Choice and circumstance: Qualitative insights into contemporary childlessness in Australia

Using data from in-depth interviews with 115 women, men and couples in eastern Australia for whom family formation was a recent, current or imminent future issue, this article explores contemporary childlessness among those physically able to have children. It differentiates between those childless by choice and by circumstance, and among other themes highlights (i) the role preservation of lifestyle appears to play as a motive for deliberate childlessness following development of a life course through early adulthood that both generates lifestyle aspirations and often places parenthood on the backburner until after age 30, and (ii) the roles difficulty forming suitable relationships, women’s desire for meaningful careers, and male involvement in family formation decisions play in bringing about childlessness by circumstance.     

Business Actors in Peace Mediation Processes

Even though the relevance of business actors in peace processes is increasingly acknowledged, analysis of their particular roles and contributions remain sparse in peace mediation literature. This is despite the fact that such knowledge would be highly relevant for supporting mediation processes such as those ongoing in Colombia or the Philippines. This article looks at the involvement of business actors in mediation processes by tracing analysis along the entry points for involvement, the different roles that business actors can play and the limitations they face. The empirical data shows that business actors mainly play a role during the pre‐ and mediation phase and therein often as a support‐giver to the mediation process. Furthermore, most of the involvement does not take place at track‐1 level but rather at track‐2 mediation processes, where mainly local business play an important role. In contrary to what is postulated by some of the literature, the relevance of utilitaristic motives is not problematic; rather a monetary motivation can also foster the credibility in a political process where a lot is at stake.     

旅行家的召唤——徐霞客及其西南边陲之旅

徐霞客生前通过史无前例的、系统性与大规模的艰苦旅行,对中国八方所有的名山景观进行了考察,并因其对边陲地貌的细致考察而享有盛名。当时他选择追求自己的志趣,而没有陷入腐败政治和官僚体制的俗世纠缠,由此就像许多同时代的优秀文人一样被誉为奇人。现代知识分子反将他视为一个早期科学家的模型。通过对徐霞客西南边陲之旅的系统性考察,与明末文人"奇"和"癖"的话语相关联,由此提出,只有考虑到中国游记写作的历代仪式伦理功能,才能够更深刻地理解,为何徐霞客游记行为与思想方面的启发,远远超越了东西、古今之别,并提供了跨文化的社会更新潜力。     

The food insecurity―obesity paradox as a vicious cycle for women: inequalities and health

Poverty and income inequality undermine women's health in a myriad of ways. This article discusses findings from the Full Plate Project, which addressed women's experience of food security, obesity, and chronic disease in Atlantic Canada. Through first-hand accounts, it identifies a vicious cycle surrounding the food insecurity–obesity paradox. The cycle's core elements included experiences of poverty, food insecurity and nutritional deprivation, weight gain leading to obesity, stress, and experiences of chronic illness. These mainly qualitative findings provide a vivid and multi-layered analysis of the effects of inequalities on health. A majority of Full Plate participants were lone mothers and unattached women, and existing outside of a two-adult member household framework. The vicious cycles experienced are intertwined and cannot be addressed by compartmentalising elements of health or social services. Evidence indicates that policies must respond fully to the social determinants of health and multiple inequalities related to poverty, gender, age, mobility, disability, location, culture, coping skills, and other dynamics.     

Time and Postmodernism

In this essay we discuss changes in the cultural meaning and significance of time in postmodernism. We begin by examining the experience of time and space in the Middle Ages and its radical alteration following the Renaissance. After a relatively brief period of optimism during the Enlightenment regarding the scientific control over time and space, a new crisis beginning in the mid‐nineteenth century emphasized the increasing disjuncture between external, objective notions of time and the way time was experienced subjectively. We argue that the current literature on time and post‐modernity is best understood in this context, where earlier disequilibriating effects brought about by modern technologies are exacerbated by new developments in transportation and communications technology. Here we discuss the particular effects on topics of interest to social scientists such as changes in notions of personal identity and the effacement of historical time. We conclude with a call for more empirically grounded work on questions concerning time in postmodernism. We lament the paucity of concrete data as well as the excess of useless polemics and recommend several researchers already conducting work in this field.     

Use of propensity score matching to evaluate a national smoking cessation media campaign

Sustained mass media campaigns have been recommended to stem the tobacco epidemic in the United States. Propensity score matching (PSM) was used to estimate the effect of awareness of a national smoking cessation media campaign (EX) on quit attempts and cessation-related cognition. Participants were 4,067 smokers and recent quitters aged 18-49 in targeted U.S. media markets. Controlling for potential confounders through PSM and regression analysis, confirmed awareness of EX was not significantly associated with either outcome at 6-month follow-up. Matched analyses excluding 217 quitters resulted in a significant effect of EX on both outcomes.     

Development and accuracy of projections of population and households in the united states

The history of the official U. S. projections of population and house-holds in recent decades is briefly reviewed, with particular attention to methodology and the relation of the methodology to the accuracy of the projections. The introduction of the cohort-component procedure in the 1930’s opened the way for separate analysis of the trend of the components of births, deaths, and net immigration in connection with making population projections. As a further development, the period-fertility method of projecting births gave way in the 1960’s to the cohort-fertility method. Consideration is now being given to various methods involving parity-progression procedures. Some alternative methods and problems of measuring the accuracy of population projections are then considered. The percent “error” in the projected population growth, by components and age, and the range from high to low expressed as a percent should also be examined in addition to the percent “error” in the total population. However accuracy is measured, the projections made in the 1930’s and 1940’s were often wide of the mark, and those made in the 1950’s and 1960’s failed to anticipate the sharp changes which occurred, even though the actual figures usually fell within the range projected. Elaboration of projection methodology has not resulted in any great increase in the precision of the projections, largely because birth rates have fluctuated widely, and the fluctuations have proven difficult, if not impossible, to predict. The projections of households have had a roughly similar history, and the methods and problems of evaluation are somewhat similar. Their development has been characterized by the introduction of alternative and changing “headship” rates and increasing disaggregation of the data and procedures. The paper concludes with some generalizations based on U. S. experience. Although refinement of methods may contribute little to accuracy, accuracy is only one aspect of the usefulness of projections. The need for conditional projections and their analytical usefulness are such that there is no question that we should confidently continue to make them.