Women in Politics in Norway

This paper attempts to explain how and why women in Norway have achieved unusually high political representation. The study, based on forty-three personal interviews with female politicians and persons familiar with Norwegian political culture, found that certain favorable social and political preconditions existed in Norway that encouraged women's entry into politics. However, it was the strong and effectively organized women's movement which was responsible for the significant increase of women in politics. A number of environmental opportunities and threats facilitated the formation of a successful coalition between establishment and new feminist factions of the women's movement. This coalition then used effective strategies to get more women into politics.     

Schizophrenia in older adults

Although the number of people older than 55 with schizophrenia is expected to double during the next 20 years, the research data on older adults with schizophrenia are limited. This appears to be because until the middle of the 20th century, it was assumed that mental illness in older adults was a part of the aging process and because older adults are often excluded from research investigations. Nursing research is needed to explore how people with schizophrenia learn to manage their problems as they age, as well as how those who are first diagnosed with schizophrenia in later life adapt to their illness. Mental health nurses need to be cautious in assigning premature labels to older adults with mental illness that may lead to unsubstantiated assumptions about levels of disability. Instead, nurses should realize individual potential regarding undiscovered strengths and should attempt to create interventions that recognize and foster personal development for older adults with schizophrenia.     

No safety net for disabled children in residential institutions in Ireland

The voices of adults and children with disabilities who have experienced violence and abuse are slowly beginning to surface in the public domain. Segregated residential institutions run by religious congregations appear to be dangerous places for children with disabilities and perceived differences – according to the former residents, speaking and communicating to us today as adults in Ireland. A statutory Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse in Ireland attracted important numbers of former residents – witnesses – who recounted appalling experiences of violence as children. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities contains articles concerning the prevention of cruelty, sexual assault, violence and acts of humiliation that may be useful for countries like Ireland which have been unable to ratify the Convention. The protection of children with disabilities requires legal reform in Ireland, statutory licensing, monitoring and inspection of the segregated centres where children with disabilities are living.     

Child Welfare Professionals’ Experiences in Engaging Fathers in Services

The purpose of this exploratory focus group study was to examine child welfare professionals’ (n = 22) experiences with and perspectives towards working with fathers. The six themes that emerged from the thematic analysis contrasted sharply with earlier research findings and indicated that child welfare professionals skillfully engage fathers and that some fathers trust the system and are motivated to be involved. The findings revealed insights about foster fathers and working with foster parents. Unique regional issues also emerged as a factor that affect fathers and families. Recommendations for designing training, especially in areas with limited fatherhood specific services are provided.     

The Role of Grandparents in Single-Parent Families in Taiwan

Using data from the Taiwan Education Panel Survey, this study explored the role of co-resident grandparents in Taiwan's single-parent families. Single fathers were more likely to settle in multigenerational living arrangements than single mothers. Grandparent co-residence was positively associated with adolescents’ cognitive scores, but the benefit was even larger for youths from single-father families. Grandparent co-residence was correlated with greater parental investment, although in different ways for different types of single families. Single fathers interacted more with the child and had higher educational expectations if living with a grandparent. Single mothers in three-generation families spent more tutorial expense than other single mothers. These results suggest that the grandparent role may be supplementary to weak family functioning.     

Personal assistance in Sweden

This article provides an overview of the Swedish personal assistance program for persons with severe impairments, introduced in 1994. The personal assistance program makes it financially possible for people with severe disabilities to appoint a personal assistant, by themselves or through a provider, to create support adapted to the individual and to optimize the person's influence over how the support is arranged. The article describes how the reform has increased the opportunity for people with severe disabilities to choose their own way of living. Overall, the personal assistance has enhanced the quality of life for people with severe disabilities and their families.     

