Arenas Of Life Research Articles

Precarious Transitions: How Precarious Employment Shapes Parental Coresidence among Young Adults

Abstract The rise of precarious work generates important questions about how this mode of employment might affect young workers’ transition to adulthood, particularly their decision to live independently. Existing demographic literature has considered the impact of unemployment on parental coresidence but overlooked the potential influence of precarious employment. Yet, features of precarious employment might matter for young adults’ residential arrangements. Our paper provides a theoretical framework linking precarious work to parental coresidence. Specifically, we outline three mechanisms that underlie this relationship: low pay, meager benefits, and short job tenure. Using longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth from 2005 to 2017, we provide empirical support for our model. We found that precariously employed young adults are more likely than their peers in standard jobs to live with their parents. About a third of this effect can be accounted for by the three theorized mechanisms. Our research contributes to the growing literature demonstrating the impact of economic insecurity on the workplace and family, the two essential arenas of social life.

Student participation in Irish primary schools

ABSTRACT This research explores the perceptions of 125 primary school students (ages 8–12) in two Educate Together schools in Ireland. As a national network, established over 40 years, Educate Together schools are characterised as equality-based, child-centred, participative and democratic. This ethos is set out in the Educate Together Charter and clarified through the recent development of the Educate Together Ethos Quality Framework. This article explores the understanding of student participation in literature and what it means in practice for Educate Together schools. Using a survey to gather data, the key research questions are as follows: How do students perceive their participation in school: (1) in the classroom; (2) outside the classroom and (3) in decision-making at the whole school level. This research attempts to build on the small number of previous studies where student participation in school was explored from the student's perspective. The descriptive quantitative and qualitative findings indicate a relatively high level of participation across these key arenas of school life, and the findings differentiate between those participation activities that are experienced, more or less commonly among students. The study considers the enabling environment created by Educate Together to ensure that student participation is part of school culture.

Tokenism and Its Long-Term Consequences: Evidence from the Literary Field.

Research on tokenism has mostly focused on negative experiences and career outcomes for individuals who are tokenized. Yet tokenism as a structural system that excludes larger populations, and the meso-level cultural foundations under which tokenism occurs, are comparatively understudied. We focus on these additional dimensions of tokenism using original data on the creation and long-term retention of postcolonial literature. In an institutional environment in which the British publishing industry was consolidating the production of non-U.S. global literatures written in English, and readers were beginning to convey status through openness in cultural tastes, the conditions for tokenism emerged. Using data on the emergence of postcolonial literature as a category organized through the Booker Prize for Fiction, we test and find for non-white authors (1) evidence of tokenism, (2) unequal treatment of those under consideration for tokenization, and (3) long-term retention consequences for those who were not chosen. We close with a call for more holistic work across multiple dimensions of tokenism, analyses that address inequality across and within groups, and a reconsideration of tokenism within a broader suite of practices that have grown ascendent across arenas of social life.

The Impacts of Online Experience on Health and Well-Being: The Overlooked Aesthetic Dimension

It is well-recognized that online experience can carry profound impacts on health and well-being, particularly for young people. Research has already documented influences from cyberbullying, heightened feelings of inadequacy, and the relative decline of face-to-face interactions and active lifestyles. Less attention has been given to the health impacts of aesthetic experiences of online users, particularly gamers and other users of immersive virtual reality (VR) technologies. However, a significant body of research has begun to document the surprisingly strong yet previously unrecognized impacts of aesthetic experiences on health and well-being in other arenas of life. Other researchers have used both fixed laboratory and wearable sensors and, to a lesser extent, user surveys to measure indicators of activation level, mood, and stress level, which detect physiological markers for health. In this study, we assessed the evidence that online sensorial experience is no less important than in the physical world, with the capacity for both harmful effects and salutogenic benefits. We explore the implications for online design and propose an outline for further research.

Asian Muslim women's struggle to gain value: The labour behind performative visibility as everyday politics in Britain

Historical and contemporary discourses around Muslim women represent them through gendered cultural tropes of victims of their own patriarchal community, racial tropes of victims of islamophobia, the sexualised and fetishized ‘other’ or complicit in ‘terrorist’ activity. However, Muslim women's investment in race relations is evident in their performative visibility in everyday spaces (e.g., work, education, shops, streets etc.), where they know that participatory parity is an uninhabitable category for them as minority women. Shifting focus from activism to struggle, this research demonstrates that Muslim women's struggle against stereotypical classifications is a form of politics, a struggle to be recognised as ‘doing politics’ in different ways, in different arenas of social life, disrupting relations between Muslims and majority British society. The paper also shows participants use of different strategies, reframing, challenging and ambivalence, as ways of doing politics explaining how power-relations are active in different spaces in these women's everyday lives.

