Resident well‐being, community connections, and neighbourhood perceptions, pride, and opportunities among disadvantage metropolitan and regional communities : evidence from the neighbourhood renewal project.

The current study aims investigate the relationship between participants’ neighbourhood perceptions and social capital and resident well-being using data from the Neighbourhood Renewal Project (NRP; n = 7855). Resident well-being was positively associated with the quality of the physical environment and safety of the neighbourhood, but negatively associated with government trustworthiness and community connections. Life satisfaction had a positive relationship with community connections, resident well-being, as well as quality of community services and safety. We conclude that free or low-cost opportunities to engage and connect with neighbours through participation in activities such as sporting groups, volunteer organizations, and leisure/hobby groups may increase life satisfaction of individuals in a neighbourhood, particularly for those living in low socioeconomic or stigmatized areas.

Mothering siblings: Diaspora, desire and identity in American born confused Desi

In this essay we consider the construction of cultural identity, motherhood and the family in ABCD, a film of the Indian diaspora that had its world premiere at the 2001 London Film Festival. This film reads family, apparently within familiar narrative structures such as the U.S.-immigrant story, as portrayed in films like Goodbye, Columbus and My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and the "leaving home" story, as classically portrayed in Pride and Prejudice, where a young person needs to escape from her clueless family. The irritating presence of the mother in the film, and the quickness with which her two children appear to make life-determining decisions following her death, seem to invite discussions of plot and character organized around ideas of individual development, self-improvement and understanding. This is the territory of the desire plot, an account of family history captured for the twentieth century by Freudian-Lacanian readings which position sexual desire within the unconscious history of familial fantasies, understood as vertical and Oedipal. In this territory, mothers and old ladies become, as Mary Jacobus memorably phrased it, little more than "the waste products" of a system in which marriageable women are objects of exchange between men (142) and a mother's death would be expected to grease the wheels of narrative. Identity and narrative are inextricably linked here: a certain understanding of narrative as developmental and teleological paves the way for an understanding of identity as either/or. There are problems, however, in trying to read ABCD as a bildüngsroman structured by what Susan Freidman calls "the temporal plots of the family romance, its repetitions and discontents" (137), rendering the "Indian" characteristics of the plot unreadable, and the apparently self-defeating nature of the characters' choices and behavior, rather pointless. A central [End Page 16] difficulty is that the film both responds to and resists readings based on the Oedipal model of the bildüngsroman with its focus on linear development through time.

Primed and prejudice: the Kurantha-Bothata study

O sistema de peer review é uma ferramenta fundamental nas publicações científicas, cujo objetivo é selecionar os estudos que contribuem para o avanço do conhecimento. No entanto, questionamentos tem surgido acerca de vieses no sistema de peer review. Um exemplo é o estudo "Lost science in the third world" (Gibbs, 1995), que afirma existirem sérios vieses em relação à origem dos pesquisadores. Ainda que haja evidências para suportar esse argumento, nosso conhecimento acerca de vieses no sistema de peer review ainda é limitado, já que poucos estudos controlados podem ser encontrados na literatura. No presente trabalho, foi realizado um exeprimento no qual os sujeitos deveriam avaliar um artigo sem qualquer identificação de autoria, exceto por uma nota de rodapé onde constava o nome da instituição fictícia que financiou a pesquisa. Sob uma condição, o nome da agência financiadora é associado com o continente africano, enquanto na outra condição, o nome da agência é associado ao continente europeu. Os resultados dão indícios de que possa haver um viés relacionado às origens do autor.

The stigma and prejudice of leprosy: influence on the human condition

Introduction: To analyze the knowledge, feelings and perceptions involving patients affected by leprosy, as a better understanding of these factors may be useful to decrease the stigma and prejudice associated with the condition. Methods: The study cohort consisted of 94 patients who underwent treatment for leprosy at the Health Units in the City of Cuiaba, Mato Grosso (MT), Brazil. The study questionnaire included items to collect information on socio-demographic data, knowledge about the disease, stigma, prejudice, self-esteem and quality of life of leprosy patients. Bivariate analyses were used to assess the data based on the chi-square test with a 5% significance threshold. Results: The results revealed that the study population consisted predominantly of males (55.3%) with an income between 1 and 3 times the minimum wage (67%). The survey respondents reported that the most significant difficulties related to the treatment were the side effects (44.7%) and the duration of the treatment (28.7%). A total of 72.3% of the subjects were knowledgeable about the disease, of whom 26.6% had the leprosy reaction. Stigma and prejudice were cited by 93.6% of the participants. Based on the responses, 40.4% of patients reported being depressed and sad, and 69.1% of the subjects encountered problems at work after being diagnosed. A total of 45.7% of the patients rated their quality of life between bad and very bad. Conclusions: Our results suggest that leprosy causes suffering in patients beyond pain and discomfort and greatly influences social participation.

The Caustic Pen Is Mightiest: A Tradition of Female Satire in the Novels of Jane Austen, Ivy Compton-Burnett, and Muriel Spark

Female satirists have long been treated by critics as anomalies within an androcentric genre because of the reticence to acknowledge women's right to express aggression through their writing. In Pride and Prejudice (1813), A House and Its Head (1935), and The Girls of Slender Means (1963), Jane Austen (1775-1817), Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884-1969), and Muriel Spark (1918-2006) all combine elements of realism and satire within the vehicle of the domestic novel to target institutions of their patriarchal societies, including marriage and family dynamics, as well as the evolving conceptions of domesticity and femininity, with a subtle feminism. These female satirists illuminate the problems they have with society more through presentation than judgment in their satire, which places them on the fringes of a society they wish to educate, distinguishing their satire from that written by male satirists who are judging from a privileged height above the society they are attempting to correct. All three women create heroines and secondary female characters who find ways to survive, and occasionally thrive, within the confines of a polite society that has a streak of savagery running just beneath its polished surface.

London pride and London shame,

Mode of access: Internet.

Pastiche and prejudice.

"Reprinted ... from the Times."

The novels and letters of Jane Austen;

v. 1-2. Sense and sensibility.--v. 3-4. Pride and prejudice.--v. 5-6. Mansfield Park.--v. 7-8. Emma.--v. 9. Northanger Abbey.--v. 10. Persuasion.--v. 11. Lady Susan. The Watsons. Letters.--v. 12. Letters.

The house of pride, and other tales of Hawaii,

Mode of access: Internet.