Women’s Experiences with Infertility: The Fluidity of Conceptualizations of ‘Family’

In this study, I examine women’s experiences with infertility and the impact upon their conceptualizations of ‘family.’ Active interviews with 32 women revealed most women started out with conceptualizations that reflected a traditional ideology of family. Participants who conceived biological children through medical assistance expressed a broader conceptualization of family through a greater appreciation for their children and family life in general. Women who did not conceive, despite medical assistance to do so, also discussed broadening their conceptualizations so that ‘family’ took on new meanings, structures, and/or significance. Conceptually, the analysis shows how notions of family are not static, but rather a fluid process subject to interpretation and re-evaluation as a result of life events, in this case, encounters with infertility.     

The Concept of ‘Family’ Among Norwegian Adolescents in Long-Term Foster Care

In Norway, about 8,000 children live in foster homes (about 3.300 in age group 13–17). What does ‘family’ mean to these children? We explored the views and feelings about ‘family’ among 22 adolescents who are living in long-term foster care. Three patterns emerged. Most of the participants expressed confidence and adjustment in the foster home placement and felt bonded to both their foster family and to their birth family. Other adolescents expressed a strong sense of membership to their birth family but not to their foster family, and the remaining adolescents described a weak bond to birth family but a strong bond to their foster family. The main implications of the three patterns are discussed in the light of policy and practice.     

The ‘Harmonization’ of Islam with the Neoliberal Transformation: The Case of Turkey

The end of the Cold War brought about a great uncertainty in relation to the geopolitical order. The prevalence of this neoliberal model of development had as a prerequisite the integration of countries other than the traditionally developed and powerful nations of the West. As a consequence, the developing or the less economically developed economies were the ones appearing to acquire ‘renewed’ importance. A fundamental aspect of these repercussions was the triggering of ideological debates over the compatibility of Islam with this stage of capitalist development. One major axon of these debates was the ‘desecularization’ of capitalist modernization and the integration of Islam in the new global order. This article examines the case of Turkey in this framework. It analyses how the ‘Conservative Democracy’ programme of the Justice and Development Party is ‘harmonizing’ Islam with the transformation of the country and how this transformation is presented with ‘local colours’, being more acceptable and creating the new hegemony in Turkey.     

The ‘recidivist tongue’: embracing an embodied language of trauma

This article analyses selected excerpts from the writing of Antjie Krog and Yvonne Vera in order to theorise strategies for overcoming the disjuncture between the mind and the body that tends to result from violence. Both authors repeatedly return to the bodies of their characters and they insist that psychic and physical pain and trauma reside in the bodies of survivors as much as in their psyches. Acknowledging this corporeal reality of violence circumvents any opportunity to deny the totality of the impact that violence has on the lives of survivors. This has implications for survivors as well as for those who read or hear about violence. By developing an embodied language of violence and trauma, these authors offer new and more comprehensive ways of dealing with traumatic violations. When survivors reclaim their bodies, they are also able to utilise their bodies’ capacity for healing and comfort. When readers, and society at large, are unable to deny the harm that violence does to bodies, they are compelled to recognise the reality of survivors’ suffering. The article illustrates that the body can speak and that we ignore its voice at our peril.     

Newly Educated MSW Social Workers’ Use of Evidence-Based Practice and Evidence-Supported Interventions: Results From an Online Survey

ABSTRACT

Social work programs have increased evidence-based practice (EBP)-related curricular content; yet, it is unclear whether newer practitioners are successful in incorporating it into their practice. This study examines factors that influence the use of EBP among newly graduated social workers. We developed and implemented a Web-based survey that assessed individual, school, and agency factors that predict implementation of EBP among a sample of master’s of social work practitioners post-graduation. Multiple regression analysis resulted in five factors that were significantly associated with use of EBP: confidence with EBP; feeling that EBP is essential to practice; organizational culture emphasizes EBP; field placement/internship emphasizes EBP; and faculty emphasizes EBP. Findings suggest that individual and organizational factors may be more important in determining use of EBP than educational program factors alone.     

