Friendship and care: gendered practices within personal communities in Portugal

What is the role of friends in practices of care within intimate relationships, either towards each other, or in supporting caring practices towards other persons (children, parents or other kin)? And to what extent are these caring practices gendered? I explore how friendship either disrupts, or reproduces, the ethics of care that cross-cuts gender relations throughout society. I focus on the experience of Portuguese men and women and take as reference their personal community, understood as the active and meaningful personal ties they consider to be central in their lives. Drawing on qualitative data from 30 in-depth interviews, I explore their experiences of care in three dimensions: caring for others; caring for oneself; and being cared for. Results show that, while it is not possible to assert a complete centring of personal lives on friendship, friends stand out as important sources of care in these three different situations, providing both emotional and practical support.     

African-Caribbean women, (post)? Diaspora,and the meaning of home

ABSTRACT

Drawing on bell hooks, Audre Lorde and Carole Boyce-Davies, this paper develops an ethical framework to provide a gendered analysis of relative power inside and outside the home. In doing so, it considers the ways in which our view of home as African-Caribbean women, impacts our understanding of '(post) diaspora' (Dunn, Leith, and Suzanne Scafe. 2019. “African-Caribbean Women: Migration, Diaspora, Post-Diaspora.” Caribbean Review of Gender Studies 13: 1–16) in the UK. Insofar as home is central to the idea of diaspora, I suggest that home must be conceptualised as an interdependent 'adult's' home rather than a dependent 'child's' home. On this reading, in the context of global power relations, I caution that while offering a useful and necessary point of departure from diaspora, the use of 'post' could be deployed to undermine an unapologetically intersectional black politics. As such, I claim the (Post) Diaspora Network's methodology, rather than the term itself, best demonstrates the liberatory intent and importance of a (post) diaspora subjectivity.     

河南省农村养老服务机构的发展现状

随着老龄化社会的到来,如何养老成为人们关注的话题。本文通过对河南省农村养老服务机构发展现状的分析,看到河南存在养老观念陈旧、农村养老服务机构数量少、空间分布不均衡和运营不规范等问题,制约了农村养老服务机构的发展。为适应新形势对农村养老服务机构的需求,政府应发挥主导作用,从政策扶持、观念宣传、机构管理等多方面着手,积极探索新的养老模式,拓宽养老途径,满足农村老年人日益增长的养老需求。     

论“微时代”网络技术的异化

马克思的"异化"观点揭示了资本主义私有制条件下劳动产品及劳动对劳动者奴役的现象,现代科技"异化"是对马克思"异化"观的引申和发展。现代网络通信技术的发展在给人们生活带来极大便利的同时,又在一定程度上超出了人的控制,甚至成为支配、统治人的异己力量。要消除网络技术的负效应,必须凸显科技的人文关怀,推动网络技术的可持续发展,实现科技与社会的良性互动。     

Patients’ views of the quality of Danish forensic psychiatric inpatient care

The present study describes the quality of psychiatric care among forensic inpatients in Denmark who answered the Danish version of the Quality in Psychiatric Care–Forensic In-Patient (QPC–FIP) instrument. A sample of 143 patients (response rate 53%) from 25 of the 27 specialized forensic units in Denmark participated in the study. The patients’ ratings of the quality of care were generally high. The highest rating was found for the quality of the secluded environment and the lowest for patient participation in the care. The results showed that several factors influenced the patients’ ratings. Women rated the quality of care lower in comparison to men. Patients living together with someone before admission, patients with a lower level of education, and patients who were better informed regarding their diagnosis, who was the responsible physician, and where to complain rated the quality of care higher. We can recommend the use of the Danish version of the QPC–FIP instrument for measuring and improving the quality of care in forensic inpatient care.     

在家教育的平等保护

我国现行法律规范在例外情形下承认了未成年人在家接受教育的可能,这与美德两国关于在家教育的绝对禁止与相对禁止模式皆不同。德国绝对禁止儿童私自在家接受教育,要求一切适龄儿童入校接受教育。美国基于言论自由、宗教信仰等宪法保障的基本权利保护儿童在家接受教育权利,也同时对在家接受教育者给予规制和指引。我国法律应在平等保护的视角下根据不同标准对适龄入学人群进行不同分类,并对其给予差别对待,以完善宪法保障的受教育权利。     

Kinship Family Relatedness,Nuclear Family Contact,and Social Support Among Foster Youth

Using a sample of 16-year-old youth placed with kinship foster families in California, the current study examines the relationship between kinship foster family structure and foster youth's biological family contact and support. Latent class analysis was used to examine differences in family structure based on the relatedness between foster youth and other members of the kinship family household. Subsequently, the respective relationships among household structure and foster youths' characteristics, experiences, and biological family contact and support were examined. We find that the kinship families serving foster youth are represented by four distinct household types, including sibling and grandparent households. Kinship family household type is found to be statistically significantly associated with youths' contact with siblings, closeness to caregivers, and perceived social support. Implications for kinship foster family scholarship are discussed.     

Health care and democratization in Indonesia

Analyses of Indonesian democracy often emphasize elite capture of democratic institutions, continuity in oligarchic power relations, and exclusion of popular interests. Defying such analyses, over the last decade, Indonesia has experienced a proliferation of social welfare programmes, some with a redistributive element. This article analyses the expansion of social welfare protection by focusing on health care. At the national level, Indonesia has introduced programmes providing free health care to the poor and approved a plan for universal social insurance. At the subnational level, in the context of far-reaching decentralization reforms, politicians have competed with each other to introduce generous local health care schemes. Taking its cue from analyses of social welfare expansion in other East Asian states, the article finds the origins of policy shift in the incentives that democracy creates for elites to design policies that appeal to broad social constituencies, and in the widening scope for engagement in policymaking that democracy allows. The article ends with a cautionary note, pointing to ways in which oligarchic power relations and the corruption they spawn still undermine health care quality, despite expansion of coverage.     

Prison Birthday: "It's All Good"

Due to an overreliance on arrests in the late 1990s, the incarceration of young women in the United States increased dramatically. On any given day in 2010, over 9000 girls were held in residential placement. Largely hidden from public view, little is known about the health requirements of female adolescent offenders in US secure custody. Less is known about how those needs are met while in detention. Curiously, while most theories regarding female juvenile delinquency draw upon non-criminogenic health-related factors – sexual abuse, family violence, and low self-esteem – their specific legal troubles are rarely, if ever, framed in public health terms. Drawing on original interviews with 100 court-involved girls, detainees’ perceptions of their medical, psychological, sexual, and social health concerns are highlighted. The data link court-involved girls’ prior health issues to their coming to the attention of juvenile authorities as well as demonstrating possible non-compliance with domestic and international standards for the health rights of juveniles deprived of their liberty.     

The need to improve the living conditions of women in Nuba Mountains,Southern Kordofan

ABSTRACT

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) not only ended Africa's longest civil war, it aimed to transform Sudanese society. A critical element of this transformation is uplifting the status of women. This article surveys the conditions faced by women in two villages in Nuba Mountains/Southern Kordofan, principally their ability to access land for farming, credit facilities and barriers to education and health services, and whether the implementation of the CPA has resulted in any concrete changes.