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A growing body of research shows that social networks and identities have a profound impact on mental and physical health. With such mounting evidence of the importance of social relationships in protecting health the challenge we face is explaining why this should be the case. What is it that social groups offer that appears to be just as beneficial as a daily dose of vitamin C or regular exercise? This edited book brings together the latest research on how group memberships and the social identities associated with them determine people's health and well-being. The volume provides a variety of perspectives from clinical social organisational and applied fields that offer theoretical and empirical insights into these processes and their consequences. The contributions present a rich and novel analysis of core theoretical issues relating to the ways in which social identities and factors associated with them (such as social support and a sense of community) can bolster individuals' sense of self and contribute to physical and mental health. In this way it is shown how social identities constitute a 'social cure' capable of promoting adjustment coping and well-being for individuals dealing with a range of illnesses injuries trauma and stressors. In addition these theories provide a platform for practical strategies that can maintain and enhance well-being particularly among vulnerable populations. Contributors to the book are at the forefront of these developments and the book's strength derives from its analysis of factors that shape the health and well-being of a broad range of groups. It presents powerful insights which have important implications for health clinical social and organisational psychology and a range of cognate fields.

Intellectual disability is usually thought of as a form of internal, individual affliction, little different from diabetes, paralysis or chronic illness. This study, the first book-length application of discursive psychology to intellectual disability, shows that what we usually understand as being an individual problem is actually an interactional, or social, product. Through a range of case studies, which draw upon ethnomethodological and conversation analytic scholarship, the book shows how persons categorized as 'intellectually disabled' are produced, as such, in and through their moment-by-moment interaction with care staff and other professionals. Mark Rapley extends and reformulates current work in disability studies and offers a reconceptualisation of intellectual disability as both a professionally ascribed diagnostic category and an accomplished - and contested - social identity. Importantly, the book is grounded in data drawn from naturally-occurring, rather than professionally orchestrated, social interaction.

A tidal wave of panic surrounded homosexuality and AIDS in the 1980s and early 1990s, the period commonly called 'The AIDS Crisis'.With the advent of antiretroviral drugs in the mid '90s, however, the meaning of an HIV diagnosis radically changed.

When philosophers address personal identity, they usually explore numerical identity: what are the criteria for a person's continuing existence? When non-philosophers address personal identity, they often have in mind narrative identity: Which characteristics of a particular person are salient to her self-conception? This book develops accounts of both senses of identity, arguing that both are normatively important, and is unique in its exploration of a range of issues in bioethics through the lens of identity. Defending a biological view of our numerical identity and a framework for understanding narrative identity, DeGrazia investigates various issues for which considerations of identity prove critical: the definition of death; the authority of advance directives in cases of severe dementia; the use of enhancement technologies; prenatal genetic interventions; and certain types of reproductive choices. He demonstrates the power of personal identity theory to illuminate issues in bioethics as they bring philosophical theory to life.

PurposeBased on social exchange theory and social identification theory, I investigated how employee organizational identification affects the effectiveness of commitment-based human resource (HR) practices. I focused on employee attitudes (job satisfaction) and behaviors (proactive knowledge seeking) as HR practices’ outcomes.Design/methodology/approachUsing a structural equation modeling analytical approach, I tested the hypotheses with data from a web-based cross-sectional survey of 208 specialists and engineers of manufacturing subsidiaries in Poland.FindingsResults showed that the positive relationship between commitment-based-HR practices and job satisfaction is weakened for employees strongly identified with the organization. Simultaneously, the connection between seeking knowledge and job satisfaction is stronger and more important for people who identify moderately to strongly.Research limitations/implicationsThe study limitations regard mainly its cross-sectional design and single cultural and industrial context.Practical implicationsFrom the managerial perspective, the study suggests that to enhance proactive employee behavior, companies need to increase employee organizational identification and ensure that employees have a positive perception of the implemented HR practices.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the ongoing discussion on whether individual contingencies affect the effectiveness of commitment-based HR practices in the form of individual attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. The findings revealed that the contingent effect of organizational identification depends on the type of individual outcomes, suggesting that the strength of organizational identification affects how employees decide to reciprocate the organization’s attention and investment.

Deep China investigates the emotional and moral lives of the Chinese people as they adjust to the challenges of modernity. Sharing a medical anthropology and cultural psychiatry perspective, Arthur Kleinman, Yunxiang Yan, Jing Jun, Sing Lee, Everett Zhang, Pan Tianshu, Wu Fei, and Guo Jinhua delve into intimate and sometimes hidden areas of personal life and social practice to observe and narrate the drama of Chinese individualization. The essays explore the remaking of the moral person during China's profound social and economic transformation, unraveling the shifting practices and struggles of contemporary life.

