Former Minister Zhang's discourse on SARS: Government's image restoration or destruction?

This study analyzes the image repair discourse by Chinese Health Minister Zhang Wenkang's discourse on SARS. The minister faced several accusations: the SARS outbreak was growing, the Chinese government had covered up the severity of this problem, the Chinese government ignored Taiwanese who suffered from SARS, and the Health Ministry provided information that was neither timely nor accurate. He employed several image repair strategies (denial, defeasibility, bolstering, minimization, differentiation, attack accuser, and corrective action). However, his messages were contradictory and apparently related on false information, so his efforts were unsuccessful and he was stripped of his office.     

Getting to know reality and breaking stereotypes: the experience of two generations of working disabled women

This paper sets out the results of a Spanish study of the experience and meaning of work among disabled women of two generations, with three types of disability (physical, visual and hearing). Performing a socially recognised activity such as a job is a source of emotional welfare and self‐esteem. Moreover, it confers a certain social status. For the participants in this study the kind of work involved, whether productive, paid and ‘extra‐domestic’ or ‘reproductive’, unpaid and done at home, acquires different meanings, since for disabled women, sexist stereotypes – already more or less accentuated in the culture – social attitudes towards disability and personal factors introduce relevant differences, while leading to conflicts and dilemmas that these women have to solve. At any rate, their sense of responsibility in performing all types of work should be emphasised as evidence of their sense of independence and personal competence, forming a keystone in their construction of a sense of identity and social integration.     

Living on the margin: disabled Iranians in Belgian society

This paper explores the antecedents, experiences and consequences of marginalization as reported and dealt with by disabled Iranian immigrants in Belgium. This work extends the work of Gallie and colleagues and Siegrist demonstrating that the forces of marginalization applicable to all immigrants are particularly pertinent to disabled immigrants. The research is based on 26 in‐depth, face‐to‐face interviews, focus groups, interviews with government officials and immigration experts, ethnographic work and official government statistics. The findings detail how the combined forces of history, context and reasons for immigration; isolation, vulnerability and perceived loss of control; religion and rejection; lack of reciprocity in social exchanges; problems in obtaining jobs; and difficulties in negotiating an entry into Belgian society combine to sustain marginizalation. As a consequence, disabled immigrants in this group are generally excluded from society and discriminated against in terms of citizenship, education, jobs and general acceptance.     

Adolescent Deliberate Self‐Harm: Linkages to Emotion Regulation and Family Emotional Climate

Parents' responses to their children's emotional expressivity have been shown to significantly influence children's subsequent psychosocial functioning. This study hypothesized that adolescents' deliberate self‐harm (DSH) may be an outcome associated with poor emotion regulation as well as an invalidating family environment. The mediational role of specific emotion processes (i.e., poor awareness of emotion, difficulties expressing emotions) between family emotional environment and the frequency of DSH was examined with 131 psychiatrically hospitalized adolescents (M age=14.84 years, SD=1.75 years). Results indicated that adolescents who self‐injured reported that this behavior reduced their negative emotional states. Structural equation modeling provided support for the proposed model that family climate influences frequency of DSH through emotion regulation skills but the model held for girls only. A direct model effect was not supported. Emotion regulation partially mediated the relationship between family climate and DSH, and direct effects were also observed.     

Culture: A Possible Predictor of Morality for African American Adolescents

This study examined the ways in which cultural orientation (communalism and material well‐being) and empathy influence the moral reasoning of African American middle to late adolescents. Specifically, this study utilized path analysis to investigate Ward's (1995) hypothesis that a communal orientation would promote morality among African American adolescents, while a material well‐being orientation would mitigate against it. In addition, it was hypothesized that empathy would mediate the relationship between cultural orientation and moral reasoning. Thirty‐seven high school students and 35 college students participated in the study. Results revealed that communalism was a significant predictor of empathy. Despite prediction, communalism and material well‐being were not predictors of moral reasoning. The findings did not yield support for empathy functioning as a mediator between communalism and moral reasoning. These findings are discussed in terms of previous findings, methodological limitations, and implications for future research.     

Do institutions really matter for saving among low-income households? A comparative approach

This study aims to examine the extent to which competing theories explain saving of low-income households in Individual Development Accounts (IDAs). Competing theories include the individual-oriented perspective, a social stratification perspective, and institutional saving theory. We use American Dream Demonstration (ADD) data collected at the Tulsa IDA program. Compared with the individual perspective and the social stratification perspective, institutional features explain a large part of the variance in saving outcomes measured by average monthly net deposit (AMND) and deposit frequency. Findings suggest that institutional structures encouraging low-income households to save may contribute to more inclusive asset-based policy.     

On ‘flip‐flopping’: Branded stance‐taking in U.S. electoral politics1

This article examines stance in U.S. political discourse, taking as its empirical point of departure Democratic candidate John Kerry's epistemic stance‐taking in the televised 2004 presidential debates. Kerry's stance‐taking is shown to help display the characterological attribute of ‘conviction’ and serve as a rejoinder to critics who had branded him as a ‘flip‐flopper.’ His stance‐taking is thus not primarily ‘to’ or ‘for’ copresent interactants, but is largely interdiscursive in character. ‘Conviction’ and its opposite, ‘flip‐flopping,’ suggest further how stance‐taking itself has been an object of typification in the agonistic dynamics of candidate branding and counter‐branding. In moving from epistemic stance‐taking in discourse to models of the stance‐taker as a social type, this article addresses questions about the units and levels of analysis needed to study stance in contemporary political discourse.     

Testing Evolutionary Hypotheses with Demographic Data

An ecological evolutionary viewpoint offers new perspectives on contemporary demographic problems in general and on population–environment issues in particular. In turn, rich and detailed human demographic data can help solve problems of interest in evolutionary theory. Such data have been analyzed in greatest detail in studies of traditional and historical societies. Evolutionary approaches using historical data go beyond small‐sample anthropological studies to the application of the evolutionary approach to large datasets, and illuminate important similarities between small‐scale traditional societies and large modern populations living in evolutionarily novel environments. This article provides a concise update of the breadth of questions and hypotheses of likely interest to demographers and others that evolutionary theorists address using a variety of traditional and historical datasets. It suggests opportunities for additional collaborative work between evolutionary theorists and historical demographers and highlights topics relevant to modern demography.     

Employment and earnings of foreign-born scientists and engineers

Population Research and Policy Review -     

Child and Youth Well-Being in the United States, 1975–1998: Some Findings from a New Index

Social Indicators Research - This paper addresses the following questions: Overall, on average, how did child and youthwell-being in the United States of Americachange in the last quarter of the...