The ABCs of Communication

People in every culture tend to regard the way they do things as"normal."This includes the communicative practices and norms that people learn from interacting inside their culture.But in regard to ways of speaking,what may seem natural to one person may be odd or misunderstood by someone outside that culture.What seems natural to the speaker is actually ritualized behavior,generated and governed by cultural norms.     

Rules of the Tongue

I believe Chinese teachers here have the best intentions in the world. Schools must measure and assess how students learn, yet evaluating language learning is a particularly slippery slope.     

Members of the international commission for the history of representative and parliamentary institutions as at 31 march 1984

F.L. Carsten: The First Austrian Republic 1918–1938: A Study Based on British and Austrian Documents. (Gower Publishing 1986, pp. 309; ISBN 0 566 05162 1; £22.50.)

A.R. Peters: Anthony Eden at the Foreign Office 1931–1938. (Aldershot: Gower Publishing and New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986; pp. viii, 402; ISBN 0 5660 5117 6; £25.00.)

Brian Girvin and Roland Sturm (eds.): Politics and Society in Contemporary Ireland. (Aldershot: Gower Publishing, 1986; pp. ix, 199; ISBN 0 566 05135 4; £18.50.)

Klaus von Beyme: Political Parties in Western Democracies (Aldershot: Gower Publishing, 1985; pp. xiii, 444; ISBN 0 566 00570 0 £25.00.)

Gordon Smith: Democracy in Western Germany: Parties and Politics in the Federal Republic (3rd edition, Gower, 1986; pp. xi, 243: ISBN 0 566 05267 9 (pb); £6.95.)

George C. Malcher: Poland's Politicized Army: Communists in Uniform (New York, Praeger Publishers, 1984: pp. xvi, 287; ISBN 0 275 91221 3; £34.95.)

I. Crewe and M. Harrop (eds): Political Communications: The General Election Campaign of 1983 (Cambridge University Press, 1986; pp. vii, 335; ISBN 0 521 30425 3; £25.00.)     

How Resilient are Labour Markets to Natural Disasters? The Case of the 1998 Bangladesh Flood

Natural disasters devastate economies as they impede capital accumulation. The resilience of labour markets is crucial for the poor who rely on labour to reduce risk. We evaluate how the 1998 ‘flood of the century’ affected wages in Bangladesh. We find short-term declines in agricultural and non-agricultural wages. Agricultural workers who moved towards non-agricultural employment to cope benefitted through a lower percentage reduction in short-term wages. Endowed with human capital, salaried workers were unable to mitigate income risk. Extending the eligibility of credit access or relief programmes may preserve local businesses and their employees in the years following a flood.     

Molecular Assay for Screening and Quantifying DNA in Biological Evidence: The Modified Q‐TAT Assay*

Abstract: A method is described for the quantitation of total human and male DNA. Q‐TAT utilizes end‐point, multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of the amelogenin and SRY loci to quantify DNA and incorporates a cloned nonhuman template to detect PCR inhibition. Standard curves of fluorescence from amelogenin or SRY amplicons were generated from amplification of known amounts of NIST traceable SRM‐female or SRM‐male DNA. Curves showed good linearity up to 500 pg of SRM‐template (R² > 0.99) and reliably estimated total and male DNA content in casework samples. The nonhuman pRL_null template included in each PCR was a sensitive indicator of known PCR inhibitors including EDTA, hemin, blue denim dye, and humic acid. Finally, the SRY amplicon was a sensitive indicator of male DNA and, in mixtures, could reliably estimate male DNA present in an excess of female DNA. The Q‐TAT multiplex is a reliable quantitation method for forensic DNA typing.     

Sexual victimization against transgender women in prison: Consent and coercion in context

In this article, we conjoin two long‐standing lines of inquiry in criminology—the study of prison life and the study of sexual assault—by using original qualitative and quantitative data from 315 transgender women incarcerated in 27 California men's prisons. In so doing, we advance an analysis of the factors and processes that shape their experience of sexual victimization in prison. The results of qualitative analysis of 198 reported incidents of sexual victimization exhibit a range of types of sexual victimization experienced by transgender women in prison and reveal the centrality of relationships to their experiences of victimization. Findings from logistic regression models buttress the qualitative results, highlighting a factor that consistently and powerfully indicates vulnerability to sexual victimization is involvement in consensual sexual relationships with male prisoners. Together, the data demonstrate the prominence of intimate partner violence in prison, complicate the distinction between consent and unwanted sexual experiences in the lives of transgender women in prisons for men, and shine a light on the workings of gender in a total institution that privileges heteronormativity at the expense of the safety of transgender women in prisons for men. We discuss the implications of our findings in light of timely policy concerns.     

Responses to corporate versus individual wrongdoing

For many years, researchers assumed that the public was indifferent to corporate wrongdoing, but recent surveys have discovered evidence to the contrary. Taking insights from these data a step further, this study employed an experimental design to examine whether people responded differently to corporate versus individual wrongdoers. We varied the identity of the central actor in a scenario involving harm to workers. Half the respondents were informed that a corporation caused the harm; the remainder were told that an individual did so. Respondents applied a higher standard of responsibility to the corporate actor. For identical actions, the corporation was judged as more reckless and more morally wrong than the individual. Respondents' judgments of the greater recklessness of the corporation led them to recommend higher civil and criminal penalties against the corporation.Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the annual meetings of the Law and Society Association (1986), the Society for the Study of Social Problems (1986), and the American Psychological Association (1987). Writing was facilitated by a NIMH Fellowship in Psychology and Law at Stanford University to Valerie Hans. The authors wish to thank Jeffrey Davidson, Sam Gaertner, Michael Levi, Nancy Pennington, David Sciulli, Wes Skogan, and Robert Wood for their contributions to the work.