Perceptions of the narrative of the ‘other’ among Arab and Jewish adolescents in Israel: between peace talks and violent events

One of the major challenges for the process of peace building is to overcome the rigid structure of the socio‐psychological repertoire that accompanies it. Our longitudinal study examined one element of this repertoire among Jewish and Arab adolescents in Israel: the cognitive legitimacy and the emotional reactions toward the historical narrative of the opponent. We focused our question on the impact of the socio‐political context and the role of the violent reality in the development of these perceptions among youth. Data were collected in four stages (1999–2000, 2002, 2004, and 2007) among various samples of Arab and Jewish high school students (10th and 12th graders). The results showed that among the Jewish adolescents, the readiness to legitimate Palestinian narratives significantly decreased during violent periods. Among the Arab students, the impact of their difficult status as a Palestinian minority in the State of Israel is reflected in their relatively high level of readiness to accept both narratives. The results are discussed from social, cultural, and developmental perspectives with a focus on the role of the conflictual reality itself in the development of the socio‐psychological repertoire among youth.     

共同书写的历史：藏文史籍的中原史实记叙及其意义

习近平总书记提出中华民族的“四个共同”,其中之一即是“我们悠久的历史是各民族共同书写的”。文章结合藏文史籍中存在大量对中原史实的记叙,对各民族共同书写中华民族悠久历史的问题进行了讨论与分析。重视历史上各民族交往交流交融和铸牢中华民族共同体意识这一新时代要求,不仅极大丰富和拓展了中国民族史研究的思路和眼界,能让我们在传统史料中看到一些过去为传统史学观念所遮蔽的或被我们忽视的丰富内涵与意义。从这一意义上说,重视历史上各民族交往交流交融和铸牢中华民族共同体意识这一新时代要求,无疑为中国民族研究提供了一个具有引领性的新的学术方向。这正是我们从藏文史籍中存在的大量有关中原史实记叙所得到的一个重要启示。     

“Trying to give birth naturally was out of the question”: Accounting for intervention in childbirth

Problem

Studies of women’s childbirth preferences repeatedly show that natural birth remains highly valued, yet the majority of births involve some form of medical intervention. Reasons for this lack of correspondence have typically been investigated through interviews and focus-groups with women. Relatively little research explores the ways in which women describe their experiences of childbirth outside of such research settings.

人物特写编译的新闻叙事学分析——以新华社中共中央常委习近平特稿为例

新华社近期以人物特稿的方式对新一届中共中央常委进行了连续报道,文章以此为素材,借用叙事特征的相关概念对中文文本和英文译文进行编码,归纳出新华社采用的叙事策略和叙事结构。     

Obfuscation,Textual Complexity and the Role of Regulated Narrative Accounting Disclosure in Corporate Governance

This paper examines whether poorly performingcompanies use textual complexity to obfuscatein the Operating and Financial Review (OFR) andthus undermine effective communication and goodgovernance. Prior research on the obfuscationhypothesis has reached confused andcontradictory conclusions. The OFR is a usefulobject for testing the hypothesis because itssemi-regulated status provides a measure ofcommonality of content while leaving scope forvariability in textual complexity. This studyexamines whole texts, employs a larger numberof variables and proxy measures than previousstudies, and uses regression analysis, toovercome some of the possible causes ofinconsistency in previous results. It concludesthat poorly performing companies do notobfuscate by the use of textual complexity.OFRs are nonetheless textually complex and byno means all this complexity can be attributedto the complexity of the underlying activitiesto be described. The consequences of thisfinding for regulators and researchers arebriefly examined. The weakness of the evidencefor the hypothesised obfuscation by textualcomplexity shifts attention to other forms ofobfuscation and some suggestions for futureresearch are made.     

Narratives of Spousal Support for the Careers of Men in Managerial Posts

This article analyses the narratives of men managers to see how they perceive their wives' support in relation to their careers. Our aim is to focus on different forms of spousal support and explore how the support can evolve in the course of the men's careers. We are also interested in what kind of gender relations men produce when narrating their experiences of spousal support for their career. The research material comprises interviews with 29 managers who are fathers. In contrast to many previous studies, the results here suggest that spousal support is not a fixed or uncomplicated phenomenon but is constructed as various and flexible by men: negotiated, enriching and declining. The narrative analysis, in which we detected three different story‐lines — romance, ‘happily‐ever‐after’ and tragedy — shows that the most positive narratives in terms of life satisfaction and career success were those in which spousal support was constructed as negotiated and men were willing to be flexible and adaptable in their gender relations with their spouse. More attention to a father's work and family integration is needed in the field of management and organizations.     

Motives for sharing illness experiences on Twitter: conversations of parents with children diagnosed with cancer

A patient- and family-centred approach in paediatric health care is important because parents are involved in making key decisions about their child’s health care and advocating for the best interest of the child. Parents and family members are increasingly turning to the internet to find and actively share information about their child’s health care. Twitter is one of many online platforms used by parents of children diagnosed with cancer to share information related to their child’s cancer experience. Existing research suggests that there is a need to better understand the motives for using Twitter for sharing content about a child’s cancer experience. Furthermore, there is a lack of theoretical frameworks for characterizing those motives. In this paper, we identify key themes of tweets posted by parents of children diagnosed with cancer and align those themes with motives inspired by the well-studied Everyday Life Information Seeking framework. We propose a new motive in addition to those associated with the framework and suggest that information can be shared for endogenous reasons as well as to meet the needs of others. This paper contributes an increased understanding of motives for sharing information about a child’s cancer journey and extends a theoretical framework for building further knowledge in this area.     

Cosmopolitan militaries and dialogic peacekeeping: Danish and Swedish women soldiers in Afghanistan

Feminist security studies (FSS) scholarship advocates the analysis of women’s war experiences and narratives to understand conflict and military intervention. Here we add a non-great power focus to FSS debates on the gendered discourses of military interventionism. We zoom in on Danish and Swedish women soldiers’ reflections on their involvement in the ISAF operation in Afghanistan. Their stories are deconstructed against the backdrop of their states’ adoption of a cosmopolitan-minded ethic on military obligation. Both states employed women soldiers in dialogic peacekeeping in Afghanistan to establish links with local women and to gather intelligence, tasks that were less frequently afforded to male soldiers. However, feminist FSS scholarship locates military intelligence gathering within racial, gendered and imperialist power relations that assign victimhood to local women. This feminist critique is pertinent, but the gendered and racial logics governing international operations vary across national contexts. While such gender binaries were present in Danish and Swedish military practice in Afghanistan, our article shows that dialogical peacekeeping offered an alternative to stereotypical constructions of women as victims and men as protectors. Dialogical peacekeeping helped to disrupt such gendering processes, giving women soldiers an opportunity to rethink their gender identities while instilling dialogical relations with local women.     

Narrating European integration: transnational actors and stories

ABSTRACT

This article introduces the special issue on narrating European integration. Narratives, or stories, are a key mechanism for constructing individual and collective identities, and other politically important elements of discourse. The articles in this special issue go beyond most existing work on narratives. First, they examine the actors and networks, ranging from EU institutions to political parties and social groups, which create, foster and disseminate narratives. Second, they address major narratives and sets of narrating actors of at least a partly transnational nature. Third, the authors transgress disciplinary boundaries, drawing on contemporary history, sociology, political science and cultural studies.