1,720,958 research outputs found
"Suffering in silence": a qualitative inquiry of sexual violence against married women in Ghana
No full textAlthough a global problem, sexual violence against women is more pronounced in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet academic scholarship on this important topic remains scant. In particular, little attention has been given to the lived experiences of sexual violence from the perspective of married women. This gap is problematic as previous studies suggest that sexual violence is commonplace among married than single women in sub-Saharan Africa, requiring immediate research and policy attention. Contributing to the limited but growing body of literature, this study examined the lived experiences and perspectives of married women who suffered sexual violence in the Eastern Region of Ghana, one of the areas with the highest or most prevalent incidents of male-partner violence in the country.
A qualitative research approach with Heise’s social-ecological framework was employed to better understand sexual violence in Ghana. Specifically, the study used fifteen qualitative recorded in-depth interviews purposively held with Ghanaian women who had experienced sexual violence in their marriages to answer two main research questions: (1) what are the reasons for married women’s experience of sexual violence? (2) how does sexual violence affect married women?
Results from the thematic analysis showed that several driving forces and motivations triggered sexual violence against married women. Some of the reasons participants identified were macro-level and exosystem issues including cultural beliefs about gender division of labour, some traditional marriage practices, poverty and adherence to traditional masculine norms. Other explanations were micro-level and ontogenic issues comprising substance use, past experiences of violence and extramarital sexual affairs on the part of husbands. Due to itsperpetration, participants indicated that women did not experience only sexual violence but also physical violence and verbal violence. The results showed that the experiences of married women following sexual violence and other forms of abuse were physical injuries, psychological problems, sexual, reproductive health problems, and suicidal ideations. These negative health outcomes significantly undermined women’s economic activities and depleted their income.
Overall, the findings demonstrate that sexual violence among married women is a chronic experience, with severe implications for their health and well-being. Thus, campaigns against marital violence and domestic abuse should make sexual violence a priority. It is also important that legal and policy frameworks are strengthened to address the aetiology of male-partner sexual violence against women in Ghana.Includes bibliographical references (pages 95-114)
“Biopower and Immigration”: A Biopolitical Perspective on Anti-Migration Policies
Get PDFWhile several competing theoretical frameworks contribute significantly to the epistemology and debate on anti-migration policies, there are still missing theories in this area. This paper uses Foucault’s concept of biopower to analyze anti-migration strategies. The paper argues that from the logic of biopolitics, anti-migration policies are deployed to protect the biological existence and well-being of populations (legal citizens). This analysis is particularly important considering the unceasing migration from low and middle-income countries to developed nations due to acute socio-economic, political and environmental conditions. The paper will serve as evidence to inform policy decision-making on immigration procedures. Keywords: Immigrants, anti-migration, biopower, biopolitics, government, migratio
“State of Exception”: A Tool for Fighting Terrorism
Get PDFThis paper examines Giorgio Agamben’s work on the state of exception, a top-down approach in which the sovereign suspends the constitutional law and imposes decisions on subjects through exceptional mechanisms. The paper seeks to tease out the analytical merit of the concept in helping to interpret the rise of emergency regimes in the current epoch. The paper analyzes some recent cases in France and the United States involving exceptional policies to elucidate the worthiness of Agamben’s work on exceptionalism. Keywords: state of exception, bare life, sovereign ban, terrorism, governmen
The coping strategies of “men left behind” in the migration process in Ghana
No full textPrevious studies report that independent transnational female migration is growing rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, scholarship on the ‘left-behind’ in the migration process largely focuses on women and children, with little attention paid to men left behind. Using qualitative methods, with Folkman et al.’s coping theory, to examine the coping strategies of men left behind in the migration process in Ghana, this study fills an important research gap in the migration and the left-behind literature. Through the snowball sampling method, 12 in-depth interviews were conducted with men in the Accra Metropolis whose spouses were staying abroad. Participants explained that left-behind husbands cope with domestic work and care through support from family relations, careful planning and time management, eating out in food joints, and paid services from domestic workers. Participants also mentioned that these men cope emotionally through social media, religion, regular visits to spouses and engaging in extramarital affairs. The results demonstrate that in the absence of migrant spouses, husbands adapt using a variety of coping mechanisms
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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