Engaging Native Hawaiians and Pilipinos in creating supportive and safe violence-free communities for women through a piloted “talkstory” intervention: Implications for program development

In Hawaii, 20% of women have been victims of intimate partner violence (IPV). Although disaggregated data specific to Native Hawaiians or Pilipinos (The official Filipino language recognizes both Filipino (Filipina) and Pilipino (Pilipina) as terms for the citizens of the country. Participants in this study chose to use the terms Pilipino (Pilipina). Retrieved from: www.pilipino-express.com/history-a-culture/in-other-words) are limited, greater than 70% of women murdered in Hawaii as a result of IPV are Pilipino or native Hawaiian. A consortium was formed to assist Native Hawaiian and Pilipino women addressing abuse and strengthening support from the community. A quasi-experimental community-based participatory research study was designed to assess a community “talkstory” intervention for IPV. “Talkstory” refers to informal gatherings considered to be a laid-back conversation involving a “reciprocal exchange of thoughts, ideas, feelings about self, and other issues” (Affonso et al., 1996. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, & Neonatal Nursing, 25, 738). This article describes the development of an intervention to address IPV in Hawaii and presents the findings obtained from the pilot studies. Results from the pilot study were used to modify the proposed “talkstory” intervention, revise the data collection tools, and provide the program developers with insights into how the community viewed IPV. The most significant change was an increased perception of their awareness, knowledge, and confidence to address IPV following the intervention.     

“To be HIV positive is not the end of the world”: Resilience among perinatally infected HIV positive adolescents in Johannesburg

BackgroundResilience, or positive adaptation to challenging situations, has potential to improve health outcomes for high risk populations. Resilience may be particularly important for perinatally infected HIV positive adolescents, who are exposed to significant stigma, risks and stressors. Despite recognition that HIV positive adolescents show remarkable resilience in the face of adversity, little is known about how resilience occurs within this population.MethodsThe aim of this study was to identify elements of resilience in a group of perinatally infected HIV positive adolescents attending HIV clinics. In-depth interviews were conducted with 25 purposively selected HIV positive adolescents (15 female, 10 male) between the ages of 13–19 years in Johannesburg. Data were analysed in NVIVO 10 using a thematic approach to coding.ResultsDespite marked stressors in the lives of these adolescents, a high degree of resilience was described. Characteristics of resilience in this group included a pertinent set of beliefs, including a belief in fate and recognition of personal strength as a consequence of managing adversity. Character traits such as a pragmatic acceptance about one's life, actively taking responsibility, and a robust self-esteem were evident. Social behaviours included the ability to pursue and access adults and healthcare to meet developmental needs, having a desire to support and help others and challenging HIV related stigma. These characteristics were underscored by the capacity for self-reflection.ConclusionPerinatally infected adolescents, who face high levels of hardship and change, nevertheless exhibit strong resiliency beliefs, traits, and behaviours. Healthcare environments have the potential to be utilized as powerful resources in fostering resilience in HIV positive adolescents, if characteristics of adolescent resilience were integrated into current prevention and intervention programming. Resilience promotion could lead to improved health outcomes for HIV positive adolescents.     

They tell us “we don’t belong in the world and we shouldn’t take up a place”: HIV discourse within two-spirit communities

Objectives: We investigated how HIV discourse is negotiated and given meaning in the lives of young, male two-spirit leaders, when considering their communities’ and their own health and wellness. These men are also unique in that they have always lived under the specter and dominant discourse of HIV; that is, they are part of a second generation since the time of HIV/AIDS. Methods: We conducted a discourse analysis of six qualitative interviews from the HONOR Project, a multi-site, mixed-methods study of the two-spirit community across the United States, foregrounding the relationships among trauma, coping, and health. Results: HIV functions discursively in four ways: as a shadow presence, professionalized identity, health sub-/priority, and vehicle for belonging and (re)claiming. Conclusions: This study is important to social work as well as HIV prevention and care as it affords voice to two-spirit men, a highly marginalized community and one often silenced in scientific discourse. And, it centralizes language and context, complicating social epidemiological characterizations of HIV/AIDS, risk, and historically traumatized populations.     

