The Polish Parliament and the Making of Politics through Abortion: Nation,Gender and Democracy in the 1996 Liberalization Amendment Debate

The collapse of communism across East Central Europe was marked by a renewal of debates around reproduction, with abortion debates surfacing in Romania, Germany and Poland. Reproductive politics and more specifically abortion debates typically come to the forefront in times of crisis or societal transformation. Struggles over women's reproductive rights in Poland, as evidenced by continuing debate around the legal status of abortion, are in this postcommunist context intimately related to and bound up with ongoing symbolic and concrete re-definitions of Polish nationhood, identity and citizenship. Focusing on the connections between discourses of Polish nationhood, gender and democracy, this article offers a detailed and critical engagement with debate in the Sejm (the lower chamber of the Polish parliament) during the second reading of the 1996 liberalization of abortion amendment. Using a discourse analysis methodology, the article argues that abortion is a symbolic issue through which anxieties about postcommunist reform are raised, nationalist pasts and futures are imagined and through which political projects are articulated.     

Motherhood,Apple Pie and Interprofessional Working

This article seeks to challenge the uncritical and often benign way in which interprofessional practice is considered within social work and other social professions. In particular the article highlights issues concerning definitions, structural solutions, interprofessional education, the assumption of consensus, the lost voice of the service user, the potential for unnecessary surveillance and some ideas of what distinctly good interprofessional working might look like. This article is not an attack on interprofessional practice per se but an attempt to go beyond the ‘motherhood and apple pie’ nature of much of the current debate.     

Work and rest in the long-distance road transport industry in Australia

Abstract

To date management of fatigue in professional drivers has largely focused on strategies that limit the amount of time spent on the job. These approaches have, however, not taken into account the well-documented effect of time of day. Consequently, the likely impact of the pattern and timing of work and rest has received little attention. The results revealed that the group of drivers who did the shortest trips and worked the shortest weekly hours were the lowest reporters of fatigue, although longer hours were not always associated with the highest reporting of fatigue. In contrast, the shortest working hours were associated with earliest onset of fatigue. For all drivers, the influence of circadian rhythms was evident in the occurrence of fatigue, with better management of the problem evident among drivers who were able to arrange the timing of rest to more closely coincide with periods of fatigue. Thus, time of day appeared to be a more important influence in determining effective rest than did period of work. These findings raise questions about the validity of the assumption underlying work hour regulations for long-distance drivers which, currently, are universally based on duration of work.     

The Effect of Male Delinquency on Mothers and Fathers: A Heuristic Study

This paper addresses some of the lacunas extant in the empirical literature on adolescents. The focus rests on studying the impact of juvenile delinquency not on adolescents, but on their parents. From an interactional perspective, adolescents are denned as proactive social actors who contribute to the quality of their family lives. A multisample, multimethod study of delinquents'parents is conducted and finds that parents are highly affected by their children's delinquency; this effect is particularly strong for mothers compared to fathers. Difficult adolescent behaviors and delinquency lead to a series of complications and stressors in parental lives. Research questions are suggested that target a broad range of variables and themes.     

Making disability conferences more actively inclusive

In this article I explore how generic disability conferences can become more inclusive of participants with intellectual disability. Increased inclusivity entails adapting to the support needs of people with intellectual disability, in line with the principles and practice of inclusive research. In the article I consider three specific areas where there can be more inclusion – access to information related to the conference, access to knowledge imparted during the conference, and financial issues. While many good practices have been developed in these areas, it is important to ensure that inclusion is catered for in a systematic and pro-active manner, so that people with intellectual disability have increasingly more meaningful and active roles within disability studies and disability research.     

Family ties in genes and stories: the importance of value and recognition in the narratives people tell of family

Diagnosis in paediatric genetics involves a combination of technologies able to display variation in DNA and clinical discussions with families that concentrate on retrieving family histories. This paper explores the significance of the family tales that genetics brings to the fore. Through discussion of an ESRC‐funded ethnographic study of families referred to a paediatric genetic service, the paper explores how genetics and family history intersect in ‘relations of exchange’ (Latimer, 2013). It draws from sociological work on family that emphasizes the importance of narrative to the formation and maintenance of family ties and the importance of broader social contexts to the kinds of stories that can be told and recognized by others. The paper emphasizes the significance of claims to respectability and value to the narratives people provide of family ties; particularly in contexts where such ties, in the past or the present, are thought of as ‘troubling’. Making reference to research by Skeggs and Loveday (2012), it is argued that an important narrative that is drawn upon, in order to claim respectability, is that of being a good parent who protects their children from socially ‘risky relations’ so that a positive future as a ‘subject of value’ may be possible.     

Oppositional poverty: the quantitative/qualitative divide and other dichotomies

Despite increased recognition that the dichotomy between qualitative and quantitative approaches (and related dichotomies) may be less than useful, such divisions remain entrenched in the core social science disciplines. Theoretical and methodological attempts to move out of and beyond dichotomous frames of reference have not yet led to reconstruction of the social science enterprise. Application of Goody's analysis of the impact of literacy on human cognition to this question suggests that the mode (as well as the context) of academic discourse has structured and constrained the way we (can) think about what we do. The paper concludes by briefly reflecting on the potential of triangulation for reconstructing the way we think about methodological and theoretical dichotomies.