Katz &Milton, ‘Fragment from a lost diary’

Abstract

The appearance of this collection of twenty stories is a significant event. It is a rare chronicle of the difficult, often heart-breaking lives of women in Africa, Asia and Latin America today.     

Organizational and Human Factors Affecting Forensic Decision-Making: Workplace Stress and Feedback

Although forensic examiners operate in a stressful environment, there is a lack of understanding about workplace stress and feedback. These organizational and human factors can potentially impact forensic science judgments. In this study, 150 practicing forensic examiners from one laboratory were surveyed about their experiences of workplace stress, and the explicit and implicit feedback they receive. Forensic examiners reported that their high stress levels originated more from workplace-related factors (management and/or supervision, backlogs, and the pressure to do many cases) than from personal related factors (family, medical, and/or financial). The findings showed that a few (8%) of the forensic examiners sometimes felt strong implicit feedback about what conclusions were expected from them and that some (14%) also strongly felt that they were more appreciated when they helped to solve a case (e.g., by reaching a “match” as opposed to an “inconclusive” conclusion). Differences were found when comparing workplace stress and feedback levels across three core forensic science fields (forensic biology, chemistry, and latent prints) and across career stages (early, mid, and late). Gaining insights into the stress factors within a workplace and explicit and implicit feedback has implications for developing policies to improve the well-being, motivation, and performance of forensic examiners.     

Configurations of Identity Among Sexual Minority Youth: Context,Desire, and Narrative

Youth with same-sex desire undergo a process of narrative engagement as they construct configurations of identity that provide meaning and coherence with available sexual taxonomies. This article presents a theoretical analysis and four case studies centering on the relationship among context, desire, and identity for youth with same-sex desire. Through an interpretive, holistic analysis of the personal narratives of youth, we examine the integration of same-sex desire, behavior, and identity in the general life story and the selective appropriation of elements of “master narratives” of sexual identity development. Narratives were characterized by challenges to integrate desire, behavior, and identity into a configuration that conformed to the received sexual taxonomy. Implications for theory and further research on sexual identity development are discussed.