Older disabled workers' perceptions of volunteering

The activity of volunteering is readily available to, and undertaken by, able-bodied people in Australia and is recognized as a valuable social pursuit, particularly among citizens of retirement age. Despite the known benefits of volunteering, however, there are few reports of disabled people participating as volunteers and little is understood of their experiences or perceptions of volunteering. The aim of this study was to explore how older workers within supported employment settings perceived the opportunities for and barriers to volunteering. Fourteen people with long-standing impairments participated in this small qualitative study. Overall the participants were positive about volunteering, but noted they might require support to volunteer successfully. Drawing upon the participants' views, recommendations are made for developing training. Disabled workers facing retirement need to be supported to have opportunities for active participation in the community as volunteers if so desired.     

“The show must go on”: Behind the scenes of elderly spousal caregiving

Based on interviews with ten caregivers and on observations of their daily behavior, the present article sets out to clarify why, despite the burdens of care-giving, elderly individuals care for their spouses at home, even when the option to institutionalize them is available. Unlike traditional ways of approaching this question, founded on emic models, the analysis presented in this article is mainly an etic one, based on the dramaturgical approach. The findings indicate that caregiving is a stage for self-deceptive playacting, allowing caregivers to suspend time, awareness, and anxiety in a way that would not have been possible had they institutionalized their spouses. The study shows that features of caregiving, usually portrayed as burdens and hardships, serve in fact as coping mechanisms, which may explain elderly people's willingness to care for their spouses in their own homes.     

Committed,Grateful, and Worthy of Acceptance: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Master Chef Israel</Emphasis> and the Social Construction of Immigration Narratives

The rhetoric of nations, such as Israel, often assigns immigrants social positions in nationalist reconstructions. Given the active role the media has taken in reconstructing the nation, this paper suggests looking at Master Chef Israel (MCI) as an arena in which immigrant contestants are staged as recruited to engage in the reconstruction and branding of Israel. A narrative analysis of five seasons of MCI and interviews with 15 contestants tracked three narratives, each of which reveals a different mode of branding Israel. The show branded Jewish immigrants as equipped with the necessary capital to become Israelis, while those who converted to Judaism and immigrated to Israel were expected to show commitment both to their new religion and to their new country. In the third narrative, MCI staged the patriotism of individuals who immigrated after marrying an Israeli citizen as a gradually emerging sentiment based on the extent to which their difference enabled the incorporation of an Israeli component into their overall identity.     

Perception vs. Circumstances of the Child Sexual Abuse Event in Relation to Depression and Post-traumatic Stress Symptomatology

The study examined the impact of the circumstances of childhood sexual abuse on post-traumatic stress symptoms and depression among female adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. The sample consisted of 225 Israeli women divided into two groups according to the identity of the perpetrator (nonfamily perpetrator versus a family member perpetrator). A self-report questionnaire was used consisting of the following scales: demographic variables, the Traumatic Events Questionnaire, Childhood Sexual Experiences Scale, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Scale, and Depression Scale. The findings indicated that the identity of the offender significantly differed between groups only if intercourse had occurred. Women who experienced coerced intercourse scored significantly higher on depression and post-traumatic stress compared to those who experienced other forms of childhood sexual abuse.     

Space,gentrification and traditional open-air markets: how do vendors in the Carmel market in Tel Aviv interpret changes?

Space is often believed to lose its importance in the global era as individuals cease to interact face-to-face in favor of online communication. Studying the Carmel market located in city center Tel Aviv, Israel aims to show how space, in a global city, is constantly produced, reproduced, and transformed in reaction to the changes in the community that uses the space and remains an invaluable resource for its users. By specifying the vendors’ perspective on the changes the market undergoes, this article offers an often missing aspect of the study of space, gentrification, and human action. It argues that public spaces in gentrified areas provide the vendors with means to instill their actions, traditional values which often lose their primacy in a global era and gain social recognition. I spent two years of participant observation and detailed ethnographic interviews with vendors. These have led me to conclude that in addition to a steady income that access to space provides, the vendors claim access to space to enable them to sustain familial values and offer to members of the community the opportunity of face-to-face interaction. Also they interpret their interaction with the new clients as a means of compensating for lack of social upward mobility.     

