Depoliticising literature,politicising diversity: ethno-racial boundaries in Dutch literary professionals’ aesthetic repertoires

Although still a neglected area, over the years a growing body of sociological research on the position of ethno-racial minorities in Western artistic fields has emerged. With this article we aim to contribute to this research area by focusing on ethno-racial diversity in the Dutch literary field. Through in-depth interviews, we analyse how gatekeepers mobilise specific cultural repertoires and by doing so draw ethno-racial boundaries when discussing acquisition, assessing quality and positioning themselves in the literary field. We argue that literary publishers and other professionals (selectively) employ an ‘old school’ modernist repertoire that especially values the formal aspects of literary products, by which non-white writers and publishers concerned with diversity are often positioned in an identity politics framework. Their work is said to take in a less prestigious ‘political’/’subjective’ position rather than a ‘literary’/‘universal’ one. As such, this paper informs on how gatekeepers’ practices shape the position of non-white authors in the Dutch literary field.     

Social Policy as Social Risk Management

With the growing sophistication in social policy instruments and the advances made in the analysis of their impact, it became clear that the analytical separation of social policy and social security policy from other policy areas is increasingly difficult. The paper discusses a new analytical approach based on the social management of risks. It redefines social policy as public interventions to assist individuals and households to cope with their risks. The conceptual framework starts with the notion of main needs and defines and subdivides the risks threatening the satisfaction of these main needs. An important feature of the framework is that social policy is not only linked to the satisfaction of the main needs at a certain moment, but to the risk that, at a certain moment in the life-course of an individual, the needs cannot not be satisfied. Social policy is then no longer solely focussed on the guaranteeing that all individuals in an economy can fulfil their main needs in a static framework. Quite the contrary, social policy is focused on preventing contingencies to materialize, on mitigating the effects before they materialize and on coping with the unfortunate moment bad luck, shocks or unfortunate events strike. The social risk management framework rests on the observation that the satisfaction of main needs and the management of risks, is not the sole responsibility of public authorities. Social welfare is produced by at least three institutions symbolically summarized as the social welfare triangle of which markets, families and public authorities form the corner points.     

Women with fear of childbirth might benefit from having a known midwife during labour

Aim

Having a known midwife at birth is valued by women across the world, however it is unusual for women with fear of childbirth to have access to this model of care. The aim of this study was to describe the prevalence and factors related to having access to a known midwife for women referred to counseling due to childbirth fear. We also wanted to explore if women’s levels of childbirth fear changed over time.

The dilemma of prostitution in Taiwan and Thailand from an NHRD perspective

Throughout the world, prostitution creates a societal dilemma; Taiwan and Thailand are especially affected by the prevalence of such sex workers. While much has been written about prostitution, it has seldom been addressed from a national HRD (NHRD) perspective. This paper addresses reasons why prostitution is so prevalent; the extent of prostitution in these two countries; past NHRD efforts in this arena; and recommendations for NHRD policy, practice and future research.     

Relationship between sarcopenia and fracture risks in obese postmenopausal women

It is known that obesity is inversely correlated with fracture risk. It remains unclear if a low muscle mass (sarcopenia) modulates the relationship between obesity and bone mass density. Twenty-seven obese women were matched for total fat mass (+/- 0.5 kg) and age (+/- 4 yrs) and divided in 3 equal groups: class II sarcopenic, class I sarcopenic, and nonsarcopenic. Body composition (DXA) and dietary intake were measured. Our results suggest that obesity may offer some protection against osteoporosis, even in sarcopenic postmenopausal women. However, further studies are needed to examine the actual implication of these results on a clinical standpoint.     

Biological and social determinants of body size across the life span

The accuracy of demographic models designed to project future trends of population-level health and disease can be improved by incorporating biological data. One barrier to this process are quantitative characteristics of the data themselves. Biological data are characteristically time-dependent phenomena that behave in a nonlinear fashion. To develop accurate projections of the morbidity, disability, and mortality experience among future cohorts in late life, research needs to focus on development of models that create the opportunity to distinguish all-or-none, boundaries, and latency aspects of biological factors driving demographic phenomena, development of methods to identify time-dependent effects, and development of genetically informative samples. This presentation focuses on the biology of adult body size, its behavior as a variable in statistical analyses, and strategies for the incorporation of this variable into demographic models of population aging in the United States. First, several examples of generally observed quantitative characteristics of biological variables are reviewed. To illustrate the nonlinear character of biological data, three general patterns of change with aging are presented. Next, issues concerning the measurement of body size are discussed. Scenarios describing body size over the adult life span are described. By the end of this process, recommendations for starting a dialogue between researchers interested in biological endpoints (individual weight change, disease risk) and those interested in demographic outcomes (population-level disease and disability issues) using body size will be presented.