Family Transitions and Later Delinquency and Drug Use

Changes in the family structure can be very disruptive to adolescents who live in those families. This article examines the impact of the number of family transitions on delinquent and drug-using behavior. Specifically, the effect of family transitions is hypothesized to be mediated by problems within the family, school, and peer settings. A sample of 646 boys (73%) and girls (27%) taken from a longitudinal panel study of high-risk adolescents are used to examine these hypotheses. For girls, little support is found for the direct or the indirect effect of family transitions on delinquent behavior or drug use. For boys, however, both forms of problem behavior are influenced by family transitions directly and indirectly through changes in, and problems with, peer associations. The findings suggest that during times of family turmoil, the friendship network of adolescent male children is also disrupted, leading to an increase in associations with delinquent others and, in turn, an increase in problematic behaviors.

Indonesian Men's Contrasting Perceptions of How to Deal with Local Violence

This paper reports on data from a 2009–2010 project on masculinity and violence, part of which was conducted in Indonesia. The data here come from semi-structured interviews with 86 men in five cities, with minor reference to survey findings. Using a Foucauldian interpretive framework, we focus primarily on how these Indonesian men view police intervention in comparison to resolving the problem of violence within their community through mediation. The issue here is that while community mediation approaches are regarded positively, at present, it only seems to be religious leaders who are trusted to resolve conflicts effectively through this approach. Suspicion of mediation interventions and other measures that are tied to the authority of the state means that the promise of service-oriented policing reforms may not be effectively implemented.     

“How Can We Stay Sober?” Homeless Women’s Experience in a Substance Abuse Treatment Center

This article presents findings from an exploratory, qualitative examination of an intensive outpatient treatment program for homeless women recovering from substance dependence disorders. Structured interviews of seven current program clients and three graduates of the program were conducted to ascertain how clients maintain their sobriety in addition to meeting the unique challenges of being homeless. Based on these interviews, there are four main concerns discussed: lack of communication between service providers, inconsistency in personnel during recovery, inconsistency in relapse policies, and clients feeling ill prepared to live in the “real world” after program completion.     

Perspectives from the Senior Executive Service

Much of the research and scholarship on public administration relies heavily on an ‘outsider’ perspective. There is very little ‘insider’ discussion on the priorities, concerns and personal constructs which influence senior executives’ careers. This small qualitative study captures the perspectives of members of the Senior Executive Service (SES) within Australian public sector agencies and identifies key issues for them as senior executives.     

Taking Chances: Evaluating Risk as a Guide to Better Use of Best Practices

Recent attention to best practices has resulted in a complex array of terminology and a number of compendia of effective practices that may be daunting to public policy makers and administrators seeking solutions to important public problems. This study clarifies these distinctions and builds on them to create a decision tool that will help policy makers as they use best practice information in program adoption or development. Decision makers must know their goals in seeking out best practices. As they evaluate potential practices, they should consider not only the quality of available evidence of effectiveness but also the risk of harm to constituents and the cost per unit of benefit generated. The study applies the rubric to an emerging practice in support services for individuals with disabilities known as Cash and Counseling, demonstrating that the practice is low risk, cost neutral, and improves effectiveness and consumer satisfaction. The tool highlights the judgmental elements of concern in the decision process while providing a means to assess multiple decision dimensions in a coherent fashion.     

Who stands for the norm? The place of metonymy in androcentric language

Since its emergence as an academic discipline in the early 1970s, feminist commentary and scholarship has prosecuted a critique of androcentric or sexist (gender exclusive) language, which has to some extent been successful. The struggle by women to occupy a positive linguistic space is continually being challenged by the endemic nature of masculine bias, which is realized through “indirect” or “subtle” sexism in the community. Seemingly innocuous words, like guy/guys, are frequently used to represent both men and women, reminiscent of the previous use of man/men as gender-inclusive common nouns. This raises the question of how to account for the persistence of such language use in spite of the fact that attention is regularly drawn to its problematic character. In this paper we approach the matter in a novel way, by appealing to work in the field of cognitive semantics, in particular the conceptual theory of metonymy. We propose that the relationship between the concepts of masculine and feminine as these are typically structured through language is indicative of a metonymy THE MASCULINE FOR THE FEMININE, in which the masculine “stands for” the feminine and in which lexical items are given as inclusive yet in effect refer to one (normative) gender. A corollary is that the feminine is subsumed (really or virtually) by the presence of the masculine and is made to disappear, and only reappears when she needs to be specified within the contextual frame.     

