The Power of Unsilencing: Between Silence and Negotiation in Heterosexual Relationships

Orly Benjamin, The Power of Unsilencing: Between Silence and Negotiation in Heterosexual Relationships, pp. 1–19.
This article proposes an analysis of the social process of unsilencing in the specific context of heterosexual relationships. Unsilencing is the process in which an individual woman becomes empowered to the extent of voicing what is silenced by structural hierarchies that shape her experiences of the heterosexual relationships she is involved in. I connect the process of unsilencing to the sociological notion of "negotiated order" and a feminist notion of the self as fragmented and continually changing. Unsilencing is conceived as a response to power operating on three levels: emotional connection that empowers a contesting meaning structure; a process of distancing that empowers the individual in overcoming positioning processes; and an increased sense of authenticity in relation to the set of emotional management, language and beliefs embedded in the contesting meaning structure.     

Postneonatal diarrhea mortality of Mexican American and Anglo American infants: Trends and context

In the 1930s and 1940s, the Mexican origin population of San Antonio, Texas, USA, was desperately impoverished and inhabited some of the worst slums in the USA. Mortality of Mexican origin infants in the 1930s and 1940s was dominated by diarrhea, a cause of death identified with fecal contamination of the environment. The postneonatal diarrhea mortality rate (risk) was 48 per 1,000 Mexican origin infants, but only 7 per 1,000 Anglo infants. By 1970 this cause of death had virtually disappeared in both populations, but in the 35 years of 1935-1969, Mexican origin infants accounted for over 90 percent of all diarrhea deaths in the city. Limited evidence suggests that miserable living conditions without proper water supplies and sanitation in the densely settled Mexican American neighborhoods gave rise to environmental contamination which resulted in high diarrhea morbidity and mortality. The hypothesis is suggested that reduction of mortality from diarrhea was a consequence of specific community interventions.     

Desh bidesh revisited

This article discusses the emergence of a ‘British Bangladeshi social field’. It makes two connected arguments about its effects. First, it argues that the emergence of the British Bangladeshi social field has rendered the discourses of desh and bidesh less important. Second, it argues that British Bangladeshis are embedded into many transnational social fields and lead multiply orientated rather than binary lives. It uses the example of the importance of the global Islamic umma (community) to British Bangladeshis to illustrate this and argues that it has also contributed to the decreasing importance of the discourse of the desh. What this shows is that the transnationalism of today is very different from that of 20 years ago, both in terms of how it is experienced and how it is analysed.     

Masculinity,Complex: A Historical Take

The author recapitulates the history of the changes in second-wave feminist psychoanalytic thinking regarding masculinity, beginning with the critique of the Freudian-Lacanian position of phallic monism adumbrated by Juliet Mitchell. It traces the reversal brought about by the North American position, represented by Stoller and Chodorow, that emphasized the boy’s problem in breaking his primary identification with the mother. Continuing, the author summarizes her own critique of the oedipal model and have-have-not binary that it dictated as well as her own outline of preoedipal “homoerotic identificatory love” and the overinclusive nature of early identifications. In addition, she includes her understanding of the Oedipus as founded in the repudiation of passivity and its projection into the female “Other,” the daughter position. Along the way she points to how a number of other feminist psychoanalytic thinkers took the idea of postoedipal and overinclusive thinking further and in a more critical direction.     

Implicit Nativist Attitudes,Social Desirability,and Immigration Policy Preferences

While previous research on immigration attitudes among the American public has focused on factors such as economic threat, social context, and racial prejudice, fewer studies have examined the psychological determinants of immigration policy preferences. This study analyzes the results of an implicit association test (IAT) procedure that measures automatic nativist preferences for a traditional American culture versus a Latino‐American culture (i.e., implicit nativist attitudes). In brief, this study demonstrates that implicit nativist attitudes are fairly common, that they are an independent predictor of immigration policy attitudes, and that they affect those who are not explicitly nativist but who still hold restrictionist policy views.     

Neuropsychological Profiles of Victims of Financial Elder Exploitation at the Los Angeles County Elder Abuse Forensic Center

The current article examines neuropsychological correlates of financial elder exploitation in a sample of older adults who have been documented victims of financial elder exploitation. The purpose of this exploratory study was twofold. First, a subsample of the referrals at the Los Angeles County Elder Abuse Forensic Center (LACEAFC) was compared to community dwelling adults in terms of the specific cognitive domains linked to financial capacity including memory, calculation, and executive functioning. Next, the correlation between presence of neuropsychological data and the likelihood of filing a case with the LA County’s District Attorney office was examined. Twenty-seven LACEAFC cases and 32 controls were assessed. Overall, the forensic center group performed worse than a community-based age-matched control group on the MMSE, calculation, and executive functioning (ps < .01). The presence of neuropsychological data was significantly correlated to an increased likelihood of a case being filed.