TNCs: Aid agents for the new millennium?

Until very recently private capital flows to developing countries have been growing rapidly. In the wake of the 1997 East Asian financial crisis, foreign direct investment has been identified as a vital ingredient to restore and invigorate the economies in the Asian region and beyond. In an attempt to attract overseas capital and to stimulate economic development, countries such as the Philippines have stepped up the adoption of policies that allow for greater access by foreign investors. Increasingly, it appears that foreign capital, provided through transnational corporations, is set to replace official aid and to promote economic development first and foremost, with 'trickle-down' social benefits to follow. This study examines the role of one transnational corporation called the Alliance, in the promised development of Bohol in the Philippines, as a by-product of a water treatment and supply proposal linking the island provinces of Bohol and Cebu. The findings suggest that economic objectives tend to take priority over social development. The Alliance seemed to expound its economic and technical ability, with less effort given to involving and consulting with affected communities. This resulted in residents being disenfranchised from the development process, and gave rise to a feeling of mistrust and resentment.     

Immigration and its Imperatives

Conflict and compromise have marked domestic immigration and asylum law in many countries. In examining whether these patterns will be replicated at the level of the EU, this article proposes an alternative method for analysing immigration law and its politics, framing them within the complex interaction of the interpretations by key actors of the imperatives of the State, the EU, and the legal sphere. An account of the functional, normative and polity legitimating imperatives, their specific manifestations in different spheres, and their interaction in the field of immigration and asylum is sketched. This politically-grounded analysis explains more clearly the structure of conflict and compromise that characterises this sphere, illuminates the judicial strategies in this field and enables us to speculate upon the probable future of EU immigration and asylum law.     

A Move Toward Specificity: Examining Urban Disadvantage and Race-and Relationship-Specific Homicide Rates

The purpose of this research is to estimate the differential impact of structural conditions on race- and relationship-specific homicide rates for U.S. cities in 1990. The structural conditions commonly employed in race-specific homicide research are examined, such as job accessibility, economic deprivation, racial segregation, and racial inequality. Furthermore, four relationship categories of homicide—acquaintance, family, stranger, and intimate—are disaggregated by racial group. The detailed relationship-specific homicide rates are compared to a baseline homicide rate to determine whether structural factors associated with urban disadvantage similarly influence homicide rates across relationship types. The results indicate that differences emerge in the impact of structural conditions on homicides disaggregated by race- and relationship-specific categories. Theoretical explanations consistent with criminology and race-relations literature are discussed, as well as the potential benefits and implications for studies that pursue more meaningful and detailed classifications in homicide offending.     

Food and the challenge to identity for post-war refugee women in Australia

Abstract

In many societies, feeding one’s family in traditional and culturally appropriate ways is an essential part of being a mother and a wife. For migrants, food can play an important role in the maintenance of tradition, culture, and identity. This paper uses archival evidence, media coverage, memoirs, and oral histories to explore how policies associated with food in migrant hostels impacted on, and interfered with, the central role of food in the commensal circle of the family, and in the identification of migrant women as wives, mothers, and cultural gatekeepers. We identify three main factors that contributed to this negative cultural impact: the preparation of quintessentially ‘Australian’ menus that were alien to most of the population; communal dining arrangements which disrupted the basic social activity of commensality; and the fact that there was no need for women to prepare food for their families, and no opportunity to do so since having private cooking facilities was illegal. The impact of these eating/dining experiences on women and their families was obviously profound: even today, the topic of food and enforced communal dining is among the first and most vivid of memories, typically negative, reported by those who transitioned through the hostels.     

Increased Lung Weights in Drug‐related Fatalities

This study is of autopsy data for potential validation as to whether increased weights of the lungs support toxic effects of drugs as the cause of death. This retrospective study compared data from 133 deaths resulting from the toxic effects of drugs with previously reported normal lung weights (Toxicol Mech Methods, 22, 2012, 159; Am J Forensic Med Pathol 33, 2012, 368). The lung weights and their standard errors were used in a two‐sample independent t‐test comparing the average drug‐related death weight to the average control weights. To account for multiple comparisons, a Bonferroni‐adjusted alpha level of 0.0125 was used. We are 98.75% confident that the mean right lung weight for female drug‐related deaths is between 227 and 377 g greater than the mean right lung weight for female non‐drug‐related deaths. We are 98.75% confident that the mean right lung weight for male drug‐related deaths is between 245 and 378 g greater than the mean right lung weight for male non‐drug‐related deaths.     

The Right to Be Racist in College: Racist Speech,White Institutional Space,and the First Amendment

Throughout the post–civil rights era, colleges and universities across the United States have periodically experienced explicitly racist incidents on their campuses. From the hurling of racial slurs at students of color, to the hanging of nooses on campus, to students donning Ku Klux Klan outfits or throwing “ghetto” parties that caricaturize communities of color, these incidents challenge the notion that modern racism has changed to a more subtle form, referred to as color‐blind racism. We place these incidents within a broader context of race and institutions, suggesting a connection between overt racist expressions and the more covert elements of neoliberal color‐blind racism. Through a critical discourse analysis of news stories about these incidents, the website of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and the controlling legal cases involving racist expression on campuses, we suggest that explicitly racist incidents operate in tandem with neoliberal educational policies and color‐blind racism to mark and reinscribe colleges and universities as white institutional spaces.