Imagined Masculinity: Body,Sexuality, and Family among Israeli Military Reserves

This article explores how middle‐class Jewish men on reserve duty in the Israel Defense Forces form a “proper” masculinity through humor and jokes. Reserve service creates a fruitful territory for researching four issues that have not been extensively studied in the literature on masculinities: the relation between gender and age, the periodic reaffirmation of masculinity along the life course, how women are perceived as sexual objects and how informal social pressure is placed on singles to marry and begin families, and how men not only are motivated by homophobia but use images of women and homosexuals to map and interpret power relations and competition between men.     

The Overlooked Side of the Experience: Personal Growth and Quality of Life Among Grandparents of Children Who Survived Cancer

This study adopted the theoretical framework of Schaefer and Moos (1992) to identify the resources that contributed to the personal growth and quality of life of 56 grandparents of childhood cancer survivors and compare them with 60 grandparents of healthy children. Participants filled out questionnaires addressing sense of coherence, social support, personal growth, and quality of life. A significant difference was found only with regards to personal growth. Hierarchical regressions revealed that health, economic status, higher levels of sense of coherence, and support contributed to quality of life, whereas being a grandparent of a child who survived cancer, lower sense of coherence, support, and past experience of the Holocaust contributed to personal growth. It seems that though they are both positive dimensions, quality of life and personal growth represent different entities in grandparents’ lives. This study sheds light on the experiences and perspectives of grandparents, indicating that alongside the physical and emotional toll taken by their grandchild’s illness, there are also positive implications that can lead to personal growth. Strengthening grandparents could enable families to take advantage of the potential contribution of one of the most committed support providers in the family.     

Internal exclusion of leprosy sufferers: Dual ambivalence and its theoretical implications

On the basis of an anthropological study combined with historical investigation, this paper analyzes Thai people's responses toward leprosy prior to the discovery of a cure for the disease. The findings indicate that the ambivalent perception of leprosy sufferers as anomalous figures led to their ambivalent segregation within the framework of the community. The analysis of this dual ambivalence is revealed as capable of reconciling two approaches to the study of deviance, grounded in conflicting assumptions concerning individual and cultural tolerance of ambivalence: the first focusing on ambivalent perceptions of social deviants, and the second dealing with ambivalent behavioral reactions toward them.     

Estimation of contingency tables in complex survey sampling using probabilistic expert systems

In this paper we explore the possibility to use a particular class of models, known as probabilistic expert systems, to define two classes of estimators of a contingency table in case of stratified sampling designs. The two classes are characterized by the different role of the sampling design: in the first, the sampling design is treated as an additional variable; in the second, it is used only for estimation purposes by means of the survey weights. The bias/variance trade off of these estimators is analyzed and the consequences of model misspecification are illustrated. Furthermore, it is shown that the Horvitz–Thompson estimator belongs to both classes of estimators. It comes out that the Horvitz–Thompson estimator is almost always inefficient but robust. Monte Carlo simulations illustrate the efficiency of the proposed estimators.     

Explaining Satisfaction with Volunteering in Emergencies: Comparison Between Organized and Spontaneous Volunteers in Operation Protective Edge

The study aimed to identify factors that explain general satisfaction with volunteering among volunteers in Operation Protective Edge, in Israel, through a comparison between organized volunteers affiliated with volunteer organizations and spontaneous volunteers who arrived at the scene independently. Based on the social exchange theory as the theoretical framework, the contribution of several variables to explaining general satisfaction with volunteering was examined: satisfaction with the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards of volunteering, personal sacrifice in volunteering, and motives for volunteering (social solidarity, personal empowerment, and escape from reality). The findings revealed that among organized volunteers, satisfaction with the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards of volunteering mediated between motives for volunteering and general satisfaction with volunteering. Among spontaneous volunteers, the motives of social solidarity and personal empowerment as well as satisfaction with intrinsic and extrinsic rewards were the main variables that explained general satisfaction with volunteering. In contradistinction, the main variables that explained general satisfaction with volunteering among organized volunteers were the motive of personal empowerment and satisfaction with the extrinsic rewards of volunteering.