Authenticated social capital: conceptualising power, resistance and well-being in the lives of transgender older adults

‘Staying in the Nationalist Bubble’

Kapitał społeczny ludzi starych na przykładzie mieszkańców miasta Białystok

The concept of social capital and its association with health has gained relevance in the last decades. Different proposals for its measurement and classification have been established, making the use of a wide range of variables essential for its proper coverage. In this sense, we aim at measuring two dimensions of social capital, bonding and bridging social capital, for the elder European population and how they both relate with self-assessed health. Recent evidence for this population group is missing. We used the 2011, 2015, and 2019 waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to obtain a proper range of variables assessing social capital. Fixed-effects logistic regressions were performed, regressing self-assessed health on social capital variables. We also included lagged values of social capital in our estimations to test temporal dynamics in the relationship between social capital and health, and conducted heterogenous analysis by gender and marital status. High levels of bridging social capital reduced the odds of declaring a poor health status, even after controlling for socioeconomic characteristics, objective health variables, and year dummies (OR: 0.878 95%CI: 0.82-0.941). Our heterogenous analyses revealed that being satisfied with social networks is correlated with lower odds of reporting poor health among single older adults and females. Additionally, we observed that high values of bridging capital in 2015 were correlated with lower odds of assessing a poor health status in 2019 (OR: 0.928; 95%CI: 0.872-0.987), as were having a larger number of family members in the social network (OR: 0.939; 95%CI: 0.895-0.985) and being satisfied with bridging social capital activities in 2015 (OR: 0.899; 95%CI: 0.851-0.948). Our results highlight the important role of participating in social activities on European older adults' health across time. Thus, policies aimed at promoting these activities not only might reduce unwanted loneliness among older adults, but also improve their health across time.

BackgroundLittle is known about social capital and health among older adults in South Africa. This study investigates the association between social capital and several health variables, namely: self-rated health, depressive symptoms, cognitive functioning and physical inactivity, among older South Africans.MethodsWe conducted a national population-based cross-sectional study with a national probability sample of 3840 individuals aged 50 years or older who participated in the Study of Global Ageing and Adults Health (SAGE wave 1) in 2008 in South Africa. Measures included socio-demographic characteristics, health variables, cognitive functioning and physical activity. Social capital was assessed with six components, namely: marital status, social action, sociability, trust and solidarity, safety, and civic engagement.ResultsThe social capital assessment revealed that 56% of the respondents were married or cohabiting, 45% reported low (0) social action, 42% reported medium (2–3) sociability, 43% reported high (2) trust and solidarity, 50% reported high (2–4) civic engagement and 42% reported medium (6) psychological resources. In multivariate analysis, self-reported good health was associated with younger age, having secondary education and higher social capital (being married or cohabiting, high trust and solidarity and greater psychological resources). Depressive symptoms were associated with lower social capital (not being married or cohabiting, lack of high trust and solidarity and low psychological resources). Better cognitive functioning was associated with younger age, higher educational level, greater wealth and higher social capital (being married or cohabiting, high trust and solidarity, lack of safety, higher civic engagement and greater psychological resources). Physical inactivity was associated with older age and lower social capital (lower social action, lack of safety, lower civic engagement and poorer psychological resources).ConclusionsGiven the basis of these findings on cross sectional data and subsequent limitation, it was found that these study findings mimic the findings of many European and American studies. Social capital among the elderly generation in South Africa is imperative for better health.

This study recognises the importance of social capital in community health interventions. It presents the results of a qualitative study exploring the role of community-level social capital in creating and facilitating pathways through which HIV/AIDS infection can be prevented and mitigated. Drawing on ethnographic narratives of the participants captured mainly through semi-structured interviews, the study reveals social capital as playing a significant role in addressing a host of social determinants of HIV/AIDS such a poverty, social marginalisation and inequality. Study participants were drawn from three (3) villages of the Umkhanyakhude District of KwaZulu-Natal Province. The importance of social capital can be seen in its ability to promote the development of a common morality and the horizontal exchange of resources. The study has established that at the community l evel, social capital is believed to promote health by fighting social stigma and the provision of social support. This study also emphasised the relevance of localised participation in HIV/AIDS initiatives and its ability to create social capital for HIV/AIDS prevention.

