Societal Images Research Articles

Social Imaginations of Motor Road: Dissecting Discourse and Actualities

This research paper principally explores the intricate relationship between motor road development and social dynamics, aiming to understand how the construction of these roads influences local perceptions, societal images, and unintended consequences. In addition to the physical aspects of the motor road, this study examines the socio-cultural backdrop linked with road construction, delving into diverse accounts and historical narratives recounted by residents of the regions where the road was constructed. These roads represent dual symbolism of “bikas” (development) and “dukha” (hardship), mirroring the experiences and aspirations of the local inhabitants. The government, pursuing its own interests, takes on the task of road construction, revealing a complex interplay with the people living in these areas. This research article further uncovers the contrasting dynamics between the state and the community during the road construction process, shedding light on the disparities between the promises made and the realities of motor road development that unfold the political economy of road building. To conduct this written analysis of the motor road project, primary data was gathered through a three-month ethnographic field study carried out between August and October 2017 followed by several field visits till 2023. This approach included engaging in participant observation, conducting twenty comprehensive interviews with key informants, and having thirty informal discussions with participants involved in the research. Secondary data was obtained from archives, government records, and existing literature.

Medicine in older age—perception and assessment of ageing processes by older people and medical and nursing professionals: study protocol for a qualitative focus group design (FOR TiMed_Life)

BackgroundThis study is conducted by a subproject of the DFG research group "Medicine, Time and the Good Life" FOR 5022 (FOR TiMed_Life) and investigates the care preferences of individuals of advanced age and the care priorities of medical and nursing professionals in times of increasing medical options and more complex decision-making processes, especially for elderly patients. We assume that the preference for or rejection of medical treatment is shaped by individual and social age patterns and by the awareness of the finiteness of life. Just like older people themselves, professionals are also influenced by societal images of age(ing) and associated notions of age-appropriate health. These concepts are subject to constant change, which means that what was considered to be a 'normal' symptom of older age 100 years ago is now treated medically as a disease. The aim of the study is to identify the underlying perceptions of ageing and their influence on medical decisions.MethodsBy means of semi-structured focus group discussions and supplementary individual interviews with older people and medical and nursing professionals, the subproject investigates the perception of ageing processes and the resulting care preferences and priorities of these three groups. The evaluation of the interview material is carried out in two stages: First, the recorded group discussions are pre-structured using knowledge mapping. Based on the mapping results, the interview passages are selected, transcribed, and analysed in detail based on qualitative content analysis.DiscussionBecause the nature of the research question is exploratory, qualitative methods provide a suitable approach. The mapping technique provides early initial results that are used by the other subprojects. Within the research group, the results of the interviews provide an empirical basis for ethical discourses on the influence of medicine on ideas of a good life, and in particular, on successful ageing.Trial registrationGerman Clinical Trials Register: DRKS00027076, 05/11/2021.

“WOKE” in Historically Black Colleges and Universities

This research paper aims to examine and critique the impact and contribution of HBCUs in advancing societal issues and education while fostering a heightened understanding of social justice for today’s HBCU students. The purpose of this research is to discuss, expose, and share the impact HBCUs have had on the “WOKE” movement and social justice in the United States of America. The discourse centers on the development of scholars and activities who have been nurtured by and at HBCUs. The primary sources and events have been summarizing, focusing on the cause and effect of the injustice minorities face from the modern Civil Rights Era to the present day. The information/data demonstrates core components that have shaped American HBCUs from their establishments/foundation. Those ideals still evoke the same emotion of individuals who effort toward higher education decades ago up to today’s HBCU student bodies that embrace societal images upon their school. It also demonstrates how HBCUs have shown their ways of waking to societal limits in multiple forms of action to be heard through their oppression. Some sources broadly state approaches to reinstating these essential values, while some indicate the efforts to prove the name of HBCUs compared to PWIs. Some sources even show how our institutions solidify our government. This paper expresses how HBCUs in our nation keep students aware of the delinquent acts around them from social injustice and racial inequality.
 
 

Exploring Aging Masculinities From Different Disciplines and Perspectives

Traditionally, gerontology research has been relatively genderless. When the intersection of age and gender was explored, this was done primarily by focusing on the experiences of older women. Much less is known about the experiences of older men. The present symposium brings together work from the humanities and the social sciences in order to explore societal images and personal experiences of aging men. The paper by Maierhofer and Ratzenböck provides a theoretical outlook on this intersection from the humanities perspective, followed by empirical applications from the social sciences. Next, Armengol uses contemporary American literature to challenge the traditional stereotype of decline in sexuality and masculinity. The paper by Ni Leime & O’Neill examines stereotypes of aging masculinities, but this time from the perspective of older men as the audience who react to their portrayal in visual culture. Finally, Ayalon and Gweyrtz-Meydan present ethical dilemmas faced by physicians who treat older men’s sexuality in light of active marketing campaigns of the pharmaceutical industry, which advocate for a model of successful aging and ongoing sexual intercourse. The discussant, Kimmel, will conceptualize the four papers by stressing the different types of information that can be obtained via different methods of inquiry. The complementary information provided by the different papers and the integration of methods and findings from the humanities with the social sciences will be discussed.

