Communal Care Research Articles

“The British coloureds of Sophiatown”: The case of St. Joseph’s Home for coloured children, 1923-1998

During apartheid South Africa (1948-1994), black, coloured, and Indian children did not enjoy the same privileges as their peers of European descent – because of racial discrimination. However, some destitute coloured children’s lives changed positively following their admittance to St. Joseph’s Home for Coloured Children – administered by Sisters from the St. Margaret’s Order based in Sussex, England. This paper is not only the first academic study of St. Joseph’s Home for Coloured Children, but also the first to include the latter in the written history of Sophiatown. The article contributes doubly to the historiography of Sophiatown as well as the under-researched history of institutional care and orphanages in Johannesburg. The article explores how coloured children were perceived and treated at St. Joseph’s Home and how their lived experiences differed from those of the other children in Sophiatown – a racially-integrated area until the 1950s when the apartheid regime declared it an all-white area and forcibly removed black people. Furthermore, the article highlights St. Joseph’s Home’s challenges and successes during its existence as an institutional care centre, until 1998 when it was declared a monument and adopted a communal care structure. This paper is based on the Home’s administrators’ reports, interviews, and archival material. The findings of this research indicate that coloured children admitted to the Home adopted the English culture and “lived in comfort”, through the influence of the Sisters, making these children “better off” than the rest of their Sophiatown peers. The implication of the fact that these Home-based children were regarded as privileged is that they were resented by people from the older coloured generation, especially those employed at St. Joseph’s Home, for living privileged lives that were foreign to the rest of the coloured people of South Africa – during apartheid.

Understanding When a Partner Is Not in the Mood: Sexual Communal Strength in Couples Transitioning to Parenthood.

Situations in which one partner is interested in having sex but the other partner is not "in the mood" are common in relationships. We extend previous work on sexual communal strength-the motivation to be responsive to a partner's sexual needs-to demonstrate that in addition to the motivation to meet a partner's need to have sex, the motivation to be understanding about a partner's need not to engage in sex is uniquely associated with sexual and relationship satisfaction. In Study 1, we adapted a measure of sexual communal strength for having sex (SCSS) to create a new measure of sexual communal strength for not having sex (SCSN). We demonstrated that SCSN is distinct from SCSS and associated with more positive and less negative responses to an imagined situation of sexual rejection. In Study 2, both SCSS and SCSN were uniquely associated with greater sexual and relationship satisfaction in couples transitioning to parenthood-a time when many couples experience changes to their sexual relationship. Having a partner who is higher in SCSN is associated with greater sexual satisfaction and relationship quality for new mothers but not new fathers, suggesting that during the transition to parenthood, it might be more important for women to have a partner who is understanding about their need not to engage in sex. The results suggest that the motivation to be understanding about a partner's need not to engage in sex may be an additional way that partners can show communal care in their sexual relationships.

Health Information Seeking Among Singaporeans: Roles and Collective Contexts

ABSTRACTThis article seeks to contribute to the literature on health information seeking (HIS) by culturally locating the search for health information within the local contexts of everyday life in Singapore, and within the meaning-making processes that individuals participate in. Based on in-depth interviews with 100 participants selected through stratified sampling, it asks: How do Singaporeans make sense of HIS in the realm of their everyday lived experiences? The study contributes to the literature on the roles familial ties play in information gathering and sharing in a collective context. More importantly, these familial ties provide perspective on the ways in which culture spatio-temporally constitutes HIS. HIS is informed by familial role expectations in a collectivist context where filial piety and “respect for the elderly” are guiding anchors for behavior. Moreover, harmony and community well-being define societal roles and responsibilities of caregiving, directed broadly at communal care. These collective-oriented contexts therefore inform HIS.

