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AbstractResearchers often assume that the extent, quality, and effectiveness of personal relationships explain why African Americans have relatively good mental health despite experiencing high levels of stress. This study tests this assumption using data from the 1990–1992 National Comorbidity Survey. Few racial differences emerge in patterns of social relationships, and the nature and quality of social relationships do not explain African Americans' resiliency on mental health. Several aspects of social relationships benefit African Americans' mental health more than Whites', but these moderating effects are insubstantial. Hence, the data do not support the assumption. If social relationships help explain the lack of racial differences in mental health, their nature and effects must be more adequately conceptualized.

This book focuses on families and their changes in Taiwan and China. Traditional notions of what constitutes a family have been changing in China, Taiwan and other Asian countries. The chapters in this book provide interesting methodological and substantive contributions to the discourse on family and social change in Chinese societies. They also underscore the implications of the various social changes in Chinese families. Written by Chinese and Western scholars, they provide an unprecedented overview of what is known about the effects of social change on Chinese families. One might think that defining a "family" is an easy task because the family is so significant to society and is universal. The family is the first place we learn culture, norms, values, and gender roles. Families exist in all societies throughout the world; but their constitution differs. In the past several decades there have been many changes in the family in Taiwan and China. For instance, whereas in the West, we use a bilineal system of descent in which descent is traced through both the mother's side and the father's side of the family, in many parts of China, descent is patrilineal, although this is changing, and China and Taiwan are starting to assume a family constitution similar to that in the West. This and other issues are discussed in great detail in this book. Indeed it is the very nature of the differences that motivated the writing of this book on changing families in Taiwan and China. The chapters in Part I: The Family in Taiwan and China focus on the basic family issues in Taiwan and China that provide the groundwork for many of the chapters that follow. Chapter 1 is about the distribution of resources in the family in Taiwan. Chapter 2 focuses on filial piety and the autonomous development of adolescents in the Taiwanese family, and Chapter 3 explores the important issue of family poverty in Taiwan. Chapter 4 moves away from Taiwan and looks at several issues of family growth and change in Hong Kong, noting the interesting similarities and differences between Hong Kong and China. Part II: Issues of Marriage, the Family and Fertility in Taiwan and China focuses specifically on marriage, family and fertility. In Chapter 5 the authors discuss the relationships between marital status, socioeconomic status and the subjective well-being among women in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Chapter 6 describes patterns of sexual activity in China and the United States. Chapter 7 consi ...

Analyzes the impact of political science curriculum on student development by comparing highly structured, sequenced majors with more flexible majors. Different student reasoning styles of undergraduates are identified, & the styles of political science undergraduates from two different universities are measured. Conclusions are drawn about the desired structure to facilitate abstract reasoning. 9 References. L. Collins

Editorial Note: A European Seminar on this subject was held in Bristol, England in Septem ber, 1959 as part of the United Nations European Social Welfare Programme. The following article, containing a summary of the main points, is being printed here because of the wide spread interest in "urban cpmmunity development" which has recently sprung up around the world. The full report of the Seminar is available from the United Nations office in Geneva. It was prepared by Mr. P. H. K. Kuenstler of the African Development Trust in London, who directed the Seminar.

The social destination of the nomenklatura.
When communism entered upon its decline in Central and Eastern Europe, J. Sta- niszkis in Poland and E. Hankiss in Hungary offered the following theory about the change of power : a section of the communist élite, realising that the development of soviet-type socialism was a threat to its authority and its social standing, took steps to transform its political role and its administrative power into economic capital. A second theory - viz. « nothing has changed » - in one sense rounds off the first, while a third - « the nomenklatura as victim of the revolution » - offers a contradictory view.
The first aim of this article is to examine the position at present held by the former members of the nomenklatura, and so to discover the main routes that they have travelled in the passage from their 1988 functions to those of 1993. In this way, it should be possible to establish a general outline of the mobility of the communist nomenklatura inside post-communist Europe. The article's second purpose is to compare the fate of the nomenklatura in three former communist countries now in transition. Given the diversity in method, and pace of change to the system in Poland, Hungary and Russia, one might have expected sizeable variations in what ultimately became of the nomenklatura. As we shall see, this is not really the case.

In this article, I show that credit scoring, although not explicitly designed as a security device, enacts (in)security in South Africa. By paying attention to a brief history of state-implemented social categories, we see how the dawn of political democracy in 1994 marked an embrace of – not opposition to – their inheritance by the African National Congress. The argument is placed within a theoretical framework that dovetails David Lyon's popularization of 'social sorting' with an extension of Harold Wolpe's understanding of apartheid and capitalism. This bridging between Lyon and Wolpe is developed to advance the view that apartheid is a social condition whose historical social categories of rule have been reproduced since 1994 in the framing of credit legislation, policy and scoring. These categories are framed in the 'new' South Africa as indicators of 'social transformation'. Through the lens of credit scoring, in particular, it is demonstrated that 'social transformation' not only influences, shapes and reproduces historical forms of social categories, but also serves the state's attempt to create and maintain populations as risks.

A survey of the literature on social movements shows that the contributions by American and European scholars have shed considerable light on two problems: why social movements emerge with particular identities and how organisers give coherence to a movement and co-ordinate the actions of their followers. The challenge faced by movement organisers in seeking to bring about change - a challenge that forces a social movement to engage strategically as a social actor, with its political-institutional environment - has received, however, relatively little attention. Seeking to fill this gap in the literature I argue that the distinct analytical issues raised by the problem of political strategy which social movements face can only be addressed through a synthesis that builds upon, but goes beyond, the contributions made by American and European scholars. The challenge is to conceive of social movements as strategic actors, while acknowledging the implications that a movement's collective identity and social nature has for an analysis of strategic action.

