Age Is But a Number? An Exploration of Age Differences in Episodic Volunteering

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Age has long been understood as a strong demographic determinant of volunteering. However, to date, limited literature...     

Cohabitation and commitment: partnership plans of young men and women

Popular commentators on marriage and the family often interpret the increase in heterosexual couples living together without marrying as reduced willingness to create and honour life‐long partnerships. Survey and in‐depth interviews with samples of 20–29 year olds living in an urban area of Scotland finds little support for the postulated link between growing cohabitation and a weakened sense of commitment to long‐term arrangements. Most of the cohabiting couples strongly stressed their ‘commitment’. Socially acceptable vocabularies of motive undoubtedly influenced answers but interviews helped to explore deeper meanings. Many respondents’ views were consistent with previous research predictions of a weakening sense of any added value of marriage. At the same time, some respondents continued to stress the social significance of the distinction between marriage and cohabitation, consistent with research interpreting cohabitation as a ‘try and see’ strategy part‐way to the perceived full commitment of marriage. The notion that ‘marriage is better for children’ continued to have support among respondents. While, on average, cohabiting couples had lower incomes and poorer employment situations than married couples, only very extreme adverse circumstances were presented as making marriage ‘too risky’. Pregnancy‐provoked cohabitation was not always in this category. Cohabitation was maintained because marriage would ‘make no difference’ or because they ‘had not yet got round to’ marriage. Most respondents were more wary of attempting to schedule or plan in their personal life than in other domains and cohabitees’ attitudes to partnership, including their generally ‘committed’ approach, do not explain the known greater vulnerability of this group to dissolution.     

HIGH-TECH DEVELOPMENT POLITICS:

This article examines the current nature of dependency in the context of global restructuring, where technological change in computers and telecommunications has made those sectors central for global economic competition. The Brazilian policy to promote computer manufacturing and software development, or informatics, is an example of a strategy to transform dependency in this context. This article examines the political and economic conditions that affected implementation of the Brazilian informatics policy after it became the object of a U.S. trade investigation in 1985. It identifies three sets of structural constraints on policy choices and outcomes: trade conflicts with the U.S. government, rapidly changing international product markets, and trade dependence. These constraints were found to persist, despite proficient and flexible political efforts to adapt to changing market conditions and manage ties with foreign capital.     

Medicine on the line? Computer‐mediated social support and advice for people with diabetes

The advent of thousands of Usenet groups on the Internet, covering a vast range of medical and welfare issues and ostensibly devoted to the mutual social support of participating members, has raised the potential for the development of new forms of 'virtual' health care. This article critically analyses the use by people with diabetes of one such Usenet group. It seeks to establish, first, the extent to which such a site provides some demonstrable measure of social support to its participants. This is approached by undertaking a structural analysis of the site to identify the extent of usage, and the nature of supporting interventions using a fivefold classification (instrumental, informational, esteem and social companionship and other). Second, the article attempts to identify any disparity between the lay health-knowledge in evidence and biomedical opinions proffered by the use of a panel of consultant diabetiologists. The results of the analysis suggest that the diabetes newsgroup provides an example of an active forum for largely well-informed participants who routinely use the media as an aid to the reflexive management of their medical condition. It also raises the prospect of a renegotiated relationship between medical knowledge and lay experience based upon shared learning     

Mapping Gender and Migration in Sociological Scholarship: Is It Segregation or Integration?

A review of the sociological research about gender and migration shows the substantial ways in which gender fundamentally organizes the social relations and structures influencing the causes and consequences of migration. Yet, although a significant sociological research has emerged on gender and migration in the last three decades, studies are not evenly distributed across the discipline. In this article, we map the recent intellectual history of gender and migration in the field of sociology and then systematically assess the extent to which studies on engendering migration have appeared in four widely read journals of sociology (American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Demography, and Social Forces). We follow with a discussion of these studies, and in our conclusions, we consider how future gender and migration scholarship in sociology might evolve more equitably.     

Family responses to the social inclusion of children with developmental disabilities in the United Arab Emirates

This paper focuses on findings from a qualitative study of care-giving Arab Muslim families of children with developmental disabilities in the United Arab Emirates. The perceptions of mothers in relation to family acceptance and social inclusion issues are explored. Parental views of existing provision are also considered with regard to existing services for children with special needs in the region. Findings indicate that, in common with other Middle Eastern countries, social stigma is prevalent and this impacts upon the disabled child as well as the mother. However, this is in turn ameliorated by the influences of religion, which constitute an example of family resilience, in addition to the strides made in social development in this region.     

The HIT LIST and other horror stories: sex roles and school transfer

A collection of scarey stories told to pupils facing transfer to secondary school is analysed. Five major themes can be found in the stories, which are discussed and explicated. Boys and girls hear and tell different stories, while males and females feature in contrasting roles in them. An analysis focusing on the messages about sex roles in secondary school transmitted by these stories is presented.