Subjektive arbeitsbezogene Gesundheit in un- und angelernten, kulturell diversen Belegschaften

To date, research on subjective work-related health within low-qualified, culturally diverse workforces is sparse. Accordingly, psychological measures have hardly been validated for culture-sensitive application within this specific target group. Thirty-four interviews of low-qualified workers in four companies (65?% immigrants) were qualitatively analyzed. The interviewees showed complex health beliefs and the attributions of typical working conditions to poor health. Agitation and exhaustion and positive mood and energy were predominant states of impaired and positive well-being at work, respectively. Assigning low-qualified workers to six cultural clusters revealed cultural peculiarities in subjective health beliefs and attributions of causes to impaired well-being. The results form the basis for future studies to assess impaired and positive, work-related well-being among low-qualified workers and across diverse cultures within these workforces.     

Kommunikation in E-Learning-Veranstaltungen. Erfahrungen der Studierenden und ihre Präferenzen für Online- oder Face-to-Face-Kommunikation

Altogether, 2,196 students from 29 Austrian universities took part in an empirical investigation on learning and communication in e-learning courses. The students completed a questionnaire on their experiences in an actual e-learning course, on their perceived learning achievements, and their enjoyment of the course. Furthermore, they expressed their preferences for online or face-to-face communication. All in all, students were satisfied with their course. They did not prefer one communication setting over another. They preferred online-communication for the distribution of information but advocated face-to-face communication when joint learning and cooperation are important or when socio-emotional relations are to be developed. The results of the study advocate blended-learning designs and give recommendations for which communication purposes online and for which face-to-face settings are more adequate.     

Assisting women to make informed choices about screening for Group B Streptococcus in pregnancy: A critical review of the evidence

The approach to the prevention of early onset GBS disease in the newborn varies considerably from country to country. The Centre for Disease Control in the United States advocates universal culture based screening with the administration of intra-partum antibiotics, usually benzylpenicillin or ampicillin, to women who are colonised with GBS. National groups in the UK and New Zealand advocate a risk-based approach where intra-partum antibiotics are given to women with identified risk factors. The Canadian Taskforce on preventive health care has identified a third approach; where intra-partum antibiotics are given to women with a positive GBS culture and an identified risk factor. There are no national guidelines or consensus in Australia.The aim of this paper is to explore the evidence for screening and intrapartum prophylaxis for GBS. The three main methods of detection and management of GBS in pregnancy are described and the implications for women and midwifery practice are addressed. It is hoped that this discussion will provide women, midwives and other clinicians with a summary of the evidence, risks and benefits to enable informed decision making.     

Space,place and the midwife: Exploring the relationship between the birth environment,neurobiology and midwifery practice

BackgroundResearch indicates that midwives and their practice are influenced by space and place and that midwives practice differently in different places. It is possible that one mechanism through which space and place influence midwifery practice is via neurobiological responses such as the production and release of oxytocin, which can be triggered by experiences and perceptions of the physical environment.AimTo articulate the significance of space and place to midwifery and explore the relationship between the birth environment, neurobiology and midwifery practice.DiscussionQuality midwifery care requires the facilitation of trusting social relationships and the provision of emotionally sensitive care to childbearing women. The neuropeptide oxytocin plays a critical role in human social and emotional behaviour by increasing trust, reducing stress and heightening empathy, reciprocity and generosity.Principle conclusionThrough its role as a trigger for oxytocin release, the birth environment may play a direct role in the provision of quality midwifery care.     

U dhashay—Ku dhashay: Genealogical and Territorial Discourse in Somali History

Genealogical reckoning has always been a prominent aspect of Somali social organisation long characterised as a ‘segmentary’ lineage-based political system. Beyond this ethnographic foundation there was also a widely-held view that the Somali nation—despite the inherent ‘republicanism’ of the segmentary system—did at least possess a distinctive and inclusive ‘national’ genealogy. However for a decade now—following the collapse of the unified state of Somalia—authors have been re-examining the basic assumptions of the Somali nation. True to the traditions of the segmentary system they describe, a younger generation of scholars has challenged their elders and these youthful revisionists have uncovered the ethnic and even ‘racial’ complexity of the Somali state and questioned the dominant national genealogical discourses. This article asks that the dominant genealogical framework of Somali studies be taken back to its local contexts, and that descent by lineage (or indeed race) should be seen as only one part of the repertoire of political legitimacy in Somalia.     

Museums and the Utility of Culture: The Politics of Liberal Democracy and Cultural Well-Being

Contemporary museums exist as variously configured sets of institutional coordinates that aspire to function as popular, demotic spaces dedicated to representing a variety of experiences and modes of citizenship. In some cases, they can be seen as gesturing toward Yúdice's formulation, whereby recognizing the value of culture as a resource may facilitate or enable a new episteme that is ‘posthegemonic’ (from the ‘purview of the national proscenium’) and predicated on the withdrawal of the state from the public sphere (which also redefines the parameters of social agency). This post-Habermasian take on publicity has real implications for museums, which are, by and large, still functioning within what is, according to Yúdice, an exhausted model of citizenship.

This paper examines whether, in aiming to provide a much-publicized social advocacy role for indigenous peoples and source communities, the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa might be seen as producing open and inclusive public spaces that encourage debate about what constitutes citizenship in postcolonial multicultural societies. I argue that a neo-Habermasian realm of association and interaction may be provided by cultural centre-like museums. However, I qualify this point by adding that this suitability also reveals the double-edged role of culture at the NMAI and Te Papa—where it is unclear whether culture provides a key resource for the state's social management discourses, or whether it is connected to discourses of development produced by—or in consultation with—communities.     

Liberalism and Cultural Policy in Indonesia

The beginning of contemporary cultural policy in the West is tied to the emergence of liberalism and its formulation of the subjects of governance as free individuals. Culture was judged a field where the state could teach its subjects to exercise a ‘responsible and disciplined’ freedom without impinging on that freedom. In colonial contexts, indigenous subjects were judged incapable of exercising freedom responsibly and the state considered them to require a degree of state control thought inappropriate for Western subjects. In this paper, I explore how cultural policy in Indonesia has been influenced by engagement with these two applications of liberalism from the late colonial period until the present, against the background of a changing international climate and political events in Indonesia. I also address the post-Suharto period where, due to the absence of a strong political movement for reform to drive change and the decentralisation of a number of policy areas including culture, a variety of cultural policies reflecting a variety of engagements with these interpretations exist together. I demonstrate that understanding the complexity of the application of liberal methods of governance in a colonial and postcolonial context is central to appreciating the cultural policy of that location.