The Writing s on the Wall: Symbolic Orders in The Yellow Wallpaper

When responding to the problem of the feminine condition, most women writers start with the premises that women are superior, inferior or equal to men—and in any case, the man is the Other. The works of Nicole Vedrès imprime this fundamental otherness on which the feminist dispute traditionally fed. The structures of several of her novels suggest an underlying archaic and tribal pattern which coincides in many places with traits of matriarchal societies. They tend to de‐emphasize the individual character in favor of the unity of the clan. The figure of the husband acquires a secondary and transitory aspect. Within this framework, the women are freed from the usual ethical and sociological taboos of the patriarchal system with which we are familiar, while preserving their dignity and their identity. Finally, the true hero of these stories is the clan's executive agent, a self‐effacing and protective male whose function is to ensure the survival of feminine values. In as much as his relationships with the women of the village are nonsexual and of a brotherly nature, his role resembles that of the maternal uncle in matriarchal models. He does not present the alien and aggressive potential of the usual male hero, thus making possible a world in which men and women are close without being antagonistic.     

The history of family and colonialism: Examples from Africa,Latin America,and the Caribbean

The historical study of the family started later in the “Third World” than in Europe and North America, and the link between colonialism and family structures in the colonized or formerly colonized countries has not been explored thoroughly. In this issue we have chosen examples from Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean in part because the importance of people of African background in both continents provided a certain link. The main connection, though, was the fact that all examined cultures had to cope with Christian-European family norms and with the values of the colonizers. The aims, forms, and historical circumstances of the colonial situation were quite different in all the cases examined. When changing conditions made traditional kinship bonds less reliable or less workable, people turned to alternative institutions such as gynaegamy or gender groups. If there is one conclusion to be drawn from all the examined cases, it is that colonized societies had the ability to use a variety of family forms as they adjusted to new situations.     

To fund or not to fund …

A local government practitioner and a marketing academic consider the claims for marketing as a new organising principle for local government. They scrutinise the most frequent objections to the concept of marketing in this context and demonstrate that these have little or no force. This is especially true concerning the emerging paradigms of relationship marketing and Webster's development of the marketing concept. The authors conclude that a marketing philosophy underlies much of the new approach to local government service provision, and set out some of the characteristics which local government marketing needs to have.     

An econometric analysis of trends in fertility rates

Some regression models are used to test the hypothesis that changes in fertility rates have been caused by changes in socioeconomic conditions. The model is applied to four groups of countries and the conclusion is that no simple relationship exists between fertility changes and environmental changes. This conclusion is at variance with results derived from cross‐section studies and suggests not that there is no relationship between socioeconomic and fertility changes, but only that the relationship may be more complex than that considered in previous models.