Ideology,Diversity, and Imprisonment: Considering the Influence of Local Politics on Racial and Ethnic Minority Incarceration Rates*

Objective. To test the influence of local (county) politics on minority incarceration rates. Methods. Data are collected at the county level in California to create a pooled cross‐sectional data set. OLS regression models predicting black, Hispanic, and white incarceration rates (in state prison) are used in the analysis. Results. Counties' ideological orientations and racial and ethnic contextual characteristics significantly impact minority incarceration rates. Greater ideological conservatism within counties is associated with higher rates (as a proportion of their population) of both black and Hispanic incarceration. Consistent with racial threat theory, results show counties with greater racial and ethnic diversity are more likely to incarcerate blacks and Hispanics. Tests for interaction effects indicate that greater county diversity decreases the punitive effects of ideological conservatism on minority incarceration. Conclusion. Political forces nested within states systematically shape how state government incarceration power is distributed across different racial and ethnic groups.     

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same: The Elusive Search for Racial Equity in Higher Education

In 1965, when affirmative action officially became part of the national consensus to achieve racial social justice, it was based on the compelling justification of establishing equality and remedying the effects of past discrimination. Since then, there has been a slow but steady shift from "equity" to "diversity" as its rationale. The shift has had a negative effect on achieving the original goal of racial equality. The diversity rationale has permitted parallel procedures to evolve that provided majority students with an even larger differential advantage than that conferred on minority students by affirmative action. In addition, we continue to have massive segregation. Minorities are concentrated in second level schools in urban areas, while whites are concentrated in higher quality institutions in the educational suburbs. It is without factual or legal foundation that whites can argue that they (relative to minorities) are the victims of discrimination through unfair and unequal educational policies and practices that determine access to higher education.     

The historical patterns of occupational attainment of racial minorities in Massachusetts: An analysis of the 1974–2002 Current Population Survey Data

In the past three decades numerous studies have been conducted to document structural changes in the labor market and their impacts on occupational attainment at the national level. However, few systematic studies have been conducted to assess racial disparity in the labor market at the state level over time. As Massachusetts has become more racially diverse than ever before and is prepared for greater challenges in the global economy, the state has to make sure that its labor force is ready to embrace the challenges. Thus, it is critically important to review the historical patterns of racial disparity in the state labor market over time and to explore factors that may help address occupational disparity. Relying on the human capital theory, this study will use the state data from the Current Population Surveys to assess the extent of labor market segmentation and examine factors that may contribute to racial occupational attainment over time.     

Disparities in Educational Opportunities and Outcomes: What Do We Know and What Can We Do?

This article examines disparities based upon poverty and race/ethnicity. After framing the issues by looking at national, state, and local data, it illustrates ways that social scientists can be involved in shaping educational practices and policies, focusing on the types of skills that are useful and on ways of thinking about the types of collaboration that are needed. Skills discussed are methodological as well as substantive; both types draw from existing knowledge bases. For collaboration, the model described is that of action research. Approaches are illustrated through personal examples drawn from collaborations with urban public schools. They include defining expected growth for students at different achievement levels, school accountability issues, and setting up long-term collaboration .     

Of peasants and publics in colonial India: Daduram's story

ABSTRACT

This article uses an exceptionally well-documented law case from the 1650s to offer a fresh perspective on the English experience of Atlantic settlement during its early years. It argues for the centrality of the Essex county quarter sessions court in the building of neighbourhood on the geographic and cultural margins of the Massachusetts Bay colony. By focusing on the north-eastern margin at Cape Ann, the analysis reveals aspects of state building through a common law judicial process which was just as important, but less readily apparent, in other settings. The article addresses three major historiographic areas, engaging with the historical literature on English neighbourhoods and English adaptation to the American environment, on the significance of witchcraft or maleficium in English societies, and on the nature and meanings of law, law courts and judicial process in the building of communities. Case documents also enable the use of some concepts and techniques of literary analysis related to the study of narrative, arguing that judicial verdicts selected and suppressed aspects of local stories elicited during the course of the investigation in order to craft an account of local neighbourhood that suited a broader cultural narrative of Massachusetts Bay’s political consolidation during the 1650s.     

