Toward Self-Sufficiency: Evaluating a Transitional Housing Program for Homeless Families

Homeless families face the economic and personal challenges of sparse employment opportunities and child care and nutrition needs, compounded by the loss of adequate housing. The Family Development Center (FDC) is a transitional housing program in Atlanta, Georgia, designed to provide young homeless mothers an opportunity to emerge from what may well be desperate circumstances and begin the journey to economic self-sufficiency. This paper describes the research on programs for homeless families and presents the results of a comprehensive look at the operation and effectiveness of the FDC program during its first 5 years of existence. The work shows that while many families were able to effect notable positive changes in their lives during and after taking part in the housing program, for some the recovery from homelessness was extremely difficult. For even the most successful formerly homeless families—those that secured employment, housing, and other social supports—the escape from welfare dependence and poverty proved very difficult. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for relevant public policy.     

Care and the Lives of Homeless Youth in Neoliberal Times in Canada

Socio-spatial insights from feminist theories of care are examined in relation to the complex, difficult lives of some homeless youth in Ottawa, and their embeddedness within multiple scales of public policy construction and implementation. As lengthy interviews with 78 female and 78 male homeless youth in Ottawa revealed, both care and self-sufficiency figure strongly in these young peoples' lives. It is our contention that care is generally not part of current senior government agendas geared to marginalised youth and that as a result, there is a gap in funding that supports efforts of community organisations who work with homeless youth. We suggest that one way in which to understand this gap is by recognising that senior government programming for marginalised youth is geared problematically to narrowly defined employability issues. Furthermore, we assert that this results in local organisations being left to bridge the gaps between these one-dimensional characterisations and the complex gendered, racialised and situated lives of marginalised youth. In this article, we draw upon our preliminary findings from on-going research with homeless youth in Ottawa to expand on these arguments, in conjunction with theoretical insights drawn from selected ethics of justice and ethics of care arguments. We assert that there are important socio-spatial implications to be considered. Incorporating care into the framework of senior government policies implies that there is an onus not only to provide sufficient funds but also to direct those monies in such a way that the gendered and racialised contexts within which homeless youths are living manifest qualities of both care and justice. This article suggests that the role of appropriately located, multifaceted social services may have a significance that has not been appropriately recognised.

Cuidado y las vidas de jóvenes que faltan viviendas en tiempos de tendencia neoliberalista en Canadá

Se examinen perspicacias socio-espaciales que viene de teorías feministas de cuidado en relación a las vidas complejos y diversas de jóvenes sin hogares en Ottawa y a su fijación (embeddedness) en escalas múltiples de la construcción e implementación política publica. En entrevistas largas con 78 jóvenas y 78 jóvenes que no tienen hogares en Ottawa se revela que el cuidado e independencia se destacan en las vidas de las/los jóvenes. Sostenemos que generalmente el cuidado no es parte de las agendas actuales del gobierno superior que orientan a jóvenes marginalisados, y como consecuencia existe una brecha de financiamiento para apoyar organisaciones que trabajan con jóvenes sin hogares. Sugerimos que una manera para entender ésta brecha es reconocer que los programas del gobierno superior se orientan a cuestiones de empleabilidad limitado. Además afirmamos que resulta que organisaciones locales tienen la responsabilidad para tender puentes entre la brecha de caracterisaciones unidimensional y las vidas complejas, generificadas (gendered), racialisadas, y situatadas de jóvenes marginalisados. En éste artículo utilisamos conclusiones preliminares de investigaciones continuas con jóvenes que no tiene viviendas en Ottawa para extender los dichos argumentos en conjunción con perspicacias teoréticas de argumentos específicos de las éticas de justicia y las éticas de cuidado. Afirmamos que hay implicaciones socio-espaciales importantes que se necesitan tomar en cuenta. La incorporación de cuidada en el marco de las políticas desgobierno superior implica que no solo hay una responsabilidad para aprovisionar financiamiento suficiente sino que dirigir los fondos en una manera en que los contextos racialisados y generificados de las vidas de jóvenes marginalisados manifestan las calidades de cuidado y justicia. Éste artículo sugiere que el papel de servicios multifacéticos que se ubica adecuado tengan una importancia que no se reconocen apropiado.     

Tibetan People:Masters of Their Own Fate

Now,itisknowntoallthatserfsandslavesinoldTibet,whomadeup95percentoftheTibetanpopulation,ownedlessthan10Der-centofthesocialwealth.Underthesituation,theserfsandsIavessangfEvenifthesnowymountainsturnintobutter,theybelongtotheserf-owners.Evenifriverwatersturnintomilk,wehavenoaccesstoitatall.TlBETANPoPULATloN.Beforel765,therewere2millionpeopleoftheTibetanethnicgroupwestoftheNujiangRiver.Inl95l,theyearTibetwaspeacetlillyliberated,how-ever,thenumberofTibetansdroppedtolmillion.Statisticssh…     

A View of Their Own: Women's Committee Leadership Styles and State Legislatures

Analysis of survey data from 291 state legislative committee chairs suggests that professionalization has important gender implications not previously explored. Legislatures are gendered in the sense that culturally masculine and feminine committee management styles are more at home in some legislatures than in others. "Citizen" legislatures seem to be more hospitable to "feminine" behaviors of inclusion and a motivation focused on people-oriented concerns. Professionalized legislatures–promoted in large part on the basis of a masculine vocabulary of independence, rationality, expertise, and competition with the executive–discourage inclusive or collegial committee strategies and public-minded motives. Professional legislatures may be positive environments in which to nurture policy leadership, but their committee leaders eschew public participation.     

Fashioning a Cacique Nun: From Saints’ Lives to Indian Lives in the Spanish Americas

New Spain was a land of opportunity for the missionary as well as the conquistador. The controversial proposal to found a convent for women of the indigenous elite illuminates the redefinition of notions of gender and race. Examining testimonies on this question written by priests, this article charts how they transform material that would normally have been presented as hagiography into narratives of a more general nature, and argues that this rhetorical shift contributed to a kind of writing on the Indies which not only shared the comparative and epistemological stakes of ethnography but also considered issues of gender.     

从家庭和私人生活看古雅典妇女的地位

在以男性为中心的古雅典社会 ,不同类型的妇女在家庭和私人生活中 ,都处于屈从男性统治的低下地位 ,这种地位是雅典的社会制度、经济、政治、教育、结婚年龄和社会风尚等多种文化因素相互作用的结果。     

Zhang,Qiong.Making the New World Their Own: Chinese Encounters with Jesuit Science in the Age of Discovery

While Sino-Western cultural exchanges,in particular the contribution of Jesuit missionaries to the rise of a modern type of Chinese science and worldview,have fascinated historians of late-imperial China for years,Professor Qiong Zhang's ambitious and substantial book greatly contributes to a deeper and much more complex understanding.