Faction in Movement: The Impact of Inclusivity on the Anti‐Globalization Movement*

Objectives. This research examines and evaluates the reasons why the anti‐globalization movement has yet to make significant progress in achieving its primary goals of democratizing international trade negotiation processes. Methods. Data on anti‐globalization protest cycles were collected from news sources for a time period of up to one month that encapsulated the protest events. From these, I constructed brief case narratives of the major events in Seattle, Washington, DC, Prague, Quebec City, Genoa, and Doha to illustrate my argument. Results. I find that the democratic master frame employed by the movement results in two important limitations: (1) the movement cannot exclude participants without undermining its legitimacy, and (2) its lack of a centralized organizational framework makes it impossible to police the actions of participants during major protests. Recognizing these limitations, states hosting global economic summits have demonstrated increasingly a willingness to utilize repressive measures against the movement thereby undermining the movement's ability to achieve its goals. Conclusion. I conclude that the inability of the anti‐globalization movement to exclude violent participants will continue to limit its effectiveness given states' increasing willingness to employ repressive tactics indiscriminately.     

Conducting a Hispanic Health Needs Assessment in rural Kansas: building the foundation for community action

Healthy People 2020 states ethnic health disparities are a priority for the US. Although considerable national statistics document ethnic-related health disparities, information specific to rural areas is scarce and does not provide direction for implementing chronic disease prevention programming. Therefore, the purpose of our project was to use the Hispanic Health Needs Assessment (HHNA), a tool designed by the National Alliance for Hispanic Health (NAHH), in culturally diverse, rural Southwest Kansas. Our focus areas included: access to healthcare, heart disease, diabetes, overweight, nutrition, and physical activity. METHODS: The assessment followed six steps: (1) developing the assessment team, (2) data gathering using community member surveys, existing statistics and community leader interviews, (3) assembling the findings, (4) formulating recommendations for action at individual, institutional, community and policy levels, (5) sharing findings and program planning, and (6) sharing findings with NAHH. We identified several challenges collecting health related data in rural communities, but overall, the HHNA was a comprehensive and useful tool for guiding a community level health assessment. CONCLUSION: This process has provided our community partners with locally relevant statistics regarding the current status of health, health behaviors, and perceived community needs to inform resource allocation, program planning and applications for new funding initiatives.     

Caregiving fathers and the negotiation of crossroads: Journeys of continuity and change

This article addresses the sustainability of extensive paternal involvement in caregiving by applying a temporal approach to understandings of the journeys of primary- and equal-carer fathers and their families. Drawing on a second phase of interviews with UK fathers first spoken to 5 years earlier, we explore continuities and changes in their roles, identities and outlooks as their caregiving journeys progressed and their children became older. Specifically, we explore how fathers and their families negotiated significant moments of change that had the potential to prompt reflection or reorientation, moments that we term caregiving crossroads. Through doing so, we highlight how, in spite of shifts in their arrangements and understandings, the embeddedness of fathers' caregiving routines, bonds and identities had apparently enabled their commitment to counter-normative roles to endure through such crossroads. We also outline, however, how gendered limitations to some aspects of the scope of their caregiving seemed also to persist as their journeys as fathers progressed.     

DO CHANGING VALUES EXPLAIN THE NEW POLITICS? A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE POSTMATERIALIST THESIS

Many social scientists have argued that major political changes have occurred in the postindustrial societies of Western Europe, North America, and Australasia since the 1960s. These changes include partisan dealignment accompanied by a breakdown in traditional political orientations, the appearance of "new social movements," and increasing use of non-traditional forms of political action. One of the most influential account of the origins of the "New Politics" is Ronald Inglehart's "postmaterialist" thesis. Analyzing data from the Political Action surveys, we test two central propositions of the postmaterialist thesis: that postmaterialism constitutes an emerging and categorically distinct type of value commitment in these societies; and that a commitment to postmaterialism leads to a rejection of the state as a means of accomplishing policy objectives. Neither of these propositions is supported. The analyses instead provide evidence for an alternative account that we characterize as "value pluralism," and they show further that even citizens with postmaterialist values endorse the intervention of state institutions to achieve desired political outcomes.     

