The local agenda 21 issue commission in bath and North‐East Somerset: Review of a community consultation exercise towards sustainability

Local authorities in the UK have come under renewed pressure from central government both to adopt Local Agenda 21 and to advance participative democracy. In late 1996/early 1997, the (then) new unitary authority of Bath and North‐East Somerset Council set up a Local Agenda 21 Issue Commission to review its ‘sustainability’ performance and policy development practice with the direct involvement of the community. The way in which the commission was conceived and conducted resulted in difficulties in identifying and carrying out its task. Nonetheless, it kick‐started significant steps towards LA 21 within the council, and provided valuable insights into LA 21 implementation, and the nature of meaningful consultation.     

Cuba: From “Dollarization” to “Euroization” or “Peso Reconsolidation”?

Since its “depenalization” in 1993, the U.S. dollar has become possibly a more significant component of Cuba's money supply than the old peso. What are the alternatives? The euro seems inappropriate, given the inevitability of eventual normalization of relations with the United States. More advantageous would be to restore the Cuban peso, though this would involve unifying the bifurcated economic structure and the dual monetary and exchange rate systems. The Cuban government has yet to announce its plans. This study argues that an appropriate mix of exchange rate, monetary, fiscal, and income or wage and salary policies should support a rehabilitation of the Cuban peso.     

The distribution of shotgun pellets after ricochet from an intermediate target surface

This paper presents a geometrical model for the ricochet of shotgun pellets from an intermediate target surface. The model predicts that after ricochet the shotgun pellet pattern will be elongated in the direction parallel to the intermediate target surface, as has been found in empirical studies. This paper also shows that the angle of impact theta of a mass of shotgun pellets with a target surface can be calculated without significant error from the width W and the length L of the pellet pattern using the formula: sin theta= W/L.     

Developmental Trajectories of Aggressive and Non-Aggressive Conduct Problems

Modeling the heterogeneous trajectories along which antisocial behaviordevelops in childhood and adolescence may contribute in important waysto understanding antecedents of offending in adult life. This paperexamines the development of aggressive and non-aggressive conduct problemsin the Great Smoky Mountains Study of Youth, a longitudinal study in thesoutheastern United States. Aggressive and non-aggressive conduct problemsof clinical severity, police contact and arrest, and family andenvironmental correlates were assessed in four annual interviews for789 boys and 630 girls aged 9–13 at first interview. The bestfitting latent class model identified three developmental trajectories:stable low problem levels, stable high problem levels, and declining levelsof conduct problems, for both aggressive and non-aggressive behaviors. Boyswere over-represented in the stable high trajectory class on the aggressivetrajectory, but sex differences in non-aggressive trajectories were lessmarked. The overlap between aggressive and non-aggressive trajectory classeswas quite limited. Both classifications showed strong associations withrisks of police contact and arrest in early adolescence, and with measuresof family adversity. The results are discussed in relation to developmentalmodels of conduct disorder and delinquency.     

Micropolitics and Collective Liberation: Mind/Body Practice and Left Social Movements

This article explores the growing use of mind/body practices such as meditation and yoga in Left social movements. The analysis is rooted in interviews with activists participating in the transformative movement-building current: the growing number of organizations integrating subjective and social transformation practices. William Connolly’s work on micropolitics is put into conversation with the transformative movement-building current. The epistemological assumption undergirding this article is that textual political theory, and the knowledge being produced by activists, can benefit from dynamic exchange. My argument is that Connolly’s post-Nietzschean political theory offers a powerful justification for the political importance of mind/body practices, one that adds to activist justifications. I also argue that transformative movement-building contributes to recent theoretical debates by concretely demonstrating the integral importance of micropolitics for successful macromovements.