Racial Threat or Racial Contact? How Race Affected Third‐Party Presidential Voting in the Antebellum North*

Objective. In this study, the “racial threat” and “racial contact” hypotheses are evaluated in relation to voting for the Liberty and Free Soil Parties in the North during the 1840s. Methods. Regression models are used to predict the effect of county‐level black populations on Liberty and Free Soil vote percentages in relation to types of employment. Results. Racial threat occurred in high manufacturing counties, but racial contact/threat emerged in more agricultural counties. The effects vary by party and region of the North. Conclusion. The effects of racial context on political behavior during this era are mixed, much like modern political studies have uncovered.     

Combining Work and Family in Two Welfare State Contexts: A Discourse Analytical Perspective

This paper describes and compares the way in which British and Finnish mothers of dual‐career families construct discourses on the work and family interplay. Through this comparison, the paper also considers the presence or visibility of larger welfare state frameworks at the level of the discourse of mothers. The paper argues that, despite the many structural and ideological differences between the British and the Finnish welfare states, mothers living in them often construct their daily lives by using similar discursive frameworks. These discourses are, however, contextualized and interpreted differently. This level of contextualization and interpretation of the discourses is argued to be the stage where the structures and gender constructs of welfare states step in.     

Youth ‘in moral danger’: (re)conceptualizing delinquency in post-Civil-War Greece

Juvenile delinquency generated strong international anxieties in the 1950s and 1960s. Its purported increase became an important political issue that mobilized a multitude of national public and private agents, as well as the new international bodies established after the end of the Second World War. The wide ‘transnational discourse’ on juvenile delinquency, formed during this period, had two distinctive features: it repeatedly claimed scientific status and it was permeated by strong moralism. This article focuses on the case of Greece. It shows that, although part of this wider discourse, the way in which the category of ‘youth in moral danger’ was constructed, addressed and transformed in the Greek public realm, testified to the particular local cultural, social and political context. It sketches the unstable and fluid content of this category at the level of official and scholarly discourse, and the public interventions of various public and private child-saving agencies and institutions. In the 1960s the concern for ‘youth in moral danger’ left the public domain but continued to permeate policies and discourses surrounding juvenile delinquency. Attempts by psychologists to go beyond moralism, by focusing on self-adjustment rather than moral regulation, remained marginal and were curtailed by the military coup of 1967 and the re-politicization of the ‘youth problem’.     

Why It Is Bad to Be Kind. Educating Refugees to Life in the Welfare State: A Case Study from Norway

In Norway, as elsewhere in Europe, the aim of policy‐making is to ensure the integration of immigrants into mainstream society. This paper focuses on one of the most concrete and practical measures Norwegian authorities have ever taken in this field, namely the recent establishment of a compulsory two‐year introduction programme for newly arrived refugees. This is an activation‐style programme involving both a financial and an educational component, where out‐payments depend on participation in a full‐time training programme aimed at enabling participants to become self‐sufficient members of Norwegian society. In the first part of the paper the establishment of this policy is located within a broader context of integration crisis, before it moves on to look more specifically at the background for the programme and the problems it is set up to address. The latter part of the paper addresses the implementation of the introduction programmes in one medium‐sized Norwegian city. The local discourse here is one of before and after, where the failings of previous policies have been overcome and new and productive practices have been established. Connections can be made between public and political discourses on integration crisis and the local discourses of implementation through the notion of kindness and the idea that kindness has hampered the integration efforts of the state. Herein lies a story not only about views on immigrants and diversity, but also about how immigration has challenged the Norwegian welfare state model.     

