The Family Window: Perceived Usage and Privacy Concerns

Families have a strong need to connect with their loved ones over distance. However, most technologies do not provide the same feelings of connectedness that one feels from seeing remote family members. Hence our goal was to understand if a video connection, in the form of a media space, could help families feel more connected. To answer this, we designed a video media space called the Family Window and deployed it within the homes of two families for eight months and four families for five weeks. We also interviewed 16 individuals to obtain additional feedback about the system and to learn about their privacy concerns

Rhetorical Resolutions to the Tension Between Issue Ownership and Agency OR What do you do with an old social movement?

This paper will apply Gusfield’s theory of issue ownership to one specific social issue: domestic violence. It will briefly trace the evolution of the issue as a social problem, looking at the battered women’s movement. It will present a case study of a specific, localized issue owner – Boulder County Safehouse, now SPAN (Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence) as it attempts to reframe the problem and expand its control of the issue. Finally, the case study and paper will serve as an exemplar for how other issue owners might meet the challenge of expanding the power of ownership to reframe an issue -- to keep it current and viable

Shame as a social phenomenon: A critical analysis of the concept of dispositional shame

An increased clinical interest in shame has been reflected in the growing number of research studies in this area. However, clinically-orientated empirical investigation has mostly been restricted to the investigation of individual differences in dispositional shame. This paper reviews recent work on dispositional shame but then argues that the primacy of this construct has been problematic in a number of ways. Most importantly, the notion of shame as a context-free intrapsychic variable has distracted clinical researchers from investigating the management and repair of experiences of shame and shameful identities, and has made the social constitution of shame less visible. Several suggestions are made for alternative ways in which susceptibility to shame could be conceptualised, which consider how shame might arise in certain contexts and as a product of particular social encounters. For example, persistent difficulties with shame may relate to the salience of stigmatising discourses within a particular social context, the roles or subject positions available to an individual, the establishment of a repertoire of context-relevant shame avoidance strategies and the personal meaning of shamefulness

Investigating the Correlation Between Nurses\u27 Spiritual Well-Being and Spiritual Care Perspectives

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between nurses\u27 spiritual well-being (using the JAREL Spiritual-Well Being Scale) and their perspectives of spiritual care (using the Spirituality and Spiritual Care Rating Scale). Both instruments use Likert-scale ratings. An additional survey obtained general demographic information including an item regarding spirituality in nursing in-service participation. A total of 130 registered nurses (23%) participated in the study. The data was analyzed using SPSS in which a Pearson\u27s r correlation was performed on the JAREL and SSCRS scores. The results were statistically significant for a positive correlation between nurses\u27 spiritual well-being and perspectives of spiritual care (r = 0.43, p \u3c .01) demonstrating that a portion of the nurses\u27 spiritual care perspectives can be attributed to their spiritual well-being. The results underscore the need for academic and post-professional spirituality training for nurses as well as collaboration of the health care team and administrative support

Leading with political astuteness: A study of public managers in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom

Combining quantitative survey data from over 1000 middle and senior public managers, as well as qualitative data from 42 in-depth interviews, the study sheds light on how managers understand politics in their work; how they rate their own and their colleagues’ political skills; how they use their political skills; and how these skills were developed. The report also sets forth recommendations to improve the development of managers’ political astuteness at the level of the individual, the organisation, and the professional body/training provider

Liberty and Community in Marriage: Expanding on Massey’s Proposal for a Community Property Option in New Hampshire

This article argues that intimate partners should have the right to adopt a sharing economy within marriage. Forty-one U.S. states employ a separate property regime for property acquired during marriage; of these, only two allow married couples to opt out of the separate property system and hold their assets as community property. Nine U.S. states are community property states. To encourage equal partnership in marriage, Calvin Massey proposed that New Hampshire, a separate property state, enable a community property option. This essay expands on Massey’s proposal by comparing it to three other marriage reform proposals: two based on privatization, and another focused on equitable distribution laws. To be sure, all four reforms refer to market-metrics, but only the community property option proposal allows for the qualitative claim that an individual has a right to enter into and maintain a marriage between economic equals. Massey’s view was that the state should enable, not frustrate such a right. For this and other reasons, this essay develops a comparative and analytic foundation for Massey’s community property option proposal

Of Tigers, Ghosts and Snakes: Children's Social Cognition in the Context of Conflict in Eastern Sri Lanka

This paper is based on field research with Tamil children and adolescents in the war-affected district of Batticaloa in eastern Sri Lanka. It examines young people's experiences of conflict in terms of their social worlds and their relations with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE), finding both to be permeated with ambiguity and dissonance. According to established understandings of social cognitive development this would suggest a significant threat to children's social perception, awareness and skills. Yet, it is found that these children and adolescents hold unexpectedly secure values of sociality. In light of this evidence, the paper raises various questions about the adequacy of current theoretical perspectives on social cognition from psychology and anthropology. In particular, it re-evaluates the common emphasis upon the critical importance of mutuality and durability in the socio-cultural dimension for effective cognitive development.

The Dynamic Impact of Periodic Review on Women’s Rights

Human rights treaty bodies have been frequently criticized as useless and the regime’s self-reporting procedure widely viewed as a whitewash. Yet very little research explores what, if any, influence this periodic review process has on governments’ implementation of and compliance with treaty obligations. We argue oversight committees may play an important role in improving rights on the ground by providing information for international and primarily domestic audiences. This paper examines the cumulative effects on women’s rights of self-reporting and oversight review, using original data on the history of state reporting to and review by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CmEDAW). Using a dynamic approach to study the effects of the periodic review process, we find that self-reporting has a significant positive effect on women’s rights. We explore three clusters of evidence for the domestic mobilization mechanism: information provision through domestic civil society organizations; publicity and critique through the domestic media; and parliamentary attention, debate, and implementation of recommendations. This is the first study to present positive evidence on the effects of self-reporting on rights and to describe the mechanisms that link Geneva bodies with local politics. Our findings challenge the received wisdom that the process of reporting to these treaty bodies is basically useless