Culture and context: exploring attributions and caregiving approaches of parents of children with an intellectual disability in urban India

We utilized a sociocultural lens and a qualitative approach to examine causal attributions and caregiving approaches of parents of children with an intellectual disability in a mid‐sized Indian city. Sixteen mothers and three fathers participated in a semi‐structured interview. Findings elucidate participants' active processing of the cause of their child's intellectual disability. They seemed to simultaneously draw upon religious, biological and situational factors to construct an explanation. As far as caregiving approaches, most parents reported moving away gradually from mainstream medicine to alternative medicine and physiotherapy and from regular education settings to special schools. The themes highlight the role of sociocultural factors and also cross‐cultural similarities in parental causal attributions and caregiving approach. The findings are discussed in the context of implications for social work practice and policy in India.     

Broadcasting Sharia: American TV News' Illustration of Social Identity and the Emergence of a Threat

Using social identity theory to assess in-group, out-group representations, this study examines the portrayal of sharia in American network television media. A 10-year content analysis showed that ABC, CBS, and NBC continually paired sharia with mentions of the United States, reinforcing its representation as the in-group. These mentions frequently were coupled with mentions of non-Western countries, supporting the idea of an in-group versus out-group comparison. Moreover, the stories included many topics connotatively negative in Western culture. A significant and positive relationship between mentions of non-Western countries and connotatively negative topics was found, reinforcing the positioning of individuals associated with sharia—most often Muslims—within the out-group.     

Reports of Conferences,Institutes, and Seminars

Abstract

This column includes reports on sessions from the Electronic Resources Minnesota Conference 2019 and Charleston Library Conference 2019. The reports cover a user experience analysis of a discovery system, managing change due to an organizational restructure, improving communication between subject specialists and technical services, and key findings of the LYRASIS 2019 Accessibility Survey Report.     

Was pet relinquishment related to foreclosure?: A spatial research note from California during the height of foreclosure

Media reports asserted that the 2008 foreclosure crisis unleashed a rash of pet relinquishments, especially in California's central valley, an area that had the highest U.S. foreclosure rates that year. However, reports on the foreclosure/relinquishment association relied on anecdotal evidence provided by animal shelters, which is known to be flawed since many people do not give a reason for relinquishment, or give a false reason. This study compares separate data sources for the central valley city of Turlock, 2008: foreclosure data from the Stanislaus County Recorder's Office (N = 235) and relinquishment data from the Turlock Animal Shelter (N = 248). Contrary to shelter driven data, these separate data sources reported only one shared address. However, spatial analyses show that foreclosures and relinquishments were concentrated in similar areas. Analyses also show that unaltered (non-spayed/neutered) dogs are more likely to be concentrated in lower socioeconomic (SES) areas. While our initial finding contradicts recent media reports, spatial analyses verify other research on the social problems associated with concentrated foreclosures, and lend support for policies designed to reduce breeding during heighted periods of foreclosure and other economic crises.     

Relationship Characteristics and the Relationship Context of Nonmarital First Births Among Young Adult Women

OBJECTIVES: The objectives of this study were to examine whether and how characteristics of the relationship dyad are linked to nonmarital childbearing among young adult women, additionally distinguishing between cohabiting and nonunion births. METHODS: We used the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 Cohort and discrete-time event history methods to examine these objectives. RESULTS: Our analyses found that similarities and differences between women and their most recent sexual partner in educational attainment, disengagement from work or school, race/ethnicity, and age were linked to the risk and context of nonmarital childbearing. For example, partner disengagement (from school and work) was associated with increased odds of a nonmarital birth regardless of whether the woman herself was disengaged. Additionally, having a partner of a different race/ethnicity was associated with nonmarital childbearing for whites, but not for blacks and Hispanics. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that relationship characteristics are an important dimension of the lives of young adults that influence their odds of having a birth outside of marriage.     

Separation of powers and the Ecuadorian Supreme Court: exploring presidential–judicial conflict in a post-transition democracy

In 2005 ongoing political conflict between the executive and legislative branches of government in Ecuador culminated in a struggle over the judiciary. These events resulted in the dismissal, re-constitution, and dismissal again of the Ecuadorian high court (the Corte Suprema de Justicia) and the impeachment of the president. This paper uses the political crisis surrounding the dismissal of the Ecuadorian Supreme Court of Justice to examine the broader phenomenon of executive branch attacks on the judiciary in South American and Africa. We make three general observations: (1) the longevity of the judiciary alone (time without attack) does not guarantee a sufficiently deep reservoir of diffuse support to protect it from successful efforts at structural change or dissolution, (2) despite previous evidence that multilateral constitutional processes result in increased court independence (Dargent, 2009), we conclude that multi-party institutional arrangements are more vulnerable to the types of crisis that cause them to seek to use courts and their legitimacy to achieve political goals thereby limiting previous gains in independence, and (3) a court's institutional legitimacy is enhanced when it survives political threats from other branches of government. The crisis in Ecuador is used to demonstrate the challenges facing newer democracies with continuing multilateral conflict as well as the utility of thinking about how, why and when political institutions attack high courts and how the judiciary and citizens respond.     

Why Do We Observe Stockless Operations on the Internet? Stockless Operations Under Competition

Due to the proliferation of electronic commerce and the development of Internet technologies, many firms have considered new pricing‐inventory models. In this paper, we study the role of stockless (i.e., zero‐inventory) operations in online retailing by a considering duopoly competition in which two retailers compete to maximize profit by jointly optimizing their pricing and inventory decisions. In our model, the retailers are allowed to choose either an in‐stock policy or stockless operations with a discounted price. We first present the characteristics and properties of the equilibrium. We then demonstrate that the traditional outcome of asymmetric Bertrand competition is observed under head‐to‐head competition. However, when the two firms choose different operational policies, with corresponding optimal pricing, they can share the market under certain conditions. Finally, we report interesting observations on the interaction between pricing and inventory decisions obtained from an extensive computational study.