Społeczna interpretacja wybranych wczesnośredniowiecznych cmentarzysk rzędowych w perspektywie gender studies i lifecycle analysis

Wydział Historyczny: Instytut Prahistorii

Gender-dependent language anxiety in Polish communication apprehensives

This paper analyzes the relationship between communication apprehension and language anxiety from the perspective of gender. As virtually no empirical studies have addressed the explicit influence of gender on language anxiety in communication apprehensives, this paper proposes that females are generally more sensitive to anxiety, as reflected in various spheres of communication. For this reason, language anxiety levels in communication apprehensive females should be higher, unlike those of communication apprehensive males. Comparisons between them were made using a student t test, two-way ANOVA, and post-hoc Tukey test. The results revealed that Polish communication apprehensive secondary grammar school males and females do not differ in their levels of language anxiety, although nonapprehensive males experience significantly lower language anxiety than their female peers. It is argued that the finding can be attributed to developmental patterns, gender socialization processes, classroom practices, and the uniqueness of the FL learning process, which is a stereotypically female domain.

The Arab Spring as a Test of post-Lisbon Capabilities and Strategies of the European Union in North Africa

This study aims to present the conditions related to the European Union’s involvement in the Arab Spring, as well as examine the extent of this capability-based involvement in the first months of 2011 against the background of competence disputes between institutions and inter-governmental contentions. These considerations will be the basis for conclusions on the theoretical and practical viability of the European Union’s action in the region of North Africa, in terms of both interests defined in Brussels and representation of a jointly agreed position and undertaking practical actions in the international arena. These assumptions can facilitate a new perspective for the EU’s strategic approach framework in the region of North Africa.

Some preliminary conjunctural thoughts on countercultures

The article is devoted to analysis of various countercultures aspects. The Author hypothesizes that the forms of contemporary politics are the result of two fundamentally interrelated strategic vectors. First is built upon a politics of ressentiment, setting “ordinary” folks against the socio‐cultural elite which constututed to the “new right” movement. Second vector is originated of counterculture of the 1960s. The author states that counterculture exists without a singular identity. It is a space of hybridity and heterogenity. On the other hand counterculture is related to the concept of contemporary ambivalence as well it transforms of affective experience of everyday life. Another feature of counterculture is connected with the conviction that counterculture stands against of dominant culture. Also the author puts counterculture movements against various aspects of new american modernity including reconstruction of the practice of the hegemony, as well as through popular culture and reconstruction of the „left” and „right” idelogy and practice.

Doença de Crohn

Projeto de Pós-Graduação/Dissertação apresentado à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como parte dos requisitos para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Ciências Farmacêuticas

Leadership, fairness and gender: a practitioner's perspective

This Portfolio of Exploration outlines the course of learning by a practitioner on a personal leadership journey. It constructs a functional examination of ideas around leadership. It explores the belief system which underpins leadership practice and it also explores to what extent the increased participation of women can lead to a qualitatively different type of leadership. Different models of leadership are explored to find the model which can best fit with the author’s perception of leadership. The Women’s Intercultural Leadership Model is discussed. This model conceptualises leadership as the envisioning of oneself and others as potential leaders. It seeks to promote that recognition whilst at the same time encouraging personal transformation. The promotion of a values based leadership is examined. The value of fairness is examined as an element of functional leadership. The extent to which increasing the number of women in leadership can lead to a qualitatively different type of leadership is explored. Drucker’s assertion that every practice rests on theory is used to unearth the underlying assumptions of this reflective practitioner doctorate. Kegan’s Theory of Adult Mental Development and Subject-Object separation is used to explicitly examine knowledge construction. Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and Assumption/Commitment/Behaviour/Outcome (ACBO) template are used to promote practice change.

