Social Markers Research Articles

Apresentação - Dossiê Ensino de História, História das Mulheres e Desigualdades Sociais no Brasil

O dossiê Ensino de história, história das mulheres e desigualdades sociais no Brasil é um convite a um presente e um futuro feministas. A obra conta com um conjunto de ações concretas, propositivas e imediatas dos ensinos de história dentro do campo da história das mulheres e dos estudos de gênero. De norte a sul, de oeste a leste do Brasil, o dossiê em tela recebeu artigos que são atravessados pelas discussões acerca dos marcadores sociais de gênero, de classe e de raça.

HUTSULʼS MASCULINE INITIATION PRACTICES

Summary. The purpose of the study is to analyse the rituals and actions performed by the Hutsuls to manifest the changes in age or social status of a male, to describe the structure and age sequence of the rituals and to identify the main ritual elements related to the changes of male’s status. The research is conducted on the basis of available sources. The research methodology is based on principles of systematicity and objectivity, as well as on comparative-historical method, structural-semantic and typological analysis and the field research method. The term «initiation» refers solely to the rites of male’s transition from an infant to an adolescent and from an adolescent to an adult. The scientific novelty of the research is establishing the correlation between different initiation practices and age and social markers. The structure of the initiation practices as well as their influence on the appearance of a person, his/her place in the community, social rights and responsibilities has been described. Conclusions. The initiations Hutsuls performed were meant to empower a new member of the community with rights and responsibilities, and more importantly, to extend his lifespan. Several rituals were important to young men in different periods of their life as they had initiation significance. According to the typical scheme of transition by A. van Gennep, we can distinguish two main groups of initiations – those that contain the liminal phase and those that do not.The main markers of status change for men (in the studied rituals and ceremonies) are the change of hairstyle (cutting hair), «misbehaving» within the fellow community, showing required physical qualities and military service.Meanwhile, we must admit the lack of solid source base for this study. Therefore the structure, the nature and the significance of Hutsulʼs masculine initiation practices cannot be fully revealed. The way of gaining special statuses by Hutsul males requires further scientific research.

Acculturation of Syrian Refugees in the Netherlands: Religion as Social Identity and Boundary Marker

Abstract We studied the acculturation processes of Syrian refugees in the Netherlands, based on semi-structured in-depth interviews. The study aims to investigate how Syrian refugees perceive the cultural distance caused by the differences and boundaries between Syrian and Dutch culture; how they cope with the boundaries and prejudice that they perceive; and which acculturation orientations they prefer. The research builds mainly on the framework of Berry’s acculturation model. Religion emerges as a prominent issue in the acculturation process and is found to impact acculturation as it is perceived to be a cause of cultural distance, a salient social identity, a bright boundary and a source of prejudice in the host country. Our findings suggest that refugees’ religious identity strongly influences their coping strategies and preferred acculturation orientations. Refugees with low/no religious affiliation were more in favour of an assimilation orientation whereas refugees with strong religious identity preferred an integration orientation.

Brazilian youth experiencing poverty: Everyday life in the favela

ABSTRACT Based on a comprehensive perspective of reality, this study aimed to analyze the representations that young dwellers of a Brazilian favela have about that place, focusing on the impacts on urban mobility and everyday life. Data were collected through workshops conducted with young people attending a non-governmental organization located in a favela in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The participants were seven youngsters aged 15-21 years. During the workshops, the participants constructed a “City of Youth” with the purpose of representing what they wanted for a city. They discussed whether or not there would be a favela in this city and its residents’ access to other spaces in the city, especially to leisure areas. It was observed that poverty is an important social marker in the representations about Brazilian favelas, and that the stigma associated with them are incorporated and reproduced by their youth. These facts reflect the possibilities and impossibilities of urban mobility of young favela dwellers, directly affecting their everyday lives and limiting their opportunities for social participation and access to social life.

Classe social e produção de desigualdades: uma análise culturalista de classe

Este artigo analisaEste artigo analisa qual a relevância de classe social como marcador social para alunos de administração e como os alunos definem classe social, utilizando-se para essa análise a abordagem culturalista de classe. Para tanto, foram aplicados questionários e conduzidos grupos focais com um roteiro semiestruturado de entrevista junto aos alunos de graduação de administração, sendo os dados produzidos investigados por meio da análise de conteúdo. Conclui-se que, apesar de autores declararem a morte de classe como marcador social, classe é um marcador social identitário no contexto estudado, produzindo hierarquias e desigualdades econômicas, culturais e sociais. Em uma análise culturalista, os alunos de administração definem classe considerando tanto aspectos objetivos quanto subjetivos, declarando a relevância de classe em sociedades menos desenvolvidas e evidenciando o alto nível de estratificação social presente na sociedade brasileira.

