This article analyses informal support networks in Portugal. Using data from a national survey on families with children (1999), it explores the dynamics of support, in terms of the characteristics of, and variations in, families' experience of support. The analysis underlines the importance of social factors, such as the position of families in social and educational structures, and family variables, such as position in the life course, in determining the extent of support received by families. The results show that many families have a low level of support and that extended kinship does not play a significant role in providing support. As in other European countries, assistance flows mainly from parents, from the wife's family and from women rather than men; it is also strongly related to families' position in social structure, with low educational levels and less favourable occupational categories determining lower levels of support over the course of married life. Thus welfare provision stemming from informal relationships reinforces existing social inequalities rather than compensating for them, and the idea of a strong pre- and post-modern welfare society must be challenged.

Faced with the confused meanings of the concept of generation, this article defends the need to move from Karl Mannheim’s excessive emphasis on political and intellectual self-awareness as a pre-condition for generation formation to an enlarged social and cultural definition of generations. By developing the concept of social generations, we argue that rather than concrete groups, generations are better conceived as discourses with which individuals relate in order to build self-identification. Individuals living in similar historical contexts may share mental and practical dispositions, but must always position themselves in face of the narratives that have come to be dominant to describe a given generational location. Such a contention implies redressing Mannheim’s culturalist view through a reformulation of his hierarchical view of the scheme of generations. By replacing generation-units by dominant ideas, we contend that generations are better conceived as discursive formations in the Foucauldian sense.

Confronted with the centrality of the body for trans-masculine individuals interviewed in the United Kingdom and Portugal, we explore how bodily-reflexive practices are central for doing masculinity. Following Connell’s early insight that bodies needed to come back to the political and sociological agendas, we propose that bodily-reflexive practice is a concept suited to account for the production of trans-masculinities. Although multiple, the journeys of trans-masculine individuals demonstrate how bodily experiences shape and redefine masculinities in ways that illuminate the nexus between bodies, embodiments, and discursive enactments of masculinity. Rather than oppositions between bodily conformity to and transgression of the norms of hegemonic masculinity, often encountered in idealizations of the medicalized transsexual against the genderqueer rebel, lived bodily experiences shape masculinities beyond linear oppositions. Tensions between natural and technological, material and discursive, or feminine and masculine were keys for understanding trans-masculine narratives about the body, embodiment, and identity.

No abstract

Nasal type extranodal NK/T-cell lymphoma is a distinct entity according to the World Health Organization classification. Although 60% to 90% of patients with this disease present with a destructive mass in the midline facial tissues, it may also primarily or secondarily involve extranasal sites, like the skin. We report the case of a 77-year-old patient that came to our department with erythematous plaques of the right leg and eczematous lesions of the trunk. These lesions were biopsied and the patient was diagnosed with extranodal NK/T-cell lymphoma, nasal type. He was treated with multi-agent systemic chemotherapy but died 5 months after diagnosis. This case highlights the rarity and variability of cutaneous features of this disease and its aggressive course and poor prognosis.

Resumo-A partir de uma análise qualitativa sintética sobre homens imigrantes em Portugal, procura-se destrinçar as maneiras como as identidades migrantes são construídas de forma gendrificada, com diferenças relativas à constituição de comunidades diaspóricas específicas (Brasileiros, Cabo-verdianos e Moçambicanos), com origem em diferentes histórias coloniais e pós-coloniais. Para os homens migrantes, a experiência da alteridade, ainda que permeada por emaranhamentos culturais, hibridismo e inclusão social, é marcada, na maioria dos casos, pela subalternidade. As maneiras de lidar com a discriminação levam à construção de identidades migrantes, segundo origens nacionais, de forma altamente gendrificada, nomeadamente em termos de masculinidades. Ao mesmo tempo que os homens migrantes aspiram ao poder de formas variadas (nomeadamente pela reinvenção de múltiplas formas de performatividade corporal e sexual masculina), tendem também a afastar-se da inclusão na ordem de género dominante em Portugal, sendo frequentemente cúmplices involuntários da sua própria fetichização enquanto Outro.

No abstract

A central problem of life course analysis concerns the changes brought about by the pluralization and differentiation of biographies in western societies. Lives would be increasingly dissimilar from each other and marked by a broader range of transitions and stages. Under the lens of life course theorization, the heterogenization of biographies is typically understood as destandardization. However, if the destandardization hypothesis gained momentum, there is still little information about its explanatory power outside the wealthiest centres of Europe and North America. Following recent trends in research, the article critically examines the applicability of the destandardization hypothesis to the Portuguese case. Through an analysis of the lives of three generations of Portuguese men and women, we reconstruct the life trajectories of each generation starting from the 1930s until the early 2000s. Through the reconstitution of both family and work trajectories, we see if there is a standard biography from which to derive subsequent patterns of heterogenization. From this perspective, we reassess the extent to which the destandardization model is suitable for explaining life course transformations in the Portuguese society.