Working with transnational immigrants: expanding meanings of family, community, and culture

An increasing number of recent immigrants maintain intense connections with their countries and extended families. The complexity of relationships that arise from transnational connections calls into question dominant discourses about family bonds and requires that we adopt new theory and treatment considerations. The relational stresses and the almost untenable choices that economic immigrants face take the form of separations and reunions of parents and children, and difficult gender or generation transformations that need to be considered against this new transnational backdrop. This article proposes a model that encompasses foundational approaches with new approaches in family therapy by focusing on three crucial contexts for work with immigrants: the relational, the community, and the cultural-sociopolitical. Family therapists are also encouraged to create collaborative links with migration studies, a growing interdisciplinary field.     

Systemic Wisdom,The ‘Selving’ of Nature,and Knowledge Transformation: Education for the ‘Greater Whole’

Considerations arising in the context of burgeoning concerns about the environment can provoke an exploration of issues that have significance both for environmental education in particular and education more generally. Notions of the ‘greater whole’ and ‘systemic wisdom’ that feature in some strands of environmental discourse are a case in point. It is argued that interpretations of these notions arising in currently influential scientific and systems thinking understandings of nature that attempt to overcome a corrosive separation of humankind and nature through a dilution or dismissal of the distinction between the human and non-human, self and other, require critical evaluation if they are not to bring their own dangers. Merleau-Pontian understandings of object constitution in a subjectively informed life-world and ideas of the ‘selving’ of natural things are drawn upon in developing a non-discursively grounded interpretation of systemic wisdom. The latter is taken to raise questions that have considerable transformative potential for conventional views of knowledge and its curriculum organisation.     

“It is Good to Know Now…Before it’s Too Late”: Promoting Sexual Health Literacy Amongst Resettled Young People With Refugee Backgrounds

Little is known about access to sexual health information amongst young people with refugee backgrounds living in countries of resettlement. This paper reports on a study of sexual health amongst recently arrived young people from refugee backgrounds in Melbourne, Australia. The study employed qualitative research methods to explore and describe how resettled youth access, interpret and implement sexual health information. Between August and December 2007, data was collected through 23 focus group discussions and 14 in-depth interviews involving 142 young people with refugee backgrounds. Participants were purposively selected to reflect the ethnic composition of humanitarian entrants to Australia over the past 3 years. Their countries of origin included Iraq, Afghanistan, Burma, Sudan, Liberia, and Horn of Africa countries. The findings highlight how young people with refugee backgrounds are disadvantaged in relation to access to sexual health information. Young people had little knowledge of sexual health or STIs apart from HIV/AIDS. While they are aware of potential sources of sexual health information, few of these sources are utilized. Specific barriers to learning about sexual health include concerns about confidentiality, shame and embarrassment when discussing sexual health, and the competing demands of resettlement. The paper argues for sexual health promotion to be an explicit part of early resettlement services for refugee youth, and the implications for the development of appropriate sexual health education programs are discussed.     

Plumbing the Depths: A Recovery of Natural Law and Natural Wisdom in the Context of Debates about Evolutionary Purpose

I argue that the theological traditions of natural law and wisdom offer helpful meeting points in discussions about evolutionary “purpose” and contingency in relation to theological purpose, and serve to form the basis for a theology of nature. Natural law offers a way of describing the ordered action of God toward complexity in a contingent world without using the language of either “design” or “progress.” The theological tradition of wisdom as implicit in the natural world, learned in the human community, and received as gift of grace offers a further means of interconnecting biological reality with spiritual experience, while retaining distinctions. Wisdom and natural law intersect inasmuch as natural law is participation in Eternal Wisdom, although the latter makes sense only from the prior perspective of faith.     

Emotional Relationships in Mothers and Infants: Culture-Common and Community-Specific Characteristics of Dyads from Rural and Metropolitan Settings in Argentina, Italy, and the United States

This study uses country and regional contrasts to examine culture-common and community-specific variation in mother-infant emotional relationships. Altogether, 220 Argentine, Italian, and U.S. American mothers and their daughters and sons, living in rural and metropolitan settings, were observed at home at infant age 5 months. Both variable- and person-centered perspectives of dyadic emotional relationships were analyzed. Supporting the notion that adequate emotional relationships are a critical and culture-common characteristic of human infant development, across all samples most dyads scored in the adaptive range in terms of emotional relationships. Giving evidence of community-specific characteristics, Italian mothers were more sensitive, and Italian infants more responsive, than Argentine and U.S. mothers and infants; in addition, rural mothers were more intrusive than metropolitan mothers, and rural dyads more likely than expected to be classified as mid-range in emotional relationships and less likely to be classified as high in emotional relationships. Adaptive emotional relationships appear to be a culture-common characteristic of mother-infant dyads near the beginning of life, but this relational construct is moderated by community-specific (country and regional) context.     

Consensus collaboration enhances group and individual recall accuracy

We often remember in groups, yet research on collaborative recall finds "collaborative inhibition": Recalling with others has costs compared to recalling alone. In related paradigms, remembering with others introduces errors into recall. We compared costs and benefits of two collaboration procedures--turn taking and consensus. First, 135 individuals learned a word list and recalled it alone (Recall 1). Then, 45 participants in three-member groups took turns to recall, 45 participants in three-member groups reached a consensus, and 45 participants recalled alone but were analysed as three-member nominal groups (Recall 2). Finally, all participants recalled alone (Recall 3). Both turn-taking and consensus groups demonstrated the usual pattern of costs during collaboration and benefits after collaboration in terms of recall completeness. However, consensus groups, and not turn-taking groups, demonstrated clear benefits in terms of recall accuracy, both during and after collaboration. Consensus groups engaged in beneficial group source-monitoring processes. Our findings challenge assumptions about the negative consequences of social remembering.     

A Goodness-of-Fit Approach to Informed Consent for Pediatric Intervention Research

As children and adolescents receive increased research attention, ethical issues related to obtaining informed consent for pediatric intervention research have come into greater focus. In this article, we conceptualize parent permission and child assent within a goodness-of-fit framework that encourages investigators to create consent procedures “fitted” to the research context, the child's cognitive and emotional maturity, and the family system. Drawing on relevant literature and a hypothetical case example, we highlight four factors investigators may consider when constructing consent procedures that best reflect participants' rights, concerns, and well-being: (a) the child's current assent capacity and the likely impact of study information on the child's mental and physical development, (b) parents' understanding of their child's treatment needs and distinctions between treatment and clinical trials research, (c) the family's history of shared decision making, and (d) the child's strivings for autonomy within the context of their parents' duty to make decisions in the child's best interest.     

Explaining Black–White differences in homicide victimization

In recent decades, homicide has so truncated life expectancy in the United States that homicide victimization should be considered a public-health problem worthy of addressing via preventive programs and policies. Evidence in the literature roots homicide victimization deep within the social structure, in problematic social inequalities and disadvantages. The evidence suggests homicide victimization is associated with six demographic, social, and lifestyle factors: being male, African-American, young, of low socioeconomic status, without adequate social support, and mentally ill or a substance user. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this paper outlines theoretical mechanisms leading to racial differences in homicide victimization. It hypothesizes that Black Americans (a) are likelier than Whites to become homicide victims and, if victimized, (b) are likelier to be younger than victimized Whites. To understand these racial differences, the paper examines whether and how multiple disadvantages—at both the macro and micro level—operate against Blacks disproportionately. The paper concludes by noting further research needs and policy implications.