Transition in practice and action in research. A French case study in piloting eco-innovations

Transition in practice means that diverse organizations – from private foundations to citizen-led movements for “cities in transition” – are experiencing ways to bring about sustainable transitions at the system level. While academic thinking on sustainability transitions can efficiently inform transition in practice, these organizations' initiatives can enrich the analytic understanding of transitions. It is this mutually beneficial trade-off that became the purpose of the action research project with the French private foundation Fondaterra, and which led to the drafting of Fondaterra's own model in piloting eco-innovations towards transition. This paper outlines the main features of the Fondaterra model: the territorial perspective, the idea of piloting change, espousing prospective visions, creating new chains of value, implementing demonstrators and monitoring. The comparison of this model with the transition management model suggests that the latter may resonate with other intervention methodologies that have been developed with strong concern for governance strategies, and that many configurations of transition in practice led by intermediary organizations could achieve tangible results in triggering transitions.     

The Crisis in Psychology

The crisis ofpsychology is not in the lack of psychologists or lack of literature being produced. It is in the poor development of our understanding of human life, the science itself, and the relationship of the science to the world. Three senses in which there has been loss, subject matter, method, and mission, are discussed. The loss with respect to subject matter is associated with the systematic denial of the self-evident fact that mentation, at least in the form of decisions, plans and goals, is essential to human conduct The loss with respect to method is based on the uncritical acceptance of the assumption that the psychological is readily revealed by applying statistical methods to aggregated measures of behavior. The loss with respect to mission is manifested in the separation of modem psychology from its classical association with political science, and the task of designing the social order so that it is in harmony with human nature. The historical role of psychology in promoting the unfortunate idea that the main purpose of education is to fix responses rather than to enlighten and liberate is indicated.     

The crisis in psychology

The crisis of psychology is not in the lack of psychologists or lack of literature being produced. It is in the poor development of our understanding of human life, the science itself, and the relationship of the science to the world. Three senses in which there has been loss, subject matter, method, and mission, are discussed. The loss with respect to subject matter is associated with the systematic denial of the self-evident fact that mentation, at least in the form of decisions, plans and goals, is essential to human conduct. The loss with respect to method is based on the uncritical acceptance of the assumption that the psychological is readily revealed by applying statistical methods to aggregated measures of behavior. The loss with respect to mission is manifested in the separation of modern psychology from its classical association with political science, and the task of designing the social order so that it is in harmony with human nature. The historical role of psychology in promoting the unfortunate idea that the main purpose of education is to fix responses rather than to enlighten and liberate is indicated.     

A Sex Difference in Mental Rotation in Infants: Convergent Evidence

Quinn and Liben (2008) reported a sex difference on a mental rotation task in which 3‐ to 4‐month‐olds were familiarized with a shape in different rotations and then tested with a novel rotation of the familiar shape and its mirror image. As a group, males but not females showed a significant preference for the mirror image, a pattern paralleled at the individual level (with most males but less than half the females showing the preference). Experiment 1 examined a possible explanation for this performance difference, namely, that females were more sensitive to the angular differences in the familiarized shape. Three‐ to 4‐month‐olds were given a discrimination task involving familiarization with a shape at a given rotation and preference testing with the shape in the familiarized versus a novel rotation. Females and males preferred the novel rotation, with no sex difference observed. This finding did not provide support for the suggestion that the sex difference in mental rotation is explained by differential sensitivity to angular rotation. Experiment 2 revealed that the sex difference in mental rotation is observed in 6‐ to 7‐month‐olds and 9‐ to 10‐month‐olds, suggesting that a sex difference in mental rotation is present at multiple ages during infancy.     

Marginalisation processes in inclusive education in Norway: a longitudinal study of classroom participation

The aim of this paper is to describe the classroom participation of primary school children with disabilities who attend regular schools in Norway; to explore how relations between children with disabilities and their environment change, and further to chart how schools act in response to such change. The analyses are based on a life course study with data gathered from interviews and questionnaires given to the parents of children with disabilities born in the period between 1993 and 1995. The results show an increasing marginalisation of children with disabilities who receive their primary school education at regular schools. Despite the fact that public policies in Norway are based on a relational understanding of disability, thus suggesting that educators would make considerable efforts to accommodate children with disabilities in regular schools, the reality is that schools take an individual approach to children with disabilities which reflects a medical understanding of disability.     

