In the flesh: a poetic inquiry into how fat female employees manage weight-related stigma

ABSTRACT

This paper engages with the question of how fat female employees manage weight-related stigma at work. We use poetic inquiry to show the reader how it feels for our participants to be stigmatized based on their size. We interviewed 22 women who self-identify as full-figured, fat, overweight, or obese. The results consist of six poems, five of which were written by us, the researchers. These ‘tri-voiced poems’ (Leavy 2010b) illustrate the spectrum of affective responses and stigma management strategies that our participants talked about, ranging from feeling anxious, super-smart, impeccable, and funny to rebellious and confident. The sixth poem was written by one of our participants and voices her first-person experiences and perspective. Our aim is to do justice in our writing to the emotions that circulated in the interviews and to make a political statement with regards to the stigmatizing practices in organizations related to size and health.     

Teenage childbearing: young sole mothers challenge the stereotypes

Teenage sole mothers in receipt of welfare benefits are seriously affected by systematic and radical restructuring of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s state welfare system since 2008. With few exceptions, the changes oblige beneficiaries to prioritise obtaining paid work. To address questions of how welfare changes and socio-cultural context in Aotearoa New Zealand are experienced by teenage mothers we conducted a narrative study of 10 young women’s stories of sole mothering as beneficiaries. Purposeful sampling was used to recruit young mothers who were attending, or had recently attended a specialist school for teen parents. Thematic analysis of interview narratives represented experiences of financial and social deprivation, negative stereotyping, stigma and resistance. In contrast to the government’s explicit goal of getting welfare recipients into paid employment, the teenage mothers in our study placed full-time mothering as their principal duty. They also acknowledged the material and social advantages of entering paid employment, and were committed to working but only when their child was ‘settled and ready’ – a decision they understood to be their responsibility.     

Feeling disability: theories of affect and critical disability studies

This paper explores connections between affect studies and critical disability studies. Our interest in affect is sparked by the beginnings of a new research project that seeks to illuminate the lives, hopes and desires of young people with ‘life-limiting’ or ‘life-threatening’ impairments. Cultural responses to these young people are shaped by dominant discourses associated with lives lived well and long. Before commencing our empirical work with young people we use this paper to think through how we might conceptualise affect and disability. We present three themes; ontological invalidation in neoliberal-able times; affect aliens and crip killjoys; disability and resistant assemblages.     

“烘云托月”与“说不可说”冯友兰新理学“负方法”的关学阐释

在冯友兰新理学关于方法论的论述中，其用“负方法”对形而上学的“讲述”对美学有着深刻的启示意义，甚至可以说它本身就涵蕴着丰富的关学意味。道家的方法、禅宗的方法和诗的言说，是“负方法”的三种典型言说方式，这三种言说形式具有美学阐释的可能性，表现在直觉性、神秘性、超越性和浑整性4个方面。     

Discrete Linnik Weibull distribution

Abstract

We introduce a new family of distributions using truncated discrete Linnik distribution. This family is a rich family of distributions which includes many important families of distributions such as Marshall–Olkin family of distributions, family of distributions generated through truncated negative binomial distribution, family of distributions generated through truncated discrete Mittag–Leffler distribution etc. Some properties of the new family of distributions are derived. A particular case of the family, a five parameter generalization of Weibull distribution, namely discrete Linnik Weibull distribution is given special attention. This distribution is a generalization of many distributions, such as extended exponentiated Weibull, exponentiated Weibull, Weibull truncated negative binomial, generalized exponential truncated negative binomial, Marshall-Olkin extended Weibull, Marshall–Olkin generalized exponential, exponential truncated negative binomial, Marshall–Olkin exponential and generalized exponential. The shape properties, moments, median, distribution of order statistics, stochastic ordering and stress–strength properties of the new generalized Weibull distribution are derived. The unknown parameters of the distribution are estimated using maximum likelihood method. The discrete Linnik Weibull distribution is fitted to a survival time data set and it is shown that the distribution is more appropriate than other competitive models.     

Female Labor Supply,Human Capital,and Welfare Reform

We estimate a dynamic model of employment, human capital accumulation—including education, and savings for women in the United Kingdom, exploiting tax and benefit reforms, and use it to analyze the effects of welfare policy. We find substantial elasticities for labor supply and particularly for lone mothers. Returns to experience, which are important in determining the longer‐term effects of policy, increase with education, but experience mainly accumulates when in full‐time employment. Tax credits are welfare improving in the U.K., increase lone‐mother labor supply and marginally reduce educational attainment, but the employment effects do not extend beyond the period of eligibility. Marginal increases in tax credits improve welfare more than equally costly increases in income support or tax cuts.     

Cautious Expected Utility and the Certainty Effect

Many violations of the independence axiom of expected utility can be traced to subjects' attraction to risk‐free prospects. The key axiom in this paper, negative certainty independence ([Dillenberger, 2010]), formalizes this tendency. Our main result is a utility representation of all preferences over monetary lotteries that satisfy negative certainty independence together with basic rationality postulates. Such preferences can be represented as if the agent were unsure of how to evaluate a given lottery p; instead, she has in mind a set of possible utility functions over outcomes and displays a cautious behavior: she computes the certainty equivalent of p with respect to each possible function in the set and picks the smallest one. The set of utilities is unique in a well defined sense. We show that our representation can also be derived from a “cautious” completion of an incomplete preference relation.     

Estimating Abundance from Presence–Absence Maps via a Paired Negative‐Binomial Model

The estimation of abundance from presence–absence data is an intriguing problem in applied statistics. The classical Poisson model makes strong independence and homogeneity assumptions and in practice generally underestimates the true abundance. A controversial ad hoc method based on negative‐binomial counts (Am. Nat.) has been empirically successful but lacks theoretical justification. We first present an alternative estimator of abundance based on a paired negative binomial model that is consistent and asymptotically normally distributed. A quadruple negative binomial extension is also developed, which yields the previous ad hoc approach and resolves the controversy in the literature. We examine the performance of the estimators in a simulation study and estimate the abundance of 44 tree species in a permanent forest plot.     

扶贫政策的负外部性及其化解

在脱贫攻坚中,对重点贫困地区的精确瞄准与偏向投入,在一定程度上对非贫困县、非贫困村与非贫困户产生了必然的政策负外部性,表现为县域脱贫结构失衡、村庄帮扶悬崖效应与边缘人群争贫风险。究其原由,在公共政策过程中,竞争性的政策汲取、排他性的政策分配与分割性的政策评价是负外部性的三种发生机理。为此需要建立上下融合减贫机制,探索社区主导发展模式,拓展村民赋权参与空间,通过政策纠正、调适以消解和弥补政策负效应,强化政治决策与分配的正义性。     

“自然历史”：阿多诺对自然的重构

启蒙理性遵循同一性逻辑。同一性意味着概念与实在的分离,且概念替代实在并拥有对实在的控制权。其结果,自我保存理性将内外自然彻底剥离,并实现了对自然的全面统治。否定辩证法的根本特征是否定性,其核心即矛盾,矛盾双方具有向对立面转化的潜能。在阿多诺否定辩证法的框架内,自然并非仅指同一性所赋予的外观——历史的维度,同时也具有原始自然的维度。自然是一种矛盾的存在,而且,它总是处于历史对它的否定与抵抗中,在具有反思性的否定中,自然获得了重建与救赎的可能。阿多诺的自然理论对破除自然与历史、主体与客体的对立具有积极的意义,但他对自然的理解具有观念性,且否定辩证法本身有一定的悖论性。