Idea Of Ambivalence Research Articles

Hidden in plain sight: how individual ADHD stakeholders have conflicting ideas about ADHD but do not address their own ambivalence

Psychiatric classifications refer to clusters of behavioral symptoms. We know much about how psychiatric classifications are intended to be used in theory. Yet the scientific study of the practice of classification to date is limited. We aimed to explore how individuals navigate and make sense of the complexity surrounding an ADHD classification. We used thematic analysis to analyse stakeholder perspectives from seven focus groups: adults classified with ADHD, adolescents classified with ADHD, parents of children classified with ADHD, clinicians, researchers, teachers, and policy makers. We found seven themes in how stakeholders navigate the classification ADHD. Yet, what stood out was an overarching discursive pattern: individual stakeholders expressed highly ambivalent ideas about ADHD but did not address their own ambivalence. We suggest that promoting a social kinds perspective on ADHD may help us navigate the complexity and ambivalence associated with ADHD more competently.

Mapping Feminist Politics on Tik Tok during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Content Analysis of the Hashtags #Feminismo and #Antifeminismo

In recent decades, marked by the supposedly universal access to different types of social media, we have seen the emergence of forms of popular feminism embedded in complex dynamics. Often cohabiting in these dynamics are ambivalent ideas and imaginaries that both reject and express feminist issues. Particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of digital technologies increased exponentially to overcome mobility constraints, popularizing connective action around feminism and, at the same time, reinforcing normative views of society. This article explores these ambivalences by focusing on TikTok discourses, whose popularity grew intensely during the pandemic. Departing from a feminist constructionist perspective and using content analysis, we examine the 100 most prominent videos on the Portuguese hashtags #feminismo (#feminism) and #antifeminismo (#antifeminism) in the period corresponding to general containment measures in the second phase of the public health crisis. The results are less than encouraging. Over half of the analysed videos contain discursive dynamics conforming to social hierarchization (53%), often reaffirming gender stereotypes. By allowing forms of popular feminism and antifeminism to permeate the shared discourses, the results suggest that the platform gives rise to ideas and discourses that reify unbalanced power relations.

Alcohol Drinking, Smoking, and Diabetes

Many patients with diabetes continue smoking and high-risk drinking during diabetes treatment. Some patients try and fail to stop alcohol drinking and smoking because of the addictive and habitual effects. Considering the high lifetime prevalence of alcohol and nicotine use disorders, the percentage of people who actively use treatment services is low. Smoking is related to increased vascular complications and mortality as well as development of diabetes. A small amount of alcohol is allowed in the diabetes treatment guidelines, but the limit can be difficult to maintain in reality. Therefore, it is necessary for a medical doctor to evaluate the alcohol and smoking problems of diabetic patients, and it may be helpful to use screening and evaluation tools such as AUDIT (alcohol use disorders identification test) for alcohol drinking and FTND (Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence) for smoking. It is important that patients are provided necessary information and a brief intervention and that they are recommended a professional treatment such as active treatment with anti-craving medications and structural psychosocial treatment programs. Many patients are worried about the harmful effects of alcohol drinking and smoking and think they should quit it, but at the same time, they may have their own reasons for not being able to quit drinking and smoking, and may be suffering from ambivalent ideas about alcohol drinking and smoking. Therefore, rather than criticizing the patient’s alcohol drinking and smoking behavior, it is important to show understanding of patient difficulties and to encourage the patient to stop drinking and smoking.

TikTok and Child Hypersexualization: Analysis of Videos and Narratives of Minors

The objective of this study is to analyze the degree of sexualization observed in TikTok videos and to compare it with the narratives of young people about the social network. A mixed-methods research design was used combining (1) a quantitative observational study based on measuring indicators of sexualization in 648 videos published by the 12 TikTokers most followed in Spain and (2) a qualitative study with 12 in-depth interviews to TikTok users (6 male, 6 female) between 8 and 17 years old from Spain. The video analysis reveal hypersexualized behaviors in 10/12 accounts, without statistically significant gender differences. Narratives about the social network showed ambivalent ideas, considering it a fundamental space for fun and socialization while being aware of numerous risks and threats. Sexualization is described with the expression “being loose” and is recognized as an intrinsic characteristic of the network. The discourses on hypersexualization are markedly gendered, recognizing sexualization almost exclusively in women. Some young people perceive self-sexualization as a form of self-empowerment, while when they describe it in other women, it is penalized and negatively valued as a form of objectification that favors bullying. They also warn about its impact on self-esteem and mental health, especially in terms of those bodies that do not fit into body hierarchies. The climate of the network facilitates criticism and insult, the dissociation between the real and virtual self, and that public exposure increases their vulnerability. It is urgent to advance digital affective-sexual education that addresses these problems.

