Attachment Behavior of Children Adopted Internationally at Six Months Post Adoption

The purpose of this pilot study was to describe attachment behavior in children adopted internationally at six months post adoption. Twenty-two children and their adoptive mothers were observed at home for completion of an attachment measure. Mothers also completed a questionnaire on their child's preadoption care. Comparisons of children low and high in attachment security suggested that low secure children showed predominantly ambivalent attachment behavior or that they were still in the process of forming an attachment. Children having foster versus orphanage care prior to adoption differed in quality of preadoption care and in certain attachment behaviors, but not in overall attachment security.     

Making Sense of Social Change: Observing Collective Action in Networked Cultures

This article presents an overview of rising trends in the study of networked interactions conveyed by social media technologies and the emergence of new meanings associated with social change. In recent years, a healthy amount of studies has focused on ICT uses within collective action, considering social media tools to have become crucial components of many transnational movements and social change projects. Crossing boundaries between social movements theories, political science, and communication studies, literature suggests that ‘online activism’ and increasingly networked interactions may have transformed the meanings and definitions associated with ‘collective action’ and ‘social change’. To make sense of these meanings, we identify three approaches used by scholars, which focus on (i) the actual networking of actors, (ii) the diffusion of new repertoires and frames through networks, and (iii) making sense of new meanings conveyed within networked cultures. We conclude by suggesting the need for more comprehensive research to better observe and make sense of how's actors define collective action and how they use social media tools when striving to convey social change.     

Maternal Tactile Stimulation and the Neurodevelopment of Low Birth Weight Infants

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship of early maternal touch to the neurodevelopmental status of low birth weight (LBW) infants. One hundred and eight LBW infants and their mothers were videotaped during a typical feeding when the infant was 3 months old. This tape was used to analyze both the mother's touch and other facets of caregiving behavior using standardized coding systems. Data on perinatal medical risk were also acquired through chart review, and neurodevelopmental tests were administered to the infants at age 1 year. Results indicate that infants whose mothers used more stimulating touch during caregiving had better visual‐motor skills at 1 year of age. In addition, infants of mothers who touched them frequently had more advanced gross motor development. Findings suggest that stimulating and frequent touch may help to compensate for early neurosensory deficits and promote neurodevelopment for LBW infants. Infant birth weight made the strongest contribution to all measures of infant neurodevelopmental status at age 1 year.     

Attachment status and complexity of infants' self- and other-knowledge when tested with mother and father

At 13 and 20 months, infants' featural knowledge of self and parent was assessed separately with mother and father. Infants' featural knowledge was measured by a scale that included tasks reflecting infants' knowledge of facial features, spatial location, name, possession and gender. No significant relation between attachment status and featural knowledge was obtained at 13 months when tested with either parent. At 20 months, in contrast, more complex featural knowledge of self and parent was demonstrated by infants who were securely attached than by those who were insecurely attached. Independent of age, however, infants' featural knowledge of their mothers was more complex than that of their fathers, although no differences in self-knowledge were obtained as a function of parent gender. These data are understood in the context of cognitive development and the differences in interactional qualities assessed by attachment status and parent gender.     

MANAGING GUILT:

In this article I illustrate the connections between talk, emotion management, and identity. In much of the recent work on collective, discursive strategies such as narrative and rhetoric, this link is left implicit. Through the study of a support group for parents of "troubled" teenagers, I highlight how parents' rhetorical talk created an emotional pathway that enabled them to maintain their good-parent identities despite their teenagers' rebellion. Parents used a personal responsibility rhetoric to make sense of their teenagers' misbehavior. For the most part as parents applied the personal responsibility rhetoric, they followed meeting protocol. Occasionally, however, parents violated the rhetoric's expression rule that parents were to avoid talking about guilt. I address how parents collectively constructed meeting discourse and conclude that their use of the personal responsibility rhetoric was how they collectively managed their own and each others' emotions. As a result they set the stage for becoming strict disciplinarians, which made it possible to see themselves as good parents, regardless of their teenagers' rebellion.     

"Men of Influence"– The Ontology of Leadership in the 1914 Boer Rebellion

Abstract This paper raises questions about the ontology of the Afrikaner leadership in the 1914 Boer Rebellion – and the tendency to portray the rebel leadership in terms of monolithic Republicans, followed by those who shared their dedication to returning the state to the old Boer republics. Discussions of the Rebellion have not focused on the interaction between leadership and rank and file, which in part has been obscured by Republican mythology based on the egalitarianism of the Boer commando. This paper attempts to establish the ambitions of the leaders for going into rebellion and the motivations of those who followed them. It traces the political and economic changes that came with union and industrialization, and asks why some influential men felt increasingly alienated from the new form of state structure while others adapted to it. To ascertain the nature of the support for the leaders, the discussion looks at Republican hierarchy and the ideology of patriarchy. The paper further discusses the circumscribed but significant role of women in the Rebellion. This article seeks to contribute to a wider understanding of the history of leadership in South Africa, entangled in the identity dynamics of masculinity, class and race interests.     

THE RESPONSIBILITY TO CURE AND THE RIGHT TO DIE: CARDIOPULMONARY RESUSCITATION AND HOSPITAL STRUCTURE

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation has become a routine procedure in hospitals in spite of the fact that it may be carried out without orders from a physician or consent from the patient It has a high failure rate and some research has indicated that the benefits to patients may be questionable. This article analyses some aspects of the structure of hospitals, other than the role of patient care and cure, which provide sociological explanations for the firm entrenchment and indiscriminate use of the procedure.