Law,love and being in relation

ABSTRACT

This article takes up Agozino's call for love. Yet this call is not a straightforward one. In response, I press for an appreciation of love which avoids collapsing love into 'protection', engaging instead with the Aboriginal World View described by Kombumerri and Wakka Wakka woman and scholar, Mary Graham, as a form of conduct, reflection and a practice in listening. Through two quite distinct stories offered by young people in their encounters with Australia's criminal justice system, I explore the ethics of listening and respectful relations in social and institutional settings. While the first story reveals the denial of colonial violence accompanying protectionist policies for the ‘care' of Indigenous communities, the second story shows how such patterns of denial underpin western ‘justice' systems, including for settler peoples. Responding to Agozino’s call requires that we examine the ethical act of listening and reflect on the repercussions of the failure to listen.     

Moving Ahead,Falling Apart,Losing Power: Three Narratives to the Development of Human Services

Scholars agree that we live in a society in which the lion’s share of human needs is supplied by formal organizations. This article deals with how society reached this situation and the challenges embedded in it. We will postulate that there are three basic narratives of human services, which we have named the progress, the social disintegration, and the power narrative. The narratives will be demonstrated through examples from the field of juvenile and adolescent mental health services. We claim that meaningful professional training in human services must expose students to the interpretations, insights, and possible directions for practice in light of each of the narratives.     

Similarities and Dissimilarities in Spouses’ Narratives of Miscarriage: A Dyadic Analysis of Communicated Narrative Sense-Making and Well-Being

Drawing upon communicated narrative sense-making (CNSM) theory, we explored how husbands and wives narratively make sense of their miscarriage and links to well-being. Specifically, we analyzed how the narrative theme, sequence, and similarity related to spouses’ perceived stress and relational satisfaction. Heterosexual married couples (n = 185; N = 370) who had experienced a miscarriage responded to online questionnaires in which they told the story of their pregnancy loss and completed measures of well-being. Seven miscarriage story themes emerged – hope lost, factual, time heals, helpful support, unhelpful support, cautiously optimistic, and guilt/shame. Findings demonstrated that husbands’ themes accounted for differences in their relational satisfaction, whereas wives’ themes accounted for differences in their perceived stress. Analyses on narrative similarity revealed couples with different themes reported higher relational satisfaction than those with similar themes. Further, those couples with the same narrative sequences (i.e., contaminated, redemptive, or ambivalent) reported less perceived stress than those with different narrative sequences. These findings suggest that storying miscarriage helps both husbands and wives process loss in unique ways.     

Putting the Logos to Work: A Reply to Meyer

Abstract

Journalist Janet Malcolm recently published several articles and a book in which she accused her own profession of manipulation and deceit in its listening and interviewing practices. Specifically, she focused on the Jeffrey MacDonald murder case, on which Joe McGinniss' book, Fatal Vision, was based. McGinniss, she claimed, fostered a close and seemingly empathic relationship with the accused in order to betray him later—and in this event Malcolm saw the prototypical journalist-interviewee relationship. Her accusations about the role of journalism raised intense professional scrutiny. This essay examines the case from the standpoint of journalistic listening. Are the temptations for deceptive or “slanted” empathy inherent in the journalistic interview? Does the journalist have a responsibility not only to listen to the person being interviewed, but to “listen” equally well to the demands of a developing story—as if it, too, were a living entity? Do ethical standards within journalism demand that an interviewer's listening style, especially as it is seen in empathic behavior, be congruent with his or her unexpressed conclusions?     