Особенности представлений о семейных отношениях у подростков-правонарушителей

The article deals with the concept of family life in juvenile offenders. Juvenile delinquency often has roots in family problems. Teenage criminals are known to express ambivalent ideas about family relationships. In this research, they described Mother as emotionally distant, undemanding, soft-hearted, uncooperative, lacking control, and inconsistent in her educational influence. Father was described as stern, demanding, even cruel, emotionally distant, and unaccepting. The research proved the ambivalent character of family concept in teenage criminals. They had more positive ideas about their own future family than about their life with parents. Most juvenile delinquents were eager to have their own family in the future. However, they hardly ever described themselves as a spouse or a parent. Their ideas about family relationships were blurred; they had a very poor understanding of family roles and tended to oppose their parental family to the family they imagined for themselves.

ТРАНСПЛАНТАЦИОННЫЕ ТЕХНОЛОГИИ И ДОНОРСТВО ОРГАНОВ: КУЛЬТУРНО-ПСИХОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ АСПЕКТЫ

The purpose of the study is to reconstruct the basic concepts of the mind-body continuum underlying transplantation technologies. Using modern research, the author shows that the application of transplantation technologies is based on ambivalent ideas: on the one hand, tissues and organs act as purely biological entities, on the other hand, they also imply the values of the subject’s personal and сultural identity. This involves an understanding of the challenges and requirements that accompany contemporary transplantation technologies: patients need to develop the ability to switch from one bodily identity to another (so-called «intercorporeality»), while transplant physicians need the ability to work with an intentional sphere of human mind. Using a number of cross-cultural studies, this paper offers a view of how the conception of death, body and identity varies in different cultural and social settings.

Loved and feared: citizens’ ambivalence towards free movement in the European Union

ABSTRACT The right of citizens to live and work in any member state is a foundational pillar of the European Union. The views of EU citizens on free movement are characterized by a puzzle: the border-free Europe is seen as the most important achievement of European integration but also appears as a main driver of Euroscepticism. In this article, I argue that this is because of a tension between citizens’ own mobility rights and the mobility rights of citizens from other EU countries. This idea of ambivalence towards free movement is tested with observational data and a survey experiment across 28 EU countries. The results suggest that many citizens hold ambivalent views towards free movement due to a tension between the value of one’s own mobility and the fear of immigration. Their effective support depends on the relative salience of inward and outward mobility. This finding has important implications for the public support of international integration more generally.

ПОВЕЗАНОСТ СТАВА ПРЕМА РОДНИМ УЛОГАМА И РОДНИХ ПРЕДРАСУДА КОД СТУДЕНАТА У СРБИЈИ

The idea of ambivalence in gender prejudice, as one of the modern forms of prejudice, has been in the spotlight of social psychologists for the last two decades, sometimes even more than most of the well-explored, traditional forms of prejudice such as ethnic or race prejudices. The central problem of this paper is the level of ambivalent gender prejudice toward men and women in students, as well as what the relation of attitudes towards gender roles is, as well as some other variables, and the level of gender prejudice. For research purposes, several scales were applied: Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI), the Ambivalence toward Men Inventory (AMI), and Attitudes towards Gender Roles scale (ATGR). The sample consisted of 715 students of 34 faculties of the Universities in Novi Sad and Belgrade, as well as students of the Academy of Criminalistics and Police Studies and Military Academy in Belgrade. The results show that gender prejudices (although there are smaller differences with respect to the type of prejudice) are most strongly predicted by the attitudes towards gender roles, the respondents’ gender and the type of faculty (almost consistently students of social and human sciences expressed less prejudices). Also, the most prominent were the benevolent prejudices toward women, confirming that in our culture, this kind of behaviour is still not considered as a problematic treatment of the opposite (but also own) gender.

