In the eye of the beholder: Meaning and structure of informal status in women's and men's prisons*

Applying an abductive mixed‐methods approach, we investigate the informal status systems in three women's prison units (across two prisons) and one men's prison unit. Qualitative analyses suggest “old head” narratives—where age, time in prison, sociability, and prison wisdom confer unit status—are prevalent across all four contexts. Perceptions of maternal “caregivers” and manipulative “bullies,” however, are found only in the three women's units. The qualitative findings inform formal network analyses by differentiating “positive,” “neutral,” and “negative” status nominations, with “negative” ties primarily absent from the men's unit. Within the women's units, network analyses find that high‐status women are likely to receive both positive and negative peer nominations, such that evaluations depend on who is doing the evaluating. Comparing the women's and men's networks, the correlates of positive and neutral ties are generally the same and center on covariates of age, getting along with others, race, and religion. Overall, the study points to important similarities and differences in status across the gendered prison contexts, while demonstrating how a sequential mixed‐methods design can illuminate both the meaning and the structure of prison informal organization.     

Direct STR amplification from whole blood and blood- or saliva-spotted FTA without DNA purification

The DNA purification step has been thought to be essential for typing of STR DNA. However, this process is time-consuming, and there is a risk of unexpected cross-contamination during purification. We report a new method for direct short tandem repeat (STR) amplification using a newly developed direct PCR buffer, AnyDirect, which can amplify STR loci from whole blood and blood- or saliva-spotted FTA cards without DNA purification. The autosomal and Y chromosomal STR loci were analyzed for whole blood and blood or saliva spots of random individuals, followed by comparison of the results with those of corresponding purified DNA. The results from whole blood and blood spots showed perfect concordance with those from purified DNA without allele or locus drop-out. However, in the case of saliva spots, no amplification or locus drop-out was observed in some of the samples, which offers a topic for further study. Additionally, some commercial hot-start DNA polymerases other than AmpliTaq Gold DNA polymerase were also found to be compatible with this buffer system. Therefore, this direct PCR buffer was demonstrated to be useful for fast forensic DNA analysis or criminal DNA databases for which there is no need to store DNA samples.     

Citizen participation matters. Bureaucratic discretion matters more

New Public Governance theory increases citizen participation and expands bureaucrats' roles in the work of government. Citizen participation creates new mechanisms for citizens to influence the policy process. Bureaucrats' expanded roles allow for broader bureaucratic discretion over policy implementation. When citizens' and bureaucrats' views on public management decisions collide, whose views prevail? Do citizen volunteers or bureaucrats have greater influence over public decisions? We answer this question by studying the U.S. Department of Energy's initiative to engage citizens in environmental clean-up decisions. We assess 10 years of meeting records and administrative decisions using a three-step, mixed-method analysis to identify, weigh, and test the influence of citizen participation and bureaucratic discretion. The results indicate that while citizen participation matters, bureaucratic discretion has a more significant influence over administrative decision-making. The findings expose holes in New Public Governance theory, which has implications for democracy and demands deeper thought into structuring citizen participation.     

Capital united? Business unity in regulatory politics and the special place of finance

While organized business is a key actor in regulatory politics, its influence is often conditional on the level of unity or conflict occurring within the business community at any given time. Most contemporary regulatory policy interventions put pressure on the normal mechanisms of business unity, as they are highly targeted and sector‐specific. This raises the question of how business unity operates across a highly variegated economic terrain in which costs are asymmetric and free‐riding incentives are high. In this paper, we empirically assess patterns of business unity within regulatory policymaking across different regulated sectors. Our analysis utilizes data from hundreds of regulatory policy proposals and business community reactions to them in the telecommunications, energy, agriculture, pharmaceutical, and financial sectors over a variety of institutional contexts. We find considerable empirical support for the “finance capital unity” hypothesis – the notion that the financial sector enjoys more business unity than other regulated sectors of the economy. When the financial sector is faced with new regulations, business groups from other sectors frequently come to its aid.     

Security,Nationalism and Popular Culture: Screening South Korea’s Uneasy Identity in the Early 2000s

By examining the cultural representations of the South Korean notion of the Self/Other in relation to its major traditional enemy — North Korea — this article aims to capture a picture of South Korea’s discursive economy of the North, and to problematise the South Korean identities implicated in that economy in the early 2000s. To achieve these aims, this article focuses on representations of a successful popular South Korean film which was released in 2000, just a few months after the first inter-Korean summit: Joint Security Area JSA. By analytically reading JSA, it is revealed that, in South Korea, the traditional discursive practices based on the Cold War thinking have been eroded. For the South, the North is part of the Self (Korean-ness; love for the North as the same nation) and, at the same time, is an Other (South Korean-ness; contempt for the North as an inferior state). Related to this, South Korea appears to be the uneasy Self without a firm Other in between Korean-ness and South Korean-ness.     

