Midwives,Marginality, and Public Identity Work

Because midwifery in the United States is an occupation at the margins of medicine, midwives must frequently negotiate competing identity claims. This article examines the public identity work of a group of midwives by focusing on two important tools they use to accomplish this work: boundary negotiation and impression management. Drawing on data from in‐depth interviews with twenty‐six licensed, nurse, and empirical midwives in the state of Florida, this article illustrates the ways in which midwives frame their identities in relation to history and media representations and manage public identities through boundary negotiation and impression management. I argue that the marginality of this occupation lends itself to competing categories of identity that midwives must negotiate. These categories become salient when midwives confront historical and media representations of childbirth and midwifery as well as the perceptions of the general public, consumers, lawmakers, and medical professionals.     

Verbal and nonverbal communication of warmth to children,foreigners, and retarded adults

The verbal and nonverbal communication of warmth was examined in a study in which undergraduate women taught a block design task to a listener who was either a six-year-old child, a retarded adult, a peer who spoke English as a second language (foreigner), or a peer who was a native speaker of English. The degree of warmth conveyed by the speakers differed only minimally across different categories of listeners. However, these communications did vary systematically within each category, in accord with the levels of cognitive and linguistic sophistication of each particular listener. Speakers tended to fine-tune communications by conveying more warmth to the more sophisticated children and foreigners than to the less sophisticated members of these categories. To the more sophisticated retarded persons, however, they conveyed—nonverbally—less warmth than to the less sophisticated retarded persons. The relevance of these findings to the communication of expectancy effects and to the social psychology of stigma is discussed.This paper was written while the first author was visiting at the University of Florida. We thank John Neil Bohannon, Linda Caporael, Margaret Clark, William Cooper, Monica Harris, Harry Levin, and Carol Sigelman for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. For their help in conducting this research, we thank Ann Ashworth, Pamela Brown, Linda Douglas, Susan Finkelstein, Tamara Harper, Robin Johnson, Susan Kirdendol, Sheila Larkin, Sue Limber, Jose Macaranas, Ashook Nimgade, Maria Papetti, Maurice Perry, Lester Pretlow, Carissa Smith, Laura Taswell, Tina Tedeschi, Charles Valadez, and all of our listener-subjects. We also thank the students, faculty, and administration of Dunmore High School, Dunmore, Pennslyvania, for their participation and cooperation. Support from NSF, NIMH, the National Academy of Education, and a Rackham Faculty Grant was invaluable. Most importantly, we thank Roger Brown and Robert Rosenthal for their wisdom and inspiration.     

International migration: demographic and socioeconomic consequences in the United Kingdom and Europe

"This article evaluates the consequences of international migration since World War II, with particular reference to Great Britain. It emphasizes the substantial differences between the origins and responses to immigration in the United Kingdom and that of the rest of Western Europe." It is found that "people of non-European origin from Commonwealth countries have predominated in postwar immigration to the United Kingdom. That migration neutralized the previously dominant pattern of emigration and increased U.K. population by about 3 million people through immigration and higher fertility, with only slight effects upon the age distribution."     

The design of organizations and the right to act

Recent innovations in the structure of formal organizations suggest possible directions for the design of schools to bring about high achievement. The structure of output-driven in contrast to administratively-driven schools is described, and designs are described which address both the goal of high achievement and the goal of reduced inequality.An earlier version of this paper was presented as the author's Sorokin Lecture at the annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society, Boston, March 1993.     

Understanding Popularity and Relational Aggression in Adolescence: The Role of Social Dominance Orientation

This study investigated a potential moderator of the association between popularity and relational aggression: social dominance orientation (SDO), the degree to which an individual endorses the importance of social hierarchy. One hundred eighty‐five ninth graders completed a sociometric assessment of RA and popularity, and a self‐report SDO measure. SDO was positively associated with popularity for both boys and girls, and with RA for girls. Popularity and RA were positively correlated for both genders. Regression analyses showed that SDO moderated the association between popularity and RA for girls, but not for boys. Girls who were both popular and who were social dominance‐oriented were particularly high in peer‐nominated RA. SDO may provide a useful framework for understanding the role of popularity in adolescent peer groups.     

Égalité entre hommes et femmes et gouvernance des chaînes d'approvisionnement mondiales: promouvoir les droits des travailleuses

La gouvernance privée telle qu'elle découle des différentes initiatives prises par les multinationales pour promouvoir le respect de normes sociales et l'égalité hommes‐femmes a eu peu d'effet sur les discriminations fondées sur le genre dans les chaînes d'approvisionnement mondiales. Les auteures soulignent l'intérêt des Principes directeurs des Nations Unies relatifs aux entreprises et aux droits de l'homme en la matière, estimant qu'il est indispensable de recourir à une gouvernance «stratifiée» associant public, privé et acteurs sociaux pour lutter contre cette discrimination et intégrer le souci de l'égalité des sexes dans l'exercice de la diligence raisonnable exigée en matière de droits de l'homme.     

(Re)constructing Family Images: Stepmotherhood Before Biological Motherhood

Strong cultural values and ideals attached to women in families deem the role of stepmother as inferior to that of biological mother. Although biological motherhood is celebrated, stepmotherhood is stigmatized, and women who wish to become mothers but become stepmothers prior to having biological children may grieve the loss of images surrounding normative ideals of creating a family. Using a feminist family science approach, the purpose of this grounded theory study was to explore the experiences of women without children in their transition to stepmotherhood. Interviews with 23 stepmothers (aged 26–47) revealed that women engaged in an internal process of creating and then adjusting personal images of family life to accommodate their new family circumstances. The process of (re)constructing family images had implications for later adjustment to stepmotherhood. Notions of the motherhood hierarchy emerged to depict the unique experiences of women who became stepmothers prior to having biological children.