Societies, Volume 5, Issue 4 (December 2015) – 9 articles , Pages 686-871

Black families in the United States are usually studied from a deficit perspective that primarily considers single parents in poverty. There is, however, considerable diversity among American Black families in terms of social class, immigration status, marital status, and parenting values and practices. Using data from the Contemporary Black Marriage Study, a study of young married couples who are native-born Black, African immigrants, or Caribbean immigrants, this research examines childbearing and parenting values from an intersectional perspective. A sample of whites is included for comparison purposes. The research considers impacts of social class, immigration, gender, and race as well as structural influences. Diversity exists both within and among social and demographic groups. Full article

Community-based rehabilitation (CBR) strives to enhance quality of life for individuals with disabilities and their families by increasing social participation and equalizing opportunities in the global south. Aligning with the Sustainable Development Goals, CBR also aims to address the high rates of poverty faced by individuals with disability. Empowerment, a pillar of CBR, involves strengthening the capacity of people with disabilities, their families, and their communities to ensure reduction of disparities. This article outlines a scoping review that guided by the question: “What is known from the existing literature about the applicability of eLearning for capacity building in CBR?” This review did not uncover literature related to eLearning in CBR; however findings suggest that other disciplines, not explicitly tied to CBR, currently use eLearning to educate and empower professionals in the global south. We argue that eLearning technology could be an effective and sustainable solution for CBR programming in the global south for capacity development. Such technology could increase individuals with disabilities’ access to education and could provide opportunities for wider dissemination of knowledge, beyond typical funding cycles. With a goal of informing future CBR practice in eLearning, this article concludes by highlighting key lessons taken from other disciplines that have utilized eLearning in the global south. Full article

Family types continue to expand in the U.S., yet normative patterns of endogamy and the privileging of nuclear families persist. To understand how professional women of color navigate endogamy and family ideals, I draw on 40 in-depth interviews of professional Black women and Latinas to ask how they construct partner preferences. I find that professional Latinas and Black women prefer same-race, similarly educated partners but report significant barriers to satisfying these desires. Respondents’ experiences with racism, the rejection of ethno-racial and cultural assimilation, gendered racism from men of color, and the college gender gap emerge as mechanisms for endogamous preferences. These preferences resist and support hegemonic family formation, an ideological and behavioral process that privileges, white, middle class, endogamous, heteronormative ideals for families comprising courtship, marriage, and biological childbearing. By challenging the racial devaluation of people of color while preferring the normativity that endogamy offers, the women in this study underscore the fluidity embedded in endogamy. Full article

Intimate, romantic spaces are important sites for the examination of self-identification and perceived identification, especially with regard to gender and racial power. In this article I examine how white men in romantic relationships or marriages with Mexican women and residing in Texas, impose “Hispanic” as a racial identity as a discursive tactic that reinforces the hegemonic power of being white and being a man in order to define the situation, impose ideals that distance Mexican partners from being “too ethnic” or “threatening” in order to achieve closer proximity to “honorary whiteness” and acceptability of racial others, and creates a romantic space that is coercive instead of loving and safe. This study thus finds that white men used their hegemony to not only employ imposed Hispanicity, which I define as an institutionally created but culturally and institutionally imposed label, and an action based on the use of direct and indirect coercion and force by others, in this case, white romantic partners, for the purpose of establishing power and determining the situation in which racial definitions are made. Therefore, “Hispanic” becomes an identity that is chosen by others and while participants of Mexican descent do employ agency, the socially imposed conditions and expectations associated with “Hispanic” serve to police the identities, bodies, lives, and actions of people of Latin American descent. Full article

The primary objective of the qualitative study was to describe women’s resilience in older adulthood according to older women’s interpretations of their experiences and the contexts of their lives. Intersectionality and critical feminist gerontology served as theoretical frameworks for examining, interpreting and highlighted the dynamic nature of intersecting identities and the interrelationships between identity and contextual factors. Constructivist grounded theory methodology was used to identify themes that represent older women’s subjective interpretations of their experiences with adversity and to construct definitions of resilience based on their experiences. The aspects of identity that women in the study associated with their experiences of adversity and their resilience were age, physical and mental health, marital status and income. Women in the study emphasized how subjective interpretations influenced the meaning they associated with events, circumstances, or changes that accompanied aging and their understanding of the role of identities in those experiences. Full article

