Subjektivierung der Biographie. Lebensorientierungen und Anspruchshaltungen

Opposing the tendency within current analyses in the social sciences to draw a conclusion from present changes in people??s working and living conditions to corresponding social-psychic dispositions, this article both theoretically and empirically develops the thesis that people??by considering structural preconditions??put demands on themselves and structure their resources and possible courses of action. In order to understand how this is done, the article develops the concept of ??life-orientation??. By means of four exemplary typifications of life-orientations gained from a research project on employees?? demands on work, we will demonstrate that established beliefs about actual forms of subjectivity are in need of correction.     

The same and the other: male childcare workers managing identity dissonance

As childcare workers, men are in a contested position. On the one hand, they are in danger of being depicted as the pedophile; on the other hand, they are expected to bring something new and innovative to the thus-far female-dominated field. These men are experiencing ‘identity dissonance’ and have to find ways to manage and facilitate legitimate subject positions as both childcare workers and as men. Applying a perspective of discursive positioning, this article discusses men's positioning practices in nine qualitative interviews conducted with male childcare workers in German-speaking Switzerland. We identified a total of six discursive practices that men engage in to manage identity dissonance and construct a legitimate subject position. We found that men are engaging in a greater variety of practices than have been discussed so far. Unlike findings from other studies of men in female-dominated occupations, ours do not point to a clear-cut typology with regards to hegemonic and alternative masculinities; instead they show a variety of practices that are mobilized throughout all interviews.     

Of other movements: nonhuman mobility in the Anthropocene

ABSTRACT

This article has two broad aims. The first is to treat and write of nonhuman animals and their lives, deaths, and suffering at the hands of humans and human infrastructure as important to theory, politics, and policy. The second is to explore how social theory can think creatively about specific examples in which nonhuman animals are affected by and need more from human infrastructures – especially those built for human mobility. These two broad aims will be narrowed to consider nonhuman animal deaths upon roads, focused on the potential for enriching human and nonhuman animal life through creative thinking, ethically minded road design, and the acknowledgement of shared vulnerability. In pursuit of these aims it will necessarily focus attention on the experience of human mobility on nonhuman animals, forging an approach that keeps an ethics of entanglement and care at the forefront.     

"We'll Figure a Way": Teenage Mothers' Experiences in Shifting Social and Economic Contexts

The current economic and social context calls for a renewed assessment of the consequences of an early transition to parenthood. In interviews with 55 teenage mothers in Colorado, we find that they are experiencing severe economic and social strains. Financially, although most are receiving substantial help from family members and sometimes their children's fathers, basic needs often remain unmet. Macroeconomic and family structure trends have resulted in deprived material circumstances, while welfare reform and other changes have reduced the availability of aid. Socially, families' and communities' disapproval of early childbearing negatively influences the support young mothers receive, their social interactions, and their experiences with social institutions.     

Optimal discrimination designs for exponential regression models

We investigate optimal designs for discriminating between exponential regression models of different complexity, which are widely used in the biological sciences; see, e.g., Landaw [1995. Robust sampling designs for compartmental models under large prior eigenvalue uncertainties. Math. Comput. Biomed. Appl. 181–187] or Gibaldi and Perrier [1982. Pharmacokinetics. Marcel Dekker, New York]. We discuss different approaches for the construction of appropriate optimality criteria, and find sharper upper bounds on the number of support points of locally optimal discrimination designs than those given by Caratheodory's Theorem. These results greatly facilitate the numerical construction of optimal designs. Various examples of optimal designs are then presented and compared to different other designs. Moreover, to protect the experiment against misspecifications of the nonlinear model parameters, we adapt the design criteria such that the resulting designs are robust with respect to such misspecifications and, again, provide several examples, which demonstrate the advantages of our approach.     

Life-Coaching zur Entwicklung der Lebenszufriedenheit

This research explores with the help of pretest-posttest-design with two repeated measures, control group and 19 clients, whether a Life Coaching can change a life dissatisfaction. As a result, dissatisfaction decreased in 81% of the clients or terminate completely. Stressors were reduced by 100% (T(11) = 4; p < 0.005), strains were reduced by 88%. A significant decline of the emotional-cognitive strains by 89% (T(13) = 0; p < 0.005) was noticed. The stress load all over was significantly lower (T(13) = 20; p < 0.05). It exists a within-subjects effect between intervention and one of the subscales, F(1.24) = 5.776, p = 0.024.     

Return migration as a ‘family project’: exploring the relationship between family life and the readjustment experiences of highly skilled Austrians

Most research studies on return migration analyse remigration and reintegration as individual projects, without considering the interconnectedness of remigrants with their family members. This article addresses this research gap and seeks to add to our understanding of the role which the family plays in shaping reintegration outcomes through a qualitative analysis of the experiences of highly skilled Austrians who returned, with their co- or inter-ethnic family members, in the last 10 years. Results show that the relationship between family and reintegration is complex. Core family members may act both as constraints and as enablers of readjustment. Partners and children ease reintegration by providing enthusiasm, motivation and emotional support. At the same time, family members may also complicate the reintegration process by increasing the amount of administrative work to be done in order to re-organise family life or by triggering feelings of alienation, when family members face (re)-integration challenges. The reintegration process was also found to have a significant impact on highly skilled returnees’ family life. The problem-solving strategies which returnees develop during their process of reintegration either impede the formation of new families, impact on the structure of existing families or change the division of family work in the household.     

A Web-based review of sexual and reproductive health services available at colleges and universities in Georgia

Objective: Although two-thirds of graduating high school seniors attend college or university in the U.S., there is a paucity of national or state specific research regarding SRH services available on or near college and university campuses.

Methods: A review of websites for all colleges and universities in Georgia was conducted to evaluate sexual health services available on campuses and evidence of referral to community providers.

Results: Of 96 colleges in Georgia, 44 had campus-located health centers, with only 3 at two-year colleges. Overall SRH service provision was low, with great variation between colleges. Distances between colleges and Title X clinics ranged from 0.33 to 35.45 miles.

Conclusions: Many students lack access to campus health centers, and information on college websites regarding SRH service availability and referrals differs dramatically between campuses. In the absence of robust campus-located services, schools should highlight where students can obtain comprehensive SRH care in the community.     

What is Recklessness in Scientific Research? The Frank Sauer Case

On May 22, 2017, administrative law Judge Leslie Rogall of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Departmental Appeals Board, Civil Remedies Division, ruled in favor of the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) concerning its decision to charge former University of California at Riverside biochemistry professor Frank Sauer with research misconduct for fabricating or falsifying digital image data included in three papers and seven grant applications submitted to the National Institutes of Health. More specifically, Sauer was deemed responsible for manipulating, reusing, and falsely labeling images of autoradiograms and gels in his research in epigenetics. One month after this decision, ORI announced its final ruling concerning Sauer, which barred him from serving in any advisory capacity to the Public Health Services and required him to retract affected papers. The case raises some interesting and important questions concerning research integrity because it focused on the legal issue of what constitutes recklessness in scientific research.