Older Workers: The ‘Unavoidable Obligation’ of Extending Our Working Lives?

Older workers are becoming an increasing topic of research interest and policy concern as the populations of Europe, the United States and many other countries age. Some commentators argue that living longer means that there will be an ‘unavoidable obligation’ to work for longer as well. This article considers the reasons for concern about an ageing workforce. It then looks at the different literatures, which seek to research and understand the position of older workers. It provides a snapshot of the work that those over 50 years of age in the UK currently do and poses the question of whether we want to work for longer or whether a culture of early retirement prevails. It concludes by arguing for a more fine grained understanding of the composition of the older worker cohort, differentiated by class, gender and race and for more research on flexible work, gradual retirement and managing health at work.     

Through The Camera’s Eye: The Intergenerational Transmission of Loss

The intergenerational transmission on of trauma has been examined through the lens of attachment theory, infant studies, and psychoanalytic writings. In the following literature review, I summarize the impact of interpersonal trauma on early attachment patterns and dream content along with the implications for treatment. A case vignette presented to illustrate the intergenerational impact of unresolved loss within a relational treatment framework and the process of reconstruction and integration of intergenerational traumatic loss within a relational treatment paradigm.     

China’s Developing Infrastructure: The Impact of Globalisation

Infrastructure in China is a key service provider, and the current priority accorded to it by the Chinese leaders reflects both the nation’s role as a global player and the commitments of accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. To date the creation of a Chinese nationwide market has been impeded by poor transportation infrastructure and provincial particularism. Accordingly, this paper will examine the development and shares of different transport modes since the beginning of economic reform in the 1980s as well as projections and forecasts for the period ending in 2050. In view of China’s domestic consumption aims and continuing, through changing, foreign trade priorities, there must be better coordination between different transport modes in passenger or freight movement. Finally, the potential for foreign direct investment participation reflects WTO commitments and the globalization of Chinese business. In summary, the institution of a coordinated comprehensive transportation system is crucial for China’s sustainable economic growth.     

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 Formality of Informal Civil Society: Ukraine’s EuroMaidan

Over a period of three months, starting in late 2013, Ukraine experienced a remarkable civic transformation. What started as peaceful protests largely consisting of young idealists, grew quickly into an organized yet decentralized social movement, a conglomeration of semi-formal initiatives, and a loosely defined network of related formal and informal organizations—a process that ultimately prompted significant political and social changes in Ukraine. This paper offers three case studies related to EuroMaidan to provide insight into the formal and informal dimensions of civil society, contrasting those with official designations. The discussion contributes to the long-debated question of the strength or weakness of civil society in the context of Eastern Europe and suggests directions for future research with regard to the conceptualization of civil society and our understanding of formality.     

The ruler’s game of musical chairs: Shuffling during the reign of Ethiopia’s last emperor

Dictators frequently shuffle their officials to break up potentially threatening cliques within their regimes. Yet, how they go about rearranging their officials is not well understood. Using network analysis and focusing on the last emperor of Ethiopia, this paper offers a systematic analysis of shuffling by tracing the movements of subordinates over the course of thirty four years. The results show that while officials where frequently shuffled, their movements were confined within clusters of different branches. Such circumscribed movements, I argue, represent the mechanism by which dictators reconcile the tradeoff between suppressing potential rivals and encouraging expertise for the proper functioning of the state apparatus.     

Chekhov’s Depiction of Human Stress: The Case of Nikolai Ivanov

This article constitutes an attempt, previously not undertaken in the critical literature, to collate all the known information concerning Nikolai Gogol′’s work in 1833–1834 on a history of Ukraine, and, based on this evidence, to formulate a reasoned conclusion as to how much of the history he might have completed beyond what purports to be the introductory chapter, initially published under the title “Fragment from a History of Little Russia” and later as “A Glance at the Composition of Little Russia.” Gogol′’s original plan was to write a history of Ukraine from the time southern Rus’ separated from the northern as a consequence of the conquest of Kyiv by the Mongols in 1240 and later the absorption of Kyivan Rus’ by Lithuania in the mid-14th century. The “Fragment” is almost certainly the only part of it, as per this plan, ever written, and is itself probably unfinished, because the writer broke off work on it when he redesigned the history, intending now to begin with the early history of the Eastern Slavs and the founding of the Kyivan state. A two-page prose fragment found among what is represented in the 1937–1952 Academy edition of Gogol′’s complete collected works as the writer’s notes on Russian history, represents the new beginning, but this breaks off as well, and what would have constituted its continuation is still in the form of an outline and notes, so that, logically, no continuation of either beginning can be expected to surface.     