This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: Bogin, Barry; Vera, Carlos; Hermanussen, Michael and Scheffler, Cristiane: Human life course biology: A Centennial Perspective of scholarship on the human pattern of growth and capacity for culture which has been published in final form at: American Journal of Physical Anthropology 165.4 (2018): 834-854 titled : Human life course biology: A centennial perspective of scholarship on the human pattern of physical growth and its place in human biocultural evolution. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23357. This is article non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving

We aimed to investigate whether social capital (obtaining support through indirect ties such as from neighbors) and social cohesion (interdependencies among neighbors) within neighborhoods positively affect the well being of older adults. This cross-sectional study included 945 of 1,440 (66% response rate) independently living older adults (aged ≥70 years) in Rotterdam. We fitted a hierarchical random effects model to account for the hierarchical structure of the study design: 945 older adults (Level 1) nested in 72 neighborhoods (Level 2). Univariate analyses showed that being born in the Netherlands, house ownership, education, income, social capital of individuals, neighborhood security, neighborhood services, neighborhood social capital, and neighborhood social cohesion were significantly related to the well being of older adults. Multilevel analyses showed that social capital of individuals, neighborhood services, neighborhood social capital, and neighborhood social cohesion predicted the well being of older adults. Single and poor older adults reported lower well being than did better off and married older adults. However, the effects of marital status and income were mediated by neighborhood services, social capital, and social cohesion. Neighborhood services, social capital, and social cohesion may act as buffer against the adverse effects of being single and poor on the well being of older adults. The results of this study support the importance of social capital of individuals, as well as social capital within the neighborhood and social cohesion within the neighborhood for well being of older adults. The well being of older adults may also be enhanced through the improvement of quality of neighborhood services.

We aimed to investigate whether social capital (obtaining support through indirect ties such as from neighbors) and social cohesion (interdependencies among neighbors) within neighborhoods positively affect the well-being of older adults. This cross-sectional study included 945/1440 (66 % response rate) independently living older adults (aged >70 years) in Rotterdam. We fitted a hierarchical random-effects model to account for the hierarchical structure of the study design: 945 older adults (level 1) nested in 72 neighborhoods (level 2). Univariate analyses showed that being born in the Netherlands, house ownership, education, income, social capital of individuals, neighborhood security, neighborhood services, neighborhood social capital, and neighborhood social cohesion were significantly related to the well-being of older adults. Multilevel analyses showed that social capital of individuals, neighborhood services, neighborhood social capital, and neighborhood social cohesion predicted the well-being of older adults. Single and poor older adults reported lower well-being than did better-off and married older adults. However, the effects of marital status and income were mediated by neighborhood services, social capital, and social cohesion. Neighborhood services, social capital and social cohesion may act as buffer against the adverse effects of being single and poor on the well-being of older adults. The results of this study support the importance of social capital of individuals, as well as social capital within the neighborhood and social cohesion within the neighborhood for well-being of older adults. The well-being of older adults may also be enhanced through the improvement of quality of neighborhood services.

Emerging from feminist and queer theory, trans theory asks us to challenge essentialist and heteronormative understandings of gender, sex, and sexuality. Trans theory teaches us to critique essentialist and binary models of embodiment by attending to and centering the body in theory and in the world. In the early 21st century, trans people are more visible than we have ever been. There is an increasing appetite from “mainstream” readers for trans memoir, larger numbers of trans characters on screen and in the media, and out trans people now hold high-ranking political positions, teach in schools and universities, and act on stage and screen. Rather than the demand for trans stories being driven by scopophilia, curiosity, or voyeurism, it appears that there is a desire to genuinely understand trans lives, bodies, and lived experiences. Visibility comes with a price though, and we must be wary of tracing a simplistic progress narrative in relation to trans and gender diverse people and communities. When we appear in public, we gather our own communities, as well as allies and sympathizers, but these appearances also make us vulnerable to those who still fiercely deny our right to exist—the Vatican City’s thirty-one page statement discussing gender theory in education (2019), where we are told that trans people are “annihilating nature,” is a perfect example of this. While the term “trans” (more often than not) refers to transgender people, it is also a prefix that means “across”; trans denotes movement, going from one to the other, and change. Because we can find trans people across all times, places, and populations, we can also trace a complex, rich, and ever-expanding archive of trans writing, histories, and stories. It is through troubling the idea that trans people are a “modern” invention, that we are the living embodiment of political correctness gone mad, that we can begin to find each other in text, gather together, and work toward making significant social, political, and cultural change.

