Vocational or academic track? Study and career plans among Swedish students living in rural areas

This ethnographic study explores how rural lower secondary school students reflect on study and career choices, focusing on the choice between vocational and academic upper secondary programs. Applying a spatial perspective, we analyze individual students’ reflections about study and career choices within a variety of rural regions, and compare patterns in the regions. The results indicate complex interactions between structural factors and individual dispositions. In places where education levels were low and the local labor market predominantly offered unskilled manual and service work, there was a stronger tendency to choose vocational programs than in places with higher education levels and access to a more varied labor market. Likewise, there was an association between strongly gendered labor markets and gender-typical choices. However, individual students positioned themselves actively in relation to the local place, its local labor market and social relations; their choices were place-bound to varying degrees, and chose upper secondary programs and presented ideas about prospective careers that were harmonious with the local labor market in some cases, but discordant in other cases. The results are discussed in the framework of individuals’ horizon for actions.     

Curious erasures: the sexual in wartime sexual violence

Wartime sexual violence is especially egregious precisely because it is a sexual form of violence that causes particular harms. Yet, curiously, and in contrast to feminist theory on sexual violence more generally, the sexual has been erased from frames of understanding in dominant accounts of wartime rape. This article places the seeming certainty that “wartime rape is not about sex (it’s about power/violence)” under critical scrutiny and poses questions about the stakes of the erasure of the sexual in explanations of conflict-related sexual violence. It argues that the particular urgency that accompanies this erasure reflects the workings of familiar distinctions between war and peace, as well as efforts to clearly recognize violence and separate it from sex. Erasing the sexual from accounts of wartime rape thus ultimately reinscribes the normal and the exceptional as separate, and reproduces a reductive notion of heterosexual masculine sex (in peacetime) that is ontologically different from the violence of war.     

Just Before I Recognize Myself: The Role of Featural and Multisensory Cues Leading up to Explicit Mirror Self‐Recognition

Leading up to explicit mirror self‐recognition, infants rely on two crucial sources of information: the continuous integration of sensorimotor and multisensory signals, as when seeing one's movements reflected in the mirror, and the unique facial features associated with the self. While visual appearance and multisensory contingent cues may be two likely candidates of the processes that enable self‐recognition, their respective contribution remains poorly understood. In this study, 18‐month‐old infants saw side‐by‐side pictures of themselves and a peer, which were systematically and simultaneously touched on the face with a hand. While watching the stimuli, the infant's own face was touched either in synchrony or out of synchrony and their preferential looking behavior was measured. Subsequently, the infants underwent the mirror‐test task. We demonstrated that infants who were coded as nonrecognizers at the mirror test spent significantly more time looking at the picture of their own face compared to the other‐face, irrespective of whether the multisensory input was synchronous or asynchronous. Our results suggest that right before the onset of mirror self‐recognition, featural information about the self might be more relevant in the process of recognizing one's face, compared to multisensory cues.     

Roma Press Center – 20 years of making a difference

ABSTRACT

The Roma Press Center (RPC) is the first Roma news agency in Hungary with the goal of reducing prejudice against the Roma. Their profile has been changed throughout the years, since the technological developments of the media and the political and economic changes of the country challenged their way of effectiveness. Until recently, the RPC was always about reacting to the negative stories about the Roma and balancing this image in the media. In the last 3 years, RPC changed its attitude by becoming a proactive media organisation which directly participates in shaping the public discourse about the Roma with their work. The interview with the two decisive characters of the RPC tells about this process.     

Foster Care to Kinship Adoption: The Road Less Traveled

ABSTRACT

Although a rather extensive literature concerning informal kinship care and kinship foster care has emerged over the past 30 years, much less is known about the children and families involved in kinship adoption. This article pays particular attention to recent research that investigates placement decisions and outcomes for former foster children adopted by relatives. This review suggests conclusions similar to broader reviews, in that kinship placement tends to show some consistently favorable outcomes across a range of study populations and methods. Financial need may be the greatest concern for relatives who adopt. The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 expands adoption subsidies and provides states with the option of providing ongoing subsidies to certain relatives who take guardianship of family members from the foster care system. However, relative caregivers often are not well informed about financial supports afforded them by federal and state policies. Specialized programs for kinship adoptive families are still limited. Much of the growth of kinship placement has been due to the absence of other placement options for many children and value-based decision making that places a premium on kinship, rather than on evidence of the advantages of kinship adoption.     

“Family Matters”: A Systematic Review of the Evidence For Family Psychoeducation For Major Depressive Disorder

The first aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the evidence for family psychoeducation (FPE) interventions for major depressive disorder (MDD). A second aim was to compare the efficacy of different modes of delivering face‐to‐face FPE interventions. Ten studies (based on nine distinct samples) were identified comprising four single‐family studies, four multifamily studies, one single versus multifamily comparative study, and one peer‐led, mixed‐diagnosis study. Seven studies measured patient functioning and six reported positive outcomes. Six studies measured carer's well‐being and four reported positive outcomes. Results provide preliminary evidence that FPE leads to improved outcomes for patient functioning and family–carer's well‐being for persons with depression. The implications for future development and delivery of FPE interventions for MDD are discussed.     

‘From mosh pit to posh pit’: Festival imagery in the context of the boutique festival

This paper addresses market-based cultural production in the context of the UK festival field, with a focus on the framing of the festival experience through anticipation. In particular, boutique festivals are discussed as examples of a contemporary cultural ‘product category’ which has emerged and proliferated in the last decade. Through discourse analysis of media representations of boutique festivals, we situate the boutique festival in a broader sociocultural discourse of agency and choice, which makes it meaningful and desirable, and outline the type of consumer it is meant to attract. For the contemporary consumer, the boutique festival is presented as an anticipated experience based on countercultural festival imagery, while simultaneously framing cultural participation through consumption. The paper contributes to a wider debate on the construction of the consumer in the cultural economy.     

The Transformative Impact of Cultural Portals on the Ethnic Identity Development of Second-Generation Filipino-American Emerging Adults

This study considers why second-generation Filipino-Americans (SGFAs) may experience unique challenges regarding family socialization, ethnic identity formation, and a history of colonial mentality. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, in-depth interviews were conducted with 30 SGFA emerging adults. An indigenous perspective and life story interview was used to underscore social, political, and historical contexts of participants. Despite experiencing colonial mentality, assimilation, and constrained enculturation, SGFAs displayed areas of resilience through cultural portals, or access points to their own heritage and culture, which allowed them to explore and develop their own ethnic identity in a transformative way.     

Ethnicity and Effectively Maintained Inequality in BC Universities

As Canadian postsecondary systems have expanded they have become more institutionally differentiated. In British Columbia, distinctions are made between research‐intensive universities (RIUs) and teaching‐intensive universities with respect to resources, programming, and perceived prestige value. We employ an effectively maintained inequality framework to examine the role played by ethnicity in the competition for admission to RIUs. Our findings indicate that, together with socioeconomic status and gender, ethnicity is significantly related to RIU attendance rates. Ethnic group differences were particularly marked—Chinese and Korean speakers being most likely and Tagalog speakers least likely to attend an RIU. High school grade point averages and English language proficiency scores moderated only some of these differences, raising questions about the efficacy of competitive admissions policies based solely on academic merit.