Poverty and productivity in female-headed households in Zimbabwe

A household survey conducted in rural Zimbabwe in 2001 is used to compare the position of de facto and de jure female-headed households to those with a male head. These households are characterised by different forms of poverty that impinge on their ability to improve agricultural productivity. However, once inputs are accounted for, it is only for growing cotton that female-headed households' productivity is lower than that found for male-headed households. General poverty alleviation policies will benefit the female-headed household but specific interventions via extension services and access to marketing consortia are also indicated.     

Listening to the Government: How Information Shapes Responsibility Attributions

Assigning credit and blame in systems of multilevel government, such as federal states, requires information. This paper examines how voters respond to information about policy outcomes when attributing responsibility to multiple levels of government in a European context. Using an experimental design, we show that the responsibility attributions of British voters are affected by perceptual biases, notably their feelings about the government and the European Union (EU). But interestingly, we also find that voters, regardless of their predispositions, are only responsive to information they receive from their national government, whereas they ignore information provided by EU officials. These findings have implications not only for our understanding of attribution in systems of multiple levels of government, but also for how voters use information selectively depending on the credibility of the source.     

This other and other others

This paper offers an alternative understanding of the relationship between feminist ethics, time and otherness. Rather than suggesting a feminist ethics should simply be for ‘the other’, or that feminist ethics is always futural (dedicated to that which is not yet), the paper suggests that ethics involves responding to the particular other in a present that carries traces of the past, as well as opening up the future. It is through responding to particular others (where particularity is not understood as a characteristic of another, but as a mode of encounter) that we face and face up to ‘other others’. The relationship between ‘this other’ and ‘other others’ suggests an intimacy between the particular and the collective, between the face-to-face of an encounter and political economies, and between feminist ethics and politics. Indeed, the paper concludes by suggesting that the ethical and political imperatives of feminism are aligned precisely given that collectivity is an effect of the work that has to be done to get closer to this other and, with her, other others. This other and other others collect together in the making of a feminist ‘we’. Such a ‘we’ can be embraced only through a willingness to struggle with and for others who are faced in the present (a facing that is indebted to a past that cannot be left behind), and an openness to the future, as the promise and hope of what we might yet become.     

Controlling Immigration through Language and Country Knowledge Requirements

This article examines why some states in Western Europe have adopted integration-from-abroad requirements, which include tests and language courses administered as a condition for immigration. After considering the significance and empirical differences of pre-entry integration programmes, it argues that mandatory language and country knowledge training from abroad primarily represent a deliberate and increasingly effective instrument for immigration control – specifically family unification and formation. The article first roots the political opportunity for pre-entry integration in supranational EU Directives on Family Reunification and Status of Third Country Nationals. Second, it looks at the Dutch Civic Integration from Abroad exam as a crucial case to show how mode of preparation, exempt categories, and policy language link the immigration test to migration control objectives. It concludes that this new instrument in immigration policy-making reveals strategic thinking by policy-makers to use positive, politically acceptable language of integration and inclusion to achieve potentially objectionable and discriminatory outcomes of exclusion.     

Elder Mistreatment Victims during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Administrative Data from San Francisco Adult Protective Services

This study examined elder mistreatment victims’ experiences at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on their COVID-19 awareness and unmet needs. San Francisco Adult Protective Services (APS) caseworkers conducted phone interviews with clients or collaterals (client’s family, trusted other, or service provider) to inquire about clients’ awareness of COVID-19 and unmet needs. Nine-hundred-and-thirty-four (71%) of 1,313 APS’ past clients or their collaterals were interviewed, with 741 (79%) responding positively to COVID-19-awareness questions, and 697 (75%) having no unmet needs. Binary logistic regression with Firth adjusted maximum likelihood estimation method revealed that older persons (p?<?.05), self-neglectors (p?<?.05), and victims of neglect (p?<?.05) were less aware of COVID-19. Unmet needs varied by mistreatment type. Victims of isolation were more likely to have medical needs (p?<?.05), while victims of emotional abuse were more likely to report loneliness (p?<?.001). Case notes reflected clients who were well-prepared for the pandemic, versus those who required additional assistance to follow preventative measures of the COVID-19 pandemic to stay home. Although the majority of San Francisco APS’ past clients experienced no unmet needs at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the prolonged length and intensity of the pandemic could have exacerbated this vulnerable group’s situation. Collaboration between service providers is key in assisting victims experiencing unmet needs to live safely in a public health crisis, especially underserved victims of specific ethnic backgrounds.

     

Utopias Re-imagined: A Reply to Panizza

This article is a reply to Panizza's recent article, 'Unarmed Utopia Revisited: The Resurgence of Left-of-Centre Politics in Latin America'. It contests the claims that there are no alternatives to market economies and liberal democracy in contemporary Latin America. It does this by disentangling the conceptual assumptions that underlie the analysis presented, which, it argues, construct a loaded dice that makes the conclusions of the arguments seemingly inevitable and objective. It also explores the internal contradictions within the alternative presented. This analysis is developed through the use of critical social theory and with reference to the 'movements from below' engaged in the struggle to re-imagine and reconstruct utopias. This involves bringing to the heart of analysis a theoretical orientation in which structures become a series of concrete social relations, not objects, and power is mediated at a variety of spatial levels. It necessitates a conceptualisation of politics, structure and the agents and nature of structural change that expand the boundaries of traditional political science categories. Such conceptual expansion and theoretical repositioning make visible, and politically central, the movements from below normally categorised as marginal in political analysis.     

Who is rebuilding Aceh? Tensions between groups of staff in an NGO

This article takes its point of departure in an international non-governmental aid organisation (INGO) active in post-disaster and post-conflict Aceh. Using material collected through fieldwork conducted in the organisation, the article addresses the issue of how the intrinsic logic and workings of development reinforce the historically tense relationship between Acehnese and Indonesians.     

Queering accounts of “MSM” practitioner agency: recognising collateral benefits

This article demonstrates how donor resources can enable MSM/TG practitioners to exercise agency in diverse ways, which produce collateral benefits for sexuality/gender-diverse communities. By focusing on what Thai MSM/TG practitioners actually do, we illustrate how their practices respond to their own aspirations, not only the demands of donor funding regimes. We position our project as queer in the sense that it interrupts the normative absence of practitioner agency within current “MSM” development literature. We argue that our reading might enable greater recognition and donor support for MSM/TG practitioners who produce collateral benefits through their work.     

Proposed Method for Predicting Pair Matching of Skeletal Elements Allows Too Many False Rejections

Byrd proposes a method for predicting pair matches in commingled remains to reduce visual comparison. The method compares differences between left and right postcranial element measurements in commingled samples with differences in known pairs from a reference sample using a t‐score approach. We duplicated his protocol using six elements from two samples of known paired elements (n = 854 to 1063) and calculated the number of pairs correctly predicted. Time commitment was estimated by mathematically attempting matches with all left and right elements in these samples. Although the results show an 86% reduction in the number of potential pairs requiring visual matching, we do not recommend the method because (i) the normality assumption for use of a t‐score approach is violated, (ii) no account is made for bilateral asymmetry, and (iii) the high rate of false rejections (up to 22%) undermines its ability to show true incompatibilities for potential pair matches.