Cape Verde at the End of Atlantic Slavery

This article situates the Cape Verde islands in the last half-century of Atlantic slavery. It concentrates on the final decades of bondage in Cape Verde, abolished selectively in 1857 and in totality in 1878, set within a longer period that began with international conventions prohibiting slave trafficking north of the equator and ended with the imperfect end of Atlantic slavery in the 1880s. Several dynamic forces, I argue, gave the Cape Verde archipelago an outsized role in Atlantic slavery's uneven decline and destruction. Some of these forces – the enforcement of anti-trafficking conventions, British abolitionist activity, the eclipsing of enslaved by free-labour in transatlantic labour flows – should be categorised as local echoes of a larger Atlantic narrative. Yet, in Cape Verde, we also find a dynamic admixture of phenomena – ecological crisis, epidemic disease, the advent of South Atlantic steamship service, experimentations in free soil, and imperial renewal – that projected the archipelago into and onto a wider nineteenth-century world made by enslavement and its destruction.     

Relationship education among incarcerated populations

Abstract

Incarceration represents a significant shift in the life course trajectories of the nearly seven million inmates in the American criminal justice system and their families and can have far-reaching effects on intimate and family relationships. Prior research has highlighted the relationship difficulties that inmates face while incarcerated and upon their release. Using a life course perspective, we review the disruptive impact of incarceration on relationships. We examine how relationship education targeted to incarcerated individuals may be an opportunity to provide knowledge and skills that help improve and maintain healthy relationships both during incarceration and upon release. Relationship education courses have consistently been shown to be effective within a variety of settings, and preliminary studies indicate that they may be effective within incarcerated populations as well.     

Do Therapists Address Gender and Power in Infidelity? A Feminist Analysis of the Treatment Literature

Sociocontextual factors such as gender and power play an important role in the etiology of affairs and in recovery from them, yet it is unclear how current treatment models address these issues. Drawing on feminist epistemology, this study utilized a grounded theory analysis of 29 scholarly articles and books on infidelity treatment published between 2000 and 2010 to identify the circumstances under which gender and power issues were or were not part of treatment. We found five conditions that limit attention to gender and power: (a) speaking (or assuming) as though partners are equal, (b) reframing infidelity as a relationship problem, (c) limiting discussion of societal context to background, (d) not considering how societal gender and power patterns impact relationship dynamics, and (e) limiting discussion of ethics on how to position around infidelity. Analysis explored how each occurred across three phases of couple therapy. The findings provide a useful foundation for a sociocontextual framework for infidelity treatment.     

Friends with benefits or “friends” with deficits? The meaning and contexts of uncommitted sexual relationships among Mexican American and European American adolescents

Using focus groups, this study sought to understand and compare how Mexican American (n = 41, M = 16.0 years old, SD = .96) and European American (n = 34, M = 16.1 years old, SD = .64) youths conceptualize and experience “friends with benefits” relationships (FWBRs). Contrary to the implied nature of friendship, partners did not show caring and viewed FWBRs as a means to meet sexual needs. The “benefits” of this arrangement included guilt-free pleasure, little responsibility, the freedom to date others, or to remain available for a more desirable partner. The inherent deficits of FWBRs, on the other hand, included the potential pitfall of getting emotionally attached. Despite the recognized deficits, European American and Mexican American girls both desired and participated in FWBRs. However, Mexican American girls described more committed “going-out” relationships as ideal, which left them vulnerable to mismatched expectations and emotional upset in FWBRs. Findings outline the socio-emotional contexts of adolescent involvement in FWBRs, as well as underscore the potential for conflicting desires. Recommendations for healthy relationship and sexual health programs are discussed.     

Co-ordinating learning: The future of practice teaching

Traditional models of practice teaching have usually assumed the superiority of a one-to-one arrangement. However, ‘long-arm supervision’, often used in group care and other settings as a way of providing placements in units without qualified practice teachers, could provide the basis for future models where the accredited practice teacher takes a management responsibility for planning and co-ordinating a range of learning experiences involving a variety of staff. Some of the issues and advantages of this model are briefly explored.     

Abortion or birth? Discriminators in problem pregnancy decisions

This paper explores the decision process in problem pregnancies, based on the decision‐making model of Brim et al. (1962). The study compares 29 aborters with 29 women who chose to give birth. The women were interviewed by means of a 7‐page schedule designed to elicit answers to questions taken from the literature on abortion and from reference group theory. The research found that women confronted with problem pregnancies go through decision stages and that certain social influences discriminate the two groups. The most noteworthy discriminators were source of information, relationship to the male, beliefs about the beginning of human life, perception of the decision as individual or joint, and attitudes toward abortion. Other variables associated with the decision were age, education, father's income, father's occupation, number of alternatives considered, and influence reported, as from parents or peers. Implications for further research and practical application are discussed. A woman with an unwanted pregnancy should acquaint herself with all alternatives, seek support from significant others, be apprised of procedures, and recognize costs involved.     

Marijuana,Gender, and Health-Related Harms: Disentangling Marijuana's Contribution to Risk in a College “Party” Context

Sociological studies suggest that there is social change occurring in the acceptance of lesbians and gay men in the workplace. Compared to prior decades, there are more businesses that welcome, value, and even privilege nonheterosexual sexual identities and relationships. Few studies have analyzed workers' experiences in these types of work contexts. In this article, we explore the experiences of “out” LGB women and men who work for organizations that they consider “gay-friendly.” In-depth interviews demonstrated that, although gay and lesbian workers feel that they are accepted in “gay-friendly” organizations, they nevertheless described differential treatment because of their sexual identity. We discuss evidence of stereotyping, sexual harassment, and gender discrimination in their work experiences. Although the movement toward greater acceptance of gays and lesbians in the workplace has made significant progress, the transformation is so far incomplete. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of this research for the study of equality in organizations.     

An agent-based random-utility-maximization model to generate social networks with transitivity in geographic space

Stochastic actor-based approaches receive increasing interest in the generation of social networks for simulation in time and space. Existing models however cannot be readily integrated in agent-based models that assume random-utility-maximizing behavior of agents. We propose an agent-based model to generate social networks explicitly in geographic space which is formulated in the random-utility-maximizing (RUM) framework. The proposed model consists of a friendship formation mechanism and a component to simulate social encounters in a population. We show how transitivity can be incorporated in both components and how the model can be estimated based on data of personal networks using likelihood estimation. In an application to the Swiss context, we demonstrate the estimation and ability of the model to reproduce relevant characteristics of networks, such as geographic proximity, attribute similarity (homophily), size of personal networks (degree distribution) and clustering (transitivity). We conclude that the proposed social-network model fits seamlessly in existing large-scale micro-simulation systems which assume RUM behavior of agents.