What’s in a name? Exploring use of the word queer as a term of identification within the college-aged LGBT community

ABSTRACT

The language one uses for self-identification can be instrumental in the development and integration of one’s sense of self. This is particularly true regarding gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation. This seems to be particularly marked with use of the term “queer.” This research project explored terms that college-aged people use for self and other reference, especially use of the word queer. The results from this study provide empirical evidence that college-aged people have reclaimed the word queer as acceptable for gender or sexual orientation identification, although it is not the most frequent term used for their own self-identification.     

Expanding “Irish Family” Repertoires: Exploring Gay Men's Experiences as Parents in the Republic of Ireland

ABSTRACT

This article explores gay men's parenting experiences and practices in order to seek insight into how gay men accept or challenge heterosexual family norms and how “family” is understood in the Irish context. It is based on small-scale qualitative research (interviews) with seven gay fathers. Despite the limited routes to parenthood for gay men in Ireland, the research findings indicate that the participants enjoy parenting and that they are motivated in their parenting practices. The gay fathers in this study are participative parents who have made significant decisions in their lives in order to prioritize their children's welfare. The diversity of family constellations and care arrangements that surround gay fathering in Ireland can expand family and care repertoires beyond the traditional biparent heterosexual norm. Gay fathers in Ireland appear to enjoy some security at the private familial level and in the responses from their families and communities, but they are keenly aware that nontraditional families are given less status in Irish society. Unlike other jurisdictions, gay parenting is not articulated by the gay fathers in this research as a rights-based argument. Instead, these Irish gay fathers are de facto activists who seek to “humanize” gay parenting.     

Sexology as a Profession in Spain: Results of the “Euro-Sexo” Study on the Practice of Sexology in Spain

This article presents the major results of a survey on the profession in Spain. An international research program previously conducted in eight European countries (Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom) was adapted to Spain. The sample was made up of Spanish professionals who were members of professional organizations in sexology. The questionnaire used in the other European countries was translated and adapted into Spanish; its 89 questions inquired into: the sociodemographic profile of respondents, their initial academic and professional background, the specific training received in sexology or human sexuality, and their professional practices in sexology. In Spain, most sexologists are women from a nonmedical health profession. Most respondents received specific training in sexology and stated that it is not necessary to be a physician to be a sexologist. The findings bring to light many similarities with the data collected in the eight other European countries.     

Exploring the formation of the “leave-it-to-experts” storyline during the initial outbreak of the 2013 smog hazard in Beijing

Beijing’s smog hazard is one of the most urgent issues on China’s public agenda. Drawing on the recently developed dynamic discourse coalition (DDC) approach, this article examines the ways in which the hazard’s initial outbreak in early 2013 was reported by four news sources: the Xinhua News Agency; China Daily; South China Morning Post; and the Associated Press. The findings suggest that although domestic and overseas media first provided different explanations for the hazard, these were eventually consolidated into the same problem-solving discourse of “leave-it-to-experts.” This discourse included a proposal to address the hazard under the current political economic structure of industrial capitalism. The proposal, however, was constrained by an elitist bias that downplayed China’s existing social and regional inequalities. The article argues that environmental challenges such as the smog hazard call for not only a sustainable model to direct China’s future development, but also the explicit recognition of the country’s existing environmental injustices.     

Factors Influencing Family-Member Perception of “Homelikeness” in Long-Term Care Homes

Background: A number of long-term care homes in Nova Scotia, Canada, have been built or redesigned with new models of care with expanded care aide scope of practice and neighborhood-style layouts. Our objective was to examine what physical characteristics (bed size, owner-operator), model of care, and relational (family–staff relationship, perceived staff–resident relationship) factors were associated with increased family-member perception of homelikeness in long-term care homes.

Methods: We analyzed surveys collected from 273 family members from 23 long-term care homes in Nova Scotia, Canada. We conducted a multivariate linear regression to assess variables associated with increased family-member perception of homelikeness.

Results: We found that relationships between family and staff, perceived resident-to-resident relationships, and family involvement in decision making were positively associated with increased family perception of homelikeness. We found no significant associations between model of care or physical characteristics and increased family perception of homelikeness.

