“Otis”: A Case Study of an Online Attempt to Purchase Children for Sex

ABSTRACT

The researchers analyzed court documents to develop a case study of an individual convicted of buying sexual services from exploited children. Findings indicate that the subject deviates from preexisting victim selection processes and demonstrates characteristics inconsistent with existing sexual offender typologies that likens offender behaviors to the hunting techniques and behaviors of predatory animals. As evidenced in the case study, the individual perceived the victims solely as a means of deviant sexual satiation and did not participate in traditionally established victim acquisition techniques. In addition, the researchers propose adopting terminology that adheres to the term consumer rather than buyer as it better represents some offenders’ disconnect and lack of empathy in the victim acquisition process.     

Needs and Perceptions of LGBTQ Caregivers: The Challenges of Services and Support

Increasing attention has been paid to the lack of services and support afforded older lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) women in same-sex relationships, including caregivers. This study was designed to investigate the needs and perceptions of LGBTQ women from ages 35 to 91, including informal caregivers and older adults regarding services and support from health care providers. Questionnaires were completed by older LGBTQ women (N = 76), and follow-up interviews were conducted with 25% of caregiver respondents. The majority of subjects indicated a fear of future challenges and discrimination. Four main themes emerged when analyzing the open-ended responses: the need for health care workers who were both supportive and knowledgeable about LGBTQ issues; better and consistent recognition of same-sex partners and their rights to make decisions as primary caregivers; increased sensitivity training regarding the needs of LGBTQ patients and caregivers; and more open and accepting environments where LGBTQ patients and caregivers could feel comfortable discussing issues with the staff.     

The gentle exercise of male power in rural Argentina

Why do women choose their own subordination, and how are their choices linked to structural characteristics of society and to conceptions and ideologies of gender? These are the central questions in this paper based on fieldwork in Santa Cecilia, a farm community in the northern part of Santa Fe province in Argentina. It portrays how power is exercised in face‐to‐face interaction between men and women, on the basis of the existing sexual division of labour in the household and in society at large, and on men's privileged access to crucial resources (material as well as organizational and ideological). It is significant that men's control over resources and women is not associated with conflict and grievances, but is based on shared values. It is argued that masculinity is hegemonic, and the paper aims at revealing the processes whereby hegemonic masculinity “naturalizes” gender inequality.     

Far Away So Close: Race,Whiteness, and German Identity

Race and nation have been difficult concepts in Germany since the Holocaust. Although race has seemingly disappeared from public discourse, the concept is very present in the narrative construction of white German national identities. In fact in Germany, race, and more specifically whiteness, disappears into a national naming. On the basis of a qualitative study on women activists, I examine to what extent the research participants struggle with the racialized discourse on German identity and what this struggle looks like. Using John Hartigan's (2000 Hartigan, John Jr. 2000. Object lessons in whiteness: Antiracism and the study of white folks. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 7(3): 373–406. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) approach to analyzing ethnographic accounts of whiteness, I show how a racialization of German identity plays out in complex and complicated ways. On the one hand, the narratives are complicit with a racialized Germanness, yet on the other hand, the idea of a unified, white, cultural community is being challenged. To move toward a postcolonial narrative of Germanness that includes Germany's history of colonialism as well as fascism, we need to move away from race, but we also need to move toward race. A starting point would be provided by focusing on racism, not as a fringe issue of German society but rather as an urgent matter that is located at the centre of German politics and is actively shaping its history.     

