Building relationships across the Timor Sea: an evaluation of the Australian/Timorese friendship agreements

This article explores the concept and dynamics of the newly formed, and increasingly popular, Friendship Agreements, between local councils in Australia, and their counterpart district administrations in Timor Leste. The history and purpose of international municipal links are explored and contrasted with current Friendship Agreement policy and practice. The key elements of making international municipal links a success are examined and the main impediments to forging and maintaining sustainable partnerships are discussed and contrasted with the Australian/Timorese experience. The article offers suggestions for creating sustainable, vibrant links. It argues that those Agreements built on notions of paternalism are less likely to succeed than those that are committed to relationship and trust building between and within communities in Australia and Timor Leste. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Even Lawyers Get the Blues: Gender, Depression, and Job Satisfaction in Legal Practice

It is an intriguing puzzle that women lawyers, despite less desirable working conditions and blocked career advancement, report similar satisfaction as men lawyers with their legal careers. The paradoxical work satisfaction reported by women and men lawyers obscures a more notable difference in their depressed or despondent feelings. Using a panel study of women and men lawyers practicing in Toronto since the mid-1980s, we find at least three causal pathways through which gender indirectly is connected to job dissatisfaction and feelings of despondency. The first path is through gender differences in occupational power, which lead to differential despondency. The second path is through differences in perceived powerlessness, which directly influence job dissatisfaction. The third path is through feelings of despondency that result from concerns about the career consequences of having children. The combined picture that results illustrates the necessity to include measures of depressed affect in studies of dissatisfaction with legal practice. Explicit measurement and modeling of concerns about the consequences of having children and depressed feelings reveal a highly gendered response of women to legal practice that is otherwise much less apparent. Women are more likely to respond to their professional grievances with internalized feelings of despondency than with externalized expressions of job dissatisfaction. That is, they are more likely to privatize than publicize their professional troubles.     

Indian Citizenship and the Discourse of Hygiene/Disease in Nineteenth‐Century Peru

Citizenship had become conflated with 'race' in late nineteenth century Latin America partly on account of the new language of biological science. This article focuses on the contest between rights of belonging and rights of citizenship as played out in a provincial town in Andean Peru during the late nineteenth century. In particular, it explores how by drawing on a discourse of hygiene/disease a provincial elite was able to restrict access to public space in the town and thus deny 'Indians' the possibility of participating as citizens in urban political life.     

Building Trust: Social Capital, Distributive Justice, and Loyalty to the Firm

Trust is essential to successful business relations, particularly to the efficient operation of law firms. Trust fosters productive working relationships, favorable reputations, and a lucrative clientele. This paper contributes to research on law firm development through a consideration of social dynamics within law firms beyond traditional emphases on trading relationships and community solidarity. We introduce a social capital perspective on the evolution of trust and its consequences for commitment to the law firm. We argue that trust, specifically in the form of perceived distributive justice, is created and nurtured through social integration among law firm members. Yet, for women, who continue to be denied full access to these social networks and professional rewards, trust is undermined. Exclusion and emerging distrust prompt women to contemplate leaving their respective firms. This paper examines the bases of differential levels of trust and their impact on lawyers'intentions to leave practice.