Thinking Birth Differently

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 23-46
Author(s):  
Alison Happel-Parkins ◽  
Katharina A. Azim

This feminist narrative inquiry discusses the experiences of two women in a metropolitan city in the Midsouth of the United States who each intended to have a drug- and intervention-free childbirth for the birth of their first child. This data came from a larger study that included narratives from six participants. Using Alecia Y. Jackson and Lisa A. Mazzei's concept of “plugging in,” we read and analyzed the data through three feminist theorists: Sara Ahmed, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Susan Bordo. This allowed us to push the limits of intelligibility of women and their narratives, challenging the dominant, medicalized discourses prevalent in the current cultural context of the United States.

2004 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Goggin

Interest in the fate of the German psychoanalysts who had to flee Hitler's Germany and find refuge in a new nation, such as the United States, has increased. The ‘émigré research’ shows that several themes recur: (1) the theme of ‘loss’ of one's culture, homeland, language, and family; and (2) the ambiva-lent welcome these émigrés received in their new country. We describe the political-social-cultural context that existed in the United States during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Documentary evidence found in the FBI files of three émigré psychoanalysts, Clara Happel, Martin Grotjahn, and Otto Fenichel, are then presented in combination with other source material. This provides a provisional impression of how each of these three individuals experienced their emigration. As such, it gives us elements of a history. The FBI documents suggest that the American atmosphere of political insecurity and fear-based ethnocentric nationalism may have reinforced their old fears of National Socialism, and contributed to their inclination to inhibit or seal off parts of them-selves and their personal histories in order to adapt to their new home and become Americanized. They abandoned the rich social, cultural, political tradition that was part of European psychoanalysis. Finally, we look at these elements of a history in order to ask a larger question about the appropriate balance between a liberal democratic government's right to protect itself from internal and external threats on the one hand, or crossover into the blatant invasion of civil rights and due process on the other.


2018 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Jin You ◽  
Qian Lu ◽  
Michael J. Zvolensky ◽  
Zhiqiang Meng ◽  
Kay Garcia ◽  
...  

Purpose Literature has documented the prevalence of anxiety and its adverse effect on quality of life among patients with breast cancer from Western countries, yet cross-cultural examinations with non-Western patients are rare. This cross-cultural study investigated differences in anxiety and its association with quality of life between US and Chinese patients with breast cancer. Methods Patients with breast cancer from the United States and China completed measures for anxiety (Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory) and quality of life (Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Breast). Results After controlling for demographic and medical characteristics, Chinese patients reported higher levels of trait and state anxiety than US patients. Although there was an association between anxiety and quality of life in both groups of patients, the association between state anxiety and quality of life was stronger among Chinese patients than among US patients, with the association between trait anxiety and quality of life the same between the two cultural samples. Conclusion These findings suggest that anxiety and its association with quality of life among patients with breast cancer varies depending on cultural context, which reveals greater anxiety and poorer quality of life among Chinese patients compared with US patients. This suggests greater unmet psychosocial needs among Chinese patients and highlights the need to build comprehensive cancer care systems for a better quality of life in Chinese populations.


PMLA ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 129 (3) ◽  
pp. 512-517
Author(s):  
Jenny Sharpe

In death of a discipline, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak attributes the emergence of postcolonial studies to an increase in Asian immigration to the United States following Lyndon Johnson's 1965 reform of the Immigration Act (3). I would like to resituate her genealogy of the field in order to consider the “ab-use,” or “use from below,” of the European Enlightenment she asks us to cultivate in her most recent book, An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization. To perform this move, I will suggest that postcolonial studies began more than one hundred years before the legislation Spivak names in what has become a founding document for the field. I am referring to Thomas Babington Macaulay's well-known 1835 minute on Indian education, which proposed the creation of “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect” (729). The class of Western-educated natives who would serve as liaisons between European colonizers and the millions of people they ruled came to be known in postcolonial studies as colonial subjects.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mallory Lapointe Taylor

Within the United States, the American South can be perceived as its own entity. From the arts to Southern cuisine, the South commands attention with its own history, myths and culture. Within the history of photography, Walker Evans's photographs of Alabama are arguably some of the most culturally significant images taken of the state and its residents. This thesis investigates how photographs of Alabama are collected in the same locality. By examining the collecting practices of four Alabama institutions in regards to photographs in general, and Walker Evans specifically, this case study will expand on the question of how photographs, in a Southern cultural context, work to create a sense of place and attachment to local geography.


2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Clark

I admit that I am an addict, a compulsive user of libraries and especially law libraries. As a comparative lawyer I need to investigate foreign law, which for me is the law of jurisdictions outside the United States. Since I believe the social and cultural context in which law operates is important to its understanding, I must leave the relative comfort of United States libraries and venture abroad to learn about the features of legal systems not adequately described in books. Beyond common law countries, as the IALL 20th Annual Course illustrates, the language of law is something other than English: yet another hill to climb to understand foreign law. For most of you, United States law is foreign law, which is the other side of the same issue. In addition, public international law lawyers could benefit from the comparative approach. This is particularly true for those from the Anglo-American world who rely almost exclusively on English language materials in their research. This narrow perspective undercuts the fundamental premise of universality behind a truly international legal system.


2003 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel A. Rodríguez

This study addresses the need for a missiological Christology informed by the sociohistorical and cultural context of Mexican-Americans. The author analyzes the contribution and relevancy of Christologies elaborated around the “Galilean identity” of Jesus, but argues that from an evangelical perspective, Jesus' Galilean identity does not adequately interpret the meaning of the passion and vindication of Christ. This study demonstrates that a Christology developed around the “Rejected Stone” passages found in the New Testament relates the ministry and passion of Jesus Christ in a contextually relevant way to Mexican-Americans. The author also explores the missiological implications of the proposed Christology.


1996 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 271-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uday Tate

To examine the applicability of social support scales in a cross-cultural context measures of supervisory support, coworkers' support, and support from family members and close friends were obtained from retail sales personnel, 262 from the United States, 195 from Japan, and 183 from Colombia. Reliability and the factorial validity suggest that these measures may be applied across different cultures or nations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-442
Author(s):  
Isis M. Sánchez Estellés ◽  
Mario Domínguez Sánchez‐Pinilla

Genealogy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan Tinh Trinh

This paper, in the form of walking meditation, sitting, drinking, eating, and traveling among spaces and times, witnesses how the author as a Vietnamese immigrant child living in the United States (U.S.) traces untold stories of their family through family photos. Further, this paper attempts to find, understand and connect the relation between personal and political, between individual and collective, for a Vietnamese re-education camp detainee and his family, situated in political, historical, and cultural context. The use of photo elicitation comes from the desire that the reader can engage with the voices of the family members as they describe events in their past history. In addition, this paper refuses the forms of “category” and “fixed results” in writing up academic research. Rather, it will appear in the form of daily conversation, collected from multiple settings. Simply speaking, this paper is a form of storytelling that invites the readers to oscillate, communicate and think with the author’s family members on this historical journey.


2013 ◽  
Vol 112 (2) ◽  
pp. 667-677 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Chavajay

This study investigated the extent and sources of perceived social support among international students attending a northeastern university in the United States. Using the Index of Sojourner Social Support Scale, international students reported perceiving greater socioemotional and instrumental support from other international people than from Americans. Results also indicated that younger international students perceived more socioemotional and instrumental support from others than did older international students. The findings point to sources of social support available to international students in the host culture and the important role such types of social support may play in helping international students make adjustments to living and studying in a new cultural context.


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