The New Miss India: Popular Fiction in Contemporary India

Miss New India is the title of a 2011 novel by Indian-born (now American-based) Bharati Mukherjee, which tells the story of a young woman who leaves her small-town home and family to find work in a call centre in the information technology city of Bangalore. The call centre is emblematic of a ‘new India’, in which educated young people seize the possibilities of a global labour market. This is a generation for whom colonialism is ancient history, a generation who have grown up in the aftermath of economic liberalization in India. Chetan Bhagat refers to this generation as ‘Young India’ and has written a series of best-selling novels that feature ambitious young men in the ‘new India’. There is, however, an emerging genre of similar narratives written by women and addressed to a female readership. This article discusses a range of contemporary Indian women’s popular novels and argues that, while Bhagat and his male heroes may embrace globalization and the market, the narratives written by women are more nuanced in their celebration of economic liberalization. The novels dramatize the tensions between tradition and modernity, family and independence, and suggest that these are particularly fraught for young Indian women. These texts pick up on the discourses of contemporary journalism about ‘Young India’, within the generic form of the romance, but their resolutions are repeatedly uneasy and suggest that the ‘new India’ is not an entirely comfortable space for the new Miss India.     

Educating Women: schooling and identity in England and France, 1800–1867 CHRISTINA DE BELLAIGUE; Rousseau's Daughters: domesticity,education and autonomy in modern France JENNIFER J. POPIEL

The following books are reviewed.

Women and Gender in Early Modern Wales MICHAEL ROBERTS &; SIMONE CLARKE (Eds), 2000 Cardiff: University of Wales Press. 320 pp., ISBN 0 7083 1550 X, paperback, £14.99; 0 7083 1580 1, hardback, £35.00

Women in Scotland c. 1100–c. 1750 ELIZABETH EWEN &; MAUREEN M. MEIKLE (Eds), 1999 East Linton: Tuckwell Press. 282 pp., ISBN 0 86232 046 2, £14.99

Gendering Scottish History: an international approach TERRY BROTHERSTONE, DEBORAH SIMONTON &; OONAGH WALSH (Eds), 1999 Glasgow: Cruithne Press. xxi + 280 pp., ISBN 1 873448 18 X, hardback, £20.00; 1 873448 16 3, paperback, £10.95

Women, Sexuality and War PHILOMENA GOODMAN New York: Palgrave. xii + 164 pp., ISBN 0 333 76086 7, £42.50

Revealing New Worlds: three Victorian women naturalists SUZANNE LE-MAY SHEFFIELD, 2001 London: Routledge. ISBN 0 415 2706 9, hardback, £65.00

‘Wicked’ Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa Dorothy L. Hodgson &; Sheryl A. McCurdy, 2001 Oxford: James Currey. xiii + 325 pp., ISBN 0 85255 695 0, hardback, £40.00; 0 85255 654 4, paperback, £16.95

‘I Will Not Eat Stone’: a women's history of colonial Asante Jean Allman &; Victoria Tashjian, 2000 Oxford: James Currey. xlvi + 255 pp., ISBN 0 85255 691 8, hardback, £40.00; 0 85255 641 1, paperback, £15.95

‘We Women Worked So Hard’: gender, urbanization and social reproduction in colonial Harare, Zimbabwe, 1930–56 TERESA A. BARNES, 1999 Oxford: James Currey. xlv + 204 pp., ISBN 0 85255 686 1, hardback, £40.00; 0 85255 636 5, paperback, £16.95

Women and Modernity in Weimar Germany: reality and representation in popular fiction VIBEKE RÜTZOU PETERSEN, 2001 Oxford: Berghahn Books. xvi + 184 pp., ISBN 1 57181 154 0, hardback, £20.00; 1 57181 789 1, paperback, £13.95

The Irish Women's History Reader ALAN HAYES &; DIANE URQUHART (Eds), 2001 London: Routledge. xi + 242 pp., ISBN 0 415 19914 X

The Routledge Historical Atlas of Women in America SANDRA OPDYCKE, 2000 New York: Routledge. 144 pp., ISBN 0 415 92138 4, £10.99

What American Women Did, 1789–1920 LINDA MILES COPPENS, 2001 Jefferson, NC: McFarland &; Company. ix + 259 pp., ISBN 0 7864 0899 5, £36.60

Favorite Dishes: a Columbian autograph souvenir cookery book CARRIE V. SHUMAN (Ed.), 2001 (reprinted from an 1893 edition) Champaign: University of Illinois Press. lxiii + 210 pp., hardback, $29.95; paperback, $15.00

