Collapsing the Boundaries? Fatherhood,Organization and Home‐Working

In the modern western world, the discursive construction of fatherhood and everyday fathering practices has been underpinned by the spatial separation of work from home, of public from private. However, increasing numbers of employees are now working from home and a disproportionate number of these are men with young children. This article draws on new empirical research to examine the implications for fathers and for organizations as home‐working disrupts earlier spatial configurations of fatherhood and fathering practices. The article concludes that as the spatial boundaries between home and work collapse, new accommodations between fatherhood/fathering and organization are emerging. However, these are underpinned by a traditional gender division of labour in the household. More broadly, these findings confirm the inadequacy of static distinctions between public and private, showing that while such distinctions are still used to mark space and time, this is relational, contingent and unstable.     

美国研究型大学本科生科研的实践与启示——以罗格斯大学为例

本科生参与科研是美国研究型大学本科生教育改革的一项重要措施。通过几十年的发展,本科生科研已成为美国几乎所有研究型大学的重要教学活动,相关的机制也得到不断地改进和完善。以美国罗格斯大学为例,介绍它本科生科研的实施机构、校外设施,特别是它在过去十年中逐步建立和完善的针对不同年级本科生的研究计划和辅助措施以及它们的实施情况,并通过分析从中得出一些对中国高校有价值的启示。     

Motivating talents in Thai and Malaysian service firms

Talent development in Thailand and Malaysian service firms has become a prioritized human resource management practice as these societies move toward knowledge-based economies. This paper discusses talent management in the social, organizational and managerial context of firms in Thailand and Malaysia, and argues that such structures often counterbalance investments made in talent development. The paper concludes that new human resource management practices do not produce a difference per se. It is the mindset and attitude of various managers that makes the difference. The learning for practitioners is that they need to adapt existing social and organizational structures to their new human resource management practices. The paper is based mainly on qualitative interviews with human resource managers from Thai and Malaysian service firms.     

Pollutant Ground Concentrations of Nonneutrally Buoyant Particles

A methodology is suggested for the estimation of the mass density and the cumulative ground deposition of a nonvolatile, nonneutrally buoyant, air pollutant (liquid or solid) released from a polluted column (following an explosion caused during routine operation in, e.g., the chemical industry or due to any kind of hostile act) and deposited on the ground via gravitational settling. In many cases, the deposited mass due to gravitational settling constitutes a significant fraction of the original inventory released from the source. Implementation of the methodology in preliminary risk assessments can serve as an efficient tool for emergency planning for both immediate and long‐term measures such as evacuation and decontamination. The methodology considers, inter alia, an estimation of the critical particle diameter, particle size, and mass distributions along the polluted column. This methodology was developed to apply in rural regions since proper application of relevant meteorological input data can be accomplished mainly for such areas.     

制度与非制度因素对农民工落户城镇意愿的影响

农民工能否落户城镇对我国的新型城镇化建设有重大的现实影响。利用2013年全国流动人口动态监测数据,从制度性因素和非制度性因素两方面对农民工的落户城镇意愿进行了探讨。实证研究发现：社会保险状况及学龄子女是否在本地就学会显著影响农民工的落户意愿,表明制度性因素的重要;从社会网络视角来看,基于传统的先赋性场域网络如亲属网对农民工的落户意愿无显著影响,而基于现代社会的自致性场域网络如朋友网、行政组织网、工作同事网则显著提高了农民工落户城镇的意愿。     

The disorganized family: institutions,practices and normativity

This paper considers the value of a normative account of the relationship between agents and institutions for contemporary efforts to explain ever more complex and disorganized forms of social life. The character of social institutions, as they relate to practices, agents and norms, is explored through an engagement with the common claim that family life has been de‐institutionalized. The paper argues that a normative rather than empirical definition of institutions avoids a false distinction between institutions and practices. Drawing on ideas of social freedom and creative action from critical theory, the changes in family life are explained not as an effect of de‐institutionalization, but as a shift from an organized to a disorganized institutional type. This is understood as a response to changes in the wider normative structure, as a norm of individual freedom has undermined the legitimacy of the organized patriarchal nuclear family, with gender ascribed roles and associated duties. Contemporary motherhood is drawn on to illustrate the value of analysing the dynamic interactions between institutions, roles and practices for capturing both the complexity and the patterned quality of social experience.     

Parental stress and parenting in Chinese immigrant families: The mediating role of social support

As the population of Chinese immigrants has been growing rapidly in the United States, it has been understudied on the parenting behaviours as well as the roles parental stress and social support playing in parenting in this group. This study investigated whether parental stress was associated with parenting and whether this relationship was mediated by social support in a sample of 255 Chinese immigrant parents from the Survey of Asian American Families in New York City. Regression analyses with a rich array of control variables found that a higher level of parental stress and the presence of one or more stressors such as unemployment, low income, and low education were positively associated with the use of harsh discipline and parent–child conflicts and negatively associated with positive parenting practices. Social support functioned as a significant mediator in the relationships between parental stress and positive parenting practices but not in the relationships of parental stress with parent–child conflict or the use of harsh discipline.     

Note passing as gendered practices of public ambiguity in a hyper‐masculine organization

This article explores a surprising and seemingly mundane organizational practice: passing notes during professional meetings. Based on 34 in‐depth interviews with women in a hyper‐masculine organization — the Israeli military — this study focuses on what I term gendered practices of public ambiguity. It demonstrates how these practices shed light on three interrelated paths to power at work: (i) practices of public intimacy between men; (ii) practices of women's degradation by men; and (iii) practices of recognition claims by women. The tension between the publicity inherent in the routine passing of notes and the ambiguity of their contents calls for a more nuanced theorization of gendered power practices, which transcends the accepted dichotomy of doing and undoing gender, reproducing or challenging the symbolic gender order. The findings show that gendered micro‐practices can become polysemic symbolic spaces in which women redirect the flow of power, if only temporarily and locally, and turn it into a multidirectional and multi‐agentic resource. The conceptual contribution of these findings is discussed in terms of the positioning of women in hyper‐masculine environments as pragmatic subjects who (re‐)construct mechanisms of power out of the restricted repertoire available to them.     

Kinship Care and Transnational Parenting: The Intersection of Cultural Values and Practices

This study uses ethnographic research to examine the phenomenon of transnational parenting by migrant mothers from the African Caribbean community and their family who care for the mothers’ children. Twenty women’s narratives demonstrate the complexity of relationships between migrant mothers living and working in New York City and their extended family or kinship caretakers who coparent their children in their countries of origin. The study reveals three main factors that contribute to the success of transnational parenting: (1) informal kinship care-child fostering, (2) remittances, and (3) social networks. Policy and practice implications are explored.