The adult-child relationship in breastfeeding and development: a Merleau-Pontian perspective on the existential and social conflicts in childrearing

This paper discusses Merleau-Ponty’s use of idea of ambivalence and its role in psychological conflicts. Merleau-Ponty affirms ambivalent conflicts as lived and social rather than biologically determined, as one might have in some developmental accounts, or hidden, as in some psychoanalytic accounts. With this concept, the paper takes up feminist considerations of the conflicts experienced by mothers in breastfeeding. It argues that the Merleau-Pontian and feminist approach to considering breastfeeding provides a nuanced model for thinking about development that is better suited to cases where both the child and the parent are co-evolving.

Liminal geopolitics: the subjectivity and spatiality of diplomacy at the margins

This paper argues that the lens of liminality has the potential to enrich scholarship in critical geopolitics by offering a nuanced approach to the geographies and ambivalence of political subjectivity. In the context of a perceived proliferation of ‘new’ actors the paper turns critical attention to what happens at the threshold between the categories of state and non‐state, official and unofficial diplomacy. It asks what such a perspective on diplomacy might mean for understandings of who is, and who should be, a legitimate actor in international politics by turning to the notion of liminality as developed in cultural anthropology. This is a concept that surprisingly has been overlooked in political geography and this paper asks how geographers might engage more productively with it, particularly in light of emergent critical international relations research on liminality as a paradigm for understanding stability and change in institutionalised orders. Empirically, the paper focuses on the articulation of liminal political subjectivities and spatialities through the lens of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), a coalition of almost 50 stateless nations, indigenous communities and national minorities that currently are denied a place at international diplomatic forums. Drawing on this case study, the paper examines three areas of geopolitical enquiry that the notion of liminality opens up. First is the spatiality of diplomacy in terms of the out‐of‐placeness of liminal actors and the construction of transformative spaces of quasi‐official diplomacy. Second are particular qualities of political subjectivity, including the blurring of boundaries between diplomacy and activism, and the notion of geopolitical shapeshifters. Finally, attention turns to the notion ofcommunitasto draw out the politics of belonging, recognition and legitimacy. The paper concludes by suggesting that the idea of ambivalence that underpins liminality is a useful provocation to take creativity and aspiration seriously in geopolitics.

SIGNIFICADOS AMBIVALENTES NO PROCESSO DE ADOÇÃO: UM ESTUDO DE CASO

A existência de significados diversos, deflagrando ideias e sentimentos ambivalentes sobre a adoção, no momento atual da sociedade brasileira, é tema deste trabalho. O papel dessa ambivalência é analisado, procurando-se mostrar como ela pode se refletir na decisão de adotar uma criança. Este trabalho aborda a dinâmica que caracteriza a construção de significados, que ocorre na relação entre a sociedade e os indivíduos, ou seja, entre a primeira, concebida como cultura coletiva, e os pretendentes à adoção, constituindo as suas culturas pessoais. A análise de entrevistas realizadas com um casal heterossexual estéril, inscrito no Cadastro Nacional de Adoção (CNA), ilustra esse processo de construção de significados que, no presente caso, resulta em significar “estar inscrito no CNA” como possibilitando tanto esperar a criança desejada, por meio dessa forma legalizada, como poder obter essa criança por meio de quaisquer outras formas não legalizadas. Sugerimos que a tentativa de reduzir a ambivalência, criada pelas mensagens contraditórias coexistentes, desempenha papel central na construção de significados, que orienta as ações escolhidas e as opções adotadas pelos pretendentes à adoção, no momento atual no Brasil.

Ambivalence--a key concept in gerontology? Elements of heuristics exemplified by identity formation in old age

Ambivalence is a widely used concept in gerontology, mostly used in the common sense meaning. We propose that an elaborated notion based on the historical and systematic analysis, reveals important theoretical, methodological and practical potentials of the idea of ambivalence for the study of aging. We exemplify this view by proposing a heuristic perspective for the analysis of processes to constitute and reconstitute identities in old age using a model based on a multidimensional understanding of ambivalence. Ambivalence is defined as referring to the experiences of vacillating between polar contradictions of feeling, thinking, wanting and social structures in the search for the sense and meaning of social relationships, facts and texts, which are important for unfolding and altering facets of the self and agency.

