Vulnerability to climate change in rural Saskatchewan: Case study of the Rural Municipality of Rudy No. 284

With the likelihood of future changes in climate and climate variability, it is important to understand how human systems may be vulnerable. Rural communities in Saskatchewan having agricultural-based economies are particularly dependent on climate and could be among the most vulnerable human systems in Canada. Future changes in climate are likely to have significant impacts on rural livelihoods, and rural populations will face the challenge of coping with climate change in light of a multitude of other changing socio-economic and environmental conditions. The Rural Municipality of Rudy No. 284 was chosen as a case study due to its access to irrigation, a key tool in climate adaptation for the agricultural system in the area against one of its most notorious climatic features - severe multi-year droughts. Further irrigation development would continue to reduce climate vulnerabilities. Even with irrigation however, the compounding effects of climate and other socio-economic changes will likely require modifications in current practices and policies in order to secure adequate livelihoods. Climate change adaptation in the RM must ensure equitable access to water and potentially irrigation, reduce barriers to collaboration when addressing communal problems, and provide more certainty in government programs.     

Pathologizing behavior: Meanings of behaviors in dementia care

Deficit and problem-based approaches to behavior stigmatize persons with dementia and cause great unnecessary suffering. In order to reduce the harm caused to persons misunderstood, it is important to understand the process by which staff attach meaning to behaviors and how those meanings ultimately influence how staff respond to behaviors. To this end, this research sought to examine the perceptions and meanings that staff attach to behaviors, how staff experience these behaviors, and the role that meanings and experiences have in staff actions and responses to specific behaviors. This paper focuses on one sensitizing concept that emerged from our study — pathologizing behavior — that reflects how behaviors become pathologized and problematized in the long-term care context. Conducted as part of a larger interpretive grounded theory study, active interviews were conducted with 48 staff members working in a range of positions in long-term care homes in Ontario, Canada. All staff interpreted and placed residents' behaviors in context through a complex process that started with the process of filtering behavior through the lens of pathology, and guided how staff then assigned meaning to the behaviors, how they characterized behaviors as “challenging”, and ultimately reacted through crisis management. The findings demonstrate the impact biomedical discourses have on meanings attached to behaviors and responses to behaviors and point to the need for alternative discourses that emphasize understanding meanings of actions using multidimensional lenses.     

Can we,should we,measure ethnicity?

Feminist social science is marked by its diversity, its ethos of inclusiveness and its critical power. These qualities are best exemplified in feminisms' acknowledgement, at the epistemological level, that men as well as women are crucial participants in the feminist enterprise. Moreover, epistemological justifications for positioning men within feminism is matched by a commitment to think through the methodological implications of men's involvement as both researchers and researched. In particular, inclusiveness pushes at the boundary of what counts as feminist methodology, and it forces us to rethink the underlying principles of feminist research work. In this article, two key feminist methodological principles—rapport and empathy, and democracy—are interrogated in the light of a series of in-depth interviews with a group of powerful, authoritative and uniformed men (senior police officers). It is suggested that while there may be a temptation to dismiss the interviewing relations which evolved as ‘non-feminist’, they are also indicative of feminist methodological vitality and strength as well as its capacity to accommodate the fractured subjectivities of research participants. The paper concludes by positing a re-conceptualization of interviewing principles which not only appreciate diversity in feminist epistemological and methodological commitments, but also variability and difference in feminist research relationships.     

The retrenchment of second‐tier pensions in Hungary and Poland: A precautionary tale

In 1997, Hungary and Poland led Central Europe in partially privatizing their national pension systems, diverting a portion of public pension contributions to privately‐managed individual investment accounts. In the aftermath of the global economic crisis, both governments retrenched these second‐tier schemes: Hungary (December 2010), by ceasing to fund the accounts and recouping most workers' existing balances; and Poland (April 2011), by reducing the diversion of contributions to the second tier. The factors that drove these retrenchments are traced to the original 1997 second‐tier designs, which omitted key specifications related to financing the accounts, private benefit design, and the regulation of private management fees. While both governments tried to compensate for the missing design specifications during implementation, the results were limited. By reducing investment returns and raising borrowing costs, the global economic crisis brought the problems to a head. The conclusion highlights some outstanding issues whose resolution will shape the retrenchments' long‐term impacts.     

Student Functioning,Concerns, and Socio-Personal Well-Being

The following study used the Student Quality of Lifeand Satisfaction (SQOLAS) instrument and 467University of Rhode Island undergraduate and graduatestudents as participants in order to examinerelationships among functioning and performancevariables, student concern and importance areas, andmeasures of socio-personal satisfaction andwell-being. Canonical correlational analysis revealedtwo statistically significant canonical correlationsbetween a student functioning/performance variable setand a concern/importance area variable set. A set ofvariables related to increased concern and importanceratings of socio-sexual behavior, and decreasedratings of crime, violence, multicultural, and genderissues was significantly associated with a second setof variables: increased levels of alcohol use andassociated negative consequences, younger age,increased mental health concerns, men more than women,decreased class year, and less positive ratings towarddirection in life. Standard multiple regressionanalysis produced a statistically significant modelwhere positive attitude towards direction in life canbe predicted by higher levels of socio-personalsatisfaction and deep metacognitive processing, andlower levels of alcohol use and associated negativeconsequences, and fewer mental health concerns.Implications of the results are discussed in relationto theories of cognitive behavior, phenomenologicalfunctioning, life meaning, and well-being.     

The importance of fairness and equity for the marital satisfaction of older women

In all societies, people are concerned with social justice. "It's just not right" is a fairly common lament. In these two studies, we interviewed 240 older women, who ranged in age from 50 to 82. We found that most older women (85%) considered their marriages to be fair and equitable. Older women were less concerned about existing inequities than their younger peers. Nonetheless, they were somewhat concerned with how rewarding and how fair and equitable their relationships were perceived to be. Those who felt over-benefited, for example, felt more guilty than did their less advantaged peers; those who felt under-benefited felt far more angry than did their privileged peers. Stressful life events--such as the arrival of children, retirement, serious illness, or the awareness impending death--often brought to awareness long simmering resentments over issues of fairness.     

Evaluating the complex interactions between malaria and cholera prevalence,neglected tropical disease comorbidities,and community perception of health risks of climate change

The burgeoning literature on the climate change–human health nexus has focused almost exclusively on the health impacts of climate change with little attention to how ill-health and disease influence public perception of the health risks of climate change. Based on a cross-sectional survey of 1,253 individuals, linear regression was used to examine the independent effects of malaria and cholera prevalence, and neglected tropical disease comorbidities on perceived health risks of climate change. Individuals who reported more comorbidities had higher scores on perceived health risks of climate change compared with those who did not report any comorbidities. Unexpectedly, at the multivariate level, there were no statistically significant relationships between age of respondents, gender, and educational attainment on the one hand, and perceived health risks of climate change on the other hand. Individuals who were diagnosed with cholera in the past 12 months had higher scores on perceived health risks of climate change but there was no relationship between diagnosis with malaria in the past 12 months and perceived health risks. Individuals who had attained secondary education had lower scores on perceived health risks of climate change compared with those without any formal education. Given that this relationship did not exist at the bivariate level, it indicates that biosocial and sociocultural factors suppressed the relationship between secondary education attainment and perceived health risks of climate change. The findings underscore the complex relationship between perceived health risks of climate change and infectious disease, comorbidities, compositional, and contextual factors at the multivariate level.