Fission-fusion dynamics in black-and-white ruffed lemurs may facilitate both feeding strategies and communal care of infants in a spatially and temporally variable environment

Species with greater expression of fission-fusion dynamics show greater variability in the size, composition, and cohesion of subgroups over time. This may allow their adjustment to local environmental, social, and demographic conditions. We tested which environmental and social factors influenced subgroup size in one such species, the black-and-white ruffed lemur (Varecia variegata) at two sites within a fragmented forest landscape. Using instantaneous focal sampling at 15-min intervals, we collected data on subgroup size and composition, fruit and flower availability, and location. We also collected biweekly data on site-wide fruit and flower availability. We used these data to test the influence of season, food availability, reproduction, and predation risk on adult subgroup size in this species. Ruffed lemur adults consistently formed significantly larger subgroups in times of lower site-wide fruit availability, during the wet season, and when one or more infants were present. There were differences between sites in the relationship between subgroup size and tree size, fruit patch size, and site-wide flower availability. Variables measuring indirect predation risk showed no significant relationship with subgroup size. These results emphasize the strong relationship between fission-fusion dynamics and spatial and temporal variation in food availability, as well as the importance of sociality in a species with communal care of infants. Fission-fusion dynamics may serve as an evolutionary strategy to adapt to the unpredictable and sometimes harsh environmental conditions of Madagascar and may facilitate the persistence of communities of this critically endangered lemur despite widespread anthropogenic habitat modification. Fission-fusion dynamics (the joining and separating of subgroups within a larger group of animals) may allow species to adjust social benefits to changing environmental conditions. This study examines the underlying ecological and social factors that might influence fission-fusion dynamics in black-and-white ruffed lemurs. Subgroup size in this species was strongly related to food availability, though not always in the direction expected. This suggests that the relationship between food availability and sociality changes when food availability reaches very low levels. Additionally, infant presence was linked to larger adult subgroups, indicating a connection between fission-fusion behavior and the cooperative rearing of offspring seen in this species. Relationships between subgroup size and some environmental variables differed between sites, emphasizing the flexibility of grouping patterns in this species and indicating that local conditions may play a large role in the expression of fission-fusion dynamics.

Evidence for Community Transmission of Community-Associated but Not Health-Care-Associated Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus Strains Linked to Social and Material Deprivation: Spatial Analysis of Cross-sectional Data.

BackgroundIdentifying and tackling the social determinants of infectious diseases has become a public health priority following the recognition that individuals with lower socioeconomic status are disproportionately affected by infectious diseases. In many parts of the world, epidemiologically and genotypically defined community-associated (CA) methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains have emerged to become frequent causes of hospital infection. The aim of this study was to use spatial models with adjustment for area-level hospital attendance to determine the transmission niche of genotypically defined CA- and health-care-associated (HA)-MRSA strains across a diverse region of South East London and to explore a potential link between MRSA carriage and markers of social and material deprivation.Methods and FindingsThis study involved spatial analysis of cross-sectional data linked with all MRSA isolates identified by three National Health Service (NHS) microbiology laboratories between 1 November 2011 and 29 February 2012. The cohort of hospital-based NHS microbiology diagnostic services serves 867,254 usual residents in the Lambeth, Southwark, and Lewisham boroughs in South East London, United Kingdom (UK). Isolates were classified as HA- or CA-MRSA based on whole genome sequencing. All MRSA cases identified over 4 mo within the three-borough catchment area (n = 471) were mapped to small geographies and linked to area-level aggregated socioeconomic and demographic data. Disease mapping and ecological regression models were used to infer the most likely transmission niches for each MRSA genetic classification and to describe the spatial epidemiology of MRSA in relation to social determinants. Specifically, we aimed to identify demographic and socioeconomic population traits that explain cross-area extra variation in HA- and CA-MRSA relative risks following adjustment for hospital attendance data. We explored the potential for associations with the English Indices of Deprivation 2010 (including the Index of Multiple Deprivation and several deprivation domains and subdomains) and the 2011 England and Wales census demographic and socioeconomic indicators (including numbers of households by deprivation dimension) and indicators of population health. Both CA-and HA-MRSA were associated with household deprivation (CA-MRSA relative risk [RR]: 1.72 [1.03–2.94]; HA-MRSA RR: 1.57 [1.06–2.33]), which was correlated with hospital attendance (Pearson correlation coefficient [PCC] = 0.76). HA-MRSA was also associated with poor health (RR: 1.10 [1.01–1.19]) and residence in communal care homes (RR: 1.24 [1.12–1.37]), whereas CA-MRSA was linked with household overcrowding (RR: 1.58 [1.04–2.41]) and wider barriers, which represent a combined score for household overcrowding, low income, and homelessness (RR: 1.76 [1.16–2.70]). CA-MRSA was also associated with recent immigration to the UK (RR: 1.77 [1.19–2.66]). For the area-level variation in RR for CA-MRSA, 28.67% was attributable to the spatial arrangement of target geographies, compared with only 0.09% for HA-MRSA. An advantage to our study is that it provided a representative sample of usual residents receiving care in the catchment areas. A limitation is that relationships apparent in aggregated data analyses cannot be assumed to operate at the individual level.ConclusionsThere was no evidence of community transmission of HA-MRSA strains, implying that HA-MRSA cases identified in the community originate from the hospital reservoir and are maintained by frequent attendance at health care facilities. In contrast, there was a high risk of CA-MRSA in deprived areas linked with overcrowding, homelessness, low income, and recent immigration to the UK, which was not explainable by health care exposure. Furthermore, areas adjacent to these deprived areas were themselves at greater risk of CA-MRSA, indicating community transmission of CA-MRSA. This ongoing community transmission could lead to CA-MRSA becoming the dominant strain types carried by patients admitted to hospital, particularly if successful hospital-based MRSA infection control programmes are maintained. These results suggest that community infection control programmes targeting transmission of CA-MRSA will be required to control MRSA in both the community and hospital. These epidemiological changes will also have implications for effectiveness of risk-factor-based hospital admission MRSA screening programmes.

