Philip Coleman and Stephen Matterson, eds. ‘Forever Young’? The Changing Images of America.

The volume editors have selected and published 19 essays from among those which were presented at Dublin, Ireland during the 2010 EAAS conference. The volume includes a brief introduction by the editors. In the view of this reader, the 19 essays vary in quality. One group of essays deal with social issues; Guillaume Marché’s asks the question whether LGBT youth sexuality is a source of victimization or it should be a source of empowerment; Eva--Sabine Zehelein wonders about senior citizen com..

Revenge and the “New” Americans

A persistent theme in American ethnic fiction and film involves an ethnic or immigrant character who dreams of and/or performs an act of violence which goes against the law of the land; on the contrary, it is prescribed by a pre-American law, or unwritten custom. Application of such a pre-American law though engenders a question: why should a new American citizen resort to the dictates of a pre-industrial past rather than to the laws of a modern, well-organized, bureaucratic society? This paper claims that, paradoxically, these acts inspired by a pre-American set of beliefs and attitudes expedite the transition of the immigrant and ethnic into the mainstream and post-ethnicity. Contextualized as part of organized crime, labor politics, predatory capitalism, the myth of the Golden Door these violent acts configure as ethnic but are motivated by the desire of the protagonist to join America and move on to a post-ethnic identity. The author analyzes Anzia Yezierska’s “The Lost Beautifulness” (1920), Harry Mark Petrakis’s “Pericles on 31st Street” (1957), and George Pelecanos’s “The Dead, Their Eyes Implore Us” (2003)

Consumer Food Safety Risk Attitudes and Perceptions Over Time: The Case of BSE Crisis

Recent research has shown that by decoupling the risk response behaviour of consumers into the separate components of risk perception and risk attitude, a more robust conceptualization and prediction of consumers’ reactions to food safety issues is possible. Furthermore, it has been argued that the influence of risk attitudes and risk perceptions on consumer risk behaviour for contaminated food products can be used to formulate effective agricultural policies and strategies in case of a food crisis. The question arises whether or not the influence and magnitude of these risk variables changes over time and, hence, whether policies and strategies must be adapted. The BSE (mad cow disease) crises in the USA, Germany and The Netherlands in 2001 and 2004 provided us with a natural experiment to examine the relationship between risk attitudes and perceptions and behaviour over time. The results show that in some countries consumers risk behaviour changed, whereas in others not. These results are useful to policy makers and decision makers in food industry in developing more efficient supply chain management and public policies

Marketing Cooperatives' Re-engineering: Influences among Organizational Attributes, Strategic Attributes & Performance

ABSTRACT In this paper we expand the agribusiness co-op literature by studying the re-engineering process of marketing cooperatives (co-ops). More specifically we discuss and empirically examine organizational innovations adopted by marketing co-ops in Greece. We hypothesize three types of relationships: a) the influence of organizational (i.e., collective ownership, control and cost/benefit allocation) and strategic (i.e., market and brand orientation) attributes on organizational performance; b) the influence of organizational attributes on market orientation; and c) influences among strategic attributes. Data for this study were collected from a largescale survey with CEOs of marketing co-op in Greece. The results show that strategic attributes have a much greater influence on organizational performance than organizational attributes have, as only a few among the examined elements of re-engineered attributes have a (marginal) positive influence on performance. This result raises the question whether the influence of the re-engineered structures on performance has been over-emphasized in the co-op literature. Moreover, the results demonstrate positive influences among the strategic attributes of co-ops, contrary to the non-significant results of organizational attributes on market orientation. This may imply that organizational attributes do not seem to act as drivers or barriers to the adoption of strategic attributes, and, hence, reinforces the conclusion that emphasis in co-op theory and practice should also be also placed on the strategies and tactics that co-ops should adopt and implement in order to capture market benefits. Keywords: marketing cooperatives, attributes, organizational, strategic, performance, Greec

Consumer Risk Reactions to Food Product-Harm Crises Over Time: Evidence From Cross-Cultural Field Studies

Consumer/Household Economics, Risk and Uncertainty,

Consumer Food Safety Risk Attitudes and Perceptions Over Time: The Case of BSE Crisis

Recent research has shown that by decoupling the risk response behaviour of consumers into the separate components of risk perception and risk attitude, a more robust conceptualization and prediction of consumers’ reactions to food safety issues is possible. Furthermore, it has been argued that the influence of risk attitudes and risk perceptions on consumer risk behaviour for contaminated food products can be used to formulate effective agricultural policies and strategies in case of a food crisis. The question arises whether or not the influence and magnitude of these risk variables changes over time and, hence, whether policies and strategies must be adapted. The BSE (mad cow disease) crises in the USA, Germany and The Netherlands in 2001 and 2004 provided us with a natural experiment to examine the relationship between risk attitudes and perceptions and behaviour over time. The results show that in some countries consumers risk behaviour changed, whereas in others not. These results are useful to policy makers and decision makers in food industry in developing more efficient supply chain management and public policies.consumer risk behaviour, food safety, risk attitude, risk perception, time, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,