The Shawlies: A study of early neoliberal ‘gender-fication’. The Street Trading Act, 1926, modern gender-fication, and the implications for Cork’s women street traders

For centuries Cork’s Shawlies, working-class women, survived by trading on public streets. My study explores how the first Irish Free State government, and Cork’s local authority, limited the rights of poor women to earn by subsistence trading with The Street Trading Act, 1926. The government insisted this would regulate street trading. In practice it further marginalised the women economically and socially, containing them outside the privileged, commercial city centre. In Cork the legislation facilitated the gradual disappearance of the Shawlies amid entrenched social processes and relations, contingencies that allowed for the abuse of their rights in the service of amalgamated business interests. This study address the role of discourses in deepening this marginalisation. My theoretical framework is designed to demonstrate how a seemingly innocuous piece of legislation would, in practice, do this. I set out the concepts of ‘Thriving State’, ‘Prosperous State’, and state of ‘Best Intentions’ that uses gentrification to meet these goals. The existing knowledge on women in trade is then examined, highlighting the gaps in what is known about the Shawlies. Chapter 3 details the theory behind my genealogical method. The legislation, debate, and other data produced at the national level is then examined, before moving to the local data. Chapter 6 is devoted to the Shawlies, setting their stories in the larger context of the debates. An examination of studies of contemporary women street traders in poor nations follows, along with a brief history of the decline of street trading in New York city under gentrification. Points of convergence between that process and the one in Cork are identified, along with convergences between contemporary traders and the Shawlies. The conclusion sets out my methodological, theoretical and substantive discoveries, and comments on current nostalgic renderings of the Shawlies in Cork’s newly gentrified Corn Market Street.

States of play: Irish childhoods, race and belonging

This thesis explores the meaning-making practices of migrant and non-migrant children in relation to identities, race, belonging and childhood itself in their everyday lives and in the context of ‘normalizing’ discourses and spaces in Ireland. The relational, spatial and institutional contexts of children’s worlds are examined in the arenas of school, home, family, peer groups and consumer culture. The research develops a situated account of children’s complex subject positions, belongings and exclusions, as negotiated within discursive constructs, emerging in the ‘in-between’ spaces explored with other children and with adults. As a peripheral EU area both geographically and economically, Ireland has traditionally been a country of net emigration. This situation changed briefly in the late 1990s to early 2000s, sparking broad debate on Ireland’s perceived ‘new’ ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity arising from the arrival of migrant people both from within and beyond the EU as workers and as asylum seekers, and drawing attention to issues of race, identity, equality and integration in Irish society. Based in a West of Ireland town where migrant children and children of migrants comprise very small minorities in classroom settings, this research engages with a particular demographic of children who have started primary school since these changes have occurred. It seeks to represent the complexities of the processes which constitute children’s subjectivities, and which also produce and reproduce race and childhood itself in this context. The role of local, national and global spaces, relational networks and discursive currents as they are experienced and negotiated by children are explored, and the significance of embodied, sensory and affective processes are integrated into the analysis. Notions of the functions and rhetorics of play and playfulness (Sutton-Smith 1997) form a central thread that runs throughout the thesis, where play is both a feature of children’s cultural worlds and a site of resistance or ‘thinking otherwise’. The study seeks to examine how children actively participate in (re)producing definitions of both childhood and race arising in local, national and global spaces, demonstrating that while contestations of the boundaries of childhood discourses are contingently successful, race tends to be strongly reiterated, clinging to bodies and places and compromising belonging. In addition, it explores how children access belongings through agentic and imaginative practices with regard to peer and family relationships, particularly highlighting constructions of home, while also illustrating practices of excluding children positioned as unintelligible, including the role of silences in such situations. Finally, drawing on teachers’ understandings and on children’s playful micro-level negotiations of race, the study argues that assumptions of childhood innocence contribute to justifying depoliticised discourses of race in the early primary school years, and also tend to silence children’s own dialogues with this issue. Central throughout the thesis is an emphasis on the productive potentials of children’s marginal positioning in processes of transgressing definitional boundaries, including the generation of post-race conceptualisations that revealed the borders of race as performative and fluid. It suggests that interrupting exclusionary raced identities in Irish primary schools requires engagement with children’s world-making practices and the multiple resources that inform their lives.

