Making the Case for Evaluation Partnerships in Child Protection Mediation Programs: Insights from a Case Study

Many jurisdictions have instituted child protection mediation programs (CPM) for the purposes of reducing the length of children's stays in out‐of‐home care and decreasing court system burden, and numerous studies have shown promising results. However, important implementation and sustainability problems persist. This article presents a case study's findings and retrospectively interprets underlying reasons for challenges the program faced in implementation. Study implications call for a more structured planning process, including early partnership with experienced court‐based evaluators to develop successful marketing and recruitment strategies that may encourage stakeholder endorsement and foster sustainability.     

Female entrepreneurs and poverty reduction: hair craft SMEs in Tanzania

This study attempts to link poverty alleviation with specific sectors and gender in the context of a developing country, focusing on, female hairstylists in Tanzania. Using the absolute definition of poverty based on income/consumption in relation to specific nationally and internationally defined living standards, the study examined the income and consumption patterns of 230 women engaged in the hairstyling business in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Findings suggest that female entrepreneurs in the business earn more relative to conventionally defined indicators. Their earnings have improved their consumption, investments and savings, and enabled them to fulfil their dependents’ basic needs.     

Morphoscopic Trait Expression in “Hispanic” Populations

This study evaluates population variation of eight cranial morphoscopic traits using samples of known southwest Hispanics (n = 72), Guatemalans (n = 106), American Blacks (n = 146), and American Whites (n = 218). We applied the support vector machine (SVM) method to build a prediction model based on a subsample (20%) of the data; the remainder of the data was used as a test sample. The SVM approach effectively differentiated between the four groups with correct classification rates between 72% (Guatemalan group) and 94% (American Black group). However, when the Guatemalan and southwest Hispanic samples were pooled, the same model correctly classified all groups with a higher degree of accuracy (American Black = 96%; American White = 77%; and the pooled Hispanic sample = 91%). This study also identified significant differences between the two Hispanic groups in six of the eight traits using univariate statistical tests. These results speak to the unique population histories of these samples and the current use of the term “Hispanic” within forensic anthropology. Finally, we argue that the SVM can be used as a classification model for ancestry estimation in a forensic context and as a diagnostic tool may broaden the application of morphoscopic trait data for the assessment of ancestry.     

Politics by Number: Indicators as Social Pressure in International Relations

The ability to monitor state behavior has become a critical tool of international governance. Systematic monitoring allows for the creation of numerical indicators that can be used to rank, compare, and essentially censure states. This article argues that the ability to disseminate such numerical indicators widely and instantly constitutes an exercise of social power, with the potential to change important policy outputs. It explores this argument in the context of the United States’ efforts to combat trafficking in persons and find evidence that monitoring has important effects: Countries are more likely to criminalize human trafficking when they are included in the U.S. annual Trafficking in Persons Report, and countries that are placed on a “watch list” are also more likely to criminalize. These findings have broad implications for international governance and the exercise of soft power in the global information age.     

Northern NGO advocacy: Perceptions,reality, and the challenge

This article reports the results of and conclusions from a survey of Northern NGOs conducted during 1998 and 1999 for the purposes of testing generalised criticisms of Northern NGO advocacy and providing benchmarks for further research on the policy impact of the Washington Advocacy office of Oxfam International. Based on the survey findings, the author challenges Northern NGOs to evaluate more thoroughly their advocacy so that they may effectively demonstrate their advocacy achievements and, by so doing, confidently invest a greater proportion of resources into advocacy programmes which effectively contribute to their goals of reducing poverty.     

Bridging cross-cultural feminisms: annie besant and women's rights in England and India, 1874-1933

Abstract

Annie Besant was a Victorian radical whose outspoken views included advocacy of women's rights and opposition to British imperial policies. In her mid-forties she went to live in India. Contesting British attempts to Westernize Indian society, Besant found herself in the seemingly anomalous position of defending traditional Indian patriarchy and resisting efforts to reform the status of Indian women. Such conservatism brought on Besant criticism not only from Western liberals and Christian missionaries, but also from many Indian social reformers. When she gradually shifted her views and voiced her support for Indian women's rights, Indian nationalists condemned her as a British imperialist. The conflict between loyalty to national heritage and opposition to traditional patriarchy is one that colonized women have commonly experienced. By examining how an anti-imperialist British feminist responded to the question of women's reform in India, this paper offers another perspective on the complexities of this dilemma.     

Life into art and art into life: visualising the aesthetic woman or ‘high art maiden’ of the Victorian ‘renaissance’

There has been a great deal of research concerning the effect of aestheticism on men in the late nineteenth century, especially in terms of their sexuality, but its impact on women has been largely dismissed as unnecessary, as women were naturally ‘feminine’. This article examines whether ‘the self-absorption and heightened emotional life of Aestheticism’ (J.B. Bullen, 1998 [Oxford: Oxford University Press]) was tolerable in women or if it was leading to disease, decay and corruption. Aestheticism's insistence on individuality and self-discovery were to have important consequences for women, fuelling the desire for a life of their own rather than solely service to others.