A forecasting model for state expenditures

In this study, the median voter model is applied to the problem of predicting state public expenditures in four major categories: human services, elementary and secondary education, higher education, and health services. Demand functions for public services are derived within a formal utility-maximizing model. The resulting model is estimated using time-series data for a representative state and the model is used to predict state spending for fiscal year 1985. The results of the estimation are consistent with the predictions of the median voter model and the forecasts correspond closely to those made by the State Bureau of the Budget. In contrast, a naive autoregressive model of state spending performs poorly.     

Toward a theory of reproduction

Summary In this article I have attempted to theorize the relations of reproduction in a manner that makes their operation in history more apparent. Using an historical materialist analysis, I have diverged from previous analysis by situating reproduction in the base and positing a co-determinative relation between production and reproduction. I have argued that due to the distinctly different dynamic of reproduction, its longer completion time and its political subordination in class societies, we must pursue different research strategies than those used to illustrate the impact of production on reproduction. This article serves only to give the broadest outline of concerns and questions to focus upon in developing new strategies. As such it suggests that the ubiquity of patriarchy and its preservation, even in the face of structural contradictions with production, provide a starting place for such inquiry. To this end I have developed a model of the modes of reproduction in order to rediscover reproduction in history, its dynamic and its interaction with production.This perspective permits us to reanalyze old rules and customs previously understood exclusively as rules of production (e.g., rules of inheritance and property, certain labour and welfare laws), and discover within them the impact of the reproductive as well as the productive imperative. The model emphasizes the inextricable connection between production and reproduction at the same time that it calls attention to the distinctiveness of their dynamics. Dynamics which, because of their distinctiveness, do not automatically guarantee balance between the two spheres. Hence the continuous necessity for socially engineering this balance, a necessity requiring even more intervention as the two spheres become structurally more alienated.     

Reading aloud as performance and its representation on television programmes for children

ABSTRACT

The social practice of reading aloud picture books to children, or shared reading, has been represented on many televisions programmes broadcast across English-speaking countries. This article views shared reading as a performance, and explores its transformation on two television shows for children and the potential of such shows to promote reading engagement and literacy development. Taking a critical multimodal perspective, we analyse shared reading in real life and on television as a social practice, focusing on the ways the participants talk about the picture book, relate it to exterior texts or activities, and legitimise shared reading through the employment of multimodal and interactive strategies. The analysis reveals significant differences between actual adult–child shared reading and its representation on television. The comparison illustrates the potential benefits and limitations of television shows in which picture books are read to the viewer, in terms of promoting shared reading among families and supporting young children’s emergent literacy development.     

Digitised Justice: The New Two Tiers?

Criminal Law Forum - Prevailing conditions of access to justice and due process in the Singapore courts are criticised through McBarnet’s two-tier lens and Carlen’s dramaturgical...     

The language of the ADVERTISING SLOGAN Part 2

Abstract

This article presents findings from research into the impact of affordability on cell phone usage in the impoverished community of Grahamstown East. The findings indicate that the usage of cell phones is significantly constrained by a lack of affordability, which calls into question whether this community is experiencing a shift from an earlier, industrial form of society, to what Castells et al. have called the ‘mobile network society’. The research points to the fact that the positive benefits of cell phones, identified by Castells et al., cannot be realised in a circumstance where cell phone usage is survivalist in nature, and in fact cell phones are highly extractive in this resource-poor context, diverting income away from more productive uses. The research is used to raise a series of questions about the explanatory power of technology-led accounts of social transformation for an impoverished community such as that of Grahamstown East, and whether it is appropriate for theorists to base their accounts of social change largely on middle-class experiences with cell phone usage.