Maternal stress and plural breeding with communal care affect development of the endocrine stress response in a wild rodent

Maternal stress can significantly affect offspring fitness. In laboratory rodents, chronically stressed mothers provide poor maternal care, resulting in pups with hyperactive stress responses. These hyperactive stress responses are characterized by high glucocorticoid levels in response to stressors plus poor negative feedback, which can ultimately lead to decreased fitness. In degus (Octodon degus) and other plural breeding rodents that exhibit communal care, however, maternal care from multiple females may buffer the negative impact on pups born to less parental mothers. We used wild, free-living degus to test this hypothesis. After parturition, we manipulated maternal stress by implanting cortisol pellets in 0%, 50–75%, or 100% of adult females within each social group. We then sampled pups for baseline and stress-induced cortisol, negative feedback efficacy, and adrenal sensitivity. From groups where all mothers were implanted with cortisol, pups had lower baseline cortisol levels and male pups additionally had weaker negative feedback compared to 0% or 50–75% implanted groups. Contrary to expectations, stress-induced cortisol did not differ between treatment groups. These data suggest that maternal stress impacts some aspects of the pup stress response, potentially through decreased maternal care, but that presence of unstressed mothers may mitigate some of these effects. Therefore, one benefit of plural breeding with communal care may be to buffer post-natal stress.

Daylighting in older people's housing: Barriers to compliance with current UK guidance

This work identifies barriers to compliance with current UK guidance on daylighting in the design of extra-care housing which provides older occupants with self-contained dwellings and access to communal facilities and care. Secondary analysis was made of data from a survey of 165 dwellings in 23 extra-care housing schemes in England. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 people involved in the design of extra-care housing. Findings suggest that financial constraints limit the feasibility of providing dual aspect dwellings and windows for every room. Architects' reluctance to undertake daylight factor calculations, and the need to reduce window size to prevent solar gain, meet planning requirements and minimise construction costs, could explain why some surveyed schemes did not comply with daylight factor recommendations.

