‘Being called sisters’: Masculinities and black male nurses in South Africa

This study contributes to an understanding of the geographies of masculinities, by demonstrating how black South African male nurses negotiate hegemonic masculinity through citing masculine gendered acts. The research draws on qualitative data gathered from interviews with 15 black male nurses aged between 26 and 50 years who have worked in the paediatric, trauma, orthopaedic, oncology and midwifery fields for a period of not less than two years. It is argued that the colonially imposed hierarchies of race, gender and occupation merge with culturally specific pre‐existing African masculinities, and that this informed how the black male nurses experienced their gender identity in the occupation. The study demonstrates how, because of their career choice, the gender identities of the male nurses were positioned as marginalized and subordinate to the modes of a hegemonic masculinity, a gender identity only available to them momentarily. In this context, it was found that the modes of gender performativity in which the nurses negotiated and subverted their subordinate and marginal status was with the complicity of patients and other healthcare workers. This upheld the more generally assumed hegemony of masculinity in the hospital workplace. The study traces these experiences to the discourses of black masculinities during South Africa's pre‐colonial, colonial and apartheid eras and in the present day. In doing so, this study contributes to an understanding of the geographies of masculinities by demonstrating the locally specific modes of masculine performativity through which black male nurses negotiate their gender in South Africa.     

Palm snags are a critical nesting resource for woodpeckers in an urbanized tropical region

Urban Ecosystems - Critical resources for birds nesting in cities can support populations in spite of the challenges imposed by urbanization, and the identification of such resources can shed light...     

Has East Germany Overtaken West Germany? Recent Trends in Order‐Specific Fertility

Some 20 years after reunification, the contrast between East and West Germany offers a natural experiment for studying the degree of persistence of Communist-era family patterns, the effects of economic change, and fertility postponement. After reunification, period fertility rates plummeted in the former East Germany to record low levels. Since the mid-1990s, however, period fertility rates have been rising in East Germany, in contrast to the nearly constant rates seen in the West. By 2008, the TFR of East Germany had overtaken that of the West. We explore why fertility in East Germany is higher than in West Germany, despite unfavorable economic circumstances in the East. We address this and related questions by (a) presenting an account of the persisting East/West differences in attitudes toward and constraints on childbearing, (b) conducting an order-specific fertility analysis of recent fertility trends, and (c) projecting completed fertility for the recent East and west German cohorts. In addition to using the Human Fertility Database, perinatal statistics allow us to calculate a tempo-corrected TFR for East and West Germany.     

SCHOOL RACIAL COMPOSITION AND BIRACIAL ADOLESCENTS' SCHOOL ATTACHMENT

Despite extensive research on multiracial youth in recent years, to date, no empirical studies have analyzed how racial context may affect biracial adolescents' sense of belonging in a social institution beyond families. In this study, we examine how the racial makeup of the student body affects self-identified biracial adolescents' school attachment. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we find that the proportions of white or black students in school significantly affect the school attachment of Hispanic/black, Asian/black, and American Indian/black biracial adolescents, but school racial composition in general has little influence on biracial adolescents with a partial-white identification (i.e., black/white, Hispanic/white, Asian/white, and American Indian/white). Our analyses also show that on average, students of most biracial groups display lower school attachment than their corresponding monoracial groups, but the differences from the monoracial groups with the lower school attachment are generally small. We discuss the implications of our findings for biracial adolescents' perceived racial boundaries and contemporary American race relations.     

Promoting Evidence-Based,Trauma-Informed Social Work Practice

ABSTRACT

Given the human costs of psychological trauma, social workers should be well versed in trauma-informed care (TIC). This framework helps guide the efforts of systems, organizations, and practitioners toward reducing trauma or mitigating its effects. The field has created TIC principles, although they have yet to be fully realized as practical applications. This article makes the case that theoretically and empirically grounded content on trauma should be foundational to social work education. We also argue that social work practice will be advanced by clearly defining trauma and by distinguishing TIC from trauma-focused and trauma-sensitive approaches. Finally, a TIC certificate program illustrates how graduate student training and social work practice are enhanced by integrating trauma content into classroom and field settings.     

