Aging in e-place: reflections on online communities for the aged in India

ABSTRACT

In this short piece, I offer a reconfiguration of the term “aging in place” by analyzing media content of web-based senior-focused portals while demonstrating how these online consumer-driven spaces unwittingly re-create new social relations and imagined communities. Building on the sparse body of scholarship on extra-familial, kin-like networks, I reflect on the cultural possibility of internet spaces as surrogate “places” for later life non-kin sociality. In this exploration, I privilege the possibility of enriched selfhood of older Indians by moving away from the conventional gerontological trope of the (Indian) elderly as indivisible familial subjects, as a deliberate process of decolonizing the field of gerontology.     

Locative Mobile Social Networks: Mapping Communication and Location in Urban Spaces

Abstract

This study conceptualizes the new spatial logic created by the social use of location aware mobile technologies, analyzing how mobile communities are formed by the mapping of social networks in urban spaces. It explores two main areas with the goal of understanding how locative mobile social networks (LMSNs) challenge the traditional logic of networks. First, it conceptualizes LMSNs by comparing them to (1) traditional transportation and communication networks, and (2) mobile social networks (MSNs). Second, the paper discusses potential social implications of LMSNs, such as privacy, surveillance, and social exclusion.     

Coming Out of the Shadows and the Closet: Visibility Schemas Among Undocuqueer Immigrants

ABSTRACT

Centering the experiences of 31 undocuqueer immigrants, this study seeks to understand the ways that undocuqueer immigrants negotiate the boundaries of social performance by revealing or concealing their gender, sexuality, and immigration status. Findings of this study reveal how, in order to avoid the constant threat of rejection (both legal and social), undocuqueer immigrants engage visibility schemas and make strategic decisions about coming out of the shadows and the closet across different contexts. Undocuqueer immigrants’ narratives reveal the ways the closet resembles the shadows in that both provide protection from the outside world, yet neither are considered suitable places for sustaining life. This study raises implications for both research and policy by considering how the intersection of gender, sexuality, and immigration status nullifies neoliberal narratives of coming out as an empowering process and illustrating the uneven landscapes of social acceptance and political control that undocuqueer immigrants must negotiate.     

Drivers of job satisfaction in midwifery—A work design approach

BackgroundIdentifying common factors that influence job satisfaction for midwives working in diverse work settings is challenging. Applying a work design model developed in organisational behaviour to the midwifery context may help identify key antecedents of midwives job satisfaction.AimTo investigate three job characteristics – decision-making autonomy, empowerment, and professional recognition as antecedents of job satisfaction in New Zealand (NZ) midwives.MethodsLatent multiple regressions were performed on data from Lead Maternity Carer (LMC) midwives n = 327, employed midwives n = 255, and midwives working in ‘mixed-roles’ n = 123.FindingsWe found that professional recognition is positively linked to job satisfaction for midwives in all three work settings. At the same time, decision-making autonomy and empowerment were shown to influence job satisfaction for midwives working as LMCs only.DiscussionOur main finding suggests that the esteem generated from being acknowledged as an expert and valuable contributor by maternity health colleagues is satisfying across all work contexts. Professional recognition encompasses the social dimension of midwifery work and influences midwives job satisfaction. Decision-making autonomy and empowerment are task and relational job characteristics that may not be similarly experienced by all midwives to noticeably influence job satisfaction.ConclusionGiven that job satisfaction contributes to recruitment, retention, and sustainability, our findings show that drivers of job satisfaction differ by midwifery work context. We present evidence to support tailored efforts to bolster midwives job satisfaction, especially where resources are limited.     

Taking Sacred Space out of Place: From Mount Sinai to Mount Getty Through Travelling Icons

Abstract

Starting from a behind‐the‐scenes tour preceding the opening of the recent Getty exhibition Icons from Sinai, this article seeks to destabilize traditional notions of sacred space as a territorially fixed entity defined through a binary opposition to the profane. Icons and other ‘travelling’ sacred objects are regarded as vehicles for the circulation and displacement of holy places outside of their physical boundaries and for the reconfiguration of sacred space in new, hybrid forms. The paper thus suggests a reconceptualization of sacred space in relational terms, as the product of human and non‐human interactions and networked flows, and of ‘sacred places’ as ‘reassuring anchors’ (both territorial and imaginative) within a world of fluid global networks.     