Cocaine-Exposed Toddler-Caregiver Dyads During Free Play at 24 Months

Some women continue to use cocaine during pregnancy, placing their fetus at risk for developmental problems. While gross problems are not evident after controlling for experimental flaws, subtle effects continue to be found. Social interactions of cocaine-exposed and nonexposed toddlers and their caregivers were assessed during a Free Play test to determine if psychobehavioral deficits were clinically observable. Risk factors were evaluated to assess whether the child’s socioemotional-behavioral behaviors were related to exposure and/or interactions with caregivers or the environment. Twenty-four-month-old cocaine-exposed and nonexposed toddlers were evaluated with the Child Behavior Check List while they played with their caregivers. Caregivers’ vocalizations were scored as contingent pairs if they occurred within 3 seconds of the child’s. The proportion of pairs was compared by group. Quality of caregivers’ vocalizations was rated as positive or negative based on approval, encouragement, and criticism. General linear model analyses indicate that cocaine-exposed children showed more dysfunctional behaviors than noncocaine-exposed children. Deficits increased when income and number of dependents were included. Caregivers in the drug group emitted fewer vocalizations during play before receiving a toy, indicating fewer opportunities for learning. No effect of quality of caregiver communication or gender by cocaine exposure interaction emerged. Cocaine exposure predicts poor developmental outcomes, but the toddler-caregiver relationship and reduced access to resources are additional risks that had previously been attributed to cocaine exposure. Early intervention services are needed to reduce the impact of low income, increase preschool readiness, and optimize functioning of these fragile families.     

Adoption Competent Clinical Practice: Defining Its Meaning and Development

The need for adoption competent mental health services has been well documented. However, the term “adoption-competent” has lacked a standardized, broadly accepted definition. This article reports findings from two related studies. The first examines how adoption competencies are demonstrated in practice by clinicians participating in an evidence-informed adoption competency training program. The second is an online survey designed to determine whether members of adoption kinship networks agree with a definition of an adoption competent mental health professional developed by experts. Both studies contribute to our understanding of what constitutes “adoption competent” clinical practice.     

Northern field: a landscape of morphology and mythology

This paper reflects on research conducted by the Edinburgh based network CORE: Creative Research into the Environment, which explores a series of multidisciplinary perspectives on the relationship between ‘morphology and mythology’. Part of an ongoing project entitled Environmental Dialogues, the research investigates an extensive context described here as a ‘Northern Field’, stretching from Greenland, Iceland and Scotland’s Western and Northern Isles, with a particular focus on the cultural position of the Outer Hebrides and Orkney. The Northern Field identifies with island cultures located within energy infrastructures, which deploy space at a large scale, with long established gas and oil fields, alongside emergent industries of wind, wave and tidal energy production. These can be seen as morphological structures set in a cultural landscape where mythological perspectives, histories and present day narratives intersect these large-scale infrastructures. The paper provides an overview of the research, in particular how disciplines such as art, landscape planning, anthropology, writing and poetry use creative methods alongside scientific and technological research, to capture a cultural response to the context of these extensive territories, which are often beyond perceptible grasp.     

Performing identity: Dawn French and the funny fat female body

This paper offers a discussion of the relationship between the discursive tropes consumption and contagion as they inform feminist and popular media interpretations of anorexia. It suggests that although consumption has proved a useful, if not limited source of meaning within feminist readings of anorexia, popular discourses utilize the more sensationalist notion of contagion to describe the relationship between female consumers and images of the slender female body. Through analyses of various examples from Australian popular women's media it argues that contagion displaces feminist arguments which locate the “cause” of anorexia in patriarchy and instead constructs women as a danger to each other and to themselves. By comparing some of the theoretical dimensions of the male and female gaze, the paper suggests that the idea of contagion constructs a problematic model of female vision through a sexual, rather than social register. It concludes that contagion operates in pop discourse as a counter-productive force which sustains a range of anxieties about contemporary femininity and enables the commodification of anorexia as a subject of public scrutiny.     

The Search for the National in Canadian Multilateral Cinematographic Co-productions

According to opinions expressed in the trade literature, international co-productions-made to appeal to a wide audience - are less likely to be identified as 'national productions' than domestic films. Yet in the past, co-productions not only helped the emergence and guaranteed the very existence of national film industries but, in some countries, they have also been seen as 'a mechanism for nation building'. The concepts of 'nation' and 'identity' have become increasingly problematic but, as a close examination of the reception of Canadian films made under the co-production agreements with France and the UK in the last decade shows, in the age of commercial mediation, even internationally-made cultural products can be turned into symbolic bearers of national identity.