When Biased Language Use is Associated With Bullying and Dominance Behavior: The Moderating Effect of Prejudice

Biased language related to sexual orientation is used frequently among students and is related to prominent social concerns such as bullying. Prejudice toward gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals also has been examined among adolescents, but separately from these behaviors. This study tested whether biased language use was associated with bullying and dominance irrespective of sexual prejudice or if sexual prejudice moderated these associations among 290 high school students (50% female; 56% White). Sexual prejudice was associated with biased language use among boys only. Biased language was associated with bullying regardless of levels of sexual prejudice for boys. However, this association was dependent on sexual prejudice for girls. For dominance behavior, its association with biased language was moderated by sexual prejudice for boys, but not girls. However, girls’ engagement in all behaviors was significantly less than boys. These results indicate nuanced ways in which multiple factors contribute to the use of sexual orientation biased language. Also, they underscore the need to address biased language and prejudice as part of anti-bullying programs.     

Soviet Legacies,New Public Management and Bureaucratic Entrepreneurship in the Georgian Protection Police. Agencifying the Police?

The article studies agencification and commercialisation within the Georgian police, specifically the Protection Police Department as the successor organisation of the old extra-departmental guards. Despite ostensibly having been scheduled for privatisation from 2004, this unit was instead expanded and strengthened. Given the centrality of police reform in establishing the Saakashvili government's reformist credentials, this represents a critical case testing the limits of top-down neoliberal reform within the very institution that was seen as its centrepiece. It also shows how neo-managerialist forms of organisation—in particular the public law agency—are used to camouflage what remains, essentially, Soviet-style organisation.     

A feminist family: the stracheys and feminism,c. 1860-1950

This article explores the importance and meaning of feminism within one prominent British family across two generations, spanning the later nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. It discusses the changing nature of feminist activism, the ways in which suffrage and feminist activities could become full-time occupations for some women and looks at the links between personal or personal relationships that this sometimes entailed. Focusing on the younger women in the family, however, it also shows how feminism came to be seen as antithetical to modernity and as having little to offer those who sought personal and sexual emancipation in the period after the First World War.     

Varieties of regional monetary cooperation: a tool for reducing volatility in developing economies?

Can regional monetary cooperation shield developing regions from global volatility? The article argues that the main contribution of regional monetary cooperation to enhancing the shock-buffering ability of its member countries is to provide short-term liquidity and to increase regional trade and financial links. In contrast, traditional optimum currency area (OCA) theories formulate the advantages of regional monetary cooperation in terms of allocative efficiency gains and aim at a full currency union as final stage. As such, traditional theory widely ignores the shock-buffering capacity of regional monetary cooperation as well as their varieties. In contrast, the article argues that intermediate stages of regional monetary cooperation have their own rationales related to such shock-buffering capacity. This paper systematically examines the variety of regional cooperation arrangements in the developing world that range from regional payments systems over the pooling of reserves to exchange rate coordination. We propose that the potential for shock buffering is dependent on the chosen form of cooperation. Furthermore, in contrast to full monetary integration, which is highly demanding in terms of policy coordination, the requirements for regional policy coordination are significantly lower, depending on the form and aim of the arrangement.     

From ‘Dearest Mama’ to ‘Dear Mother’: changing styles in early twentieth-century letters from daughters to mothers

In this article, the author looks at two sets of letters sent home to mothers by travelling daughters in the early twentieth century. Both sets of letters come from the Strachey family: one from Philippa Strachey written during the visit she made to India in 1901, the other from her niece, Elinor Rendel, during the period she spent with the Scottish Women's Hospital on the Eastern Front in the First World War. But the letters come from two different generations of women and there are very marked differences between them in style and in content. Both women used their letters as ways to express and to negotiate independent lives while still remaining close to their families, and the author suggests that the differences in their epistolary style serves as much to reflect contrasting approaches to expressions of sentiment and to the appropriate style for writing letters as they do to suggest different relationships between them and their mothers.     

The Politics of Cramped Space: Dilemmas of Action,Containment and Mobility

This article introduces a special issue oriented to the theme of cramped space. We look to cramped space to advance critical understanding of the relationship between space, mobility and politics. Cramped space registers degrees of deprivation, constriction, and obstruction, but always and simultaneously a concern for the ways in which such limits operate to stimulate and incite movements of becoming and remaking. With this point in mind we argue that the idea of cramped space promises to foster a fruitful dialogue between two lines of research that have hitherto unfolded separately. The first of these is the recent shift within globalization theories and mobility studies away from the initial overly-optimistic focus on unbounded flows, and towards questions of friction, containment, blockage, mediation and infrastructure. The second is Deleuze and Guattari's argument for minor politics (from where the idea of cramped space originates). Addressing an age when talk of fences and walls saturates public rhetoric, the essays collected here think through cramped space to imagine new vistas of the politics of mobility.     

Adolescents Online: The Importance of Internet Activity Choices to Salient Relationships

The purpose of this study was to determine whether using the Internet for different activities affects the quality of close adolescent relationships (i.e., best friendships and romantic relationships). In a one-year longitudinal study of 884 adolescents (Mean age = 15, 46% male), we examined whether visiting chat rooms, using ICQ, using the Internet for general entertainment, or participating in online gaming predicted changes in the quality of best friendships and romantic relationships. Multiple regression analyses indicated that Internet activity choice influenced later relationship quality in both best friendships and romantic relationships. Using instant messaging (ICQ) was positively associated with most aspects of romantic relationship and best friendship quality. In contrast, visiting chat rooms was negatively related to best friendship quality. Using the Internet to play games and for general entertainment predicted decreases in relationship quality with best friends and with romantic partners. These findings reflect the important and complex functions of online socialization for the development and maintenance of relationships in adolescence.

Theoretical Perspectives on Post-Migration Adaptation and Psychological Well-Being among Refugees: Towards a Resource-Based Model

Research on the psychological well-being of refugees has focusedon deficiencies within individuals either in terms of psychiatricsymptoms or feelings of distress. To achieve a more holisticview of the life experiences of refugees, we need to look atthe limitations of our current theoretical models. This articlecritically examines some of the major theoretical approachesthat have guided research on the psychological well-being ofrefugees: the medical model, the psychosocial stress model andBerry's (1997) ‘acculturation framework’. It goeson to examine Hobfoll's (2001) Conservation of Resources stresstheory, a model which has important implications for refugeeresearch. Drawing upon the models reviewed, the last sectionoutlines a conceptual framework for adaptation among refugees.At the heart of it lies the concept of resources. However, resourcesmust be understood in terms of the individual's needs, personalgoals and the demands he or she encounters. Each of these conceptsmust be examined in the context of the pre-migration, flightand post-migration phases. The additional concept of constraintson the use of or access to resources is particularly relevantto the post-migration phase. Such a conceptual toolkit couldprove especially useful in going beyond quantitative data topresent the human stories of refugees. It could also sensitizeresearchers to the impact of host societies on the well-beingof refugees.