Living in a “Parallel World”: Disability in Post-Soviet Ukraine

[Excerpt] These are challenges that are familiar to disabled people all over the world. Challenges such as these make many persons with disabilities in Ukraine feel as if they live in a “parallel world,” one separate from that enjoyed by “able-bodied” people. The disabled in Ukraine face both hidden and open discrimination in their daily lives, and they are stigmatized through popular stereotypes of disabled persons as inferior, deformed, and even contaminating. These attitudes stem in part from the Soviet-era policies towards the disabled, which perpetuated such harmful stereotypes. Persons with visible disabilities (i.e., spinal injuries, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, mental problems, and others) were isolated in their homes, hidden from the public and thus made seemingly invisible. Since disability was seen as a defect and as a tragedy, the Soviet regime pursued a policy of compensation. The invisibility of disabled persons positioned them as a non-problem. Their lives were not discussed, and there was practically no public debate about their needs. When attempts were made to rehabilitate people with disabilities, rehabilitation was primarily medical and vocational in nature, an approach that reflects the ideology that the problem is located within the individual, who needs to be changed/improved (i.e., given maximum physical functioning or gainful employment)

Disability and Citizenship in Post-Soviet Ukraine: An Anthropological Critique

[Excerpt] In this paper I examine Ukraine’s burgeoning disability rights movement through the lens of citizenship to illustrate the complex processes through which certain categories of people (here, persons with disabilities) are transforming themselves—and being transformed— into particular types of citizens in a changing welfare state. I take an institutional and relational approach to understanding “citizenship,” a tack that has recently been suggested by scholars such as Margaret Somers (1994, 1995) and Allison Carey (2003), to suggest approaches to understanding citizen-state relations that shed light on the complex intersections of agency, power, and personhood that post-socialist social justice struggles entail

Civil Society and Disability Rights in Post-Soviet Ukraine: NGOs and Prospects for Change

This article uses an anthropological approach to critically examine the limitations and successes of the contemporary disability rights movement in post-Soviet Ukraine. Case studies of rights legislation and the work of disability advocacy NGOs are detailed to illustrate the paradoxes and problems that imbricate disability rights issues, and the strategies some activists have leveraged to successfully navigate these challenges. The article suggests specific tactics that rights groups in Ukraine might pursue to further enact change in their communities, including pursuing more international partnerships fielding candidates for political office, and launching informational and image campaigns. Operationalizing Global Governance, Symposium. Indiana University Maurer School of Law-Bloomington, Indiana, March 19-21, 200

Women and Development in Postsocialism: Theory and Power East and West

To date, ethnographic research in Kyiv, Ukraine since 1998 has analyzed popular, political, and academic engagement of the “civil society” construct in the postsocialist context by examining ten nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) led by women. Further goals of this research have been to outline the challenges facing women in the post-Soviet period, and to examine the long-term effects of the Soviet gender contract. I argue that, in many cases, leadership roles in social organizations are a form of alternative employment for women, who have been forced out of their jobs in the context of postsocialist economic crisis and a revived nationalism that emphasizes women’s domestic, care giving functions

Civil Society and Disability Rights in Post-Soviet Ukraine: NGOs and Prospects for Change

This article uses an anthropological approach to critically examine the limitations and successes of the contemporary disability rights movement in post-Soviet Ukraine. Case studies of rights legislation and the work of disability advocacy NGOs are detailed to illustrate the paradoxes and problems that imbricate disability rights issues, and the strategies some activists have leveraged to successfully navigate these challenges. The article suggests specific tactics that rights groups in Ukraine might pursue to further enact change in their communities, including pursuing more international partnerships fielding candidates for political office, and launching informational and image campaigns. Operationalizing Global Governance, Symposium. Indiana University Maurer School of Law-Bloomington, Indiana, March 19-21, 200

HIV prevention, precarity, and fragmented landscapes of service provision in Ukraine

n/

Supporting the Professional Reasoning of Students from Fieldwork to Practice

The Occupation-Centered Intervention Assessment (OCIA) was created to assist occupational therapy practitioners and students to apply knowledge of the core theoretical constructs of occupation from didactic education to clinical practice. This study investigated how the OCIA influenced students’ professional reasoning and supported students’ transition from academic education to clinical practice during fieldwork. Using an inductive qualitative approach, researchers analyzed master’s level students’ (n=61) reflection on using the OCIA to analyze an intervention they had reported providing during fieldwork. Collaborative data analysis produced 48 initial codes. Ongoing peer briefing led to grouping of coded data into three themes and 15 subthemes, and subsequently into four subthemes. Trustworthiness was established through use of multiple researchers, reflexivity, an audit trail, thick description, and peer briefing. Three major themes emerged: (1) promotion of reflection on practice; (2) support of the student’s developing professional identity; and (3) ease of use of the OCIA. The OCIA serves as a tool to facilitate development of students’ professional reasoning while promoting occupation-centered practice

The role of social attention in older adults’ ability to interpret naturalistic social scenes

Funding This work was supported by a Discovery Project grant (DP150100302) from the Australian Research Council awarded to J.D.H. and L.H.P.Peer reviewedPostprin

Does Fungal Endophyte Infection Improve Tall Fescue’s Growth Response to Fire and Water Limitation?

Invasive species may owe some of their success in competing and co-existing with native species to microbial symbioses they are capable of forming. Tall fescue is a cool-season, non-native, invasive grass capable of co-existing with native warm-season grasses in North American grasslands that frequently experience fire, drought, and cold winters, conditions to which the native species should be better-adapted than tall fescue. We hypothesized that tall fescue’s ability to form a symbiosis with Neotyphodium coenophialum, an aboveground fungal endophyte, may enhance its environmental stress tolerance and persistence in these environments. We used a greenhouse experiment to examine the effects of endophyte infection (E+ vs. E−), prescribed fire (1 burn vs. 2 burn vs. unburned control), and watering regime (dry vs. wet) on tall fescue growth. We assessed treatment effects for growth rates and the following response variables: total tiller length, number of tillers recruited during the experiment, number of reproductive tillers, tiller biomass, root biomass, and total biomass. Water regime significantly affected all response variables, with less growth and lower growth rates observed under the dry water regime compared to the wet. The burn treatments significantly affected total tiller length, number of reproductive tillers, total tiller biomass, and total biomass, but treatment differences were not consistent across parameters. Overall, fire seemed to enhance growth. Endophyte status significantly affected total tiller length and tiller biomass, but the effect was opposite what we predicted (E−\u3eE+). The results from our experiment indicated that tall fescue was relatively tolerant of fire, even when combined with dry conditions, and that the fungal endophyte symbiosis was not important in governing this ecological ability. The persistence of tall fescue in native grassland ecosystems may be linked to other endophyte-conferred abilities not measured here (e.g., herbivory release) or may not be related to this plant-microbial symbiosis