The correlates of spouses' incongruent reports of marital aggression

Husbands' and wives' reports (n=97 couples) of engaging in or experiencing marital aggression were compared to determine congruence. Congruence was defined as spousal agreement on whether either spouse had been nonviolent, mildly violent, or severely maritally violent within the past year. Whereas approximately equal numbers of clinic couples were incongruent for husband and for wife violence (32% vs. 31%), only incongruence for husband violence (H W) was found to correlate with reports of affective and relationship functioning. Incongruent H W wives were more likely to be depressed and angry. H W incongruent wives were also more negative about the inter-spousal communication and rated the relationship as more unsatisfactory for them than did congruent wives. Incongruent H W husbands also perceived the relationship more negatively, but their levels of depression and anger did not differ from congruent H W husbands. These findings were not replicated for spouses who were incongruent for wife violence. Our results support the conclusion that spousal disagreement about H W violence has a more negative impact than does disagreement about wives' level of aggression.     

Local Governments' Fiscal Responses to Welfare Reform

The devolution of the social safety net means that local governments must increasingly respond to the needs of their citizens, particularly those who are coming off the welfare rolls and making the transition to work. Based on our findings from a statewide, randomized experiment, this article describes how welfare reforms have affected the well-being of current and former welfare recipients. We look specifically at how those leaving welfare in Indiana are using the township trustee system, the state's general assistance program providing poor relief, to meet basic needs, as well as how the trustees have responded to welfare reform.     

The Penal Voluntary Sector in England and Wales: Adaptation to Unsettlement and Austerity

This article draws on some findings from research which investigated penal voluntary sector adaptation to the mixed market in criminal justice services. The article firstly reprises the main trends for aligning state relationships with the voluntary sector from the 1980s to the present. We then outline some findings about adaptive experiences, situations and practices of the voluntary sector in criminal justice resettlement in the light of considerable upheaval. The research found that service providing voluntary sector organisations (VSOs) either outwardly comply with, or, in a minority of cases, actively embrace, competitive marketised models of service delivery. Secondly, the sector has normalised commercial approaches to organisational efficiency as well as aligned with bureaucratic practices common to the statutory sector. Despite charges that they are effectively co‐opted by both state and market interests, many have reported conflicts between prioritising long‐term financial viability with their founding ‘ethos and values’. We conclude that while many VSOs have successfully adjusted to market and bureaucratic norms, aspects of that repositioning have been at a cost to their traditions of relative autonomy, localism and distinctiveness, to the possible detriment of a vigorous civil society.     

Roads of change: political transition and state formation in Nepal’s agrarian districts

This paper explores the political field that has opened up in the wake of the recent civil war in Nepal. We focus on cultural-political developments in agrarian districts, where some of the most intriguing openings, and indeed the most pernicious closures, can be witnessed (as opposed to the national-state restructuring that commands more media and popular attention). Our research asks what spaces open up in the emerging political field at the district scale to entrench or transform dominant cultural codes and sedimented histories of socio-economic inequality. Preliminary research identifies specific sectors of local governance that have emerged as significant sites of struggle over the shape and meaning of ‘democracy’, namely forest management and infrastructure development. The primary contribution of the paper lies in specifying an analytical approach to the study of ‘post-conflict’ governance at the local scale via three conceptual terrains of inquiry – governance and planning, political subjectivity, and cultural politics. The ultimate objective is to develop a framework for assessing the conditions of possibility for a democratic restructuring of economy and society to accompany the official political institutions of liberal democracy.     

Does ethnofederalism explain the success of Indian federalism?

ABSTRACT

Ethnofederalism has been contested as a solution for diverse societies as seen recently in Nepal (where federalism has been accepted, but the design and number of units remains heavily contested) and Myanmar (where ethnic minority demands for increasing federalization have had to take a back seat to the demands for increasing democracy). It remains a heavily contested subject in Sri Lanka. Concerns are expressed that ethnofederalism will increase pressures for secession and/or lead to increased violence through increasing a sense of separateness of the people living within that territory, providing resources for political entrepreneurs to mobilize groups against the center and will lead to the persecution of minorities within the ethnofederal units. India is an example of a federation that appears to demonstrate that ethnofederalism decreases rather than increases conflict through its successful reorganization of states along linguistic lines. However, a group-level analysis reveals a more diverse picture. India has simultaneously been both a success and a failure at conflict management.     

Inscrutably,actually: hospitality,parasitism, and the silent work of Yoko Ono and Laurel Nakadate†

With interest in queer socialities, the author considers Jacques Derrida’s provocation in Of Hospitality to “say yes” as hospitable gesture in order to challenge the gendered and racialized demands of this charge. If Orientalist conflations of the East with femininity have in turn sexualized Asian women as simultaneously hypersexual and submissive, then how can we as viewers and readers performatively read Asian femininity in a different, and not anti-relational, orientation to hospitality? Building upon Anna Watkins Fisher’s concept of parasitic performance, this article posits inscrutability as a feminist methodology by considering Yoko Ono’s performances of Cut Piece and Laurel Nakadate’s video Happy Birthday for their interesting solicitations to audience-participants, costars, and viewers.