Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention in a Rural Native American Community

Nationally, the United States has a higher rate of teen pregnancy than any other industrialized nation. Native American youth have a higher birth rate than the national rate. A full-year healthy relationship program, based on Native American teachings, traditions, and cultural norms, was delivered to all eighth-grade students at a rural tribal school and a new group of eighth graders every year for 5 years, to teach healthy relationships and encourage abstinence. This article summarizes the Discovery Dating curriculum and compares the participants in the healthy relationship program to the comparison group, at the end of 5 years, in regards of the number of pregnancies as well as self-reported sexual behavior. The comparison group comprises students in the same community who attended a public middle school, rather than the tribal middle school, but the same public high school. All students had a similar age, socioeconomic status, culture, and ethnicity. Students who received the healthy relationship program (treatment group) had fewer pregnancies than the students who did not receive the healthy relationship program (comparison group). Of those who reported that they were sexually active, the students who received the healthy relationship program (treatment group) reported higher condom use than the students who did not receive the healthy relationship program (comparison group).     

Text(S) from place,space & non-place: discourses of poland

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall the author has participated in several projects aiming to change the practice of management in Central Europe. He has now moved from trying to facilitate reform to writing about the cultural, managerial and intellectual difference(s) experienced. This confronts the possibility of text-ualizing these (Central European) experiences as something: (i) to be gazed at, (ii) as glances towards an object wherein (authorial) gaze took precedence, (iii) as an indefinable activity of gazing. In this article, these textual strategies are explained, and an example of each is presented and commented upon.     

The man in the black hat

A century after the American Frontier was closed, the cowboy remains an iconic figure. A sturdy individualism, a steely disregard for convention and the bravery to do what’s gotta be done: these are powerful tropes that seemingly define a particular type of heroism. One that seems ageless despite the disappearance of the border environment in which the fictive cowboy operated.

Our aim in this paper is to explore the mythology of the cowboy as depicted in western films and fiction, demonstrating how it draws upon and develops particular kinds of individualism, sociality and morality that were first explicitly explored in the late eighteenth century. And, as theoretically‐laden icon, we examine how the cowboy continues to shape writing and thinking about individuals and organizations, specifically focussing on the works of Ayn Rand and notions of entrepreneurship.     

Are baby‐boomers healthy enough to keep working? Health as a mediator of extended labour force participation

One strategy to reduce the economic impact of structural ageing is to increase and/or extend the workforce participation of older workers. Currently, a large proportion of this group consists of post‐World War II baby‐boomers (1946–1965) whose characteristics, experiences and attitudes differ markedly from their predecessors. Maintaining good health underpins strategies to extend workforce participation among baby‐boomers but there is little hard evidence supporting the assumption that baby‐boomers are generally in good health compared to previous generations and will, therefore, be able to work longer. Using a dataset that includes biomedical and self‐reported health for a representative sample of South Australian baby‐boomers, we analyse the extent to which current labour force participation is mediated by health. We find that health is a significant factor in workforce exits. Respondents with fair‐to‐poor self‐rated health, or with diabetes, arthritis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or cardiovascular disease, were more likely to be retired or unable to work, and around 10 per cent of older baby‐boomers (born 1946–1955) who have left the workforce rate their health as poor or fair. The data suggest that these patterns are likely to be replicated in younger baby‐boomers (born 1956–1965).     

Assessing ‘empowerment’ as social development: goal and process

ABSTRACT

Empowerment is a concept widely used in several policy documents and is presented, in social work and social care professional universes, as an operative process to reduce vulnerability and to increase the power, or capabilities, of individuals and groups to make choices and to transform these into actions and results. However, to move beyond rhetoric and paternalistic practices, we need to understand what empowerment really means and implies in different contexts, and especially, how to evaluate what has changed (outcomes) or is changing (processes), both on an individual and a collective level.     

The role of econometrics in economic science: An essay about the monopolization of economic methodology by econometric methods

Econometrics is seen as the dominant method in terms of applicability, accuracy and efficiency in economic science. It is widely used and other methods have been reduced to marginal contributions. Econometricians behave as if their techniques were universal when in fact they are not. If alternative methods are accepted, one can largely eliminate the restrictions and distance to reality of econometrics. The article debates the pathways for a satisfactory economics in a context where theoretical and methodological pluralism is entering even in mainstream ideas. The historical construction of econometrics as the main method in economics and the limitations and possibilities of this tool are explored, underlining the need of pluralism.     

News and comments

A sample of 6,029 married persons from the National Survey of Families and Households was analyzed to determine the correlates of sexual inactivity in marriage and to see if sexually inactive marriages were less happy and stable than those with sexual activity. Sixteen percent of the marriages in this sample had been sexually inactive during the month prior to the interview. A logistic regression analysis showed unhappiness with the marital relationship, increased likelihood of separation, lack of shared activity, few arguments over sex, lack of physical violence, increased age, fewer children, the presence of preschoolers, and poor health all to be significant correlates of sexually inactive marriage. Significant differences existed between males and females, such as the presence of relationship violence being associated with sexual activity only for females, and the presence of preschoolers and poor health associated with sexual inactivity only for males. These findings suggest that although sexually inactive marriages are not uncommon, they are not happy, stable marriages in which the partners simply do not have sex. Lack of sexual activity may be a danger signal for many marriages.     

Sexual Offenses Against Elderly People: Forensic Evaluation and Judicial Outcome

Forensic evaluation reports and judicial outcomes regarding older victims of suspected sexual offenses were retrospectively reviewed. During this period, a total of 14 cases were registered, corresponding to 0.3% of nonfatal crimes against elderly and 0.6% of the total of sexual crimes reported. All the victims were female. The majority lived alone and did not have limitations in communication, orientation, ambulation, or autonomy. The offenders were all male (17 to 81 years old); most were known to the victims and had history of previous disruptive behaviors. The majority of the sexual offenses occurred in the victims’ homes, and the offenders tended to use physical violence. Forensic evaluation was crucial for the identification of physical and biological evidence, and forensic conclusions were positively correlated with the judicial outcome of each case. High prosecution and conviction rates were also observed.     

Looking forward,looking back: animating magic,modernity and the African city-future in Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon

Lagos has recently become the focus of much scholarly interest, with a strong emphasis placed on the city as crucible of global innovation. Rem Koolhaas, in his well-known formulation of Lagos has, for example, memorably theorised the city as an African megalopolis “at the forefront of globalising modernity.” Contemporary African artists have similarly begun, in recent years, to place Africa at the vanguard of planetary discourse, producing a new wave of cultural output that signals the continent as a site from which to imagine the emergence of future worlds. Salient to this growing body of work are the writings of Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor, who writes in the register of “African science fiction.” This article takes Lagos as its focus by considering its futuristic representation in Okorafor’s novel Lagoon (2014). Drawing on John and Jean Comaroff’s theories of the city “as future lab to be learned from,” I suggest that it is from Okorafor’s account of Lagos, infused with a series of connections between magic and modern, city and sea, global and local, human and nonhuman, that the novel imagines the potential birthing of a new world order. Given the vital presence of nonhuman interlocutors in Okorafor’s text, this article concludes by arguing that Lagoon merits consideration within the growing field of Anthropocenic studies.