Socialising disease: medical categories and inclusion of the aged1

When older peoples’ troubles are categorised as social rather than medical, hospital care can be denied them. Drawing on an ethnography of older people admitted as emergencies to an acute medical unit, the article demonstrates how medical categories can provide shelter for older people. By holding their clinical identity on medical rather than social grounds, physicians who specialise in gerontology in the acute medical domain can help prevent the over‐socialising of an older person's health troubles. As well as helping the older person to draw certain resources to themselves, such as treatment and care, this inclusion in positive medical categories can provide shelter for the older person, to keep at bay their effacement as 'social problems’. These findings suggest that contemporary sociological critique of biomedicine may underestimate how medical categorising, as the obligatory passage through which to access important resources and life chances, can constitute a process of social inclusion.     

The Research Potential of Mental-Health Social Workers: A Qualitative Study of the Views of Senior Mental-Health Service Managers

Social workers have undoubtedly played a significant role inmental-health care in Britain. Yet their contribution to themental-health knowledge base is decidedly meagre compared tothe prolific research activity of psychiatry and allied healthprofessions. A qualitative study was conducted on the researchpotential of mental-health social work, based on the views ofsenior service managers in London boroughs. Social-work researchwas found to suffer from a combination of structural, economicand academic constraints. The impact of social work on mental-healthpolicy and practice developments, particularly in the lightof a growing emphasis on evidence-based practice, is likelyto remain weak until this issue is addressed.     

Tell Me a Story: A Review of Narrative Assessments for Preschoolers

The use of narrative assessments in mental health research with young children has increased significantly over the last 15 years. This article reviews 13 empirically validated narrative assessments for preschool populations. The reviewed instruments assess children’s attachment relationships, moral values, separation anxiety, pro-social behavior, object relations and depression, among other constructs. The authors present an analysis of each instrument including a discussion of its methodological rigor, and point to needed directions in the field. These narrative assessment instruments provide researchers and clinicians with insight into the internal worlds of young children, offering windows into a difficult-to-assess population.     

Growing Up Punk: Negotiating Aging Identity in a Local Music Scene

Punk music, in its thirty‐odd‐year history, is traditionally conceived of as a youth subcultural phenomenon. As one of many ways to rebel, kids might choose or find in punk rock an anti‐authoritarian, destructive, or anarchistic ideology that helps them manage the tumult of adolescence. But what happens next? In this conceptual article, the author is interested in how punks negotiate their identity as punks, as they age. She examines this by looking at people's experiences in a local punk scene. Based on these observations, she argues that “aging identity” and “the scene” are theoretical tools in a dialectic relationship with one another, which highlights the fluidity of both. This theory helps promote “the scene” as a more useful concept than subculture. Furthermore, looking at the local punk rock music scene as a scene—rather than a subculture—illustrates how identity forms over time as a cumulative process, synthesized in the relationship between changing self and other. From her research on a punk scene, the author argues that to construct a long‐term conception of scene involvement, punk scene members look to real and idealized others to demonstrate what they see as successful and unsuccessful ways of aging in connection with the music scene.     

高等教育的理念和功能(上)

高等教育的理念就是高等教育发展远景与方向的指导原则,或者是最高领导原则。它是对高等教育的精神、使命、宗旨、功能与价值观等发展的基本思想的概括性论述。高等教育的功能则是办学理念的延伸或受理念的无形制约。高等教育理念不会恒常不变。不同时代有不同的理念,即使同一时代,不同国家和地区、不同派别的理念也会大异其趣。随著高等教育的发展,高等教育的理念不断丰富,高等教育的功能也不断演进。而培养人才、发展科学、服务社会已成为学术界公认的高等教育三大功能。进入了全球化时代,各国经济、文化受到前所未有的冲击,而资讯科技的突飞猛进,使人类处于一个知识爆炸的时代。这种发展态势促使高等教育赋予各种功能以新的内涵。     

The behavioral response of emerging pine snakes (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Pituophis melanoleucus</Emphasis>) to people: implications for survival and protection

