The body weight of women of childbearing age living in Malaysia : quantitative and qualitative perspectives

Background Ethnic inequalities in the body weight of childbearing aged women 18-49 years old in Malaysia, are not fully appreciated. The aims of this research were two. First, to identify the patterns of underweight, pre-overweight, overweight, obesity and the mean BMI of Malaysian Malay women, Malaysian Chinese women, Malaysian Indian women and women of Other Indigenous People Minority Groups and their associated socioeconomic factors. Second, to explore women’s perspective as regards to the meanings of body weight and the factors associated with weight maintenance, gain or weight loss. Methods Drawing from the interpretivism and positivism realm and within the framework of Social Determinants of Health, a sequential mixed methods approach was used to address the above aims. In the first phase of the study, two secondary data analyses of 1996, 2006, 2011 and 2015 Malaysia National Health and Morbidity Survey data were conducted using multilevel and logistic modelling techniques. The findings generated from the first phase of the study informed the undertaking of semi-structured interviews in the second phase. Results The results of secondary data analyses found evidence on the presence of educational inequalities in mean BMI across women of four main ethnic groups. There was a negative education level-mean BMI gradient among Malaysian Chinese women in 1996, 2006 and 2011, respectively. The same pattern was observed among Malaysian Malay women in 2011. Hence, the better education, the lower mean BMI for these women. There was a shift in educational-mean BMI patterning from positive gradient in 2006 to negative gradient in 2015 for women of Other Indigenous Minority Ethnic Groups. Among Malaysian Indian women, there was no education level gradient in mean BMI. The 18 semi-structured interviews supported the findings of Malaysian Chinese women in secondary data analyses by emphasising how traditional and modern, as well as local culture interacted with contextual factors in influencing their body weight via eating and or exercise. Conclusions The findings provide an understanding of the educational patterning of mean BMI among women of four main ethnic groups, and how cultural and contextual factors potentially contributed to such patterning and the practice

Pendekatan The New History Dalam Pembelajaran Sejarah Lokal, Nasional, dan Global Untuk Integrasi Bangsa Pada Program Studi PIPS UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang

This study was motivated by the writer’s concern on the accumulating phenomena of national disintegration in many parts of Indonesian territory, and this situation influenced the restlessness and instability among the young generation, in this case IPS department student, regarding to their identity and nationality. Several problems examined in this study revealed that in classes, history was still presented in the conventional way, where the students were lectured on factual feature of history (time concept, actors, and sequence of events). On the other hand, the new learning in history, which was called the New History, opened multidisciplinary approach where sociology and anthropology contributed to the student’s efforts of searching for their ethnic and cultural roots inside the Indonesian nationality. The research findings are firstly, that the influence of new history approach in teaching and learning history towards the acquiring of inter-ethnic relations and national solidarity are significant. Second, the influence of local history teaching and learning to aquire good interethnic relations is significant, while the contribution to national solidarity is positively significant. Third, that the influence of national history teaching and learning towards interethnic relations is significant, but insignificant to building national solidarity. Forth, that influence of global history teaching and learning towards interethnic relations and national solidarity are quite significant

Care of elderly women in Saudi Arabia : a comparison of institutional and family settings

In recent decades, the structure of social and economic life in Saudi Arabia has undergone enormous change, and among those most affected are the elderly. While Islam enjoins respect for and care of the elderly, economic and social factors are changing the traditional system of family-based care. This thesis investigates care of elderly women in institutional and family settings in Medina. It examines the experience of old age and the discourse surrounding it, focusing on the factors influencing care arrangements, elderly women’s perceptions of their role in the family and society, the practical, economic, social and psychological implications of care for the elderly women and their relatives, the profile of carers, the dynamics of the care relationship, problems faced and support received.Data for 20 elderly women in a care home were collected through participant observation during a three-month placement, together with semi-structured interviews with 5 residents and 31 members of staff. Data for seven elderly women in family settings were collected through semi-structured interviews with the women, their main carer(s) and domestic staff.It was found that care decisions were influenced mainly by economic status and family structure. Women in family settings underwent a gradual transition, continuing to a great extent to enact former roles, while care home residents suffered an abrupt change and reconstruction of identity as “patients” and “victims”. While both groups had subsistence and medical needs met, social and psychological needs were poorly met in the care home. Findings for both groups shed light on the roles of female carers, including a heavy reliance on migrant employees, whose motivations, working conditions and relationships with employers are explored. Implications from the findings are drawn for both ageing and migration theory, and for the support needed by elderly women and their carers in both family and care home settings

Mokk Pooj: gender, interpretive labour and sexual imaginary in Senegal’s art/work of seduction

This thesis examines the evolving gender relationships exposed by and contested through the Senegalese art of seduction, mokk pooj. The Wolof expression encompasses a set of feminine attitudes and actions (culinary prowess, docility, eroticism) that reflect values such as teraanga (hospitality), sutura (discretion), and muñ (patience, endurance). These beliefs and the discursive practices that perpetuate them are central to the reproduction of a gendered, normative, patriarchal, polygamous Senegalese sexual imaginary, but are framed within the playful and pleasurable realm of seduction and sexuality. Indeed, mokk pooj implies a satisfying sexual life based on a religiously-­‐informed sexual ethics: in a country where 95% of people identify as Muslim, marriage and procreation are divine recommendations, and sexual pleasure is said to make a married couple feel closer to Allah. In consequence, objects and strategies that enhance sexual satisfaction are an integral part of the Senegalese seduction toolkit. Each chapter pays attention to a specific element of the material culture of seduction and explores how it exposes larger gender dynamics. By taking potions and amulets, money, aphrodisiacs, food, and lingerie as the starting point of each chapter, I explore how these objects relate to concepts of social conformity and normativity, love, anxiety, complementarity and agency. In doing so, I analyse the gendered labour – the art/work of seduction – that goes into mokk pooj. David Graeber (2012) suggests that within hierarchical relationships, individuals in an inferior position (women) have to constantly imagine, understand, manage and care about the egos, perspectives and points of view of those on the top (men) while the latter rarely reciprocate. While Graeber contends that this ‘interpretive labor’ or ‘imaginative identification’ reproduces an internalised structural violence, I analyse mokk pooj as an affective economy in which women’s emotional, interpretive labour, becomes an agentive, albeit conservative, tool of negotiation and power (Mahmood 2005). In imagining and interpreting men’s needs and desires, Senegalese women uphold the Senegalese sexual imaginary that portray them as docile and submissive. However, it is through the apparent conformity and subdued demeanour that mokk pooj requires of them that Senegalese women manage to portray themselves as good women and consequently enhance their agentive power of negotiation