Food and the challenge to identity for post-war refugee women in Australia

Abstract

In many societies, feeding one’s family in traditional and culturally appropriate ways is an essential part of being a mother and a wife. For migrants, food can play an important role in the maintenance of tradition, culture, and identity. This paper uses archival evidence, media coverage, memoirs, and oral histories to explore how policies associated with food in migrant hostels impacted on, and interfered with, the central role of food in the commensal circle of the family, and in the identification of migrant women as wives, mothers, and cultural gatekeepers. We identify three main factors that contributed to this negative cultural impact: the preparation of quintessentially ‘Australian’ menus that were alien to most of the population; communal dining arrangements which disrupted the basic social activity of commensality; and the fact that there was no need for women to prepare food for their families, and no opportunity to do so since having private cooking facilities was illegal. The impact of these eating/dining experiences on women and their families was obviously profound: even today, the topic of food and enforced communal dining is among the first and most vivid of memories, typically negative, reported by those who transitioned through the hostels.     

Beyond compare? Women's movements in comparative perspective

Abstract. This article reviews a selected range of comparative political research on women's movements, a subfield of political science whose recent proliferation now positions it at the leading edge of women and politics scholarship. Recognizing that "women" as a category of research is of necessity heterogeneous and informed by differences of race, class, ethnicity, nationality, generation, and religion, the article argues that this complex intersectionality need not mean that women's movements are beyond the scope of comparative political research. Rather, as the research focus of women and politics scholars has become increasingly carefully specified, general patterns are evident in the research that should serve to advance the comparative study of women's movements and comparative political research more generally. The article focuses on definitional challenges and the limitations of conflating "women's movements", "feminist movements", and "women in social movements", and discusses four major research arenas within which cross–national commonalities among women's movements are evidenced. These include the relationship between women's movements and political parties; "double militancy" as a potentially distinctive collective identity problem for women's movement activists; the extent to which political opportunities for women's movements are (or can be) gendered; and the relationship between women's movements and the state. The article concludes with suggestions for future research in the subfields of comparative women's movements and comparative politics.     

Review Essay: Legitimizing Legitimacy: Shaping a New Frontier of Research

Social Justice Research -     

Husbands who harm: Predicting spousal violence by men

Previous research on spouse abuse has frequently focused on bivariate relationships between theoretically derived variables and marital violence. This study utilizes a multivariate approach in order to explore the independent and combined effects of several variables derived from the social learning and the frustration/strain perspectives on self-reported violence by husbands against wives. Data for married and/or cohabiting males are derived from a national stratified random sample of couples in the United States. Loglinear analysis is used to identify the main and interactive effects of age, occupational status, employment status, subjective economic strain, and observation of parental violence on reports of violence toward one's wife. Results indicate that age, occupational status, parental modeling and employment status affect the likelihood of violence. Employment status more strongly increases the likelihood of violence for younger men, as opposed to older men, which supports the strain perspective. The independent effect of the observation of parental violence lends support to the social learning approach. Social policy implications are discussed.     

Attributions for fair exchange outcomes: The effects of power and status

This study focuses on how two fundamental social factors, structural power position and social status, affect attributions for relatively common, non-problematic exchange outcomes. We argue that the relative power and statuses of dyad members activate expectations of competence which in turn shape attributions in the situation. Subjects assumed the role of a typist described in a vignette of a transaction between a typist and a student needing a paper typed. We manipulated power positions in the vignette by varying the value and availability of the resource each actor desired; subject's sex and that of the fictive student represented social statuses. Despite the typicality of the exchange situation, results indicated that status and, to some extent power, created variation in the strength of attributions for the exchange outcome. Females, presumably expected to be more competent typists, made stronger self-attributions for the typing payment than males. Similarly, those in high power positions tended to attribute the payment more to themselves than occupants of low power positions.     

High mortality rates among inmates during the year following their discharge from a French prison

While the poor health status of prisoners has been highlighted in Western countries, the surveillance of their mortality has been neglected. We studied the mortality of 1305 prisoners released during 1997 from a French prison. Vital status after release was obtained for 86.4% of them. Compared with the general population, ex-prisoners non-natural mortality rates were significantly increased both in the 15-34 and 35-54 age categories (3.5-fold and 10.6-fold respectively) and the risk of death due to overdose was 124 and 274 times higher in the same categories respectively. Prevention and care should be reinforced in the pre-release period without waiting more epidemiological data.     

Cor triatriatum sinistrum: a rare congenital cardiac anomaly presenting in an adult with chronic atrial fibrillation

Cor triatriatum is a rare congenital cardiac anomaly in which the left atrium is divided into proximal (dorsal or upper) and distal (ventral or lower) chambers by a fibromuscular septum. The upper chamber receives the pulmonary veins and the lower chamber contains the atrial appendage and the mitral valve. The 2 chambers communicate through a defect in the membrane. Cor triatriatum is often associated with other congenital cardiac anomalies. Most frequently, the upper chamber communicates with the right atrium through a patent foramen ovale or atrial septal defect, and the clinical symptoms simulate anomalous pulmonary venous return. Less commonly, the foramen ovale communicates with the distal chamber and the clinical features mimic mitral stenosis. When cor triatriatum is the only abnormality, the clinical findings are also similar to mitral stenosis with development of pulmonary hypertension and subsequent right ventricular hypertrophy and atrial enlargement. The diagnosis is usually made in infancy or childhood, and the lack of treatment results in death in 75% of patients.We report the case of a woman who presented much later in life. The patient was a 57-year-old female with a clinical history of chronic atrial fibrillation who presented to the emergency department because of a "funny sensation" in her chest, though she denied chest pain, nausea, vomiting, or diaphoresis. EKG revealed atrial fibrillation with a rapid ventricular response and a tachycardic rate of 157. She had a therapeutic level of digoxin, and cardiac enzymes were normal. The patient was admitted and placed on Cardizem drip. Serial EKGs remained normal and heart rate control was achieved. On hospital day 2, the patient became dyspneic and cyanotic. She went into cardiac arrest and died.Autopsy revealed cardiomegaly (610 g) with 4-chamber dilatation. A septum divided the left atrium into 2 chambers. The defect in the dividing membrane measured 1 cm in diameter. No other congenital defects were noted. The large size of the defect in the membrane likely accounted for the late onset of symptoms that allowed this patient to survive into adulthood without previous diagnosis or surgical intervention (which is usually required in childhood).