Local press,dispersal and community in the construction of asylum debates

How has the prominent and contentious international issue of asylum been debated at a local level; what local variations are there and why? This paper presents analysis of local newspapers and interviews with press workers for Cardiff and Leeds, two UK case study locations that have received asylum seekers through the dispersal policy. The case studies show that asylum is framed and constructed differently by the local press in different places with implications for reactions to asylum seekers and community cohesion. The relations between local press and community are explored as explanations for varying discourses. It is found that the way the local press represents and constructs local identity sets the framework for reactions to dispersal; and that the operation of the local press within local networks of power and information shapes the extent to which established discourses can be challenged. For Cardiff, the localising of asylum through the dispersal policy created an opportunity for local negotiation of difference in the context of the national moral panic on asylum.     

Parental smoking and children's anxieties: an appropriate strategy for health education?

While the prevalence of smoking has declined in the UK in recent years, class differentials in smoking behaviour have become more marked and smoking is increasingly recognised as a causal factor in inequalities in health. Health education initiatives to support both smoking cessation and to teach children about the health risks of smoking remain key initiatives in reducing health inequalities. However, teaching children about the risks of smoking and the impact of parental smoking on their health is not straightforward for children from backgrounds who are more likely to encounter smoking at home and in their local communities. These children have to reconcile the key messages taught at school and reinforced in smoking cessation campaigns with the knowledge that their parents and other family members smoke. In this article we consider how children from smoking homes make sense of these education and health campaigns as observed by their parents, and the impact that this has on both parental smoking and relationships within the home. The article thus seeks to challenge assumptions about the delivery of health education and the need to acknowledge family diversity.     

Punctuated Equilibrium, Bureaucratization, and Budgetary Changes in Schools

For half of a century, models of nonrational behavior have grown in popularity for explaining the behavior of administrative organizations. However, models of nonrational behavior are notoriously difficult to test because nonrational behavior is often difficult to separate from fully rational behavior. Recent research has suggested that particular types of nonrational processes should produce "punctuated" equilibria rather than "instantaneous" equilibria. In these nonrational processes, a decision maker underresponds to changes for a long period of time. Once pressure for change becomes overwhelming, the decision maker adopts a radical change. This is called "punctuation." The key to identifying this type of nonrationality of a process's rationality is the comparative success of fitting the observed behavior to "punctuated" rather than "instantaneous" equilibria.
True, Jones, and Baumgartner (1999 ) developed a method for comparing the distribution of decision outputs as a strategy for assessing the relative degree of "punctuation" in the decision processes. By assessing the kurtosis (or "peakedness") of the distribution of decision outputs, one can get a sense of the excess (compared with a standard, normal distribution) of low and high rates of change–a sign of punctuated equilibrium.
This article extends these recent developments by adapting the method to a comparative kurtosis framework. The results suggest that bureaucracy in K–12 schools serves to reduce (rather than amplify) the punctuations in budgeting processes. The article concludes with a discussion of the potential extension of the empirical results and modifications to the testing procedure.     

Economic development,marine protected areas and gendered access to fishing resources in a Polynesian lagoon

This study examines the potential socio-spatial impacts of a new series of marine protected areas (MPAs) on fishers in Moorea, French Polynesia. The establishment of the MPAs is contextualized within recent and historical processes of economic development and theories of women in development and gender, culture and development. Seventy adults from three neighborhoods in Moorea were interviewed. Analysis of the data provides new information about the characteristics of fishing in Moorea. Unlike most fishing cultures and communities throughout the Pacific Islands, men and women in Moorea have similar, as opposed to segregated, spatial patterns of fishing activities and fishing methods. The study also points out the potential negative impacts of the MPAs on both men and women, particularly younger and lower-income fishers.     

Palaeoenvironments, the archaeological record and cereal pollen detection at Clickimin, Shetland, Scotland

The Loch of Clickimin, Shetland, is well known for its broch and associated monuments supposedly of the Bronze and Iron Ages, although the former date is disputed. Pollen, diatom and sedimentological investigations permit fresh insights into the landscape and economic impacts of those who constructed the monuments, reveal that the environs of the site experienced environmental change from Neolithic times onward and provide the first Holocene radiocarbon dates from the immediate locality. The broch-building period witnessed a continuation of pre-existing pastoral husbandry for which heather burning may have exacerbated the natural spread of blanket peat. Initially, no evidence was adduced for local arable activity in the present investigation, and this was thought to be consistent possibly with the low numbers of excavated querns and the absence of cereal macrofossil finds when compared with other Shetland broch sites. The application of ‘rapid scanning’ techniques, however, led to the discovery of a consistent cereal-type pollen representation from Bronze Age times onwards. The discrepancies between the palaeoenvironmental evidence and the environmental and palaeoeconomic inferences made by the excavator of the site are explored. Evidence is presented that both supports and contradicts previous assumptions surrounding an important archaeological site.