Issues of educational support in primary school and secondary education in disadvantaged suburbs in France

From a critical sociological perspective, this article advances the debate between global schooling with political incentives and local meanings with localized educational practices and supports. It focuses on the role of education policies in the pursuit of social inclusion and social justice, but also shows how local actors adapt and experiment in managing the socio-cultural diversity of the students and the school contexts. First, I show the issues of educational support policies in the French context with a historical background and their re-appropriation by local actors. Second, I present the theoretical framework of my research (2008 to 2013), the methodology and initial results. Last, I analyze the main qualitative results of my comparative research in order to highlight ‘good’ or ‘bad’ educational support practices according to various criteria, starting with interactional socio-cultural posture between different actors.     

Changes in service provision in rural areas. Part 1: The use of GIS in analysing accessibility to services in rural deprivation research

Previous work has highlighted the importance of public service provision in rural areas particularly for potentially vulnerable groups such as the elderly, unemployed and single parents especially where this coincides with a lack of access to either private or public transport. Disadvantage can often be compounded by limited access to services for such groups with the superior resources of more affluent social groups enabling them to respond and adapt to the increasing centralisation and reduction of services. This paper reviews previous investigations of the implications of changing accessibility to services in rural areas and draws attention to the need for a new research agenda which uses spatial analytical techniques to gauge the current levels of (in)accessibility to key services at the community level. These techniques are illustrated in Part 2 of the paper with reference to changes in post office provision in mid Wales, and the policy significance of incorporating geographical information systems-based measures of provision into traditional area-based indicators of disadvantage is discussed.     

Issues in psychotherapy with HIV-infected Latinos in New York city

This article will discuss issues important in psychotherapy with Latinos with HIV/AIDS in New York City. The various levels of oppressed group membership will be discussed as they relate to a therapeutic understanding of the mental health needs of Latinos. A case study will be used to demonstrate the clinical applications of the Model of Multiple Oppression.     

Asian multiculturalism in communication: Impact of culture in the practice of public relations in Singapore

This study aims to understand the role of cultural values in influencing public relations practice in Singapore. Given that Singapore exhibits a hybrid of cultures, it purposes to comprehend how multiculturalism is operationalized and to uncover if the values that have a greater influence on organizational communication resemble those in individualistic or collectivistic societies. Using Gudykunst’s (1998) seven dimensions that influence individualism-collectivism on communication as a guide, this study interviewed 20 public relations practitioners in Singapore. Our findings showed that although the patterns expressed is slightly more consistent with those found in collectivistic cultures, it does not resemble collectivism in entirety. Multiculturalism in Singapore displays a blend of certain cultural hybridity, which is aligned with it being a multicultural cosmopolitan city that embodies Western modernity while retaining its Asian values. Our findings further reinforced the idea that public relations professionals need to be multicultural themselves to effectively communicate with culturally diverse stakeholders in today’s globalizing era of multiculturalism.     

Problems in Remarriage

This study explored the problems in remarriages which remained intact and those which ended in divorce to determine differences in the seriousness of problems with step/children and whether the redivorced reported greater disagreement on key issues. The effects of gender and family structure on marital consensus were explored also. Using a matched sample of 26 remarried and redivorced individuals, the findings indicated that those redivorced did not report problems with step/children to be more serious. They did report a significantly greater frequency of disagreement with spouses on matters involving money, parenting of step/children, spousal and outsider relations, household expectations, and miscellaneous issues. It also was found that gender and remarried family type did not significantly affect consensus except for "outsider" relations; remarriages with children born only to the current marriage reported greater disagreement than either simple or complex stepfamilies.     