Confounding Conventional Wisdom: Political not Principled Differences in the Transatlantic Regulatory Relationship

The transatlantic complaints over hormone-treated beef and genetically modified organisms before the World Trade Organisation (WTO) seem to confirm two separate but related conventional wisdoms about the transatlantic economic relationship: that it is highly conflictual and that many of the conflicts are rooted in profoundly different approaches to regulation. This article argues that neither of the two conventional wisdoms is accurate. Rather, it contends that they are products of two, compounding analytical shortcomings: one methodological, one empirical. The methodological shortcoming takes the form of an implicit selection bias. While WTO complaints are high profile they are rare and extreme examples; it is, therefore, unsound to generalise from them to the regulatory relationship as a whole. The empirical shortcoming has to do with neither the beef hormones nor the GMO dispute demonstrating what it is purported to. The article thus serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of relying on obvious cases and the need to question whether evidence really does support a prevailing popular narrative.     

The Contribution of Open Government to Prosperity of Society

The study finds that open government does not only have effect on economic prosperity, but on social capital and environment through the mechanisms of Rule of Law and Control of Corruption. The role of Rule of Law and Control of Corruption are emphasized in this study, because of their significance in mediating open government and prosperity. Unless mechanisms like regulation formulation, law enforcement and control of corruption are not put into practice; open government itself will not be a driving force to a prosperous society.     

Book reviews

The following books are reviewed.

The Hammonds: a marriage in history STEWART A. WEAVER, 1999 Stanford: Stanford University Press viii + 349 pp., ISBN 08047 3242 6, hardback, £30 (US$49.50)

Centering Women: gender discourses in Caribbean slave society HILARY McD. BECKLES, 1999 Oxford: James Currey; Kingston: Ian Randle; Princeton: Markus Wiener. xxv + 211 pp., ISBN 976 8123 78 8, £15.95

Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: a sourcebook JANE ROWLANDSON (Ed.), 1998 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xviii + 406 pp., ISBN 0 521 58212 1, hardback, 0 521 58814 4, paperback

Contesting Politics: women in Ireland, north and south YVONNE GALLIGAN, EILIS WARD & RICK WILFORD (Eds), 1999 Boulder: Westview Press. xv + 278 pp., ISBN 0 8133 3417 9, £17.50

Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices: women on Texas cotton farms, 1900–1940 REBECCA SHARPLESS, 1999 Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. xxiii + 319 pp., ISBN 0 8078 2456 9, hardback, 0 8078 4760 7, paperback, $19.95

Cato's Tears and the Making of Anglo-American Emotion JULIE ELLISON, 1999 Chicago: University of Chicago Press. xi + 229 pp., ISBN 0 226 20595 9, hardback, $28, 0 226 20596 7, paperback, £11.50

Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the powerful women of early Hollywood CARI BEAUCHAMP, 1997 Berkeley: University of California Press. 475 pp., ISBN 0 520 21492 7, paperback, £11.50

Maiden Voyages and Infant Colonies: two women's travel narratives of the 1790s DEIRDRE COLEMAN, 1999 London: Leicester University Press. xviii + 247 pp., ISBN 0 7185 0150 0, £17.99

With Women';s Eyes: visitors to the New World, 1775–1918 MARION TINLING, 1999 Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. xvii + 207 pp., ISBN 0 8061 3050 4, £24.50

Broken Silence: voices of Japanese feminism SANDRA BUCKLEY, 1997 Berkeley: University of California Press. xix + 382 pp. ISBN 0 520 08513 2, hardback, 0 520 08514 0, paperback

Conversations in Cold Rooms: women, work and poverty in nineteenth-century Northumberland JANE LONG, 1999 Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Royal Historical Society, Boydell Press. xii +241 pp., ISBN 0 86193 340 4, £40.00

Women in Espionage: a biographical dictionary M.H. MAHONEY, 1993 Santa Barbara: ABC–CLIO. xiii + 253 pp., ISBN 0 87436 743 3, £24.95

In Obedience to Instructions: FANY in the SOE in the Mediterranean MARGARET PAWLEY, 1999 Barnsley: Leo Cooper. xiii + 178 pp., ISBN 0 85052 633 7, £19.95

Enslaved Daughters: colonialism, law and women's rights SUDHIR CHANDRA, 1998 Delhi: Oxford University Press. xi + 249 pp.

English Sexualities, 1700–1800 TIM HITCHCOCK, 1997 Basingstoke: Macmillan. ix + 172 pp., ISBN 0 312 165373–0, hardback, 0 312 16574 9, paperback.

Secret Sexualities: a sourcebook of seventeenth and eighteenth century writing IAN McCORMICK (Ed.), 1997 London: Routledge. ix + 262 pp., ISBN 0 415 13953 8, hardback, £45, 0 415 13954 6, paperback.

Tradition and Liberation: the Hindu tradition in the Indian women's movement CATHERINE A. ROBINSON, 1999 Richmond: Curzon. x + 230 pp., ISBN 0 7007 1143 0.