‘Someone Needs to Carry on the Legacy of My Family’: Childbearing Perceptions Among Adolescents and Young Adults with Perinatally Acquired Hiv

Objectives: This qualitative project explored perceptions of adolescents and young adults (AYA) with perinatally acquired HIV (PHIV) regarding childbearing motivations and parenting. Methods: In-depth interviews were conducted with 35 AYA with PHIV (M_age = 20.5 years). Results: Primary childbearing motivations included the desire to experience parenthood, a wish to leave a legacy, and the chance to offer/receive unconditional love. Anticipated challenges included normative concerns (e.g., cost of parenting) and such HIV-specific concerns as parental disclosure/risk for transmission. Conclusions: Information is needed to tailor developmentally and culturally sensitive interventions to promote healthy development across the life span among the 3rd generation of HIV-affected families.     

The making of ‘Brother Time’: extending a traditional project through visual methods

Previously interested on how the Internet was shaping science in less developed regions, the World Science Project turned its research lenses to document the often-tragic setting of science in less developed regions. Based upon 100 hours of video documentation and extensive interviews (conducted in 2008 and 2009) with Kenyan research professionals, university administrators, religious leaders, journalists, shopkeepers, farmers, college students, and internally displaced refugees, our international research team investigated the unique role played by universities and research institutes during a violent political episode following presidential elections. Conducting video research that focuses on a sensitive political issue in a developing nation, involves a variety of logistical, cultural, and methodological obstacles that continued through post-production. Despite these challenges, the video documentary dimension of the research project proved instrumental in (1) reflecting upon, as well as extending, our empirical research on science in less developed regions and, as importantly, (2) elaborating upon a theoretical perspective that has evolved out of this research – Re-agency.     

The White Management of ‘Volunteering’: Ethnographic Evidence from an Israeli NGO

The article examines the recent emergence of ‘volunteering’ as a publicly significant notion and practice. Based on an extensive fieldwork in a prominent intermediary NGO in Israel, the article follows the efforts to promote and expand ‘volunteering’ pursued by the organization’s board and staff members. Affiliated with the privileged social strata of Ashkenazi (European) Jews, whose hegemonic position has been eroded during the neoliberal transformations in Israel, the NGO staff seek to retain their privileged status through a managerial activity in the field of ‘volunteering’. They promote a particular, liberally inspired construction of ‘volunteering’, while universalizing it as a professional, a-political and consensual realm. Inspired by critical studies of ‘whiteness’, the article describes how the privileged character of this managerial activity is being successfully obscured through the representation of ‘volunteering’ as an all-inclusive aspiration.     

Tales from the frontline: The experiences of early childhood practitioners working with an ‘embedded’ research team

In late 2006, SDN Children’s Services, an Australian not-for-profit provider of services for children, families and communities, engaged a research team that was ‘embedded’ within the organisation for 1 year. This action represented a significant investment of resources, such as staff time and organisational funds, and demonstrates SDN’s strong commitment to research and evaluation as a means of supporting organisational learning and development. This paper highlights the innovative nature of the approach by positioning the role of the embedded researcher within the current theoretical and socio-political context. It also provides evidence of the success of the approach by reporting on the findings of a study that investigated staff’s experiences of being involved in this type of collaborative investigation of their work. I argue that the employment of an embedded researcher can have positive benefits both for the organisation and the practitioners—but who the researchers are really matters.     