Antipolitics and Counterpolitics in Nepal’s Civil Society: The Case of Nepal’s Citizens’ Movement

This article considers the relationship of civil society to the domain of the political from the actors’ perspectives. It explores the attempt by a citizens’ movement (CMDP) in Nepal to construct new political realities in the context of the autocratic regime of king Gyanendra and then during the democratic transition. This was, paradoxically, to be achieved through the construction of an apolitical space. Theoretically, this production of apoliticality by civil society actors shows that civil society is not only implicated in the expansion of what is understood as ‘political’ but also in setting its boundaries. The broader aims of the article are to contribute to the ethnography of civil society and to add to current understandings of the relationship of actually existing civil societies to the political domain. Practically, it argues that debates over whether civil society is or is not political in the Nepal case and normative positions within development circles that it should not be political are misconceived since civil society is a site for the production of both politicality and apoliticality.     

‘The sinking cenotaph’: Jack Mapanje’s and Steve Chimombo’s contestation of monumentalised nationalist public memories of Malawi’s President Banda

This article discusses Jack Mapanje’s and Steve Chimombo’s contestations of the constitution and monumentalisation of nationalist public memories of former and first president of Malawi, Dr H.K. Banda. After more than a decade since the end of his rule as life president in 1994 and his demise in 1997, the Malawi government has constituted and monumentalised memories of Banda in Malawi through a monumental mausoleum on his grave and a statue in the capital city, Lilongwe. While others have hailed these monuments as fitting tributes for the ‘founding father’ and ‘nationalist hero’ of the nation, Mapanje and Chimombo contest such public monumentalisation of Banda’s reign in Malawi in their poetry, suggesting that Banda was a dictator undeserving of such posthumous memorialisation. They also suggest that the narratives constituted in the monuments do not represent the interests of the victims of his dictatorship. This article argues that such contestations challenge the constitution of nationalist memories of postcolonial African nations through leaders who instituted totalitarian rule.     

The Transformation of Poland’s Economic System: 1985–1995

Proceeding from Lord Acton’s insight that “exile is the nursery of nationality,” this paper examines a peculiar historical instance of dislocation as a relevant matrix for the articulation of national identity. I inquire into aspects of the elaboration of French national consciousness among French émigrés of the revolutionary period in Russia, approaching the subject at two levels: first, the maîtres à danser, the run-of- the-mill émigrés who abandon cosmopolitan certitudes or pretensions of a “monde français” and abstractions of dynastic loyalty, in favour of nostalgic attachment to a tangible patrie, very much at odds with the Russian otherness into which they have been thrust. Second, the maîtres à penser, those émigré thinkers in whom the Revolution provokes a reconsideration of established universals and who conceptualize Russia in terms of a project to reconcile universal and particular or national values. I examine the dilemmas and ultimate failure of such a projection by focusing on the work of Joseph de Maistre. On both levels, the historical case studied here is an exemplification of the proposition that nationalism is founded on a disenchantment with the world, and that physical estrangement from both the world to which one believes oneself to belong as well as spiritual estrangement from the world in which one treads, may provide a critical context for defining collective identity.     

The first lady of social media: The visual rhetoric of Michelle Obama’s Twitter images

While American first ladies have long used media to craft their image, Michelle Obama is the first contemporary first lady to use social media to promote her public persona. We use the lens of symbolic convergence theory to explore the fantasy themes incumbent in images shared through Michelle Obama’s Twitter account. Since first ladies have long been perceived as representing the American “everywoman,” understanding the fantasies built into the social media image of the first lady extends knowledge about the perception of American women more broadly. Our findings indicate that Michelle Obama’s Twitter images are strategic in that they reflect the visual themes that the media traditionally use in their coverage of first ladies. Specifically, Michelle Obama’s social media messaging portrays her as an activist mother—who espouses noncontroversial causes such as education and children’s health—and a nonpartisan figure with deep familial ties.     