Why Don't Males Do the Fair Share of House/Care Work?: Theories About Gender Differences Regarding Institutional & Communal Work in American Law Schools in a Time of Economic Distress

For many years, it has been fairly well documented that, as a whole, women do more than their equal share of communal care – household and parenting – work in households across America even when both partners in a heterosexual couple with children work outside the home. Whether such statistical disparity is a result of cultural expectations, men’s larger share of paid work, or the slow pace of achieving gender equality is debatable. Meanwhile, gendered responses to the global recession and to the contraction of the labor market also present interesting phenomena for American feminists to examine. Some the recent unemployment crisis in America the Mancession because of the types of labor sectors most heavily affected, namely middle class manufacturing jobs. Others argue that American females have been more successful in finding new employment during the global recession because they are more adaptable. Still others warn that as the economy turns around and middle class manufacturing jobs return, women will fare worse in the employment comparisons. Questions needing further examination as the data emerge are: 1) whether female employment will increase, decrease or as the economy turns around, and 2) whether female adaptation will create more success in employment numbers and compensation. Equally ripe for study is the gendered face of American legal education, particularly as legal educators are challenged to and, I posit, to engage in feminine behavior: 1) to work communally rather than individually and 2) to adapt and in a new economy. This call for change stems not simply from the 2008 financial crash, and its concomitant loss of legal jobs, but from the spiraling costs of legal education and the restructuring of the legal market. Critiques of American legal education such as those found in the Carnegie Foundation’s Educating Lawyers, the Clinical Legal Education Association’s Best Practices for Legal Education, and Brian Tamahana’s Failing Law Schools all underscore the need for American law school faculties to work in an integrated and communal manner instead of as independent contractor-experts. The question arises whether the need to act in a more holistic, integrated and communal manner will create or exacerbate gendered differences in the legal academy. I argue that there have been longstanding gender differences, as a whole, in American law faculty members’ willingness to engage in the care/household work of law schools, namely in the production of tangible value for the students, alumni and the profession. These differences can be observed in the gender disparity among the workhorse administrative positions such as the Dean of Students and/or Academics, and may also exist in the day to day committee work that is the governing structure of the academy. It can also be demonstrated by the gender identity of those who do the care work of the institution – the formation of students for real practice (clinicians) and the challenge of teaching students the most fundamental skills needed for American attorneys - legal research and writing (lawyering /legal writing faculty). That does not mean, of course, that all female faculty members are selfless and all male faculty members are self-involved. One finds both types of individuals in both gender types. However, for American law to continue to flourish, they will need individuals who work communally, who know how to adapt and for the good of the whole, and who place student or institutional needs above individual inclinations and individual goals. As the work of law school Deans becomes more burdensome and less well-compensated, I believe it is more likely we will see an increasing number of women at the helm of law schools. Contrasting with that argument, however, and on a less cynical and more hopeful note, I explore whether the feminization of law schools including the modeling of and teaching of adaptability, flexibility and communal problem solving will redeem American legal education and better prepare law students for the new economy.

Group size but not dominance rank predicts the probability of conception in a frugivorous primate

In social mammals, within-group competition for food can drive variation in female fitness. Frugivores may face particularly strong competition because they use patchily distributed usurpable resources. Dominance rank and group size influence how a female experiences within-group competition. Both are predicted to affect access to food and, thus, reproductive success. We used 15 years of behavioral, demographic, and reproductive data from wild frugivorous blue monkeys to examine effects of rank and group size on the probability that a female conceived. We used generalized linear mixed models, controlling for potentially confounding maternal and environmental factors. Blue monkey females compete aggressively and disproportionately for fruits and exhibit linear dominance hierarchies, but neither rank index we tested significantly predicted the probability of conception. Although earlier studies found that group size effects on activity budgets were minimal, we found that group size had a quadratic relationship with the probability of conception, which peaked at around 31 members. The lack of a rank effect may reflect behavioral strategies (e.g., switching resources, spreading out during feeding, using cheek pouches) that minimize the strength of within-group competition, thus facilitating group-level cooperation in between-group contests. The significant quadratic effect of group size on reproduction may occur if individuals in small groups do not obtain the full benefits of group living (e.g., predator avoidance, increased foraging success, communal care for offspring) and those in large groups experience a lower quality diet or constrained feeding time. Ultimately, measures of reproduction are preferable to behavioral proxies for accurately assessing within-group competition.

