Populations with constant immigration

We consider a Leslie‐type model of a one‐sex (female) population of natives with constant immigration. The fertility and mortality schedule of the natives may be below or above replacement level. Immigrants retain their fertility and mortality, their children adopt the fertility and mortality of the natives. It is shown how this model may be written in a homogeneous form (without additive term) with a Leslie‐type matrix. Reproductive values of individuals in each age group are discussed in terms of a left eigenvector of this matrix. The homogeneous form of our projection model permits the transformation into a Markov chain with transient and recurrent states. The Markov chain is the basis for the definition of genealogies, which incorporate immigration. It is shown that genealogies describe the life histories of individuals in a population with immigration. We calculate absorption times of the Markov chain and relate them to genealogies. This extends the theory originally designed for closed populations to populations with immigratioa     

‘You Don't Have to Shout’—Vocal Behaviour in Social Work Communication

In the context of an increasing trend toward indirect service user/practitioner contact, this article argues that voice quality, vocal features, and the use of paralanguage can facilitate communication and/or negatively reinforce social difference and professional hierarchies of power in social work practice. These issues will be considered with reference to a finding from a qualitative research study undertaken in New Zealand with Intake Social Workers (ISW) at the National Contact Centre of Child Youth and Family (CYF). The National Contact Centre (NCC) is a social work call centre, and the official entry point to New Zealand's statutory child protection system. The research explored how ISWs constructed their practice in a call centre environment. The study identified the importance to many ISWs of achieving a calm, respectful telephone manner towards service users. A smaller number of participants showed more in-depth appreciation of the impact of vocal behaviour on practice, drawing attention to the effect of paralanguage on relationships with callers. Strategies for the teaching of this skill set to social work students will be considered.     

Bildungserfolg von Kindern in Abhängigkeit von der Stellung in der Geschwisterreihe

Based on grades in school and on parental educational aspirations the article investigates the influence of siblings’ birth order on educational opportunities and educational success of elementary school pupils. It is examined whether this influence varies by social strata, i.e., whether it is moderated by the socio-economic status of parental households. Theoretical background are the resource dilution model which focuses on siblings’ rivalry for scarce family resources, the confluence model which refers to the intellectual environment within families, and the family niche model which postulates effects of siblings on personality traits of children. Furthermore, status maintenance motives of parents are used to explain birth order effects. Empirical analyses are based on a study of 1369 pupils—4th graders of elementary schools—in the city of Wiesbaden, Germany. It can be shown that the birth order has negative effects on the chosen educational indicators (grades in school, parental educational aspirations). In accordance with prior research, grades of children get worse with their position in the birth order, other things being equal. The birth order also affects educational aspirations which parents hold for their children. In this context, the crucial result of the article is: When older siblings already guarantee the social status of the family in an intergenerational perspective, parents with high SES reduce their educational aspirations for younger siblings (elimination of the status maintenance motive). In families with low SES, however, parental educational aspirations for younger siblings increase, when older siblings successfully have reached higher educational credentials (social learning from role models).     

Experience,Imagination, and Action: Versions of Artifact Mediation

Taking up a sociohistoric approach to writing as literate activity in functional systems and to disciplines as dynamic heterogeneous networks, I examine writing in graduate education as a key arena of disciplinary enculturation. Through an ethnographic analysis centered on the literate activity of students and a professor in an American Studies seminar, I work to integrate participants' situated activity around a field research and writing task with the historically sedimented affordances of key mediational means. The analysis particularly foregrounds heterogeneity, as multiple trajectories are woven together in the deeply laminated functional systems that (re)produce American Studies and its interdisciplinarity.     

Brody always on my mind: the mental mapping of a Jewish city

Once overwhelmingly inhabited by Jews, the Austro-Galician border town of Brody, in present-day Western Ukraine, has retained an important place on Ashkenazi mental maps until today, even though scholarly studies on Brody are scarce. The present article tries to capture the elements that allowed Brody to inscribe itself so successfully in Jewish memory. Therefore, this paper analyses several lieux de mémoire underlining Brody's enduring perception as a town closely related to Jewish issues. These places, however, are not only physical spots in the cityscape, like the ruins of the synagogue and the cemetery, but also images of and texts about Brody. Whether intended or not, pictures and postcards also have an impact on how Brody has been remembered; and so do memory books, be they written in Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish or Ukrainian. This study argues that Brody appears on the mental maps of Eastern European Jewry as an amalgam of physical places, icons and texts linked to a multi-layered and multifaceted urban history     

Reverse interviewing: a white adoptive mother engaging with black birth mothers and vice versa

Abstract

Researcher reflexivity, meaning the revealing of the researcher’s assumptions and her position vis-à-vis those researched, has by now become commonplace. This article explores such issues in the context of a larger study of transnational adoption for which I conducted interviews with South African birth mothers as both a researcher/interviewer and an adoptive mother. Instead of seeking to eliminate researcher bias, I propose using it as data that could reveal novel aspects of the phenomenon under study. This article specifically explores the use of reverse interviewing, which in this case meant disclosing my double positionality and inviting the interviewees to ask me questions. It is not a matter of merely extracting information: the technique allows participants to air their concerns, and facilitates investigation of the researcher’s reactions to them. All this, in turn, carries implications with regard to how the study area is conceptualised.     

WIKIPEDIA

The decentralized participatory architecture of the Internet challenges traditional knowledge authorities and hierarchies. Questions arise about whether lay inclusion helps to ‘democratize’ knowledge formation or if existing hierarchies are re-enacted online. This article focuses on Wikipedia, a much-celebrated example which gives an in-depth picture of the process of knowledge production in an open environment. Drawing on insights from the sociology of knowledge, Wikipedia's talk pages are conceptualized as an arena where reality is socially constructed. Using grounded theory, this article examines the entry for the September 11 attacks and its related talk pages in the German Wikipedia. Numerous alternative interpretations (labeled as ‘conspiracy theories’) that fundamentally contradict the account of established knowledge authorities regarding this event have emerged. On the talk pages, these views collide, thereby serving as a useful case study to examine the role of experts and lay participants in the process of knowledge construction on Wikipedia. The study asks how the parties negotiate ‘what actually happened’ and which knowledges should be represented in the Wikipedia entry. The conflicting points of view overload the discursive capacity of the contributors. The community reacts by marginalizing opposing knowledge and protecting or immunizing the article against these disparate views. This is achieved by rigorously excluding knowledge which is not verified by external expert authorities. Therefore, in this case, lay participation did not lead to a ‘democratization’ of knowledge production, but rather re-enacted established hierarchies.