Civil partnership five years on

The Civil Partnership Act 2004, which came into force in December 2005 allowing same-sex couples in the UK to register their relationship for the first time, celebrated its fifth anniversary in December 2010. This article examines civil partnership in England and Wales, five years on from its introduction. The characteristics of those forming civil partnerships between 2005 and 2010 including age, sex and previous marital/civil partnership status are examined. These are then compared with the characteristics of those marrying over the same period. Further comparisons are also made between civil partnership dissolutions and divorce. The article presents estimates of the number of people currently in civil partnerships and children of civil partners. Finally the article examines attitudes towards same-sex and civil partner couples both in the UK and in other countries across Europe

Facing up to Facebook: politicians, publics and the social media(ted) turn in New Zealand

Social media have an increasingly important place in the lives of citizens, and their potential to expand the reach of communication messages beyond individual networks is attractive to those looking to maximise message efficiency. The influence of Facebook in Obama’s 2008 campaign success galvanised many politicians into taking it seriously as a campaign tool. Our study explored the Facebook wall posts (1148 in total) of New Zealand Members of Parliament (MPs) leading up to the 2011 general election to determine posting behaviours and differences. Among other things, we found that women posted more frequently than men and that Labour MPs posted more than their National counterparts. Additionally, most politicians do not invite dialogue with readers of their posts, rarely get involved in comment threads and mostly take a monologic approach, using Facebook as a way of broadcasting information rather than as a medium enabling two-way flow. In other words, same old, same old

Parental bonding and alexithymia: A meta-analysis

Aim: The primary purpose of this meta-analysis was to explore, clarify and report the strength of the relationship between alexithymia, as measured by the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), and parenting style as measured by the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI). Methods: Web of Science, PsycInfo, PubMed and ProQuest: Dissertations and Theses searches were undertaken, yielding nine samples with sufficient data to be included in the meta-analysis. Results: Evidence indicated moderate to strong relationships between maternal care and alexithymia, and between maternal care and two of the three TAS-20 alexithymia facets (Difficulties Describing Feelings and Difficulties Identifying Feelings, but not Externally Oriented Thinking). Moderate relationships were observed for both maternal- and paternal-overprotection and alexithymia respectively, and for overprotection (both maternal and paternal) and Difficulties Describing Feelings. Conclusion: This study is the first meta-analysis of the relationship between parenting styles and alexithymia, and findings confirm an especially strong association between maternal care and key elements of alexithymia. This review highlights the issues that still remain to be addressed in exploring the link between parenting style and alexithymia

Linking Process to Outcome: Implicit Norms in a Cross-Cultural Dialogue Program

This paper examines the link between dialogue mechanisms and potential outcomes. Using the “Soliya Connect Program” as a case study, I focus specifically on dialogue norms, distinguishing between explicit and implicit norms of dialogue, and examine how these norms shape the dialogue space. My analysis suggests that as dialogue mechanisms, these norms both enable and constrain participants’ comfort in expressing themselves, and thus can significantly affect the outcomes of the dialogue process

Reclaiming Impact in Qualitative Research

Sowohl in der akademischen als auch in der praktischen Literatur wird der Begriff Impact sehr weit gefasst. In Verbindung mit (uni-)direktionalen Beziehungen zwischen Variablen und methodologischen Rahmen, die auf einen positivistischen Ansatz ausgerichtet sind, wird der Begriff jedoch sehr viel enger ausgelegt. Eine solche verengte Konzeptualisierung ist problematisch insbesondere im Zusammenhang mit Initiativen, die interne, individuelle Veränderungen abzielen. Ich schlage daher vor, Impact neu zu konzeptualisieren, um menschliches Handeln anzuerkennen und Wandel ganzheitlicher erforschen zu können. Im Rahmen post-positivistischer qualitativer Forschung sollte der Begriff zurückerobert werden, da qualitative Methoden das Potenzial haben, ein dialogisches Verständnis von Impact und des intersubjektiven Kontextes, durch den Wandel entsteht zu erhellen.In both academic and practitioner literature, the term "impact" is conceptualized broadly. Yet the application of impact is construed much more narrowly, in association with (uni)-directional relationships between variables and methodological frameworks oriented towards a positivist approach. Such a conceptualization is problematic, particularly in the context of initiatives that have a goal of internal, individual transformation. Thus, I suggest reconceptualizing impact to acknowledge human agency and explore change more holistically. I argue for a reclaiming of impact by the post-positivist qualitative research community, given the potential of qualitative methodologies to elucidate dialogic understandings of impact and the intersubjective context through which transformation emerges

Navigating “Red Lines” and Transcending the Binary: Tensions in the Pedagogical and Political Goals of Peace Education Work