Between martyrology and historiography: Elias Tcherikower and the making of a pogrom historian

This article examines the dialectical relationship between martyrology and historiography, religion and secularism in the works of the Russian‐Jewish historian and communal activist, Elias Tcherikower. Tcherikower, although a disciple of Shimon Dubnov, who maintained a commitment to a positive portrayal of Jewish life in the Diaspora, championed what Salo Baron called “the lachrymose conception of Jewish history,” the view that understood Jewish history as consisting primarily of a series of persecutions. From World War One onward, Tcherikower romanticised Jewish martyrs and argued that religious and cultural renaissance followed on the heels of persecution and martyrdom. This preoccupation with the relationship between Jewish martyrdom and cultural creativity inspired Tcherikower first in his role as an historian of the pogroms of the Russian Civil War and then as a leader of YIVO. Until the eve of World War Two, Tcherikower believed that modern Yiddish scholarship served the same transcendent purpose as had Torah study in the past and that Jewish historiography could inspire the Jewish people in the same manner as had pre‐modern martyrology. Tcherikower’s work thus provides a fascinating case study of the persistence of traditional religious conceptions in twentieth‐century East European nationalist Jewish historiography.     

Protest Through Presence: Spatial Citizenship and Identity Formation in Contestations of Neoliberal Crises

We live in a contested, crisis-prone era, indicative of ongoing processes of neoliberalization. The most recent global financial and food crises have disproportionately impacted those already marginalized in society: people of colour and the working classes. The spatial expressions of this disproportionality are especially acute, evidenced by the uneven distribution of the basic necessities of food and home. Activists in the USA are responding with forms of spatial citizenship, namely exercising their right to peaceably assemble and reclaiming public spaces. During the creation of spaces of dissent, we observe the fluid formation of a collective spatialized identity among social movement actors, contingent on political identities and ideology. We use two cases based in Florida to highlight these processes. The first case is a local iteration of the Occupy Wall Street protests, Occupy Gainesville, which has occupied the city's most central public gathering place, the Bo Diddley Community Plaza. The second case involves Food Not Bombs in the city of Orlando where attempts were made to ban the group from distributing food in public parks to the homeless and working poor. First, these cases highlight the spatiotemporal relationships between unjust economic systems and the state surveillance and policing apparatus and those resisting such systems. Second, they reveal how collective identity influences and in turn is influenced by space. Our article furthers a processual, dynamic understanding of activist mobilizations to reduce the uneven burdens of neoliberalization and argues for greater attention to the spatialities of contentious politics.     

Personality Typologies for Conservative Christians in Intensive Marital Therapy

In our study we used a two-step cluster analytic approach to identify personality typologies for conservative Christians seen in intensive marital therapy (N = 207). Sixteen Personality Factor Fifth Edition results revealed significant personality differences based on gender as well as five significantly different personality clusters: (1) abstract, deferential, trusting, and tolerates disorder; (2) reactive and deferential; (3) reserved, abstract, serious, grounded, traditional, and self-reliant; (4) grounded; and (5) socially bold, abstracted, forthright, and open to change. Conclusions are drawn related to how these results compare with other personality studies in the literature and how these differing personality types might fit together in Christian marriage dyads.     

A Multisample Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Short Employment Hope Scale (EHS-14)

ABSTRACT.

Employment hope is an aspect of psychological self-sufficiency that captures the process of empowerment for low-income job seekers. It is posited that this process of maintaining and developing employment hope contributes to the economic self-sufficiency outcome. The preliminary 14-item 2-factor Employment Hope Scale (EHS) was previously developed using an exploratory factor analysis (Hong, Polanin, & Pigott, 2012). This study examines whether the same items could be validated using a multisample confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Given the unsatisfied model fit of the original 2-factor model, it was modified into a 4-factor model guided by theoretical suggestion from an earlier focus-group study. The multisample CFA on the modified model explained the data significantly better than did the initial model across 2 independent samples. Reliability and validity tests confirmed the factor structure of the modified model. This study confirms that the revalidated Short EHS (EHS-14) is a more robust version of the scale. Further research is needed to demonstrate its utility as a tool to benchmark the pre-employment client empowerment process in workforce development and to monitor postemployment employee support needs in the workplace for retention.