Undutiful daughter(s): troubling geographies of the gendered nation and belonging in Adichie’s Americanah and Atta’s Everything Good Will Come

ABSTRACT

This paper proffers a reading of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah as a Bildungsroman that represents a moment of a daughter’s “undutifulness” to domesticating national patriarchies and cultures, textual and epistemic genealogies. In this regard, I posit Adichie’s twining of national romances and a heterosexual romantic love that travels and returns as a framework for examining gendered experiencing and relations to the “home.” The article considers the text’s representation of migration and return not simply as moments of re-domestication and formulaic reunification but as incidents that enunciate expanded relationalities to the nation and reconfigure domestic intimacies in a manner that radically unsettles “home.” Americanah is read alongside Sefi Atta’s Everything Good Will Come in an attempt to show how the development of the protagonists’ interpersonal romances goes together with a studied engagement with the national space and communities in ways that inscribe women’s labours of love, care and intellect into the public domain and charts transformative possibilities of being in the world and inhabiting home. Ultimately, Adichie and Atta’s texts demonstrate alertness to celebrations of transnational black femininities, its vulnerabilities and bonds that transcend the limited “ethical” commitments delineated by the horizons of gendered roles and the national home.     

The social care needs of unaccompanied minors: the Irish experience

This article examines forms of care which can be used by social workers to best respond to unaccompanied minors (UAMs) given their complex needs and particular vulnerability combined with their agency and resilience. The vulnerabilities and agency/resilience of UAMs are examined in the context of multiple borders (cultural, political and physical) being negotiated by these young people. While it focuses on Ireland as an example of a country where care provision for UAMs has improved considerably in recent years, it draws on both the Irish and international literatures. This article critically analyses the shift from hostel to foster care provision for UAMs in Ireland and explores benefits and difficulties associated with using foster care, while also discussing the use of alternative forms of care, such as residential care. We argue that social workers must always give consideration to a range of care options, to the needs of the individual child and to both their vulnerability and their resilience/agency. This is especially true given the diversity within the population of UAMs. Given the increasing numbers of refugees entering Europe and the mix of provision for UAMs across the continent, the Irish situation may represent a useful site for examination of their care.     

On detecting outliers in the Pareto distribution

In this paper, we introduce two new statistics for detecting outliers in the Pareto distribution. These new statistics are the extension of the statistics for detecting outliers in exponential and gamma distributions. In fact, we compare the power of our test statistics with the other statistics and select the best test statistic for detecting outliers in the Pareto distribution. Finally, numerical examples of different insurance claims are used to see the performance of the test.     

国内外低压油气藏开发技术现状

针对低压油气藏的特点，介绍了国内外开发低压油气藏的一些技术现状，包括钻、完井地层保护技术，开发井网调整技术，注水（气）增压开发技术，酸化压裂等油层改造增产措施。国内外     

The welfare state, the individual and the need for care: older people's views

The aim of this qualitative study was to study how older people experience aging and reflect on their need for care in the Swedish welfare context. Sixteen people were interviewed, aged between 77 and 92 years. Staying healthy and independent in their everyday lives were prized values for the informants. Some brushed aside thoughts of being in need of home help services in the future and others had a more reflecting attitude. The informants did not want to burden either society or their children. Through mass media and the experiences of their neighbours, they had gained a negative impression of eldercare. They were uncertain if there would be any helping hand of good quality in the future. On the other hand, informants who already had home help thought that it was helping them to maintain independence in everyday life and they were also satisfied with the help they received.     

Traditional kinship foster care in northern Ghana: the experiences and views of children, carers and adults in Tamale

Surveys were employed to explore the experiences of children in care and their carers about traditional fostering. They also examined the perspectives of randomly selected adults in the community about the practice of traditional foster care in the Tamale area of northern Ghana. The 74 participants responded to closed- and open-ended interview questions about traditional foster care. Frequencies and thematic grouping of qualitative responses showed that the need to keep family ties alive was the key reason for placement of children with family and kin. Majority of the children expressed satisfaction with living in foster care, even though they had experienced physical and emotional abuse and intimidation. Although most carers were not formally employed and had little personal income, they were positive about having the care role, but faced challenges in providing for many children in a difficult economic situation. The report highlights the role of reciprocity, altruistic and socio-cultural factors in quality of care, and the potential for the traditional kinship foster care to provide suitable avenues of placement for children as recommended by the Ghana child rights law. It also identifies the need for education for carers around children's needs and Ghana's child rights law.     

An integrated response to trauma in three post office businesses

Abstract

This paper looks at the way the UK Post Office has developed a core trauma care programme that is capable of being adapted to meet the needs of three of its businesses. The core programme includes an introductory stage that is involved in the selection and education of the workforce and the promotion of the programme; crisis management; manager debriefing; psychological debriefing; trauma counselling; and a final stage involving the evaluation of the programme and following up traumatized employees. The core programme was tailored to the needs of each of the three Post Office businesses, using information on the business operation, culture and policies of the businesses in the light of the nature and range of the traumatic incidents that affect their workforce.     

论嵇康及其养生观

晋代嵇康提出养生必须“导养得理” ,强调形神兼养与防微杜渐 ,并要持之以恒 ,方可延年益寿。其论确有参考价值     

Marketisation policies in different contexts: Consequences for home‐care workers in Germany,Japan and Sweden

Market‐oriented restructurings of long‐term care policies contribute significantly to the aggravation of care workers’ situations. This article focuses on the effects of broader long‐term care policy developments on market‐oriented reforms. Germany, Japan and Sweden are three countries that have introduced market‐oriented reforms into home‐based care provision embedded in distinct long‐term care policy developments. Conceptually, this article draws on comparative research on care to define the institutional dimensions of long‐term care policies. Empirically, the research is based on policy analyses, as well as on national statistics and a comparative research project on home‐care workers in the aforementioned countries. The findings reveal the mediating impact of the extension and decline of long‐term public care support and the corresponding development of the care infrastructure on both the restructuring of care work and the assessments of the care workers themselves.