Memory,Mourning and Meaning in a Psychotherapist’s Life

In this paper the author, a psychotherapist specializing in bereavement, recounts her personal experiences of loss and the ways in which they intersect and inform her professional life. One clinical vignette explores how unresolved grief in a patient and anticipated grief in a therapist emerge in transference-counter-transference issues. Another vignette illustrates a way in which supportive therapy can open the door to intra-psychic work with the ill or dying patient and how psychoanalytically informed psychotherapy with the aged can help them to re-imagine their lives and to form different relationships, in their minds, with significant others in their past.     

Two’s company,three’s a crowd: disabled people,their carers and their partners

In this analytical autoethnography, I share some of my complex relational experiences between my partner with a severe physical disability, his carers and myself. The article explores the benefits of care and carers, the physical and emotional costs of carers and some of the general considerations taken in this triad relationship. I share some of my relational experiences with an audience who might not normally encounter or have thought about the dynamic relationships between this triad. It is hoped that this will stimulate an interest to open dialogue, offer support and provide an insight into the lives of some relationships.     

What’s in a frame? Goal framing,trust and reciprocity

Economists often rely on the Berg et al. (1995) trust game, or variants thereof, to identify levels of trust and reciprocity, which are fundamental to discussions of social capital. But to what extent is behavior in this game sensitive to the way the instructions are framed? We use the Berg et al. trust game played for ten rounds with random re-matching to study this. We implement a number of variations in the way the game is presented to subjects. We show that levels of trust, reciprocity and returns to trust are significantly higher under “goal framing”, which highlights the conflict inherent in the game, between self-interest and maximizing social surplus. Furthermore, with such framing, trust measured via the experimental game exhibits significant positive correlation with trust measured via the Social Values Orientation questionnaire.     

‘When he gets among his Countrymen,they tell him that he is free’: Slave Trade Abolition,Indentured Africans and a Royal Commission

The 1807 Act to abolish the British slave trade determined that those Africans seized by the British navy from illegally operating slave ships would be enlisted into the armed forces or indentured for a maximum of 14 years. In 1821, a Royal Commission was sent to the West Indies to investigate the ‘state’ and ‘condition’ of those Africans who had been indentured under the Act. This article focuses on the work of the Commission – as it became riven by a personal and political dispute – in Tortola. It pays particular attention to the testimonies of the indentured Africans documented in the records. Their dissident narratives further disrupted the inquiry as they refused to answer to either redemptive abolitionism or instrumental political economy – the overlapping discourses framing the ways in which alternatives to enslaved labour were conceptualised during the 1820s.     

‘Northernness’, gender and Manchester’s creative industries

This article explores northernness and gender in the context of creative industries in Manchester. I argue that a version of northernness has been mobilised by those within the creative industries and that this identity is strongly linked with masculinity. The article examines the emergence of new creative industries in Manchester from the 1980s onwards. Many of these new creative industries were connected with music and club culture and often prioritised ‘lads’ and their interests. The ‘heritage’ and influence of this seedbed stage of Manchester’s creative industries and the dominant discourses about Manchester’s pop cultural creativity has had a profound influence on the ‘gendering’ of subsequent creative industries in this city. A paradigm of northern ‘laddishness’ pervades the creative sector in Manchester, and this is amplified and sustained by a powerful, media fuelled, cultural identity of the city and its popular culture. A number of local specificities have had an impact on linking creativity to ‘northern’ masculinity in the Manchester case. This has contributed to the ascendency of closed, male-dominated networks in the creative sector. This appears to stand in the way of women’s full access to, and participation in, the city’s creative industries. I suggest that all empirical case studies of creative industries could find value in reflecting on the local context and specificities of place. Using Manchester as a case study, I argue that place-specific identities could productively be explored in debates about exclusion and underrepresentation of women in creative industries.     

Rapport: Little effect on children’s,adolescents’, and adults’ statement quantity,accuracy, and suggestibility

Abstract

Rapport building is widely recommended in eyewitness interview situations and is a critical component in some interview protocols. However, empirical evidence on the effectiveness of rapport building on memory performance is scant. The current experiment examined the effects of different levels of rapport (none, minimal, extensive) on children’s, adolescents’, and adults’ memory (N?=?229). Participants viewed a video of a mock theft and received one of three possible rapport manipulations. They then provided a free narrative of what they had seen, followed by 18 cued (suggestive and nonsuggestive) questions. In general, we found limited evidence of positive effects of rapport building on statement quantity and accuracy across age groups. Adolescents did profit more from extensive rapport building compared to no rapport. In line with the idea of a linear development of memory measures with age, adolescents generally fell in-between the other two age groups across different memory measures. The current study encourages systematic experimental research on the effect of rapport building on eyewitness memory.     