The Emotional Experience and Expression of Anger: Children’s Perspectives

The purpose of this study was to explore and identify key themes related to a child’s experience of anger. The existing literature on children’s emotional experiences stems from adult perceptions and interpretations; this study was envisioned to investigate the experience of anger among children using their own words. Furthermore, this study was designed to illustrate a contextual perspective of children’s emotional knowledge, so that teachers, social workers, counsellors and other child mental health professionals may be able to relate and interpret children’s emotional experiences. Participants were male and female students, aged 8–9 years and in a regular grade three classroom within a community school. Through the use of semi-structured interview focus groups conducted over a span of 10 weeks, participants were invited to disclose their understandings of anger and how they experienced it. Results were analyzed via a content analysis that resulted in five themes. These themes consisted of understanding anger, origins of anger, consequences of anger, regulation and resolution of anger, and finally relations with others. Results and implications of the findings were discussed.     

The affective work of sound: the case of Pussy Riot’s noise

In recent years, the anti-Putin content of Pussy Riot’s work has received sustained scholarly attention. The author argues, however, that it is not only in content but also in force – in operationality of noise, in its capacity to act and incite – that Pussy Riot engaged with Russia’s regimes of power. Once Pussy Riot emerged as a feminist collective performing noisy interventions in public spaces and mapping them onto cyberspace, their performances were described as non-musical and aesthetically unpleasant based on negative stereotyping of noise. This article takes the ambiguous feeling of the non-musical as a point of departure and explores how sound was integral to the formation of Pussy Riot’s identity as noisemaker in the face of the Kremlin’s noise-abatement campaign associated with the moral project of silence. It builds on a philosophical framework proposed by Michel Serres and the latest theoretical developments in sound and affect studies to examine the urgency of Pussy Riot’s work in the contemporary political climate.     

The Burden of Sexual Problems: Perceived Effects on Men’s and Women’s Sexual Partners

Sexual dysfunction sometimes negatively affects the individual, his or her partner, and the relationship. We investigated the relationship between the distress experienced by men and women with orgasmic phase difficulties and the perceived distress of their partner(s). We also identified predictors of perceived partner distress, and related self and partner distress to severity of the problem and relationship quality. Data were drawn from 374 men with premature ejaculation (PE) and 377 women with anorgasmia who responded to a survey regarding their sexual functioning, including their distress about their condition and the perceived distress of their partners. Results yielded an overall distress score consisting of combined self and perceived partners distress, with women showing a higher overall score and higher perceived partner distress than men. For men, significant predictors of perceived partner distress included self-distress, relationship quality, interest in sex, and arousal difficulty; for women, only the level of self-distress significantly predicted perceived partner distress. These findings indicate the burden of experiencing sexual difficulty, identify factors related to perceived partner distress, and demonstrate differences in self versus partner distress across men and women. Overall, such findings reiterate the strong need for the inclusion of the partner in any attempted remediation of a sexual problem.     

The Lovers of Venice: Musset’s Works and Life in Kuzmin’s A New Rolla

The title of Mikhail Kuzmin’s Novyi Rolla [A New Rolla] has been considered cryptic despite its evident allusion to Alfred de Musset’s “Rolla,” a poem with which it shares little. In this article I argue that the link to Musset is clear if we read A New Rolla as responding not just to “Rolla,” but also to Musset’s novel La Confession d’un enfant du siècle [The Confession of a Child of the Age] and his biography. From this composite source Kuzmin takes up the themes of a debauchee finding love, love as serial yet serious, and a love triangle in Venice, as well as an apostrophe to the kiss. Kuzmin endorses most of Musset’s idea of love, but rejects the egalitarian ideal implicit in the sympathetic treatment of the prostitute Marion in “Rolla.” A secondary allusion to Nikolai Nekrasov’s “Kogda iz mraka zabluzhden’ia” [When, out of the darkness of error] reinforces Kuzmin’s rejection of the egalitarian ideal of sexual love. The allusions to Musset and Nekrasov amount to anachronisms that partially undermine the precise temporal setting of A New Rolla. Kuzmin’s work thereby occupies an intermediate position among his period pieces, as it is neither openly playful like Venetsianskie bezumtsy [Venetian Madcaps] nor constructed with its seams hidden like the Aleksandriiskie pesni [Alexandrian Songs].