Health and the structure of adolescent social networks

Much research has explored the role of social networks in promoting health through the provision of social support. However, little work has examined how social networks themselves may be structured by health. This article investigates the link between individuals' health and the characteristics of their social network positions. We first develop theoretical predictions for how health may influence the structure of adolescent networks. We then test these predictions using longitudinal analysis of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). We find important relationships between the health status of adolescents and the characteristics of the social network positions within which they are embedded. Overall we find that adolescents in poor health form smaller local networks and occupy less central global positions than their healthy peers. These results also have implications for social network research, expanding the scope of factors responsible for the network positions individuals occupy.     

Perverts or Heroes in the Post-Socialist “Cold War”: Formula Stories of Lesbian/Bisexual/Queer Women and Transgender People in Ukrainian Media

Subjectivities such as (what would be termed in English) lesbians, bisexual, and queer (LBQ) women and transgender people are contested topics in Ukraine. Linking Laclau and Mouffe's discourse analysis with Loseke's narrative approach, we reviewed eight national, text-based, journalistic media sources to read equivalence chains within the data as publicly available formula stories about LGBTQ+ people. Formula stories are not about actual people or typically told by LBQ women and transgender people themselves, but rather exist as publicly circulating stories for consumption by non-LGBTQ+ people. Our findings shore up previous evidence that homophobia and transphobia (including criminalization and pathologization) are commonly articulated in media outlets in Ukraine. Importantly, media outlets owned by Russia and the United States and stories about events outside of Ukraine contribute most to the formula stories circulating in Ukraine, demonstrating the continuing position of Ukraine as a fulcrum of geopolitical contestations in the post-socialist “cold war.” Analyzing sexual politics through formula stories illuminates ongoing transnational connections of imperialism and Europeanization to racialization, colonialism, and contestations of power. A video abstract is available at https://youtu.be/v3dCj0yYm_g .     

Navigating Peace and Security: Women and Social Capital in Iraq

This article examines international, national and local interpretations of women's engagement in peace and security processes. In 2000, the international community formally recognized the importance of women's equal participation in maintaining and promoting peace and security via UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325). National governments subsequently enacted National Action Plans to pursue the goals of UNSCR 1325, including one established in Iraq in 2014. Iraq's National Action Plan prioritizes the reform of legal and political institutions, and this article seeks to understand whether this approach resonates with Iraqi women. Based on fieldwork conducted in northern Diyala, it examines how Iraqi women perceive, access and exert influence over peace and security mechanisms, and how their approach compares with the strategies identified by the National Action Plan and UNSCR 1325.     

Seasonal patterns of urban bird diversity in a Mediterranean coastal city: the positive role of open green spaces

Urban Ecosystems - Urbanization causes rapid changes in the landscape and land use, exerting a significant pressure on bird communities. The effect of urbanization on bird diversity has been widely...     

Creative precarity? Young fashion designers as entrepreneurs in Russia

ABSTRACT

This article explores the careers of young fashion designers as entrepreneurs in Russia. It discusses entrepreneurial experiences and labour practices of fashion designers in the context of precarity: that is, the structural conditions characterized by a lack of social, economic and emotional security caused by a shift of responsibilities for the labour market from the state to the citizens. The article takes the perspective of designers’ agency and answers the question of how young fashion entrepreneurs deal with such structural conditions using state support, community support, organizational practices and emotional management. The article also focuses on creative labour in the broader context of the circumstances of a creative class in an authoritarian state. We argue that in today’s Russia, the discourse on the creative class is perhaps more important than the discourse on precarity, since belonging to the creative class is a source of political identity for fashion designers. The issue of precarity, then, can become a further basis for solidarity and political action. The research draws from 21 in-depth interviews with fashion designers and experts conducted in the cities of Moscow, St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk between 2015 and 2016.     

Psychologists in Tortured States: A Review of Nancy Caro Hollander's Love in a Time of Hate

How do we understand the human capacity to inflict and endure such violence? How do we comprehend its toll on the human spirit? Is it possible to live through the trauma of extreme violation of human rights and sustain hope and faith in human goodness and our capacity to build loving and creating social bonds?     

Theoretical Explanatory Model of International Adoption Failure: Attachment and Ecological Systems Perspectives

International adoption, the transfer of children for parenting purposes from one nation to another, presents an extreme form of what is often known as “stranger” adoption, in contrast to relative adoption (Bartholet, 2005 Bartholet, E. (2005). International adoption. In L. Askeland (Ed.), Children and youth in adoption, orphanages, and foster care (pp. 107–130). Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group. [Google Scholar], p. 8). Adoption brings major changes to the lives of children and adoptive parents. Intercountry adoptions are associated with high monetary costs, long waiting periods to adopt, changes of the family environment, and cultural challenges, along with other bureaucratic and socioeconomic factors. This paper explores the issue of international adoption failure through the prism of two theories: attachment theory and ecological systems theory. The author begins with a brief history of international adoption into the United States, followed by a discussion of factors contributing into adoption failure as discussed in other literature. Next, adoption failure is theoretically analyzed using the concepts of attachment and ecological systems theories. Suggestions for adoption practitioners are included.     

“It's Just a Likelihood”: Uncertainty as Topic and Resource in Conveying “Positive” Results in an Antenatal Screening Clinic

The recognition of uncertainty as a pivotal issue for the sociology of medicine is longstanding. More recently, the widespread integration of new medical technologies into healthcare has led to a renewed analytic focus on uncertainty. However, there remains little work on the interactional manifestations of uncertainty. This article uses conversation analysis to examine how uncertainty is introduced and used in one specific setting: an antenatal screening clinic in Hong Kong. We focus on women who have received “screen positive” or higher risk results, and reflect on the ways in which uncertainty is an “essential tension” (Mazeland and ten Have 1996) in the activity of conveying these results to them. We conclude that as well as posing potential difficulties for interaction, the uncertainty of test results is also used here as an interactional resource in managing the institutionally defined category of “high risk.”     

More than ‘information provider’ and ‘counselor’: Constructing and negotiating roles and identities of nurses in genetic counseling sessions

This paper contributes to research on genetic counseling by exploring the complexity of this activity from the angle of identity construction. We argue that an analysis of the processes through which healthcare providers construct and negotiate their roles and identities in these encounters may contribute to a better understanding of the complexities of genetic counseling. Drawing on more than 150 video‐recorded genetic counseling encounters between nurses and clients in Hong Kong, we illustrate that the discursive processes involved in the construction of the nurses' identities are complex, overlapping and at times contradictory as the nurses respond to the (sometimes) competing norms and expectations of their institution, their clients and their own. They manage to solve these tensions by drawing on the roles traditionally assigned to nurses in these encounters such as information provider and counselor, as well as creating the new roles of co‐decision maker and cultural broker/mediator.     

DECENTRALIZATION AND PUBLIC PROCUREMENT PERFORMANCE: NEW EVIDENCE FROM ITALY

We exploit a new dataset based on European Union (EU) procurement award notices to investigate the relationship between the degree of centralization of public procurement and its performance. We focus on the case of Italy, where all levels of government, along with a number of other public institutions, are involved in procurement and are subject to the same EU regulation. We find that (a) municipalities and utilities, which currently award among the largest shares of contracts, achieve lower rebates than other institutional categories; and (b) decentralization implies lower rebates only when it comes with weak competences of procurement officials. The evidence seems to suggest that a reorganization of the procurement system, both in terms of partial centralization and increased professionalization of procurement officials, would help improve award-stage procurement performance. (JEL H11, H57, H71, H77)