Concurrent Displacements: Return, Waiting for Asylum, and Internal Displacement in Northern Mexico

This paper explores the ways in which contemporary mobility dynamics in Mexico have changed over the last decade, leading to protracted displacement. It focuses on three populations: (1) the internally displaced due to violence; (2) Mexican nationals returning from the United States, both voluntarily and due to deportation; and (3) populations seeking asylum in Mexico and the United States. These three populations are not usually analyzed together and do not squarely fall under the traditional legal definitions. The paper outlines ways that situations of protracted displacement and insecurity present challenges in four interconnected arenas of life: housing, legal status, employment, and emotional well-being. For governments and local communities, protracted displacement requires immediate humanitarian responses and the development and implementation of public policies focused on integration. The paper concludes with a set of policy recommendations based on its findings.

Prosthetic Rehabilitation Options in Post-Ablative Maxillomandibular Microvascular Reconstructions.

Surgery remains the mainstay for managing most neoplasms arising in the head and neck area. Removable or fixed prostheses are commonly used for prosthetic rehabilitation of head and neck defects following surgical resection. Some major challenges in prosthetic rehabilitation after maxillomandibular microvascular reconstruction include excessive prosthetic space, soft tissue bulk, and occlusal disharmony in the remaining dentition. This review focuses on the challenges we have experienced in the real clinical scenario while rehabilitating reconstructed maxillomandibular defects and the effective prosthetic treatment options that could be considered in each situation. Digital revolution has changed all arenas of life, and it has created a significant impact on cancer treatment planning and the delivery of quality treatment to the needy. Creating adequate retention while ensuring stability and support for the prosthesis can be challenging with temporary acrylic and cast partial removable dentures. Endosseous dental implants are considered a stable, reliable, and esthetic option for reconstruction with advantages such as increased chewing efficiency, preservation of the remaining bone height and width, and improved quality of life. The FP3 to RP5 (Misch's classification) are some commonly followed prosthetic rehabilitation options after microvascular reconstruction. The prosthetic design should permit the usage of interdental aids that ensure the longevity of prostheses. Occlusion-driven/prosthetic-driven implant-assisted prostheses are considered a reliable option that ensures stable and functional oral rehabilitation among patients with free fibula flap reconstruction. Multidisciplinary teamwork is mandatory for an optimal outcome that improves patients' quality of life.

Re-imagining anti-racism as a core organisational value

Racism and anti-racism have received widespread attention in academic debates and public discourse. Having universal features, racism manifests differently nationally and locally, and has been met with diverse anti-racism efforts. Despite historical achievements of struggles against racial oppression, racism endures, and continues to evolve and adapt, posing challenges to racial justice and equity. Parallel to this, anti-racism scholarship and action have evolved over the past decade, targeting an increasing number of arenas of everyday life. However, the place of anti-racism within organisations remains overwhelmingly peripheral and often tokenistic. This article draws attention to this and argues for re-imagining anti-racism as a core organisational value. We critically evaluate current anti-racism practices, and call for broader, holistic, committed and well-funded anti-racism approaches within organisations. We then argue why establishing anti-racism as a core organisational value may help in addressing systemic/structural racism. JEL Classification: J15, J71, M14, Z13

Civil War Secularity Talk

Despite important advances in the study of war and religion, the role of the secular remains under-analyzed. This article develops a theory of secularity talk in civil wars, examining two instances where actors have made religion and sect salient. In comparing patterns of secularity talk among non-elites found in oral history sources from the Syrian civil war and the Northern Irish Troubles, this article contributes to the recent peace turn in the religion-and-conflict literature. Greater attention to religion’s borderlands, to how actors distinguish religion from other arenas of human life can tell us more about what happens to the secular when people are under extreme pressure, including during war. This approach also sheds light on non-elite ambivalence towards elite mobilization of religion to fuel conflict, a common but as-yet under-theorized phenomenon.

