Explaining the Association between Early Adversity and Young Adults’ Diabetes Outcomes: Physiological,Psychological, and Behavioral Mechanisms

Previous studies have documented that early adversity increases young adults’ risk for diabetes resulting in morbidity and comorbidity with adverse health conditions. However, less is known about how inter-related physiological (e.g., body mass index [BMI]), psychological (e.g., depressive symptoms), and behavioral mechanisms (e.g., unhealthy eating and sedentary behavior) link early adversity to young adults’ diabetes outcomes, although these mechanisms appear to stem from early stressful experiences. The current study tested the patterning of these longitudinal pathways leading to young adults’ diabetes using a nationally representative sample of 13,286 adolescents (54% female) over a period of 13 years. The findings indicated that early adversity contributed to elevated BMI, depressive symptoms, and stress-related health behaviors. The impact of these linking mechanisms on hierarchical diabetes outcomes (i.e., prediabetes and diabetes) remained significant after taking their associations with each other into account, showing that these mechanisms operate concurrently. The findings emphasize the importance of early detection for risk factors of young adults’ diabetes in order to minimize their detrimental health effects.     

Ground zero – the semiotics of the boundary line

This paper explores the ambiguous nature of the graphic boundary line as a key element in the carto-realist conception of spatiality. Using examples (specifically the Line of Tordesillas and the UK border at Stansted Airport), the paper explores the complex and ambiguous nature of boundary lines as cartographic representations and concrete spatial practices. Drawing on Rotman's analysis of the significance of “zero” to modern semiotics and Wilden's theorization of digital and analogue communications systems, I argue that the graphic line is the spatial equivalent of a numeric zero – a meta-symbolic entity that is empty (the cartographic line, by definition, has no magnitude).     

Engaging With Criminal Prosecution: The Victim's Perspective

Despite more than a decade of policies that encourage prosecutors to proceed without the victim's input or actions in cases of intimate partner violence (IPV), prosecutors still often rely on the victim's participation to move a case forward. The purpose of this study was to identify the barriers and motivators influencing female IPV victims' engagement with the criminal justice system and their preferences regarding prosecution. Findings from focus groups with women who had experienced police response to IPV revealed that women wanted the violence to end but faced numerous barriers to engaging with the criminal prosecution process. The dominant voice favored police and prosecutors taking action toward prosecution without depending solely or heavily on the victim's active participation.     

Mixed marriage, ‘a grave injury to our church’: An account of the 1957 Fethard-on-Sea Boycott

The family was central to the religious formation and indeed the survival of southern Irish Protestantism in the mid-twentieth century. The largest Protestant denomination in the Republic of Ireland, the Church of Ireland (comprising approximately 5% of the national population in 1950) was challenged by demographic trends of late and low rates of marriage, emigration and the ever-prevalent threat of mixed marriage. Against this backdrop the church emphasised the essentiality of the socialisation of children into the church community. It cautioned against the dangers of inter-church marriage where the enforcement by the Catholic church of the 1908 Ne Temere decree obliged the Protestant partner in a mixed marriage to consent in writing to the upbringing of any children of the union as Catholics. The actions of one woman in the small village of Fethard-on-Sea in county Wexford in 1957 in challenging this dictate led to a sectarian and divisive boycott of Protestant business in the locality. Eileen Cloney, a member of the Church of Ireland, chose to leave her home with her two daughters, against the wishes of her husband Seán, rather than allow her eldest daughter attend the local Catholic school in the village. Her ‘abduction’ of her children was condemned by local and national Catholic clergy culminating in the call for a boycott of Protestant businesses and farms by the local Catholic Curate, Fr. Stafford on 12 May 1957. In this article, original oral history research as well as previously unseen documentary sources will be used in an examination of this divisive boycott and its local and national repercussions. The article will explore contemporary discourse on marriage as well as highlighting the significance of the family in church and state discourse.     

A death in the family: Household structure and mortality in rural liaoning: Life-event and time-series analysis, 1792–1867

In China before the twentieth century, the household was a locus of social and economic organization in which resources and responsibilities were allocated. This study shows that the structure of the relationships between coresident kin conditioned the allocation process. Through a discrete-time life-event analysis of triennial household register data from a northeast Chinese village, Daoyi, between 1774 and 1873, we find that an individual's probability of dying, which we treat as an indicator of access to resources and the nature of household roles, was affected by the composition of their coresident kin. As is the case in contemporary societies, widows and widowers had higher mortality than the currently married. Orphans had higher mortality than children with at least one parent present. Reflecting the dependence of a wife's status on whether she had produced an heir for her husband, married women in young adulthood and middle age who had at least one son had substantially lower mortality than those without. Reflecting the strength of the claim that elderly males could make on household resources, children with coresident grandfathers had higher mortality than those without. Even though sons were supposed to be a form of old-age security, however, the death rate of the elderly was not reduced by the presence of sons and grandsons.     

Pornography and the construction of misogyny

Summary

In this paper I return to my work in Pornography: Women, Violence and Civil Liberties, the edited volume published in 1992 by Oxford University Press, and subsequently my work on pornography, harm and human rights (Itzin, 1995, 1996a), and to pornography and child sexual abuse (Itzin, 1996b, 1997a,b, 2000a,b,c). I draw from and build on that work and from the contents of the pornography special issue of the Journal of Sexual Aggression (Itzin and Cox, 2000). This paper covers key issues such as legislation and regulation, censorship' and ‘freedom’, the literature on pornography effects, the role of pornography in the aetiology of sex offending and in the construction of desire. In particular, the paper is concerned with theorising aetiology, causality and the ‘epistemology of public policy’ on pornography. It draws from and builds on the scholarship and activism of radical feminism in conceptualising and campaigning against pornography-related harm.     

Measuring grievance thinking in sexual offenders: The revised Dissipation–Rumination Scale

Abstract

Rumination is an important part of “grievance thinking”, which has been linked to recidivism in sexual offenders. Grievance thinking is a dynamic risk factor that can be targeted in treatment, and is characterized by a perception of being wronged accompanied by angry, hostile rumination about revenge, and has similarities to the “dangerous world” implicit theory . A revised version of the Dissipation–Rumination Scale is used currently to measure grievance thinking in sexual offenders incarcerated in England and Wales. The study aimed to establish whether this revised measure is valid to use with this population. The scale demonstrated adequate reliability and good convergent validity. However, analyses revealed problems with both construct and predictive validity. Further, it is suggested that the scale may not be sufficient to measure the whole of the “grievance thinking” concept. The results do not provide overwhelming support for the use of this tool with sexual offenders; further research is required before firm conclusions can be drawn regarding the scale's utility. Directions for future research are discussed.