SN Social Sciences

The purpose of this study was to assess the psychosocial and economic aspects of rural women engaged with one more microcredit organization of Chirirbandar Upazila under the Dinajpur District of Bangladesh. This survey-based study adopted a random sampling technique to collect primary data from 200 rural women through face-to-face interviews from September to October 2019. The study reveals that rural women’s household income, monthly family expenditure, and monthly savings increased after joining one more microcredit organization. Their ability to pay installments as per schedule as well as medical expenses increased. In addition, rural women’s involvement with MCO had a statistically significant association with their self-confidence (p < 0.05), social service (p = 0.005), and family entertainment (p < 0.001). For more advancement of the rural poor women, joint intervention between Government and Non-government organizations regarding the credit program can be solicited.

Nghiên cứu hiện tại xem xét cách chuyển đổi từ giảng dạy trực tiếp sang hình thức trực tuyến sau các hạn chế do COVID-19 ảnh hưởng đến công việc nhóm trong bối cảnh giáo dục đại học. Các sinh viên năm cuối đã được khảo sát về nhận thức và trải nghiệm của họ với các phương pháp giảng dạy hợp tác trong học kỳ mùa Thu trước khi các lệnh phong tỏa liên quan đến COVID-19 và một năm sau đó khi việc học đã chuyển sang hình thức trực tuyến do các quy định về sức khỏe. Mặc dù sinh viên có ít môn học hơn, họ có nhiều bài tập công việc nhóm hơn trong thời gian đại dịch so với trước đó. Trải nghiệm công việc nhóm được đánh giá kém khả quan hơn về mặt hiệu quả, sự hài lòng, động lực và yêu cầu khối lượng công việc trong thời gian đại dịch so với trước đó. Tuy nhiên, việc hình thành tình bạn giữa các thành viên trong nhóm là một đặc điểm nổi bật liên quan đến nhận thức tích cực về công việc nhóm cả trước và trong đại dịch. Lo âu được liên kết với các nhận thức tiêu cực về công việc nhóm chỉ trong thời gian đại dịch. Mặc dù có sự thoải mái và quen thuộc đáng kể với các công cụ trực tuyến, môi trường trực tiếp được đánh giá cao hơn so với các bối cảnh trực tuyến về chất lượng công việc sản xuất và việc học. Các phát hiện củng cố nhu cầu xem xét việc bao gồm các cơ hội tương tác và xã hội như là những yếu tố quan trọng trong thiết kế giảng dạy, đặc biệt là trong các bối cảnh trực tuyến.

Recent debates on social justice have focused mainly on cultural issues. Increasing economic inequalities, especially in the developed world, have demonstrated that socioeconomic issues have not lost their importance. I argue that for social justice to be achieved, both the cultural and socioeconomic spheres need to be considered. These two approaches to social justice interpret the default principle of equality differently: while adherents of the cultural approach understand equality as the recognition of differences, proponents of the socioeconomic approach emphasize universal equal treatment. The paper consequently claims that applying both approaches to social justice can help respond to the shortcomings of exclusively focusing on cultural issues. Emphasizing both paradigms not only acknowledges the interconnection of socioeconomic and cultural issues and provides an adequate response to increasing socioeconomic inequalities, but it also helps address social division: because the socioeconomic paradigm is based on the universalist assumption of equal treatment, it provides a sense of unity. Accordingly, I argue that a sense of unity is crucial for both approaches to justice: without unity neither socioeconomic justice nor cultural justice can be attained.

The effects of social hierarchy on well-being are pervasive. An individual’s social status within the hierarchy has been proposed to play a role in acculturative stress and psychological well-being. Subjective social status is a method of measuring social status that has not been examined in immigrants’ well-being. In an attempt to fill this gap in the literature, this study explored questions about immigrants’ well-being as they deal with acculturative stressors in the United States. In particular, the potential role of subjective social status (SSS) in the acculturative stress process was examined. Three hundred and five adult immigrants from over 68 countries were recruited. Overall, the results indicated a negative association between acculturative stress with quality of life, psychological well-being, and physical health. Regression analysis also indicated that subjective social status moderated this negative association. The results make the contribution that SSS is relevant to the association of acculturative stress and immigrant well-being.