“Unless You Were Native American…Everybody Came From Another Country:” Language and Content Learning in a Grade 4 Diverse Classroom

Set amidst an increasingly tense discourse about immigration and substantial pressures on educators, this study examines a three-week fourth-grade social studies unit as taught to a class with a large number of English learners located in a low-income school in the Pacific Northwest. Using ethnographic and sociolinguistic perspectives, we provide evidence of how the teacher leverages a wide array of instructional strategies and scaffolds to build language skills and content knowledge within a fast-paced unit on 19th-century Westward Migration. Embedded within such instruction is the construction of narratives that highlight regional examples of a linguistic and ethnically diverse community and that connect immigration trends on a global scale to local history. These strategies and narratives are then used in a summative lesson about immigration that affirms students’ family stories as part of the U.S. history still being written.     

Overcoming “Crisis”: Mobility Capabilities and “stretching” a Migrant Identity among Young Irish in London and Return Migrants

We bring into dialogue the migrant identities of young Irish immigrants in the UK and young returnees in Ireland. We draw on 38 in-depth interviews (20 in the UK and 18 in Ireland), aged 20–37 at the time of interview, carried out in 2015–16. We argue that “stretching” identities – critical and reflective capabilities to interpret long histories of emigration and the neglected economic dimension – need to be incorporated into conceptualizing “crisis” migrants. Participants draw on networks globally, they choose migration as a temporary “stop-over” abroad, but they also rework historical Irish migrant identities in a novel way. Becoming an Irish migrant or a returnee today is enacted as a historically grounded capability of mobility. However, structural economic constraints in the Irish labour market need to be seriously considered in understanding return aspirations and realities. These findings generate relevant policy ideas in terms of relations between “crisis” migrants and the state.     

Resilience in the face of sexual minority stress: “Choices” between authenticity and self-determination

This qualitative study explored the experience of sexual minority stressors and corresponding resilience. Using a grounded theory approach, the core category identified in the analysis was minority stress results from systemic factors that cause lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people to face competition between their desires for authenticity and self-determination. These findings shed light upon the insidious nature of minority stress, especially within U.S. contexts that lack protective legislation, and the adaptive strategies people use to mitigate their effects. By positioning resilience as a choice between authenticity and self-determination, resilience is understood to lessen but not resolve the deleterious impact of sexual minority stress.     

“Allah will decide my life and death”: Religion and spirituality among populations at risk for HIV in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

We examined the influence of religion and spirituality on HIV risk contexts through in-depth interviews with men who have sex with men (n = 10) and female commercial sex workers (n = 10) in Malaysia. Using a grounded theory approach, five themes emerged from the interviews: (a) religion encourages caring for health, (b) health is influenced by a higher power, (c) prayer is a conduit to health assistance, (d) stigma is compounded by religion but it does not limit one’s spirituality, and (e) religion is not but should be incorporated into HIV campaigns. Incorporation of spirituality in service provision and addressing stigma is warranted.     

Political deliberation and democratic reversal in India: Indian coffee house during the emergency (1975–77) and the third world “totalitarian moment”

While the coffee house as a space of political deliberation has been a common feature across the globe, there are few historical cases in which one can analyze the role of such face-to-face political deliberation under totalitarian moments in heretofore democratic states. Of the analogous cases of democratic reversal, India is one of the most important and under-researched. In 1975, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was convicted of corrupt election practices. Rather than concede to the high court ruling, she suspended the constitution and installed herself as India’s sole political authority. The Indian Coffee House in New Delhi became the key site of resistance to the Emergency (1975–77). The totalitarian moment pushed contentious politics into the Coffee House, initially galvanizing it: even the older members of Indira Gandhi's Congress Party, who were active participants in India's Freedom Movement, were key participants in coffee house deliberations. Eventually, however, Indian Coffee House was bulldozed and political deliberation crushed. The space of the coffee house may foster political deliberation among different viewpoints, but when interaction is concentrated in one such space, it becomes easier for the state and its agents to suppress oppositional politics and more difficult for both establishment and oppositional politics themselves to retain a diversified public sphere character. While coffee houses and analogous institutions are not adequate substitutes for other forms of democratic politics, therefore, they can encourage expression when other avenues are closed off and nourish the memory of a democratic political culture for the future.     

