Assessing the Impact of Location on Women's Labor Market Outcomes: A Methodological Exploration

Location and the nature of locally available employment opportunities is believed to shape labor force participation, job type, and wages. Analysts investigating this issue have encountered problems in operationalizing the concept of “locally available employment opportunities.” We first review the grounds for expecting a relationship between local context and employment outcomes for women and then critically assess the methods and measures that analysts have used to explore the relationship. Finally, we describe a new approach for measuring local employment context that consists of a fine-scaled measure individually tailored for each woman in the sample. Using discriminant analysis we ask whether the spatial variables measuring local employment context are important determinants of women's employment in female-dominated occupations. The results suggest that for most groups of women (defined by city or suburban residence and by sociodemographics) the spatial variables are not important. For well-educated, part-time employed women with young children, however, living in an area rich in female-dominated job opportunities increases the likelihood of having a job in a gender-typical occupation; for these women, the local employment context does affect labor market outcomes.     

Style and information: An analysis of Susiana ceramics

Style is viewed as a mode of communication that signals social group identification and helps to maintain boundaries between social groups. A theoretical framework is developed which relates changes in social messaging in the stylistic mode to changes in the sociopolitical organization of chiefly societies. Observable changes in style are specified for situations in which sociopolitical organization becomes more complex through an increase in horizontal differentiation of social units, as well as those in which complexity increases through vertical differentiation. A methodology for quantifying changes in stylistic complexity, using two measures of redundancy and the information statistic H, is outlined. A specific proposition relating changes in sociopolitical and stylistic complexity in chiefly societies is tested using painted ceramic bowls from several late sixth and fifth millennium B.C. sites on the Susiana Plain in Iran.     

THE SOURCES OF PUBLIC POLICY: WELFARE POLICY IN THE AMERICAN STATES

The conceptualization of political and economic determinants of public policy as interactive rather than sufficient causes is subjected here to a comparative state analysis. An examination of interactive effects of culture, wealth, and gubernatorial power on AFDC grants and Medicaid benefits offers empirical illustration of Stonecash's reconceptualization of the classic politics-process-policy model. The results indicate that political dispositions become more potent in combination with increasing concentrations of wealth and executive power.     

The Promotion of Non-traditional Agricultural Exports in Honduras: Issues of Equity,Environment and Natural Resource Management

A recent trend in development in Central America is the promotion of non-traditional agricultural exports as a means of revitalizing economic growth and increasing income among the region's small producers. Using an approach which integrates environmental concerns into political-economic analysis, this article examines the impact of this strategy on regional inequality and environmental degradation. The article begins with a synopsis of efforts to further non-traditional exports in Central America since the Second World War. Then, in order to demonstrate the complex articulation among social, economic and environmental factors, the investigation focuses on the impact of non-traditional exports on southern Honduras. Analysis concentrates on the most important of several non-traditional exports being encouraged — shrimp mariculture in coastal areas along the Gulf of Fonseca. The study demonstrates the systemic interconnections among the dynamics of agricultural development, associated patterns of capitalist accumulation, rural impoverishment and serious problems of environmental degradation. The article illustrates how larger international and national forces affected people and the national environment and how local people, in turn, are attempting to affect those powers. Finally, the Honduran case is related to policy concerns regarding effective environmental management. First we were evicted from our land … now they are throwing us out of the sea. Where will we go? (Honduran peasant and artisanal fisherman, La Tribuna, 26 May 1988)     

An Empirical Assessment of Devolution's Policy Impact

This article evaluates the influence of devolution on perceived and actual policy outcomes at the local level in the United States. Proponents of devolution often argue that the transfer of policymaking authority to a lower level of government allows subnational officials to more effectively address problems on the government's agenda. We provide one of the first empirical evaluations of this implicit assumption of devolution. We utilize data from 100 counties in one state, North Carolina, that were the recipients of additional welfare policymaking authority in 1997 to provide a preliminary assessment of devolution's consequences and policy impact. We then investigate the recipient governments' ability to bring about positive change using three prominent indicators associated with welfare policy. Our findings provide evidence that devolution matters quite significantly to the perception of policymaking effectiveness; however, devolution's actual impact on policy outcomes is mixed.     

‘Milking The Elephant’: Financial Markets as Real Markets in Kenya

Financial liberalization policies in the 1990s were intended to raise formal sector interest rates, enhance competition and expand access for users. This article investigates patterns of provision and use in a local financial market in Karatina, Kenya, at the end of the 1990s after a period of financial and economic liberalization. It takes a holistic approach, examining both formal and informal financial arrangements and microfinance interventions. This is because the role of the informal financial sector is particularly important for poor people and has received relatively little attention in the discussion of the consequences of reform. The author does this using a ‘real’ markets approach that sees markets as socially regulated and structured. Significant provision by the mutual sector (formal and informal), and poor lending performance by the banking sector is explained through an examination of the characteristics of the services on offer and their embeddedness in social relations, culture and politics.     

The strange geography of health inequalities

Place is undoubtedly relevant to health, and geography is a central character in the story of how rich societies handle inequalities in death and disease. But the text is incomplete, its scope limited by a too-delicate encounter between research and policy, and by a strange subdisciplinary divide. Accounts of the geography in health inequalities are largely, albeit subtly, locked into 'context'. They document the complex extent to which different (material, social and cultural) environments undermine or enhance resilience. They tell the tale of risky places. Our complementary narrative is written around the findings of qualitative 'compositional' research. It is about the way health itself is drawn into the structuring of society and space. This geography is a map of health discrimination, illustrated in the processes of selective placement, entrapment and displacement. By drawing attention to the 'healthism' of politics and policy in 'care-less' competition economies, this enlarged perspective might enhance the role of geography (and geographers) in both understanding and managing health inequalities.