Conclusion: Relationships among family members, residents, and staff are integral to family members feeling at home in their loved one's long-term care home. Feeling at home in long-term care is largely related to family-member perception of meaningful social interactions between family and staff, and between residents.     

Process evaluation of “Girls on the Run”: Exploring implementation in a physical activity-based positive youth development program

Many positive youth development programs rely on physical activity as a primary program component. Referred to as physical activity-based youth development programs, these program designs have great potential for promoting healthy youth development. This study examined how one such physical activity-based positive youth development program was implemented in order to identify design features critical to maximizing positive youth outcomes. This mixed method, multi-site process evaluation of Girls on the Run (GOTR) utilized focus groups, site visits, and self-report implementation checklists. Implementation scores were calculated to assess implementation fidelity across twenty-nine sites, and qualitative data were inductively analyzed to identify factors influential for implementation. Results reveal variability in how GOTR was implemented. Five themes emerged from the data that represented factors serving as facilitators or barriers to programmatic implementation. These included contextual/environmental factors (e.g., parental involvement, relationships with school personnel), organizational factors (e.g., implementation support and responsiveness of staff), program-specific factors (e.g., curriculum design), coach factors (e.g., existing relationships with participants, responsiveness to participant's needs), and youth factors (e.g., behavioral and discipline issues). Study findings have implications for improving the design of physical activity-based and other positive youth development programs, with relevance to evaluators, program planners, youth development leaders, and others working with children and youth.     

Producing Migrant Domestic Work: Exploring the Everyday Political Economy of Malaysia's ‘Maid Shortage’

Abstract

The article considers how the employment of domestic workers by middle-class Malaysian households has been thrown into flux by the imposition of bans on the sending of workers by states such as Indonesia and Cambodia, as well as the decline in numbers of women seeking employment as domestic workers in Malaysia and rising employment costs. This article does not seek to focus on the high-level policy negotiations and disputes that have come to characterize systems of temporary return migration for domestic work in Asia, but to focus in on the everyday political economies (of social reproduction, work, and everyday agency) that constitute the conditions of possibility within which bilateral disputes and labour agreements between Southeast Asian states take shape. We examine three dimensions of migration for domestic work in Southeast Asia in ways that bring together literatures on everyday life and social reproduction. These interconnected yet distinct dimensions are (a) the relationship between strategies to boost remittances and flows of workers from some of the most impoverished parts of Southeast Asia; (b) the centrality of low-cost migrant domestic workers to Malaysian middle-class ‘success stories’, and (c) the day-to-day production of ‘good’ worker subjects—a process that is actively and constantly resisted by workers themselves. The article provides important insights into the mechanisms through arenas of everyday life—and the household in particular—are transformed; becoming sites for the ever widening and deepening of the market economy.     

Social Work in the Emergency Department—Implementation of a Domestic and Family Violence Screening Program

Abstract

Women who have experienced domestic and family violence use health services more frequently than women who have not. Early identification and intervention by the health system may reduce health problems associated with domestic and family violence and lead to savings for the health sector. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of a new domestic and family violence screening program, which was based on an ecological model and introduced by a social work team in the Emergency Department of a major metropolitan hospital. The evaluation method included an audit of social work case files to assess the effect on referral rates and a survey of Emergency Department staff to obtain perceptions of the impact of the program on the staff and clients. In the 3-month period following the introduction of the program, the rate of referral to social work increased by 213%. Staff agreed that the Emergency Department is an appropriate place to ask about domestic and family violence, under certain conditions. Findings suggest that an ecological social work model provides an approach to screening for domestic and family violence that not only contributes to increased identification and supportive client interventions but may also contribute to more sustainable systemic change.     

When is a bed not a bed? Exploring the interplay of the material and virtual in negotiating home-work boundaries

Working from home is often associated with possibilities of anytime-anyplace working and with a fusion of work and home. In this empirical paper, we explore how the sociomaterial contexts of home-working define and tether what is possible for home-workers in their negotiations with others. Drawing on qualitative data sets, Wengerian concepts are used by exploring the role of boundary objects and brokering in negotiating temporal and spatial boundaries around and across work and home. The home-workers’ bodies are shown to be the key boundary objects, through which technology objects and furniture objects are sometimes fused. Yet, such fusion is shown to be only temporary, always precariously situated and also mediated by identity-regulating norms and values of home-workers. The contribution of the paper is to highlight the limits of what is technologically possible by emphasising the role of the body and material objects in the home-working context.     

