(Dis)locating nations in the World Cup: football fandom and the global geopolitics of affect

The World Cup, as a tournament that pits national teams against one another, initially seems to be a site where support for sports is tied to nations. However, situating this sporting event at the intersection of discourses of globalization, transnational circulation of capital and populations, and theories of fandom, our examination of diasporic populations found that the choice is not a simple one between ‘origin nation’ and ‘residence nation.’ Instead, the decision of which team to support relies much more on an attenuated, complex notion that we call transnational affinity. We examine this concept in relation to the context of transnational flow of players, media, spectators, and capital, contending that locating nations or national preference in the World Cup requires understanding the contemporary de- or trans-nationalization of not only sports but identity itself beyond the binary of national and global.     

The social model of disability as an oppositional device

This article engages with debates about the UK Disabled People’s Movement’s ‘Big Idea’ – the social model of disability – positioning this as an ‘oppositional device’. This concept is adapted from the work of the art theorist and activist Brian Holmes, elaborated using insights from Foucault and others. The model’s primary operation is introducing contingency into the present, facilitating disabled people’s resistance-practices. We recognise, however, that the device can operate in a disciplinary manner when adopted by a machinery of government. Whilst our primary goal is to understand the character and operation of the social model, by providing a more general definition of an oppositional device as the concrete operation of technologies of power, we also propose a concept potentially useful for the analysis of the resistance-practices of activists involved in a wide variety of struggles. This concept may thus have implications for wider social and political analysis.     

Assessment of an e-training tool for college students to improve accuracy and reduce effort associated with reading nutrition labels

Objective: Nutrition labels are often underutilized due to the time and effort required to read them. We investigated the impact of label-reading training on effort, as well as accuracy and motivation. Participants: Eighty college students (21 men and 59 women). Methods: The training consisted of a background tutorial on nutrition followed by three blocks of practice reading labels to decide which of two foods was the relatively better choice. Label-reading effort was assessed using an eye tracker and motivation was assessed using a 6-item scale of healthy food-choice empowerment. Results: Students showed increases in label-reading accuracy, decreases in label-reading effort, and increases in empowerment. Conclusions: The nutrition label e-training tool presented here, whether used alone or as part of other wellness and health programs, may be an effective way to boost students’ label-reading skills and healthy food choices, before they settle into grocery shopping habits.     

Communicative Openness About Adoption and Interest in Contact in a Sample of Domestic and Intercountry Adolescent Adoptees

Adolescent intercountry (n = 122) and domestic (n = 40) adoptees and their adoptive parents were asked about their views on communicative openness. The adoptees were also asked for their thoughts on birth parents and contact. A modest association between communicative openness and feelings about adoptive status and self-esteem was found. Girls were more interested in many aspects of their adoptions than boys. Compared with the situation at 11 years of age, there was greater parent-child agreement on whether the child had difficulties talking about adoption. Nevertheless, at age 15, children were still nearly twice as likely to report difficulties talking about adoption issues than their adoptive parents realized. At the age of 15, the majority of the adoptees expressed a desire for contact with birth relatives, but this was a reduction from the numbers at age 11. They also reported finding it easier to talk about adoption issues than they did at the age of 11. The implications for policy and practice are discussed.     

'What Matters to Me is not What You're Talking About' - Maintaining the Social Model of Disability in 'Public and Private' Negotiations

Moving from a medical to a social model of individual disability is a political process of change with implications for understanding of and relationship to borders between individual, social life and political participation. This process has echoes in the conceptual experience of change through movement for women's liberation and gay liberation. Conceptualisation of a public/private divide has been identified in both these movements, and can also be used productively to further the use of a social model of disability. In this way, public change in status and participation can be linked to private defeat of barriers to public and political participation. This article identifies some uses of conceptualising public and private as a way of locating service provision within a social model of disability.     

Delay and Anxiety in Care Proceedings: Grounds for Hope?

This paper draws on an evaluation of a pilot project in three London boroughs (the ‘Tri-borough’ authorities) which had the aim of reducing the length of care proceedings to 26 weeks, in advance of nationwide moves in the same direction. Rather than looking at this as yet another battleground between professional autonomy and bureaucratic rigidity, the authors focus on the psychological aspects both of court delay itself and of setting time limits, considering the impact of each on the children, parents and professionals involved. The challenge is to balance the pressures of time and the need for thoroughness, being mindful of the uncertainty and anxiety that pervade care proceedings. The pilot succeeded in greatly reducing the average length of care proceedings. Professionals involved in the project, including those whose job was to represent the interests of parents and children, seemed satisfied that this had not been achieved at the expense of thoroughness, and indeed that shorter proceedings might help to reduce the overall level of distress and anxiety that children and parents endure. On the other hand, the new approach adds to the pressures on the professionals themselves. If the changes are to be sustained, the anxiety involved in making these life-changing decisions about children must be recognised, and adequate support offered to those who have to make them.