Calves as social hubs: dynamics of the social network within sperm whale units

It is hypothesized that the primary function of permanent social relationships among female sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) is to provide allomothers for calves at the surface while mothers make foraging dives. In order to investigate how reciprocity of allocare within units of sperm whales facilitates group living, we constructed weighted social networks based on yearly matrices of associations (2005-2010) and correlated them across years, through changes in age and social role, to study changes in social relationships within seven sperm whale units. Pairs of association matrices from sequential years showed a greater positive correlation than expected by chance, but as the time lag increased, the correlation coefficients decreased. Over all units considered, calves had high values for all measured network statistics, while mothers had intermediate values for most of the measures, but high values for connectedness and affinity. Mothers showed sharp drops in strength and connectedness in the first year of their new calves' lives. These broad patterns appear to be consistent across units. Calves appeared to be significant nodes in the network of the social unit, and thus provide quantitative support for the theory in which communal care acts as the evolutionary force behind group formation in this species.

Born Southern: Childbirth, Motherhood, and Social Networks in the Old South (review)

Born Southern: Childbirth, Motherhood, and Social Networks in the Old South. By V. Lynn Kennedy. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. Pp. 277. Cloth, $65.00.)Reviewed by Rebecca SharplessFor many women across time and space, childbirth and child-rearing have been the centerpieces of their adult lives, and this was the case in the antebellum South. Lacking effective contraception, both African American and white women could expect to be pregnant or nursing much of the time, often bearing ten or more children. Lynn Kennedy successfully uses birth and as a lens to investigate the complexities, difficulties, and social meanings of race and gender in the midnineteenth-century South. She looks not only at the actual experiences of women but also how southern society used those experiences to shape the region's identity.Kennedy argues that had great meaning not only for individual women but for southern society as a whole: Birth and shaped the identities of all individuals within the antebellum South and . . . these experiences created family and community bonds that developed into the foundations of a broader southern (7). Slavery, of course, put a different spin on the institution of in the South, and Kennedy carefully outlines the contrasts that slavery created between women. She also investigates the ways in which gender bound women into common experiences.Kennedy begins her discussion with the idealization of birth and common in the early nineteenth century. While southern white women shared the ideals of womanhood with other European and American cultures, southerners tied a woman's fulfillment of these standards to her status and identity within the southern community, giving a regional cast to the expectations. Southern society wanted mothers to be virtuous, monogamous, and pious, even expecting slave women to adhere to the principles of virtuous motherhood (13). Southerners boasted about the fecundity of the region's women, although the birthrate actually declined.The reality of childbirth and parenting was something altogether different from the ideal, Kennedy reveals, and it gave women an occasion for cross-racial sympathy. Some southern women feared and dreaded motherhood, and both African American and white women tried actively to limit their fertility. Their efforts largely failed, of course, and many women bore more than five children. Privileged white women often received careful attention during pregnancy. Conditions for slaves varied with the owners, as some took extra care of pregnant slaves while others refused to lessen the workload and even devised special methods of corporal punishment. The actual occasion of childbirth provided respite from patriarchy, as women alone controlled the birthing room for both slaves and their owners. African American midwives provided a crossracial experience for both races and often held esteemed positions within their communities. After the births, however, white women received care that the African Americans could only dream of, as they returned to their work routines in short order.Once children were born, most white women nursed and cared for their children themselves, although wet nurses and mammies did exist. The nurture of white children by African American women was somewhat controversial, as it implied that black women might be better than white women in caring for babies. On large plantations, slave children often had communal care; in smaller settings, their mothers had to figure out how to juggle childcare with their workload. …