“What Would a Loving Mom Do Today?”: Exploring the Meaning of Motherhood in Stories of Prenatal and Postpartum Depression

Prenatal depression (PD) and postpartum depression (PPD), experienced by up to one-quarter of pregnant women and new mothers, are associated with maternal impairment and disruptions to children’s behavior, development, and health. Women experiencing PD/PPD must cope with negative feelings and detrimental outcomes that stand in contrast with cultural conceptions of how (ideal) mothers feel and act (i.e., the discourse of intensive mothering), thus furthering stigma and negativity surrounding the PD/PPD experience. The present study, couched in relational dialectics theory, aims to explore how women, through naturally occurring online narratives, make sense of motherhood in light of both PD/PPD experiences and cultural expectations/understandings of mothers. Throughout the narrative corpus, the culturally dominant Discourse of (Self-)Sacrificing Blissful Moms (DSBM)—which expands on the discourse of intensive mothering—is de-centered, albeit never fully delegitimated, by the Discourse of Mothers as Whole People (DMWP). Rather than closing down the DSBM, the DMWP works to expand meanings of what “good” mothers can feel and do. This finding holds both cultural/theoretical and practical implications, as discussed by the authors.     

Exploring the Potential of Shadow Controls in the Evaluation of Children’s Services

This article describes and presents a framework for an under‐used evaluation technique in the context of an evaluation of a programme for disaffected young people. Shadow controls—the use of expert judgement to estimate the success of a programme—are often dismissed in research design as an unreliable form of comparison, but can be useful in situations where there is limited scope for a control group or to enhance the causal inference attributable to non‐experimental evaluations. The exercise described uses a practice tool as a structure for making predictions about the situations of the young people on the programme, assuming they do not receive an intervention. These predictions (shadow controls) are then compared to outcome data for the young people at the end of the programme. The results of the exercise provide some important messages about the programme’s effectiveness and the potential for strengthening non‐experimental evaluation methods. The article also discusses how the method can usefully inform evaluations of social programmes and encourage agency and user collaboration.     

Modernism,the City and the “Domestic Interior”

This article argues that the overwhelming critical and historical focus on the figure of the flâneur in readings of literary modernism has led to the marginalization of key aspects of the experience of living and writing in the modern city: the marginalization, in fact, of the domestic interior. Having situated the reasons for the dominance of this critical paradigm, the article then explores whether we might be able to generate a comparably historicized cultural project, based on readings of Woolf, of Richardson, and of Pound and his circle, that engages with the more confined, and the more static terrain of the room as a way of reading the modern city. It analyzes some of modernism's key interiors, beginning with rooms in a number of Virginia Woolf's texts, and considering how they figure as a space of memory, as a framework for identities, and as a locus of security. It then examines the hierarchies of domestic spaces, the relations between the boundaries of the self and the boundaries of the room, and the troubling landscape of the suburban in Dorothy Richardson's novel Pilgrimage. Finally, in examining the cultural milieu of Ezra Pound, it considers how London interiors provide the physical and the metaphorical landscape for particular forms of modernist innovation in the early years of the twentieth century.     

Laws Concern Domestic Issues of the PRC

Article 1 This Law is formulated in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China with a view to ensuring self-government by the villagers in the countryside, who will administer their own affairs in accordance with the law, and promoting socialist democracy at the grassroots level, socialist material     

Pop Music and the Search for the Numinous: Exploring the Emergence of the “Secular Hymn” in Post-Modern Culture

A growing body of research suggests that traditional religious institutions are failing to meet the spiritual needs of their adherents, who are now abandoning traditional worship and turning to pop music to fill the void. This article defines and explores the phenomenon of the “secular hymn.” While nonreligious in nature or intent, the secular hymn is a pop song that allows the listener to experience the numinous by creating an affective state that parallels a spiritual or religious state of mind. This article outlines the phenomenon of the secular hymn in pop culture, defines its characteristics, and evaluates several pop songs against these criteria. While some secular hymns may be used in some church settings, the overall trend may exemplify the continuing erosion of traditional religion and the use of explicitly religious music in both public and private settings.     

