Legitimizing leisure experiences as emotional work: A post‐humanist approach to gendered equine encounters

Due to changes in lifestyle and work patterns, education and values associated with wellbeing, non‐human animals are now incorporated into a range of human experiences and environments. This research specifically focuses on human–equine relations, examining blurred boundaries between therapeutic and recreational interspecies encounters. It is acknowledged that human–equine relations are often gendered and this research focuses mainly on women's narratives. Viewed through the post‐humanist lens, horses now form kinship and companionship roles, particularly for women, where relations have become mutually emotionally dependent as a result of interspecies communication and embodied encounters. Research utilizes feminist post‐humanist and cultural politics of emotion frameworks associate with the co‐agency on the co‐agency of animals. Embedded in the concept of equiscapes, or post‐humanist leisure spaces, research methods employ qualitative approaches, including in‐depth interviews, participant diaries and multispecies ethnography. Findings reveal how women make considerable investments in equine activities, which develops mutual welfare and wellbeing. Yet, despite these benefits, emotional and other expenditures are justified in work discourses to legitimize them as valuable to themselves, their families and their communities.     

Sociology and the European Court of Human Rights

This article offers a sociological analysis of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Adopting a sociological jurisprudence approach, the article aims to demonstrate the unique and valuable contribution that sociology can make to understanding key aspects of international human rights law. Whilst the article seeks to develop an agenda for critical sociological research on human rights law, it also aims to persuade those charged with the supervision of human rights of the value of sociological analysis. To achieve this, the article focuses on three separate but inter‐related aspects of ECtHR jurisprudence: first, it considers the ECtHR's approach to consensus in its adjudication of human rights complaints; second, it examines the social control implications of the ECtHR's decisions and judgments; and third, it assesses how conceptualizations of social identity are often foundational to the ECtHR's reasoning.     

Retirement Villages

No abstract available for this article.     

A personal validation of the social nature of disability: different environments,different experiences

There is neither a unified definition of disability nor a unique experience of disability across the world. The present paper aims to explore the lived experiences of disability in three different countries – Turkey, England and the USA – to evaluate the continued value of the social model of disability in those contexts. A comparison between these countries is provided through the lens of my personal experiences in each country as a disabled student and an academician. As can be seen in each example, whilst impairment does not change, the role of disabling barriers did change depending on the physical, social and psychological nature of the respective environments. We can therefore reasonably refer to the extent to which environments are disabling or non-disabling aspects of each setting. The paper provides a personal validation of the social nature of disability.     

Making Human Behavior Theory Real Through the Unreal: Fiction in the HBSE Classroom

This article examines the use of fictional literature as a method for helping students apply human behavior theory in competent practice. When students and educators read a poem, short essay, or novel, it allows them the opportunity to join together as an audience as they tease out teachable lessons from the story. The authors posit that when used in human behavior and the social environment courses, fictional literature allows educators and students to experience abstract content as more concrete. Following a brief literature review, we examine one novel through the lens of three different human behavior theories.     

Is Domestic Violence a Gender Issue,or a Human Issue?

Abstract

Domestic violence, like all violence, is a human issue. It is not merely a gender issue. Classifying spousal and partner violence as a women's issue, rather than a human issue, is erroneous. In domestic relations, women are as inclined as men to engage in physically abusive acts. Yet most reports appearing in the popular press, and in scholarly journals, have framed the issue as essentially a masculine form of assaultive behavior, thereby imbedding into the national consciousness a false and inaccurate view of the problem. This article presents the results of selected empirical studies that contradict the popular view of domestic violence, briefly focuses on the phenomenon as it relates to race, offers several elucidating case accounts, and suggests that the popular view of domestic violence not only contributes to men's increasing legal and social defenselessness, it also leads to social policies that obstruct efforts to address the problem of domestic violence successfully.     

Local Rites and Body Politics

The growing awareness of violence against women has resulted in endorsement of various international codes and conventions relating to physical, psychological and sexual violence. Female genital mutilation is one form of violence against women that has polarized people within and across national borders. Here, I explore its popular representation, consider how activism against genital mutilation has been confounded by sex and race and how activism to eradicate the practice is understood by immigrant women in Australia. In doing this, I draw on research conducted with women immigrants to Australia from north Africa (the Sahel areas) and the Middle East, from countries where female genital mutilation is most common. These women are often frustrated by what they see as contradictions in hospital policy and practice that arise in response to their requests to be reinfibulated after childbirth. I tease out the dilemmas that emerge when refusal is contrasted with other permissible practices of the body, such as hymen reconstruction, and given the commodification of bodies and related issues of age and agency, the individual and the community. The perceived discrepancies suggest to these African women that rights discourse is discriminatory, racist and informed by sensational portrayals of traditional practices. I question the ethics, values and rights that inform public discourse about sexual and reproductive rights, when women’s rights and values are so discrepant from our own ideals.     

Racialization in a ‘homogenous’ society? The case of Buraku people in Japan

This paper examines the puzzling status of Buraku people in Japan through the methodological prism of historical sociology. I develop a theoretical approach that emphasizes the concept of racialization to illuminate the historical and social construction of Buraku status. I propose this approach as a complementary alternative to prior analytic perspectives. Two major perspectives have dominated research on the status of Buraku people. First, an earlier approach that focused on the legacy of caste discrimination. The second framework focuses on Buraku people as part of the struggle for universal human rights. This article raises three basic, but interrelated questions about the historical development of Buraku status in Japan. Why did the Buraku people become subject to such overt discrimination in local community life, and through government policy? How was the state involved in the social construction of Buraku people? How did the Buraku liberation struggles challenge formalized discrimination?     

Incorporating knowledge management as HRD strategy: the case of a Korean electronics company

Abstract

There is no doubt that knowledge management is now a very dominant theme in modern enterprises. To survive and compete in a knowledge-based economy, companies must learn to manage and sustain their intellectual assets. As a number of practitioners have noted, human resources play an important role in the transition process to the knowledge-based economy. This transition process is characterized by participant-driven integrative teamwork for dealing with various tasks and issues in organizations. This article presents a case study of the development of human resources in the context of knowledge management, which is based on systems thinking, exploring the process of problematization. It is based on a Foucauldian approach to expose the social relationship of power, knowledge and subjectivization in the problem-solving practice.     

Paraphrase II

SUMMARY

Paraphrase -A multimedia listening skills training program is presented and discussed. Major elements of the program include a definition of paraphrasing, some of its advantages and disadvantages, techniques of paraphrasing, and an example of how such a multimedia program might be used to deal with a problem of interpersonal conflict in an organization. Graphics, text, video images and audio were used in the design of the program.