Social Roles of Family and Friends Differ in Social Networks of Older Adults Who Live Alone

Social networks consisting of family and friends tend to better facilitate older adults’ emotional well-being than networks consisting of only family or only friends. This study assessed the heterogeneity of older adults’ network compositions based on the network members’ relationship (family vs. friends) and proximity (local vs. non-local) and evaluated the types of interactions between older adults and types of members. Adults 60 years and older living in a U.S. Midwestern city participated in a one-time structured survey (n=133), and reported about 1,730 social network members. Compared to participants who lived with others, those who lived alone reported more depressive symptoms and higher frequency of feeling lonely (p=0.002). Those who lived alone also had higher proportions of local friends in their networks than those who lived with others (p=0.02). Whereas the social roles of family and friends were similar in networks of older adults who lived with others, those who lived alone were less likely to identify family as who they co-engaged in social activities with (local family OR=0.55, non-local family OR=0.27) and who provided companionship (local family OR=0.33, non-local family OR=0.11) compared to their local friends. Having more members who co-engaged in activities was associated with lower depressive symptoms (p=0.05) and less frequency of feeling lonely (p<0.01). Providing supportive infrastructure for community-based older adults to develop and maintain co-engaging relationships with local friends may be beneficial. Network approaches can be used to identify existing network members who may be inspired to play this role.

The Burrard Neale Memorial at Walhampton – Legend and Reality

The Burrard Neale monument in Lymington was erected ostensibly to celebrate the career of an admiral well known to the local community, Sir Harry Neale. Examination of his career casts doubt on this being the sole motivation. A wider review of his family, associates, and of the circumstances surrounding the erection of the monument engenders further misgivings about the received narrative handed down to later generations.<br/> Although erected to a member of a local family dominant in Lymington, the effect was rather more to perpetuate the Burrard name, which Sir Harry himself had dropped in 1795, and to bestow self-reflected glory on his heir, his brother George.

The Transition to a Coresidential Partnership: Who Moves and Who Has the Partner Move In?

Moving into a joint household is an important step in the process of union formation. While a growing body of literature investigates differences between those couples who start coresidence and those who do not, we know little about the likelihood of moving upon the start of coresidence. The aim of this paper is to investigate how individual and couple-level characteristics are associated with moving, or having a partner move in, at the start of coresidence. We use data from 10 waves of the German Family Panel pairfam for those who started coresidence (n = 983) and estimate logistic regression models of moving versus having a partner move in. The respondents in the sample are quite young with a mean age of 27. For long-distance relationships, those with a higher level of education than their partner and women who were living in close proximity to their parents were less likely to move. In short-distance relationships, respondents living in the parental home or in crowded housing were more likely to move than those living in uncrowded housing. In contrast with previous research, we did not find that women were more likely to move than men. Our results highlight that factors like educational resources, housing demands, and local family ties have differential effects on moving decisions at the start of coresidence depending on the distance moved.

Move or perish? Sticky mobilities in the Swiss academic context

This article uses a context of increasing institutional demand to be geographically mobile to examine how early-career researchers move across borders. I explore the case of Swiss academia, a particularly competitive and attractive environment with the highest levels of inbound and outbound mobility in Europe. In line with the aims of the European Research Area, an EU programme created in 2000 to foster a pan-European academic labour market, Switzerland funds scientific mobility and promotes extended research trips abroad as tools to boost collaboration and research excellence. Therefore, Swiss institutions have valued mobility for professional and personal development. In the meantime, they have raised concerns about female academics not being mobile and the potential consequences of their local family ties on career inequalities. In this study, I explore how early-career researchers experience mobility and how their personal accounts challenge institutional definitions of being mobile or immobile. I draw on a qualitative analysis of 65 semi-structured interviews conducted for two EU research projects on early-career academics from various backgrounds. I show how empirical data question the traditional—and often gendered—mobile/immobile dichotomy. I also highlight how mobility practices are normalised by the interviewees. Moreover, using the concept of stickiness, I describe a subtle range of sticky-to-stretchy mobility experiences influenced by both structural and individual factors. Finally, through the figure of the geoccasional worker, I question romanticised visions of mobility and stress the need to reconsider mobility as a (gendered) precarity issue rather than as a female problem.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak during a Chinese New Year dinner in a restaurant, Hong Kong SAR (China), 2020

