The differential impact of mortality of American troops in the Iraq War: The non-metropolitan dimension

This study investigates the disproportionate impact of mortality among United States troops in Iraq on rural communities. We advance scholarly research and popular accounts that suggest a non-metropolitan disadvantage by disaggregating the risk of mortality according to the metropolitan status of their home county and by examining potential sources of variation, including enlistment, rank and race or ethnicity. Results show that troops from non-metropolitan areas have higher mortality after accounting for the disproportionate enlistment of non-metropolitan youth, and the non-metropolitan disadvantage generally persists across military branch and rank. Moreover, most of the differential is due to higher risks of mortality for non-metropolitan African American and Hispanic military personnel, compared to metropolitan enlistees of the same race or ethnicity.ethnicity, Iraq War, military, military mortality, mortality, non-metropolitan impact, race/ethnicity

Using Iterative Cycles of Discovery Within a Glaserian Grounded Theory of Socialization in Compassion

In 2007, I embarked on an exploratory study to understand the professional socialization experiences of student nurses within 21st-century nursing in the United Kingdom. The study enabled me to develop postgraduate research expertise and gain a PhD, as well as add to the body of knowledge on nursing education that could enable development of an improved student experience and improved professional preparation for clinical practice. During the early phases of the study, it became clear that grounded theory was the best “fit” for my epistemological position on the knowledge of social reality and for the focus on student nurse socialization. However, the journey of discovery using grounded theory was not without its challenges. This case study illustrates some of the challenges and opportunities when using grounded theory. It demonstrates the iterative processes that enable emergence of new understanding grounded in participants’ experiences. It also demonstrates the challenges of discovering a plethora of approaches described as grounded theory alongside my decision to adopt a traditional Glaserian approach within my study. My PhD study found that student nurses experienced challenges within their socialization in compassionate practice. Their socialization created dissonance between the professional ideals of compassionate practice and the practice reality. The findings from my study preceded a significant refocus on compassion during 2012 within UK nursing as well as all National Health Service practice and professions

Sisterhood Articulates A New Definition Of Moral Female Identity: Jane Austen\u27s Adaptation Of The Eighteenth-century Tradition

Writing at a moment of ideological crisis between individualism and hierarchical society, Jane Austen asserts a definition of moral behavior and female identity that mediates the two value systems. I argue that Austen most effectively articulates her belief in women\u27s moral autonomy and social responsibility in her novels through her portrayal of sisterhood. Austen reshapes the stereotype of sisters and female friendships as dangerous found in her domestic novel predecessors. While recognizing women\u27s social vulnerability, which endangers female friendship and turns it into a site of competition, Austen urges the morality of selflessly embracing sisterhood anyway. An Austen heroine must overcome sisterly rivalry if she is to achieve the moral strength Austen demands of her. As Mansfield Park (1814) and Pride and Prejudice (1813) demonstrate, such rivalry reveals the flawed morality of both individualism and patrilineal society. I further argue that in these novels sisterhood articulates the internally motivated selflessness Austen makes her moral standard. Sisterhood not only indicates female morality for Austen, it also enables this character. Rejecting Rousseau\u27s proposal of men shaping malleable female minds, Austen pronounces sisters to be the best moral guides. In Northanger Abbey (1818), Austen shows the failure of the man to educate our heroine and the success of his sister. In Sense and Sensibility (1811), Austen pinpoints the source of sisterly education\u27s success in its feminine context of nurture, affection, intimacy, and subtlety. With this portrait of sisterhood, Austen adheres to the moral authority inherent in Burkean philosophy while advocating individual responsibility, not external regulation, to choose selfless behavior. Austen further promotes gender equality by expressing women\u27s moral autonomy, while supporting gender distinctions that privilege femininity. By offering such powerful, complex sister relationships, Austen transforms eighteenth-century literary thought about women, sisters, and morality

Student Nurse Socialisation in Compassionate Practice.

BACKGROUND: This thesis explores the 21st Century student nurse journey of professional socialisation in compassionate practice. The concept of compassion in nursing is currently under the spotlight following reports that indicate a lack of compassion within UK nursing care. Compassionate practice is a requirement within nursing and a stipulated expectation of student nurse professional preparation, and yet compassion is a complex and contested concept. METHOD: Using qualitative methodology, a Glaserian Grounded Theory study was completed that involved in depth individual interviews with nineteen student nurses in the North of England over an eighteen month period. Through the iterative process of constant comparison, theoretical sampling, coding and comparing themes from within the student interview data, a new Grounded Theory of student nurse socialisation in compassionate practice was identified. Supplementary data from interviews with five nurse teachers and the NHS patient and staff surveys from within the students’ geographical area of practice contributed to the discussion. FINDINGS: Students reported exposure to variability in practice and a lack of understanding about expectations of the Registered Nurse role and emotional labour boundaries, within the enactment of compassionate practice. This left them feeling vulnerable and uncertain of their future. They experienced dissonance between the professional ideal of compassionate practice and the practice reality they witnessed. Students managed the dissonance by balancing their intentions: to uphold the compassionate practice ideal or relinquish it in order to survive reality when they became a Registered Nurse. CONCLUSIONS: Student nurse socialisation in compassionate practice involves managing the uncertainty and vulnerability associated with dissonance between professional ideals and practice reality, leaving student nurses balancing their intentions towards or away from compassionate practice. This new Grounded Theory has important implications in relation to nurse education and nursing practice where compassionate practice is an expectation of 21st Century nursing

MOZAMBICAN NATIONAL ANTHEMS: MEMORY, PERFORMANCE, AND NATION-BUILDING

This thesis examines the national anthems of Mozambique. Crises in Mozambique's history prompted the search for a new national anthem three times, with only two of the searches ended in a new national anthem--namely, "Viva, Viva a FRELIMO" the anthem adopted at independence and the current national anthem "Patria Amada." Using theory from ethnomusicology, anthropology, political science and others, the role of these national anthems in national unification and cultural solidification are discussed. In order to analyze the anthems of Mozambique, national anthems will be explored as static symbols and performed rituals. The history of Mozambique from its first contact with colonization through the present day will add insight to the associations that make anthems powerful in those roles

Perception and Action: Sympathy, Charity and Ideal Communities in Eliot\u27s Middlemarch and Dostoevsky\u27s The Brothers Karamazov

The desire to know and be known is one of the driving forces of the human condition that seems to have been repeatedly examined to the point of cliché, and yet literature has the power to continue reinventing the same question of whether humans can actually understand one another on a deep level or whether they simply learn to coexist, never breaking out of the shell of self-interested perception. In the late nineteenth century as national and smaller communities seemed to be experiencing major upheavals, Fyodor Dostoevsky and George Eliot sought on different sides of Europe to communicate how novels could change the way individuals related to one another. Coming from a Christian point of view, Dostoevsky desired to ultimately point his readers to look outside of themselves the higher power of God, while Eliot substituted the communal organism itself as goal of living in sympathy toward others. While perhaps it is easy to meditate on the differences in context between these two figures that became regarded as voices of their age, both Dostoevsky and Eliot were writing with the same mindset that they could profoundly impact culture and change society through their fictional worlds that would teach their readers to embrace the idea of achieving an ideal community through acts of charity in the case of Dostoevsky and sympathy in Eliot\u27s case