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.     

What’s in a frame? Goal framing,trust and reciprocity

Economists often rely on the Berg et al. (1995) trust game, or variants thereof, to identify levels of trust and reciprocity, which are fundamental to discussions of social capital. But to what extent is behavior in this game sensitive to the way the instructions are framed? We use the Berg et al. trust game played for ten rounds with random re-matching to study this. We implement a number of variations in the way the game is presented to subjects. We show that levels of trust, reciprocity and returns to trust are significantly higher under “goal framing”, which highlights the conflict inherent in the game, between self-interest and maximizing social surplus. Furthermore, with such framing, trust measured via the experimental game exhibits significant positive correlation with trust measured via the Social Values Orientation questionnaire.     

Exploring the relationship between parents’ and children’s housework time in Spain

Intergenerational transmission has been successfully employed in economic research to explain the persistence of certain economic behaviors across generations. This paper evaluates the relevance of this transmission process in the formation of gender roles during childhood. In particular, we analyze the relationship between parents?? and children??s housework allocation patterns. We propose a simple theoretical model that predicts that parents with a strong adherence to gender to traditional gender norms??as proxied by their division of household labor??are more likely to allocate housework to children in a way that reflects stereotypes of men??s and women??s domestic tasks. The empirical application is carried out with data from the 2002?C2003 Spanish Time Use Survey. The sample restricts to two-parent households with at least one child aged 10?C17?years. We find a significant positive correlation between a more egalitarian parents?? allocation of housework and a less asymmetrical distribution of domestic chores between sons and daughters.     

What’s India’s Beef with Meat? Hindu Orthopraxis and Food Transition in India Since the 1980s

Does development affect food practices? The nutrition transition model correlates positively meat consumption levels with gross domestic product per capita, except in India. In this article, I analyze food diets in this country since the 1980s by mapping out households’ practices in animal product consumption depending on their social positions. Applying multiple factor analysis on the Consumer Expenditures data of the National Sample Survey Office, I produce a relational model of food diet segmentation to overcome the dead ends of the nutrition transition model. Two structural dimensions are highlighted. The first one differentiates beef and nonbeef meat diets and relates to the symbolic capital of caste and religion. The second one opposes diets including animal products and without, depending on the amount of economic capital. The concept of temporal homology is introduced to show that the social structure remains stable over time. This denotes the importance of sociocultural norms in food practices rather than their weakening due to “modernization” and shows how these norms are key to understand food transitions beyond linear expectations drawn from economic development.     

Exploring the Interaction Between Volunteering Status,Paid Job Characteristics and Quality of Volunteers’ Motivation on Mental Health

The literature on the health-promoting effects of community work has primarily dealt with the population in retirement age, yet the vast majority of volunteers are people still in the workforce. The aim of this study is to observe the relationship between volunteering and health within the context of working life, considering paid work conditions and motives to volunteer as moderating variables. We conducted an online survey with a sample of Swiss workers employed in different industries. Results show that volunteers with self-determined motives (but not with controlled motives) report lower levels of stress and burnout than non-volunteers. Moreover, volunteers in general (regardless of the quality of motivation) report higher levels of work engagement and well-being. Analyses further reveal an interaction effect for burnout and stress, where the difference between self-determined volunteers and non-volunteers becomes larger with unfavorable working conditions at their paid job, hinting at potential compensatory effects. Implications for future research and the voluntary sector are discussed.     

Purely Academic? Exploring the Relationship Between Theory and Political Activism

This paper discusses the relationship between political activism and theory and asks to what extent the production of disability theory is 'useful' in broad terms. Through out the paper I locate myself as part of the disabled peoples movement, and write from a position of a shared value base and analyses of a collective experience. In doing so, I make no apology for flouting academic pretentions of objectivity and neutrality. Rather, I believe I am giving essential information which clarifies my motivation and political position.     

Maternal Care and Control as Mediators in the Relationship Between Mothers’ and Adult Children’s Psychosocial Problems

The current research investigated the relationship between mothers’ and adult children’s psychosocial problems through two different aspects of maternal interactions. Data were collected from family triads (N = 286), including a mother, a child, and a sibling. Mothers and their adult children completed measures of depression, loneliness, and self-esteem. The assessment of the maternal interaction variables (i.e., maternal care and maternal control) involved the perspectives of a sibling to minimize common method variance. Results partially supported the hypothesized model, wherein maternal care (but not maternal control) mediated the relationship between mothers’ depression, loneliness, and self-esteem to that of their children. Specifically, mothers who reported higher levels of psychosocial problems had children who reported that their mothers were less caring and, in turn, less maternal care was associated with higher levels of psychosocial problems in their young adult children.     

What’s the Confusion About Fusion?—Differentiating Positive and Negative Closeness in Lesbian Relationships

This study differentiated between closeness and fusion in lesbian relationships, and examined whether age, adult attachment style, social support, outness, and relationship satisfaction were associated with these variables. Participants consisted of 77 women in long-term, lesbian relationships. Overall, women who reported showing greater closeness toward their partners were more satisfied in their relationships. Age and attachment style were better predictors of closeness and fusion than were social support and outness. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed. Findings highlight the need for therapists to distinguish between positive and negative types of closeness in lesbian relationships, and avoid pathologizing high levels of closeness in lesbian relationships simply because they may deviate from a heterosexual norm.     

