Reactions of students to different settings of field experience

The study assessed Israeli students’ emotional–experiential reaction and attitude to different client populations, following a week-long experience in one of five social services settings. The study provides preliminary findings regarding the implications of first year students’ experience on their emphatic skills, a subject that generally has not received adequate scholarly attention. Using a purpose-built, self-administered questionnaire, we found students’ emotional–experiential response to their experience differed by the setting in which they were placed, being lowest in the Bedouin oriented services, intermediate among those placed in juvenile correction services, and highest in mental health, adult and child disability services. Responses were independent of all other explanatory variables, including sex, cognitive ability, previous training experience and perceptual shifts concerning the population served. We discuss possible reasons for these differences.

     

Women,Poverty, and the Microenterprise: Context and Discourse

The article discusses the claims of success of microenterprise development programmes (MDPs) in poverty reduction and gender equality. It also deals with the broader theoretical and methodological issues related to the ways in which context and discourse interact in the assessment of anti‐poverty and gender equity strategies. MDPs are considered among the most viable strategies for helping women overcome poverty and promoting gender equity. However, there has been significant debate over these claims. The relationship between business ownership, poverty reduction and gender empowerment is still to be proved. The article presents the voices of women engaged in a microenterprise (ME) from a context‐informed and discourse analysis perspective, and considers the women's insights about ME as an anti‐poverty and gender empowerment strategy. The findings show a complex picture. On one hand, the new occupational status promises a tangible alternative to multiple personal, social and gender constraints. Additionally, women in the study perceived the ME as a space for self‐definition and as an outlet for expressing their oppressed identities. On the other hand, the findings seriously challenge the capacity of the MDP strategy to promote gender equity and combat poverty among low‐income women. Implications for research and policy are discussed.     

Computer Integrated Drug Prevention–Combining Multi-Media and Social Group Work Practice to Teach Inner City Israeli 6th Graders How to Say No to Drugs

SUMMARY

The author describes an educational multi-media program to teach Israeli youth to avoid drugs using an older brother model who provides information and advice to youthful Israeli players regarding the adverse consequences of using drugs.     

State of Family Research and Theory in Korea

This paper is a review and assessment of 246 articles from 6 journals published from 1980 to 1992 in Korea. Theoretical and methodological issues, changes in values and functions of the families, premarital, marital and parent-child relations, families in the middle and the later years, and families with problems are the major areas examined. The review indicates that the areas of parent-child and marital relations are dominantly investigated and that researchers have given much effort to identify the emerging changes and continuing patterns of the Korean family in the context of societal and familial changes. The authors suggest, however, that because of the lack of the cumu- lative information, conceptual clarification and methodological rigor, generalizations of the findings are considered to be tentative.     

Cooperative Parenting Arrangements After Marital Separation

The identification of factors that predict cooperation and agreement between ex-spouses is important to understanding and promoting healthy post-divorce among parents and their children. This study of 64 separated and divorced parents was intended as an initial investigation of ex-couples who are able to negotiate and maintain mutually agreeable shared parenting arrangements, without legal or mental health intervention. As expected, these cooperating ex-couples selected from a wider range of custody and access arrangements than demographically similar ex-couples in disagreement about parenting arrangements. Also consistent with expectation, interparental cooperation and disagreements influenced the proportions of time children spent with their parents, whereas type of custody and access arrangement did not. Although all children tended to spend more time with their mothers than with their fathers, this discrepancy was greater for disagreeing than cooperating ex-couples. As hypothesized, histories of domestic violence were less likely among cooperating ex-couples than disagreeing ex-couples. Finally, the hypothesis that cooperating ex-couples are generally more satistied with their lives than disputing ex-couples was supported by the results of a MANOVA. However, subsequent univariate analyses revealed that cooperating and disagreeing ex-couples did not differ in their levels of satisfaction with their social lives and their financial situations. These findings and additional exploratory comparisons between the two groups were interpreted as potential avenues for subsequent investigations of cooperating ex-couples.     

“Like My Status”

This paper engages with the relatively new area of research into teenage girls and online social networks, focusing on the experiences and views of Israelis. In particular, we examine how Israeli girls construct social relationships on Facebook. Adopting a feminist interpretive approach, this qualitative study is based on focus group interviews with Israeli girls aged between twelve and eighteen from diverse cultural, economic, and social backgrounds. The girls clearly distinguish between different circles of social closeness on Facebook, with each circle marked by different relationships, dynamics, and expectations. The study's findings beg the question of whether social networks allow Israeli girls to exercise control, power, choice, and agency in their social world, or whether they remain informed by existing social structures that shape and restrict their choices and actions. The significance of these findings is discussed in the contexts of feminism, girl power, and Neoliberal discourse.     

Taming the road,tamed by the road: sense of road as place among Indigenous Bedouin in an ethnic frontier in Israel

ABSTRACT

We propose the concept ‘sense of road as place’ for an Indigenous group within an ethnic frontier, specifically in the case of the Israeli Bedouin. A road in this spatial context carries far greater meanings than elsewhere, particularly when also impacted by power relationships with the state. We reveal how Road 31 was/is subjectified by the Bedouin as a place prior to and after an upgrade. Initially they were able, through their Indigenous spatiality, to tame the road into their informal mobility and make it a place, but following the upgrade their informal mobility has been tamed into formal state-regulated mobility, making the road a non-place.     

The Organizational Connection: Social Capital and the Career Expansion of Directors of Business Groups in Israel

This article studies which directors of the largest corporations forming part of the Israeli business groups accumulated directorships within the groups between the years 1974 and 1988. A comparison is made between directors within business groups who accumulate directorships and those who do not, and in addition, the research focuses on directors who joined additional boards, questioning who gets ahead in terms of three components of social capital: organizational positions, elite positions, and social networks. The study uses logistic regression to discern which variables increase the likelihood of being invited onto an additional board within the business groups and the likelihood of getting ahead. The findings strongly support the hypothesis that the organizational position of directors, more than their elite position ties and social networks, is the most significant determinant of who will join additional boards and who will get ahead. The article is concluded with a discussion of several factors contributing to relative impact of organizational positions.     

伊战对阿以和平进程的影响

美国发动的对伊战争将使阿伯世界进一步分裂与重组。战后,美国虽主导了“中东和平路线图”计划,但美并未改变其袒以压巴政策,以也未改变其对巴的强硬政策,因此,和平路线图计划将面临重重困难,中东地区很可能继续处于动荡之中,中东和平仍将路漫漫。     

设立"上海犹太高科技工业园区" 促进中以经贸关系发展

上海曾经是远东最大的犹太人聚居地,尤其是在二战期间曾接纳大批犹太难民使之免遭纳粹屠戮,这一事实足以令全世界犹太人对上海产生一种特殊的感情.由中、以两国合作兴办"上海犹太高科技工业园区",借助犹太民族的人、财资源来实现上海的硅谷梦.鉴于美以特殊关系和美国犹太人资本的雄厚实力,"拉以促美"的引资战略,这是改善和发展中美关系的一条曲线思路.