Occupations and attitudes of former student activists 10 years later

Respondents in a 1969 survey (N=400)of undergraduate men at the University of Michigan were resurveyed as alumni in 1979 (N=215).Of the 400 surveyed in 1969, 50 were active in political organizations (organization activists) and 57 had been in demonstrations. These were rank- and-file student activists in the 1960s, not leaders. The demonstration activists were the more extreme in attitudes in both 1969 and 1979. In 1979 the demonstration activists were still more interested in political affairs than the nonactivists, more suspicious of free enterprise ideology, more opposed to current fears of communism, and more alienated from the military. Former organization activists were disproportionately employed in the human services areas of government, disproportionately absent from the business sector. In 1979 the former activists were no longer critical of the universities or of American society as a producer of poverty. They had shifted their main involvement from national to community affairs. While still distinctive in some attitudes, they were generally less radical than earlier.Financial support was provided by the Spencer Foundation.Received Ph.D. from Harvard University. Research interests include sociology of religion and youth.Received M.A. from Catholic University. Research interests include social movements and sociology of the arts.     

Reputation and behavior of battered women who kill their partners: Do these variables negate self-defense?

Vignettes describing a case in which a battered woman killed her husband were presented to college students. Independent variables were the presence or absence of verbal aggression by the woman toward her husband before the final beating, the woman's reputation and social desirability as a wife and mother, and whether or not a weapon was present when the battering husband threatened the woman before she killed him. After reading a vignette, subjects (N=413) selected a verdict, reported what influenced their verdicts, and completed attitudinal measures on sex-role attitudes, attitudes toward wife-beating, and “just world” attitudes. The presence of verbal aggression by the woman increased the odds of subjects choosing a guilty verdict by 1.71 times compared to the absence of verbal aggression. A defendant characterized as a “bad” wife/mother or a dysfunctional wife/mother was, respectively, 6.24 and 2.49 times more likely to be found guilty rather than not guilty by reason of self-defense (NGRSD) than the “good” wife/mother. Use of a weapon by the husband did not significantly increase the number of NGRSD verdicts over conditions in which no weapon was present. Neither subjects' attitudes nor demographics appeared to be related to their choice of verdicts.     

地方政府绩效考评的人文GDP指标体系初探

党的十六届三中全会提出了全面、协调、可持续的科学发展观和构建和谐社会,这是我们党对社会主义现代化建设指导思想的新发展。因此,我们既要注重地方政府经济GDP和绿色GDP的增长,又要注重实现地方政府四个GDP(经济GDP、绿色GDP、人文GDP和人力GDP)的全面发展,同时,尤其要将人文GDP纳入考评轨道并建立科学的指标体系。     

住房公积金制度对公务员住房消费的支持作用分析

本文提出,住房公积金制度对公务员住房消费具有促进住房消费资金的自我积累、实现住房消费互助、提供实现住房平滑消费的低成本信用工具、供给政策与商业性个人住房消费贷款组合产品、丰富住房分配货币化和住房保障途径等重要作用,并对这些作用的重要性进行了分析,以期为做好公务员的住房公积金管理工作提供理论依据。     

Participation in a residential mobility program from the client's perspective: Findings from Gautreaux Two

Abstract

In 2002, the Gautreaux Two housing mobility program provided low‐income families living in Chicago public housing with the opportunity to move to more affluent, less racially isolated communities. This article presents findings on their complex search and moving process. Only about one‐third of enrolled families actually moved through the program ("leased‐up"). In‐depth interviews with a randomly chosen sample of 71 families and an additional 20 “likely mover” families showed that movers fell into four groups distinguished by personal characteristics that made it easier for them to move or by residence on Chicago's North Side.

Nonmovers faced a variety of obstacles, both external (a tight rental market, discrimination, and bureaucratic delays) and internal (limited experience and program comprehension, large household size, and health problems). Also, some nonmovers were too busy with work or school to engage in what proved to be an onerous process of identifying a suitable unit and moving.     

‘The backbone of the village’: gender,development, and traditional authority in rural Zanzibar

Recent processes of political decentralisation and the parallel movements asserting indigenous identity and autochthony have led to a resurgence of academic interest in ‘traditional’ and local forms of leadership and authority. Based on ethnographic research on the hirimu age-set system and related forms of traditional authority in the Zanzibari village of Jongowe, this article explores how these systems rooted in local history and identity are mitigated by contemporary national and international political circumstances. By examining how ‘traditional’ systems both create and circumscribe space for gendered expressions of power and how they work with the emerging forms of non-governmental organisation characteristic of contemporary development, the article considers how these dynamic local systems of governance maintain their legitimacy through both association with the past and engagement with contemporary politics. It argues for an understanding of ‘traditional authority’ that expands beyond hereditary leadership positions, and suggests that such forms of power, though embedded in historical collective identity, are expressions of contemporary forms of governance.     

Public Investments in Education and Children’s Academic Achievements

While the benefits of additional schooling in the developing world are widely recognised, the best use of scarce resources to improve academic achievement remains unclear. We compare public investments in school infrastructure, school improvement grants, teacher qualifications, and attendance incentives on independently-gathered measures of academic skills as well as grade progression for 8–11 year olds in India. We match a rich household survey containing a skills-assessment module, the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), with detailed measures of each district’s education resources from the District Information Survey on Education (DISE). We also include border-pair fixed effects to control for unobserved heterogeneity. We find that incentives for children to attend school were associated with arithmetic, reading and writing skills, and grade progression. Investment in teachers were associated with greater probability a child could write and do more advanced math. Small improvement grants to schools were associated with better reading skills and writing ability. Investments in school infrastructure were only associated with improved writing ability.     

A critique of quantitative measures of the degree of democracy in Israel

The question addressed in this study is: ‘How accurate and meaningful are quantitative measures of the degree of democracy in Israel?’ With the increasing use of such measures in studies of democracy, an answer to this question becomes increasingly important. The Freedom House and Polity IV measures of democracy in Israel contend that there is a very high level of democracy, but their characterization is contradicted sharply by the views of many scholars. In seeking to account for this contradiction, we will assess the accuracy and meaningfulness of the two quantitative measures. We find that both empirical and conceptual problems affect the utility of the measures. Empirical inaccuracies are suggested by three findings: the role in Israel's democracy of the largest minority group, the Israeli Arabs, is ignored or substantially discounted; the discrepancies between the two indices suggest that at least one of them is not capturing empirical reality accurately; and neither index seems very sensitive to democracy-related events in the country. The degree to which these empirical findings are indicators of inaccuracies is dependent upon the conceptualization of democracy. Conceptually, the indices differ from each other and from the concepts used by many others who examine Israeli democracy. Two conclusions are reached: the indices measure imperfectly what they call Israeli ‘democracy’. Furthermore, a prima facie look at the scores characterizing democracy in other countries suggests that the ‘democracy’ they measure in Israel is not the same as the ‘democracy’ they measure elsewhere. The implications are several: on the academic side, the accuracy of general knowledge developed using these measures becomes questionable. On the practical side, the indices contribute little to knowledge that may be applied to overcoming the complex problems democracy in Israel is facing or the building of democracy in other countries of the Middle East. Thus, their accuracy and meaningfulness is limited.