Friendsourcing Peer Support for Alzheimer’s Caregivers Using Facebook Social Media

ABSTRACT

This research piloted an e-health intervention that used social media to friendsource peer support for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) caregivers. Friendsourcing is a variant of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing recruits online participants who share a characteristic that makes their volunteerism meaningful when they join to achieve an outcome. Friendsourcing recruits online participants who share membership in a social network that makes their volunteerism meaningful when they join to achieve an outcome. This article introduces our friendsourcing intervention research and examines the effects on the psychological well-being of AD caregivers. After a 6-week intervention, caregivers were found to have significantly decreased burden (Z?=??2.01, p?<?.05) and perceived stress (Z?=??2.95, p?<?.01). Emotional and informational support scores were significantly increased (Z?=??2.32, p?<?.05). Qualitative data analysis of the intervention identified positive effects in new caregiving knowledge acquisition and application and reduced stress in the acceptance of the caregiving role. Joining social networks in support groups through friendsourcing was feasible for AD caregivers who were familiar with social media, and can provide another means of guiding the development of their personal support networks.     

Listening Competency on Campus: A Psychometric Analysis of Student Listening

Primarily used in corporate and organizational contexts, this study evaluates the psychometric properties of the 30-item Organizational Listening Survey (OLS) as a measure of listening behavior with a sample of undergraduate college students. The first study analyzed 1,475 students' self-reports of their listening behavior on campus, indicating a single-factor model of listening with strong internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = .96), incorporating aspects of affirming the relational partner as well as confirming the message communicated. The second study involved students' other-reports of their professors' listening behaviors. It demonstrated high interrater agreement using the OLS to evaluate a common professor.     

Physician’s Listening and Adherence to Medical Recommendations among Persons with Diabetes

Every year, millions of people die of diabetes-related complications. Despite this risk, patients’ nonadherence to lifesaving medical recommendations remains a persistent crisis. One factor that could increase adherence is the formation of an alliance with the medical staff. This alliance, in turn, may increase when the patient perceives that the health care staff is willing to listen. To test this model, we asked people with diabetes, N = 76, to report (a) perceptions of listening by their nurse and physician, (b) their working alliance with the medical-staff members, and (c) several indicators of adherence with medical recommendations. The results suggested that listening is highly correlated with working alliance, r = .84, both with the nurse and the physician. Furthermore, both listening by the physician, r = .27, and alliance with the physician, r = .44, were associated with medication adherence. Listening by the physician, and alliance with the physician were not associated with adherence to life-style recommendations, but hinted at possible associations with glycemic control, r’s = .19, and .22, respectively. Our findings suggest that listening is an important facet of a working alliance, which in turn appears to positively affect the health of patients with diabetes.     

Parental Depression and Anxiety and Early Childhood Behavior Problems Across Family Types

Using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we examine the association between parental major depressive and generalized anxiety disorders and child behavior problems across family types: married, cohabiting, involved nonresident father, and noninvolved nonresident father. Among 3‐year‐olds in all families, maternal anxiety/depression is associated with increased odds of anxious/depressed, attention deficit, and oppositional defiant disorders (N = 2,120). Paternal anxiety/depression has no significant association with these problem behaviors; father’s illness, however, exacerbates anxious/depressed behaviors in young children if both parents are ill and he is coresident. The findings underscore the importance of maternal mental health for child well‐being and suggest that a negative interaction between parent illnesses is most likely when parents and children share the same disorder.     

‘Making narrative portraits: a methodological approach to analysing qualitative data’

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes the method of ‘narrative portraiture’, which, located within the wider field of narrative studies, offers an analytical tool to narrative data. Two research projects, one on disability and one on identity, are used to illustrate how the method can be applied. While the paper will focus on the methodological benefits and limitations of the approach, throughout the article we also highlight the ethical concern of representation. We suggest that through ‘narrative portraiture’ research findings can be contextualised in broader social narratives without losing sight of the unique personal qualities of the research encounter. Thus, we argue for the importance of bringing the participant and their everyday life experience into focus, highlighting that a portrayal of a sole story can be, not only a medium to understand a research phenomenon, but also a valuable research output in itself.     

Listening and Referring to Voices: Students' Repertory in Educational Settings

When we construct our knowledge in educational settings we usually listen to many different voices, mediated through teachers, classmates, books, films, and so on. Eight students in teacher training were videotaped for 12 hours of group talks with a tutor over a six-month period. The overall purpose of the study was to describe the polyphonic nature of the discursive field of education and the interplay between various contexts and contextual resources in that social interaction.