Women in developing countries largely have been contending with their place in the production and ownership of housing in owner-occupied housing units, the study looks into women involvement in housing production within the developing countries setting. Survey was conducted among women living in owner-occupied housing units in Ile-Ife, a university town South west Nigeria. Questionnaire were administered on 98 such women to find out ownership issues on the land and the house as well as the area of their participation in the development of their houses. The findings revealed that only 10% of the respondent owned the land and the building out rightly whereas 72% of them had a joint ownership with their male partners who are mostly their husbands. In the involvement in developmental activities, it was noticed that women were mostly involved in land acquisition (M = 2.41, SD = 0.96) and building plan production (M = 2.41, SD = 1.0) from about 14 areas they could be involved. The women played important roles in hiring of professionals and artisans mostly together with their partners or in some cases alone. This was also noticed in payment for services rendered and building materials bought. Only in the area of physical labour activities that the women participation was insignificant (13%).

The sustainable livelihoods framework is an analytical tool that allows livelihoods to be conceptualized in a holistic manner. This understanding is an important prerequisite to addressing potential vulnerabilities in people’s livelihoods. However, the framework places relatively little emphasis on people and their agency, although this aspect is central to vulnerability analysis. For example, factors hindering or enabling people’s capabilities to convert potentially available assets into desired livelihood outcomes are not explicitly disclosed in the framework. Instead, they are seen as part of the assets themselves or of site-specific processes and institutions. Accordingly, the framework is of limited use to analyze to what extent a person or group is capable of accessing a particular resource or converting them into a livelihood strategy and determining how power and power relations, as well as locally institutionalized practices and relationships, influence vulnerability. Yet, such analytical why-questions are central to the alignment of interventions that address vulnerability with people’s needs and local realities. Otherwise, there is a risk of remaining at a purely descriptive level. We propose an extension and partial redesign of the framework to better account for such dynamics and to better reflect the complex realities of peoples’ livelihoods. In particular, we propose the “personal realization capability” as a complementary component for analyzing the capability of individuals or households to convert assets into livelihood outcomes. The new component allows for a more person-centered analysis that focuses on people, their social living conditions, and the social structure surrounding them.

Despite the rarity of childhood cancers, they are still a persistent source of morbidity and mortality among children and adolescents in Canada. Camps for children with chronic illnesses like cancer have been in existence for decades. However, there is little empirical contemporary qualitative scholarship that exists. In this study, we explored the experiences of 10 children and adolescents at a summer camp in Eastern Canada. We utilized a sociology of childhood conceptual framework to center children’s agency at camp as well as an institutional ethnography to focus on children’s everyday lives in the camp context. Children with cancer navigated their self-identities in complex ways at camp, including deeply emotional experiences. Their social worlds were equally complex and comprised meaningful social interactions with important social actors both inside and outside the camp context, such as companions at camp and parents. Children’s camp experiences were extensive and included the decision to come to camp, traveling to camp, and whether they engaged in dialog about cancer with other children at camp. Our findings on self-negotiations, the importance of camp companions, and cancer dialogs at camp are novel pieces of evidence. Our findings support the important role that camp plays in the lives of children with cancer and the potential role of camp in reducing cancer-related psychosocial adversity. Further, our findings serve as a call to future researchers to better engage with children’s voices to better understand how they navigate complex self and social world negotiations at camp.

This article examines the impact of the host society’s social characteristics on second-generation immigrants’ understanding of their national and ethnic identities. Specifically, we studied how second-generation Iranians in Sweden identify themselves with Iranian society, with the Iranian ethnic group in Sweden, and/or with Swedish society, and then we compared second-generation Iranians in Sweden with those in the USA concerning the issue in question. To gather the data in Sweden, we used semi-structured e-mail interviews with 15 young people of Iranian background. We used secondary data to compare our results with those obtained in the USA. When comparing the results of this study with those obtained in the USA, we did not find the identity tensions and crisis reported by research on second-generation Iranians in the USA in members of the same generation in Sweden. Some policy recommendations were suggested.