Journeys to Knua: displacement,return and translocality in Timor-Leste

ABSTRACT

Return journeys to ancestral lands are a central dimension that underscores contemporary ideas of origin, identity, kinship, custom, health and prosperity for the East Timorese. The material and social reproduction of knua – both in the sense of the ancestral territory and associated kin-based ritual community – is heavily reliant on ongoing place-based and translocal customary reciprocal exchanges. Based on multi-sited fieldwork, this article examines the return journeys to Lesuai, an ancestral settlement in the remote central southern highlands of Timor-Leste, which was abandoned during the Indonesian invasion and restored in the later years of occupation. Lesuai community believes the spirit realm exerts an overwhelming influence over their general well-being, compelling ‘house’ members to renew their connection with knua to maintain family ties and benefit from ancestral protection. Closer ethnographic attention reveals how the motivations, experiences and understandings of ‘return’ to origin places are highly personal, gendered and generational. Broadly, these return mobilities demonstrate the agency, adaptability and resilience of conflict-affected populations. Through prolonged displacement and resettlement, dispersed knua members have created new livelihoods, subjectivities and attachments across multiple places, which are reconfiguring family ties, connections to ancestral places, and how ritual obligations are fulfilled.     

Differentiating the time-geography of recreational running

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes a relational time-geography approach to differentiate the geographies of recreational activities, whose place cannot be pinned down to a single specific infrastructure or area and therefore risks being marginalised in planning. Running is used as a case study. Based on diary-interviews, we have identified three different exercises/places used alternately by the respondents: the forest run; ‘the most boring route in the world’; and the tourist run. We argue that the time-geography of runners could be conceptualised as a rhythm of place dependencies, where different places afford complementary qualities. By allowing for a negotiation of the spatio-temporal constraints of everyday life, these different places (and their affordances) are of crucial importance for motivation and exercise.     

Medicaid,motherhood, and the challenges of having a healthy pregnancy amidst changing social networks

BackgroundAfrican American women with low income face various challenges to having a healthy pregnancy. Unplanned pregnancies often amplify those challenges and negatively impact women’s ability to get the care that she needs. Research has shown that social networks can improve pregnancy outcomes by helping women cope with and address the problems that they face. However, there is little research on how unintended pregnancy impacts the medical and social support that African American women receive.AimThis research explored how unintended pregnancies impact women’s social networks and the type of support that they need throughout the pregnancy.Design and sampleThis ethnographic study included 20 African American women who used pregnancy services at a health department in the United States. Fourteen women were enrolled in the study during their first or second trimester and were interviewed upon enrollment, in their third trimester, and within one month of giving birth. An additional six women were enrolled and interviewed within one month of giving birth.ResultsAfrican American women’s needs and social support networks change throughout their pregnancy. When medical providers primarily offer pregnancy information and referrals to social service agencies during the first trimester, problems that women have later in the pregnancy are not properly addressed.ConclusionSocial support needs to be accessed at multiple times during the pregnancy. Pregnancy resources should be provided throughout the pregnancy, recognizing that social support and personal struggles evolve during the pregnancy.     

Questionably Queer: Understanding Straight Presence in the Post-Gay Bar

ABSTRACT

Gay bars have long been understood as havens from heteronormativity. However, a shift towards greater LGBTQ tolerance has led to more heterosexual involvement in these once marginal places. Such shifts towards ‘post-gay’ identity politics have called into question the queerness of many LGBTQ-oriented social outlets. This paper illustrates how rhetorical marketing and aesthetic choices lead some venues to develop reputations as questionably queer spaces—reputations that are created and negotiated by patrons as they evaluate these venues’ ultimate functionality in relation to their own increasingly uncertain ideals about the form and desirability of queer spaces. By examining how divergent configurations of queerness mediate the ambivalence many LGBTQ people feel about these places and the straight people who occupy them, we can further our knowledge about how queer space operates today without getting trapped within the homonormative/queer dichotomy that limits much pre-existing research.     

