Policy and legal framework on protecting children’s rights in Latvia and Sri Lanka

The article focuses on comparing policies and legislation, that affect social-work professionals in implementing children’s rights of Latvia and Sri Lanka. It attempts to disclose legal framework of the two countries in different socio-cultural, economic and geographical contexts (European and South-Asian) on implementing children’s rights, with base of United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). This study analyses local policies, laws, institutional structure and its implementation processes. Policy review has been made by a content analysis, empirical research conducted doing expert interviews (n = 10) focusing on implementation process. Similarities and differences are discussed between two contexts with the standpoint of global perspective of Social work as a global profession. Research results reveal that both countries have sufficient level of policies and legislation to adapt UNCRC, and established specific government bodies for ensuring children’s rights. At the same time differences are identified in application of Foster Families, Engagement of children in employments, Children employed as domestic servants, Corporal Punishment to children, in Policy implementation process in Latvia and Sri Lanka.

Clements Musa Kadalie and the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union of Africa

Between 1919 and 1929, Clements Musa Kadalie rose to worldwide fame as secretary of the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union of Africa (ICU). Under his leadership, the ICU transformed Southern Africa’s labor movement. Organizing black railway, dock and factory workers, miners, domestic servants, and farm laborers across South Africa, South West Africa (modern-day Namibia), Basutoland (Lesotho), and Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) into “One Big Union,” the ICU led a number of strikes, challenged pass laws and unionized anywhere between 100,000 and 250,000 members. Over six foot tall and always dressed in an immaculate suit, Kadalie regularly addressed mass meetings of thousands of people across rural and urban South Africa. Kadalie was born in Chifira, Tongaland, British Central Africa Protectorate (modern-day Malawi) around 1895. After being expelled from the local mission school, he migrated via Southern Rhodesia to South Africa. He was elected as the ICU’s secretary at its first meeting. The ICU took a leading role in the 1919 Cape Town dock strike and won wage increases for dock workers in 1920. By 1925, the trade union had over 50 branches across Southern Africa and a widely circulating newspaper, The Workers’ Herald. In 1927, Kadalie toured Europe, calling on the international labor movement to campaign against a raft of repressive legislation. Amid fractious internal disputes, however, Kadalie’s “czarlike” character, frivolous expenditure and “foreign” birth were publicly denounced by rivals, and the financial contributions of ICU members collapsed. Kadalie led a breakaway Independent ICU from February 1929 and called a general strike in East London in January 1930. He passed away on November 28, 1951, leaving a complicated legacy. The ICU’s radical rhetoric and mass mobilization, nevertheless, demonstrated both the possibility and necessity of organizing black workers and inspired black leaders across the world for decades to come.

Genealogies of “Verification”: Policing the Master–Servant Relationship in Colonial and Postcolonial India

Police verification of domestic servants has become standard practice in many cities in contemporary India. However, the regularization of work, which brings domestic servants under protective labour laws, is still a work in progress. Examining a long timespan, this article shows how policing of the servant, through practices of identification and verification, came to be institutionalized. It looks at the history of registration within the larger mechanism of regulation that emerged for domestic servants in the late eighteenth century. However, the establishment of control over servants was not linear in its subsequent development; registration as a tool of control took on different meanings within the changing ecosystem of legal provisions. In the late eighteenth century, it was discussed as being directly embedded in the logic of master–servant regulation, a template that was borrowed from English law. In the late nineteenth century, it was increasingly seen as a proxy for formal means of regulation, although this viewpoint was not universally accepted. Charting this history of changing structures of inclusion and exclusion within the law, the article argues that overt policing of servants is a manifestation of the colonial legacy, in which the identity of the servant is fused with potential criminality.

Amerindian Wayúu Legacy and Garciamarquezian Literary Fable

García Márquez is the only novelist of the so-called Latin American Boom whose origins lie in the rural world. Does this bear on his personal upbringing, and does it project onto his literary fabulation/storytelling? This article attempts to reply in the affirmative to these questions, recognizing the intercultural and regional context whence the author comes and carrying out a perspectivist reading that will compare the highly frequent images of the supernatural in his stories and novels to the hierophantic images of Wayúu-Amerindian narrative tradition—to which the domestic servants who accompanied his childhood in the home of his maternal grandparents in Aracataca belonged. Among the author’s narratives, the first explicit mention of the Wayúu people (the Guajiros) occurs in “Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo.” And his intercultural childhood, which can be read as an autobiographical trait, is noticeable in the character Ulises’s heteroglossia in “Eréndira,” in the Buendía children in One Hundred Years of Solitude, and in Sierva María in Of Love and Other Demons. The article argues that the intercultural childhood of the novelist is the source of the co-presence of the natural and the supernatural as unfolded in these writings, which had Colombian culture and history almost as their exclusive subjects. To this innovative reinvention of the Colombian nation, the article attributes two larger cultural consequences: first, the subversion of national literary tradition, and second, the change in Colombia’s self-image brought about by its reception.

