The Unintended Consequences of Structural Change: When Formal and Informal Institutions Collide in Efforts to Address Wicked Problems

Significant restructuring of bureaucracies has occurred to facilitate joined-up working. This article draws on new institutionalism to explore the rationale behind the use of structural change for the promotion of joined-up working. It argues that a strong institutionalized myth has emerged which has created isomorphic pressures in the public sector to instigate structural changes in the name of vertical integration. These combine with informal institutions in ways that can be both productive and unproductive, highlighting the need to find a balance between formal institutional change and informal institutionalized practices, which often go unacknowledged as a powerful influence on policy.     

At-Home Environment, Out-of-Home Environment, Snacks and Sweetened Beverages Intake in Preadolescence, Early and Mid-Adolescence: The Interplay Between Environment and Self-Regulation

Obesity-related behaviors, such as intake of snacks and sweetened beverages (SSB), are assumed to result from the interplay between environmental factors and adolescents’ ability to self-regulate their eating behaviors. The empirical evidence supporting this assumption is missing. This study investigated the relationships between perceptions of at-home and out-of-home food environment (including SSB accessibility, parental, and peers’ social pressure to reduce intake of SSB), nutrition self-regulatory strategies (controlling temptations and suppression), and SSB intake. In particular, we hypothesized that these associations would differ across the stages of preadolescence, early and mid-adolescence. Self-reported data were collected from 2,764 adolescents (10–17 years old; 49 % girls) from 24 schools in the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. Path analysis indicated that direct associations between peers’ social influence and SSB intake increased with age. Direct negative associations between at-home and out-of-home accessibility and SSB intake as well as direct positive associations between parental pressure and intake become significantly weaker with age. Accessibility was related negatively to self-regulation, whereas higher social pressure was associated with higher self-regulation. The effects of the environmental factors were mediated by self-regulation. Quantitative and qualitative differences in self-regulation were observed across the stages of adolescence. The associations between the use of self-regulatory strategies and lower SSB intake become significantly stronger with age. In preadolescence, SSB intake was regulated by means of strategies that aimed at direct actions toward tempting food. In contrast, early and mid-adolescents controlled their SSB intake by means of a combination of self-regulatory strategies focusing on direct actions toward tempting food and strategies focusing on changing the psychological meaning of tempting food.     

Book reviews

The following books are reviewed.

Men of letters, writing lives: masculinity and literary auto/biography in the late victorian period TREV LYNN BROUGHTON, 1999 London: Routledge. 213 pp., ISBN 0 415 08211 0 hardback, £60.00 0 415 08212 9 paperback, £19.99

Adapting to Capitalism: working women in the English economy, 1700–1850 PAMELA SHARPE, 1996, 2000 London: Macmillan. xi + 226 pp., ISBN 0 333 91901 7

Women, Gender and Industrialisation in England, 1700–1870 KATRINA HONEYMAN, 2000 London: Macmillan. vii + 204 pp., £15.50

Breadwinning: New Zealand women and the state MELANIE NOLAN, 2000 Christchurch: Canterbury University Press. 386 pp., ISBN 0 908812 97 3, NZ$39.95

Working-class Culture, Women and Britain, 1914–1921 CLAIRE A. CULLERTON, 2000 London: Macmillan. xii + 221 pp., ISBN 0 333 91290 X

Austerity in Britain: rationing, controls, and consumption 1939–1955 INA ZWEINIGER-BARGIELOWSKA, 2000 Oxford: Oxford University Press. xiii + 286 pp., ISBN 0 19 820453 1, £40.00

Seeing History: public history in Britain now HILDA KEAN, PAUL MARTIN, SALLY J. MORGAN (Eds), 2000 London: Francis Boutle. 193 pp., ISBN 0 9532388 9 X, paperback, £10.00

Migrant Daughter: coming of age as a Mexican American woman FRANCES ESQUIBEL TYWONIAK & MARIO T. GARCIA, 2000 Berkeley: University of California Press. 237 pp., ISBN 0 526 21915 5

The Matriarchs of England's Co-operative Movement: a study in gender politics and female leadership, 1883–1921 BARBARA J. BLASZAK, 2000 London, Greenwood Press. ix + 209 pp., ISBN 0 313 30995 7

Dirt and Desire: reconstructing Southern women's writing, 1930–1990 PAULINE YAEGER, 2000 Chicago: University of Chicago Press. xvii+324 pp., ISBN 0 226 94491 3 paperback, £12.53     

Cuba's Response to COVID-19: What Underlies its Apparent Success?

Over the last few months extremely positive accounts have been circulating of Cuba's role and approach in the COVID-19 response, both nationally and internationally. A universal healthcare system with family doctors and nurses providing door-to-door services, as well as the swift introduction of measures to control movement have been some of the factors underlying this relative success. However, this success hides the disadvantageous social reality facing the majority of Cubans, including differential access to services, a health system that is struggling and limited choice and freedoms.     