"The U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) provides benefits to disabled adults and children, offering vital financial support to more than 19 million disabled Americans. Of that group, approximately 5.5 million have been deemed -- by virtue of youth or mental or physical impairment - incapable of managing or directing the management of their benefits. Hence, a representative payee has been appointed to receive and disburse SSA payments for these beneficiaries to ensure that their basic needs for shelter, food, and clothing are met. Periodically, however, concerns have been expressed about the accuracy of the process by which SSA determines whether beneficiaries are capable of managing their benefits, with some evidence suggesting that underdetection of incapable recipients may be a particular problem. The importance of creating as accurate a process as possible for incapability determinations is underscored by the consequences of incorrectly identifying recipients either as incapable when they can manage their benefits or as capable when they cannot. Failure to identify beneficiaries who are incapable of managing their funds means abandoning a vulnerable population to potential homelessness, hunger, and disease. Informing Social Security's Process for Financial Capability Determination considers capability determination processes used by other similar benefit programs, abilities required to manage, and direct the management of, benefits, and effective methods and measures for assessing capability. This report evaluates SSA's capability determination process for adult beneficiaries and provides recommendations for improving the accuracy and efficiency of the agency's policy and procedures for making these determinations"--

Children most times are vulnerable to abuse, unable to decide what happen to them and that is why intervention is necessary for the lives of children that are sold to unknown destinations in Nigeria. This study investigates social work intervention strategies against illegal child adoption in Enugu State, Nigeria. Mixed method design is used to authenticate data collected from questionnaire. Ministry of Gender Affairs (Welfare Unit Staff) Enugu and Welfare Office Nsukka were interviewed on the process of adoption and its efficacy. Two hundred questionnaires were shared to 200 respondents using availability sampling as method of their selection. The data were computed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 20). The findings show that majority 142 (71%) of the respondents saw adoption as acceptable and government approved while 58 (29%) said it stigmatizes and culturally disapproved. It also showed that majority 126 (63%) go for illegal adoption while 74 (37%) follow legal means. The reasons for illegal adoption – 88 (44%) said cheaper avoiding bottlenecked procedures at the social welfare; 81 (40.5%) said fear of being stigmatized by neighbours and 24 (12%) ignorance of its consequences. Some 72 (36%) said that some sell off their babies to avoid the stigma, shame, family/society's prosecutions, 85 (42.5%) for economic reasons; 24 (12%) is to do away with the baby and continue with life and 19 (9.5%) supports all of the above reasons. Majority 157 (78.5%) said no serious attention has been given by the government to stop baby selling due to corruption of the law enforcement agencies. The entire 200 (100%) respondents agreed that social workers have many roles in preventing illegal adoption like working with the federal ministry of women or gender affairs to ensure proper child adoption and follow up after adoption to ensure the safety of the baby, since many baby buyers use them for rituals. These findings have obvious implications for social policies and future research on child welfare.

"Few African countries have attracted the international attention that Ghana has. In the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the then-colonial Gold Coast emerged as a key political and intellectual hub for British West Africa. Half a century later, when Ghana became the first sub-Saharan state to emerge from European colonial rule, it became a key site for a burgeoning transnational African anticolonial politics that drew activists, freedom fighters, and intellectuals from around the world. As the twentieth century came to a close, Ghana became an international symbol of the putative successes of post-Cold-War African liberalization and democratization projects. Given these many fascinating developments, it is easy to forget that fundamental concepts such as "the Gold Coast," "Ghana," and "Ghanaian" have never been set in stone and themselves bear exploring. Here Jeffrey Ahlman offers an original and accessible explanation of how these ever-changing concepts interact with those broader developments. On the one hand, he narrates a rich political history stretching from the beginnings of the very idea of the "Gold Coast" to the country's 1994 democratization, which paved the way for the Fourth Republic. At the same time, he offers a rich social history that examines the sometimes overlapping, sometimes divergent nature of what it means to be Ghanaian through discussions of marriage, ethnicity, and migration; of cocoa as a cultural system; of the multiple meanings of chieftaincy; and of other contemporary markers of identity. Throughout it all, Ahlman distills decades of work by other scholars while also drawing on a wide array of archival, oral, journalistic, and governmental sources in order to provide his own fresh insights. For its clear, comprehensive coverage not only of Ghanaian history, but also of the major debates shaping nineteenth- and twentieth-century African politics and society more broadly, Ghana: A Political and Social History is a must-read for students and scholars of African Studies"--

Most scholars of social movements have been drawn to research on the politically contentious behavior of collective actors because of the conviction that social movements sometimes generate significant historical progress and social change. Yet movement outcome research has been least developed in the literature. This irony emanates from methodological and causal intricacies that fail to clearly explicate how social movements create change. The challenges encompass the heaped typologies, mutual inconsistencies, causal heterogeneities, and conflictive evaluation criteria of movement outcomes. To overcome these quandaries, this paper proposes that (1) any attempt to find an invariant model or general theorization of a movement outcome is inevitably futile; (2) instead, attention to the specific context of time and place in which social movements produce outcomes is necessary; and (3) a comprehensive understanding of the origins of a movement outcome becomes possible when multiple variables are considered and their combined effects are analyzed.