Reduction of quantity smoked predicts future cessation among older smokers.

AIM: To examine whether smokers who reduce their quantity of cigarettes smoked between two periods are more or less likely to quit subsequently. STUDY DESIGN: Data come from the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative survey of older Americans aged 51-61 in 1991 followed every 2 years from 1992 to 1998. The 2064 participants smoking at baseline and the first follow-up comprise the main sample. MEASUREMENTS: Smoking cessation by 1996 is examined as the primary outcome. A secondary outcome is relapse by 1998. Spontaneous changes in smoking quantity between the first two waves make up the key predictor variables. Control variables include gender, age, education, race, marital status, alcohol use, psychiatric problems, acute or chronic health problems and smoking quantity. FINDINGS: Large (over 50%) and even moderate (25-50%) reductions in quantity smoked between 1992 and 1994 predict prospectively increased likelihood of cessation in 1996 compared to no change in quantity (OR 2.96, P<0.001 and OR 1.61, P<0.01, respectively). Additionally, those who reduced and then quit were somewhat less likely to relapse by 1998 than those who did not reduce in the 2 years prior to quitting. CONCLUSIONS: Reducing successfully the quantity of cigarettes smoked appears to have a beneficial effect on future cessation likelihood, even after controlling for initial smoking level and other variables known to impact smoking cessation. These results indicate that the harm reduction strategy of reduced smoking warrants further study.

A cross-site, comparative effectiveness study of an integrated HIV and substance use treatment program.

Co-occurrence of HIV and substance abuse is associated with poor outcomes for HIV-related health and substance use. Integration of substance use and medical care holds promise for HIV patients, yet few integrated treatment models have been reported. Most of the reported models lack data on treatment outcomes in diverse settings. This study examined the substance use outcomes of an integrated treatment model for patients with both HIV and substance use at three different clinics. Sites differed by type and degree of integration, with one integrated academic medical center, one co-located academic medical center, and one co-located community health center. Participants (n=286) received integrated substance use and HIV treatment for 12 months and were interviewed at 6-month intervals. We used linear generalized estimating equation regression analysis to examine changes in Addiction Severity Index (ASI) alcohol and drug severity scores. To test whether our treatment was differentially effective across sites, we compared a full model including site by time point interaction terms to a reduced model including only site fixed effects. Alcohol severity scores decreased significantly at 6 and 12 months. Drug severity scores decreased significantly at 12 months. Once baseline severity variation was incorporated into the model, there was no evidence of variation in alcohol or drug score changes by site. Substance use outcomes did not differ by age, gender, income, or race. This integrated treatment model offers an option for treating diverse patients with HIV and substance use in a variety of clinic settings. Studies with control groups are needed to confirm these findings.

Young caregivers in the end-of-life setting: a population-based profile of an emerging group.

PURPOSE: Little is known about young caregivers of people with advanced life-limiting illness. Better understanding of the needs and characteristics of these young caregivers can inform development of palliative care and other support services. METHODS: A population-based analysis of caregivers was performed from piloted questions included in the 2001-2007 face-to-face annual health surveys of 23,706 South Australians on the death of a loved one, caregiving provided, and characteristics of the deceased individual and caregiver. The survey was representative of the population by age, gender, and region of residence. FINDINGS: Most active care was provided by older, close family members, but large numbers of young people (ages 15-29) also provided assistance to individuals with advanced life-limiting illness. They comprised 14.4% of those undertaking "hands-on" care on a daily or intermittent basis, whom we grouped together as active caregivers. Almost as many young males as females participate in active caregiving (men represent 46%); most provide care while being employed, including 38% who work full-time. Over half of those engaged in hands-on care indicated the experience to be worse or much worse than expected, with young people more frequently reporting dissatisfaction thereof. Young caregivers also exhibited an increased perception of the need for assistance with grief. CONCLUSION: Young people can be integral to end-of-life care, and represent a significant cohort of active caregivers with unique needs and experiences. They may have a more negative experience as caregivers, and increased needs for grief counseling services compared to other age cohorts of caregivers.