We reported a local family cluster of 6 confirmed COVID-19 cases, among 29 attendees of a Chinese New Year family dinner gathering in a restaurant, with 1 additional case from secondary transmission. The public should maintain social distancing at all times during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Legends on the «Muscovite» origins of several szlachta dynasties in the historical discourse of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 17th—18th century

Легенды о происхождении и корнях шляхетских родов являлись важной частью самосознания высшего сословия Великого Княжества Литовского (и Речи Посполитой в целом) в XVII–XVIII вв. Среди потенциальных вариантов интерпретации ранней родовой истории в источниках (гербовники, панегирики, акты и судебные материалы) фиксируется мотив прибытия рода в ВКЛ из Москвы или подконтрольных ее территорий. В большинстве случаев такие родословия имели фиктивный характер и создавались для того, чтобы компенсировать недостаточно знатное действительное происхождение. Для мелкой, часто безземельной шляхты апелляция к «московскому» происхождению могла становиться важным аргументом для подтверждения принадлежности к шляхетскому сословию. В свою очередь, для представителей государственной и локальных элит ВКЛ идея выезда из Москвы в Литву должна была демонстрировать лояльность и преданность по отношению к польским королям и великим князьям литовским, а также заслуги перед Речью Посполитой. В данном контексте подчеркивание московских корней соединялось с акцентом на занятии родом на протяжении многих поколений важных государственных должностей. Несмотря на многочисленные войны между Речью Посполитой и Российским государством, упор на «московское» происхождение был вполне приемлем для генеалогического дискурса ВКЛ, хотя и не являлся наиболее популярным вариантом для конструирования родового прошлого. Legends on the «Muscovite» origins of several szlachta dynasties in the historical discourse of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (and in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) in the 17th—18th century. Among the potential interpretations of the early dynastic histories in recorded sources (armorials, panegyrics, legal acts and court materials) one finds a recurring motif of a family claiming its ancestors came to the Great Principality/Grand Duchy of Lithuania from Moscow or Muscovite-controlled lands. In the majority of cases, these dynastic histories had a fictional character and was created in order to compensate a pedigree that lacked noble origins. For the lesser and often landless szlachta the appeal to «Muscovite» family origins could become an important argument when seeking to confirm one’s place amidst the szlachta class. In turn, the idea of leaving Moscow and moving into Lithuania, in the eyes of the Grand Duchy’s state and local elites of the was called to demonstrate the loyalty towards Polish Kings and Lithuanian Grand Dukes, as well as to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a whole. In the given context the accent on the Muscovite roots came hand in hand with a family’s claim at a centuries’ long occupation in state service. Despite numerous wars between Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, «Muscovite» origins were seen as a perfectly acceptable and solid argument in the genealogical discourse of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, even though it wasn’t the most popular pillars in the construction of local family histories.

REPRESENTATION OF FEMININITY IN MODERN UKRAINIAN NOVELS

The paper deals with the main tendencies of the artistic reception of women images in modern Ukrainian novels. The principles of modeling femininity in literature have been considered from the positions of the gender studies, postcolonial and psychoanalytic theory. It is proved that the peculiarities of this modeling are determined by stylistic and genre tendencies of the Ukrainian literature. The interpretation of feminine images typical for the national literary tradition (mother, family-keeper, demonic woman) has been demonstrated in numerous examples. These images correlate with the fundamental artistic principles of the turning points in history (actualization of the archetypes, attention to the irrational manifestations of human psychics). They display the ‘masculine’ literary tradition (representation of a woman as an external object), but at the same time demonstrate a new accent in the understanding of the gender roles (woman as a mentor of a man). The alternative types of the feminine identity represented by feminist and culturological women’s writing have been explored as well. Special attention has been paid to procreation as the main woman’s ability, which forms different models of feminine mentality – from the essentialist mother-type to the image of a child-free woman. The modeling of a feminine artistic worldview becomes an actual strategy in overcoming the postcolonial trauma. It is explained by the peculiarities of the postcolonial literatures, which fulfill their historical reflections in the local family stories. In this context, feminine conscience gets the status of a memory-keeper and shows the ability to trace the development of national history in its everyday dimensions. Based on the large-scale generalization of the last decades’ artistic practice, the researcher determines the main worldview intentions of modern novels, in particular the tendency to achieve gender parity, the full-fledged dialogue of men and women as the equal subjects of culture creation.