县级财政生产性支出偏向研究(英文)

中国县级决策者主要对上级负责,追求尽可能高的经济增长率,而非居民福利最大化,导致其财政决策偏向生产性支出。基于2067个县（市）2001-2005年财政经济数据的实证检验,为县级财政生产性支出偏向的存在提供了有力的证据。生产性支出偏向严重地妨碍公共财政体制的建设和向公共服务型政府的转型。解决这一问题的根本出路在于逐步增强县级政府满足本地居民需求的激励。     

The government spending multiplier: Evidence from county level data

The passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 has brought fiscal policy to the forefront once again. The size of the “multiplier” of government spending becomes of critical importance for determining the effect of stimulus programs. Yet there is considerable controversy about this issue. This study adds to the discussion on the size of the multiplier by using earnings data by county. This allows the creation of a panel data that includes 3141 counties for the time period 2001–2012. We estimate the federal government spending multiplier to be approximate 1.5. Our estimate for state and local spending multipliers are considerably smaller. Our results have implication for policy in that federal programs will be more effective for stabilization county economies than state or local spending.     

Discourses of Decision Making in Child Protection: Condusting Comprehensive Assessments in Britain

Findings from a qualitative study of comprehensive assessments in child protection social work in the UK are discussed. The accounts of social workers in formal interviews, informal interactions and case files are analysed, examining their explanations and understandings of the process of decision making. Two discourses of decision making are discerned: scientific observation and reflective evaluation. Whilst most social workers understand their work, at different times, through both discourses, it is argued that the discourse of scientific observation becomes the dominant one when communicating with other agencies such as the court. The findings are discussed in relation to wider issues in contemporary social work including the bureaucratisation of social work and the nature of assessment.     

Between Activation and Supporting Women – Alternative Operation of Welfare‐to‐work Programmes

With the emergence of activation policies, researchers are intrigued by the extent to which welfare‐to‐work (WTW) programmes reflect the ideological orientation of policymakers, while leaving the ideological orientation of their operators unexamined. This aspect may be of particular importance when women's non‐governmental organizations operate non‐coercive WTW programmes. Directing attention to the contribution of the operator, we ask how women who operate these programmes distinguish between the feminist goal of increasing women's independent access to material resources, and the activation rhetoric of ‘work first’. Moreover, as not enough is known about how participants benefit from the incongruence between the feminist discourse and the activation one, scholarship contemplating women's resistance to WTW programmes remains focused on specific welfare histories, and this form of feminist work remains neglected. The importance of the specific operators and the policy implications of the benefits of feminist operation of WTW programmes receive attention in the study reported on herein. We used a non‐coercive activation programme operated by a feminist organization in Israel (among other operators) as an opportunity to deepen our understanding of how programme trainers voice their position between feminism and activation discourse, and how their form of speech enables participants to insist on decent employment as a policy issue. Implications for policy are discussed.     

Ecological Validity of Indicator Data as Predictors of Survey Findings

In a series of sh1die.r the validity of preexisting indicator data, based on child and family variables, was tested by means of an extensive sample survey with individual case interviews in two counties in New York State. The counties included one of the highest and one of the lowest in the state, as measured on a specially developed index. On comparable variables a close fit was found between the indicator and the survey data. When the more extensive field data were subjected to multiple regression analyses to determine how broadly predictive the indicators are, however, it was found that prediction was much better for subcounty areas than for counties as a whole. These findings have implications for planning at both national and local levels.     

The Spatial Strategy of Equality and the Spatial Division of Welfare

In this paper we argue that little is known about either the geographical objectives or the spatial outputs of the welfare state. Conclusions of geographical inequality are problematic for three main reasons. First, the geographical aims of the welfare state, "the spatial strategy of equality", are unclear. Second, the geographical distributional paradigm is rarely placed in the wider context of local and national welfare states, and the tension between spatial equity and local autonomy is ignored. Third, the geography of welfare, "the spatial division of welfare" is often based on simplistic and confused evidence. Much of the existing work implicitly takes a centralist perspective, assuming that all geographical inequalities are defects. Issues of local government, local politics and local welfare states are ignored. All detected inequality may not be "bad", and greater spatial equity may not necessarily be "good". The spatial division of welfare should not be examined in an analytical vacuum, isolated from the wider contextual issues of national and local services and the trade-off between local autonomy and territorial justice. If the "default value" is that all detected geographical variations are assumed to be defects, then the arguments for localism are doomed to failure.     

