PTSD compromises battered women's future safety

Intimate partner violence continues to be a social crisis that results in a complex array of physical and mental health problems. Although resources to counteract the effects of the violence are sometimes available, the posttrauma sequelae may prevent access by those in need. Using the Chicago Women's Health Risk Study, a naturalistic longitudinal study of 320 abused women, the current study examined the impact of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression on battered women's safety at follow-up. Participants completed both a baseline and follow-up interview, including data on abuse experiences. Results suggest symptoms of PTSD predict severity of violence at follow-up over the impact of help-seeking behaviors, perceived helpfulness of these behaviors, and social support. Implications of results are discussed.     

Courage,regulatory responsibility,and the challenge of higher‐order reflexivity

Contemporary regulators must respond to ever‐increasing societal demands in various domains. Regulators must cope with these demands under conditions of extreme epistemic scarcity and ideological divide. This leaves regulators perplexed about what action they should take. Regulatory praxis offers two primary responses to this moral and epistemic dilemma: technical canonization and reflexive regulation. While these two approaches represent contrary regulatory philosophies, they suffer from two common blind spots: (a) disregard of the critical role of discretionary judgment in regulatory action; and (b) disregard of the dilemma of higher‐order reflexivity. The article explores the idea of higher‐order reflexivity in the regulatory context. This exploration renders visible the abysses that are faced by regulators as they attempt to resolve regulatory dilemmas through a cognizant and introspective process. The article argues that the Socratic concept of courage and the idea of forward‐looking responsibility provide a plausible framework for thinking about the challenge of regulatory judgment. It concludes with a discussion of the legal and institutional mechanisms that could both facilitate and put to scrutiny the realization of this ideal (but noting also several features of the contemporary regulatory system which constitute potential barriers).     

The White Gold: The Role of Government and State in Rehabilitating the Sugar Industry in Mozambique

This article examines the rehabilitation of the sugar industry in Mozambique after the General Peace Accord in 1992, engaging primarily and critically with certain aspects of the business-state literature. It explains why the sugar sector was rehabilitated from the perspectives of Mozambican state, government and industry actors. The article argues that support for the industry cannot be identified in singular and one-dimensional terms, but must include a variety of attributes of support that emerged from a post-independence fusion of industry, state and government officials' historical experiences of success and failure in the industry, and pragmatic as well as longer-term ideological stances. This, it is argued, created a ‘mediating bureaucracy’ that could broker between the diverse interests and aspirations of state/government and industry.     

The Dynamic of Corporate Self-Regulation: ISO 14001, Environmental Commitment, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior

This article examines the institutional impact of environmental management systems (EMSs), focusing on ISO 14001. It develops a pluralistic framework for thinking about the dynamic of corporate self-regulation that we term the polyphonic model. It argues that the adoption of ISO 14001 can move the firm into a new equilibrium trajectory, which enmeshes together environmental and economic goals and reflects greater sensitivity to ecological concerns. There is a positive reciprocal cycle between the pro-environmental structural changes induced by ISO 14001 and the employees' attitudes toward the firm and the environment. In order to examine ISO 14001 institutional impact, we conducted a series of interviews with managers and administered questionnaires to employees in 24 Israeli firms with and without certification. The findings indicate that the perceived environmental commitment of certified firms was higher than that of noncertified firms and was higher among employees that perceived the EMS as more highly integrated in the firm. Perceptions of the standard's integration were also found to be positively correlated with personal environmental commitment. The results also indicate that the increase in the firm's environmental commitment was positively associated with employees' organizational citizenship behavior within certified firms. Further indications of the pro-environmental dynamic induced by ISO 14001 were found in the in-depth interviews.     

Do Changes in the Labour Market Take Families Out of Poverty? Determinants of Exiting Poverty in Brazilian Metropolitan Regions

Abstract

Using survival models, we test whether short-term changes in the labour market affect poverty duration. Data are from the Brazilian Monthly Employment Survey. Such a monthly dataset permits more accurate estimations of events than using annual data, but its panel follows households for a short period. Then methods that control for both right- and left-censoring should be used. The results are as follows: households with zero income are not those with the lowest chances of exiting; changes in aggregate unemployment do not affect poverty duration; and increasing wages in the informal sector has a negative effect on poverty duration.     

Etat incitateur ou “deuxième ville”: l'animation socioculturelle à Genève

Cet article propose une analyse du paysage hétéroclite de l'animation socioculturelle à Genève. À partir d'un aperçu historique de son développement, les auteurs proposent une typologie, distinguant l'animation “d'allégeance” basée sur des valeurs et des formes d'intervention traditionnelles, l'animation “de gestion” caractérisée par la professionnalisation de l'intervention, l'animation “de conscientisation” en coopération conflictuelle avec les instances étatiques et, enfin, l'animation “indépendante” insérée dans des niches culturelles. Cette typologie nous permet de souligner d'une part des transformations dans l'action de l'Etat, qui développe des activités incitant à l'animation auto-organisée à la place des interventions planificatrices du social et, de relever d'autre part la variété dans la pratique d'animation qui se situe entre dépendance étatique complète et deuxième ville. Les conséquences de ces transformations seront discutées du point de vue de leur contribution à la création de nouveaux espaces publics urbains, ainsi que de l'effet de la diversité dans l'animation sur la diffusion du lieu de la politique dans la société.