Human origins and the transition from promiscuity to pair-bonding

A crucial step in recent theories of human origins is the emergence of strong pair-bonding between males and females accompanied by a dramatic reduction in the male-to-male conflict over mating and an increased investment in offspring. How such a transition from promiscuity to pair-bonding could be achieved is puzzling. Many species would, indeed, be much better off evolutionarily if the effort spent on male competition over mating was redirected to increasing female fertility or survivorship of offspring. Males, however, are locked in a "social dilemma," where shifting one's effort from "appropriation" to "production" would give an advantage to free-riding competitors and therefore, should not happen. Here, I first consider simple models for four prominent scenarios of the human transition to pair-bonding: communal care, mate guarding, food for mating, and mate provisioning. I show that the transition is not feasible under biologically relevant conditions in any of these models. Then, I show that the transition can happen if one accounts for male heterogeneity, assortative pair formation, and evolution of female choice and faithfulness. This process is started when low-ranked males begin using an alternative strategy of female provisioning. At the end, except for the top-ranked individuals, males invest exclusively in provisioning females who have evolved very high fidelity to their mates. My results point to the crucial importance of female choice and emphasize the need for incorporating between-individual variation in theoretical and empirical studies of social dilemmas and behaviors.

Transnational marriages as a strategy of care exchange: veteran soldiers and their mainland Chinese spouses in Taiwan

AbstractIn this article, I discuss how Taiwanese veterans and their mainland Chinese wives use transnational marriages as a strategy to obtain care and security in old age. The state's population, welfare and immigration policies shape the veterans' care needs and rights. Middle‐aged mainland Chinese women choose to migrate to provide security for themselves and better educational and economic opportunities for their children. I use Stafford's concept of ‘cycles of yang’ to explain why, despite state provision of care, family members prefer reciprocity of care and why they choose transnational marriage in preference to other forms of family formation. This framework blurs the distinction between caregivers and care receivers, and conceptualizes differential care needs as part of the life course. I use the concept of a care diamond to analyse how state policies, communal care and market forces together shape care relationships in transnational families and patterns of transnational mobility.

Filial ethics and judgments of filial behaviour in Taiwan and the United States†

Parent-child relationships are fundamental human relationships in which specific norms govern proper parent-child interactions. Such norms, or filial ethics, have been observed in different cultures, including in the United States and Taiwan, but important differences may exist in how filial practices are viewed across cultures. From a traditional view of power as domination over others, if filial relationships are viewed to reflect power differentials between parents and children, actors who follow filial ethics should be viewed as less powerful than actors who do not follow filial ethics for maintaining or enhancing positive parent-child relationships. Alternatively, power can be conceptualized as the ability to meet one's needs (e.g., for communal care and trust), and actors who follow filial ethics should be viewed as more powerful and trustworthy than actors who do not follow filial ethics because they have the ability to maintain or enhance positive parent-child relationships. Based on a power-trust model, we compared American and Taiwanese perceptions of actors in an experiment using vignettes describing filial behaviours. We conducted a path analysis with a sample of 112 American and 74 Taiwanese participants to test the proposed relations. Results showed that both Taiwanese and Americans rated actors more favourably (i.e., as more powerful and trustworthy) when actors behaved according to filial ethics than when they did not. Some cross-cultural differences were also observed: Taiwanese attributed trust-traits to actors who performed filial practices to a larger degree than did Americans. We discuss implications for the implicit nature of filial relationships and conceptualization of power cross-culturally.

A MODEL FOR GENOMIC IMPRINTING IN THE SOCIAL BRAIN: ELDERS

Genomic imprinting refers to the process whereby genes are silenced when inherited via sperm or egg. The most widely accepted theory for the evolution of genomic imprinting-the kinship theory-argues that conflict between maternally inherited and paternally inherited genes over phenotypes with asymmetric effects on matrilineal and patrilineal kin results in self-imposed silencing of one of the copies. This theory was originally developed in the context of fitness interactions within nuclear families, to understand intragenomic conflict in the embryo and infant, but it has recently been extended to encompass interactions within wider social groups, to understand intragenomic conflict over the social behavior of juveniles and adults. Here, we complete our model of genomic imprinting in the social brain by considering age-specific levels of expression in a society were generations overlap, to determine how intragenomic conflict plays out in older age. We determine the role of sex bias in juvenile dispersal, reproductive success, and adult mortality in mediating the direction and intensity of conflict over the competing demands of parental and communal care as the individual ages. We discover that sex-specific asymmetries in these demographic parameters result in intragenomic conflict at early age but this conflict gradually decays with age. Although individuals are riven by internal conflict in their youth and middle age, they put their demons to rest in later life.