Considerable attention has been devoted to the effects of people on birds and mammals, usually in wilderness areas. In contrast, human disturbance of reptiles has largely been ignored. Many reptiles, such as snakes, are hard to conserve because they are difficult to locate and protect. The young are especially vulnerable to predators when they first hatch and must emerge from nest sites. In this paper, the response of pine snake (Pituophis melanoleucus) hatchlings to the presence and handling by people was observed in the laboratory and in the field. Pine snakes lay their eggs in underground burrows in open sandy pine barrens, and the hatchlings push their way to the surface to emerge. Hatchlings that were visually-disturbed or touched as they emerged returned immediately to their tunnels and nests, and required more time to re-emerge than did their siblings that were not visually-disturbed or touched during their initial disturbance. In nature, undisturbed pine snakes showed similar re-emergence times to those from the laboratory, and disturbed snakes required longer to re-emerge. These data suggest that in nature even the presence of people in nesting areas of pine snakes would lengthen the time the young are in burrows, exposing them to additional threats from predators. This suggests that parks or nature reserves with vulnerable snake populations should restrict human disturbance during the period when young snakes are emerging from their nests. Field observations indicate that a set-back distance of more than 12 m from known nesting areas is essential to protect emerging hatchlings.     

Effects of off-road vehicles on reproductive success of pine snakes (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Pituophus melanoleucus</Emphasis>) in the New Jersey pinelands

Considerable attention has been devoted to the effects of people and their vehicles on birds and mammals, but possible effects on reptiles in populated areas have received less attention. Moreover, the effects of human activities on reptile reproductive success itself has been harder to demonstrate. This paper examines the effect of management of off-road vehicles in New Jersey’s pinelands on the reproductive success of pine snakes (Pituophus melanoleucus) from 1986 to 2005. We used the percentage of snakes in each hibernaculum that were young of the year (hatchlings) as an indicator of reproductive success, and compared this percent for five hibernacula that were in an area with varying degrees of off-road vehicle (ORV) disturbance, with 12 hibernacula in areas with no ORV disturbances (reference sites). This percent took into account differences in absolute numbers from one location to another, and over time due to hibernacula destruction (by people or predators) and natural variations (food supply). The ORV pressure in the pinelands is intense because it lies within the most densely populated urban area in the United States. Although the number of snakes in the reference hibernacula varied over the years from 46 to 63, the percent of young in these hibernacula did not vary significantly over the 20 year period (21–29%). In contrast, the percent-young in the disturbed sites differed significantly in years without ORV disturbance (28%) compared to those with ORV disturbance (15 and 16%, P < 0.01). Further, there were no differences between the percent of young in the reference sites and those in the disturbed site in years without ORV disturbance. ORV disturbance ceased only with the creation of large dirt berms coupled with fences that could not be easily broken. These data indicate the importance of having detailed population data on pine snakes in hibernacula, on ORV use (or indications of such use), and of managing ORV use to protect sensitive populations. Maintenance of healthy pine snake populations in urban areas may require continued adaptive management.     

Developing Employment Opportunities for Care Leavers

This article describes an action research project carried out in North West England that aimed to assist Children’s Services Departments and Care Trusts in developing their strategies for supporting care leavers into employment and training. The study found a range of models and approaches that can be utilised to develop local and regional partnerships offering employment and training opportunities designed to meet the needs of care leavers. Relevant questions about the extent to which such opportunities should be ring‐fenced or targeted on particular fields of employment are identified. © 2010 The Author(s). Children & Society © 2010 National Children’s Bureau.     

The trade–labour relationship in the light of the WTO Appellate Body's embrace of pluralism

Labour lawyers have raised concerns that the law of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has the potential to limit member States' ability to respond to violations of (international) labour rights/standards, both at home and abroad. But its Appellate Body has interpreted WTO law to “permit pluralism”, preserving Members' right to regulate. This jurisprudence has carved out “policy space” for Members, broadened the scope of doctrinal exceptions and blunted the force of disciplines that seek deep integration through regulatory coordination/coherence. These moves mean that numerous labour-protecting measures are likely to be legal under WTO law, diminishing the potential conflict between multilateral trade law and labour law.