Guest Editorial: Political geographies of children and young people

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the present Special Issue of Space & Polity tackling the political geographies of children and young people. Historically given scant attention by the sub-discipline, since children and young people appear to have little active influence on the workings of states, nations, geopolitics and the like, there are now small signs of how and why political geographers might look anew at the experiences and contribu tions of this population cohort. An empirical vignette, based on letters written by children and young people to Eleanor Roosevelt during the Great De pression, is deployed to develop this claim. Contrasts are then drawn between political geographies of children and young people that are ‘adult-centred’ and those that are ‘child-centred’, as related to claims about the distinctions and connections between ‘macro-politics’ and ‘micro-politics’. It is suggested that, notwithstanding the exciting insights to be derived from child-centred approaches, the situation should not be a matter of privileging these over adult-centred approaches. Indeed, it is argued that there are dangers in going down such a route and of thereby collapsing ‘the political’ into ‘the personal’, thus missing what is distinctively political about the geographies needing to be researched and written. Following a brief excursion into debates about the supposed political apathy of (post)modern children and young people, the paper then introduces the other contributions to the Special Issue.     

Literary Reviews

Tyranny and redemption. Anthills of the Savannah. Chinua Achebe. London: William Heinemann. 1987. 233pp. £10.95hb

Suffering with stoicism: Kenyan histories. Coming to Birth. Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye. London: Virago Press. 1986. 150pp. £3.95pb

The Present Moment. Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye. London: Heinemann. 1987. 155pp. £10.95hb

The politics of the soul. Search Sweet Country. B Kojo Laing. London: Picador. 1987. 318pp. £3.95pb

Images of Istanbul. The Sea‐Crossed Fisherman. Yashar Kemal. Translated from the Turkish by Thilda Kemal. London: Methuen. 1986. 289pp. £3.95pb

The Birds Have Also Gone. Yashar Kemal. Translated from the Turkish by Thilda Kemal. London: Collins Harvill. 1987. 122pp. £8.95hb

Enemies within. War in the Land of Egypt. Yusuf al Qa'id. Translated from the Arabic by Olive and Lome Kenny and Christopher Tingley. London: Al Saqi. 1986. 192pp. £4.95pb

Frustrated fantasies. Heartbreak Tango: A Serial. Manuel Puig. Translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine London: Arean. 1987. 224pp. £2.95pb

Pubis Angelical. Manuel Puig. Translated from the Spanish by Elena Brunet. London: Faber and Faber. 1987. 236pp. £9.95hb

Tending towards one voice. Faces and Masks. Eduardo Galeano. Translated from the Spanish by Cedric Belfrage. London: Quartet. 1987. 304pp. £14.95hb

Land of riches. Cuzcatlan. Manlio Axgueta. Translated from the Spanish by Clark Hansen. London: Chatto and Windus. 1987. 255pp. £11.95hb

Autobiography of the age. The Infinite Rehearsal. Wilson Harris. London: Faber and Faber. 1987. 88pp. £8.95hb

Caribbean childhoods. Summer Lightning and Other Stories. Olive Senior. Harlow, England: Longman. 1986. 134pp. £2.95pb

Whole of a Morning Sky. Grace Nichols. London: Virago. 1987. 156pp. £3.50pb

Traumas of partition. Kingdom's End and Other Stories. Saadat Hasan Manto. Translated from the Urdu by Khalid Hasan. London/New York: Verso. 1987. 257pp. £U.95/S18.95hb

Mirroring Pakistan: reflections and distortions. The Thirteenth House. Adam Zameenzad. London: Fourth Estate. 1987. 202pp. £10.95hb

Black Mirrors. Farooq Khalid. Translated from the Urdu by Eric Cyprian. London: Jonathan Cape. 1987. 285pp. £10.95hb

Christopher Shackle. School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Prize poetry. Under Another Sky: An Anthology of Commonwealth Poetry Prize Winners. Edited by Alastair Niven. Manchester and New York: Carcanet. 1987. 103pp. £6.96/S10.95pb     

Providing eyewitnesses with initial retrieval support: what works at immediate and subsequent recall?

The effect of retrieval support on eyewitness recall was investigated in two experiments. Based on the outshining hypothesis, Experiment 1 tested whether retrieval support enhances witness performance (compared to free recall) especially when witnessing conditions are suboptimal (e.g., because witnesses were distracted during the crime). Eighty-eight participants watched a videotaped crime with either full or divided attention and subsequently received retrieval support with the Self-Administered Interview© (SAI) or completed a free recall (FR). One week later (Time 2 – T2) all participants completed a second FR. Unexpectedly, retrieval support did not lead to better memory performance than FR under divided attention conditions, suggesting that retrieval support is not effective to overcome adverse effects of divided attention. Moreover, presence of retrieval support at Time 1 (T1) had no effect on memory performance at T2. Experiment 2 (N = 81) tested the hypothesis that these T2-results were due to a reporting issue undermining the memory-preserving effect of T1-retrieval support by manipulating retrieval support (SAI vs. FR) at T1 and T2. As expected, T1-retrieval support led to increased accuracy at T2. Thus, the beneficial value of T1-retrieval support seems greatest with high-quality T2-interviews. Interviewers should consider this when planning a subsequent interview.     

Stakeholders,natural resource management and Australian rural local governments: A Q methodological study

This paper reports on a Q methodological study of stakeholder perceptions of rural local government management of natural resources. Data analysis of the Q sorts revealed that there are five distinct stakeholder perspectives relating to rural local government and natural resource management. In terms of natural resource management at the local level rural stakeholders perceive local government as an unwilling participant, an inconsequential participant, as a problematic participant, as a potential participant, and, most positively, a participatory partner. The paper describes each of these five stakeholder perspectives in detail before examining the implications of these findings for greater natural resource management at the local level in non-metropolitan Australia.