Local Family Fiqh in Malaysia: An Analysis of `Urf Methodological Framework (Fiqh Keluarga Tempatan Di Malaysia: Suatu Analisis Rangka Kerja Metodologi ‘Urfi)

The ongoing advocacy for developing local fiqh, among others, emphasizes an indigenous approach to evolving fiqh by highlighting the flaws in the dominant approach to family law reform and renewal. One of their methodological tools is to examine the existing family fiqh from its ‘urfi based content as well to explore ways of resolving new emerging usages and customs, which differ from custom of people in other communities in the Muslim world. Critics, however, have some misgivings about this approach and see it as a kind of post-modernist thinking, the thrust of which is to raise skepticism about religious content of any intellectual argument or advocacy. To rebut such an argument, following content analysis method, this paper argues by concluding that an Islamic juridical approach to insist on legislative significance of local custom in evolving a local family fiqh is governed by a set of methodological frameworks and parameters which can safeguard it against any suspicion for secularization. Keywords: Family fiqh, local, methodological framework, reform. Abstrak Sokongan umum yang berterusan untuk membangunkan fiqh tempatan, antara lain, menekankan pendekatan tempatan untuk mengembangkan fiqh dengan menonjolkan kekurangan dalam pendekatan yang dominan terhadap pembaharuan dan pembaharuan undang-undang keluarga. Salah satu alat metodologi mereka adalah untuk mengkaji fiqh keluarga yang sedia ada dari kandungan 'urfi yang berasaskannya juga untuk meneroka cara penyelesaian kegunaan dan kebiasaan yang baru muncul, yang berbeza dari kebiasaan orang dalam komuniti lain di dunia Islam. Pengkritik, bagaimanapun, mempunyai beberapa kekeliruan mengenai pendekatan ini dan melihatnya sebagai sejenis pemikiran post-modernis, teras yang menimbulkan keraguan tentang kandungan agama tentang sebarang hujah intelektual atau advokasi. Untuk menolak hujah sedemikian itu dengan menggunakan kaedah analisis kandungan, makalah ini telah berupaya untuk menyimpulkan bahawa pendekatan yuridis Islam untuk menegaskan kepentingan perundangan adat tempatan dalam mengembangkan sebuah fiqh keluarga tempatan ditadbir oleh satu set kerangka metodologi dan parameter yang dapat melindunginya daripada sebarang kecurigaan untuk sekularisasi. Kata Kunci: Fiqh keluarga, tempatan, kerangka metodologi, pembaharuan.

Religion and family politics in Hellenistic Kalaureia. Three new inscriptions from the sanctuary of Poseidon

This article presents three unpublished Hellenistic inscriptions from the sanctuary of Poseidon in Kalaureia (modern Poros): two found during archaeological excavations on the site and one recorded in a letter that was once part of Ioannis Kapodistrias’ official correspondence. All three inscriptions were dedicatory and carved on bases supporting portrait statues. Interestingly, they were offered to Poseidon by members of a single family already known from other documents in the Kalaureian epigraphic corpus. Remarkably, eight out of the 18 inscriptions discovered in Kalaureia make repeated references to men and women of this very family, which appears to have materially dominated Poseidon’s temenos and its environs during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC through the careful placement of portraits of its members. Most of these statues were conspicuously placed by the entrance to the sanctuary, though at least one of them was erected inside of the god’s temple. In our article, we present in detail the three new inscriptions, one of them an epigram, and attempt an analysis of the religious behaviour of this prominent local family against the background of contemporary sociopolitical developments.

From Total Dependency to Corporatisation: The Journey of Domestic Work in the UAE

Migrant domestic work has played complex, dynamic, and multilevel roles in the evolution of families, and the corporatisation of domestic work across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, particularly the United Arab Emirates (UAE). With the increasing globalisation process in the UAE, migrant domestic work has not only deepened families’ critical dependency towards domestic work, but also influenced the state’s logic to institutionalise reforms to control, govern, and corporatise domestic works sector in recent years. Using primary and secondary literature sources, this article examines the historical and contemporary evolution of migrant domestic work in the UAE and of the GCC region. It argues that the UAE’s domestic work sector has historically transformed from informally structured sector—heavily dependent on the sponsorship of local family structures—to emerging corporatised sector across the UAE labour market. This article presents empirical and theoretical contributions because it highlights the evolving corporatised approach of the state in managing and governing domestic work and its impacts on local family structures in the UAE.