Gender Differences in Rates of Depressive Symptoms Among Low-Income,Urban, African American Youth: A Test of Two Mediational Hypotheses

The present study tested for gender differences in depressive symptoms in a sample of 622 low-income, urban, African American adolescents. Results indicate that adolescent girls in this sample were significantly more likely to endorse depressive symptoms than were boys. To examine possible explanations for this gender difference, 2 variables were tested as mediators of the relation between gender and depressive symptoms: (1) interpersonal stressors and (2) ruminative coping. Results indicate that ruminative coping, but not interpersonal stressors, mediated the relation between gender and depressive symptoms in this sample. Possible explanations for these findings, in light of the common and unique experiences of low-income, urban youth of color, are explored.     

Some observations on Japanese and American policing

The highly successful Japanese and less than successful American policing situations were compared in terms of: historical background, police organization and format, cultural environment, social-cultural background of officers. training, police socialization, and general nature of policing. Positive influences upon Japanese policing were found to be: the nature of the Japanese people; their deliberate recruitment of ideal police candidates—especially recruiting from samurai families; the highly respected paternalistic and benevolent image in Japan of the police as governmental officials; their deliberate socialization of officers into the police fraternity by using pride. duty, and responsibility to ensure professionalism; and their very extensive and thorough academy training in continuity with later field training and performance. It was suggested that in the United States we begin to address our problems in both selection and training by formulating and then enforcing national guidelines similar to those in Japan.     

Whose Foreign Policy? Britain’s ‘Inner Cabinet’ and the Eastern Crisis,January–March 1878

This article considers one aspect of Britain’s “great Eastern crisis” of 1875–1878. It examines in detail the claims that for two months in early 1878, an “inner Cabinet” led by the prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli—Lord Beaconsfield—in effect replaced the foreign secretary, Lord Derby. With the full range of evidence relating to the “inner Cabinet” never previously explored, this analysis assesses the critical diplomatic phase and the way in which that phase was represented in the context of the 1879–1880 general election campaign. It suggests that electoral considerations drove senior Conservative politicians to construct a retrospective narrative of foreign policy, which has in turn affected the historiography. Exploring the story of the “inner Cabinet” addresses unanswered questions about 1878, accounts for the story’s later emergence, and at the same time illuminates party-political debate about foreign policy.     

The Limits of Local Accommodation: Why Contentious Events Remain Prone to Conflict in Northern Ireland

This article examines the difficulties of finding local solutions to the problem of contentious events in contemporary Northern Ireland. In so doing, it offers a sociological perspective on fundamental divisions in Northern Ireland: between classes and between communities. It shows how its chosen case study—parades and associated protests in north Belfast—exemplifies the most fundamental problem that endures in post-Agreement Northern Ireland, namely that political authority is not derived from a common civic culture (as is the norm in Western liberal democracy) but rather that legitimacy is still founded on the basis of the culture of either one or the other community. Haugaard's reflections on authority and legitimacy are used to explore Northern Ireland's atypical experience of political conflict vis-à-vis the Western liberal democratic model. The Bourdieusian concepts of field illusio and doxa help to explain why it is that parading remains such an important political and symbolic touchstone in this society.     

Women Worthies and Feminist Argument in Eighteenth-Century Britain

The practice of celebrating exemplary women has had a hallowed if contested place in the history of feminism, but this essay argues that recent scholarship has not recognized just how profound a role the discourse of women worthies has played in the feminist thought of eighteenth-century Britain. By examining several major texts, including Mary Astell's writings and the ‘Sophia’ tracts, this analysis demonstrates the continuity and resilience of this discourse across the length of the eighteenth century. The female worthies managed to survive the challenge of newer feminist idioms such as Cartesianism, Scottish four-stage theory, and natural rights philosophy, and in fact appeared alongside them in the very same texts. Even when Mary Wollstonecraft dismissed the worthies, her colleagues restored them to debates over ‘the rights of woman’.     

Providing Public Servants What They Need: Revealing the “Unseen” through Data Visualization

Electronic media has enabled new forms of communication with the potential to provide more effective means of conveying evidence to public servants. This article explores what is known about the use of these new capacities in public affairs to visualize the results of research. The authors first explore the value of visual engagement for increasing comprehension. Then, they examine what is known of studies of the effectiveness of visualization and offer basic design principles that underpin effective visualization. Finally, two original public affairs examples are presented to illustrate what is possible.