The modern history of disability, and of speech impediments in particular, has largely been written as one of medical discourse and (more recently) of social and cultural imaginations. The pathology of speech appears as an embodied, but ultimately intangible, issue due to the transient nature of sound itself. Once produced, it disappears, and seems to escape memory. In this text, stammering is approached as an object of material history. Drawing on the “paper trail” left by medical experts, popular entertainers and a handful of stammerers’ experiences, this paper examines the ways in which stammering was made material in the nineteenth century. The impediment not only provided (pseudo) medical actors with a lucrative market for various curative objects and practices, but also propelled the (sheet-)music business. Stammerers themselves appear in this story of materialization and market as both agents and objects. The cheap self-cures, medical manuals, sheet music and (later) recordings that were produced not only for, but also by, them, show how easily the impediment was aligned with the modern consumer’s identity and how the persona of the stammerer was, ultimately, lodged in the Western collective memory in very material ways. Full article

Adolescent childbearing has received decreasing attention from academics and policymakers in recent years, which may in part reflect the decline in its incidence. Another reason may be its uncoupling from nonmarital childbearing. Adolescent childbearing became problematized only when it began occurring predominantly outside marriage. In recent decades, there have been historic rises in the rate of nonmarital childbearing, and importantly, the rise has been steeper among older mothers than among adolescent mothers. Today, two out of five births are to unmarried women, and the majority of these are to adults, not adolescents. Nonmarital childbearing is in and of itself associated with lower income and poorer maternal and child outcomes. However, unmarried adolescent mothers might face more difficulties than unmarried adult mothers due to their developmental status, education, living arrangements, and long-term prospects for work. If this is true, then the focus on adolescent mothers ought to continue. We suggest several facets of adolescent motherhood deserving of further study, and recommend that future research use unmarried mothers in their early 20s as a realistic comparison group. Full article

Background: Organizational learning theory has retained considerable attention in the past decades from a wide array of academic disciplines in social sciences. Yet few integrative efforts have satisfactorily offered a comprehensive and systematic articulation of the concept of organizational learning with regards to: (a) its core constitutive dimensions and associated mechanisms; (b) the analytical levels from such mechanisms operate (e.g., workers, teams, organizations); as well as (c) their interplay. Methods: This article builds on a critical synthesis of predominant approaches in organizational learning theory (i.e., structural functionalist, social constructivist and middle range approaches), highlighting the contributions of each approach on the key analytical elements guiding our inquiry (i.e., core dimensions and associated mechanisms, analytical levels, interplay). Drawing from the work of sociologists Anthony Giddens and Margaret Archer on agency-structure theory, we develop a series of theoretical propositions supporting the Organizational Learning Practices (OLP) concept as a unifying heuristic tool. Results: OLP are defined as a set of collectively shared practices held by members of a given organization embedded in normative, political, and semantic dynamics. At the heart of such dynamics lies organizational knowledge as a power resource pivotal to the sustainable development of organizations, as well as that of their members. Conclusion: OLP offer promising answers to on-going debates in organizational learning theory, and we conclude by discussing concrete guidelines to advance research and practice on OLP. Full article

Through considerable efforts and investments of resources, adolescent pregnancy and birth rates in the United States have decreased significantly over the past two decades. Nonetheless, large disparities persist for many populations of youth. Reducing unintended adolescent pregnancies is considered a “winnable public health battle,” but one that will require innovative thinking and continued persistence. This paper reviews the recent research literature and innovative programmatic efforts to identify six promising strategies that address the challenge of adolescent pregnancy in new ways. These strategies aim to: (1) understand and address the complexity of adolescent lives; (2) expand the provision of quality sexual health education; (3) engage youth through technology and media; (4) increase access to contraceptives and other sexual health services; (5) create tailored interventions for populations with special needs; and (6) create a supportive policy environment. By building upon lessons learned from past efforts, we can move the field toward the development, strengthening, and promotion of future strategies that enhance the sexual well-being of all adolescents. Full article