Systematic review of social norms, attitudes, and factual beliefs linked to the sexual exploitation of children and adolescents

BackgroundDespite growing interest in the role of social norms in perpetuating the harmful practice of sexual exploitation of children and adolescents (SECA), little is known about the state of the literature on this issue. ObjectiveThis systematic review aims to summarize what associated norms, attitudes and factual beliefs have been identified by the SECA literature worldwide. MethodsMultiple database searches were conducted using controlled vocabulary and keywords referring to SECA. ResultsOur searches identified 3690 unique references. After applying our exclusion criteria, 49 studies, including over 14,000 participants from 37 countries and most world regions, were included. Across studies we identified six injunctive norms perpetuating SECA: owning goods as a social status marker ; being sexually active; exchanging sex for favors; contributing financially to the household; stigma and discrimination against young people who experienced SECA; and lack of social sanctions for SECA perpetrators. These norms were supported by enhanced tolerance of SECA when it involved older or more physically developed adolescents and when it occurred in poverty-affected contexts. Beliefs around markers that denote adolescents’ readiness for sex; men’s entitlement to sex; and the perceived benefits of intergenerational relationships, also contributed to the maintenance and reproduction of SECA. Findings from all regions suggested that marginalized young people are particularly vulnerable to SECA. ConclusionsInterventions to reduce SECA must consider individual, social, and structural factors and how they interrelate. Context-specific social norms interventions are needed to address harmful norms, promote protective norms, and improve services for those who have experienced SECA.

Extending cultural mismatch theory: in consideration of race/ethnicity

ABSTRACT Cultural Mismatch Theory (CMT) has emerged as a paradigm to account for the disparate experiences and outcomes of first-generation students (FGSs). Past research on CMT demonstrate how social class disposition can shape cultural mismatch among FGSs; however, the sole focus on social class sacrifices attention to other social markers of significance. Our manuscript explores if FGSs at the intersection of marginalized social class and racial/ethnic identities (working-class, Cambodian American students), experience cultural mismatch and how an institutional mechanism (student organizations) addresses that mismatch. We find that through their involvement in a student organization, first-generation, working-class, Cambodian American students foster a community that supports interdependent norms, while simultaneously developing skills to navigate independent norms. These efforts produce cultural match and demonstrate agentic qualities through which students reconfigure moments of cultural mismatch to assert their views of legitimacy and reshape the boundaries of cultural capital.

Economic Analysis of “Garbage Conflicts” (The Example of Modern Russia)

The article is devoted to the economic analysis of conflicts related to the disposal of municipal solid waste. A wave of protests, both against garbage dumps and against the construction of incineration plants, overwhelmed Moscow suburbs in the summer of 2017. These protests are a form of environmental conflict and are well described by the theory of external effects. This theory allows us to identify and evaluate the real economic costs of various waste disposal options which the decision makers do not take into account. The article analyzes quantitative estimates of the external effects of the most common waste management methods – landfilling and incineration. It is shown that the distribution of external costs between the source of externalities and recipients forms an objective economic basis of “garbage conflicts”. These are important social markers of unsustainability. The concept of sustainable development requires a transition to a higher level in the hierarchy of waste management methods – the processing and reuse of waste, for which incineration is a competitor. Western countries imposed a moratorium on the construction of new incineration plants and strengthened modernization requirements to the remaining plants. Despite this fact the Russian government proposes a strategy based on outdated technologies of incineration. The environmental characteristics of these new plants are inferior to the Western ones. In this regard, we can expect only an increase in the protest activity of the population, which can be stopped only by developing a really science-based concept of solid waste management.

“Visual Affluence” in Social Photography: Applicability of Image Segmentation as a Visually Oriented Approach to Study Instagram Hashtags

The aim of the study is to examine the applicability of image segmentation—identification of objects/regions by partitioning images—to examine online social photography. We argue that the need for a meaning-independent reading of online social photography within social markers, such as hashtags, arises due to two characteristics of social photography: (1) internal incongruence resulting from user-driven construction and (2) variability of content in terms of visual attributes, such as color combinations, brightness, and details in backgrounds. We suggest visual affluence—plenitude of visual stimuli, such as objects and surfaces containing a variety of color regions, present in visual imagery—as a basis for classifying visual content and image segmentation as a technique to measure affluence. We demonstrate that images containing objects with complex texture and background patterns are more affluent, while images that include blurry backgrounds are less affluent than others. Moreover, images that contain letters and dark, single-color backgrounds are less affluent than images that include subtle shades. Mann–Whitney U test results for ten pairs of hashtags showed that eight pairs had significant differences in visual affluence. The proposed measure can be used to encourage a “visually oriented” turn in online social photography research that can benefit from hybrid methods that are able to extrapolate micro-level findings to macro-level effects.

