Invisible injuries and silent witnesses: The shadow of racial oppression in workplace contexts

Abstract

Internalized oppression is the primary means by which all of us hold on to, ‘agree’ and re-enact our unresolved and repressed difficulties. This paper will examine this particular phenomenon with specific regard to black and white relations in workplace contexts. The reality of prevailing external and internal issues will be fully discussed to highlight factors relating to racial oppression, capacity for resilience and their deleterious effects on black identity development.     

Not my will but thine be done: Church versus magic in contemporary Russia

In contemporary Russia, the Orthodox Church has started to assume its traditional but long‐lost role as a guardian of morality and a source of coherent ontological foundations. At the same time, magic and alternative healing have become pervasive and conspicuously public phenomena, thriving on the new institutions of the market and the free media. The article examines the nature of ideological offensive deployed by the Russian Church against magic and healing. It suggests that the controversy between Church and magic reflects conflicting ontologies of self and incompatible constructions of agency inherent in these respective cultural fields. It argues that magic and healing are built on the Western models of agency as empowerment of an autonomous individualistic self, and explores contrasting models of agency offered by the Orthodox Christianity. In the light of this argument, seemingly premodern practices of healing and magic appear as phenomena deeply embedded in globalised modernity.     

Key challenges in tram/streetcar driving from the tram driver’s perspective – A qualitative study

Tram drivers have a difficult task in controlling one of the heaviest vehicles on the road whilst negotiating a complex road environment with multiple road users. Like all public transport drivers, tram drivers need to ensure passenger safety and to run on time. However, very little research has been conducted evaluating tram driving tasks and even less on evaluating tram drivers opinion on how other road users are affecting tram road safety. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the key tram driving challenges, to identify the key road user factors affecting tram road safety as well as to explore the potential safety improvement initiatives on tram routes from the tram drivers’ viewpoint. The study incorporated five focus groups involving thirty tram drivers in Melbourne. The key themes emerged inductively from focus groups were identified through a data coding process. Outcomes of the focus groups revealed seven major challenges in tram driving: ensuring safety for all people in and around the tram, pressure for running on-time, maintaining constant concentration on roads, predicting other road users’ behavior in advance to avoid any crash incident, preventing passenger falls on board, accepting the operational constraints of trams and managing fatigue workloads. Tram drivers identified that other road users are unaware of safety issues around trams, have a poor understanding of road rules about driving with trams and often violate road rules around trams, and they mentioned this road user behaviors as the key challenges for safe tram driving. Tram drivers proposed rendering greater law enforcement on the tram network to penalize road users who are violating road rules around trams, introducing more safety campaigns and safety education to increase awareness among road users to improve tram road safety. Findings of this research enhance understanding of tram driving challenges, provide an in-depth knowledge of road user factors affecting tram road safety and suggest effective planning strategies for transit agencies to improve road safety.     

What is the key to culturally competent care: Reducing bias or cultural tailoring?

Objective: To gain a better understanding as to whether disparities in patient–provider relationships arise from ethnic minority patients being treated differently than European American patients while they would prefer to be treated the same, or whether disparities arise when ethnic minority patients are treated the same as European American patients while they would prefer to be treated differently.

Method: African-American, Latina/Latino and European American community members were recruited to participate in one of 27 focus group discussions. Topics included what made a good or bad relationship with a doctor and what led one to trust a doctor. A thematic analysis was conducted using NVivo 10.

Results: Patients of all groups described experiences that reflected the concepts of patient-centred care, such as wanting a clinician who is attentive to patients’ needs. African-American patients reported experiences they viewed as discriminatory. Some African-American patients felt it was appropriate to racially/ethnically contextualise their care, and most Latina/Latino patients preferred language/culturally concordant clinicians.

Conclusion: Health care disparities might be reduced through a patient-centred approach to cultural competency training, general knowledge of the cultural context of clinicians’ patient population, and attention to the effects of racial bias and discrimination among both clinicians and non-clinical staff.     

群体印象形成与个体印象形成：反基准比率效应

采用 “反基准比率效应”范式考察在群体印象形成与个体印象形成两种认知加工过程中, 基准比率对印象形成过程及其结果的影响。被试分别为39名19~25岁大学生(实验1：男生17名, 女生22名, 均为右利手)以及46名19~25岁大学生(实验2：男生21名, 女生25名, 均为右利手)。结果发现：无论是群体印象形成还是个体印象形成, 在学习阶段, 知觉者都能准确认知各类事件间的关系, 但会优先建构高频事件间的联结。而在测试阶段, 当低频事件与高频事件同时出现时, 知觉者发生明显关系误判, 即以反基准比率的倾向高估低频事件间的联结强度。实验表明群体与个体印象形成过程中都会产生反基准比率效应这样的加工偏差, 进而初步揭示反基准比率现象在社会信息加工领域具有一定的普遍性。     

Actions taken by schools when tobacco policies are violated: associations with adolescent smoking prevalence

This study examined the association of adolescent smoking prevalence with actions taken by schools (i.e., informing parents or disciplining pupils at school) for violating the school tobacco policy. Interaction terms between actions taken by schools and role models' smoking behavior or support for adolescents were also examined. Data were collected using self-completed questionnaires from a nationally representative Norwegian sample of 15-year-olds (1,404 pupils, 51% males) and 73 staff members. Informing parents when the school tobacco policy was violated by contrast with other actions taken by schools was not associated with lower levels of adolescent smoking. Disciplining pupils was associated with lower levels of adolescent smoking but the association was no longer significant when examined together with parents' and teachers' smoking behavior or support. Exposure to parents' and teachers' smoking, and teachers' support were associated with adolescent smoking prevalence, irrespective of actions taken by schools. Identifying the mechanism under which these different home and school factors relate to adolescent smoking may be worthwhile to inform intervention initiatives.     