Gender and Humanitarian Disasters

The catastrophic dimensions of humanitarian emergencies are increasingly understood and more visible to states and international institutions. There is greater appreciation for the social, economic and political effects that follow in the short to long term from such catastrophes whatsoever their causes. Rhetorically too, there is some recognition of the gendered dimensions of humanitarian emergencies in policy and institutional contexts. It is generally acknowledged that women are more visible in the refugee and internally displaced communities that typically result from many humanitarian crises. Women, because of their acute care responsibilities in most societies, also disproportionately bear the brunt of familial and communal care responsibilities in communities affected by disaster, war and natural emergencies. Women, given their disparate social and legal status in many jurisdictions may have less access to capital, social goods and other legal means to protect themselves when crises arise. While tacit acknowledgement of this reality increasingly permeates academic and political discourses, the depth of the descriptive often fails to capture and fully grasp the extent of gender harms and gender insecurity. This article offers some preliminary assessment of the intersection of women’s experiences with situations of humanitarian crisis. It does so by a survey of three important but frequently marginalized issues namely: vulnerability, masculinities and security in situations of crisis. In particular the article seeks to explore the particular vulnerabilities experienced by women in the context of humanitarian emergencies. Drawing on Fineman’s theoretical framework ascribing the inevitability of vulnerability, the article proposes a shift in thinking around inevitable dependencies in the international context of humanitarian emergencies that might function to realign our understanding of and response to gendered vulnerabilities. The work identifies the structural limitations and biases inherent in prevailing humanitarian crisis responses, and maps them onto the masculinities inherent in the standard operating procedures of international organizations and the cadre of experts that typically offer solutions to the society in crisis. The conclusion reflects on the limits of current international legal obligations in addressing women’s harms and needs in the context of humanitarian crises.

A MODEL FOR GENOMIC IMPRINTING IN THE SOCIAL BRAIN: ADULTS

Genomic imprinting refers to genes that are silenced when inherited via sperm or via egg. The silencing of genes conditional upon their parental origin requires an evolutionary explanation. The most widely accepted theory for the evolution of genomic imprinting-the kinship theory-argues that conflict between maternally inherited and paternally inherited genes over phenotypes with asymmetric effects on matrilineal and patrilineal kin results in self-imposed silencing of one of the copies. This theory has been applied to imprinting of genes expressed in the placenta, and infant brain determining the allocation of parental resources being the source of conflict parental promiscuity. However, there is growing evidence that imprinted genes are expressed in the postinfant brain where parental promiscuity per se is no longer a source of conflict. Here, we advance the kinship theory by developing an evolutionary model of genomic imprinting in adults, driven by intragenomic conflict over allocation to parental versus communal care. We consider the role of sex differences in dispersal and variance in reproductive success as sources of conflict. We predict that, in hominids and birds, parental care will be expressed by maternally inherited genes. In nonhominid mammals, we predict more diversity, with some mammals showing the same pattern and other showing the reverse. We use the model to interpret experimental data on imprinted genes in the house mouse: specifically, paternally expressed Peg1 and Peg3 genes, underlying maternal care, and maternally expressed Gnas and paternally expressed Gnasxl genes, underlying communal care. We also use the model to relate ancestral demography to contemporary imprinting disorders of adults, in humans and other taxa.

