Regional growth linkages from agriculture

Pioneering research on downstream linkages from agriculture is said to demonstrate that consumption links rather than production links are the main source of indrect growth effects, that these consumption links take the form of labour‐intensive goods and services produced locally, and that the largest farm enterprises are most locally multiplicative of activities mopping up surplus rural labour. This article has two purposes. First, the methodologies, assumptions and data base for the quantification of the local and non‐local regional multiplier effects from agricultural development are examined. Second, the contradictory interpretations for agricultural policy which have arisen from these exercises of quantification are discussed and an attempt made to explain their bases.     

Societal Actors Shape Collective Identities of Minorities: Procedural Fairness Climate Effects on Identification,Subjective Well-Being and Psychological Health

In the present studies, we aimed to show that the perceived procedural fairness of societal actors’ multicultural decisions promotes ethnic minority members’ societal identification. These enhanced identification levels, in turn, contribute to better psychological health and well-being. Firstly, a vignette study in a sample of African Americans explored the effect of procedural fairness climate on identification. The second and third studies used self-report questionnaires. Study 2 consisted of a sample of sojourners in a university context, Study 3 analyzed online data through an African American sample. The studies provided evidence for the effect of procedural fairness climate on increased societal identification, which in turn mediates the fairness effect on increased well-being and psychological health. Societal actors can use procedural fairness to increase well-being when making decisions that involve ethnic minorities.

     

The routine profiling of forensic heroin samples

A method for the routine profiling of illicit heroin samples received in casework has been developed which depends on simple and straightforward sample pretreatment, followed by gas chromatography on a capillary column using flame-ionization detection. The factors affecting the choice of each aspect of the procedure are discussed, as are the statistical data for sampling and the chromatography. Components of illicit heroin derived from opium and other adulterants have been identified. The significance of data from samples examined in 1986 is discussed.     

Living in the Past or Living in the Future? Analyzing Parties’ Platform Change In Between Elections,The Netherlands 1997–2014

Do parties change their platform in anticipation of electoral losses? Or do parties respond to experienced losses at the previous election? These questions relate to two mechanisms to align public opinion with party platforms: (1) rational anticipation, and (2) electoral performance. While extant work empirically tested, and found support for, the latter mechanism, the effect of rational anticipation has not been put to an empirical test yet. We contribute to the literature on party platform change by theorizing and assessing how party performance motivates parties to change their platform in-between elections. We built a new and unique dataset of >20,000 press releases issued by 15 Dutch national political parties that were in parliament between 1997 and 2014. Utilizing automated text analysis (topic modeling) to measure parties’ platform change, we show that electoral defeat motivates party platform change in-between elections. In line with existing findings, we demonstrate that parties are backward-looking.     

‘Daughters of injur’d Africk’: 1 African women and the transatlantic slave trade

There is now a substantial literature on slavery yet few studies directly address the gendered nature of the slave trade. In this article, the author demonstrates how women’s experiences of the trade were contingent on conflicting European stereotypes of African women, their fertility and sexual vulnerability but, also, their gendered roles in African cultures. These gender differences influenced women’s resistance and survival strategies. The middle passage represented irreversible changes in slave women’s lives but important threads of continuity also existed across the Atlantic world. On the slave ship the ‘Daughters of injur’d Africk’ forged new bonds with fellow slaves and their cultural knowledge travelled with them. Women were seminal in reworking African culture on the slave plantation and actively resisted enslavement from the moment of capture to their harsh new lives in the Americas.