Ruralisation: a tool for rural transformation

There is a concept that development practitioners have either not heard of or not read, or have chosen to ignore – ruralisation. Unlike urbanisation in urban studies, ruralisation is rarely used as a concept in rural research. It remains a poorly explored concept. By challenging existing notions about the use of the concept, this article attempts to (re)introduce ruralisation as a fundamental concept in rural studies. What is ruralisation? Why do we need it? How can we use it for rural transformations? The article addresses these critical questions. It defines ruralisation and presents its conceptual framework for rural transformation.     

Networks,Hierarchies, and Hybrids

Clusters of organizations making at least modest efforts to collaborate on implementing joint solutions to public sector problems are often called “networks.” By directing attention away from the hierarchical aspects of these clusters, and towards the voluntaristic and egalitarian aspects, this nomenclature can undermine and distort our understanding of the phenomenon. Such organizational clusters can be more fruitfully thought of as “implementation hybrids,” a type of collective production arrangement that has its own distinctive strengths and weaknesses, which this article delineates.     

The use and abuse of intelligence: An intelligence provider's perspective

There is a widely held perception that intelligence is the purloining of secret information from foreign countries, which is then used for advantage in wartime and as an aid to diplomacy and statecraft in peacetime, and the catching of foreign spies, or counterintelligence. In reality, intelligence serves a number of other purposes, such as technology development in support of other intelligence programmes, support to treaty negotiations and monitoring, arms control, and more. Several recently declassified Cold War intelligence activities are reviewed as examples of some of the other uses and benefits of intelligence gathering, and to show that leaders, policy makers and other consumers of intelligence may choose to use, abuse or ignore it, depending upon their own predilection, prejudices, biases, or political agendas, and sometimes altering the original intent of the intelligence.     

Why Is There a Strong Positive Correlation Between Perpetration and Being a Victim of Sexual Coercion? An Exploratory Study

The purpose of this research was to determine if the correlation between perpetration and being a victim of sexual coercion is due to a lack of self-control, a coercive lifestyle, or dysfunctional romantic relationships. Two hundred and sixty-two college students completed measures of perpetration and being a victim of sexual coercion, lack of self-control, coercive lifestyle, romantic partner’s coercive lifestyle, and partner’s perpetration and being a victim of sexual coercion. Support was not found for the lack of self-control and coercive lifestyle explanations; support was found for the dysfunctional relationships explanation. Multiple regression analyses found that the self-control variable that best (negatively) predicted both perpetration and being a victim of sexual coercion was valuing long-term, committed romantic relationships. Interventions to prevent perpetration and being a victim of sexual coercion should focus not only on the individual victim/perpetrator but also on promoting functional romantic relationships.     

Contextualizing community violence and its effects: an ecological model of parent-child interdependent coping

This article presents an integrated conceptual framework that contextualizes exposure to community violence and the interpersonal and interdependent processes of parent and child response to community violence. This model posits that parental distress, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression, is a significant mediator of child distress symptomatology and behavior problems. The model advances understanding of the impact of community violence in the lives of parents and children through various mechanisms, including social capital. This article underscores the need for a fundamental shift in the study of community violence, in the delivery of mental health services, and in prevention efforts from focusing on the individual child to concentrating on the parent, family, and community-level factors and processes. This article highlights important areas to address in future research, including investigation and specification of the mechanisms and processes by which neighborhoods affect and influence human development outcomes.     

B: Reviews: review articles

THE OTTOMAN GULF: THE CREATION OF KUWAIT, SAUDI ARABIA AND QATAR. By Frederick F. Anscombe. New York, Columbia University Press, 1997. 270 pp., maps, $21.00/£14.00 (pb), $55.00/£38.00 (hb).

THE BLOOD‐RED ARAB FLAG: AN INVESTIGATION INTO QASIMI PIRACY, 1797–1820. By Charles E. Davies. Exeter, University of Exeter Press, 1997. 453 pp., illustrations, maps, £40.00.

THE POLITICS OF REGIONAL TRADE IN IRAQ, ARABIA AND THE GULF, 1745–1900. By Hala Fattah. SUNY Series in the Social and Economic History of the Middle East (11). Albany, NY, State University of New York Press, 1997. 254 pp., maps.

AN OTTOMAN CENTURY: THE DISTRICT OF JERUSALEM IN THE 1600s. By Dror Ze'evi, edited by Jere Bacharach. SUNY Series in Medieval History. Albany, NY, State University of New York Press, 1996. xii + 258 pp.

FABRICATING ISRAELI HISTORY: THE ‘NEW HISTORIANS’. By Efraim Karsh. London and Portland, Frank Cass, 1997. 210 pp., £25.00 (hb).

ISLAM AND MODERNITY: MUSLIM INTELLECTUALS RESPOND. Edited by John Cooper, Ronald Nettler and Mohammed Mahmoud. London and New York, I. B. Tauris, 1998. xii + 228 pp., £39.50.

DEFINING ISLAM FOR THE EGYPTIAN STATE: MUFTIS AND FATWAS OF THE DAR AL‐IFTA. By Jakob Skovgaard‐Petersen. Leiden, New York and Koln, Brill, 1997. vii + 420 pp.

CIVIL SOCIETY, DEMOCRACY AND THE MUSLIM WORLD. Edited by Elisabeth Özdalga and Sune Persson. (Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul Transactions Vol. 7.) Richmond, Curzon Press, 1997. 143 pp., £15.00.

CIVIL SOCIETY IN YEMEN: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ACTIVISM IN MODERN ARABIA. By Sheila Carapico. (Cambridge Middle East Studies 9.) Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, 1998. 256 pp., map, 14 tables, £35.00.