A Sociological Portrait of the Animal Welfare Movement in Russia

Introduction. Promotion of volunteerism plays an important role in the formation of civil society in Russia. The animal welfare movement is one of the areas of such socially significant activities. Studies in this field are of relevance and practical significance, since the development of the animal welfare movement is a kind of social marker of the moral state of society. The study is aimed at identifying the organizational forms of the animal welfare movement in Russia as well as the motivation for people to participate in this activity, and at drawing up a sociological portrait of the Russian animal welfare activist. Materials and Methods. The article presents the results of two sociological studies: a survey of animal welfare activists (2017) done using the method of informal guided (semi-structured) interviews and an online survey of members of animal welfare groups on social networks (2019) conducted using ‘snowball sampling’ technique. Results. A portrait of a typical representative of the animal welfare movement in Russia has been done. The main achievements and problems of the animal welfare movement in Russia have been identified. The social composition of the animal welfare movement has been revealed as well as the activists’ motivation for participation in volunteering. An assessment of the level of development of the animal welfare in Russia as a whole and in the home regions of the animal welfare activists has been presented. Discussion and Conclusion. The animal welfare movement is represented at the regional and federal levels, the degree of its development being a certain marker of the state of public morality and the level of maturity of civil society. However, the effectiveness of animal welfare activities is constrained by a number of factors: legal, organizational, financial, and informational ones. Overcoming these barriers depends on a sustainable dialogue between the authorities and civil society, especially at the regional level. The practical significance of the study lies in the possibility of using its results by the authorities and volunteer movements for the implementation of civil initiatives and their legislative support at the federal and regional levels.

Role of emotions in High School students’ scientific initiation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation's Scientific Vocation Program (Provoc-Fiocruz) is a non-formal educational program for scientific initiation directed to High School students in Brazil since 1986, in the areas of Biological Sciences, Health, Human or Social Sciences. This research is qualitative and it will be conducted semi-structured interviews with up to fifteen High School students and fifteen researchers-advisors from Provoc-Fiocruz, to understand the role of both students’ and advisors’ emotions in their knowledge socialization to develop scientific research. The data will be analyzed through content analysis and this research is grounded in the discipline of Sociology of Emotions and relate social markers differences such as gender, race and class in the construction of knowledge that result in academic and professional choices.

Social Disadvantage, Access to Care, and Disparities in Physical Functioning Among Children Hospitalized with Respiratory Illness.

Understanding disparities in child health-related quality of life (HRQoL) may reveal opportunities for targeted improvement. This study examined associations between social disadvantage, access to care, and child physical functioning before and after hospitalization for acute respiratory illness. From July 1, 2014, to June 30, 2016, children ages 8-16 years and/or caregivers of children 2 weeks to 16 years admitted to five tertiary care children's hospitals for three common respiratory illnesses completed a survey on admission and within 2 to 8 weeks after discharge. Survey items assessed social disadvantage (minority race/ ethnicity, limited English proficiency, low education, and low income), difficulty/delays accessing care, and baseline and follow-up HRQoL physical functioning using the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL, range 0-100). We examined associations between these three variables at baseline and follow-up using multivariable, mixed-effects linear regression models with multiple imputation sensitivity analyses for missing data. A total of 1,325 patients and/or their caregivers completed both PedsQL assessments. Adjusted mean baseline PedsQL scores were significantly lower for patients with social disadvantage markers, compared with those of patients with none (78.7 for >3 markers versus 85.5 for no markers, difference -6.1 points (95% CI: -8.7, -3.5). The number of social disadvantage markers was not associated with mean follow-up PedsQL scores. Difficulty/delays accessing care were associated with lower PedsQL scores at both time points, but it was not a significant effect modifier between social disadvantage and PedsQL scores. Having social disadvantage markers or difficulty/delays accessing care was associated with lower baseline physical functioning; however, differences were reduced after hospital discharge.

