Misery And Myopia

Over five years have passed since the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), more than two years have passed since its expansion and reauthorization, and millions of dollars have been spent to achieve the Act's stated goals of protecting trafficking victims, prosecuting traffickers and preventing human trafficking. In spite of apparent widespread political support and seemingly ample funding, the TVPA's success has been modest. Domestically, the number of cases prosecuted have been few and the number of trafficked workers in the U.S. who have been assisted by the program has been a small proportion of the estimated number of such workers in the U.S. In order to understand why the TVPA has fallen short of its goals, the Act must be analyzed in the context of its legal antecedents: the labor, immigration and sex trafficking laws that existed prior to the TVPA and that form the bulk of the Act's substantive provisions. This article demonstrates that long before the TVPA was enacted, legal and policy decisions were made in each of these three areas that continue to exacerbate the domestic manifestations of problem of human trafficking and the related exploitation of undocumented migrant workers. Unfortunately, Congress did not systematically revisit these laws when passing the TVPA. In fact, the TVPA incorporates many provisions of these laws with only minor changes, and fails to address many of the perverse structural incentives that the laws create. Border interdiction strategies, restrictive and punitive immigration policies and insufficient labor protection for migrants interact in ways that leave exploited workers in the United States at the mercy of traffickers and abusive employers, notwithstanding the TVPA. Furthermore, the narrow understanding of trafficking that dominates domestic TVPA enforcement efforts has created an over-emphasis on anti-prostitution efforts to the exclusion of broader issues of worker exploitation, and has also resulted in racially biased understanding and enforcement of anti-trafficking laws within the United States. Unfortunately, some of the worst impulses of U.S. anti-trafficking strategies have also been incorporated into the U.S. government's international anti-trafficking strategies. In short, as currently enforced, the TVPA exacerbates many of the negative effects of pre-existing laws, even as it alleviates some of the political pressure to address human exploitation.

'Here comes four-eyes!' Jerry is bullied for wearing glasses. When he realises his short-sightedness is not a disability but a new way of perceiving and understanding the world around him, he begins to look at it from a new, unique perspective. He even starts to believe he might have super-powers, but soon learns a great deal about himself and about the boy who is making his life such a misery. Has Jerry discovered a new way of dealing with firmly held opinions? Myopia is a novel about bullying, friendship and learning the hard way.

"The Tragedy of Heterosexuality is an exploration of the so-called 'straight culture.'"--

Latina/os are currently the largest minority population in the United States. They are also one of the fastest growing. Yet, we have very limited research and understanding of their sexualities. Instead, stereotypical images flourish even though scholars have challenged the validity and narrowness of these images and the lack of attention to the larger social context. Gathering the latest empirical work in the social and behavioral sciences, this reader offers us a critical lens through which to understand these images and the social context framing Latina/os and their sexualities. Situated at the juncture of Latina/o studies and sexualities studies, Latina/o Sexualities provides a single resource that addresses the current state of knowledge from a multidisciplinary perspective. Contributors synthesize and critique the literature and carve a separate space where issues of Latina/o sexualities can be explored given the limitations of prevalent research models. This work compels the current wave in sexuality studies to be more inclusive of ethnic minorities and sets an agenda that policy makers and researchers will find invaluable.

Believer and unbeliever alike are subtly evangelized every day of their lives by the ambient glow of Gods cinematic masterpiece. They sense something grand but are confused by the incoherent cultural edits scattered throughout the film. The Good News is that the deleted scenes are not lost but can be found in our shared human experiences, and once spliced back together reveal an epic of Biblical proportions, The Directors Cut of the Greatest Story Ever Told. Dr. Erik Strandness takes a unique bottom up approach to apologetics by investigating experiences common to all people and concluding that they can only be adequately understood through a Biblical filter. The goal is to empower lay Christians to condently share their faith in a concrete, friendly, real-world context that effectively engages the day-to-day realities of their audience. Dr. Strandness writes in a clear, engaging, and witty style, combining the thoughts of many great Christian thinkers with culturally relevant illustrations in order to make a solid real world case for the Christian worldview. Once in a while, someone manages to put ageless truth in such a fresh package that it cries out, Read on! Thats the way I felt when reviewing Erik Strandnesss book. What a pleasure it is to read! But its not just Eriks engaging word images that make it such a great read. Its the profound and timely message he is communicating in such an intelligent and winsome way. This is a book you will be telling others about. Dr. Christian Overman, Director, Worldview Matters, biblicalworldview.com

Within the broader study of decision-making, the Carnegie perspective occupies a unique place. Initially developed by pioneering scholars such as Herbert Simon and James March, it views organizational decisions as resulting from the combined influences of a.) psychological processes of attention allocation, interpretation of experience, and motivated search, and b.) features of the organizational context that direct attention, influence preferences, contend with ambiguity, contain conflict, and divide labor. Despite its unique strengths and a considerable body of work (see below some foundational references), research that adopts the Carnegie perspective is still relatively unknown outside the field of organization studies. As James March noted, Carnegie has been primarily an importer of ideas, rather than an exporter. The goal of this research topic is to facilitate dialogue and integration between this well-established Carnegie perspective and other lines of inquiry into the study of decision making and problem solving. We are interested in bringing to the fore what is distinctive in the accumulated body of evidence produced by the Carnegie perspective and highlighting similarities, differences, and potential points of connection with other research done on similar topics. To achieve this goal, we hope that the front end of each submission will cover the following four components: