Public Ridicule Research Articles

“You Know How People Talk,” Reasons Behind Child Marriage among Female Youth in The North-Eastern State of West Malaysia

INTRODUCTION: Over the past decade, Kelantan has consistently ranked among the top three states in Malaysia for the highest number of registered child marriages, garnering attention in local and international news. However, little is understood about the local factors influencing girls' decisions to marry young. This study aimed to explore these reasons from the perspective of young women involved in child marriages in Kelantan, Malaysia. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Fourteen women aged 16-30, married before 18, participated in semi-structured, in-depth interviews. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analysed using NVivo® software. Thematic analysis, drawing from phenomenology and socioecological theory, revealed three overlapping themes. RESULTS: Themes emerged were: (1) self-fulfilment, (2) marriage brings security, and (3) avoidance of public ridicule. CONCLUSION: The study underscores societal and familial pressures, alongside low socioeconomic status, and religious factors, as central to child marriage in Malaysia. By amplifying the voices of these women, efforts can focus on preventing the consequences and devising solutions to curb this practice in the future.

Parliamentary Dress

Parliamentary Dress

Dispatches from the Farm: The Literary Craft of John Gould’s Maine Humor

Dispatches from the Farm: The Literary Craft of John Gould’s Maine Humor

HIV-related stigma experiences and coping strategies among pregnant women in rural Uganda: A qualitative descriptive study.

BackgroundHIV-related stigma is a global problem among HIV clients with far-reaching effects including increased rates of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. However, HIV-related stigma experiences and coping strategies have received little attention, especially among pregnant women in rural settings. We explored the HIV-related stigma experiences and coping strategies among pregnant women in rural northern Uganda.MethodsThis was a qualitative descriptive study conducted among HIV-positive pregnant women seeking care at Aboke Health Center IV, Kole district, northern Uganda. We conducted 12 in-depth interviews using a semi-structured interview guide. Data were analyzed using the inductive thematic approach of Braun and Clarke.ResultsThe age range of the 12 participants was 17 to 35 years while the average duration with HIV since diagnosis was five years. The majority of the participants were subsistence farmers who had attained a primary level of education. Social rejection and public ridicule were identified as HIV-related stigma experiences while ignoring, social support, and prayers were identified as HIV-related coping strategies among the study participants.ConclusionEnacted HIV-related stigma is common among pregnant women in rural northern Uganda. Healthcare providers should work closely with HIV-positive women and other stakeholders to identify and strengthen HIV-related stigma coping strategies among pregnant women in rural settings.

Humor and Rumor in the Post-Soviet Authoritarian State

Humor and Rumor in the Post-Soviet Authoritarian State

‘Do Mormons thinkThe Book of Mormonis funny?’

AbstractPublic ridicule of a minority typically predicts a defensive response from the target of that humor. This is because public ridicule provides a polarizing spectacle, where the majority enjoys a humorous face reward, and solidarity, at the expense of that minority. Logically, we could expect a faith-based minority to beespeciallysensitive to public ridicule, since their face investment is greater, in inverse proportion to their social position and power, and because their group (and personal) identity is linked inextricably to what would normally be inviolable: a sacred text, a prophet, or deity. However, the official response from the LDS Church to the musical comedyThe Book of Mormondefies this expectation. This paper analyses this response, in order to understand why a religious minority chose to creatively engage with what should have been a highly face-threatening satire.

Dimensions of HIV-related stigma in rural communities in Kenya and Uganda at the start of a large HIV 'test and treat' trial.

HIV-related stigma is a frequently cited barrier to HIV testing and care engagement. A nuanced understanding of HIV-related stigma is critical for developing stigma-reduction interventions to optimize HIV-related outcomes. This qualitative study documented HIV-related stigma across eight communities in east Africa during the baseline year of a large HIV test-and-treat trial (SEARCH, NCT: 01864603), prior to implementation of widespread community HIV testing campaigns and efforts to link individuals with HIV to care and treatment. Findings revealed experiences of enacted, internalized and anticipated stigma that were highly gendered, and more pronounced in communities with lower HIV prevalence; women, overwhelmingly, both held and were targets of stigmatizing attitudes about HIV. Past experiences with enacted stigma included acts of segregation, verbal discrimination, physical violence, humiliation and rejection. Narratives among women, in particular, revealed acute internalized stigma including feelings of worthlessness, shame, embarrassment, and these resulted in anxiety and depression, including suicidality among a small number of women. Anticipated stigma included fears of marital dissolution, verbal and physical abuse, gossip and public ridicule. Anticipated stigma was especially salient for women who held internalized stigma and who had experienced enacted stigma from their partners. Anticipated stigma led to care avoidance, care-seeking at remote facilities, and hiding of HIV medications. Interventions aimed at reducing individual and community-level forms of stigma may be needed to improve the lives of PLHIV and fully realize the promise of test-and-treat strategies.

‘Mormon reactions to The Book of Mormon’

The sustained success of the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon posed a major dilemma for the Mormon Church 1 and for many individual Mormons who revere the scripture from which the musical comedy takes its name. As a minority religion in the USA, the Mormon Church has endured over 190 years of persecution, public ridicule and marginalisation, much of which has been prompted by media and religious opposition to the Church’s distinctive doctrines and scripture. Naturally, Mormon sensitivity to criticism – including humour which targets its core doctrines – remains high, given this historical legacy of wider community hostility. Nevertheless, the Mormon Church responded with what commentators saw as a unique and good-natured official public relations/proselyting campaign, capitalising on the musical’s success. It signalled what can be referred to as a mature and creative policy/culture of tolerance, and this policy probably encouraged some members to attend the musical. This paper investigates the Church’s official response to the musical, looks briefly at Mormon humour, and presents the results of a survey amongst Mormons who watched the show, to see if Mormons can laugh at The Book of Mormon.

Perceived barriers and facilitators to diet and physical activity among adults diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in Malawi

ABSTRACT Diet and physical activity are crucial to Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) self-management. However, socio-environmental, and cultural factors can impede lifestyle behaviours, and hence T2DM management. This study aimed to identify barriers, facilitators and support for diet and physical activity among adults with T2DM in Malawi selected from a larger clinical assessment study, conducted in urban and semi-urban public hospitals. Four focus group discussions were conducted, and audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, coded, then organised and analysed using thematic analysis. Emergent themes included: family, friends, and health worker ties that facilitated both diet and physical activity as socio-support systems. Diabetes peer groups occurred more often in urban than semi-urban areas. Dietary barriers to self-management of T2DM included: cost and access to food; lack of knowledge on what and how much to eat; challenges of separate preparation and purchase of food; dilemmas of what to eat during functions and travel; and conflicting dietary information from different sources. Comorbidities and fear of public ridicule were key perceived barriers to participants being physically active. Therefore, socio-environmental factors should be considered by nutritionists, dietitians, and health workers when developing and providing nutrition and physical activity education to adults with T2DM in Malawi.

Research contributions: The role of the iconoclast

Research contributions: The role of the iconoclast

When Sonia Met Boris: An Oral History of Jewish Life Under Stalin by Anna Shternshis

Reviewed by: When Sonia Met Boris: An Oral History of Jewish Life Under Stalin by Anna Shternshis Jarrod Tanny Anna Shternshis. When Sonia Met Boris: An Oral History of Jewish Life Under Stalin. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Xii + 264 pp. Cloth $34.95. ISBN 0190223103. Who gets to tell the story? In Anna Shternshis’s When Sonia Met Boris it is 474 Ashkenazi Jews, all born in the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union between 1906 and 1928, Soviet citizens who came of age during the Stalin era and experienced the attendant social upheavals and cataclysmic events that marked this tumultuous era. Through oral histories, Shternshis seeks to uncover the daily lives of her subjects, how work, home, family, and migration patterns intersected with being Jewish in a time of modernization, famine, terror, war, and, antisemitism. The collapse of the USSR engendered a massive wave of Jewish emigration. Shternshis conducted her interviews in the United States, Canada, Germany, and Russia over the course of the first decade of the twenty-first century. The result is an informative, sophisticated, and lively account of Soviet Jewish history, one that “fleshes out and revises the historical record” (21) because “some events in Soviet Jewish history simply cannot . . . be understood properly without oral histories.” (9) When Sonia Met Boris is divided into three parts. In part one, Shternshis reflects on the practice of oral history, its strengths, and its limitations. She illustrates the techniques she used to get her interviewees to voice their histories, fully cognizant that hindsight, location, and her own role as an intermediary might severely compromise the stories they tell. In parts two and three, Shternshis examines Soviet Jewish family life and Jews in the Soviet workplace. In the eight chapters that make up these two sections, she strikes a delicate balance between a chronological thematic approach, periodically returning to topics already discussed—marriage, education, internal migration in search of work, fear of shame and arrest during Stalin’s purges—because such is the nature of human memory. The author tries to go where her subjects take her, letting them articulate their past as they remember it. But ever aware of her own role as mediator, Shternshis regularly tells the reader when her subjects’ responses surprised her, undermined her previous assumptions, or resonated with her as a scholar and—one may speculate—as a Soviet Jewish émigré. “Teachers were my favorite narrators,” writes Shternshis. “They were the most articulate, usually recalled events of the past with remarkable detail, were amazing storytellers, spoke loudly and clearly, and made sure the interviewer understood their point,” even though “they quickly recognized the interviewer’s agenda and sometimes exaggerated.” (123) Such personal interjections strengthen Shternshis’s work, because they remind the reader that the collector and interpreter of oral histories is not (and can never be) an impartial conveyer of unfiltered material. Although Shternshis’s composite picture of “the first Soviet Jewish generation” offers insight into many questions typically raised by scholars, two conclusions stand out. First, the final period of Stalin’s reign, 1948–53—what is commonly referred to as “the black years of Soviet Jewry” because of the [End Page 94] sharp uptick in state-sponsored antisemitism—was in fact a turning point in the lives of most of her subjects. “Whoever forgot that he was as a Jew, or didn’t know, learned about it in 1948!” (122) stated countless interviewees to Shternshis, because being Jewish became a liability; it prompted an enduring awareness that antisemitism could lead to obstructed professional mobility, public ridicule, and even arrest. But “these stories of antisemitism are not solely tales of victimhood,” (108) cautions Shternshis, because her subjects presented them as “quests,” as challenges that they needed to face and surmount, much as “one beats a disease, succeeding despite being burdened by misfortune.” (188) Shternshis may not be the first historian to reach this conclusion, but her use of oral testimony allows us to see how Soviet Jews perceived their changing relationship to the state and to their non-Jewish neighbors. It reveals the many secrets people kept and it fills in the spaces of silence historians encounter in archival and printed sources...

The Retreats of Reconstruction: Race, Leisure, and the Politics of Segregation at the New Jersey Shore, 1865–1920 by David E. Goldberg

Reviewed by: The Retreats of Reconstruction: Race, Leisure, and the Politics of Segregation at the New Jersey Shore, 1865–1920 by David E. Goldberg Andrew Diemer (bio) The Retreats of Reconstruction: Race, Leisure, and the Politics of Segregation at the New Jersey Shore, 1865–1920. By David E. Goldberg. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017. Pp. 200. Cloth, $110.00; paper, $28.00). Few historians of nineteenth-century America will be surprised that the resorts of the New Jersey shore were racially segregated from the late nineteenth century until well into the twentieth. Historians have long known that racial discrimination of various sorts followed in the wake of northern [End Page 156] emancipation, and yet as David Goldberg points out in the introduction to his illuminating Retreats of Reconstruction, we know far less than we should about how northern segregation actually worked. This book, then, serves as a welcome addition to the scholarly literature on northern race relations. While northern racism, the commitment of white northerners to the value of their “whiteness,” was surely critical, Goldfield argues that “whiteness alone did not make segregation at the Jersey shore” (2). According to Goldfield, conflicting ideas about political economy, in particular notions of the rights to be afforded consumers, played an essential role in determining the practices of segregation in this particular time and place. The resorts of the Jersey shore had been somewhat exclusive in the antebellum decades, but around the middle of the nineteenth century business leaders sought to appeal to a broader middle-class public. The result was what many observers saw as a unique mixture of social classes. “The rich banker does not look down upon the shop boy he meets,” insisted one Atlantic City booster, and “the boy thinks himself equally as good as the banker” (24). Of course, this social mixture presented opportunities for African Americans as well as for whites. Black residents of northern cities had often found seasonal work at the Jersey shore. In their time off, they sought to take advantage of the leisure opportunities offered by the shore. Many of the white patrons of these booming shore towns were uncomfortable with the prospect of taking their leisure alongside black patrons, and yet this discomfort did not automatically yield segregation. While businessmen were sensitive to the desire of white patrons to avoid sharing their leisure with African Americans, those businessmen were also reluctant to resort to out-and-out segregation. They recognized that such an effort would likely provoke a heated response from African Americans, and so in order to avoid the sort of public black reaction that would in turn disturb potential white patrons, white business leaders instead turned to a series of half measures. For example, African Americans were encouraged to enjoy the beach and boardwalk at later hours than white patrons, or after the white season had ended at the end of August. Eventually, African Americans would reject these half measures and would come to make their argument for access to leisure facilities not as a means of promoting social equality, but rather based on their rights as consumers. Black protest mobilized this claim in order to desegregate the shore, and yet ultimately there were significant limitations to this strategy. White business owners and political leaders developed their own political economy of segregation. In response to the disruptive protests of black consumers, they insisted that segregation was a necessary evil that protected [End Page 157] property owners and the free enterprise system itself. Black entrepreneurs responded to this successful segregation of the Jersey shore by building a separate black leisure industry, redirecting black civil disobedience into consumption. Not only did these black business owners provide options for black consumers, but some actually petitioned for legal segregation of beaches as a means of “shield[ing] black patrons from public ridicule, as well as to ensure the economic solvency of these early black businesses” (87). Black entrepreneurs, however, remained dependent on the support of white political leaders, for example, for protection from selective police crackdowns on vice or in order to improve black neighborhoods. Essentially, Goldberg argues, black and white business leaders became cocreators of the political economy of segregation. “Together they...

Wesley and the Anglicans: Political Division in Early Evangelicalism

The relationship between the Wesleys' Methodism and the Church of England has exercised historians, theologians, and ecumenists for a long time. On the one hand, John and Charles Wesley were nurtured in the best traditions of High Church spirituality at Epworth, educated in Anglican divinity at the University of Oxford, and professed lifelong loyalty to the Established Church. On the other hand, they shaped a movement that gave rise to the largest of the English Free Churches, setting in train a separation that is still in search of full reconciliation with the Church of England. Within this broad context, there is the specific issue of the Wesleys' often fractious relationship with the group of ‘Gospel clergy’, who were the forerunners of the evangelical school within the church. Why, when the Wesleys shared so many doctrinal, experiential, and missional emphases with evangelicals like Samuel Walker, Thomas Adam, Henry Venn, and John Newton, was there so little cooperation and so much suspicion and distrust between them? In this impressive study, Ryan Nicholas Danker argues that an exclusively theological explanation, focusing on predestination and perfectionism, will not suffice. True, most of the evangelicals were moderate Calvinists, unpersuaded by the Wesleys' assertive Arminianism and alarmed by John Wesley's advocacy of Christian Perfection. But this theological divergence gained strength and significance because of a whole range of ecclesiastical, social, and political factors. John Wesley's commitment to an itinerant preaching ministry, his disregard for parish boundaries and for the authority of incumbents, his use of lay preachers, and his apparent willingness to entertain the possibility of his preachers seeking licences under the Toleration Act, and even celebrating the Eucharist, drove a wedge between him and the small band of beneficed evangelicals whose vision for the renewal of the church required a patient parochial ministry. Episcopal hostility and public ridicule of ‘Methodists’ combined to encourage the ‘Gospel clergy’ to draw away from Wesley, especially as threats to the established order in Church and State provoked a Tory and High Church resurgence in the middle years of the eighteenth century, seen, for example, in the expulsion of six undergraduates from St Edmund Hall, Oxford, for ‘Methodism’ in 1768. Put simply, the evangelicals had too much to lose in associating with the Wesleys, and they chose to pursue their own course of institution-building within the Establishment. Although there were successful local pacts, like the 1764 ‘Huddersfield Compromise’ with Henry Venn, John Wesley's attempts to forge a wider union of ‘Gospel clergy’ (inevitably under his own leadership) through the early 1760s failed, and by 1770 the Wesleys and the evangelicals were set on their separate paths.Danker has read widely in the literature of the period and is fully abreast of modern scholarship on the Wesleys, early Methodism, and the various strands of the Evangelical Revival. He is at pains to emphasize the insufficiency of a single line of explanation for a complex web of personal relationships, and his combination of political, ecclesiastical, and theological factors is helpful and persuasive, especially with regard to the beneficed evangelicals—one suspects that George Whitefield had a different perspective on ‘irregular’ missionary methods. In the final chapter he advances a particularly thought-provoking thesis, suggesting that there was a fundamental incompatibility between the outlook of the evangelicals, grounded in the Reformation and a desire to reinvigorate Puritan ‘Old Divinity’, and that of the Wesleys, derived from a High Church paradigm that looked for inspiration to the primitive church and the theology and spirituality of the Caroline divines. Here Professor Danker's reference to John Wesley's ‘strange amalgamation of high churchmanship and Pietism’ (239) is telling, and it connects with wider debates about how far the Revival was a development from Puritanism and how far a new phenomenon. It raises too the question of the importance and also the limits of a shared evangelical experience in the face of deep-seated doctrinal, political, and ecclesiological differences—the question posed by Wesley in his sermon ‘Catholic Spirit’.A few minor slips notwithstanding—‘Maxwell’ for Maxfield (25), ‘John’ Bell for George (224), ‘Gareth’ Lean for Garth on page 57, and some consistent misspelling of ‘Forsaith’—this is an excellent study, and well deserves the commendations it has received from leading scholars in the field.

The Courtesan and the Gigolo: The Murders in the Rue Montaigne and the Dark Side of Empire in Nineteenth-Century Paris by Aaron Freundschuh

Freundschuh, Aaron. The Courtesan and the Gigolo: The Murders in the Rue Montaigne and the Dark Side of Empire in Nineteenth-Century Paris. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2017. ISBN 978-1-50360-082-9. Pp. 272. The “Pranzini affair” is one of the most remarkable crime stories of nineteenthcentury France. The triple murder could well have been an international myth as salacious and enduring as Jack the Ripper’s string of murders in fin-de-siècle London. Indeed, “the murders of London and Paris bear notable points of convergence, beginning with the outsize role of the mass press, which by the late 1880s had become a blinding industrial ream, saturating the streets and boulevards with paper, much of it printed with tales of hideous criminality”(3). The defendant Enrico Pranzini was a handsome migrant of Egyptian origin who fascinated the Parisian public with his good looks and ambiguous sexuality. The story was sensationalized in the press and the victims (an elegant woman,a child,and a domestic) were put under a microscope— particularly the victim who, at around forty years old, was said to be a high-class prostitute,known by the“faux-aristocratic pseudonym”of“Mme Montille”(2).Despite bearing all the elements of a tabloid news scandal and notwithstanding extensive coverage in the Parisian press,the Pranzini affair was soon forgotten.Aaron Freundschuh masterfully reconstructs the crime scene, investigation, trial, and press coverage of this remarkable scandal. Freundschuh transforms a historical true-crime story into a meditation on class, colonialism, and Third-Republic politics. Pranzini “became a metonym of the dark side of European empire and, as such, a repository for national anxieties and indigested animus”(9). Freundschuh locates the Pranzini affair as a key moment for the development of“the cultural imagination of the cosmopolitan colonial as criminal, like similar myths about Jews, freemasons, and socialists”; this cultural imagination “took hold in a political environment that colonial expansionism itself had, in some measure, destabilized”(197). One possible enduring effect of the Pranzini trial was the unification of the“forces of the New Right”through the conversion of the anti-Semite Édouard Drumont into an “ardent Boulangist” (148). After attempting a coup, General Boulanger, a minister and a darling of the far right, was reassigned to Clermont-Ferrand, enraging the Boulangists. This political scandal“shared newspaper column space for months” with the Pranzini affair, and the trial “became a platform for the public ridicule of deviant sexual identities” (148). Although the Boulangists were not universally anti-Semitic, the Pranzini affair was one of a series of polarizing events that consolidated anti-Semites, Boulangists, conservative Catholics, and monarchists into a coherent ideological block. The arguably seminal role of the Panzini affair in the consolidation of the fin-de-siècle New Right is only one example of Freundschuh’s deft contextualization of a minor incident in French history. This book is the rare contribution to French history that is gripping and readable enough for the 222 FRENCH REVIEW 91.3 Reviews 223 general reader, or for an undergraduate course, but which is detailed and nuanced enough for research or use in a graduate course. University of Memphis Melanie Conroy Ginio, Ruth. The French Army and its African Soldiers: The Years of Decolonization. Lincoln: UP of Nebraska, 2017. ISBN 978-0-8032-5339-1. Pp. 250. Ginio surveys France’s most desperate act to hold on to French West Africa, its former territories, via its army even after independence. Through a thorough examination of the protracted role played by the French Army, Ginio convincingly demonstrates how France had heavily invested in preventing the decolonization from being fulfilled in West Africa. The French army and its African soldiers will be the key component in a series of strategies and policies used by France to maintain its relations with that region. Beside the French army’s involvement in the usual warfare to consolidate its empire, it assumed most of the civilian responsibilities, such as education, social assistance, health, and participated feverishly, as Ginio puts it, in colonial decision making and in shaping the colonial agenda (xviii). Ginio is definitely the authoritative voice for conducting a work in this caliber given her constant...

Xavier Herbert. Requiem for Genius

In today’s global celebrity culture it’s hard to imagine a word more over-used and abused than ‘genius’. It is a slippery word with a long and contradictory conceptual history. Yet, in the Land of the Tall Poppy, self-confessions of genius invariably have paved a broad road to public ridicule and denigration. Xavier Herbert’s notion of genius was not static. It changed throughout his life and it evolved through his writing. He agreed with Carlyle that the first condition of genius must always be a ‘transcendent capacity of taking trouble’ and on this foundation he built his own concept of genius, as the unending ‘capacity for loving’. This article explores what genius meant to Xavier Herbert and how it translated into his fiction, before considering how our sense of genius today influences the way we respond to his most challenging fictions of love and hate, 'Capricornia' and 'Poor Fellow My Country'.

Studi Komparatif Konsep Ketuhanan Islam dan Agama Adam pada Komunitas Samin

One of the problems that disturb the harmony between religious communities is a lack of understanding of the majority (mainstream) religion about the local religion, and vice versa. This article aims to develop such inter-religious understanding by comparing between Islam and the religion of Adam, a local religion of Samin community. The comparative study was made within the scope of the concept of God in both religions. This study found that the understanding between Islam the religion of Adam about the concept of God is essential in common. God called Allah (in Islam) and Yai (in the religion of Adam) are equally perceived as condescendent, an only single power, and the Almighty. Both communities also share Adam as the first man in the world. So, it is not proportional if the public ridicule Samin community with atheist stigma.

Hashtag Comedy: From Muslim Rage to #Muslimrage

After Newsweek published an article in 2012 entitled “Muslim Rage and the Last Gasp of Islamic Hate,” Twitter proliferated with jokes under the hashtag #MuslimRage. These funny one-liners acted as rebuttals to the negative affect of the Newsweek article by opposing its images of uncontrolled ideological anger with funny quips about the innocuous nature of everyday Muslim life. This analysis argues that #MuslimRage tweets became sensational because of their unique form of argumentation through humor that could only happen through Twitter. Because tweets are iconic and enthymematic, they make arguments that function as a form of individualized, massively resonant counterpropaganda. For Muslims, digital jokes created cognitive space of action that directly combated negative stereotyping and public ridicule.

Nudging and Social Marketing

Ideally, the goals a society pursues are predicated on a voluntary consensus of the citenzenry who through their actions in the private and public spheres develop an approximation of the good or just society. However, just like bad-tasting medicine which may have to be force fed in order to get the patient well, the achievement of some elements of the good society seem to involve a group of experts, often far removed from popular sentiment or opinion, who must go behind the backs of citizens in order to move them toward the better life. But instead of the ham-fisted interventions of a nanny state which often lead to overt resistance and public ridicule, governments can use social marketing and the more subtle principles of behavioral economics to nudge a wary and reluctant public toward valued ends. I argue that although such obfuscation and sugarcoating may work over the short term, in the long run nudging may do more harm than good.