Experiências de imigrantes africanas na cidade de Fortaleza-CE (2010-2017)

O artigo analisa experiências de vidas de mulheres africanas imigrantes e residentes na cidade de Fortaleza-CE, Brasil, em um contexto de migração transnacional. As mulheres apresentam discursos marcantes com relação à raça, religião, gênero, sexualidade e pertencimento étnico. A partir da observação etnográfica, entrevistas abertas e conversas informais, comparei as experiências migratórias de três mulheres de nacionalidades cabo-verdiana e bissau-guineense, verificando seus distintos lugares enquanto africanas, negras e estrangeiras interseccionando com diversos marcadores sociais. Após o deslocamento de África para o Brasil, as jovens passam a apresentar pertencimentos diferentes daqueles que assumiam nos seus países de origem, ressignificando identificações de raça, orientação sexual, religião e trabalho.

Age-related changes in children’s accent-based resource distribution

Children display explicit social preferences for native-accented and same-race peers, but when these two markers are in conflict, they prefer native-accented other-race peers over foreign-accented same-race peers. However, to what extent do these preferences translate into children’s behavior toward others? This study investigated children’s resource distribution decisions based on photographs of unfamiliar children who differed in accent and race. A total of 77 native English-speaking, White 5- to 10-year-old children were given three coins to distribute to pairs of recipients, with an option to distribute equally by discarding a resource. Children under 7 years gave selectively more coins to recipients who shared their accent and race, whereas children aged 7 and 8 years gave more coins to their accent in-group only when it was paired with the out-group race. Children aged 9 and 10 years consistently gave more coins to their accent in-group despite the racial category. It was concluded that, with age, accent becomes an increasingly used social marker in guiding children’s resource distribution decisions.

Bidirectional Associations across Time between Entitativity, Positive Affect, Generosity, and Religiousness in Adolescents Training with a Religiously Affiliated Charity Marathon Team.

Numerous studies have established that participation in regular physical activity provides physical, cognitive, and affective benefits to adolescents, but fewer studies have examined how athletic involvement might affect character, social, or religious developmental markers of psychosocial functioning. The purpose of this study is to examine the bidirectional associations between entitativity (group closeness), positive affect, generosity, and religiousness across time among adolescents and emerging adults involved in charitable marathon training. We collected data from 396 adolescents and emerging adults who trained for half/full marathons with a religiously affiliated charity team. Participants completed measures at three occasions over 18 weeks (pre-training, mid-training, post-race). We conducted cross-lagged path analysis of latent factors to study concurrent and longitudinal effects of intrinsic religiousness, positive affectivity, and entitativity on interpersonal generosity and fundraising. Participants who reported higher levels of pre-training generosity were more likely to experience positive affect during training, which predicted higher levels of post-race generosity. Likewise, the internalization of religious ideas, reflected in increased intrinsic religiousness during training, was associated with higher post-race generosity. Overall, results support the potential of charitable sporting events to promote positive psychosocial developmental outcomes.

A Scoping Review of Music Therapy in the Lives of Children and Youth With Disabilities and Chronic Conditions in Non-Acute Medical and Community-Based Settings: A Novel Consideration for Art Therapists? (Étude de portée de la musicothérapie dans la vie des enfants et des jeunes ayant des incapacités et des états chroniques en milieux médical et communautaire de soins non actifs

The therapeutic benefits of music and art therapy have been recognized for centuries. Despite a growing number of systematic reviews and meta-analyses on the benefits of art therapy, there has not been a thorough scoping review examining the role of music therapy in the lives of children and youth with disabilities. We examined how music therapy has been utilized in non-acute medical and community-based contexts in the lives of children and youth with disabilities and chronic conditions. The scoping review included a search of six academic databases between 2006 and 2018. Drawing on 44 articles, results revealed that music therapy is associated with no harm and some benefit on physical, emotional, social, behavioral, coping-related, and cognitive markers of health. The greatest positive impact was on perceptions of pain and reduced anxiety. No change in quality of life was reported. Suggestions to enhance the quality of music therapy evidence in the future are proposed. The relevance of our findings to the field of art therapy are discussed.