Work

Relationships with domestic servants were among the longest-lasting and most complicated of Virginia Woolf’s life. For Woolf, domestic spaces are not private but shared, bringing women of different classes into intimate and sometimes uncomfortable proximity. Woolf’s life also spans a time of significant changes in the institution of domestic service in Britain, changes that affect Woolf’s own experience of domesticity and shape her writing. This chapter explores the intertwined contexts of domesticity and class in Woolf’s life and her writing, showing the contradictions and complexities in her thinking over time and across genres. As Alison Light has shown, Woolf’s attitude towards domestic workers often reflected ingrained class prejudices; feminist critics may be disturbed at how often servants mark the limits of Woolf’s imagination. Yet Woolf’s writing also demonstrates a career-long effort to think through the ‘servant problem’, an effort that shapes her aesthetic, her feminism, and her domestic life.

Georgian Washerwomen: tales of the tub from the long eighteenth century

Washerwomen in the Georgian period belonged, for the most part, to the small army of part-time and casual workers who found employment when and where they could. As handlers of one of the most coveted (as well as necessary) commodities of the period they were a focus of interest to a wide range of society and were growing in number as many householders came to rely less on resident domestic servants. Washerwomen were prime players in the ‘economy of makeshifts’, relying on a miscellany of supplementary activities to ‘get by’ and in which they showed both enterprise and agency.

Overcoming poverty in Laut Tribe households through gender relations on Lipan Island, Riau Islands Province

The Laut Tribe on Lipan Island in Selayar District, Lingga Regency in the Riau Islands Province is a remote community that has received guidance from the government but they live below the poverty line. This study aimed to look at the gender relations of the Laut Tribe households in relation to overcoming the poverty problems, using a gender analysis approach. This study used a qualitative methodology with a descriptive approach. The informants of this study are the husbands and wives from Laut Tribe. The data was obtained through interviews, observations, and documentation. The results of this study showed that the women were contributors to the family’s economy, which was used to meet their daily needs. Some worked as shrimp peeler laborers and domestic servants, while others followed their husbands to go to sea to sort the catch. These women role was only considered to improve the family’s economy because of the patriarchal values constructed in the community. This has an impact on gender relations, in which there is a division of roles in the domestic and public sectors which causes the women to have a double burden and has no effect on the women’s bargaining position.

NILAI FEMINISME PROFETIK DALAM NOVEL KOTA KAUM CADAR KARYA ZOE FERRARIS

Perbedaan antara laki-laki dan perempuan yang digambarkan di dalam karya sastra selalu menimbulkan beragam peristiwa sosial, termasuk persoalan ketimpangan gender.Peran perempuan dianggap hanya cocok berada di ranah domestik.Namun, secara feminisme profetik peran tersebut tidak dipersoalkan, karena perempuan meskipun berperan di dalam rumah tangga tetap bermanfaat dan memiliki nilai kebaikan.Penelitian ini bertujuan mendeskripsikan nilai feminsime profetik dalam novel Kota Kaum Cadar karya Zoe Ferraris.Penelitian ini dilakukan dengan metode deskriptif kualitatif.Pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan teknik pembacaan dan pencatatan.Data penelitian ini adalah nilai feminisme profetik dalam novel Kota Kaum Cadar karya Zoe Ferrraris. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa perempuan dan laki-laki memiliki kesempatan yang sama dalam melakukan kebaikan baik di ranah domestik maupun publik. Di dalam novel Kota Kaum Cadar karya Zoe Ferraris peran perempuan diposisikan sejajar dengan laki-laki dalam konteks berbuat kebaikan guna memeroleh remunerasi pahala dari Tuhan.Secara feminisme profetik melalui deskripsi peran tokoh perempuan dalam novel ini ditemukan pula nilai-nilai berupa; nilai humanis(amar ma’ruf), nilai liberasi (nahi munkar), nilai transedensi(tu’mina billah). Ketiga nilai tersebut saling berkaitanerat dengan nilai-nilai kebaikandalam kehidupan keluarga dan masyarakat.Kata kunci: nilai, feminisme profetik, ketimpangan genderPROPHETIC FEMINISM VALUES IN THE NOVEL KOTA KAUM CADARBY JOE FERRARISAbstract.The differences between men and women always lead to social differences and status, including gender inequality. Women are still placed and considered inferior to men and tend to have a lower status. Based on prophetic feminism, the role of women as domestic servants is not a problem, because women still have values of benefits eventhough they just stay at home. The aim of this study is to describe prophetic feminism value in the novel Kota Kaum Cadar by Zoe Ferraris. The research was conducted by using a qualitative descriptive method and the data were collected through reading and documentation techniques. The primary data in this research was prophetic feminism value in Kota Kaum Cadar novel by Zoe Ferraris. The results of the study showed that men and women have the same opportunities in exposing positive activities in local or public areas in order to get God’s rewards. The other prophetic feminist values that were found through the description of women’s character in this novel are humanization values (amar ma’ruf), liberation value (nahi munkar) and transcendence value (tu’mina billah).Keywords: values, prophetic feminism, gender inequality