Emotional kinship care and neutral non‐kinship care — the struggle between discourses

In this paper, social workers' ideas of kinship care and non‐kinship care as foster placement alternatives for vulnerable children are analysed and discussed. The study is based on group interviews with Swedish social workers, using a discourse analytic approach. The interviews took two vignettes of children who needed an immediate and long‐term placement because one of the parents had killed the other parent, as their point of departure. Domestic violence is a common social problem across countries, and controversies about placement alternatives become even more apparent when discussing lethal violence. The analysis revealed three main discourses: ‘emotional kinship care’, ‘neutral non‐kinship care’ and ‘a real family’. The emotional kinship care discourse also revealed two competing sub‐discourses: ‘emotions as glue that binds’ and ‘emotions as obscuring a child perspective’, displaying a struggle concerning the advantages and risks that social workers connected to kinship care. In this paper, the results and their implications for vulnerable children are discussed.     

“The only equality is the pain”: An exploration of the Irish policy sphere's approach to “access” and “entitlement” in health care

This paper critically analyses how overarching policy goals and practices surrounding access and entitlement to health care (HC) have been dominated by a conflicting system of libertarian and equity-based principles. We examine how this mixed-motives system originated and the importance of policy legacies inherited from the Poor Laws era in shaping modern conceptions of access and entitlement to HC. We also considered how these determined the scope of state intervention in this policy domain. Drawing on empirical evidence and interviews with key stakeholders in Irish health policy, we explored the appetite to engage in meaningful HC reforms that address the growing gaps of inequity between higher and lower socio-economic groups in society. Rather than emulating European counterpartsapos; emphasis on universal coverage within an egalitarian paradigm, Irish policy actors have sought to instill a spirit of fairness in HC delivery. Under the guise of equality of opportunity and equity, the policy focus has centred on directing publicly funded HC towards lower-income groups and the most vulnerable in Irish society. However, we argue that the operation of the mixed-motives structure has also created conflict and policy ambiguity surrounding overarching goals which frame the governance and consumption of HC in Ireland. This is evidenced by the dysfunction and complexity of the two-tier system of public-versus-private access to HC services. Ultimately, we argue that the policy aspirations of equality that underpin the HC structures surrounding access and entitlement should be revisited to achieve greater health outcomes and create a more equal society.     

SPECIAL ISSUE： SOCIAL CHANGE AND CHINESE WOMEN From State Dominance to Market Orientation： The Composition and Evolution of Gender Discourse

国家、市场与传统文化是构成性别话语的三个基本要素。从改革开放前30年到后30年,中国社会的性别话语发生了明显转型,由国家主导的“泛政治化”模型转变为市场导向的“泛市场化”模型。市场化一方面改变了国家话函的叙述方式和内容,另一方面也导致了市场话语和传统话语的结盟。转型后的性别话语本质上是一种素质话语,它不再表现为一种由国家建构的、在实践中打了折扣的意识形态意义上的平等神话,而是表现为一种在现代性和个体自由的诉求中利用国家、市场和传统文化的各方力量平衡做出主体选择的精打细算的应对策略。     

Therapist Effects on Disparities Experienced by Minorities Receiving Services for Mental Illness

OBJECTIVES: The authors examine if some of the reason clients from racial and ethnic minority groups experience outcome disparities is explained by their therapists. METHOD: Data from 98 clients (19% minority) and 14 therapists at two community mental health agencies where clients from racial and ethnic minority groups were experiencing outcome disparities were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling with treatment outcomes at Level 1, client factors at Level 2, and therapists at Level 3. RESULTS: There were substantial therapist effects that moderated the relationship between clients' race and treatment outcomes (outcome disparities). Therapists accounted for 28.7% of the variability in outcome disparities. CONCLUSIONS: Therapists are linked to outcome disparities and appear to play a substantial role in why disparities occur.