Brothers, friends, and enemies: averting intimacy on Facebook in western India

Brothers, friends, and enemies: averting intimacy on Facebook in western India

Examining Consumers’ Adoption of Smart Wearable Payments

Smart wearable (SW) devices have attracted the users’ attention and their utility has been increasingly employed in different arenas of life. Of late, it is expected that wearable payments will be the norm of mobile payments soon. Recognizing the SW payments as an emerging innovation, this study investigates the consumers’ adoption of SW payments. A survey method was used to collect data from SW devices users in Saudi Arabia. For this purpose, online questionnaires were distributed and a total of 269 responses were received within that 243 operational cases were used for data analysis. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique was employed to analyze the data. The statistical tools employed for data analysis are SmartPLS 3.0 and SPSS23. The findings show that all hypothesized relationships were supported except the compatibility and perceived ease of use relationship which was found insignificant. Additionally, the moderating role of personal innovativeness on behavioral intention and actual use relationship was also confirmed. Although TAM is an established robust model of technology adoption, however, the integration of technological features like (perceived esthetics, compatibility, and convenience) make it a more vigorous model for adoption of the smart wearable device.

Patriarchy

AbstractPatriarchy is more than just “sexism.” It is a social formation of male‐gendered power with a particular structure that can be found with striking regularity in many different arenas of social life, from small‐scale contexts like the family, kin groups, and gangs, up through larger institutional contexts like the police, the military, organized religion, the state, and more. At the same time, patriarchy never stands alone, and always exists in complex intersections with other forms of power. In this article, I look at patriarchy from both points of view—that is, from both an exclusively gendered perspective, and from a perspective in which patriarchy cannot be divorced from white supremacy, normative heterosexuality, and normative able‐bodiedness. Finally I briefly consider contemporary right‐wing extremist (fascist) politics, in which the toxic intersectional brew of patriarchy, white supremacy, heteronormativity, and ideologies of bodily perfection are mobilized in pursuit of mass political control and domination.

Global Neoliberalism as a Cultural Order and Its Expansive Educational Effects

The global neoliberal era has sparked a burgeoning literature. Most accounts emphasize the political economy of the period, focusing on global markets and privatization. By contrast, we conceptualize neoliberalism as a broad cultural ideology that has reshaped how we think about people and institutions in all arenas of life, not just the economy. We delineate three main assumptions of neoliberalism as a cultural model. First, neoliberal ideology re-envisions society as consisting not of structures but of individual human persons who are attributed immense agency, entitlement, and rationality. Second, the neoliberal model redefines natural and social contexts in a manner that supports such imagined human actorhood, depicting them in terms of abstract rationalistic principles that apply universally. A third assumption, building on the previous two, is that progress is seen as emerging from universalized and abstracted human knowledge, rather than, for instance, from the material capacities of the state. Altogether, these assumptions amount to a dramatic cultural shift with broad consequences that include, but stretch far beyond, free markets. We illustrate these consequences by considering their expansive effects on education, drawing on existing studies and descriptive data. Overall, we expand sociological understandings of the cultural dimensions of neoliberalism.

Navigating Shomoyscapes: Time and faculty life in the urban Global South

We aim to decenter the Global North knowledge production about time in higher education (HE) by introducing and applying a culturally sustaining concept of shomoyscapes. While the Bengali word “shomoy” literally means “time,” it goes beyond “clock time” and also refers to memories, present moments, feelings, a particular duration, and/or signifier for a temporal engagement. A shomoyscape entails a complex temporal landscape of different temporal categories, constraints, agencies, and to various degrees, embodies hybrid times (i.e., modern time coexisting with non-linear local/traditional time). Drawing on interviews and participant observations with 22 faculty in Dhaka, Bangladesh, we demonstrate the efficacy of shomoyscapes by illuminating how faculty experience, contest, and manipulate their time(s) amid rapid socio-economic transformations of Dhaka, an urban, Global South mega city. We show how shomoyscapes manifest as faculty experience temporal constraints, such as (a) traffic, (b) party-based university politics, and (c) caring for others. We suggest that Bangladeshi faculty experience and navigate shomoyscapes that are constituted by both larger temporal constraints (spatial, structural, or relational) and their temporal agency in response to these same constraints. Using a temporal lens, we contribute to a more in depth understanding of the experiences of faculty working and living in an urban, Global South context, highlighting how life “outside the academy” spills over into working “inside the academy,” rather than vice versa. We argue that shomoyscapes offer a useful temporal heuristic to help contextualize human/social relations in different arenas of social life that would otherwise remain invisible.