Alligators in the sewer,dragons in the well and Freud in the toilet

One of the most popular of all urban legends is the story about alligators in the sewers of New York (abbreviated AIS story). While previous investigations have been concerned with the historical origins of AIS stories, this article is concerned with developing a psychoanalytic explanation which accounts for the continuing popularity of such stories. In developing such an explanation, this article makes use of the association between‘penis’ and ‘feces,’ an association that is very likely among the earliest associations formed in the human mind. Given the penis = feces association, and given Freud's suggestion that the young child will typically take defecation as a model for castration, it is argued that AIS stories are ultimately concerned with castration. The fact that ‘castration’ has different connotations for males and females helps to explain some of the details invariably incorporated into an AIS story. Finally, the argument developed in connection with modern AIS stories is used to provide a new perspective upon traditional English stories about dragons.     

Tradition and Change in Vietnamese Family Structure in the Red River Delta

One of the key features of Vietnamese family organization is patrilocality—the preference of married couples to coreside with the husband's parents. With data drawn from a retrospective survey of persons in 1,855 households in the largest province in the Red River Delta in northern Vietnam, we found that more than 75% of married respondents reported having lived with the grooms' family after marriage. The proportion of newly married couples that follow the patrilocal custom appears to have increased in recent decades, although the average duration of coresidence has declined. Some aspects of modernization, especially nonagricultural occupations and later age at marriage, contribute to a lower incidence of intergenerational coresidence, but the underlying cultural preference to live with the grooms' parents immediately after marriage appears to have become stronger in Vietnam. In contrast to some features of traditional family life that conflict with modernity, intergenerational coresidence can be quite functional in modernizing societies.     

Interpersonal trauma and associated psychopathology in girls and boys living in residential care

Out-of-home placement in e.g. residential care is the most common intervention for children and adolescents at risk and studies have shown that this population exhibits high prevalence rates of traumatic events. Associations with specific psychopathology need to be studied in order to sensitize caregivers to the specific needs of this population. The present study aimed to assess the relationship between interpersonal traumatic experiences and specific psychopathological symptoms in a high-risk population of girls and boys living in youth welfare institutions in residential care. 370 adolescents living in 64 different Swiss institutions and their professional caregivers filled out questionnaires on traumatic experiences and psychopathology and took part in structured clinical interviews. They were grouped in 3 different subgroups: no interpersonal trauma, single interpersonal trauma and multiple interpersonal trauma, i.e. interpersonal trauma in two or more domains. Furthermore, associations between the identity of the perpetrator (if the perpetrator was known vs. unknown to the victim) and psychopathology were examined. One third of participants reported multiple interpersonal trauma with female adolescents being more often affected. Multiple interpersonal trauma was associated with more internalizing and externalizing symptoms, but this association was only found with self-reported psychopathology. Male adolescents with multiple interpersonal trauma seemed to be more vulnerable to substance use and affective disorders, while female adolescents with multiple interpersonal trauma tended to have disorders of attention, activity and conduct disorders. Interpersonal trauma (compared to no interpersonal trauma) was not associated with higher rates of PTSD. Furthermore, associations between interpersonal trauma and psychopathology were stronger when the perpetrator was known to the victim.Our results suggest that interpersonal trauma, especially multiple interpersonal trauma, seem to be associated with mental health problems beyond the symptoms of PTSD in this high-risk population. Concepts of residential care institutions should contain trauma-sensitive care and include psychiatric liaison services in order to take into account the specific needs of adolescents in residential care.     

Identity Formation in Children and Young People in Open Adoptions from Out-of-home Care in New South Wales,Australia

Semi-structured interviews were used to explore identity development for nine adoptees (aged 9–23 years) who were adopted by their foster carers in New South Wales, Australia. Adoptions were open, with court-ordered face-to-face contact with birth families. Findings suggest that participants had healthy adoptive identities, with coherent and meaningful narratives about their life histories. Adoption provided a sense of security and belonging. Openness provided information to build a self-narrative and encouraged discussion of adoption issues within adoptive families. Adoptive parents were critical in helping children understand their adoption and facilitating direct contact with birth families, thus laying foundations for positive identity development.