Body image and body satisfaction differ by race in overweight postpartum mothers.

BACKGROUND: Body image (BI) and body satisfaction may be important in understanding weight loss behaviors, particularly during the postpartum period. We assessed these constructs among African American and white overweight postpartum women. METHODS: The sample included 162 women (73 African American and 89 white) in the intervention arm 6 months into the Active Mothers Postpartum (AMP) Study, a nutritional and physical activity weight loss intervention. BIs, self-reported using the Stunkard figure rating scale, were compared assessing mean values by race. Body satisfaction was measured using body discrepancy (BD), calculated as perceived current image minus ideal image (BD<0: desire to be heavier; BD>0: desire to be lighter). BD was assessed by race for: BD(Ideal) (current image minus the ideal image) and BD(Ideal Mother) (current image minus ideal mother image). RESULTS: Compared with white women, African American women were younger and were less likely to report being married, having any college education, or residing in households with annual incomes >$30,000 (all p < 0.01). They also had a higher mean body mass index (BMI) (p = 0.04), although perceived current BI did not differ by race (p = 0.21). African Americans had higher mean ideal (p = 0.07) and ideal mother (p = 0.001) BIs compared with whites. African Americans' mean BDs (adjusting for age, BMI, education, income, marital status, and interaction terms) were significantly lower than those of whites, indicating greater body satisfaction among African Americans (BD(Ideal): 1.7 vs. 2.3, p = 0.005; BD(Ideal Mother): 1.1 vs. 1.8, p = 0.0002). CONCLUSIONS: Racial differences exist in postpartum weight, ideal images, and body satisfaction. Healthcare providers should consider tailored messaging that accounts for these racially different perceptions and factors when designing weight loss programs for overweight mothers.

Gender differences in the risk of HIV infection among persons reporting abstinence, monogamy, and multiple sexual partners in northern Tanzania.

BACKGROUND: Monogamy, together with abstinence, partner reduction, and condom use, is widely advocated as a key behavioral strategy to prevent HIV infection in sub-Saharan Africa. We examined the association between the number of sexual partners and the risk of HIV seropositivity among men and women presenting for HIV voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) in northern Tanzania. METHODOLOGY/ PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Clients presenting for HIV VCT at a community-based AIDS service organization in Moshi, Tanzania were surveyed between November 2003 and December 2007. Data on sociodemographic characteristics, reasons for testing, sexual behaviors, and symptoms were collected. Men and women were categorized by number of lifetime sexual partners, and rates of seropositivity were reported by category. Factors associated with HIV seropositivity among monogamous males and females were identified by a multivariate logistic regression model. Of 6,549 clients, 3,607 (55%) were female, and the median age was 30 years (IQR 24-40). 939 (25%) females and 293 (10%) males (p<0.0001) were HIV seropositive. Among 1,244 (34%) monogamous females and 423 (14%) monogamous males, the risk of HIV infection was 19% and 4%, respectively (p<0.0001). The risk increased monotonically with additional partners up to 45% (p<0.001) and 15% (p<0.001) for women and men, respectively with 5 or more partners. In multivariate analysis, HIV seropositivity among monogamous women was most strongly associated with age (p<0.0001), lower education (p<0.004), and reporting a partner with other partners (p = 0.015). Only age was a significant risk factor for monogamous men (p = 0.0004). INTERPRETATION: Among women presenting for VCT, the number of partners is strongly associated with rates of seropositivity; however, even women reporting lifetime monogamy have a high risk for HIV infection. Partner reduction should be coupled with efforts to place tools in the hands of sexually active women to reduce their risk of contracting HIV.