Between a subject and an object: representation of China in Kuo Pao-kun’s Singapore and Denny Yung’s Hong Kong

Late Pao-kun Kuo in Singapore and contemporary Denny Yung in Hong Kong have made particular ontological and epistemological choices in their experimental theater in the context of the de-colonization and rise of China. We gather, between the two sites, a possible dichotomy in the representation of China: China as a collective subject to accommodate the changing world and China as an individualized object that emerges in each narrator’s chosen perspective. Kuo intends to prompt the audience to reconnect with something greater than their individuality. For Kuo, the crisis is the loss of cultural subjectivity and the privileging of transcendence over individualized meanings of life. For Yung, cultural subjectivity is no longer a question after the return of Hong Kong to China. Yung painstakingly generates the legitimacy and capacity of individual Hong Kong people to have faith in their own ways of transcending any version of the entirety of China.     

What’s on the Line?: Exploring the Significance of Gendered Everyday Resistance Within the Transnational Call Center Workplace

Abstract

Recent efforts on the part of International Political Economy (IPE) scholars to place an emphasis on the importance of everyday spaces and actors in analyses of the global political economy have largely tended to overlook the significance of gender. However, gender and other intersecting factors serve to inform everyday actions, which—as ‘everyday IPE’ scholars suggest—impact the international. Therefore I present a feminist everyday politics of the global economy (or FEPGE) approach that aims to provide a more nuanced understanding of the relationships between gender, everyday actions (in particular, resistance), and the international. Drawing on data from interviews with former transnational call center workers in Ontario, Canada, this approach is used to explore the significance of gendered everyday acts of worker resistance. I argue that along with the ‘feminization of labor’ within the industry, it may also be necessary to discuss the ‘feminization of resistance’.     

What’s in a Kiss? Spatial Experience Shapes Directional Bias During Kissing

One of the less-known functional asymmetries in humans is the rightward head-turning bias, in which infants spend more time turning their head to the right, rather than to the left. Observational studies showed that this asymmetry disappears around the age of 3 months. Recently, an intriguing observation found a similar rightward head-turning bias during kissing, apparently indicating that the early head-motor bias persists into adulthood. Here we challenge the theory of the innate head-turning bias in adults during lip kissing, showing by means of behavioral and observational studies that the direction of the bias is culturally dependent. Moreover, we suggest that the head-turning bias during kissing is an acquired behavioral asymmetry, probably shaped by spatial experience within cultural habits (i.e., reading direction), rather than reflecting pre-wired hemispherical lateral asymmetry.     

Is Ethnic Identity a Buffer? Exploring the Relations Between Racial Microaggressions and Depressive Symptoms Among Asian-American Individuals

ABSTRACT

This study explores the moderating role of ethnic identity in the relations between racial microaggressions and depressive symptoms. Using survey data from 353 Asian-American college students, we found that racial microaggressions significantly predicted depressive symptoms and accounted for 24% of the variance in a hierarchical multiple regression analysis. In addition, ethnic identity moderated the relations between racial microaggressions and depressive symptoms. Thus, ethnic identity buffers Asian-Americans against the negative mental health effects of racial microaggressions. Implications for research and practice in the field of social work are discussed.     

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.     

Social Work Registration: What’s the Contention?

In the face of consistent lobbying for the national registration of social workers by the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW), the Council of Health Minsters maintains the view that registration is not required, placing it at odds with comparable countries around the world. One factor that shapes this current decision is the view that social work does not pose a significant risk to the health of individuals to warrant the need for this level of regulation. In light of this ongoing debate, the following article provides an overview of the discussion to date, summarising the risks, harms, and the associated costs. Additional evidence of harm and cost are then posited, followed by suggestions for further steps that can be taken to support the Council of Health Ministers making an informed decision on whether or not to include the social work profession in the National Registration and Accreditation Scheme (NRAS).

IMPLICATIONS

• Registration of social work is an under-researched topic. Research will provide much needed evidence to help understand the impact and efficacy of registration in protecting the public.

• Research will inform the Australian Association of Social Workers strategy in pursuing mandatory registration and also support the federal government in its decision making.

• Research in this area may have broader implications for other professions and government policy both nationally and internationally.

     

Between exclusion and colonisation: seeking a place for mad people’s knowledge in academia

The omnipresent psychiatric narrative of mental illness has always had its counter-narrative – the life stories of people labelled mad. The relationship between these two accounts has always been one of domination: mad voices have been – and continue to be – not heard, overwritten, silenced or even erased in the course of psychiatric treatment. As survivor researchers who have had these kinds of experiences, we wish to discuss parallels between this tradition and some contemporary academic efforts that claim to disrupt it.     

What Narrows the Stepgap? Closeness Between Parents and Adult (Step)Children in Germany

Using data from the German Family Panel (pairfam) based on 11,746 intergenerational family relationships, the present study examined differences in parental closeness across relations with multiple, coresidential, and non‐coresidential adolescent and adult children. Replicating previous research in a multilevel analysis across families, the authors found a strong positive effect of biological descent on closeness in comparison to adoptive and steprelations; this parental favoritism toward biological offspring was partly explained by selection via parental resources and attitudes. Supplemental within‐parent fixed effect analyses suggested that the relative disadvantage of stepchildren was offset by longer duration of the stepparent–stepchild relationship, lower household income, fewer children in the household, and high parental affirmation of familism.