BackgroundSubjective well-being (SWB) is of particular interest among gerontologists and health researchers with important implications for interventions especially in poor-resource settings. This study aimed to explore the possible pathways from socioeconomic status (SES), functional independence and social capital towards SWB among older adults in India.MethodsCross-sectional data from the “Building a Knowledge Base on Population Aging in India” (BKPAI) survey with a total sample of 9231 older adults aged 60 years and above were used. The outcome variable was low SWB (LSWB). The study used univariate and bivariate analysis for reporting the initial results. Further, the study employed the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique using maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) procedure to estimate the covariance matrix.ResultsOverall, about 27% of older adults reported LSWB. Reporting LSWB was more prevalent among older adults who had no income (30.8%) and those who had income but not sufficient to fulfil their basic needs (39.4%, p < 0.001). The prevalence of reporting LSWB was significantly higher among older adults who had no asset ownership (36.5%, p < 0.001) than those who had asset ownership. The path from the SEM shows that LSWB and SES are negatively related to each other. Moreover, LSWB had significant negative relationship with independence (β = -0.032, p < 0.001) and social capital (β = -0.020; p < 0.001). In addition, results found a positive relationship between SES and independence (β = 0.019; p < 0.001), SES and social capital (β = 0.016; p < 0.001), and independence and social capital (β = 0.033; p < 0.001).ConclusionsThe findings highlight that higher SES, good physical functioning as well as favorable social capital are interdependent factors of late-life wellbeing and a multidimensional approach in policymaking can ensure a successful and active ageing among older Indian adults.

The unique feature of social marketing is that it takeslearning from the commercial sector and applies it to theresolution of social and health problems. This idea datesback to 1951, when Wiebe asked the question ‘Can broth-erhood be sold like soap?’ For the first time, people beganto think seriously that methods used very successfully toinfluence behaviour in the commercial sector might transferto a non-profit arena. Wiebe evaluated four different socialchange campaigns, and concluded that the more similaritiesthey had with commercial marketing, the more successfulthey were.Over the next two to three decades, marketers and publichealth experts developed and refined this thinking, learningparticularly from international development efforts, wheresocial marketing was used to inform family planning anddisease control programmes (1). Social marketing thinkingand techniques spread to the developed world, and socialmarketing is now located at the centre of health improve-ment in several countries. In the USA, social marketing isincreasingly being advocated as a core public health strat-egy for influencing voluntary lifestyle behaviours such assmoking, drinking, drug use and diet (2).Last year in the UK, the potential of social marketingwas recognized in the White Paper on Public Health, whichtalks of the ‘power of social marketing’ and ‘marketingtools applied to social good’ being ‘used to build publicawareness and change behaviour’ (3). The National SocialMarketing Centre, led by the National Consumer Counciland the Department of Health, has been established to‘help realise the full potential of effective social marketingin contributing to national and local efforts to improvehealth and reduce health inequalities’ (4).Social marketing – like generic marketing – is not atheory in itself. Rather, it is a framework or structure thatdraws from many other bodies of knowledge such as psy-chology, sociology, anthropology and communicationstheory to help us understand how to influence people’sbehaviour (5). Several definitions of social marketing exist,but one of the most useful is Andreasen’s, which describessocial marketing as follows:Social marketing is the application of commercial mar-keting technologies to the analysis, planning, executionand evaluation of programs designed to influence thevoluntary behaviour of target audiences in order toimprove their personal welfare and that of society. (6)Four key features are illustrated in this definition. Thefirst is a focus on

Transgender Healthcare Does Not Stop at the Doorstep of the Clinic

Effect of cognitive and structural social capital on depression among older adults in Ghana: A multilevel cross-sectional analysis

Being Seen after Going Stealth

This paper examines empirically the effect of some commonly used indicators of social capital, such as the prevalence of trust on community members and the participation in voluntary secular and religious organizations, on the incidence of violent crimes. This is a cross-country study whose basic sample consists of 39 developed and developing countries and whose dependent variable is the national intentional homicide rate. The paper identifies and deals with three challenges in the empirical estimation of the effect of social capital on the incidence of violent crimes. The omittedvariable problem is dealt with by including income inequality and economic growth as additional determinants of a country’s violent crime rate. The joint endogeneity (or reverse-causation) problem is accounted for by using instrumental variables for social capital in the crime regression. The specificity problem, that is the potentially opposite effects of group-specific and society-wide social capital, is noted and addressed only indirectly by emphasizing the results applied to the social capital indicators that have application for society as a whole. The main result of the paper is that only the component of social capital measured by trust on community members has the effect of reducing the incidence of violent crimes. The results regarding measures of other indicators of social capital are rather unclear. This may be due to a combination of limited samples, inability to fully control for reverse causation, and most likely, the opposite effects that society-wide and group-specific social capital may have on violent crime. ∗ Lederman and Menendez are economists with the Office of the Chief Economist for Latin America and the Caribbean of the World Bank. Loayza is a senior economist with the research department of the Central Bank of Chile, and he is currently on leave from the Development Economics Research Group of the World Bank. The opinions expressed herein should not be attributed to the World Bank. The authors are grateful to Ed Glaeser, Jeff Grogger, Gale Johnson, Sanjay Marwah, Steve Messner, Nicholas Sambanis, and an anonymous referee for invaluable comments and suggestions. The authors are responsible for any remaining errors.