Women, Vulnerability and Humanitarian Emergencies

The catastrophic dimensions of humanitarian emergencies are increasingly understood and more visible to states and international institutions. There is greater appreciation for the social, economic and political effects that follow in the short to long term from such catastrophes whatsoever their causes. Rhetorically too, there is some recognition of the gendered dimensions of humanitarian emergencies in policy and institutional contexts. It is generally acknowledged that women are more visible in the refugee and internally displaced communities that typically result from many humanitarian crises. Women, because of their acute care responsibilities in most societies, also disproportionately bear the brunt of familial and communal care responsibilities in communities affected by disaster, war and natural emergencies. Women, given their disparate social and legal status in many jurisdictions may have less access to capital, social goods and other legal means to protect themselves when crises arise. While tacit acknowledgement of this reality increasingly permeates academic and political discourses, the depth of the descriptive often fails to capture and fully grasp the extent of gender harms and gender insecurity. This article offers some preliminary assessment of the intersection of women’s experiences with situations of humanitarian crisis. It does so by a survey of three important but frequently marginalized issues namely: vulnerability, masculinities and security in situations of crisis. In particular the article seeks to explore the particular vulnerabilities experienced by women in the context of humanitarian emergencies. Drawing on Fineman’s theoretical framework ascribing the inevitability of vulnerability, the article proposes a shift in thinking around inevitable dependencies in the international context of humanitarian emergencies that might function to realign our understanding of and response to gendered vulnerabilities. The work identifies the structural limitations and biases inherent in prevailing humanitarian crisis responses, and maps them onto the masculinities inherent in the standard operating procedures of international organizations and the cadre of experts that typically offer solutions to the society in crisis. The conclusion reflects on the limits of current international legal obligations in addressing women’s harms and needs in the context of humanitarian crises.

Grouping patterns in warthogs, Phacochoerus africanus: is communal care of young enough to explain sociality?

AbstractGroup-living will evolve when individuals increase their lifetime reproductive success by joining with other individuals. In cooperatively breeding societies, individuals living in a group will participate in the communal rearing of young. Several factors can influence the evolutionary trade-offs of grouping and it is often unclear whether cooperative breeding is advantageous or is simply a by-product of selection acting on grouping behaviour. We used sightings of 1318 warthogs in 711 groups to investigate whether the advantages of sociality in the warthog differ depending on an individual's age, sex, reproductive state, or the time of year. Adult males only formed temporary associations with other individuals indicating that participation in a group was not advantageous. In contrast, yearlings were almost inevitably found in groups, regardless of their sex or time of year, suggesting any costs to sociality were outweighed by the benefits. Grouping in adult female warthogs was complex; adult females were more likely to form groups in the presence of juveniles and when juveniles were at their most vulnerable stage indicating that sociality in females could be partially explained by the benefits of communal care of young. However, other factors influenced female cooperation including group composition and the time of year.

Fitness consequences of group living in the degu Octodon degus, a plural breeder rodent with communal care

The fitness consequences of plural breeding vary considerably among social vertebrates. We tested three hypotheses for the direct reproductive fitness consequences of group living in the degu Octodon degus, a social rodent endemic to central Chile. To test the ‘benefits of communal care’ hypothesis, we determined the relationship between the number of females per group, per capita direct fitness and offspring survival. To test the ‘food abundance and quality’ hypothesis, we determined the relationship between the biomass of preferred foods at burrow systems, group size, per capita direct fitness and offspring survival. To test the ‘predation risk’ hypothesis, we determined the relationship between group size, the density of burrow entrances to which social groups had access, per capita direct fitness, and survival of adults and offspring. Group size of core females (i.e. those with 50% or more nightly overlap) was negatively correlated with per capita direct fitness, but not with the number of females per group or total group size. Group living did not enhance the survival of offspring. Greater biomass of food (at 3 m and 9 m) and burrow density were not linked to larger groups and offspring survival. Our results did not support predictions of the ‘benefits of communal care’, ‘food abundance and quality’ or ‘predation risk’ hypothesis. Pending microsatellite analyses, we hypothesize that survival benefits linked to foraging group size and not reproductive fitness benefits may explain the evolution of sociality in degus.