculture’ – offers an opportunity to reassess how gender factors into these global recommendations. This contribution argues that the module makes strides toward more gender-aware policymaking, but the version of CSA discussed in the module sidesteps the market-led and productivity-oriented practices often associated with CSA. As a result, though the module pushes a more feminist agenda in many respects, it does not fully consider the gendered implications of corporate-led and trade-driven CSA.     

National survey of professional practice in child sexual abuse

A sample of 276 professionals described how they spend their professional time, their attitudes and knowledge about etiology and treatment of sexual abuse. Professionals were also asked to respond to a case vignette where varied on two dimensions: age of the child victim and relationship of the offender to the victim. Agencies receiving the questionnaire were randomly assigned to one of the six possible scenario conditions resulting from the two dimensions.     

Book reviews

Jeff Haynes, Religion in Global Politics (Longman, London, 1998), 243 pp., ISBN 0–582–29312‐X (pb)

Haleh Afshar, Islam and Feminisms. An Iranian Case‐study (Macmillan, London, 1998), 235 pp., ISBN 0–333–73324‐X (hb)

Felix Moses Edoho, Globalization and the New World Order: Promises, Problems, and Prospects for Africa in the Twenty First Century (Praeger, Westport, 1997), 215 pp., ISBN 0–275–95517–6 (hb)

Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh, Social Movements in Politics. A Comparative Study (Longman, London, 1997), 269 pp., ISBN 0–582–20946–3

Mick Ryan, Lobbying from Below: INQUEST in Defence of Civil Liberties (UCL Press, London, 1996), 208 pp., ISBN 1–85728–225–8 (hb), 1–85728–256–6 (pb)

Grant Jordan and William Maloney, The Protest Business? Mobilizing Campaign Groups (Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 1997), 213 pp., ISBN 0–7190–4371–9 (pb)