Managing the observatory: discipline, order and disorder at Greenwich, 1835–1933

This article presents a case study of life and work at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich (1835–1933) which reveals tensions between the lived reality of the observatory as a social space, and the attempts to create order, maintain discipline and project an image of authority in order to ensure the observatory's long-term stability. Domestic, social and scientific activities all intermingled within the observatory walls in ways which were occasionally disorderly. But life at Greenwich was carefully managed to stave off such disorder and to maintain an appearance of respectability which was essential to the observatory's reputation and output. The article focuses on three areas of management: (1) the observatory's outer boundaries, demonstrating how Greenwich navigated both human and environmental intrusions from the wider world; (2) the house, examining how Greenwich's domestic spaces provided stability, while also complicating observatory life via the management of domestic servants; and (3) the scientific spaces, with an emphasis on the work and play of the observatory's boy computers. Together, these three parts demonstrate that the stability of the observatory was insecure, despite being perpetuated via powerful physical and social boundaries. It had to be continually maintained, and was regularly challenged by Greenwich's occupants and neighbours.

Tenaga kerja wanita (TKW) dan perubahan sosial yang disebabkannya

The focus of this research is to analyze 1) the characteristics of TKW; 2) reasons for the overseas mobility carried out by TKW; and 3) social changes that occur in the families of TKW. This research is located in Dawung Village, Ringinrejo District, Kediri Regency. A qualitative approach with this type of descriptive research is used to achieve the focus of this study. The results showed that the characteristics of TKW from Dawung Village were 1) productive age; 2) Low level of education, 3) Total dependable burden of more than 1 person; 4) the occupation which is mostly done is domestic servants; 5) Working in Asian countries. Income that is greater than working in the country is the main reason for TKW to travel abroad. They also want to have business capital, meet their children's educational needs, and are in debt. Social changes that occur in the families of TKW are in the form of changes in the role of family members, child care patterns, ways of communicating, and lifestyle. For further researchers, it is hoped that they can study the social changes of TKW families related to children's education. Fokus pelaksanaan penelitian ini adalah untuk menganalisis 1) karakteristik TKW; 2) alasan mobilitas ke luar negeri yang dilakukan oleh TKW; dan 3) perubahan sosial yang terjadi pada keluarga TKW. Penelitian ini berlokasi di Desa Dawung Kecamatan Ringinrejo Kabupaten Kediri. Pendekatan kualitatif dengan jenis penelitian deskriptif digunakan untuk mencapai fokus dari penelitian ini. Adapun hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa karakteristik TKW dari Desa Dawung yaitu 1) Berusia produktif; 2) Tingkat pendidikan yang rendah, 3) Jumlah beban tanggungan lebih dari 1 orang; 4) pekerjaan yang banyak digeluti adalah pembantu rumah tangga; 5) Bekerja di negara-negara Asia. Penghasilan yang lebih besar dibandingkan kerja di dalam negeri menjadi penyebab utama TKW melakukan mobilitar ke luar negeri. Selain itu, mereka juga ingin memiliki modal usaha, memenuhi kebutuhan pendidikan anak, serta terlilit hutang. Perubahan sosial yang terjadi pada keluarga TKW yaitu berupa perubahan peran anggota keluarga, pola pengasuhan anak, cara berkomunikasi, dan gaya hidup. Bagi peneliti selanjutnya, diharapkan dapat mengkaji mengenai perubahan sosial keluarga TKW terkait dengan pendidikan anak.