When a colleague commits suicide: how the staff reacts

1. A literature review on the subject of suicide by mental health professional indicates that research has been limited to family member survivors. There is some data on reactions to patient suicide by psychiatrists and psychologists. 2. The results of this study show that mental health professional survivors of peer suicide experience similar reactions to the studied groups. These include anger, guilt, loss of self-esteem, disruption of relationships, and concern about assessing for suicidality. 3. Subjects felt the victim did not reach out for help because she feared stigmatization; mental health professionals are not permitted to have serious problems. 4. The clinical nurse specialist can perform an important role by addressing this dynamic and working to provide a supportive and nonpunitive environment for mental health professionals experiencing problems.     

Reconceptualizing reflexivity and dissonance in professional and personal domains

Debates around 'reflexivity' and the construction of the gendered self within late modernity have occupied the attention of both 'reflexive modernization' theorists ( Beck, Giddens and Lash 1994 ; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1996 ; Giddens 1991, 1992 ) as well as gender and feminist theorists. While theorists such as Beck and Giddens have been preoccupied with establishing the connection between reflexivity and the construction of the 'non-gendered' self, gender and feminist theorists have sought to amplify the debate by exploring the intersecting nexus of contemporary theorizing, more fully within this context. This paper explores the theoretical underpinnings of these debates and their application to specific professional and personal domains. I consider three case studies to assess these issues as outlined in my own work, Brooks 2006 , and in the work of Wajcman and Martin 2002 , and McDowell 1997 , which draw on empirical research and explore changes to gender identity within professional and personal domains. I conclude that there is little evidence in the research presented here of any systematic reconfiguring of gender identities leading to a detraditionalization of gender as suggested by the 'reflexive modernization' theorists.     

Organizational constructs as predictors of effectiveness in child welfare interventions

Organizational context, including line worker characteristics and service settings, may help explain the equivocal findings of intervention studies in the field of child welfare. Yet organizational context has been largely ignored in studies of child welfare interventions. The purpose of this article is to expound upon the likely role of the organizational context in explaining service effectiveness in child welfare. Several bodies of literature within child welfare and human service organization and administration are reviewed and synthesized. A conceptual framework that can be used to guide future child welfare research is then proposed.     

Relationships between person and health factors and job characteristics in women with systemic lupus erythematosus

This study compared personal and health factors and job characteristics in persons with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) and a healthy control group and examined factors related to job characteristics. Fifteen women with SLE and 15 healthy controls completed a questionnaire regarding current employment, employer restrictions, job environment, type of work, and health factors interfering with work. Personal factors such as demographic information, disease severity, cognition, and degree of brain injury were also assessed. t-tests showed that persons with SLE worked significantly less than healthy controls but there were no significant differences between the groups for types of job or employee restrictions. In the group with SLE, health factors of mobility, dependence, musculoskeletal problems, neurological problems, and fatigue correlated with perceived social (r=0.53 to 0.67) and physical (r=0.56 to 0.87) work environments. None of the measures of cognition, brain injury or disease severity correlated with job characteristics. In the healthy controls, dependence at work correlated with physical environment and fatigue correlated with the social environment of the workplace. The results indicate that even persons with SLE who have mild disease are significantly different from healthy controls and might be at risk for discontinuing working.     

Low Birth Weight and Parental Investment: Do Parents Favor the Fittest Child?

Do parents contribute to birth weight disparities in status attainment? This study uses a nationally representative sample of 8,550 children and 1,450 twins from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort to investigate whether, as recent studies have suggested, parents favor healthier children. Children with poor health are found to receive fewer parental investments, including breast‐feeding and quality parent–child interaction, but results from between‐ and within‐family regression models, using low birth weight as a proxy for child health, find no evidence that parents compensate for or reinforce child health endowments. Instead, birth‐weight disparities in parental investment are linked with observable family, maternal, and child sociodemographic characteristics. Our results raise doubts about the utility of human capital models to explain health disparities in parental investment and shed new light on the broad spectrum of disadvantage faced by children with poor health.