Feminist Freikorps: the British voluntary women police, 1914–40 R.M. DOUGLAS, 1999 Westport: Praeger. xiv + 171 pp., ISBN 0 275 96249 0, hardback, US$58/£48.95     

General Versus Specific Predictors of Male Arrest Trajectories: A Test of the Moffitt and Patterson Theories

Developmental taxonomies of crime disagree on whether distinctive offender trajectories are related to common or unique risks. This study examined childhood risks of differing arrest trajectories across childhood through early adulthood (from ages 10–11 to 26–27 years) that were identified in prior work for 203 at-risk, predominantly Caucasian young men. Multivariate analyses revealed that when both distal (childhood risk factors) and proximal risk factors (deviant peer association as a time-varying covariate) were included in the model, relatively few childhood risk factors (assessed at age 9–10 years) discriminated the chronic offender groups from rare offenders (i.e., child antisocial behavior, child attention problems, parents’ antisocial behavior). Rather, deviant peer association was significantly related to levels of offending within each trajectory group (i.e., chronic and rare offender groups). No predictor differentially predicted membership in the two chronic groups, supporting the linear gradation argument. Theoretical and prevention implications are discussed.     

Police Budgeting: Winning Strategies

Based on a national survey of police chiefs with a follow-up focus group, this article discusses budgetary strategies that police departments used to be successful in budgeting. The strategies include: using crime and workload data judiciously; capitalizing on sensational crime incidents; effectively getting the message out; carefully mobilizing interest groups; strategic planning; playing the federal grants game; working closely with the chief executive and elected officials; and involving all departmental staff levels in budgeting.     

Application of Structured-Light 3-D Scanning to the Documentation of Plastic Fingerprint Impressions: A Quality Comparison with Traditional Photography

Plastic fingerprint impressions found at crime scenes are often too delicate for collection, leaving photography as the best option for documentation. However, traditional photography techniques can be inadequate in documenting minute 3-D details due to limitations of the camera and lighting conditions. This study investigated the feasibility of applying commercially available structured-light 3-D scanners in the documentation of plastic prints. Attempts were made to develop a procedure to extract curvature features from 3-D scanned fingerprints and flatten the friction ridge features into two-dimensional (2-D) images to allow direct comparison with the traditional photography in the CSIpix^® Matcher and NFIQ 2.0 software. Two 3-D scanners were evaluated a Dentsply Sirona inEos X5^® and an Artec Space Spider. In this study, 3-D scanners demonstrated robustness as well as efficiency in the collection of plastic fingerprint impressions in select substrates. One of the developed methods utilizing a discrete geometry operator and convexity features outperformed traditional photography, achieving higher software detection scores in minutiae count and match quality, while traditional photography could not always capture enough high-quality minutiae for comparisons, even after digital enhancement.     

Fear of Negative Evaluation and Weight/Shape Concerns among Adolescents: The Moderating Effects of Gender and Weight Status

Fear of negative evaluation has been linked with weight/shape concerns among adults, however, similar research among adolescents is lacking. We investigated the relationship between fear of negative evaluation and weight/shape concerns, including the moderating roles of gender and body mass index (BMI) in adolescents. Participant were 4045 Australian adolescents (53.7% girls) aged 11–19 years (M_age?=?14 years 11 months), who completed a self-report questionnaire about weight/shape concerns, fear of negative evaluation, and weight and height. Results showed a positive association between fear of negative evaluation and weight/shape concerns, with the association being stronger among girls. Furthermore, the association between fear of negative evaluation and weight/shape concerns was stronger among adolescents with higher BMIs, especially so for boys. These results highlight the role of fear of negative evaluation in weight/shape concerns and suggest potential avenues for prevention programs.     

A Developmental-Ecological Model of the Relation of Family Functioning to Patterns of Delinquency

Person-centered approaches to understanding delinquent and criminal careershave identified several distinct pathways or patterns of delinquent behavior(Gorman-Smith et al., 1998; LeBlanc and Kaspy, in press; Loeber et al.,1991; Loeber et al., 1993). In addition, research suggests that there maybe etiological variations that correspond to these different pathways(Gorman-Smith et al., 1998). That is, there may be different configurationsof risk factors associated with different types of delinquent and criminaloffending. If this is so, understanding these relations can have importantimplications for intervention and prevention. However, there have been fewstudies that examine how the configuration of risk factors may vary inrelation to different delinquency pathways. The current study brings aperson-centered analysis to examine how patterns of family functioningrelate to patterns of offending. In addition, this study contextualizesthese relations by examining how these relations vary as a function ofcommunity setting. This study expands upon previous research that hasidentified four basic patterns of delinquent behavior among a sample ofminority male adolescents living in poor urban neighborhoods (Gorman-Smithet al., 1998).