Locating the Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is a story of an expedition by European voyagers into the hub of the African continent at a time when such explorations into unknown lands were commonplace. As a colonial narrative, Conrad's text has provoked intense criticism and heated debate, much of which points to the novella's racist overtones. This is largely owing to Joseph Conrad's foregrounding and representations of nativism, primitivism and degeneracy, which are writ large in the novella. Using Homi Bhabha's idea of ambivalence and Mieke Ba's concept of focalisation, in tandem, this paper exonerates Conrad's text from the charges of racism, arguing that the novella draws attention to the underlying ambivalence which is located at the very heart of colonial narrative and discourse.

‘Human nature’: Chemical engineering students’ ideas about human relationships with the natural world

While importance of environmental ethics, as a component of sustainable development, in preparing engineers is widely acknowledged, little research has addressed chemical engineers’ environmental concerns. This study aimed to address this void by exploring chemical engineering students’ values regarding human–nature relationships. The study was conducted with 247 3rd–4th year chemical engineering students in Israeli Universities. It employed the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP)-questionnaire to which students added written explanations. Quantitative analysis of NEP-scale results shows that the students demonstrated moderately ecocentric orientation. Explanations to the NEP-items reveal diverse, ambivalent ideas regarding the notions embodied in the NEP, strong scientific orientation and reliance on technology for addressing environmental challenges. Endorsing sustainability implies that today's engineers be equipped with an ecological perspective. The capacity of Higher Education to enable engineers to develop dispositions about human–nature interrelationships requires adaptation of curricula towards multidisciplinary, integrative learning addressing social–political–economic–ethical perspectives, and implementing critical-thinking within the socio-scientific issues pedagogical approach.

Immigrant Ambivalence Toward the Homeland: The Case of Iraqis in Helsinki and Rome

This article seeks to contribute to our understanding of the social psychology of migrants by introducing the idea of ambivalence as a central feature of the migration experience. Building on the contribution of Neil Smelser, we follow his lead in linking the idea of ambivalence to Albert Hirschman's treatment of exit, loyalty, and voice. The data utilized herein derive from a larger study of Iraqi immigrants in Helsinki and Rome. We make use of 48 open-ended interviews, half conducted in each city. Our focus is on the ambivalence of immigrants toward their country of origin. We find evidence that ambivalence is common and the reactions to it vary along the lines suggested by Hirschman.

Social Citizenship: Rights, Participation and Responsibilities of Young People

People often expressed contrasting and ambivalent ideas and feelings about their incorporation in a society; on the one hand, everyone is an equal member of a society; but on the other hand, some members express indifference towards this notion. This research will focus on how Malaysian young people make sense of these seemingly contradictory ideas and practices and how their negotiations and resolutions relate to their social citizenship in Malaysian multi-ethnic society. In order to highlight processes of negotiations and resolutions, this research will look at social, political and civil rights under the banner of social citizenship examining young people’s perceptions and experiences of citizenship. These aspects will provide the framework for discussing how various notions including those of rights as citizens are interconnected and embedded with motives that contribute to and constitute political, social and civil rights that lead to democratic rights, participation and responsibility.

Reason’s Children: Childhood in Early Modern Philosophy (review)