“Our Kids Aren’t Dropping Out; They’re Being Pushed Out”: Native American Students and Racial Microaggressions in Schools

ABSTRACT

Poor graduation rates, truancy rates, and standardized tests results have been presented as indicators of a school crisis among Native American youths. This crisis, however, relies on ahistoric and deficit models of intervention, which imagine academic success as an individual- or family-level phenomenon. Responding to Reyhner’s (1991) suggestion to assess the role of schools and teachers in working to push students out of school, we explored the experiences of Native American youths in schools. This article documents findings from a community-based mixed-methods study. It establishes not only the significant prevalence of microaggressions for Native American youths in schools but it also presents the unique discriminatory experiences and aspects of those microaggressions. We suggest that these microaggressions play a role in school climate and push-out and provide suggestions for research, professional development, and social action.     

“Are we a family or a business?” History and disjuncture in the urban American street gang

Theory and Society -     

“I'm still raring to go”: Successful aging among lesbian,gay, bisexual,and transgender older adults

While we know that minority status differentiates the experience of aging, little research has been done to examine the ways in which patterns of successful aging may differ in diverse subgroups of older adults. In this exploratory study, we investigated and described experiences of successful aging in a sample of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) older adults. Directed by a community-based participatory research process, we conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with 22 LGBT adults, age 60 and older. We took an inductive, grounded theory approach to analyze the taped and transcribed interviews. We coded respondent experiences in four domains: physical health, mental health, emotional state and social engagement. Four gradations of successful aging emerged. Very few in our sample met the bar for “traditional success” characterized by the absence of problems in all four domains of health. Most of the sample was coping to a degree with problems and was categorized in one of two gradations on a continuum of successful aging: “surviving and thriving” and “working at it.” A small number was “ailing”: not coping well with problems. Some of the experiences that respondents described were related to LGBT status; others were related to more general processes of aging. The research suggests that a successful aging framework that is modified to include coping can better describe the experiences of LGBT older adults. The modified conceptual model outlined here may be useful in future research on this population, as well as more broadly for diverse populations of adults, and may be adapted for use in practice to assess and improve health and well-being.     

“Feeling Warmth and Close to Her”: Communication and Resilience Reflected in Turning Points in Positive Adult Stepchild–Stepparent Relationships

With the goal of understanding the development of positive stepchild–stepparent relationships, the researchers focused on turning points characterizing the interaction of adult stepchildren who have a positive bond with a stepparent. Engaging a relational turning points perspective, 38 stepchildren (males and females, ages 25 to 52 years old) who reported a positive stepparent relationship were interviewed, generating 269 turning points which were categorized into 15 turning point types and coded by valence. Turning points occurring most frequently were: prosocial actions, quality time, conflict/disagreement, changes in household/family composition, and rituals. Findings are discussed, including implications for developing and enacting resilient and positive stepchild–stepparent relationships and future directions for researchers wanting to focus on positive family interaction.     

“I'm going to do battle… I'm going to do some good”. Biographical trajectories,moral politics,and public engagement among highly religious young Catholics in Spain and Mexico

Public debates and controversies on moral issues have gained visibility in recent decades in both Spain and Mexico. Conservative Catholic groups and networks are increasingly playing a crucial role in raising and framing highly morally charged themes in the public arena, especially on intimacy-related policies, including sexual and reproductive freedoms. A new generation of young Catholic leaders becoming key political agents has emerged in this scenario. They are fostering new mobilisation repertoires in the public sphere (e.g., digital activism and public performances) and promoting new political narratives merging moral, cultural, and religious elements. These highly religious and conservative young Catholics consider themselves part of a cultural/cognitive minority and feel entitled to become what Howard Becker termed “moral entrepreneurs.” Most have been educated in Catholic schools and belong to Catholic movements. Still, they can also navigate secular politics and strategically use different regimes of justification and action. Within this context, the article aims to examine and compare the intersection of historical trends and the relevance of individual biographies to understand the role of these young Catholics in the public space in both countries.     