Educating clergy as culture‐builders: Can this long tradition be reclaimed?

AbstractThis article draws implications from my recent study of the first 150 years of Clergy Education in America for Protestants, Catholics, Jews, African Americans and working class whites. I focus on the ability of these schools to prepare leaders for various arenas of public life: families, congregations, schools, voluntary associations, and publishing. The implications for today's seminaries include reframing historic pedagogies in the liberal arts, oratory, and debate; the formation of religious charisma and iconic leadership that are socially transmitted; the orientation of interpretive practices of sacred texts and traditions toward symbolic production; the reinvigoration of theologies that enrich faith communities and the public imagination; and reclaiming the missional nature of theological and rabbinical schools through public media, the arts, and populist pedagogies.

Remembering Women Differently: Refiguring Rhetorical Work ed. by Lynée Lewis Gaillet and Helen Gaillet Bailey

Reviewed by: Remembering Women Differently: Refiguring Rhetorical Work ed. by Lynée Lewis Gaillet and Helen Gaillet Bailey Jennifer Keohane Lynée Lewis Gaillet and Helen Gaillet Bailey, eds. Remembering Women Differently: Refiguring Rhetorical Work. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2019. 274 + xviii pp. ISBN: 9781611177978 Feminist rhetoricians have pursued recovery projects for many years. Seeking to demonstrate that women had multifaceted impacts on public life, they dove deep into archives to find the forgotten fragments of their public statements. In the engaging introduction to this collection, Letizia Guglielmo labels this practice “recollecting,” which she defines both as an act of bringing to mind but also as an act of “gathering or assembling again what has been scattered” (2). Indeed, this volume serves as such recollection, bringing together fourteen eclectic essays on women’s contributions to many arenas of symbolic and collective life. As with many feminist rhetorical projects, the editors—Lynée Lewis Gaillet and Helen Gaillet Bailey—insist that recovery of forgotten women is not the end goal of their volume. Instead (and inspired by work by Jessica Enoch and Jacqueline Jones Royster and Gesa Kirsch), they explore the rhetorical work required to remember women alongside how the memories of women come to be created, used, or erased in various situations (x). The editors segment the book into four different sections: new theoretical frameworks, erased collaborators, overlooked rhetors and texts, and disrupted memories. To the editors’ credit, the afterword recognizes that alternative organizational schemas could also have served to organize these diverse essays into a readable flow. Organization by chronology, methodology, or genre of text would facilitate additional insights into female reputation management and construction. The editors have selected the organizational scheme they use to “provide a structure for thinking about ways to re-collect existing narratives [and] create a heuristic for suggesting new research possibilities and venues” (257–8). As a result, however, each section contains rhetors and projects that are quite different. The collection as a whole features rhetors stretching from Byzantine historian Anna Komnene to Nigerian anticolonial activist Olufunmilayo Ransome-Kuti to oral expression teacher Anna Baright Curry. [End Page 342] The collection’s greatest contribution is in recovery. Indeed, the rhetors and rhetorical practices studied here will likely be unfamiliar to most. And, for more recognizable speakers like Crystal Eastman and Dorothy Day’ authors bring new insights and lenses to examine their rhetoric. Many of the authors in this “re-collection” answer Enoch’s call to examine rhetorical work broadly with great creativity and strength. That is, they interrogate questions of why some of these rhetors have been forgotten or have had their reputations tarnished throughout history. In the first section, “New Theoretical Frameworks,” the editors feature essays that “suggest new methodologies for reexamining the work of women” (xi). Essays by Gesa E. Kirsch and Patricia Fancher, Alice Johnston Myatt, Maria Martin, and Ellen Quandahl foreground new ways of engaging the memory of women. In one particularly interesting contribution, Myatt explores the phases involved in reclaiming women’s reputations. Using Rosalind Franklin, a largely unknown scientist integral to the discovery of DNA’s structure, she shows how and why her reputation passed through erasure, refutation, reclamation, and restoration (41–2). Other contributions look to indigenous theory and social circulation as ways to understand the struggle and successes of women as anticolonial activists, physicians, computer programmers, and historians. The second section, “Erased Collaborators,” explores how women’s work can be expunged when women collaborate with men, who are often subsequently credited for their contributions. Essays from Mariana Grohowski and Alexis Hart, Henrietta Nickels Shirk, and Suzanne Bordelon provide insights into the way these collaborations often disadvantaged women. Shirk, for instance, creatively analyzes the partnership between John James Audubon and painter Maria Martin by reading both their exchanged letters and the images on which they collaborated—he painted the birds and she the backgrounds for the famous Birds of America almanac. Yet, of course, Audubon’s fame and status far outshone Martin’s own, and her artistic skills are forgotten. In the third part, the editors call our attention to “Overlooked Rhetors and Texts” and examine activity that is not included in traditional definitions of...

