‘Being Yourself’ in the Electronic Sweatshop: New Forms of Normative Control

This article extends research about high-commitment management practices in tightly controlled work environments typified by the call centre. One promising research avenue suggests that normative management systems in such contexts, involving ‘fun’ exercises and culture programmes, etc., are more about distracting employee attention away from other, more taxing controls. This article develops such an approach by exploring the specific nature and conditions of such distraction. An empirical study of a call centre in which employees were encouraged to ‘just be themselves’ (in relation to lifestyle differences, sexuality, diverse identities, etc.) reveals how the distractions are partly informed by the dysfunctions of existing technical, bureaucratic and conventional cultural controls, all of which homogenize workers. Furthermore, the new regime not only serves to distract employees, but proves instrumental in capturing their sociality, energy and ‘authentic’ or ‘non-work’ personalities as emotional labour. At the same time, it gives rise to some contestation and less individualistic forms of authenticity. These outcomes have wider implications for our understanding of worker autonomy in and around hybrid control systems

Material Hardships and Infant and Toddler Sleep Duration in Low-Income Hispanic Families

© 2020 Academic Pediatric Association Objective: To assess relationships between material hardships, shortened sleep duration, and suboptimal sleep practices across infancy and toddlerhood in low-income Hispanic families. Methods: We analyzed longitudinal data of 451 low-income Hispanic mother-child pairs from a child obesity prevention trial. During infancy and toddlerhood, we used adjusted linear regression to assess associations between material hardship (financial difficulty, food insecurity, housing disrepair, and multiple hardships), sleep duration (24-hour, night), and the number of suboptimal sleep practices (eg, later bedtime, co-sleeping). We used adjusted linear regression to assess the longitudinal association between the number of suboptimal sleep practices in infancy and toddlerhood, and tested whether specific or multiple hardships moderated this association. Results: In infants, financial difficulty and multiple hardships were associated with decreased night sleep (B = −0.59 hours, 95% confidence interval [CI]: −1.04, −0.14; and B = −0.54 hours, 95% CI: −1.00, −0.08). Housing disrepair was associated with decreased 24-hour sleep (B = −0.64 hours, 95% CI: −1.29, −0.01). In toddlers, each additional suboptimal sleep practice was associated with a decrease in night sleep (B = −0.19 hours, 95% CI: −0.29, −0.09). Each additional suboptimal sleep practice in infancy was associated with a 0.30 increase in the number of suboptimal sleep practices in toddlerhood (P \u3c .001), with greater increases for those with food insecurity or multiple hardships. Conclusion: Specific and multiple hardships shortened sleep duration during infancy, and moderated the increase of suboptimal sleep behaviors between infancy and toddlerhood. Future studies should consider these early critically sensitive periods for interventions to mitigate material hardships and establish healthy sleep practices

Social Capital as a Positive Social Determinant of Health: A Narrative Review

© 2020 Academic Pediatric Association Social determinants of health influence child health behavior, development, and outcomes. This paper frames social capital, or the benefits that a child receives from social relationships, as a positive social determinant of health that helps children exposed to adversity achieve healthy outcomes across the life course. Children are uniquely dependent on their relationships with surrounding adults for material and nonmaterial resources. We identify and define three relevant aspects of social capital: 1) social support, which is embedded in a 2) social network, which is a structure through which 3) social cohesion can be observed. Social support is direct assistance available through social relationships and can be received indirectly through a caregiver or directly by a child. A child\u27s social network describes the people in a child\u27s life and the relationships between them. Social cohesion represents the strength of a group to which a child belongs (eg, family, community). Pediatric primary care practices play an important role in fostering social relationships between families, the health care system, and the community. Further research is needed to develop definitional and measurement rigor for social capital, to evaluate interventions (eg, peer health educators) that may improve health outcomes through social capital, and to broaden our understanding of how social relationships influence health outcomes

Medical training in school-based health centre: a collaboration among five medical schools

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