The concept of intertextuality is adopted as a method to identify the polyphony of different voices. The explicit reported long-term listening is called the student's voice response, showing the repertory of contextual resources in use. Results from the study indicate that some of the students have a broad and some a narrow listening repertory when it comes to reported listening. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Men’s Aggression Toward Women: A 10‐Year Panel Study

The present study examined the longitudinal course of men’s physical and psychological aggression toward a partner across 10 years, using a community sample of young couples (N = 194) from at‐risk backgrounds. Findings indicated that men’s aggression decreased over time and that women’s antisocial behavior and depressive symptoms predicted changes in men’s aggression. This suggests the importance of studying social processes within the dyad to have a better understanding of men’s aggression toward a partner.     

From Non-Believer to Believer: What Leads People to Change Their Climate Views

Studies have highlighted the political, economic, and psychological factors in the debate over anthropogenic climate change—a hegemony approach—but have rarely focused on the stories and possibilities of people's transitions from climate change non-believer to climate change believer. Based on publicly accessible narratives, this study examines the stories of those who have switched from non-believer to believer—a narrative approach—and the dilemmas involved in those switches. Our investigation illuminates that a transition to climate change believer is a cultural and moral matter based on changing social relations of knowledge and what people regard as ignorable. We find that narratives of transition commonly describe interrelated shifts in three social relational factors: the narrator's notions of self, material reality, and justice. We term this contextualized transformative experience a relational rupture. Our narrative approach thus contextualizes climate change denialism within a person's web of social relations, not the hegemony of climate change communication alone. Moreover, we suggest that, since public debate and polarization on scientific topics such as climate change, vaccination, and COVID-19 are socially situated, they may potentially be socially bridged.     

The Listener as Addressee in Face-to-Face Dialogue

Face-to-face conversation is a unique listening setting, with a particular kind of listener; the person the speaker is directly addressing is the addressee. Our research program has included several experiments involving detailed, reliable examinations of the subtle yet crucial behaviors that addressees use to collaborate with the speaker in face-to-face dialogue. We have found that addressees respond to speakers using either generic back channels (e.g., “m-hm” or nodding) or responses that specify what the addressee has understood (e.g., opening eyes wide to show surprise). Addressees timed these specific responses to precise moments in the speaker's narrative, and they tailored their responses to that moment (e.g., wincing when the speaker described something painful). Distracting addressees with a task that prevented them from following the speakers' narratives made these addressees unable to contribute specific responses, which, in turn, had a deleterious effect on the speakers' storytelling. Further research showed that addressees who were not distracted used a wide variety of behaviors to contribute to dialogue without interrupting the speaker, such as brief vocalizations, facial displays, and even gestures. Speakers and addressees regulated the timing of addressee responses using an interactive pattern of gaze. Addressees also indicated understanding by their formulations, which summarized or paraphrased what the speaker had said. However, our analysis showed that these formulations were not neutral. The analysis of addressees in face-to-face dialogue generates a deeper understanding of the listening process and has implications for listening in applied settings, such as psychotherapy or health care interactions.     

Beneficial effects of the mother's voice on infants’ novel word learning

The maternal voice appears to have a special role in infants’ language processing. The current eye‐tracking study investigated whether 24‐month‐olds (n = 149) learn novel words easier while listening to their mother's voice compared to hearing unfamiliar speakers. Our results show that maternal speech facilitates the formation of new word–object mappings across two different learning settings: a live setting in which infants are taught by their own mother or the experimenter, and a prerecorded setting in which infants hear the voice of either their own or another mother through loudspeakers. Furthermore, this study explored whether infants’ pointing gestures and novel word productions over the course of the word learning task serve as meaningful indexes of word learning behavior. Infants who repeated more target words also showed a larger learning effect in their looking behavior. Thus, maternal speech and infants’ willingness to repeat novel words are positively linked with novel word learning.     