Predicting Ambivalence: When Same-Sex Sex is Only “Sometimes Wrong”

ABSTRACT

Despite Americans’ growing acceptance of LGBTQ people and their sexual behaviors over the past 40 years, approximately 10% of the population consistently expresses conflicted feelings, reporting that same-sex sex is only sometimes wrong. This research employs a theory of socially structured ambivalence to examine how individuals with ambivalence toward the morality of same-sex sex differ from those with strong moral stances. Using multinomial regression analysis of General Social Survey data, we find that socio-structural conflicts—e.g. simultaneous membership in institutions with conflicting normative messages—are predictive of ambivalent attitudes, and the presence of these structured conflicts appears to have a cumulative effect. These findings provide evidence of the predictive power of socially structured conflicts in producing ambivalent attitudes and expand the existing literature on ambivalence and attitudes about same-sex relations. We propose that scholars conceptualize ambivalence as a distinctly socio-structural and relational construct that may help to signal fertile ground for social change.     

Pedaling Power: Bicycles,Subjectivities and Landscapes in a Settler Colonial Society

Abstract

Mobilities across contested terrains are key to the formation of settler societies. This paper explores how safety bicycles were drawn into the Australian settler project at the turn of the twentieth century, just as the six independent colonies were federating into the Commonwealth of Australia. As recently imported objects, bicycles afforded settler men unprecedented mobility across remote landscapes that had not been smoothed by the infrastructures of the ‘old world’. In those years of national formation, bicycles were received as objects that could fill ‘empty’ land with people, things, activities and stories, at the same time as they generated masculine, settler subjectivities. A practice approach to settler mobilities helps to tease out the entanglements between bicycle ‘overlanding’ and two fundamental imperatives of settlerism: transforming indigenous places into settler places and creating ‘nativised’ settler subjectivities.     

Professional women “rebalancing” in retirement: Time,relationships, and body

ABSTRACT

This is an interview-based study focused on how professional baby boomer women negotiate and narrate postretirement lives. This group came of age in the 1960s and represents a socially privileged segment of the baby boomer generation, a cohort that created new gendered pathways in employment. Today, these retired professional women are attempting to make sense of their multilayered complex and changing realities. In their accounts, the most salient themes are shifting identity, embodiment, and relationships. By using what we call a relational lens, we will show how many aspects of postretirement life, for these professional women, are mediated by changing relationships—relationships to time, work identity, friends and family, and body. Through these individual and relational contexts we see how female professional baby boomer retirees grapple with liberation and loss, autonomy and control, ongoing gendered work, and rebalancing in a new chapter of life. Perhaps most importantly, we see how learning about self in this stage of life, and perhaps across the life course, takes place largely in the context of relationships.     

Daughters-in-Law as Caregivers: How and Why Do They Come to Care?

ABSTRACT

This exploratory qualitative study examines the family dynamics and socio-structural factors which explain how and why some women become caregivers to in-laws. As well, it explores prevailing attitudes about care by in-laws. Material is drawn retrospectively from three previous studies of caregivers in Montreal, Quebec, including 10 semi-structured interviews with daughters-in-law and 72 interviews with spousal and child caregivers. An exploratory framework of the factors which are determinant in becoming a daughter-in-law caregiver is proposed which includes such elements as: social and cultural norms regarding family responsibility for eldercare; social and cultural norms regarding the place and the rights of the elderly; rules of family relations, couple dynamics, gender dynamics and family availability.     

How do health professionals support pregnant and young mothers in the community? A selective review of the research literature

BackgroundThe cultural phenomenon of “teenage pregnancy and motherhood” has been socially constructed and (mis)represented in social and health care discourses for several decades. Despite a growing body of qualitative research that presents an alternative and positive view of young motherhood, there remains a significant gap between pregnant and young women's experience of young motherhood and current global health and social policy that directs service delivery and practice.AimThis paper aims to heighten awareness of how a negative social construction of young motherhood influences global health and social policy that directs current community health models of practice and care for young mothers in the community.DiscussionThere is clear evidence on the vital role social support plays in young women's experience of pregnancy and motherhood, particularly in forming a positive motherhood identity. This discussion paper calls us to start open and honest dialogue on how we may begin to re-vision the ‘deficit view’ of young motherhood in order to address this contradiction between research evidence, policy discourse and current practice and service provision. Qualitative research that privileges young women's voices by considering the multidimensional experiences of young motherhood is an important step towards moving away from universally prescribed interventions to a non-standard approach that fosters relational and responsive relationships with young mothers that includes addressing the immediate needs of young mothers at the particular time.     

