Orientalising deafness: race and disability in imperial Britain

This article explores the conflations and connections that postcolonial and disability scholars have drawn between ‘race’, ‘colonialism’ and ‘disability’ from a historical perspective. By looking at the connections drawn between ‘race’ and ‘disability’ in the context of nineteenth-century imperial Britain, I hope to probe beyond them to examine the origins and implications of their interplay. I do so by focusing on ideas about deafness, an impairment radically reconfigured in the colonial period, and inflected with concerns about degeneration, belonging, heredity and difference. Disability, I argue, not only operated as an additional ‘category of difference’ alongside ‘race’ as a way of categorising and subjugating the various ‘others’ of Empire, but intersected with it. The ‘colonisation’ of disabled people in Britain and the ‘racial other’ by the British were not simply simultaneous processes or even analogous ones, but were part and parcel of the same cultural and discursive system. The colonising context of the nineteenth century, a period when British political, economic and cultural expansion over areas of South Asia, Australasia and Africa increased markedly, structured the way in which all forms of difference were recognised and expressed, including the difference of deafness. So too did the shifts in the raced and gendered thinking that accompanied it, as new forms of knowledge were developed to justify, explain and contest Britain's global position and new languages were developed through which to articulate otherness. Such developments reconfigured the meaning of disability. Disability was, in effect, ‘orientalised’. ‘Race’ I argue was formative in shaping what we have come to understand as ‘disability’ and vice versa; they were related fantasies of difference.     

A systematic review of education for the prevention of HIV/AIDS among older adults

Through a comprehensive literature search, the authors of this systematic review identified 21 articles focused on primary prevention of HIV/AIDS for adults aged 50 and over. Three major challenges to providing HIV/AIDS education for older adults include health professionals' ageism, older adults' reluctance to discuss sexuality, and their misconception of their HIV risk. Clinical guidelines for social workers, nurses, and physicians identified the importance of sharing information and assessing risk, considering cultural diversity, and devising creative delivery strategies. Three models of HIV/AIDS education include group education programs delivered by social workers or other health professionals, peer education models, and one-on-one early intervention models including HIV/AIDS testing. Additional outreach and research on HIV/AIDS prevention among older adults is needed.     

Using Methodological Search Filters to Facilitate Evidence-Based Social Work Practice

The process of Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) requires clinical social workers to conduct systematic searches of academic databases in order to ascertain current best evidence and integrate this with client preferences/values and clinical state/circumstances. Yet social workers are often pressed for time, and searches for evidence disregarded as too time-consuming to conduct. There is hope. Searches of the literature can be more easily and quickly facilitated through the use of methodological search filters. This study introduces a new methodological search filter created especially for social care and evaluates the extent to which this and four other filters accurately and efficiently identify known social care effectiveness studies in two major scholarly databases (Psycinfo and Medline). Sensitivity, specificity, and a new metric for establishing efficiency (the AVALANCHE INDEX) are reported.     

Young Adults’ Perception of Coping with Parental Divorce: A Retrospective Study

Divorce has long been described as one of the most stressful life experiences. A review of the literature identified numerous studies that have identified detrimental effects of parental divorce on children and adolescents and few that have emphasized possible optimal implications or effective coping with this event. The focus of this study subsequently fell on how young adults had coped with the divorce of their parents during their childhood or adolescent years. Semistructured retrospective interviews were conducted with 15 participants selected by means of snowball sampling in the completion of this study. Findings revealed a set of themes and subthemes relating to adults’ coping with parental divorce during childhood or adolescence as well as a set of factors that could potentially hinder such coping. Effective communication in relationships was highlighted as a particularly valuable coping method. It is hoped that these insights will enable those involved with assisting families during divorce to cope more effectively with this event.     

Food Stamp Program Participation Among Impoverished African Americans

This study identifies the characteristics of eligible African Americans who are not receiving food stamps. Secondary analysis of the American Community Survey focused on 14,443 African American citizens aged 18 and over who were living below the poverty line. Bivariate and logistic regression analyses were used to compare the 6,558 recipients of food stamps with the 7,885 non-recipients. Less than half of impoverished African American adults used food stamps in the previous year. Food stamp use was higher among females, younger respondents, and those who had not completed high school. FSP participation was associated with co-residing with children, receiving welfare benefits and reports of functional limitations. This study can inform food security activism and improved outreach to impoverished African Americans.     

Feminized cultural capital at work in the moral economy: Home credit and working-class women

One of the defining features of the home credit sector is the role played by its agents—workers who act as intermediaries between lending companies and borrowers to facilitate lending and collect repayments. There is a prevailing and pervasive narrative in the sector that women make superior agents, largely based on the belief that female agents can manage relationships with borrowers more successfully than their male counterparts. This article analyzes data from 349,078 home credit accounts (loans), as well as 71 interviews with home credit agents and lending company managers, to evaluate both the myths and realities of women's roles in home credit. The data is also used to explore the opportunities for—and potential constraints on—women's career progression in home credit work, based on an understanding of the moral economy in which they operate. By exploring the moral economy of low-income communities, the article highlights the role of working-class women's cultural capital within the labor market. Despite women forming the majority of the agent workforce in home credit, women's capital is undervalued in comparison with their male counterparts' capital. The analysis within this article allows a greater understanding of the highly classed and gendered nature of the moral economy of low-income communities and the exchange value of women's capital within the labor market.