Reading ourselves against the grain: starting points for parental engagement with newly arrived families

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we bring together research literature on parental engagement and refugees and parental engagement to open up novel conversations about schools’ work with newly arrived families in the context of a moment of mass forced migration to communities and their schools across the European Union. This work was undertaken as part of the Open School Doors (OSD) project, a two-year Erasmus funded project involving researchers and teachers from Austria, Germany, Greece and the UK in collaboration with a pan-European parents association (EPA) that aimed to develop resources for teachers and schools working to include and support newly arrived young people and their families. We use the term ‘newly arrived’ as an inclusive term, taking account of families from both forced and more-established migration contexts as well as families from diverse Roma communities. This review identified the theoretical and contextual issues that framed OSD. Our review of the literature found that existing models of parental engagement neglect the complexity of social identity markers for newly arrived families and their inter-section with a UK teaching practice framed by white-ness and ‘post’-colonialism. Through this review, we problematise ideas of socio-cultural neutrality in home-school interactions, and draw attention to disparities in actions and outcomes for different agents (teachers, young people, parents) which have potential impacts for newly arrived and refugee families. Through this we foreground a multi-layered, intersectional approach to parental engagement. Our hybrid thinking mobilises new insights on parental engagement that demands de-othering of refugee families and reading ‘teacher-selves’ against the grain. Our review contributes recommendations for primary and secondary education, including starting points for reflection, review and practice development for teachers and school leaders.

The Dynamical Interplay of Collective Attention, Awareness and Epidemics Spreading in the Multiplex Social Networks During COVID-19.

Leveraging social and communication technologies, we can digitally observe that the collective attention typically exhibits a heterogeneous structure. It shows that people’s interests are organized in clusters around different topics, but the rising of an extraordinary emergency event, as the coronavirus disease epidemics, channels the people’s attention into a more homogenized structure, shifting it as triggered by a non-random collective process. The connectedness of networked individuals, on multiple social levels, impacts on the attention, representing a tuning element of different behavioural outcomes, changing the awareness diffusion enough to produce effects on epidemics spreading. We propose a mathematical framework to model the interplay between the collective attention and the co-evolving processes of awareness diffusion, modelled as a social contagion phenomenon, and epidemic spreading on weighted multiplex networks. Our proposed modeling approach structures a systematically understanding as a social network marker of interdependent collective dynamics through the introduction of the multiplex dimension of both networked individuals and topics, quantifying the role of human-related factors, as homophily, network properties, and heterogeneity. We introduce a data-driven approach by integrating different types of data, digitally traced as user-generated data from Twitter and Google Trends, in response to an extraordinary emergency event as coronavirus disease. Our findings demonstrate how the proposed model allows us to quantify the reaction of the collective attention, proving that it can represent a social predictive marker of the awareness dynamics, unveiling the impact on epidemic spreading, for a timely crisis response planning. Simulations results shed light on the coherence between the data-driven approach and the proposed analytical model.

POSSIBILIDADES DE CONVIVÊNCIA NA HETEROGENEIDADE: UMA EXPERIÊNCIA PELAS RUAS DA CIDADE

This study discusses an action developed by the Outreach Project Lambedores de Cultura, which aims to promote interaction with and in diversity and to establish heterogeneous networks, exploring the possibilities of the territory of the cities where the project takes place. The project is based on the guiding principles of Community Centers and Cooperative, which see in art and culture possibilities of meaningful interactions between people. The article refers to a Photographic Exploration Workshop held in Rio Claro / SP. The experiment used photography as a means to explore and occupy different city spaces, thus seeking to foster and increase heterogeneous interaction networks. The weekly workshops were opened to the community and included the participation of segments of the population segregated from common city life, due to several social markers. The workshops promoted new spaces for socialization as well as the appropriation of public spaces.

The language situation in the Slovene lands from the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries in the sociocultural context of the era

From the end of the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, Slovenes lived not only on their own, but also in the German, Italian, and Hungarian cultural spaces. The dominant role in state and society was played by the German language, with Slovenian considered the language of the common people. This article examines the peculiarities of the language situation in Carniola, Lower Styria, and Southern Carinthia - regions with predominantly Slovene populations that nevertheless remained under German political and cultural influence - and analyses the evolution of Slovenian against the sociocultural background of the age. The maturation of Slovene literary language began in the second half of the eighteenth century, during the period known as the national revival. At that time, language was both a means of communication and a social marker; only from the middle of the nineteenth century did it acquire its function as a distinctive ethnic feature and the basis for political nation-building projects. By the beginning of the twentieth century, it was fully formed and had its own scientific and professional terminology. The evolution of the language situation in the Slovenian lands was decisively influenced by two factors: the language policy of the Austrian state, aimed at the systematization and classification of non-German languages; and the activities of Slovenian patriots, aimed at developing their language and culture, and strengthening their position within the Empire.