Patient Strategies for Managing the Vicious Cycle of Fatigue, Pain and Urgency in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Impact, Planning and Support.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) causes inter-related symptoms of fatigue, pain and urgency which can persist in remission. To understand how people with IBD experience and self-manage these symptoms and to inform the future development of an online self-management programme. Using exploratory qualitative methods, we recruited participants from clinic and community settings. Focus groups, conducted across the UK, were audio-recorded and professionally transcribed. Transcripts were analysed over four rounds using framework analysis. Eight patients were consulted to agree the final structure of data and themes. Seven focus groups were held; five gave useable data. Twenty-six participants (15 female; ages 21-60years; disease duration 2-40years) with Crohn's disease (n = 10), ulcerative colitis (n = 14) and IBD-unclassified (n = 2) attended one of these five focus groups. Three core themes emerged: The Negative Impact of Symptoms, Positively Taking Control and Seeking and Receiving Support. The persistent, often stark impact of multiple co-existing symptoms on physical and emotional wellbeing can force unwanted adjustments and limitations in working, social and intimate arenas of life. Unpredictable symptoms are challenging and impact each other in negative vicious cycles. Managing diet, pacing, accepting background levels of fatigue, pain and urgency, seeking support, exercising and attending to mental wellbeing, are all perceived as helpful in self-managing symptoms. Fatigue, pain and urgency are troublesome for patients, especially in combination, suggesting that these should be addressed simultaneously by clinicians. Participants reported several strategies for self-management, providing patient-focused evidence to inform future development of a self-management intervention programme.

Impact of an Education Program on Self-Care Agency and Self-Rated Abilities among Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythromatosis

Background: Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease with potential variety and severity of manifestations and unpredictable course present challenges and repercussions in all arenas of life. The aim of the current study was to evaluate the impact of education program on self-care agency and self-Rated abilities among patients with systemic lupus erythromatosis at Mansoura university hospital. A quasi experimental research design was utilized. Setting, the study was conducted at Rheumatology and Immunology outpatient clinic at Mansoura University Hospital, Egypt. A purposeful sample consisting of all patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) without any organ damage who registered at the rheumatology and immunology unit during the period of the beginning of August 2019 to end of December 2019. Three tools were used in data collection; a structured interviewing questionnaire, Self -Rated Abilities for Health Practices Scale (SRAHP), and Exercise Self Care Agency scale. Results, revealed that one third of studied subjects fall in age group from 30-40 years old, most of them were female and more than half of them were married in addition to more than two fourth of patients had disease for more than 4 years. Related to educational program there were positive impact on self-rated abilities for health practices and self-care agency after implementation of the education program. Conclusion Application of the education program through Self-care interventions has positive impact on improving self-care agency (SCA) and self-rated abilities for health practices that permitting patients to integrate mutually social support and self-care activities. Recommendation; Continuous education programs for patient with systemic lupus erythematosus in order to improve their health status, independence and self-care activities, and replication and expanded studies are also needed.

Well-Being in Life and Well-Being at Work: Which Comes First? Evidence From a Longitudinal Study.