“Drunkorexia”: Exploring the Who and Why of a Disturbing Trend in College Students’ Eating and Drinking Behaviors

Abstract. Objective: “Drunkorexia,” limiting food intake before alcohol consumption, increases college students’ risk for negative alcohol-related health consequences. The current study tested whether (1) women engage in drunkorexia more frequently than men; (2) weight control motivations explain sex differences in drunkorexia; and (3) among women, weight control motivations are a particularly strong predictor of drunkorexia for heavier drinkers. Participants: Undergraduate males and females (N = 63) recruited during fall of 2011. Methods: Participants self-reported their alcohol consumption, drunkorexia, and weight control motivations online. Results: Findings supported hypotheses: weight control motivations explained why women engage in drunkorexia more than men; and the weight control motivation → drunkorexia relation was strongest for heavier- (vs lighter-) drinking women. Conclusion: Women have more weight concerns than men, which makes them more likely to engage in drunkorexia. Heavy-drinking women with strong weight control motivations are at greatest risk for drunkorexia. Interventions should help students more safely reconcile pressures to be thin and drink alcohol.     

Narrating Adoption: Resisting Adoption as “Second Best” in Online Stories of Domestic Adoption Told by Adoptive Parents

Framed in narrative theory and relational dialectics theory, one hundred online stories of domestic adoption told by adoptive parents were qualitatively analyzed, revealing four primary discourses of adoption that challenge the idea that adoption is a second-best way to parent. Narrative beginnings were dominated by a discourse of adoption as a valuable alternative to pregnancy. Narrative middles-and-ends featured two discourses of how the adoption process unfolds: adoption as a worthwhile struggle guided by destiny and adoption as a smooth and predictable process. Intertwined with these process-oriented constructions of adoption was a discourse of adoption as communal kinning, which emphasized a hybrid family form comprised of both biological and nonbiological ties.     

The “Our Homes,Not Nursing Homes” Project

ABSTRACT

The voices of non-elderly adults with disabilities who currently-or used to-reside in nursing homes are rarely heard. A grassroots disability advocacy organization conducts participatory action research in the form of a writing workshop in collaboration with a local community-college. Participants with disabilities describe their lives and their experiences in nursing homes with the help of volunteer scribes. The information provided in their accounts will help strengthen community-organizing efforts of the disability advocacy organization. And participants have been empowered by the realization that their life stories are helping others to leave nursing homes and join community settings.     

Nurses and the dying: Symbolic interaction as a precipitator of dying “stages”

The impact of nurses' attitudes upon their communication with dying patients is examined from the symbolic interaction perspective. Data were obtained from participant observation in the intensive care and postintensive care units of a hospital and from in-depth interviewes with additional nurses. Characteristics of the situation, nurses, and patients were examined in terms of an Interpersonal Reactions Model. The strength of this model is its emphasis upon the effect unintended judgments may have on a patient's self-image. A stage in the dying process may simply be a response to the nonverbally communicated expectations of interactors with dying persons. This research focuses on the first stage of this model—the differential reaction of nurses to the varying characteristics of patients within the constraints of extra-care situations.This is a revision of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Mid-South Sociological Association in Little Rock, Arkansas, in November, 1980.     

The aftermath of the jihād in the central sudan∗ as a major factor in the volume of the Trans‐Saharan slave trade in the nineteenth century

During the Haitian Revolution, members of the French government produced official proclamations containing laws that sought to regulate liberty and define citizenship for the ex-slaves. The proclamations were in turn translated from French into Creole to be read aloud. The signatures of Sonthonax and Bonaparte on these Creole documents bear witness to the role of translation as a vehicle for the movement of revolutionary ideals between France and Saint-Domingue. Through rhetorical strategies like omissions, repetition, and call-and-response, the anonymous translators often subverted French power and authority, producing Creole versions of these official proclamations that were often more inclusive and created space for the audience of ex-slaves to participate in debating and defining their liberty, equality and citizenship.