Home,work and community: skilled international migration and expatriate women in Singapore

While skilled labour migration across international borders is a phenomenon of increasing significance in the age of globalization and an important component in the production of global cities, it has not been given sufficient attention in traditional migration analyses.
Recent research has focused on institutional mechanisms regulating the patterns of skill transfer rather than the individual experience of being part of the international labour circuit. Women, in particular, have usually been relegated to the role of "trailing spouses" and are generally invisible in the migration process.
Using a questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews, this article attempts to reinstate the importance of women's roles by portraying them as active agents who adopt a range of strategies in negotiating the move and coming to terms with the transformations wrought by the move in the domains of home, work and community. It argues that skilled labour migration is a strongly gendered process, producing different sets of experiences for the men and women involved in it.
While international circulation often represents "career moves" for expatriate men, their spouses often experience a devalorization of their productive functions and a relegation to the domestic sphere. As an adaptive strategy, expatriate women often turn to the social and community sphere to reach for grounding in their lives.
The article also points to the diversity of "expatriate experiences": while "western" expatriates tend to recreate a more exclusive world by drawing on strong institutional support, "Asian" expatriates find that they have to navigate much finer social and cultural divides between themselves and the host society.     

Analgesia produced in women by genital self-stimulation

This study investigated the relative effectiveness of specific genital regional self-stimulation in elevating pain thresholds. Anecdotal reports in humans suggest that sexual activity and orgasm decrease a wide variety of human responses to pain and touch, but the phenomenon has not been evaluated objectively. Two types of self-stimulation, pressure and pleasurable, were applied by 10 women to the anterior vaginal wall, the posterior vaginal wall, and the clitoris. Significant increases in pain thresholds but not tactile thresholds occurred when pressure stimulation was applied to the anterior wall of the vagina or when "pleasurable" self-stimulation was applied to any of the three areas. Tactile thresholds were not significantly affected by any genital stimulation condition. However, there was a significant increase in tactile threshold but not pain thresholds in the distraction control condition. On the basis of these findings, we conclude that (a) a sensation of pleasure evoked by genital stimulation can elevate pain thresholds, (b) these pleasurable stimuli were not general "distractants" because they elevated pain thresholds but not tactile thresholds differentially, and (c) genital pleasurable stimuli activate an analgesic process that is distinct from a distraction process.     

The Effects of Diversity on Small Work Group Processes and Performance

Diversity is an increasingly important factor inorganizational life as organizations worldwide becomemore diverse in terms of the gender, race, ethnicity,age, national origin, and other personal characteristics of their members. The exact impact ofwithin-group diversity on small group processes andperformance is unclear. Sometimes the effect ofdiversity seems positive, at other times negative, andin other situations, there seems to be no effect at all.In this article, we suggest that these types of findingsmight be explained by using agroup-development model to examine theimpact of diversity on group processes and performance. Our modeluses concepts from Jackson et al.'s (1995), Milliken andMartins' (1996), and other models, as well as our ownconcepts, to show how diversity affects group development and performance. Among the conceptsincluded in the model are readily detectable personalattributes, underlying personal attributes, cognitiveparadigm dissimilarity, cognitive costs and rewards, diversity management skills, group behavioralintegration, and cognitive performance resources. In thepages that follow, we will explain each of thecomponents of the model and suggest specific hypotheses generated from the model.     

Gendered Elements of the Alternative Agriculture Paradigm

Abstract The alternative agriculture paradigm has been a useful device to both define and direct a social movement toward a more sustainable agriculture. But because that paradigm was defined by male movement leaders, it reflects their gendered perspective and may be lacking elements that make it more useful for both women and men. In-depth interviews of women involved in sustainable farming organizations and on family farms experimenting with new practices validated the elements of the Beus and Dunlap paradigm: independence, decentralization, community, harmony with nature, diversity, and restraint, but also suggested the addition of two other elements that the women identified as part of an alternative agriculture vision: quality family life and spirituality. The highly gendered nature of agriculture in the V.S. and Canada, where male identity is highly conflated with the role of farmer in the conventional paradigm, may make it more difficult for men who have just joined the' movement to articulate the aspects of quality family life and spirituality which the women saw as critical.     

Lifestyle Options and Economic Strategies: Subsistence Activities in the Mississippi Delta1

Abstract "Subsistence" and "informal economy" are contrasted in their utility as sociological concepts and their ability to explain a variety of activities in two rural Mississippi Delta communities. Literature on subsistence stresses that the desired outcome of participation is not an increase in income but the social rewards of participation itself. Two underlying dimensions of participation in these activities are documented through the literature and through a confirmatory factor analysis of empirical data: life-style choice and economic strategy. These were constructed into indexes and examined individually and in combination as dependent variables using regressors at the community, household, and individual levels. Community ties were weakly associated with participation in such activities. Whites and those with higher incomes participated more in lifestyle choice oriented activities. Participation in general was statistically related to households needing less weekly income and being of larger size. Potential connections with persistent rural poverty are discussed.     

What turns you on and off?

When you are exploring your career and where you are headed, it is helpful to consider what aspects of your job turn you on, and of course, those that don't. Energizers are activities that excite and invigorate you or people who lift your heart and inspire you. De-energizers are activities or people who drain you, drag you down, depress you. Make lists of those things that energize and de-energize you either at work or in other situations. Try hard to do something to incorporate or change at least the first five on each list and see if you feel more job and life satisfaction. Responses from 30 participants of a recent Career Choices program are provided to help you get started.     

Coming out to parents: perceptions of family relations, perceived resources, and identity expression as predictors of identity disclosure for gay and lesbian adolescents

This paper examines perceptions of family relations, identity expression, and pro-lesbian/gay resources as factors influencing coming out to parents. One hundred seventy-two adolescents responded to a survey originating from a clinical support group for lesbian and gay youth. Findings indicate that weak family relations significantly detract from coming out to parents indirectly through identity expression and perceived resources. Excluding the effects of family relations, adolescents perceiving supportive resources and expressing their lesbian/gay identity were more likely to come out to parents.     

Why are residential and school moves associated with poor school performance?

Most research on residential mobility has documented a clear pattern: Residential and school moves are associated with poor academic performance. Explanations for this relationship, however, remain speculative. Some researchers argue that moving affects social relationships that are important to academic achievement. But the association between moving and school performance may be spurious; the negative correlation may be a function of other characteristics of people who move often. We offer several conceptual and analytical refinements to these ideas, allowing us to produce more precise tests than past researchers. Using longitudinal data, we find that differences in achievement between movers and nonmovers are partially a result of declines in social relationships experienced by students who move. Most of the negative effect of moving, however, is due to preexisting differences between the two groups.     

Experiment-dependent priors in psychology and physics

Sometimes conducting an experiment to ascertain the state of a system changes the state of the system being measured. Kahneman & Tversky modelled this effect with support theory. Quantum physics models this effect with probability amplitude mechanics. As this paper shows, probability amplitude mechanics is similar to support theory. Additionally, Viscusi's proposed generalized expected utility model has an analogy in quantum mechanics.