Trouble articulating the right words: Evidence for a response‐exclusion account of distraction during semantic fluency

It is widely held that single‐word lexical access is a competitive process, a view based largely on the observation that naming a picture is slowed in the presence of a distractor‐word. However, problematic for this view is that a low‐frequency distractor‐word slows the naming of a picture more than does a high‐frequency word. This supports an alternative, response‐exclusion, account in which a distractor‐word interferes because it must be excluded from an articulatory output buffer before the right word can be articulated (the picture name): A high, compared to low, frequency word accesses the buffer more quickly and, as such, can also be excluded more quickly. Here we studied the respective roles of competition and response‐exclusion for the first time in the context of semantic verbal fluency, a setting requiring the accessing of, and production of, multiple words from long‐term memory in response to a single semantic cue. We show that disruption to semantic fluency by a sequence of to‐be‐ignored spoken distractors is also greater when those distractors are low in frequency, thereby extending the explanatory compass of the response‐exclusion account to a multiple‐word production setting and casting further doubt on the lexical‐selection‐by‐competition view. The results can be understood as reflecting the contribution of speech output processes to semantic fluency.     

Jean Baker Miller,MD, Visionary Pragmatist

ABSTRACT

Jean Baker Miller’s 1976 book, Toward a New Psychology of Women, was an overnight success. It struck a deep chord in many women because it was based on listening to women’s stories. Instead of seeing women through the lens of male psychology with its emphasis on separation and autonomy, Jean suggested that relationships are central to women’s experience of themselves and the world. Traits that were typically pathologized (needing other people, attending to the messages of emotions, wanting to participate in growth fostering relationships for all involved) were revisited by Jean and her colleagues who discovered strengths where others had seen weakness. The resulting work is known as Relational-Cultural Theory (RCT) and has offered new understandings of women’s and men’s development with a special emphasis on the impact of power and marginalization on personal and collective wellbeing. Jean’s work is carried forward by members of a collaborative group with whom Jean worked for many years. RCT theorists have written and edited over 20 books, 115 works in progress, and numerous chapters and articles that continue to elaborate on Jean’s groundbreaking work. RCT is applied to both clinical and social justice settings. Jean was devoted to contributing to the creation of a more just society.     

受艾滋病影响儿童的歧视知觉在歧视经历和心理健康之间的作用分析

本研究旨在考察中国农村地区受艾滋病影响儿童(包括双孤儿童、单孤儿童和非孤儿童)在经历了父母感染艾滋病、父母因为艾滋病丧亡后的歧视经历和歧视知觉状况,及其对心理健康的影响.采用问卷调查了1221名被试,测查了他们的歧视经历、歧视知觉、心理健康(抑郁、孤独、自尊).经过数据分析发现:(1)歧视经历和歧视知觉存在显著的年龄段和儿童类别的差异,12岁及以下的儿童得分显著高于13岁及以上的,双孤儿童得分显著高于单孤儿童和非孤儿童;抑郁、孤独和自尊存在显著的儿童类别差异,双孤儿童、单孤儿童差于非孤儿童;且孤独和自尊还存在显著的年龄段差异,12岁以下的儿童差于13岁以上的;(2)不同歧视经历和歧视知觉的儿童在抑郁、孤独和自尊上存在显著差异,均是歧视经历、歧视知觉多的儿童抑郁和孤独严重、自尊低;(3)歧视经历对抑郁、孤独和自尊都有显著的预测作用,歧视知觉在其中起到了部分中介作用.     

SCIENTISM AND TECHNOLOGY AS RELIGIONS

Abstract. Jacques Ellul, by far the most significant author in the serious discussions on the interface between religion and technology, is apparently not known to the science‐and‐religion field. The reason is the imprecise use of the terminology. In scientific formulation the relationship can be summarized as technology /religion:: science/theology. The first pair are robust three‐dimensional templates of most human experience; the second pair are linear, abstract concerns of a minority of citizens. In the parallel community—now well developed throughout academia—of science, technology, and society, where the technology/religion matters have been discussed more than the science/religion pair, John Caiazza's point that “techno‐secularism is the real problem” has been front and center for some decades. Among the theologians most aware of this, Raimundo Panikkar, Langdon Gilkey, and Huston Smith, Smith is the one who has taken the case much further than Caiazza, recognizing the danger of the real theological challenge from the religion of scientism and actively working against it. I write from a unique background among those involved in this debate—that of being deeply embedded simultaneously both in the modern science and technology establishment and in the reform of the religious enterprise for fifty years. I make the case that matters are worse than even Smith posits. He shows that scientism as a fundamentalist modern secularism serves the exact function of the theology behind the practiced religion of America and the West, that is, technology. An unexpected ray of hope has appeared in the sudden emergence of whole‐person healing (also known as complementary and alternative medicine), which is used regularly by well over half the population. This reintroduction of the spiritual dimension into this key technology of health will certainly be a major turning point.