Reviewed by: Reason’s Children: Childhood in Early Modern Philosophy Stephan K. Schindler Anthony Krupp, Reason’s Children: Childhood in Early Modern Philosophy. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 2009. 261 pp. Ever since Philippe Ariès’s seminal study of 1960 shed light on the historicity of childhood, significant further research has been conducted on the discursive construction of this stage of life. Focusing on the contributions early modern philosophers have made to the “intellectual history of childhood” (13), Anthony Krupp’s monograph successfully reconstructs the role rationalist philosophy played in the discourses on childhood prior to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile. Countering the commonly-held belief that between 1630 and 1750 the child was merely seen as an irrational and certainly not as an important subject for philosophical consideration, Krupp’s careful reading of René Descartes, John Locke, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Christian Wolff, and Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten uncovers new ground that will not only enrich the history of childhood but that of philosophy as well. The book begins by reconstructing Descartes’s struggle between body and mind, the adult’s quest to overcome childhood’s cognitive deficiencies, and its dependency on premature sensationalism. Childhood is here considered a stage of uncertainty, instilling prejudices and false opinions in the mind because the premature being lacks reflection and reason, whose proper use is reserved for the adult mind, which detaches itself from the reign of the body. While the child is able to think, the adult is unable to remember these thoughts because there is no self-awareness of rationality in childhood. Traces of such activity that are remembered are clouded with premature judgments, for the child is too situated in the corporeal world. For Descartes, one becomes an adult by more or less shedding one’s childhood. Only under the scrutiny of the Cartesian method can a few beliefs acquired in childhood be rendered acceptable to the mature mind. Compared with Descartes’s radical opposition of childhood and adulthood, John Locke is considered the first philosopher who anticipated the idea of psychological development in children. His philosophy of the mind traces children’s cognitive abilities, their deficient but not defective knowledge acquired through experiencing their immediate environment. Abstracting from these early sensuous experiences, the child gains access to the first ideas, which are not innate but learned. As Krupp points out, however, Locke had much more ambivalent ideas about children than commonly assumed. Krupp recalls Leibniz’s critique of Locke’s concept of self and how it is related to childhood, demonstrating the clash between empiricist (Locke) and rationalist (Leibniz). In the next two chapters Krupp spends considerable time reconstructing Locke’s discussion of changelings and Leibniz’s crusade against infant damnation. The latter’s idea of pre-established harmony between body and soul lends itself to structuring the relation between faith and reason, culminating in his claim that the souls of unbaptized infants rest in heaven. While these theological discussions reflect the intellectual spirit of their time, they do not necessarily advance the general gist of the monograph and could, perhaps, have been presented in a more abbreviated form. In chapter 5, Krupp turns to the father of German philosophical terminology, Christian Wolff. In his Politics Wolff organized the modern patriarchal household [End Page 292] around the upbringing of children. He sees childhood as an insufficient phase that lacks rationality and thus should be overcome on the way to reasonable maturity. Children’s weak and small bodies limit the development of the understanding soul, the site of cognition, which grows in accordance with physical development. Children, according to Wolff, are lost in the sensational world and are always in a state of lack which links them to slavery, because the absence of reason does not allow for the possibility of freedom and morality. Wolff’s student, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, is one of the first rationalists who attempts to bestow greater value on the lower faculties that are dominant in children’s recognition. For Baumgarten, sensation and reason are distinctive faculties of knowledge which mirror how child and adult perceive the world. He values childhood as a developmental life stage in which play, improvisation, and spontaneous imitation lay the groundwork for an...

Ambivalence: A “Sensitizing Construct” for the Study and Practice of Intergenerational Relationships

In recent years the idea of ambivalence has found rising attention in the field of intergenerational relationships studies and practice. It allows one to consider the contradictory dynamics of conflict and solidarity. Starting from the everyday usage of the term, an elaborated definition of ambivalence is developed that includes most of the applications in research and in practice. Before this background, it is suggested to generate for future theoretical and practical work with ambivalence the notion of a “sensitizing construct.”

<em>Law and Imperialism: Criminality and Constitution in Colonial India and Victorian England</em>, by Preeti Nijhar<br/><em>Constructing the Criminal Tribe in Colonial India: Acting Like a Thief</em>, by Henry Schwarz