The ‘Fool’s Cap’ map of the world: exploring critical cosmopolitanism through cartographic critique

The ‘Fool’s Cap’ map of the world is thought to date from the late sixteenth century and is often attributed to a little-known Christian sect called the Familists. It places a map of the world in the place of a face inside a jester’s cap, playing upon the subversive figure of the jester and his ability to ridicule those in control. The Familists were cosmopolitan and valued the idea of the world citizen, but insisted upon self-reflection, in ways not dissimilar to contemporary scholars of ‘critical cosmopolitan’. This article makes a case for viewing the Familists’ thinking as an early form of critical cosmopolitanism – critiquing its own culture whilst maintaining belief in what constitutes a good ethical world citizen. It engages with the debates forged by thinkers such as Martha Nussbaum and Gerard Delanty, and links these to the idea of emancipatory potential of globalization advanced by Leslie Sklair.     

‘Is it a mosque?’ The Islamization of space explored through residents’ everyday ‘discursive assemblages’

This article examines the Islamization of suburban space in southeast England. Its microgeographies of racialization challenge binary either/or logic, favoured by ‘mosque conflict’ approaches and instead demonstrate how residents’ negotiations are channelled through everyday both/and logic rooted in multiplicity and indeterminacy. A key element in negotiations is the ‘sometimes quality’ of the ‘Islamic Centre’ that allows it to be both a ‘mosque’ and ‘not-a-mosque’. Moreover, each of the differently positioned residents shows uneven discursive capacities for identity, belonging and community in relation to the Islamization of suburban space, and each is afforded differential empowerment and capabilities under social discourses of ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘tolerance’. In examining these microgeographies of racialization, this paper also extends representational accounts of lived experiences surrounding the Islamization of space by attending to affect, emotion and materiality. To do so, the notion of ‘discursive assemblage’ is developed.     

Adolescents’ perceptions of the ‘substance use-violence nexus’: a South African perspective

The aim of the study was to explore adolescents’ perceptions of substance use as a contributing factor to community violence by employing a conceptual framework proposed by Goldstein. Data were collected from a sample of adolescents between the ages of 15 and 16 years by means of focus group interviews. Theoretical thematic analysis was used to analyse and interpret the findings. The participants’ perceptions indicated that substance use and withdrawal symptoms induce physiological and behavioural modifications resulting in aggression and violence. The findings also suggest that participants believed that substance users frequently commit property and violent interpersonal crimes such as theft, robbery, assault and murder to procure their substances. Further, the adolescents’ perceived violence to be rooted within gang culture as well as the involvement in shared markets for illicit substance trading.     

Irish immigration and the ‘condition of England’ question: The roots of an historiographical tradition

This article argues that the study of Irish immigration in nineteenth‐century Britain has focused for too long ‐ and often uncritically ‐on what the Victorians themselves wrote about the Irish. It is argued here that historians have taken their lead from Condition of England writers, like Kay, Engels, Mayhew and A. B. Reach, with the result that our understanding of the emergence of Irish communities in Britain has been distorted in two ways. First, historians have concentrated upon ‘apartness’ and ‘settlement’ and have made little effort to assess ‘development’. Secondly, such writings have until recently focused especially on the years 1830 to 1870 to the exclusion of others. This article examines some of the key writings of contemporaries and argues that they represent the beginnings of an historiographical tradition which scholars must now look beyond.     

The ‘compliant’, the ‘pacified’ and the ‘rebel’: experiences with Swiss disability insurance

Switzerland’s social policies in the field of disability have been significantly reshaped over the last two decades by reducing the number of allowances awarded and by increasing the recourse to vocational rehabilitation measures. What stances do individuals who experience the implementation of these policies adopt? What kind of tests are they subjected to? How can we explain the posture they adopt – be it ‘compliant’, ‘pacified’ or ‘rebellious’ – when facing the (re)assignations of their identity and professional status? Drawing on interviews conducted with individuals who have recently been involved in programmes set up by Swiss disability insurance, we highlight their uncertainties and concerns relating to their place in society, as well as their reactions to disability insurance’s interventions.     

