The Differences in Role Division Between Partners in Long-term Marriages and Their Well-being

The study aims were to examine the relationships of 128 elderly couples married longer than 45 years and the role division between the partners, including a comparison of their perceptions of their first 3 years of their marriage with today. The research hypotheses were (a) there will be a change in the couple's perceptions about the traditional roles at the time of their marriage as opposed to today, and (b) men and women who recognize a change in traditional role division will experience better mental well-being than those who do not. The results showed a change in the couple's perceptions about traditional role division during the years of marriage. It was also found that these changes showed a positive correlation to the couple's mental well-being in those couples who recognized the changes.     

Power,identity, and history in central Botswana

This analysis offers an examination of two larger theoretical questions. The first is the question of theorizing local‐global relations; the second concerns the value of the concept of resistance. The essay describes the emergence of a new village community at the rural periphery of eastern Botswana. In exploring in great detail the complex struggles that have constituted the local politics in this rural periphery and the engagement of such local struggles with national and transnational forces, I wish to examine the way collective identities, social space, and social relations have shifted in the course of the past decade or more in Botswana.     

What colour ‘success’? Distorting value in studies of ethnic entrepreneurship

The study of ethnic entrepreneurship has tended to take as unproblematic what we mean by 'success' and 'failure'. Hence, some groups are defined as success stories. Recently, for example, in Britain, South Asian immigrants were said to be a 'success': they had a 'Jewish future'. The perennial debate both in Europe and in the United States is why Black people have been a 'failure' as entrepreneurs. This is even debated by Black people themselves. The present paper sets out to deconstruct notions of success and failure by probing the narrow economistic models of value on which they are based. It argues that only by understanding the organisation of mass cultural production, on the one hand, and relativity of cultural value, on the other, can we arrive at a more subtle understanding of what motivates ethnic entrepreneurs. In the light of this, I argue, even posing the question of success and failure is false. It leads research and writing on ethnic entrepreneurs into blind alleys while creating damaging - and unfounded - invidious stereotypes of different ethnic groups.     

Seeking Help From Health and Welfare Services Among Elderly Single Women

The current research is a pilot study that included 87 single women who responded to an announcement placed in one of the national newspapers and then filled out interview questionnaires. The study hypothesized three groups of variables for predicting elderly single women's appeals for help from health and welfare services: (a) demographic variables, (b) intrapersonal variables, and (c) interpersonal variables. The research tools were (a) a demographics questionnaire constructed specifically for this study; (b) a personal assessment of single life: chosen or unchosen, including a question regarding what single people think about bachelorhood/spinsterhood; (c) an approach to the institution of bachelorhood/spinsterhood; (d) self-evaluation questionnaire; (e) a sense of mastery over life questionnaire; (f) informal support networks questionnaire; and (g) an assessment of the appeal to health and welfare services for help. A special questionnaire was constructed, which included a list of health and welfare services. The research findings indicate connections among all the research variables. All the research hypotheses were confirmed. Special attention should be given to this one tenth and more of the elder population. It might improve the lives of those women and save Western governments a lot of money.     

Mothers and Daughters in Historical Perspective: Home,Identity and Double Consciousness in British Pakistanis' Migration and Return

Scholarly interest has increasingly focused on the predicament of second-generation counter-diasporic return migration to an ancestral homeland. The present paper portrays two generations of Pakistani middle class women migrants: two mothers, who arrived in Manchester in the 1970s, and their daughters, who both returned to live in Pakistan, one at the age of 11 and the other in her twenties, to marry. The latter in particular experienced Pakistan as culturally alien and unhomely. In Britain one mother has become extremely pious after 9/11. The paper looks at the moral careers of mothers and daughters, starting from the fact that migration initiates an irreversible process in which everyday, taken-for-granted intimacies and socialities of home and identity are subverted. Refuting simplistic theories of a continuous “transnational field”, it argues that migrants experience “double consciousness”, an awareness of competing rules, expectations and a doubling up of a subject's sense of belonging and alienation, which no return home can reverse.     

East Meets West: A View from Soviet Student Newcomers to Israeli Society

This paper investigates the attitudes held by young student newcomers to Israel from the former Soviet Union about the different groups that comprise Israeli society. Young newcomers are a product of the education of the former Soviet regime and the Jewish community. They were interviewed soon after their arrival in Israel and after they have been in contact with Israeli society, especially through their contacts in the universities and through the media. Results show that young newcomers categorize Israeli society in terms of social distance in three groups, ranging from those most like them to those most different. Ethiopian Jews and Arabs are relegated to the same group, despite the fact that the Soviet newcomers share a common experience of immigration with the Ethiopians.