In this article I explore the tensions that arise in the context of educational initiatives implemented by organizations that have both pedagogical and political aspirations. I draw on the work of Sadaka Reut, a veteran Jewish-Palestinian peace education organization, to highlight how the ideological commitments held by an organization working for structural equality can limit possibilities for openness to multiple perspectives and can thus serve as a barrier towards successfully achieving pedagogical aspirations, in particular Sadaka Reut’s goal of educating towards a binational community of Jewish and Palestinian activists working in partnership. I also highlight the tension inherent in working simultaneously to help Jewish and Palestinian participants develop a strong sense of ethno-national identity; and to facilitate the development of a transcendent identity as activists in solidarity

Making empowering choices: how methodology matters for empowering research participants

In diesem Beitrag befasse ich mich mit dem Beitrag methodologischer Entscheidungen für das Empowerment von Forschungsteilnehmer/innen. Ich setze mich hierzu zum einen mit Interaktionen im Forschungsprozess auseinander, zum anderen mit methodologischen Entscheidungen, die Forschende im Verlauf der Untersuchung treffen. In beiden Fällen sind Letztere zentral für Freiräume, die für Forschungsteilnehmer/innen entstehen können. Rückgreifend auf Beispiele aus einem Projekt mit früheren Teilnehmenden israelisch-palästinensischer Begegnungen in Israel arbeite ich Momente des Empowerment heraus, bei denen methodologische Wahlen halfen, traditionelle Machtbalancen in der Forschungsdynamik zu stören, zeige aber auch potenzielle Grenzen hierfür, die für die meisten Forschungsvorhaben charakteristisch sind.In this article, I explore methodological approaches to the research process that can potentially empower research participants. I examine empowerment as it arises in the context of specific interactions between researcher and participant within the research process, as well as more broadly as it encompasses choices made by researchers about their broader methodological approach. I suggest that in both cases, choices about methodology are central to creating spaces for participant empowerment. Drawing on examples from a project conducted with former participants in a joint Jewish-Palestinian encounter initiative in Israel, I highlight the potential for moments of empowerment when methodological choices disrupt traditional power imbalances in the research dynamic, but also address the limitations of these moments that are inherent in most research endeavors

Extend the shallow part of Single Shot MultiBox Detector via Convolutional Neural Network

Single Shot MultiBox Detector (SSD) is one of the fastest algorithms in the current object detection field, which uses fully convolutional neural network to detect all scaled objects in an image. Deconvolutional Single Shot Detector (DSSD) is an approach which introduces more context information by adding the deconvolution module to SSD. And the mean Average Precision (mAP) of DSSD on PASCAL VOC2007 is improved from SSD's 77.5% to 78.6%. Although DSSD obtains higher mAP than SSD by 1.1%, the frames per second (FPS) decreases from 46 to 11.8. In this paper, we propose a single stage end-to-end image detection model called ESSD to overcome this dilemma. Our solution to this problem is to cleverly extend better context information for the shallow layers of the best single stage (e.g. SSD) detectors. Experimental results show that our model can reach 79.4% mAP, which is higher than DSSD and SSD by 0.8 and 1.9 points respectively. Meanwhile, our testing speed is 25 FPS in Titan X GPU which is more than double the original DSSD.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, 3 table

Struggling to Compete: Community-Based Research on Agrarian Change in the Caribbean

Many countries in the Global South have agricultural landscapes and economies that are heavily dependent upon a small range of agro-exports, such as bananas. Tropical agro-exports have long earned low prices in international markets, which led to a number of historical policy responses geared towards stabilizing export prices and volumes. However, since the 1990s these have been overwhelmed by trade liberalization, intensifying pressures to lower costs of production and exacerbating the enduring challenges associated with tropical agro-export commodity dependence. This research seeks to understand these contemporary challenges through immersed fieldwork in rural communities. Through interviews with small farmers, farm workers, managers, owners, and government and corporate officials (n=200), it explores and compares different responses to the demise of preferential market access for bananas in two countries where dependence rests on very different productive systems: Dominica, where small farmers predominate, and Belize, where plantations prevail. In Dominica, banana production has drastically declined in the wake of trade liberalization, and most small farmers have entered a Fairtrade market with limited success. In marked contrast, banana production in Belize has continued rising, in large measure because plantations have entered a high-value niche market. However, this export growth depends upon a steady labour force which plantations are struggling to reproduce, a dynamic that is threatening to undermine the basis of this new niche. These divergent case studies problematize the impacts of trade liberalization in agriculture, and question the merits of agrarian development focused on commodity exports into the future. While this dissertation was inspired by a concern about the imbalances of the global food economy, another significant trajectory emerged through data collection: the gendered nature – and risks – of immersed fieldwork, and the void in the literature on issues of sexual violence in the field. Both conceptions and practices in feminist methodologies about reducing distance and balancing power in the field need to take into account the gendered risks of sexual violence. Conversations about sexual violence in fieldwork are needed to better prepare researchers, and are central to challenging entrenched perceptions of what is ‘rigorous’ research and the latent male archetype of the ‘ideal’ researcher