Parental access to children in care—the research messages

SUMMARY. The basic facts about access of parents to their children in care are simply stated: a significant number of children in care have parental access limited either deliberately or inadvertently, without professional or legal justification, and the result of this is that contact between parents and children withers, and may reduce to nothing. How much does this matter? How common is it? Why does it happen? These questions will be examined below. We shall see that access in care merits serious attention and highlights important issues concerning the role of the social services in the spectrum of professional support available to families with children. The article is based on a paper given in 1986 to a Family Rights Group study course on access to children in care     

The Social standing of ethnic and racial groupings*

L'article établi l'existence d'une échelle des groupes ethniques et raciales, selon leur position sociale, au Canada anglophone et francophone. Les données de l'étude étaient recueillies pendant une étude sur le prestige professionnel, utilisant une forme de question identique pour obtenir l'échelle ethnique et l'échelle professionnelle. On peut, donc, examiner si les évaluations des groupes ethniques et raciales démontrent moins de consensus que les évaluations des professions.
This paper establishes the existence of a ranking of ethnic and racial groups, according to social standing, within English and French Canada. Since the data used in the study were collected as part of a national study of occupational prestige, and used an identical question format, it is possible to test whether the degree of consensus in this ranking is as great as that for the ranking of occupations.     

Older Women's Bodies and the Self: The Construction of Identity in Later Life*

Laura Hurd Clarke Cet article étudie les difficiles et souvent conflictuelles relations entre l'image de soi d'une femme âgée et son corps vieillissant. Se fondant sur les données d'entrevues semi‐structurées avec 22 femmes âgées de 61 à 92 ans, l'auteure examine l'influence de la perte de la perception de l'aspect esthétique et celle de la détérioration de la santé et des capacités fonctionnelles sur le sentiment d'identité d'une femme âgée. Elle commente aussi l'expérience du corps des femmes en tant qu'à la fois masque et prison du soi et dégage le défi de l'image réfléchie que se fait une femme de l'idée d'être jeune « de l'intérieur ». This paper explores the uneasy and often conflicted relationship between an older woman's sense of self and her aging body. Using data from semi‐structured interviews with 22 female participants aged 61 to 92 years, the paper examines the influence of the loss of perceived physical attractiveness and the deterioration of health and functional abilities on an older woman's sense of identity. The paper discusses the women's experience of the body as both mask and prison of the self and elucidates the challenge of the reflected image to a woman's sense of being youthful on the “inside.”     

THE IMPACT OF INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING ON PUBLIC OPINION AND POLICYMAKING TARGETING TOXIC WASTE

This article reports the fourth in a continuing series of casestudies that explore the impact of news media investigativejournalism on the general public, policymakers, and public policy.The media disclosures in this field experiment had limited effectson the general public but were influential in changing the attitudesof policymakers. The study describes how changes in public policymakingresulted from collaboration between journalists and governmentofficials. The authors develop a model that is a beginning steptoward specifying the cond6itions under which media investigationsinfluence public attitudes and agendas.     

Identity and Nationalism in Mexico: Guerrero, 1780–18401

Abstract Nationalisms do not form at the expense of all previous solidarities and identities. Often nationalisms are instead based upon foundations laid by class, ethnicity, gender, or other identities. Nationalists stress identities which reinforce the unity they seek and simultaneously deny those that threaten that unity. An important part of this process consists of singling out foreigners as radically different ‘others.’The national identity constructed in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Guerrero, Mexico, stressed opposition to newly-defined foreigners and was intertwined with class, ethnic, religious, and political solidarities.