Women's Studies

In this article I consider recent policies on care provision in Japan, including the employment of immigrant workers. My discussion is framed by Michel Foucault's concepts of ‘biopower’ and ‘biopolitics’: a mode of governmentality focused on the management of populations. In the current age of economic globalization, however, biopolitics also crosses national boundaries. Raewyn Connell has described a ‘global gender order’ whereby gender relations are shaped by power structures which transcend the level of the nation-state. This involves the connections between different local gender orders and gender orders which transcend the scale of the nation-state. The migration of care workers involves gendered structures in both sending and receiving countries, in interaction with other dimensions of difference, including class, caste, ethnicity and racialized positioning. In order to understand the relationships between the providers and receivers of care, it is necessary to bring together the insights of the nation-focused concept of biopolitics and the multileveled perspective of the ‘global order of inequality’ and the ‘global order of difference’. Between the local and the global, there are also regional orders of inequality and regional orders of difference; care work involves relationships which are put into practice at local, intimate, interpersonal and embodied levels.     

Robert A. Stebbins: Arts Nonprofits: Associations and Agencies—A Literature Review

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

The Language of Globalization,Transnationality and Feminism

This article considers recent feminist actions in the Asia-Pacific region, which have involved transnational collaboration. This provides a site for a discussion of the relationship between language, discourse, cultural practices, political economy, activism and social transformation. It is argued recent examples of transnational feminist collaboration have either been based on a logic of similarity and affiliation or on a recognition of mutual imbrication in structures of inequality.     

A. S. Serafimovich’s Forgotten Novel,City in the Steppe (1912)

La plupart des écrits prérévolutionnaires de A. S. Serafimovich se trouve reléguée à l’ombre par la popularité en Union Soviétique de son roman "classique" Torrent de fer, 1924. Son premier et son plus long roman, Ville dans la Steppe, 1912, est l’une de ses oeuvres les plus achevées; une synthèse tragique et pittoresque de ces forces lointaines et sourdes concrétisées par le régime capitaliste en Russie à la fin du 19ème siècle. Cet article souligne surtout le dépouillement du monde intérieur des personnages principaux du roman – Zakharka et Polynov – que l’écrivain accomplit magistralement avec de l’acuité psychologique et une imagination puissante. Les destins de ces deux hommes opposés s’entrecroisent d’une façon qui ressemble les coups dans une partie d’échecs. Par une antithèse saisissante, Serafimovitch dévoile l’état de ces deux âmes destinées à être détruites parmi les bestialités d’un milieu capitaliste. L’auteur met en jeu ses ressorts psychologiques pour rendre les personnages secondaires et épisodiques également émouvants et mémorables. On trouve dans la caractérisation des faiblesses, des banalités, un certain pessimisme, parfois des exagérations, mais le tout est compensé par les analyses originales et inquiétantes dont l’auteur empreint toutes ses images. Riche en péripéties, sans être confus, le développement des faits dans le roman a une certaine valeur socio-historique.     

Overcoming Liability Concerns in Vaccine Trials Involving Pregnant Women

Without the protection of vaccines, the health of pregnant women may be compromised. But assessing the safety and efficacy of vaccines in pregnancy requires research in pregnancy. Furthermore, vaccinating women while they are pregnant may convey immunity to the fetus in utero, but assessing this possible benefit of maternal immunization also requires research. This article argues that one factor inhibiting vaccine research involving pregnant women is that vaccine manufacturers fear incurring liability if they fund such research. We argue that vaccine research in pregnancy can be ethical, and we explore some methods for overcoming vaccine manufacturers' fear of liability.     

Independence in Contingency Tables Using Simplicial Geometry

Frequently, contingency tables are generated in a multinomial sampling. Multinomial probabilities are then organized in a table assigning probabilities to each cell. A probability table can be viewed as an element in the simplex. The Aitchison geometry of the simplex identifies independent probability tables as a linear subspace. An important consequence is that, given a probability table, the nearest independent table is obtained by orthogonal projection onto the independent subspace. The nearest independent table is identified as that obtained by the product of geometric marginals, which do not coincide with the standard marginals, except in the independent case. The original probability table is decomposed into orthogonal tables, the independent and the interaction tables. The underlying model is log-linear, and a procedure to test independence of a contingency table, based on a multinomial simulation, is developed. Its performance is studied on an illustrative example.     

Shiftwork tolerance and 24-h variations in moods

Abstract

The objective of the study was to identify the differences in 24-h variations in moods between three groups of oil-refinery workers: tolerant shiftworkers, intolerant shiftworkers and workers who had never worked in shifts. Each group comprised 29 workers matched by age. The mood measurements were taken during a 24-h period every 2 h starting from 08:00 h. Results were scored for three scales: positive moods, negative moods and fatigue. The two-factor ANOVA revealed the significant main effect of groups for all three moods indicating differences at the average level of 24-h variations in all moods between workers who differed in the degree of tolerance to shiftwork. The significant main effect of time of day was also found for all moods while the reliable interaction between groups and time of day was observed for negative moods only, indicating a different shape of 24-h variations for non-shiftworkers in comparison to shiftworkers.