Evaluation of job satisfaction in a sample of Spanish social workers through the ‘Job Satisfaction Survey’ scale

The objective of this study is to determine the level of job satisfaction experienced by social workers and to establish whether there are significant differences between the various levels of job satisfaction and a series of personal features and job characteristics. The participants were 947 social workers (861 women and 86 men) belonging to 35 of the 36 Professional Associations existing in Spain. The measurement tool used is the Job Satisfaction Survey scale, designed by Spector [2002. Psicología Industrial y Organizacional: Investigación y Práctica [Industrial and organizational psychology: Research and practice]. México: Manual Moderno]. The results show that the social workers surveyed experience moderate levels of job satisfaction (M?=?115.8; SD?=?21.4). The intrinsic factor that seems to have the greatest positive influence on job satisfaction is the nature of the job, while the extrinsic factors of pay, fringe benefits, and operating conditions are the ones that contribute most to job dissatisfaction, and social workers have no control over any of them.     

‘Weightless?’: disrupting relations of power in/through photographic imagery of persons with intellectual disabilities

Missing in discussions of visual representations of people with intellectual disabilities are their own perspectives. Rooted in Derrida’s concern with the ‘right of inspection’ over visual representations, participatory arts-informed methodologies were used in research with people with intellectual disabilities. They critiqued and then used Photoshop to transform public photographs of labeled people. Responding to visual constructions of labeled persons as ‘weightless’/powerless, they revealed personal experiences of being denied control over their lives and representations. Yet their critiques and transformations reveal possibilities for their re-conceptualization as powerful, subverting stereotypes of labeled people and disrupting relations of power in disability imagery.     

The ‘Glasgow King of Billingsgate’: James MacQueen and an Atlantic Proslavery Network1

This article examines the ‘imperial career’ of James MacQueen, one of the most outspoken critics of the British antislavery campaign in the 1820s and 1830s. Rather than considering the particular proslavery discourses that he articulated in his writing, however, the article focuses on his central place within an Atlantic network of proslavery advocacy. Using published and unpublished sources to explore this network, the article begins with MacQueen's time as a plantation overseer in Grenada. Next, it considers his involvement in the slavery controversy after he returned to Glasgow, including his attack on the History of Mary Prince (1831) and its aftermath. Finally, the article considers MacQueen's unexpected role in the Niger Expedition following the abolition of British slavery. In this way, the article demonstrates MacQueen's central place in nineteenth-century anti-abolitionism.     

Beyond the dilemmas of multiculturalism: recognition through ‘relational reason’

Recent sociological research has shown that the ideology of multiculturalism, after having been adopted as official policy in many countries, has generated more negative than positive effects (fragmentation of society, separation of minorities, cultural relativism). This article discusses the possible alternatives to multiculturalism, asking whether the path of interculturality can be a solution or not. The idea of interculturality has the advantage of stressing the inter, namely what lies in between different cultures. But it does not yet possess a conceptual and effective means to understand and handle the problems of the public sphere. To go over the failures of multiculturalism and the fragilities of interculturality, a lay approach to the coexistence of cultures is required, which is able to give strength back to Reason, through a new semantics of inter-human diversity. The author suggests the development of ‘relational reason’, beyond the forms of rationality already known. To make human reason relational might be the best way to imagine a social order which is able to humanize the globalizing processes and the increasing migrations.     

‘Roots and wings’: an exploration of intergenerational play

Play is an important part of life, not only during childhood but also into adulthood and later life. While scholars have emphasized the physical, social, psychological, and cognitive benefits of play for children, few researchers have explored the role of play in later life. One context in which aging adults find opportunities to play is with their grandchildren. This qualitative study employed visual and text analyses to explore the experience of intergenerational play from the perspectives of grandchildren and grandparents. Findings indicated that both groups of participants were motivated to engage in play together, negotiated constraints to experience play, and received various benefits from playing with their grandparent or grandchild. Recommendations are provided to assist professionals in programming for intergenerational play and for further exploration of the motivations, benefits, and constraints associated with intergenerational play.