Exploration of the Cultural Beliefs, Values and Practices of African American Women Regarding Postpartum Depression: A Mini-Focused Ethnography

The purpose of this study was to understand the cultural beliefs, values, and practices of African American women regarding postpartum depression. Postpartum depression (PPD) is the most prevalent perinatal mental health illness in women and affects approximately 10 to 20% of all women in the United States. African American women have a disproportionately higher prevalence of postpartum depression (35-67%) and experience it differently. The research question was: What are the cultural care beliefs, values and practices of African American women regarding postpartum depression? This mini-focused ethnography was the method used for this study. It included semi-structured interviews of four African American women about the domain of inquiry. The data was transcribed and analyzed using Leininger’s Four Phases of Qualitative Data Analysis. Initial data analysis resulted in the identification of categories and patterns. The initial findings of this study revealed two emerging patterns from the interviews, striving to be a perfect mom, and distrust of the medical system, reflecting the challenges of postpartum depression of the four participants. This mini-focused ethnography provides valuable insight from African American women identifying similar cultural perceptions and beliefs about postpartum depression. These findings suggest a need for more culturally specific data regarding postpartum depression and the need for better support from health care providers with the goal of improving maternal health outcomes within this population

Gendered Representations of Apartheid: The Women’s Jail Museum at Constitution Hill

This article examines the ways in which women are represented and remembered at The Women’s Jail at Constitution Hill museum, a former women’s jail that was used to incarcerate women during apartheid in Johannesburg, South Africa. Based on fieldwork at the museum, this study examines how the memory of the former prisoners and of the apartheid regime is shaped and narrated at this site. Situating our analysis within the context of the collective memory of apartheid, we examine how the museum uses artifacts and objects to depict both the specific forms of gendered dehumanization that women experienced at the jail, as well as their journeys to incarceration as a result of discriminatory apartheid laws. We also examine the absence of torture memory and references to hierarchical structures and interactions within the jail itself, noting that these were important dynamics of prison life that are not represented in the museum. This research presents a content and visual analysis of how the use of images and artifacts may illuminate and/or silence specific memories of degradation and humiliation in a museum space.Key Words: Collective Memory, Museums, Representation, South Africa, ApartheidMemorialization, Gender and Memorializatio

Social Divisions and Coercive Control in Advanced Societies: Law Enforcement Strength in Eleven Nations from 1975 to 1994.

Conflict theory suggests that economic stratification poses a threat to order, so we should expect increased inequality to lead to a greater capacity for coercive control. The police are the primary agency that uses force to preserve order, yet we know little about the effects of economic divisions on police size in advanced nations besides the United States. The generality of findings based on a fixed-effects panel design applied to 11 developed nations should provide increased insight about how coercion is used to preserve domestic order. Other social divisions that should matter include minority presence and unemployment. With economic development, urbanism, crime, and social disorganization held constant, economic inequality and crime rates in the last years of the sample matter, but minority presence explains police strength only in the United States. The results suggest that threats to internal stability due to economic stratification are most likely to produce subsequent expansions in formal social control. These findings should help resolve disputes about which potentially destabilizing social divisions provide the most general explanation for shifts in the strength of state agencies that specialize in domestic control

Social Divisions and Coercive Control in Advanced Societies: Law Enforcement Strength in Eleven Nations from 1975 to 1994.

Conflict theory suggests that economic stratification poses a threat to order, so we should expect increased inequality to lead to a greater capacity for coercive control. The police are the primary agency that uses force to preserve order, yet we know little about the effects of economic divisions on police size in advanced nations besides the United States. The generality of findings based on a fixed-effects panel design applied to 11 developed nations should provide increased insight about how coercion is used to preserve domestic order. Other social divisions that should matter include minority presence and unemployment. With economic development, urbanism, crime, and social disorganization held constant, economic inequality and crime rates in the last years of the sample matter, but minority presence explains police strength only in the United States. The results suggest that threats to internal stability due to economic stratification are most likely to produce subsequent expansions in formal social control. These findings should help resolve disputes about which potentially destabilizing social divisions provide the most general explanation for shifts in the strength of state agencies that specialize in domestic control

Minority Threat And Police Strength From 1980 To 2000: A Fixed-Effects Analysis Of Nonlinear And Interactive Effects In Large U.S. Cities

Many studies have assessed threat theory by investigating the relationships between the size of minority populations and police strength. Yet these investigations analyzed older data with cross-sectional designs. This study uses a fixed-effects panel design to detect nonlinear and interactive relationships between minority presence and the per capita number of police in large U.S. cities in the last three census years. The findings show that the relationship between racial threat and the population-corrected number of police officers has recently become considerably stronger. In accord with theoretically based expectations, tests for interactions show that segregated cities with larger African American populations have smaller departments. The coefficients on another interaction effect suggest that racial segregation leads to reductions in police strength in the South perhaps because officers are less likely to intervene in residentially isolated black neighborhoods in this region

The Determinants of Executions Since 1951: How Politics, Protests, Public Opinion, and Social Divisions Shape Capital Punishment

This time-series study uses hypotheses derived from a politically refined version of conflict theory to explain both public support for the death penalty and the number of executions. With murders in death penalty states and Supreme Court decisions held constant, tests of hypotheses about lags suggest that public support and Republican strength in the states influence yearly executions by their effects on death sentences rather than the later appeals process. Other dynamic results show that national level Republican strength, presidential elections that emphasize law and order, economic inequality, and higher murder rates increase yearly executions because they affect the extremely influential but later appeals process. Civil rights protests, however, immediately reduce both public support and executions. Although minority threat enhances public support for capital punishment, this contextual factor does not explain executions. These results are unique as no prior studies have assessed the conditions that determine how often the harshest punishment is used

Spring Forward: Collaborating to Build and Assess a Collection of Learning Objects

Delivering innovative information literacy instruction to an ever-growing student population requires some resetting of previous practices and ideas. Collaboratively developed interactive learning activities that address library skills and the research process presented in a flipped-classroom style may represent a useful innovation in this area. This paper addresses the ongoing project at the University of South Florida (USF) Tampa Library in which interactive digital learning objects are developed, embedded into all sections of a university course via the online learning management system, assessed, and reworked