Quality of Social Networks Among UK Chinese

The present study examines factors affecting the quality of social networks of Chinese in the UK, in relation to network size and perceived respect gained from social network. The study further explores the role of social networks in relation to the social norms of helping and helping behaviour. Two hundred and eleven British Chinese participants recruited from Chinese health and community centres across the United Kingdom completed a quantitative questionnaire. The 38-item instrument consisted of four main domains: health and functioning; social functioning; volunteerism; and demographics. Findings revealed an association between social participation and social network size. High levels of trust in family members was found to be negatively associated with social network size, implying that strong family relations is a hindrance to social network size among British Chinese participants. More research is needed to further explore social networks of the British Chinese and the implications that this may have on use of services and social participation.     

Making practice transparent through e-portfolio

BackgroundMidwives are required to maintain a professional portfolio as part of their statutory requirements. Some midwives are using open social networking tools and processes to develop an e-portfolio. However, confidentiality of patient and client data and professional reputation have to be taken into consideration when using online public spaces for reflection.QuestionThere is little evidence about how midwives use social networking tools for ongoing learning. It is uncertain how reflecting in an e-portfolio with an audience impacts on learning outcomes. This paper investigates ways in which reflective midwifery practice be carried out using e-portfolio in open, social networking platforms using collaborative processes.MethodsUsing an auto-ethnographic approach I explored my e-portfolio and selected posts that had attracted six or more comments. I used thematic analysis to identify themes within the textual conversations in the posts and responses posted by readers.FindingsThe analysis identified that my collaborative e-portfolio had four themes: to provide commentary and discuss issues; to reflect and process learning; to seek advice, brainstorm and process ideas for practice, projects and research, and provide evidence of professional development.ConclusionsE-portfolio using open social networking tools and processes is a viable option for midwives because it facilitates collaborative reflection and shared learning. However, my experience shows that concerns about what people think, and client confidentiality does impact on the nature of open reflection and learning outcomes. I conclude this paper with a framework for managing midwifery statutory obligations using online public spaces and social networking tools.     

Mind the Gap: The Tempo Rubato of Dwelling in Lineups

Abstract

Despite their prominence in everyday life lineups are of peripheral concern to mobility scholars. Aiming to contribute to our existing knowledge on lineups and the transitory places of everyday life writ large, this paper attempts investigates lineups at small island ferry terminals. Drawing upon fieldwork including travel to, on and from ferry boats, for a total of about 250 journeys over three years, and about 400 qualitative interviews, this mobile ethnography focuses on practices of ferry mobility in coastal British Columbia. Lineups are portrayed as complex orchestrations of rest and movement weaved through relational performances of mobility and relative immobility. As neither a place in the sedentarist nor nomadic sense, lineups defeat facile, dichotomous conceptualizations of spatialities and temporalities. Neither still nor flowing, neither public nor private, lineups are animated by idiosyncratic practices of dwelling whereby multiple and unique forms of livelihood are performed. Ferry lineups are ephemeral moorings: places where communities form and dissolve in temporary zones, as if suspended from the regular rhythms of the rest of the day and the week. On small islands lineups exist as stolen time‐spaces – an original concept that draws inspiration from the musical idea of tempo rubato and from Michel de Certeau’s (1984) treatment of tactics.     

Adolescents’ Appraisal of Homophobic Epithets: The Role of Individual and Situational Factors

ABSTRACT

Homophobic epithets have become commonly used insults among adolescents. However, evidence suggests that there are differences in how these homophobic epithets are evaluated based on beliefs held by the observer and the context in which they are used. To examine this, Italian high school students were asked to rate the offensiveness of homophobic epithets, as well as to consider how they or others would react to homophobic epithets across various situations. Homophobic beliefs and beliefs about the social acceptability of homophobic epithets were also examined. It was found that greater perceived social acceptability of homophobic epithets was related to dismissive reactions to their use, whereas homophobic beliefs were predictive of negative emotional reactions but in varying ways depending on the specific context. The results indicate that homophobic epithets may not always be perceived as homophobic by adolescents, and that attempts to alter the social acceptability of these insults may be an effective manner of reducing their use.