The food insecurity―obesity paradox as a vicious cycle for women: inequalities and health

Poverty and income inequality undermine women's health in a myriad of ways. This article discusses findings from the Full Plate Project, which addressed women's experience of food security, obesity, and chronic disease in Atlantic Canada. Through first-hand accounts, it identifies a vicious cycle surrounding the food insecurity–obesity paradox. The cycle's core elements included experiences of poverty, food insecurity and nutritional deprivation, weight gain leading to obesity, stress, and experiences of chronic illness. These mainly qualitative findings provide a vivid and multi-layered analysis of the effects of inequalities on health. A majority of Full Plate participants were lone mothers and unattached women, and existing outside of a two-adult member household framework. The vicious cycles experienced are intertwined and cannot be addressed by compartmentalising elements of health or social services. Evidence indicates that policies must respond fully to the social determinants of health and multiple inequalities related to poverty, gender, age, mobility, disability, location, culture, coping skills, and other dynamics.     

“Just a hunch”: Accuracy and awareness in person perception

Person perception tasks involving nonverbal communication have a mystified reputation. It is frequently argued that nonverbal cues are accurately, but only unconsciously, perceived. This may explain the frequent response of judges who, when asked to decode a sample of nonverbal behavior, reply that it was just a hunch—i.e., show little or no awareness of how they arrived at a judgment, even a correct one. Two alternative models, the Unconsciousness hypothesis and the Inarticulation hypothesis are posited to describe the possible relationship between accuracy and awareness. Two studies are reported on the relationship between accuracy and awareness, both using the Interpersonal Perception Task (IPT). In the first study, the IPT was given to a sample of 476 undergraduates. Accuracy was measured by how many of the 30 IPT questions these judges answered correctly. Global awareness was indexed by having each judge guess how many of the 30 scenes they had answered correctly. In this coarse analysis, the accuracy-awareness relationship was positive but weak. A second experiment was conducted to produce more fine-grained tests of the accuracy-awareness relationship. Different versions of the IPT were presented to 134 undergraduates. Judges given each version of the IPT were asked to indicate their degree of confidence in each one of their answers. This second experiment found a positive, substantial relationship between accuracy and awareness, and this relationship was particularly strong when analyzed across experimental conditions as a whole. These findings support the Inarticulation hypothesis, and cast doubt on the Unconsciousness hypothesis. Implications for an emerging understanding of how nonverbal communication is processed are discussed.We wish to thank Robin Akert and Bob Rosenthal for helpful advice and inspiration.     

Shame and (“managed”) resentment: Emotion and entitlement among Israeli mothers living in poverty

Of the range of negative emotional states, shame is commonly found to characterize experiences of people living in poverty. However, relatively little attention has been directed toward exploring other emotions that accompany the shame. Not exploring other emotions, the possibility that working-class mothers go through a struggling emotional experience in relation to their experiences of how authorities validate their belonging, is left out of scope. Exploring the notion of resentment creates a conceptual space for considering this possibility, as it flags the importance of belonging and entitlement for mothers living in poverty. I analyze these issues here, by applying “translocational positionality” which stresses how people take up positions relating to experiences of (non-) belonging and entitlement which are informed by struggles over inclusion and resources. As such, it stresses the links between struggles of belonging and struggles for securing access to resources. It affords the opportunity to identify the emotional/affectual dimension of struggles that would otherwise be implicit at best. A Resentment focused analysis of structured interviews conducted with 90 mothers, from seven ethno-national categories, living in poverty in Israel enabled me to analyze issues of belonging and entitlement as part of a continuous struggle for resources, pitched against welfare practices which ostensibly support mothers and families in need, but in fact apply means-tested and other exclusionary principles to leave mothers without the assistance that would protect them from shame.     

Culture,memory, and structural change: explaining support for “socialism” in a post-socialist society

Two decades ago, East European state socialism met with a paradoxical fate. Between 1989 and 1991, communist party hegemony was abolished, leaving the very idea of socialism permanently discredited—or so it seemed. Yet in the decade that followed, “socialistic” principles and practices would retain—or perhaps acquire—a surprising degree of popular appeal. Was this a cultural legacy of systematic indoctrination? A strategic response to material insecurities? Perhaps a combination of both? In this article, it is argued that many previous efforts to unravel the paradox are inadequate because they ignore both the “strategic” dimensions of culture and the cultural dimensions of instrumental reason. Using life-history data on the former East Germany, it is shown that apparently discredited ideologies can acquire renewed salience in the wake of regime change if they (1) remain culturally available as strategies of action that (2) provided material opportunities or symbolic privileges in the past, and (3) promise to ameliorate new problems engendered by alternative strategies.