Heteronormative Consensus in the Norwegian Same-Sex Adoption Debate?

This article investigates the Norwegian newspaper debate (1998–2002) on the right of homosexual couples to adopt children. It identifies two patterns of meaning within which both anti-adoption and pro-adoption sides of the debate were located: 1) the nuclear family as reference point; and 2) a focus on innate qualities. Parallell to a continuous liberalization of sexualities in Norway we seem to witness a consensus on heteronormativity in Norway on both sides of the debate as the basic axiom in public discussions on homosexuality and adoption. In this article, we explore the nature of the heteronormative arguments and the reason for their appearance in this particular debate. The two patterns of meaning reproduce a perception of lesbians and gays as either a worthy or unworthy minority. These findings may be seen as reflecting fundamental positions regarding the Norwegian modernization project, where both sides of the debate see homosexuality as a central symbol. State feminism may also have played the role of reinforcing gender categories and thereby served as an important condition of possibility for contemporary heteronormativity.     

Developing an App for College Women in Abusive Same-Sex Relationships and Their Friends

ABSTRACT

Young women experiencing dating violence in same-sex relationships face significant barriers to help for safety planning. Therefore, our team developed a tailored smartphone safety decision aid app for dating violence survivors and their peers. College women survivors of same-sex dating violence, peers, and college staff reviewed the app, identifying users’ barriers to information, resources, and services and key strategies for dissemination, inclusiveness, and safety for the app. Findings support the use of the app to assist college women experiencing same-sex dating violence and peers to connect with resources and develop tailored safety plans to reduce violence and increase their safety.     

In life and in death: the story of people living with metastatic cancer

ABSTRACT

Advances in the treatment of metastatic cancers such as melanoma enable patients to live for many years. However, melanoma patients are under constant threat of a recurrence or a new growth, are under intensive follow-up, and must avoid exposure to the sun. These factors engender anxiety, a constant fear of recurrence, and a reduction in routine activity, thus requiring patients to develop mechanisms for coping simultaneously with the illness and the threat of death. This study uses content analysis of the documentation of a support group for metastatic melanoma patients to examine how they cope with both. The findings suggest that they are able to cope with both simultaneously. However, perhaps because they recognise their total lack of control over the illness, they exercise control in how they cope with death. The findings suggest that support groups like the one documented in this article could serve as sheltered and effective therapeutic spaces for coping with the threat of death.     

Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse within the Family System: Guidelines for an Educational Social Group Work Program

Children have the right to be brought up in safe environments. However, this right is often infringed by people who are supposed to provide love, care, and protection to children. These people can include biological fathers, step-fathers, brothers, cousins, aunts, mothers, and uncles. Violation of children takes place in a variety of ways, however, for the purpose of this paper, the focus is on child sexual abuse within the family system. A literature review is adopted as the methodology for the discussions in this paper. The purpose of this paper is firstly to demonstrate that child sexual abuse happens within the family system in South Africa, and secondly, to argue that the prevention of child sexual abuse should start within the family system and this can be achieved by conducting educational social group work sessions on child sexual abuse with the family members.     

Staff responses to age‐related health changes in people with an intellectual disability in group homes

The purpose of this study was to explore how supervisors in group homes caring for people with intellectual disability responded to the development of age‐related health changes in their residents. Ten group home supervisors working in the disability sector were interviewed once. Data were analysed using Dimensional Analysis. The study identified several factors related to whether a resident could stay ‘at home’ or would need to be moved to residential aged care (nursing home) including: nature and extent of group home resources, group home staff comfort with residents’ health changes, staff skill at navigating the intersection between the disability and ageing sectors, and the supervisor’s philosophy of care. The ability of older people with an intellectual disability to ‘age in place’ is affected by staff knowledge about and comfort with age‐related illnesses, staff skills at navigating formal services, staffing flexibility, and the philosophy of group home supervisors. Despite the growing international concern for the rights of people with disability, particularly in relation to decision making, questions about the older person’s choice of residence and participation in decision making about what was best for them, were almost nonexistent. Rather, decisions were made based on what was considered to be in ‘the best interest’.     

Groups and individuals: conformity and diversity in the performance of gendered identities

The nature and role of social groups is a central tension in sociology. On the one hand, the idea of a group enables sociologists to locate and describe individuals in terms of characteristics that are shared with others. On the other, emphasizing the fluidity of categories such as gender or ethnicity undermines their legitimacy as ways of classifying people and, by extension, the legitimacy of categorization as a goal of sociological research. In this paper, we use a new research method known as the Imitation Game to defend the social group as a sociological concept. We show that, despite the diversity of practices that may be consistent with self‐identified membership of a group, there are also shared normative expectations – typically narrower in nature than the diversity displayed by individual group members – that shape the ways in which category membership can be discussed with, and performed to, others. Two claims follow from this. First, the Imitation Game provides a way of simultaneously revealing both the diversity and ‘groupishness’ of social groups. Second, that the social group, in the quasi‐Durkheimian sense of something that transcends the individual, remains an important concept for sociology.     

The Museum of Amor:

No abstract available for this article.     

Housing Policy in the United States

No abstract available for this article.     

Bayesian estimation of parameters of mixed geometric failure models from Type I group censored sample

The estimation problem of the parameters of a mixed geometric lifetime model, using Bayesian approach and Type I group censored sample, will be investigated in the case of two subpopulations. The Bayes estimates are derived for squared error, minimum expected, general entropy and linex loss functions under informative and diffuse priors. A practical example given by Nelson (W.B. Nelson, Hazard plotting methods for analysis of the life data with different failure models, J. Qual. Technol. 2 (1970), pp. 126–149) is considered. A simulation study is carried out along with risk.     

Numerical integration of the divisia price index and an application of the equation of measurement to prices

First the linear and the exponential paths are chosen as examples to show how the Divisia price and quantity index can be integrated numerically. Then the equation of measurement by Eichhorn and Gleissner is adapted to price measurement and used to formulate certain properties of indices. A special class of properties, the reversal tests describing certain symmetries, is considered especially, It turns out that the corresponding antitheses form a group of eight elements.