Understanding reciprocal relationships between specific arenas in life and at work is critical for designing interventions to improve workplace health and safety. Most studies about the links between dimensions of well-being in life and at work have been cross-sectional and usually narrowly focused on one of the dimensions of the work-life well-being link. The issues of causality and feedback between life and work well-being have often not been addressed. We overcome these issues by measuring six aspects of well-being for both the work arena and life in general, using longitudinal data with a clear temporal sequence of cause and effect, and by explicitly accounting for feedback with potential effects in both directions. Nine hundred and fifty-four Mexican apparel factory workers at a major global brand participated in two waves of the Worker Well-Being Survey. Data on life satisfaction and job satisfaction, happiness and positive affect, meaning and purpose, health, and social relationships in life and at work were used. Lagged regression controlling for confounders and prior outcomes was employed. Sensitivity analysis was used to assess the robustness of the results to potential unmeasured confounding. For the relationships between life satisfaction and job satisfaction and between happiness in life and happiness at work effects in both directions were found. Nevertheless, indication of a larger effect of life satisfaction on job satisfaction than the reverse was obtained. For depression and meaning in life, there was evidence for an effect of life well-being on work-related well-being, but not for the reverse. For social relationships and purpose, there was evidence for an effect of work-related well-being on life well-being, but not the reverse. Relationships based on the longitudinal data were considerably weaker than their respective cross-sectional associations. This study contributes to our understanding of the nature of the relationship between aspects of well-being in the arenas of life and work. Findings from this study may facilitate the development of novel workplace programs promoting working conditions that enable lifelong flourishing in life and at work.

Comment: What Historians of Medicine Can Learn from Historians of Capitalism.

Comment:What Historians of Medicine Can Learn from Historians of Capitalism Beatrix Hoffman (bio) Medical care is deeply intertwined with economics, as anyone who has tried to navigate the U.S. health care system is painfully aware. The "New History of Capitalism," Christy Chapin argues in her rich and fascinating essay, can help scholars analyze and better understand this relationship. Chapin invites medical historians to apply a "broad" and "capacious" definition to the term "capitalism" in order to locate capitalist features like markets, profitmaking, and commodification throughout the history of health care. In doing so herself, Chapin makes some new and surprising observations about this history, including defining some ancient and medieval religious healing practices as capitalist, and twentieth-century physicians as anticapitalist. I learned a great deal about the New History of Capitalism from this essay, and I hope that historians of medicine will take seriously many of the field's important insights, especially its call to historicize "the economy" and analyze its particularities in different times and places. The work of the "new" historians of capitalism has helped me think about how my own work on twentieth-century U.S. health care history has mostly taken "capitalism" for granted, assuming that it was the context in which historical actors operated but not examining its composition or dynamics. I appreciate the opportunity to think more analytically about how health care in the United States has both been shaped by and contributed to modern capitalism. (Since I am more cowardly than Professor Chapin, my comments here focus solely on my own field, twentieth-century U.S. health care history.) Historians of capitalism call upon scholars "to denaturalize capitalism and 'the market,'" Chapin tells us, and to study "how power relationships are manifested through economic operations" (pp. 325–26). Yet these important goals at times contradict how some prominent spokespeople for the "new" history of capitalism have juxtaposed economic history against social and cultural history, and have chided social and cultural historians for [End Page 368] abandoning economics.1 Instead, we should not lose sight of how the economy functions and changes in relation to culture and society. As cultural historian Nan Enstad argues, summarizing the British Marxist cultural theorist Raymond Williams, "The terms 'economy,' 'culture,' and 'society' should not be treated as separate arenas of life nor as fully separable categories of analysis: their power for analysis comes from their interrelationship."2 I would add "politics" and "ideas" to this list. While she acknowledges the complexities and challenges of definition, at many points throughout her essay Chapin seems to define capitalism solely as competitive markets. This is particularly evident in her depiction of physicians in Germany, Britain, and the United States as anticapitalist, and modern health care systems as shaped by "the antagonism of organized physicians toward capitalism" (p. 344). However, if we define capitalism not simply as markets but as a particular arrangement of markets that also embodies ideology and power relations, society and culture, then organized physicians' response to health reform in the twentieth-century United States (again, I am speaking of that country only) looks more like a robust defense of the capitalist system. In opposing both government intervention and third-party competition, physician leaders argued that their profession's autonomy was central to an American identity rooted in individualism, private property, and free enterprise. This was not just a matter of rhetoric; in its ideological and strategic alliances with powerful capitalists including business groups and the insurance industry (which Chapin has so well described for the later period in Ensuring America's Health), organized medicine in the United States built its political influence in a way that had tangible consequences for the health care system. In just one example from the period the essay discusses, in 1919 the Medical Society of the State of New York joined with commercial insurance companies and the New York manufacturers' association—the quintessential capitalists of their time—to craft the legislative strategy that killed proposals for compulsory worker health insurance.3 [End Page 369] Certainly, this was a way for physicians to have their cake and eat it too: to serve as shining beacons of capitalist self-reliance while rejecting...