Contesting the boundaries of gender,race and sexuality in Barbadian plantation society

After decades of scholarly neglect, the pivotal roles played by enslaved African women in the sociocultural and economic development of New World plantation societies is finally receiving critical attention as historians embark on gendered reappraisals of Caribbean history. Understanding how African women experienced slavery has considerably enriched our knowledge of the complexity of gender, race and sexuality in structuring colonial social relations. However, considerably less attention has focused on the experiences of white women within these societies. Dismissed, at best, as the languid and leisured wives of male planters, and at worst, as a socially and economically unproductive parasitical category, white Caribbean women arguably constitute the most marginalised of social actors within Caribbean history. This article seeks to disrupt the uncritical representations that frame our epistemological understanding of the experiences of white colonial women. Taking the plantation society of Barbados as a case study, the author argues that white women were crucial actors in the reproduction and social stability of successful slave economies. In Barbadian plantation society, ideologies of white supremacy legitimised African slavery, and race became the principal mode of social stratification.     

Economic Hardship and Adolescent Problem Drinking: Family Processes as Mediating Influences

Alcohol is the most commonly used substance among adolescents in the United States, and adolescent drinking is associated with various health risk behaviors. Given the prevalence and consequences of adolescent drinking, understanding family factors that contribute to adolescent drinking is an important area for research. This study used three waves of data to evaluate a family stress model in which economic hardship is indirectly related to adolescent problem drinking through maternal psychological distress, parenting behaviors, and adolescent externalizing behaviors. Respondents included 300 mothers (71 % Black, 29 % White) and adolescents (51 % male) who were interviewed when adolescents were ages 10, 14, and 16. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized model and findings supported our hypothesized model. Economic hardship was positively related to maternal psychological distress. Maternal psychological distress was negatively associated with supportive parenting, which in turn was negatively associated with externalizing problems. Externalizing problems were positively associated with problem drinking. In support of our hypothesis regarding indirect effects, economic hardship was indirectly related to problem drinking through maternal psychological distress, parenting behaviors, and adolescent externalizing problems. The findings from this study highlight the role of family processes in adolescent problem drinking.     

Suicide with inert gases: addendum to Final Exit

Suicide by asphyxiation with a plastic bag placed over the head is a method that has been advocated by right-to-die groups. Recently, such groups have proposed the introduction of helium into the plastic bag as a means of hastening death. Helium is readily available at toy stores, where it is sold in tanks for balloon inflation. It produces asphyxiation by the exclusion of oxygen in enclosed spaces. We report 7 fatalities throughout an 18-month period involving plastic bag suffocation in conjunction with helium use. These fatalities coincide with publication of an update to a popular right-to-die text in which this method is described. Although right-to-die literature was absent from all scenes, this method was not previously observed in our jurisdiction, and the deaths likely reflect exposure to this information. Because of analytical difficulties in testing for helium in biologic specimens, death certification rests on scene investigation.     

The role of the bar context and social behaviors on women's risk for aggression

The present study is an initial examination of the extent to which the environmental characteristics of bars and social behaviors that women engage in when drinking in this setting are associated with bar-related aggression. As expected, several environmental characteristics (e.g., young patrons, pool playing) and social behaviors (e.g., alcohol consumption, leaving the bar with strangers) were associated with more severe bar-related aggression experienced by women during the past year. These results shed light on the significant problem of bar-related aggression against women and can potentially be used to develop prevention and educational programs.     

Explaining Explanations: How Legislators Explain their Policy Positions and How Citizens React

Legislators claim that how they explain their votes matters as much as or more than the roll calls themselves. However, few studies have systematically examined legislators’ explanations and citizen attitudes in response to these explanations. We theorize that legislators strategically tailor explanations to constituents in order to compensate for policy choices that are incongruent with constituent preferences, and to reinforce policy choices that are congruent. We conduct a within‐subjects field experiment using U.S. senators as subjects to test this hypothesis. We then conduct a between‐subjects survey experiment of ordinary people to see how they react to the explanatory strategies used by senators in the field experiment. We find that most senators tailor their explanations to their audiences, and that these tailored explanations are effective at currying support—especially among people who disagree with the legislators’ roll‐call positions.     

Application of Enhanced Point Estimators to a Sample of In Vivo CT‐derived Facial Soft Tissue Thicknesses

Facial approximations based on facial soft tissue depth measurement tables often utilize the arithmetic mean as a central tendency estimator. Stephan et al. (J Forensic Sci 2013;58:1439) suggest that the shorth and 75‐shormax statistics are better suited to describe the central tendency of non‐normal soft tissue depth data, while also accommodating normal distributions. The shorth, 75‐shormax, arithmetic mean, and other central tendency estimators were evaluated using a CT ‐derived facial soft tissue depth dataset. Differences between arithmetic mean and shorth mean for the tissue depths examined ranged from 0 mm to +2.3 mm (average 0.6 mm). Differences between the arithmetic mean plus one standard deviation (to approximate the same data points covered by the 75‐shormax) and 75‐shormax values ranged from ?0.8 mm to +0.7 mm (average 0.2 mm). The results of this research suggest that few practical differences exist across the central tendency point estimators for the evaluated soft tissue depth dataset.     

“If this be living I'd rather be dead”: Enslaved youth,agency and resistance on an eighteenth century Jamaican estate

By the late eighteenth century, enslaved children and young adults had become vital components in the reproduction of Caribbean slavery. Yet the experiences of enslaved children and adolescents have rarely been the focus of scholarship. Indeed, the near-absence of scholarship on enslaved children and youth within the historiographies of slavery, childhood and family history is striking. While we know much about the structure of family life, gender roles, courtship, marriage, and parenting among the enslaved, we know far less about the material worlds of enslaved youth and adolescents. Childhood and adolescence represented critical stages in the lives of enslaved children for it was during these life-stages that young people were inculcated with the racialised ideologies of the wider social order, gained insight into the value systems of their society, were socialized into acceptance of their status as unfree peoples, and prepared for their future roles as labourers. Hence, their experiences of slavery were qualitatively different from those of adult slaves.

This paper explores some aspects of adolescent life on the Jamaican estate of Thomas Thistlewood in the late decades of the eighteenth century. Thistlewood, manager of a slave-pen, early recognised the importance of young people in furthering his ambitions to become master of his own estate, and his purchases of young people reflect that market-rational strategy. Thistlewood’s preference for a youthful labour force stemmed from his conviction that young people could be more easily made to submit to his authority than adult slaves. Yet, Thistlewood’s belief in the greater tractability of enslaved youth was often undermined, as his adolescent labour force frequently and forcefully tested the limits of his mastery and asserted their rights to freedom. Thistlewood’s journal not only offers rich insights into the processes of transformation of enslaved children to adolescents and mature adults, but it also sheds light on enslaved youth and their negotiations with, manipulations of, and resistance to the master–slave relationship. This paper argues then, that far from being the passive objects of planter mastery, enslaved youth were active agents in the shaping of their own histories. In exploring these issues, this paper reveals much of the contradictions and ambiguities of enslaved childhood, youth and adolescence.