Visualising the ends of identity: pre-birth and post-death on Instagram

This paper examines two ‘ends’ of identity online – birth and death – through the analytical lens of specific hashtags on the Instagram platform. These ends are examined in tandem in an attempt to surface commonalities in the way that individuals use visual social media when sharing information about other people. A range of emerging norms in digital discourses about birth and death are uncovered, and it is significant that in both cases the individuals being talked about cannot reply for themselves. Issues of agency in representation therefore frame the analysis. After sorting through a number of entry points, images and videos with the #ultrasound and #funeral hashtags were tracked for three months in 2014. Ultrasound images and videos on Instagram revealed a range of communication and representation strategies, most highlighting social experiences and emotional peaks. There are, however, also significant privacy issues as a significant proportion of public accounts share personally identifiable metadata about the mother and unborn child, although these issue are not apparent in relation to funeral images. Unlike other social media platforms, grief on Instagram is found to be more about personal expressions of loss rather than affording spaces of collective commemoration. A range of related practices and themes, such as commerce and humour, were also documented as a part of the spectrum of activity on the Instagram platform. Norms specific to each collection emerged from this analysis, which are then compared to document research about other social media platforms, especially Facebook.     

Bridging Cultures Through Unpaid Labor: US Volunteer Teachers’ Experiences in China’s Yunnan Province

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - International volunteering has become a complex field in the context of globalization. Within the discourses of...     

Does Self-control Predict Wealth Creation Among Young Baby Boomers?

Why similar people have different patterns of wealth accumulation is puzzling. The behavioral life-cycle hypothesis indicates self-control is an important aspect of household saving behavior. This study investigated if household wealth creation from 1994 to 2008 could be predicted by self-control among a sample of young baby boomers using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) data. Variables that significantly predicted 2008 net worth included homeownership, 1994 net worth, income, bankruptcy filing, inheritance, education level, race, marital status, children, retirement planning activities, locus of control, and self-mastery. The addition of self-control predictors to a regression model improved the model’s ability to predict net worth by 1.3 % above and beyond the human capital, financial status, and demographic predictor variables. In total, the model explained 60 % of the variance in net worth. Findings indicated that individuals who invested in their human capital, were homeowners, and had higher self-control, accumulated more wealth.     

Roads to American Empire: U.S. Military Public Works and Capitalist Transitions, 1898–1934.

Between 1898 and 1934, in synchronous and successive U.S. military interventions and occupations in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, American soldiers made public works, and especially roads, into a global technology of imperial power. This essay examines infrastructure as a factor in state formation and capitalist transition in these five different imperial spaces as a way to study U.S. empire, and its effects on foreign societies, through a comparative, global, and intra‐imperial approach often precluded by the methodological nationalism of historical and sociological literatures. Despite significant differences between these sites of U.S. war and occupation, both prior to American interventions and during them, U.S. military public works expressed and advanced a common political‐economic logic of state centralization and capital accumulation. Colonial and post‐colonial political institutions and political economies, the strength of central governments, the extent of plantation agriculture and rural proletarianization, world commodity markets, and geography and natural events varied, but determined U.S. imperial infrastructure's outcomes. By the 1930s, the U.S. military had elevated infrastructural improvement to a key repertoire of American imperial power in the world, and one which persisted as the United States turned away from formal colonialism in the era of the Cold War and decolonization.     

Deepwater Horizon oil spill exposure and child health: a longitudinal analysis

Population and Environment - The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill (DHOS) created widespread concern about threats to health among residents of the Louisiana Gulf Coast. This study uses data from the...     

Explicit versus Implicit Profit Sharing and the Determination of Wages:

ABSTRACT: This paper considers the claim that explicit profit sharing reduces the marginal cost of labour This is contrasted with the view that implicit profit sharing occurs through wage bargaining Using a microeconomic data set from the UK we find no evidence that the introduction of profit sharing reduces base wages and hence the marginal cost of labour However firm profitability is found to have a positive effect on wages which supports the hypothesis of implicit profit sharing through wage bargaining These findings suggest that it is hard to justify the favourable tax treatment of profit related pay found in the UK     

Modelling period fertility: Schooling and intervals following a birth in Eastern Africa

We describe a regression-based approach to the modelling of age-, order-, and duration-specific period fertility, using retrospective survey data. The approach produces results that are free of selection biases and can be used to study differential fertility. It is applied to Demographic and Health Survey data for Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe to investigate differential trends in fertility by education. Parity progression fell and the intervals following each birth lengthened between the 1970s and 2000s in all four countries. Fertility fell most among women with secondary education. In contrast to other world regions, postponement of successive births for extended periods accounted for much of the initial drop in fertility in these African countries. However, family size limitation by women with secondary education in Ethiopia and Kenya and longer birth spacing in Zimbabwe also played significant roles. Thus, birth control is being adopted in Eastern Africa in response to diverse changes in fertility preferences.     

Changing land tenure patterns in Scotland: A time for reform?

Land tenure patterns throughout Britain have changed significantly. The popularity of the traditional agricultural tenancy has declined and in response to legislative and policy developments landowners have become reluctant to enter into long-term tenancy arangements with tenants. The result has been a growth in a number of short term leases. In response, legislative reform took place in England and Wales during 1995 and introduced a farm business tenancy. It provides for greater freedom to negotiate individual agreements. However, Scotland has been excluded. This paper illustrates that Scotland has experienced similar changes to those observed elsewhere and that the main short term lease (limited partnership tenancy) currently popular with Scottish landowners is fraught with legal and administrative difficulties. The limited partnership tenancy is not a suitable alternative to the traditional agricultural tenancy and as such there may be a case for the extension of the farm business tenancy to Scotland.     

A Social Network Comparison of Low‐Income Black and White Newlywed Couples

Relative to White families, Black families have been described as relying on extended social networks to compensate for other social and economic disadvantages. The presence or absence of supportive social networks should be especially relevant to young couples entering marriage, but to date there has been little effort to describe the social networks of comparable Black and White newlyweds. The current study addressed this gap by drawing on interviews with 57 first‐married newlyweds from low‐income communities to compare the composition and structure of Black and White couples' duocentric social networks. The results indicated that low‐income Black couples entered marriage at a social disadvantage relative to White couples, with more family relationships but fewer positive relationships and fewer sources of emotional support (for wives), fewer connections to married individuals, and fewer shared relationships between spouses. Black couples' relative social disadvantages persisted even when various economic and demographic variables were controlled.