Reviewed by: Law and Imperialism: Criminality and Constitution in Colonial India and Victorian England, and: Constructing the Criminal Tribe in Colonial India: Acting Like a Thief Clare Anderson (bio) Law and Imperialism: Criminality and Constitution in Colonial India and Victorian England, by Preeti Nijhar; pp. 220. London and Brookfield: Pickering & Chatto, 2009, £60.00, $99.00. Constructing the Criminal Tribe in Colonial India: Acting Like a Thief, by Henry Schwarz; pp. viii + 163. Oxford and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, £60.00, $99.95. Law and Imperialism is a fascinating study of legal hierarchies in Britain and India. Preeti Nijar ranges widely across sociology, criminology, and history to discuss the close relationship between metropole and colony in the making of scientific typologies and social categories. Drawing on Homi Bhaba's idea of ambivalence, Nijar theorises this relationship as part of a deliberate effort to distance colonizer from colonized and to alleviate fears provoked by the proximity of the social other in Britain and in India. The place of scientific understandings is of special concern to her, in particular with respect to the supposed dangerousness of specific communities. Though I greatly enjoyed this book, more engaged and critical editing would have greatly assisted Nijhar in producing a more forceful argument. Too often her prose is laboured, repetitive, and hard to follow. She presents a number of quotations without introduction or contextualisation. The footnotes are inconsistent; primary sources are included in the bibliography of secondary literature; and the author even misspells the name of one of the advisory editors of the book series. Conceptually, the book left me a little confused about the lines of distinction between race and ethnicity. Also, the history of the British Isles makes the concept of British indigeneity—repeatedly invoked by the author—deeply problematic. There are minor errors, too. She misunderstands the meaning of the word "outcast," following each citation with "sic." This completely misses its biblical associations, which are critical to understanding particular representations of the London poor. Nijhar is simply wrong, furthermore, about the history of convict transportation. She says that it was used in Britain before India, that Britain was unique in using it, and that convicts were used as indentured labor. But the East India Company transported Indian convicts overseas from the 1790s; Portugal, Spain, and France also transported convicts; and convicts were used as indentured [End Page 327] labor only in the Americas, not in Australia. These criticisms aside, the general thrust of the book is timely and convincing, joining a growing academic literature on colonial networks and connectedness that includes Durba Ghosh and Dane Kennedy's Decentering Empire: Britain, India and the Transcolonial World (2006). In placing the so-called criminal Sansi tribe and the British criminal classes into a single frame of analysis through an evaluation of the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act in India and the 1869 Habitual Criminals Act in England, Nijhar is especially effective. She writes of the mutual exchange of ideas about dangerousness and race: "The 'criminal' tribes and castes of imperial India were legally and socially reified in ways not dissimilar to the 'dangerous' classes in Victorian England" (134). Constructing the Criminal Tribe is a quite different sort of book, its analysis literary rather than historical or sociolegal. In Law and Imperialism, Nijhar places critical legal theory, criminal justice history, postcolonial theory, and criminology (especially labelling theory) within a single frame of historical analysis—albeit with the ultimate (though unexplored) aim of considering the historical constitution of aspects of postcolonial India. Henry Schwarz presents a narrower discussion of "the stigma of criminal inheritance" that impacts the denotified (ex-criminal) tribes in India today to more explicitly think through what I would call the colonial present (3). This is not a story of colonial and postcolonial crossings; it is instead about the explicit integration of history with the now, about the significance of colonialism for the Indian state, its institutions, its law, its governance, and its identity. Schwarz does not have to dig very deeply to find what he is looking for—the denotified tribe on which he mainly focuses (the Chhara) lives on the margins, and colonial discourses about criminality pervade contemporary social attitudes towards...

Motives, experiences and strategies of next of kin helping older relatives in the Swedish welfare context: a qualitative study

Dunér A. Motives, experiences and strategies of next of kin helping older relatives in the Swedish welfare context: a qualitative studyInt J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 54–62 © 2008 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare.Next of kin provide the major part of the help given to older people in Sweden, a country where the official goals of formal eldercare are universality and extensive coverage. This qualitative interview study investigates the thoughts and actions of next of kin who provide informal help to older relatives who also receive formal help from the municipal eldercare. Informal help‐giving, in the context of Swedish social policy, was connected with a multiplicity of motives, experiences and strategies. The motives for help‐giving were moral considerations, emotional attachment and ‘out of necessity’. The experiences of next of kin support the idea of ambivalence as a significant feature of informal help‐giving. Different strategies were employed, both active and passive in nature, to manage their situation. The study points out the importance of outlining working forms and methods of collaboration for older persons and their informal and formal networks to lessen the ambivalence experienced by help‐giving next of kin.