Group Identity and Alienation: Giving the We Its Due

The purpose of this paper is to argue for greater understanding and valuing of group affiliation and the formation of allegiances to groups during early adolescence. An overemphasis on themes of individual identity, self-reliance, and autonomy as the developmental trajectory of adolescence leads to a lack of attention to the positive, normative mechanisms that permit young adolescents to achieve a sense of belonging and connection. We propose developmental processes which underlie the capacity for reflection about groups, 4 basic components of group identity, and 6 propositions about new capacities that emerge as young adolescents struggle with the dialectic between group identity and alienation. The final section suggests opportunities that can emerge through a more appropriate emphasis on group identity as a valued, normative aspect of development during the early adolescent years.     

Differentiation and survival among North Carolina smallholders: An empirical perspective on the Lenin‐Chayanov debate

This article addresses theoretical issues concerning differentiation and class formation using North American data. It explores how socio‐economic characteristics vary and impact survival in agriculture. The study is based on panel data collected from a sample of smallholders in three Piedmont North Carolina counties. Factor analysis reveals five major dimensions of differentiation: scale, household labour, off‐farm family labour and income, demographic characteristics, and land tenure. An index of propensity to survive in agriculture, constructed from three waves of panel data is regressed upon five indices measuring the underlying dimensions of differentiation. Land tenure manifests a statistically significant net effect on survival in agriculture. These empirical results support theoretical arguments in favour of integrating analyses of socio‐economic and demographic differentiation in the study of agricultural enterprises.     

Police stress, state-trait anxiety, and stressors among U.S. Marshals

Unlike previous studies on stress in local police officers, this study was unique in that it used Deputy U.S. Marshals as the population pool. This study replicated the study conducted by Storch and Panzarella (1996) who determined stress levels and stressors of police officers. A standardized inventory of stress was combined with a questionnaire about job stressors, individual job and career variables, and personal variables. One hundred Deputy U.S. Marshals from offices across the country responded to an anonymous survey. Generally, deputies scored low on the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Spielberger, Gorsuch, Lushene, Vagg, & Jacobs, 1983). The main stressors identified by the respondents were related to organizational variables, i.e., problems with management, bad bosses, and work environment. More stress was experienced by deputies who were inclined to think about job-related illnesses or being injured while on duty, those who were facing retirement, and those who disliked their current assignments.     

The other resource curse: extractives as development panacea

Since 2010, many African governments have challenged twenty years of extractive sector liberalization that has played a key role in unlocking mineral riches and attracting foreign direct investment. The potential for extractives to drive economic structural transformation is intuitively attractive, the Africa Mining Vision (2009) document providing a primary template. Geological inheritance alone, however, is not a panacea for economic development, industrialization or poverty alleviation. While much attention to the ‘resource curse’ has identified the problem of excessive rent-seeking and the consequent impact on elite consolidation, democracy, governance and macroeconomic distortions, a more fundamental problem, the ‘other resource curse’, may be an overlooked driver: a lingering assumption that mineral resources should straightforwardly provide significant revenue streams for public goods, inputs for industrial transformation, and extensive employment. Geology alone is neither conducive nor antithetical to economic development. Stakeholders require a more comprehensive understanding of the possibilities and limits of extractives in contemporary Africa.     

Authoritarianism,religiosity and reactions to deviance

A modified F-Scale and a deviance-control scale were administered to a sample of 116 police science students and a random representative sample of 91 state university students. No overall relationship was found between respondents' preference to control deviance and their authoritarianism, nor did the F-Scale discriminate between the two groups. However, the police sample favored the control of deviance significantly more. Evidence of response bias to the F-Scale was also found. It was concluded that the source of the criminal sanction usually typified as moral indignation, was more a cognitively based evaluation than an emotionally based reaction.     

Brothers’ Keepers?

Relying on rarely analyzed public opinion data from the 1930s and early 1940s, we take issue with the notion popular in contemporary liberal circles that the New Deal era represented a period of expansive commitment to the security and well-being of the poor and politically disenfranchised. At least where the public is concerned—as opposed to the progressive policy makers in the Roosevelt administration—the jobless were regarded with suspicion, immigrants should be forced to “go home,” women belong in the kitchen not on the shop floor. The harsher the economic conditions (by state), the more conservative were the public attitudes. Hence New Deal legislative victories accrued despite rather than because of public support.