Gender Differences in Strains Associated with Suicidal Behavior Among Adolescents

Scholars such as Durkheim and Chodorow have argued that the social strains contributing to suicide vary by sex. Specifically, it has been asserted that women relative to men either do not respond to social strain with suicide, or respond to relational but not status strains. Conversely, others assert that process differences never existed, or at the least have dissipated with increasing equality between the subgroups. Neither side has offered convincing empirical evidence for their position. This study examines social strains contributing to suicidal behavior among adolescents, by sex, to address this debate. Results clearly support the presence of process differences and delineate the specific nature of these differences. Generally, males and females are responsive to both status and relational strains. However, theoretical models suggesting males are more status oriented whereas females are more relationally dependent are supported. Results hold theoretical and interventionist implications for the contextual nature of suicide among adolescents.     

A. Lentin,The Last Political Law Lord: Lord Sumner (1859–1934)

ABSTRACT

Non-governmental organisations [NGOs] sought to expand American conceptions of human rights and contributed to shaping the American debate over Nicaragua policy in the 1980s. Progressive NGOs interpreted human rights to include political and civil liberties along with social and economic ones, an interpretation similar to that of the Nicaraguan government and embodied in Nicaraguan democracy. The Ronald Reagan Administration interpreted human rights narrowly to include only political and civil ones whilst recognising electoral politics as the essential ingredient of democracy. The Administration also considered the defeat of communism as its highest priority. Calling the Sandinistas, which controlled the Nicaraguan government after July 1979, both communist and allies of the Soviets and Cubans, Reagan’s anti-communism led him to support a counterrevolutionary force in Nicaragua—the Contras. NGOs and members of Congress regularly accused the Contras of human rights abuse; and NGOs used a lexicon of human rights to oppose Reagan’s Nicaragua policy and challenge the Cold War construct.     

Accounting for Changing Earnings Inequality in Costa Rica, 1980–99

After declining from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, inequality in monthly earnings in Costa Rica stabilised from 1987 to 1992 and then increased from 1992 to 1999. In this article, we use recently developed techniques to measure the extent to which these changes in earnings inequality were the result of changes associated with the distributions of personal and workplace characteristics of workers or the earnings differences associated with those characteristics. We present evidence that the most important cause of the fall in inequality prior to 1987 was a decline in returns to education. Inequality stopped falling in Costa Rica in the 1990s in part because returns to education stopped falling. The most important cause of rising inequality in monthly earnings in the 1990s was an increase in the proportion of workers working a non-standard work week (part-time or over-time).     

The Violence of Aid? Giving,power and active subjects in One World Conservatism

Abstract

Using ?i?ek's theorisation of power, we analyse the UK Conservative Party's Green Paper on international development, ‘One World Conservatism’ (OWC). We argue that by placing the West's giving of development aid as something beyond politics, on the moral high-ground of self-evident certainty, it acts to deflect attention from critical engagement with the nature of globalisation, power and aid itself, hiding both economic and epistemological violences behind the apparently benevolent act of giving. An analysis of the nature of the green paper demonstrates the ways in which it draws in UK citizens as active subjects complicit with this vision of the world.     

Partisan and ideological belief systems: Do they differ?

In this paper a direct comparison is made between the cognitive content of ideological and partisan belief systems. A quasi-experimental design was used in a two-part study. Subjects were randomly assigned to either a partisan or ideological condition and asked to categorize and then scale contemporary leaders, groups, and issues as either Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. Results indicate that the meanings of partisan and ideological belief systems are quite similar — their cognitive attributes (issues, groups, and leaders) are interchangeable at the categorical level and highly correlated (r=0.86) in their degree of typicality. Political sophistication is determined to contribute significantly to the degree to which partisan and ideological belief systems are related. For politically sophisticated subjects (Ss) the two belief systems are highly related (r=0.90), whereas for low sophisticates, the belief systems are only moderately related (r=0.50). Sophistication also plays an important role in structuring Ss' own issue preferences. High sophisticates in both the liberal-conservative and Democratic-Republican conditions exhibit a greater level of issue constraint, which can be interpreted as either ideological or partisan constraint.Paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 1983.