The Influence of Acculturation on Meanings of Marriage for Iranian-American Women

The objective of the current research is to provide a basic framework for understanding the dynamics of Iranian marriage as women acculturate into Western norms and the implications of these experiences for those who work with them in their adjustment process. With the growing population of Iranian immigrants in the United States there is a need to understand the behaviors and values of the Iranian culture and how the culture gets transformed through socialization within the context of North America. It is crucial that a clinician understand the cultural background when working with Iranian couples in order to minimize judgment and pathology. An interpretative phenomenological methodological approach is used to develop a more complete understanding of the relational and familial dynamics among Iranian American women in their marriages and the evolving meaning of marriage as they acculturate in the North American context. Fourteen participants were targeted to complete face-to-face interviews for the present study. A phenomenological approach was used to group the participants’ descriptions into units of meaning. These units of meaning provided the researcher with clusters of themes describing what makes Iranian marriage successful. The researcher then derived multiple theme clusters from the interview results, which provided descriptions of Iranian women’s experiences and perceptions of marriage as they experience them. The study has important implications for research, theory, and practice with this population

Making a nest. Art and ecology as formative and trasformative practices in adult education.

The radical experience of isolation and vulnerability during the pandemic has aroused a reflection on the forms of living environments and social ties, on the need to rethink the relational and pedagogical styles on which they are based (Pignalberi 2022). The accentuation of disparities in access to education and culture has shown how, in truth, the training system has been in a stagnant situation of difficulty for decades. The pandemic crisis has been considered by some pedagogists (Fullan 2020) not so much as a destructive event of a functioning model but as the possibility of participating in the transformation of learning. In 2021-2022 the Department of Human Sciences of the University of Verona promoted a training course "Practices and cultures of difference in educational and care work" which was attended by 35 professionals in social-health and educational services. The training course focused on the fact that the established practices of social work often fail, exposing professionals to the unexpected, to the crisis, to the need to create. This impact was even more evident during the pandemic which made the social ties of many Italian cities increasingly fragile. It was therefore necessary to propose training contexts that could meet the experiences of vulnerability, the need to nourish trust in community ties and hope. The course aimed to address the theme of differences by deepening theories and practices of feminist philosophy (Zamboni 2009, bell hooks 1994) and transformative pedagogy (Formenti 2017, Mortari 2003) which have elaborated a florid reflection on the themes of care and relationship: an embodied knowledge that puts to work the senses, the resonances, the materiality of relationships to rethink the encounter with the Other in daily life. The path proposed to move away from 'expertism' (Illich 2008) to rethink the care of oneself, of places and of others, as a common good, thanks to: • a formative ecology vision that questions the link between learning and the environment, between daily work and community life; (Iori 2019, Corntassel, J., & Hardbarger, T. 2019, Pignalberi 2022) • art-based methodologies as levers for processes of continuous transformative training and as a means for an ecological and ecosophic transition under the banner of social justice (Formenti Lusaschi, Del Negro 2019, Sossai 2017, Segal-Engelchin D., Huss E., Massry N. 2020). The third module of the above-mentioned training course was titled "Know how: community art practices" and was held at the Mare Memoria Viva Ecomuseum in Palermo (Sicily, Italy). It was a pedagogical choice that aimed to open up the narrow imaginaries of social work to a community horizon. The artistic workshop of intensive two weeks was also granted access to 35 professionals and all those who, by attending the Ecomuseum as operators or beneficiaries, would have voluntarily contributed to the creation of a new space for cultural fruition, participating in building an Ecodom structure in Superadobe in the shape of nest

Miss USA Meets Feminism: A Qualitative Study Exploring Contestants\u27 Thoughts on Feminism

