Reductions in Poverty Significantly Greater in the 1990s Than Official Estimates Suggest

Any serious student of poverty understands the many weaknesses of the official poverty measure. In response to these concerns, the National Academy of Sciences issued recommendations to improve the official poverty measure. In addition, the Census Bureau has undertaken a vast amount of research to improve our official poverty series. The methodology used in this analysis incorporates as many of those recommendations as possible to examine the change in poverty from 1979 to 2000. Compared to this methodology, the official poverty measure understates dramatically the reduction in poverty over time.     

Travelling law: Sex,drugs and Montesquieu

With thanks to Jatinder Barn with whom I have discussed this article throughout. Thanks also to Peter Fitzpatrick for his initial invitation and subsequent encouragement, and to my friend and colleague Paul Gilroy for introducingPersian Letters to our teaching syllabus and hence to my library. I retain sole responsibility for any inaccuracies arising from the research and any mistakes in argumentation.     

Reflections of a bourgeois Menshevik

He is author of The End of Ideology; The Radical Right; The Coming of Post-Industrial Society; The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism;and The Social Sciences since World War Two.     

Police uniforms,attitudes, and citizens

This study focuses on identifying the relationship between the citizen's attitude toward the police and the police uniform and authoritarian attitude. The perceived authority associated with the police uniform has been an essential ingredient of the police role. Consequently, the police uniform influences attitudes and behaviors of the wearers as well as the citizens with whom they interact. The citizen's attitude is negatively affected by the traditional military style police uniform in conjunction with the authoritarian attitude exhibited by police officers in performance of their duties. Consequently, when the uniform and officer's attitude are altered, there will be a corresponding change in the citizen's attitude toward the police. The attitude of the officer, in conjunction with the uniform, exerts considerably more influence on the citizen's attitude than does the uniform, officer's attitude, or any additional factor acting independently.     

Institutional influences on business power: how ‘privileged’ is the Business Council of Australia?

• This paper explores the institutional and political dynamics of the Business Council of Australia (BCA), a unique form of big business association which relies on the active involvement of its one hundred or so CEO members. The paper argues that associations such as the BCA confront a range of serious institutional problems in their attempts to wield political power, or more modestly perhaps, policy influence. First, they confront a disconnect between ‘structural’ and ‘instrumentalist’ articulations of business power. The key source of business power resides in business control over the economy and the investment process, a form of power wielded at the company level not at the level of business associations. When engaged in instrumentalist or overt forms of political activism, the BCA also confronts serious collective action problems. It is also argued that the influence of the BCA seems to have declined over time and that this can partly be traced back to declining CEO commitment rooted in changing institutional and structural dynamics in the corporate world.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exploring the literature on relationships between gender roles, intimate partner violence, occupational status, and organizational benefits

Studies of intimate partner violence (IPV) and work have been primarily conducted with women in low-wage low-status (LWLS) positions, as much of this research has focused on poverty, welfare, and homelessness. Although women in LWLS positions represent a large percentage of working women in the United States, it is also important to investigate experiences of women in high-wage high-status (HWHS) positions because a growing number of women are employed within such jobs. We propose gender role theory can be used to explain occurrences of IPV among women in HWHS positions and their utilization of organizational benefits. We suggest those in HWHS positions may be likely to have access to organizational benefits (e.g., medical, vacation, and flexible work schedules) and the ability to utilize the Family and Medical Leave Act. However, prevailing gender roles existing in organizations may render women in HWHS positions unlikely to use benefits or to take leave.     

Intimate Partner Violence Victims’ Accuracy in Assessing their Risk of Re-abuse

Using four categories of accuracy (true positive, false positive, true negative, false negative), this study explored (1) how accurately intimate partner violence (IPV) victims are able to assess their risk of re-abuse; and (2) potential predictors of accuracy. Women seeking help for IPV (N = 246) rated the likelihood that they would experience physical re-abuse in the coming year and then reported 18 months later whether those risks had been realized. Victim assessments were more likely to be right than wrong, and were subject to neither a pessimistic nor optimistic bias. In the multivariate analysis, significant/marginally significant predictors of the accuracy categories were the history of violence from this and former partners, level of substance use, PTSD symptoms, and the recency of the violence. Among the more robust findings were the connection between level of stalking and true positives, and between substance use and false negatives. This study suggests that victim assessments have significant potential to inform practice, and deserve further exploration.

Raman spectroscopy and microspectrophotometry of reactive dyes on cotton fibres: Analysis and detection limits

A collaborative study on Raman spectroscopy and microspectrophotometry (MSP) was carried out by members of the ENFSI (European Network of Forensic Science Institutes) European Fibres Group (EFG) on different dyed cotton fabrics. The detection limits of the two methods were tested on two cotton sets with a dye concentration ranging from 0.5 to 0.005% (w/w). This survey shows that it is possible to detect the presence of dye in fibres with concentrations below that detectable by the traditional methods of light microscopy and microspectrophotometry (MSP). The MSP detection limit for the dyes used in this study was found to be a concentration of 0.5% (w/w). At this concentration, the fibres appear colourless with light microscopy. Raman spectroscopy clearly shows a higher potential to detect concentrations of dyes as low as 0.05% for the yellow dye RY145 and 0.005% for the blue dye RB221. This detection limit was found to depend both on the chemical composition of the dye itself and on the analytical conditions, particularly the laser wavelength. Furthermore, analysis of binary mixtures of dyes showed that while the minor dye was detected at 1.5% (w/w) (30% of the total dye concentration) using microspectrophotometry, it was detected at a level as low as 0.05% (w/w) (10% of the total dye concentration) using Raman spectroscopy. This work also highlights the importance of a flexible Raman instrument equipped with several lasers at different wavelengths for the analysis of dyed fibres. The operator and the set up of the analytical conditions are also of prime importance in order to obtain high quality spectra. Changing the laser wavelength is important to detect different dyes in a mixture.