Negotiating alliances: Muslims,gay rights and the Christian right in a Polish‐American city (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Muslim involvement in debates over municipal gay rights legislation became a hotly contested issue in Hamtramck, Michigan, during the summer of 2008. The article analyzes how faith‐based and other kinds of alliance building that took place in the context of these debates impacted processes of boundary formation among Muslim, Christian and secular‐humanist groups. In Hamtramck, debate over the Human Rights Ordinance served as a rich and generative nexus point for the proliferation and exchange of ideas about the incorporation of Muslim values and sentiments in the public sphere. A study of these debates offers us a window into understanding the politicization of Islam as a minority religion, the symbolic space it occupies, and its engagement with the institutionalization of secularism in the US at the current time.     

Policy Climates,Enforcement Rates,and Migrant Behavior: Is Self‐Deportation a Viable Immigration Policy?

U.S. immigration policy has been the subject of considerable debate in recent years. Previous research has focused on how temporal variation in federal policy has altered the migratory behavior of immigrants. The effect of spatial variation in enforcement remains untested. Relying on the criminological distinction between general and specific deterrence, we argue that high rates of enforcement are unlikely to encourage undocumented immigrants to self‐deport. We also examine the effects cultural and economic immigration policies adopted by the states. Previous research suggests that migrants will choose to remain in states with favorable environments, but this claim has not been directly tested. We draw on data from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) to address these gaps. MMP data are supplemented with government data on federal enforcement obtained from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and measures of state policy. Our findings suggest that higher rates of enforcement and the establishment of negative policy environments do not encourage undocumented immigrants to leave the United States at a higher rate than their documented counterparts do. Rather, high enforcement contexts exaggerate the differences between documented and undocumented migrant behavior, with undocumented migrants staying longer. Liberal state policies have no discernible effect.     

Agents of Change: The Role of Public Managers in Public Policy

Our article outlines a number of ways that theories of public management can contribute to the work of public policy scholars. We first outline some of the ways in which public managers have been incorporated into previous work on public policy, and the limitations faced by previous treatments. We then discuss the role that public management plays in the policy process, with a specific focus on managerial quality, networking, and performance evaluation.     

“Count What You Have Now. Don't Count What You Don't Have”: The Japanese Television Drama Around 40 and the Politics of Women's Happiness

Voted top new Japanese word of 2008, “arafô”, abbreviated from the English “around forty”, has been used in various media to describe women born between 1964 and 1973, who came of age during Japan's Bubble Era, and who entered the workforce as the country's Equal Employment Opportunity Lawwas being implemented in 1986. Arafô, or “forty-something women”, theoretically have more choices in relation to work and family than previous generations. During a time when society is ageing, their choices in employment, marriage and childbirth have been judged in journalistic and government discourses to be both progressive and problematic. At the same time, arafô have been associated with difficulties regarding individual freedom in the spate of television programs, books and magazines for and about them. The term and the gender trends it encapsulates were brought to national attention by the critically acclaimed 2008 television drama Araundo 40: Chûmon no ôi onnatachi (trans. Around 40: Demanding Women). We situate Around 40 in discussions about Japan's demographic crisis to argue that the series presents a wide array of life courses available for women near age 40 but ultimately recasts postwar gender roles for the 21^st-century sociopolitical climate. Around 40 shows how the diversification of life courses is interpreted in the influential medium of television drama.     

Practical quantitative lithic use-wear analysis using multiple classifiers

Although use-wear analysis of prehistoric stone tools using conventional microscopy has proven useful to archaeologists interested in tool function, critics have questioned the reliability and repeatability of the method. The research presented here shows it is possible to quantitatively discriminate between various contact materials (e.g., wood, antler) using laser scanning confocal microscopy in conjunction with conventional edge damage data. Experiments with replica and prehistoric tools suggest the quantitative method presented here provides valid functional inferences and is flexible enough to accommodate other relevant sources of data on tool function.