Algorithmically recognizable: Santorum’s Google problem,and Google’s Santorum problem

ABSTRACT

Because information algorithms make judgments that can have powerful consequences, those interested in having their information selected will orient themselves toward these algorithmic systems, making themselves algorithmically recognizable, in the hopes that they will be amplified by them. Examining this interplay, between information intermediaries and those trying to be seen by them, connects the study of algorithmic systems to long-standing concerns about the power of intermediaries – not an algorithmic power, uniquely, but the power to grant visibility and certify meaning, and the challenge of discerning who to grant it to and why. Here, I consider Dan Savage’s attempt to redefine the name of U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, a tactical intervention that topped Google’s search results for nearly a decade, and then mysteriously dropped during the 2012 Republican nominations. Changes made to Google’s algorithm at the time may explain the drop; here, they help to reveal the kind of implicitly political distinctions search engines must invariably make, between genuine patterns of participation and tactical efforts to approximate them.     

“It’s a Lifestyle”: Social Class,Flexibility, and Young Adults’ Stories About Defining Adulthood

Abstract

In discussions of how social class matters during the transition to adulthood, the simultaneous importance of both class origins and future class trajectories is underexplored. In this paper, I use interviews with 60 emerging adults in the United States to investigate their stories about progress towards adulthood during the emerging adult years. I find that regardless of class backgrounds and trajectories, participants agree on three subjective criteria—identity exploration, learning responsibility, and gaining control—as most important to the project of becoming an adult. However, personal stories about living up to these subjective criteria diverge by future class plans. While those on class-advantaged (middle- and upper-middle-class) tracks draw heavily from traditional, concrete markers of adulthood to explain the accomplishment of subjective expectations, those on class-disadvantaged (working-class and poor) tracks stress the importance of “flexibility” as important in their stories about becoming an adult. While emerging adults use subjective criteria to explain reaching adulthood, this subjectivity also helps conceal the ongoing importance of access to material resources and opportunities for transitioning to adulthood along a normative path. Subjectivity also allows for individualization in emerging adults’ stories, which helps obscure broader patterns of inequality.     

Development,Implementation, and Evaluation of a Comprehensive Course on Suicide in a Master’s of Social Work Program

ABSTRACT

Most master of social work (MSW) programs provide minimal education or training on suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention despite that the majority of social workers encounter suicidal clients during their professional careers. This study describes the development, implementation, and evaluation of a course on suicide in an MSW program. Changes in student suicide-related knowledge, confidence, and preparedness were evaluated using a pre/post design. We found statistically significant increases in knowledge (t [df = 21] = 4.79; p < .001), confidence (t [df = 17] = 8.55; p < .001), and preparedness (t [df = 20] = 7.28; p < .001) from pretest to posttest. Knowledge, confidence, and preparedness were significantly positively correlated, indicating that confidence and preparedness did not increase without a corresponding increase in knowledge. Given the prevalence of suicide and the frequency with which social workers serve populations affected by suicide, it is critical that MSW programs provide effective training on understanding suicide.     

Macau’s Heterotopias: Ruins of St. Paul’s as a Spatial and Temporal Disruption

This article explores and decodes the social experiences of the ruins of St. Paul’s in Macau. The depictions of St. Paul’s as a disruptive social space are elucidated by the concepts of heterotopia, palimpsest and liminality. As a palimpsest, Macau’s ruins comprise a variety of concealed and superimposed semantic layers. One can read the ruins and decipher these semantic tiers. The reading of buildings as palimpsests recognises the paradoxical combination of their durable and transitory nature. St. Paul’s ruins encompass several stratified discourses such as cultural, historical, aesthetic. All of them are deciphered in their multivalent configurations, revealing their overarching heterotopic quality. This article aims to display St. Paul’s ruins as a culturally meaningful urban space of otherness within the ambivalent spatial realm of Macau while unfolding its disruptive nature.     

‘This is real now because it’s a piece of paper’: texts,disability, and LGBTQ parents

What role do texts play in LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) parents’ experiences of disability service systems? In interviews with 15 LGBTQ parents of disabled children in Toronto, Canada, participants selected documents to be used as a focus for discussion. Parents considered how LGBTQ identity and other intersectional identities influenced their experiences of institutional texts including adoption certificates, intake forms, and assessments. Findings suggest that documentation practices can operate as forms of systemic gatekeeping. LGBTQ identity was sometimes very significant in parents’ accounts, and sometimes less central than other aspects of their families' identities and experiences.     

Kuznets’s Inverted U-Curve Hypothesis: The Rise,Demise, and Continued Relevance of a Socioeconomic Law

This paper provides a historical analysis of the changing significance of the most influential statement ever made on inequality and development—Simon Kuznets’s “inverted U-curve hypothesis.” The shifting interpretations and appropriations of the hypothesis over time—from its status as a speculative supposition in 1955, to its rise and fall as a reified socioeconomic law, to its contested standing in the social sciences today—demonstrate how Kuznets’s arguments, originally advanced under more limited conditions, became transformed into overarching theoretical, empirical, and political constructions. This history suggests that even empirically grounded and testable social science models are contingent on the broader social and political contexts in which they are produced and negotiated.