Incidental Haptic Stimulation in the Context of Flirt Behavior

The present study focuses on a previously neglected aspect influencing the decision making process during the first few seconds of (nonverbal) impression formation: incidental haptic stimulation by an external object. Participants observed portrait photos of potential male or female flirt partners depicting either a happy or a sad facial expression. In this context, the participants received haptic stimulation (by manipulating the weight of a clipboard) while they first evaluated the difficulty to flirt with the target persons and subsequently reported the general importance of others’ physical appearance. The results showed that incidental haptic stimulation substantially affected social judgments and interacted with the emotional context as well as with gender effects. We discuss the present data in the light of the concept of embodied cognition.     

Union patterns and children’s living arrangements in Latin America

This article analyzes how union patterns in Mexico and Colombia affect the lives of children. The proportion of children affected by a disruption by the age of 15 is estimated by using life table methods. The factors that contribute to a child's risk of experiencing a disruption are investigated by using proportional hazard models. Finally, the living arrangements of children by the mother's marital status, the urban status, and the mother's educational attainment are explored. The findings indicate that about one-fifth of Mexican children and one-third of Colombian children spend some time with an unmarried mother by the age of 15. In addition, those who experience a disruption or are born outside of a union spend a considerable length of time in the single-parent state. Most children of an unmarried mother live in an extended-family household, often with a grandparent.     

Who should do the talking? The proliferation of dialogue as governmental technology

This paper investigates the recent proliferation of appeals to ‘dialogue’ as a solution to problems in a broad spectrum of different organisational settings Instead of top‐down management and expert‐driven public services, we are told we need ‘dialogue‐based’ management, health treatment, elder care, social counselling, and so forth. Dialogue is often presented as a tool that will reverse the stifling dominance of authoritative expertise and leadership, liberating the energy of employees, clients and patients. However, by viewing the dialogue as a ‘governmental technology’, we emphasise that it is not simply a tool that can be used by some to liberate or govern others, or to dominate nature. A technology is rather a structuring of actions that implies that also ‘the governors’ inevitably exercise power over themselves. The paper demonstrates how dialogue technology re‐structures organisational domains of speech and hereby contributes to reconfiguring inter‐relations and self‐relations within key institutions of modern society.     

Post‐adolescence as a new phase in the family cycle?

This article investigates the phenomenon of post‐adolescence and its implications for the persons affected—both the young people and their parents—as well as for social policy. The emergence of an extended ‘moratorium’ phase for young people still in the educational system, living alone yet financially dependent on their parents is related to changes in the value systems of modern societies, the rising economic prosperity for a greater proportion of the population, the earlier age of achievement of physical maturity as well as to structural transformations at the level of the labour market.     

Zwischen Seelsorge und Supervision — das Mitarbeitergespräch in der Kirche

Between spiritual counseling and supervision — staff appraisal interviews within the church. A leadership tool used within conflicting concepts The author draws on personal experience he had when introducing staff appraisal interviews within the Lutheran Church of Bavaria, specifically in annual staff appraisals. After distinguishing between counseling, therapy, spiritual counseling, supervision and coaching, he describes the particulars of staff appraisal interviews. He particularly emphasizes that these interviews depend a great deal upon the way leadership is viewed within an organization. He sees agreement on aims as the central element of staff appraisal interviews that requires special attention and care. The article closes with critical remarks on and perspectives for current practices within the church in the area of religious instruction.     

Therapeutic mobilities

ABSTRACT

This Special Issue expands mobilities research through the idea of therapeutic mobilities, which consist of multiple movements of health-related things and beings, including, though not limited to, nurses, doctors, patients, narratives, information, gifts and pharmaceuticals. The therapeutic emerges from the encounters of mobile human and non-human, animate and inanimate subjects with places and environments and the individual components they are made of. We argue that an interaction of mobilities and health research offers essential benefits: First, it contributes to knowledge production in a field of tremendous social relevance, i.e. transnational health care. Second, it encourages researchers to think about and through functionally limited, ill, injured, mentally disturbed, unwell and hurting bodies. Third, it engages with the transformative character of mobilities at various scales. And fourth, it brings together different kinds of mobilities. The papers in this Special Issue contribute to three themes key for the therapeutic in mobilities: a) transformations (and stabilizations) of selves, bodies and positionalities, b) uneven im/mobilities and therapeutic inequalities and c) multiple and contingent im/mobilities. Therapeutic mobilities comprise practices and processes that are multi-layered and mutable; sometimes bizarre, sometimes ironic, often drastically uneven; sometimes brutal, sometimes beautiful – and sometimes all of this at the same time.