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore pageant contestants’ thoughts on feminism. A total of 12 of the 51 state titleholders who had competed in the 2020 Miss USA Competition were interviewed. They were recruited through letters sent to individual State Pageant Directors of Miss USA. The objective of the study was to gain an understanding of how women who compete in beauty pageants view their participation in light of feminism. The focus of the interviews centered on their motivations for participating, pageantry support for feminist ideals, their own self-identification as a feminist, and any criticism they may have received to suggest pageants do not align with feminist ideals. Titleholders were also invited to add any additional thoughts or suggestions on pageants and feminism. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted. Each interview consisted of a series of open-ended questions. The interviews were transcribed and coding categories were developed. Sixteen coding categories emerged from the analysis of the interview transcripts and were organized under the topics of focus for the study. Specifically, the 16 coding categories were organized according to the four research questions for this study which included: motivation for participating, pageantry support for feminist ideals, self-identification as a feminist, and experience with anti-feminist critique. Three overarching themes emerged from a further analysis of the 16 coding categories and include Pageants are Empowering, Swimsuit is Complicated, and Pageantry Has Evolved. This study revealed that these women had many reasons for entering pageants, the least of which was related to beauty. Most women felt pageantry supported feminist ideals, and personally identified themselves as a feminist, yet had experience being told by outsiders that their participation was anti-feminist and they were not feminists. Much of the outside criticism centered on the swimsuit competition, however most of the titleholders found swimsuit to be empowering. They also felt pageants had evolved and did not see “beauty pageant” as an appropriate descriptor for their participation. Implications for the study findings are discussed, including ways in which pageants might better support feminist ideals

Commercial mHealth Apps and Exploitative Value Trade-offs

Mobile health (mHealth) apps are becoming progressively important for primary care, disease prevention, and public health interventions. They promise to empower its users by offering them more independence, better access to health services, and more insight into their health status resulting in better informed medical decision-making and lifestyle changes. Disadvantages of mHealth apps often include a lack of privacy protection, a decrease in personal attachment, and the acceptance of a normative conception of health challenging the user’s self-determination. Privacy, attachment, and self-determination are, alongside health, linked to fundamental dimensions of human well-being. Users of mHealth apps can either accept those disadvantages or abstain from using this technology entirely. Users, therefore, have to trade-off fundamental dimensions of well-being to gain a certain health benefit if they want to use commercial mHealth apps. This presentation will clarify the values most relevant in this context, focusing on privacy, self-determination, and attachment. I claim that these values imply fundamental conditions of well-being that should not be undermined, especially in the context of health care. I will argue that the value trade-offs users must engage in are an instance of mutually advantageous agreements by which the provider of the app takes unfair advantage of the user. This renders such agreements exploitative. I will discuss the notion of exploitation that I think applies in this case and explain under what circumstances exploitative agreements that come with the use of commercial mHealth apps oppose the empowerment narrative

Tradition and Modernity in Italy, Portugal and Spain

DL 57/2016/CP1453/CT0041 UIDB/00749/2020 UIDP/00749/2020This volume emerges from an international seminar held at the Department of Historical Studies of the University of Turin on 2-4 October 2019, which brought together scholars from various academic and cultural institutions including, aside from the host department, the School of Social Sciences and Humanities of the NOVA University of Lisbon, the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, the Complutense University of Madrid, and the Centre for Studies on the Royal Savoy Residences in Reggia di Venaria Reale, Piedmont. It combines the outcomes of this meeting with other contributions of scientific relevance to the subject.publishersversionpublishe

Images of Royalty in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Tradition and Modernity in Italy, Portugal and Spain

This volume emerges from an international seminar held at the Department of Historical Studies of the University of Turin on 2-4 October 2019, which brought together scholars from various academic and cultural institutions including, aside from the host department, the School of Social Sciences and Humanities of the NOVA University of Lisbon, the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, the Complutense University of Madrid, and the Centre for Studies on the Royal Savoy Residences in Reggia di Venaria Reale, Piedmont. It combines the outcomes of this meeting with other contributions of scientific relevance to the subject. The editors’ aim has been to participate in the contemporary historical debate on monarchy, a topic of research that has accelerated markedly in recent years, as attested by the increase in academic colloquiums dedicated to it, such as the conference held in Cambridge in January 2019 under the title Monarchy and Modernity Since 1500, or the annual Kings and Queens Conferences that have been promoted by the Royal Studies Network since 2012.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio