Mit Goffman auf dem Drogenstrich

The drug dependent young women walking the streets in the neighborhood of Frankfurt’s main station are doubly stigmatized: as users of illegal drugs and as (unregistered and therefore) illegal prostitutes. They work in a public place and under the eyes of the police, but they try to hide their activities — as do their customers who try to remain anonymous. The ethnographic study presented here focussed on the interactions between drug prostitutes and their customers, using the models proposed by Erving Goffman as theoretical perspectives. The “view from Goffman” is certainly very useful in research on sensitive topics but also has its limitations.     

Betriebliche Gesundheitsförderung und Neue Arbeitsformen — Aktuelle Tendenzen in Forschung und Praxis

The psycho-social aspects of the consequences of new working forms concerning health and well-being are discussed. Central question is how organizational conditions influence the prospects and possible psycho-social risks to employees resulting from increased temporal and spatial flexibility of the working process. Keywords are intensification of work and privacy, Work-Life Balance, increasing emotional stressors and pressure from responsibility. Studies on work in call centers and teleworking show that high decision and action latitude and flexible time handling are important resources that need to be maintained and promoted in the context of new working forms. Consequences for workplace health promotion are presented and exemplified by a new concept of intervention     

Immigrants’ Attitudes toward Homosexuality: Socialization,Religion, and Acculturation in European Host Societies

With increasing diversity of migrants in Europe, questions around cultural integration are gaining importance. This study focuses on attitudes towards homosexuality amongst first and second generation immigrants from 186 origin countries to examine the role of religion, origin country socialization and acculturation. There is clear evidence for intra‐ and intergenerational acculturation of attitudes with declining importance of origin country context. While individual characteristics of migrants and origin country context can explain a substantial part of religious group differences particularly amongst the first generation, Muslims and to a lesser extent other non‐Christian and Eastern Orthodox migrants hold overall more negative attitudes.     

Job Stability Trends,Lay‐offs,and Transitions to Unemployment in West Germany

This paper examines the evolution of different aspects of job stability, notably the termination reasons and the transition states. We estimate Semi‐Parametric Cox Hazard Models with competing risks for West Germany and find an increasing hazard of job ending that is driven by an increasing hazard of being laid off, primarily. One explanation found is that men with fixed‐term contracts face increasing risks of being displaced. In accordance with the technological change hypothesis we also find that men with a high degree of non‐routine interactive tasks face a declining risk of displacement.     

Linking Maternal Warmth and Responsiveness to Children's Self‐regulation

The present study demonstrated that a more differentiated view of positive parenting practices is necessary in the study of children's acquisition of self‐regulation. Here, the unique contributions of maternal warmth and responsiveness to distress to children's self‐regulation were tested in a sample of 102 German mothers and their kindergarten children (51 girls and 51 boys). Behavior regulation and internalization of rules of conduct were examined as specific components of children's self‐regulation. As expected, maternal warmth was positively related to the child's behavior regulation. Responsiveness to distress was positively linked to the child's internalization of rules of conduct. No significant interactions between maternal parenting and either the child's gender or effortful control were found. The results are discussed with regard to the unique functions that different parenting practices have for children's self‐regulation.     

Self-Reported Satisfaction and the Economic Crisis of 2007–2010: Or How People in the UK and Germany Perceive a Severe Cyclical Downturn

Self-reported satisfaction measures respond to a great variety of socio-demographic characteristics as well as the job and living environment. In this paper we ask whether the recent financial market crisis has caused a deterioration of satisfaction not only for the unemployed but also for those out of the labour force and especially those in employment. The focus of our analyses is on the pattern of life, job and health satisfaction over time and the influence of unemployment rates, inflation rates and GDP growth. We compare the UK and Germany, two countries with different employment protection regulations and different consequences of the crisis for the labour market. For our analysis we use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the British Household Panel Study for the period 1996–2010 and supplement this with annual information on macroeconomic indicators. We estimate Ordered Logit and OLS models, both with individual fixed effects. We find some limited psychological costs with respect to self-reported life satisfaction in the crisis years, and a considerable impact of regional and national unemployment rates. Looking at job and health satisfaction we get similar though somewhat weaker results.     

“The risk of age”? Early detection test,prostate cancer and practices of self

Drawing on Rose and Novas’s concept of “biological citizenship” and Michel Foucault's "practices of self", this paper reflects on how men become agents of their own therapeutic regimens, and yet internalise messages of risk and practices of self within early detection of prostate cancer discourses in the late 20th century. In doing so, it traces the ways in which concepts of age, gender and risk converge at the problematic site of prostate cancer and preventative health strategies, both of the state and the medical profession. Analysing how insecurities have simultaneously resulted in over-promoting and over-diagnosing risk, thereby blurring the lines between normal and pathological states of health and aging, the paper finishes with a critical discussion on how men have adopted self-surveying and attuned themselves to risk discourses. Suggestions are made for future research on comparative gender studies on embodied concepts of self and cancer screening and the relation between differential aging, risk management and the concept of the body.     

Use of standardized client simulations in an interprofessional teaching concept for social work and medical students: first results of a pilot study

ABSTRACT

Teaching concepts with standardized clients/patients (SC) had been successfully implemented in the education of health professionals. Benefits were also demonstrated for social work education. Based on former experiences with simulated clients in medical education, we developed an innovative teaching concept for social work and medical students. We focused on the training of consultations with clients suffering from a serious illness like cancer—with different learning goals for medical students (e.g. breaking bad news) and social work students (e.g. psychosocial exploration and counseling). Both groups should gain knowledge about the other professions tasks and learn to handle clients’ emotional reactions. In addition to role-plays with simulated clients in small groups, the concept includes an interprofessional lecture by physicians, psychologists, social workers, and lawyers as well as a visit on the palliative care ward (for social work students only) and a research colloquium. A formative evaluation shows high satisfaction with the teaching concept. The students underline the realistic setting, interprofessional contact, authentic talks and direct feedback. The SC method and its interprofessional application proved to be a practicable and motivating way to enhance conversational skills.     

Zwei Dimensionen der Internationalisierung: Eine empirische Analyse deutscher Grossunternehmen

In order to analyze the impact of internationalization on national institutions, methods of measuring the degree of internationalization are required. The article presents a method for measuring the degree of internationalization of firms. We assume that the internationalization of firms has several dimensions which cannot be combined into one index, and therefore, have to be distinguished. The first dimension refers to the production activities of firms abroad; the second is measured by the proximity of the firm to international capital. Using a group of the 100 largest German companies both dimensions are empirically tested. Factor analysis supports the assumption that both dimensions, the product-oriented and the financial dimension, do not co-vary and can be separated. Using the measurements we can rank firms into higher and lower degrees of internationalization.