Richard Cronin Paper Pellets: British Literary Culture after WaterlooPaper Pellets: British Literary Culture after Waterloo. Richard Cronin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. viii+268.

<i>Richard Cronin</i> Paper Pellets: British Literary Culture after Waterloo<i>Paper Pellets: British Literary Culture after Waterloo</i>. Richard Cronin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. viii+268.

The Lingering Impact of Abusive Supervision

The Lingering Impact of Abusive SupervisionDespite the increased attention placed on functional or positive leader behavior (Cameron, 2008), some leaders elect to demonstrate dysfunctional or negative behavior instead. One destructive behavior in particular, abusive supervision, has received increasing attention over the past decade (Lian, Brown, Ferris, Liang, Keeping, & Morrison, in press; Tepper, 2007). Abusive supervision refers to subordinates' perceptions of the extent to which supervisors engage in the sustained display of hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviors, excluding physical contact (Tepper, 2000, p. 178). Verbal behaviors often consist of public ridicule (Tepper, 2000; Tepper, Duffy, Henle, & Lambert, 2006), explosive outbursts (Zellars, Tepper, & Duffy, 2002), and intimidation (Aryee, Chen, Sun, & Debrah, 2007). Nonverbal behaviors may include aggressive eye contact, withholding needed information (Zellars et al., 2002), invoking the silent treatment, and breaking promises (Harris, Kacmar, & Zivnuska, 2007). Naturally, such improper workplace behavior has been linked to a number of dysfunctional consequences (Aryee et al., 2007; Ashforth, 1997; Burton & Hoobler, 2006; Carlson, Ferguson, Perrewe, & Whitten, in press; Detert, Trevino, Burris, & Andiappan, 2007; Duffy, Ganster, & Pagon, 2002; Harris, Harvey, Harris, Cast, 2013; Harris, Harvey, & Kacmar, 2011; Mitchell & Ambrose, 2007; Tepper, 2000, 2007; Tepper, Duffy, & Shaw, 2001; Tepper, Henle, Lambert, Giacalone, & Duffy, 2008; Thau, Bennett, Mitchell, & Marrs, 2008; Zellars et al., 2002).Earlier studies of abusive supervision invoked organizational justice theory to explain the effects of abuse on a number of outcome variables (Aryee et al., 2007; Bies, Tripp, & Kramer, 1997; Tepper, 2000). Indeed, abusive supervision denotes a source of injustice which has been shown to result in negative behavioral responses (Tepper, 2000; Zellars et al., 2002). Since then, researchers have turned to alternative theories such as social exchange, self-regulation, conservation of resources, and psychological contract violation to explain individuals' behavioral responses to abuse (Aryee et al., 2007; Hoobler & Brass, 2006; Mitchell & Ambrose, 2007; Tepper, Carr, Breaux, Geider, Hu, & Hua, 2009; Tepper et al., 2008; Thau et al., 2008). More recently, Thau et al. (2008) weaved uncertainty management theory (UMT) and social exchange theory (SET) to explore the influence of situational uncertainty on the relationship between abusive supervision and organizational deviance. We extend this stream of research by applying the same framework to a positive outcome by examining the mediated effects of abusive supervision on organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), or discretionary behaviors that are beneficial to the organization but are not part of a subordinate's official job duties (Organ, 1988).The present study answers the call by Thau et al. (2008) to explore the influence of uncertainty on potentially positive consequences such as citizenship behavior and in doing so we make a number of contributions. First, we expand the exploration of the impact of abuse on organizational outcomes by exploring the lingering effect of abuse. Events with a negative valence, such as abuse from one's supervisor, have a greater impact on individuals than do those with a positive valence, and negative events also have more lasting effects (Baumeister, Braslvsky, Finkenaur, & Vohs, 2001; Ito, Larsen, Smith, & Cacioppo, 1998; Rozin & Royzman, 2001). In addition, the negative information that is derived from abusive supervision will receive more mental reflection by individuals than positive information and will play an integral role in forming impressions of the organization and those who work in it over time (Baumeister et al., 2001). These findings highlight the importance of examining phenomena over time in order to fully understand them (Mitchell & James, 2001). …