When Alfred Kinsey's massive studiesSexual Behavior in the Human MaleandSexual Behavior in the Human Femaleappeared in 1948 and 1953, their detailed data spurred an unprecedented public discussion of the nation's sexual practices and ideologies. As they debated what behaviors were normal or average, abnormal or deviant, Cold War Americans also celebrated and scrutinized the state of their nation, relating apparent changes in sexuality to shifts in its political structure, economy, and people.American Sexual Characteremploys the studies and the myriad responses they evoked to examine national debates about sexuality, gender, and Americanness after World War II. Focusing on the mutual construction of postwar ideas about national identity and sexual life, this wide-ranging, shrewd, and lively analysis explores the many uses to which these sex surveys were put at a time of extreme anxiety about sexual behavior and its effects on the nation. Looking at real and perceived changes in masculinity, female sexuality, marriage, and homosexuality, Miriam G. Reumann develops the notion of \"American sexual character,\" sexual patterns and attitudes that were understood to be uniquely American and to reflect contemporary transformations in politics, social life, gender roles, and culture. She considers how apparent shifts in sexual behavior shaped the nation's workplaces, homes, and families, and how these might be linked to racial and class differences.

In The Indian System of Human Marks, Zysk offers a literary history of the Indian system of knowledge, which details divination by means of the marks on the bodies of both men and women. In addition to a historical analysis, the work includes texts and translations of the earliest treatises in Sanskrit. This is followed by a detailed philological analysis of the texts and annotations to the translations.The history follows the Indian system's evolution from its roots in ancient Mesopotamian collections of omen on the human body to modern-day practice in Rajasthan in the north and Tamilnadu in the south. A special feature of the book is Zysk's edition and translation of the earliest textual collection of the system in the Gargiyajyoti?a from the 1st century CE. The system of human marks is one of the few Indian textual sources that links ancient India with the antique cultures of Mesopotamia and Greece.

While the past 40 years have seen significant declines in adult smoking, this is not the case among young adults, who have the highest prevalence of smoking of all other age groups. At a time when just about everyone knows that smoking is bad for you, why do so many college students smoke? Is it a short lived phase or do they continue throughout the college years? And what happens after college, when they enter the \"real world\"? Drawing on interviews and focus groups with hundreds of young adults,Lighting Uptakes the reader into their everyday lives to explore social smoking. Mimi Nichter argues that we must understand more about the meaning of social and low level smoking to youth, the social contexts that cause them to take up (or not take up) the habit, and the way that smoking plays a large role in students' social lives. Nichter examines how smoking facilitates social interaction, helps young people express and explore their identity, and serves as a means for communicating emotional states. Most college students who smoked socially were confident that \"this was no big deal.\" After all, they were \"not really smokers\" and they would only be smoking for a short time. But, as graduation neared, they expressed ambivalence or reluctance to quit. As many grads today step into an uncertain future, where the prospect of finding a good job in a timely manner is unlikely, their 20s may be a time of great stress and instability. For those who have come to depend on the comfort of cigarettes duringcollege, this array of life stressors may make cutting back or quitting more difficult, despite one's intentions and understandings of the harms of tobacco. And emerging products on the market, like e-cigarettes, offer an opportunity to move from smoking to vaping.Lighting Upconsiders how smoking fits into the lives of young adults and how uncertain times may lead to uncertain smoking trajectories that reach into adulthood.

It is often claimed that social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are profoundly shaping political participation, especially when it comes to protest behavior. Whether or not this is the case, the analysis of “Big Data” generated by social media usage offers unprecedented opportunities to observe complex, dynamic effects associated with large‐scale collective action and social movements. In this article, we summarize evidence from studies of protest movements in the United States, Spain, Turkey, and Ukraine demonstrating that: (1) Social media platforms facilitate the exchange of information that is vital to the coordination of protest activities, such as news about transportation, turnout, police presence, violence, medical services, and legal support; (2) in addition, social media platforms facilitate the exchange of emotional and motivational contents in support of and opposition to protest activity, including messages emphasizing anger, social identification, group efficacy, and concerns about fairness, justice, and deprivation as well as explicitly ideological themes; and (3) structural characteristics of online social networks, which may differ as a function of political ideology, have important implications for information exposure and the success or failure of organizational efforts. Next, we issue a brief call for future research on a topic that is understudied but fundamental to appreciating the role of social media in facilitating political participation, namely friendship. In closing, we liken the situation confronted by researchers who are harvesting vast quantities of social media data to that of systems biologists in the early days of genome sequencing.