TWO SURVIVOR CASES: THERAPEUTIC EFFECT AS SIDE PRODUCT OF THE BIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVE INTERVIEW

This paper draws a parallel between the biographical narrative life‐story interview technique and psychoanalytic therapy. It points out that this type of interview may, in some cases, assist with the re‐construction of a new narrative identity of the interviewee. Where there is practically no intervention by the interviewer it can do this just by providing the interviewee with a situation where there is someone who does not want anything other than to listen to her life narrative. Through this process there can be a therapeutic effect which is more than a joyful by‐product, which the interviewees not only unconsciously experience, but for which they overtly express their gratitude.

The paper features the case of such a woman, who was sterilised in Auschwitz. It also tells the story of a man where the interviewer experienced incredibly strong resistance and projective identification throughout the interview. This resulted in almost insoluble guilt in the interviewer. The paper tries to interpret the story of the interviewee, who is also a Shoah survivor, and is unable to make some things in his life story explicit. The interpretation suggests that he might have killed some Arrow Cross officers in order to take their uniforms to help others. He has lived for the last 60 years with feelings of insoluble guilt. The question is raised whether in this case the interview had a similar therapeutic effect to the first case or not.     

Lesbians Grieving the Death of a Partner: Recommendations for Practice

ABSTRACT

Spousal loss is a common event that has been associated with risk of depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Practitioners working with lesbians need comprehensive clinical guidelines that integrate research about lesbian partner loss with contemporary views of grief and bereavement. Using this literature, we make recommendations for clinical practice that address the possible contributions of several factors—social support, emotional closeness, relationship satisfaction, disclosure or non-disclosure of sexual identity and the relationship, faith and/or spirituality, and meaning-making—to the grieving process and positive psychological adjustment of lesbians grieving the death of a partner.     

Male-initiated partner abuse during marital separation prior to divorce

The purpose of this study was to assess predictors of male-initiated psychological and physical partner abuse during the separation process prior to divorce among a sample of 80 divorced fathers who reported no physical violence during their marriages. The predictor variables examined were male gender-role identity, female-initiated divorces, dependence on one's former wife, depression, anxiety, and coparental conflict. Through ordinary least square (OLS) regression techniques, it was found that male gender-role identity was positively related to male-initiated psychological abuse during separation. Logistic regression analyses revealed that male-initiated psychological abuse, anxiety level, coparental conflict, and dependence on one's former spouse increased the odds of a man engaging in physical abuse. However, depression decreased the odds of separation physical abuse. The models predicting both male-initiated psychological abuse (F = 2.20, p < .05, R2 = .15) and physical violence during the separation process were significant (Model chi2 = 35.00, df= 7, p < .001).     

Jacob Lawrence's The Migration Series: Art as Narrative History

Because art is a reflection of cultural heritage, a natural affinity exists between art and social studies. In Jacob Lawrence's The Migration Series, art serves as narrative history, with visual images telling the story of the Great Migration, a movement of African American people from the South to the North around World War I. Social studies and the arts can be effectively integrated using principles of discipline-based arts education and comprehensive arts education. In this article, the author provides (1) background information on the historical period, artist, and art, (2) objectives, (3) sample guided discussion questions and extension activities, and (4) sample assessment ideas. He also outlines a complete sample lesson, synthesizing the principles and ideas into a meaningful whole in which social studies studies enhances teaching and learning in the arts and vice versa.     

On the narrative vs non-narrative functions of reported speech: A socio-pragmatic study

Reported utterances have often been analyzed with regard to their narrative function. While it is true that this narrative function applies to a large group of cases, we have observed that reported speech can fulfil other functions, which are incompatible with the properties of a narrative utterance. This study, based on spontaneous discourse, will focus on the non-narrative functions of reported speech, that is, the appreciative, the support and the authority functions. We will first define the semantico-pragmatic properties of these functions of reported speech, on the basis of examples that are univocal in their contexts. Next, we will turn to examples more complex, in which there seems to be a conflict between functions considered to be incompatible. Finally, we will present the results of a distributional analysis, relating the functions of reported speech to linguistic and extralinguistic factors. The results will lead us to propose hypotheses concerning the strategic diversification of discourse behaviours by speakers.