The Effects of Risk,Beliefs, and Trust in Education Policy Networks: The Case of Autism and Special Education

There are multiple theoretical accounts of how actors address problems of collective action in policy networks, but the two most prominent hypotheses are the risk and belief homophily hypotheses. The risk hypothesis claims that relational structures (e.g., bridging, bonding) depend on the benefits actors receive from uncooperative behavior, while the belief homophily hypothesis claims that relational ties form around shared policy beliefs. This study incorporates the case of autism and special education policy, a subsystem best characterized by Berardo and Scholz's (2010) conceptualization of a low-risk environment, to test hypotheses about the influence of risk, policy beliefs, and trust on the formation on relational ties in education policy networks. Utilizing data from a 2016 network survey of public and private special education stakeholders in Virginia, results from exponential random graph models provide support for the effects of bridging structures, beliefs related to the medical model of disability, and social trust on strong (collaboration) and weak (information/advice) relational ties in policy networks. The findings reinforce the importance of using policy networks to understand how actors build connections across multiple jurisdictions and policy sectors to mitigate problems of coordination in policy decision making and implementation.     

Taphonomic and Methodological Perspectives of Leporid Hunting During the Upper Paleolithic of the Western Mediterranean Basin

Leporid (rabbit and hare) bones have been shown to yield important information about subsistence practices, mobility patterns, and demographic trends during the Paleolithic of the western and eastern Mediterranean regions. Studies of Spanish Paleolithic caves rich in rabbit bones suggest that residential mobility patterns influence the degree of leporid hunting through time. Studies of Paleolithic sites in the eastern Mediterranean suggest that leporids were hunted in large numbers only after population sizes and densities reached certain thresholds. This paper reviews and critiques these studies based on current taphonomic and ecologic information about leporids. Leporid hunting during the Upper Paleolithic of central Portugal is then discussed and compared to these existing models. These latter data suggest that rabbit hunting in central Portugal does not conform to any existing model, suggesting that local factors of leporid density and environmental conditions likely influenced the nature and timing of small game acquisition during the Upper Paleolithic.     

Do Women Need the Renaissance?

Joan Kelly's path‐breaking article, ‘Did Women have a Renaissance?’, first published in 1977, led historians of women in many fields to question the applicability of chronological categories derived from male experience. Thirty years later, the questioning continues, augmented by doubts about whether all systems of periodisation over‐simplify the diversity of gender. This paper examines what might be lost if feminist historians, in their sensitivity to difference, refuse to apply structures of periodisation. It looks at challenges to both ‘Renaissance’ and ‘early modern’ as conceptual categories and suggests ways in which gender is and must remain central to understandings of these eras.     

Editorial

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to show how national interests and western ideas about the polar wilderness influenced initiatives taken in the early decades of the twentieth century to protect the natural environment of the Arctic islands of Spitsbergen, today called Svalbard. After a brief outline of the environmental history of the islands, the explanatory significance of a game theory-based assumption about the predicament of nature conservation on common land is discussed by applying it to this historical case. It is the environmental dilemma known as the “tragedy of the commons”. Some elements of the western and Scandinavian ideological interpretations of the Arctic nature are introduced as a background to the following discussion of the most significant early initiative of nature conservation in the Arctic: Hugo Conwentz's proposal for the protection of the nature of Spitsbergen of 1914. The conception and outcome of Conwentz's initiative is explained by references to the political, social and ideological contexts of early twentieth-century science and colonialism. In the final section, the post-war development of the environmental administration of the islands is correlated to the political situation following World War I with its many historical contingencies and the breakdown of internationalism in science and nature conservation.     

Hunting in Currier and Ives's America

Currier and Ives were the most prolific producers of inexpensive lithographs in nineteenth‐century America, their prints designed to be mirrors of national tastes and attitudes. They never intended to create fine art, but rather to produce images that would be attractive to their largely middle‐class clientele. As people gathered in cities in increasingly large numbers and had their work hours regulated, they had the time, interest, and disposable income to engage in various sporting activities. Well‐off city dwellers took to hunting, both for enjoyment and as a symbolic, ritualistic expression of their place in society. Hunting came to reflect urban males’ preoccupation with pursuits that might liberate them from the growing regimentation of city life and gave visible form to the definition of masculinity in their newly adopted urban environment. Currier and Ives mirrored the development of that image in more than 100 lithographs on hunting.