Evidence-Based Practice: Challenging the Rational Wisdom

The field of performance measurement (PM) is firmly entrenched as a management practice in many governments, agencies, and nonprofit organizations. Though emerging later, the field of evidence-based practice (EBP) has developed simultaneously as a new approach to enhance agency performance. While both rationality-oriented reforms intend to enhance program or agency performance, these two related rational approaches are seldom considered in concert. This essay examines the conceptual underpinnings and practical linkages between PM and EBP to explore how EBP and PM can be jointly implemented as tools to advance agency goals. As rational approaches aimed at improving performance, these two distinct tools are not substitutes, but integrated components of a results-driven strategic management approach. As a conceptual assessment, the article offers practical advice and broad appeal to performance-oriented practitioners seeking to improve agency performance.     

Plantations,outgrowers and commercial farming in Africa: agricultural commercialisation and implications for agrarian change

Whether or not investments in African agriculture can generate quality employment at scale, avoid dispossessing local people of their land, promote diversified and sustainable livelihoods, and catalyse more vibrant local economies depends on what farming model is pursued. In this Forum, we build on recent scholarship by discussing the key findings of our recent studies in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia. We examined cases of three models of agricultural commercialisation, characterised by different sets of institutional arrangements that link land, labour and capital. The three models are: plantations or estates with on-farm processing; contract farming and outgrower schemes; and medium-scale commercial farming areas. Building on core debates in the critical agrarian studies literature, we identify commercial farming areas and contract farming as producing the most local economic linkages, and plantations/estates as producing more jobs, although these are of low quality and mostly casual. We point to the gender and generational dynamics emerging in the three models, which reflect the changing demand for family and wage labour. Models of agricultural commercialisation do not always deliver what is expected of them in part because local conditions play a critical role in the unfolding outcomes for land relations, labour regimes, livelihoods and local economies.     

Talking With Teen Parents,Hearing Young Families: (In)forming Welfare Reform Through Local Relations

This article explores an engagement process undertaken by Australian government social workers in one disadvantaged locality prior to the introduction of federal “teenage parent” welfare reforms. The focus of engagement was to learn about young parents’ experiences and aspirations, and to draw on this to inform policy implementation. Findings from engagement, and how engagement between social workers and young parents impacted local policy implementation are discussed, including the subsequent development of family friendly school options. The authors suggest that problematizing early parenting may itself be “risky,” and may obscure opportunities for building on the parental role as a source of inspiration.     

A new barrier to participation: Heterogeneous application of voter identification policies

In democratic societies there is a tension between maximizing ballot access and minimizing voter fraud. Since the 2000 presidential election, this tension has been central to discussions about election reform at the national, state, and local level. We examine this tension by focusing on the implementation of voter identification laws in one state that has experienced significant issues in recent elections, and that is currently implementing election reform: New Mexico. We hypothesize that Hispanic voters are more likely to show some form of identification than other types of voters. Using a voter data set from New Mexico's First Congressional District in the 2006 election, we find that Hispanic, male and Election Day voters are more likely to show some form of identification than non-Hispanic, female and early voters. In addition, using an overlapping study of Bernalillo County 2006 poll workers, which almost entirely overlaps with the First Congressional District, we find no evidence that differences in poll worker partisanship or ethnicity produce differences in voter identification procedures. Our findings suggest that broad voter identification laws, which may be applied unequally, may be perceived as discriminatory.