Medicine on the line? Computer‐mediated social support and advice for people with diabetes

The advent of thousands of Usenet groups on the Internet, covering a vast range of medical and welfare issues and ostensibly devoted to the mutual social support of participating members, has raised the potential for the development of new forms of 'virtual' health care. This article critically analyses the use by people with diabetes of one such Usenet group. It seeks to establish, first, the extent to which such a site provides some demonstrable measure of social support to its participants. This is approached by undertaking a structural analysis of the site to identify the extent of usage, and the nature of supporting interventions using a fivefold classification (instrumental, informational, esteem and social companionship and other). Second, the article attempts to identify any disparity between the lay health-knowledge in evidence and biomedical opinions proffered by the use of a panel of consultant diabetiologists. The results of the analysis suggest that the diabetes newsgroup provides an example of an active forum for largely well-informed participants who routinely use the media as an aid to the reflexive management of their medical condition. It also raises the prospect of a renegotiated relationship between medical knowledge and lay experience based upon shared learning     

Mapping Gender and Migration in Sociological Scholarship: Is It Segregation or Integration?

A review of the sociological research about gender and migration shows the substantial ways in which gender fundamentally organizes the social relations and structures influencing the causes and consequences of migration. Yet, although a significant sociological research has emerged on gender and migration in the last three decades, studies are not evenly distributed across the discipline. In this article, we map the recent intellectual history of gender and migration in the field of sociology and then systematically assess the extent to which studies on engendering migration have appeared in four widely read journals of sociology (American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Demography, and Social Forces). We follow with a discussion of these studies, and in our conclusions, we consider how future gender and migration scholarship in sociology might evolve more equitably.     

Labor relations and technological change at Canadian Pacific Railway

There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run When the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun Long before the white man and long before the wheel When the green dark forest was too silent to be real For they looked into the future and what did they see They saw an iron road running from the sea to the sea Bringing the goods to a young growing land All up through the seaports and into their hands From “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” by Gordon Lightfoot The authors thank CPR managers and union officials representing CPR employees for their cooperation and patience in explaining the intricacies of the railroad industry. Special appreciation is extended to Jason Copping, Labour Relations Manager, for his facilitating our initial access to the company.     

The Texaco racial discrimination case and shareholder wealth

We analyze the wealth ejfects of the Texaco racial discrimination lawsuit both on the shareholders of Texaco and its major U.S. competitors. Employing a comprehensive data set which included every case docket entry and every Wall Street Journal article on the case as an experimental stimulus, our findings suggest that the overall cost of the case to Texaco shareholders exceeded $500 million, that Texaco's tribulations had little, if any, impact on the share prices of its major competitors, and that Wall Street Journal coverage of the case was highly correlated with significant changes in Texaco stock prices. This last finding provides significant support for Hite 's suppostion that newspaper editors “key ” on ex post stock price changes in selecting the events to be covered in the next day's edition. The authors are grateful to Kee Chung for helpful comments on earlier drafts and also acknowlege the help-ful assistance of the staff of the law library at the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law at The University of Memphis.     

A Review of Kyoto Protocol Adoption in Russia: Joint Implementation in Focus

Russia’s role in ‘animation’ of the Kyoto Protocol was crucial. Its initial vacillation on ratification was predominantly due to political bargaining with the EU. Domestic economic rationales [i.e. impacts of emission trading and Joint Implementation (JI) projects] were important to a much lesser extent and environmental motives did not seem to play any role in the decision. Since the Protocol entered into force, there have been significant delays in complete establishment of policy implementation frameworks, which are necessary for Russia to start benefiting from JI and emission trading. Only recently, in 2007, have GHG inventories and a national registry been established and the responsibilities for implementation of the Protocol and JI among the government departments have been distributed only to a certain extent. Some constraints hindering JI projects, such as vague legislation, an unfavourable economic climate, lack of commitment to JI projects, corruption, xenophobia, state and agency ‘capture’ still remain.      

Job Insecurity and the Timing of Parenthood: A Comparison between Eastern and Western Germany

This article contributes to the ongoing debate on the economic determinants of fertility behavior by addressing the role of job insecurity in couples’ intentions concerning parenthood and its timing. It starts from the hypothesis that cultural values moderate individuals’ reactions to job insecurity and the way it is related to family formation. With a systematic thematic content analysis of a set of semi-structured interviews with childless men and women around the age of 30 in eastern and western Germany, we are able to show that there are substantial differences in the consequences of job insecurity on intentions to have a first child. In western Germany, a relatively secure job career is expected to precede family formation, and this sequence of transitions is rather rigid, whereas in eastern Germany job security and family formation are thought of and practiced as parallel investments. We suggest that the lack of convergence in family formation patterns between eastern and western Germany after the unification of the country in 1990 is partially related to different attitudes toward job insecurity in the two contexts.