The last 10\u2009years: any changes in perceptions of the seriousness of alcohol, cannabis, and substance use in Canada?

BackgroundOver the last decade, there have been a number of changes in the Canadian landscape - the deconstruction of alcohol policy in some provinces, the legalization of cannabis, increased availability of gambling options, and the increase in opioid use and its associated problems. Have there been concomitant changes in societal images of addictions?MethodsA general population survey on societal images of addictions was conducted in multiple countries in 2008 - Finland, Sweden, Canada (Canadian sample size: N = 864; 40% response rate), and part of Russia (St Petersburg). We repeated the same survey in 2018 in Canada (N = 813; response rate = 23%). The survey assessed perceptions of the seriousness of different issues to society - including items about alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, gambling, misuse of medical drugs, and drugs like amphetamine, cocaine, or heroin - among other items (e.g., pollution, violent crime, prostitution).ResultsThere were increases in perceptions of the seriousness of misuse of medical drugs (p = .001), of illicit drugs (p = .005), ratings of the seriousness of cannabis use (p = .02), and a decrease in ratings of gambling as a social problem (p = .04). Ratings of the seriousness of alcohol and tobacco as social problems did not display significant changes over time (p > .05).ConclusionsThere has been some variation in societal perceptions of the seriousness of different addictions. Increases in perceptions of the seriousness of misusing medical drugs and the use of illicit drugs may reflect increases in societal concerns about opioid use and its associated problems. Despite substantial changes in alcohol control policies, the legalization of cannabis, and the increased availability of options for gambling, there appears to be very little associated change in societal perceptions regarding these addictive behaviours.

HIV Health Care Providers as Street-Level Bureaucrats: Unreflective Discourses and Implications for Women’s Health and Well-Being

ABSTRACTClient-provider relationships have significant effects on how individuals comprehend their life situation during chronic disease and illness. Yet, little is known about how frontline health care providers (HCPs) influence client’s identity formation through meaning-making with clients such as HIV-positive women living in poverty. This requires ethical consideration of the meanings made between clients and providers about client’s health and well-being, both individually and in the larger society. Health care providers (N = 15) and married women living with HIV (N = 33) in north-central India engaged in separate intensive interviews providing narrative data which were analysed using a conceptual framework crossing Lipsky’s street-level bureaucracy theory (Lipsky 2010) with meaning-making processes. HCPs and women construct meanings of women’s role as caregivers that impact women’s sense of identity, health, and well-being. Findings indicate that despite being well-intentioned, HCPs inadvertently reinforce rigid gender norms and convey that women’s worth is tied to their familial caregiving role. HCPs’ discretionary advocacy may also reinforce societal images of women as incapable and needy, thereby harming them more generally. Attention to the gender-sensitive training of HIV health care providers may assure that discretion is ethically interrogated to promote gender equity and enhance women’s access to social welfare services.

MEDIA AND AGEISM

It is widely recognized that how we approach old age is conditioned upon culture. Media is undoubtedly the largest cultural arena in which societal images and attitudes towards old age and older people are formed. The existing research usually discusses the process of underrepresentation and misrepresentation of old age and older people. However, media as an important part of everyday realities among older people are also about creation and active use of media and their content. It is therefore pertinent to the study of ageism to not only understand how different types of online and offline media represent ageing and old age, but also how people of different ages access and use those media and what types of knowledge about media and old age dominate. The main objective of this symposium is to address these concerns by specifically focusing on a) the processes of knowledge production about media and via media with regards to old age, and b) the ways in which older people’s use various types of online and offline media. The symposium brings together ageing and media studies researchers from several European countries who are active in research promoting anti-ageist knowledge that reflects the growing diversity of people of different ages who are commonly referred to as ‘old’.

“The picture of a woman”: roaring girls and alternative histories in the RSC 2014 season

In staging the personal histories of transgressive early modern women alongside Shakespeare's history plays, the RSC 2014 season presented an alternative version of history. Although the narratives portrayed in both Arden of Faversham (1592) and Webster's The White Devil (1612) can be found in chronicle sources, neither belongs to the conventional register of history; indeed, Holinshed apologised for the inclusion in his Chronicles (1577, 1587) of such ‘private’ matter as Arden's murder by his wife. Dekker and Middleton's The Roaring Girl (1611) and The Witch of Edmonton (1621) are likewise rooted in the world of popular culture: the “Roaring Girl” Moll Cutpurse was chronicled in John Day's chapbook The Mad Pranks of Merry Moll of the Bankside (1610), now lost, while Ford, Dekker and Rowley borrow from Henry Goodcole's trial account A Wonderful Discoverie of Elizabeth Sawyer (1621). This article explores how the “Roaring Girls” season challenged traditional generic divisions between ‘high’ Shakespeare histories and the popular genres of domestic tragedy and city comedy. I discuss how the RSC directors used these early modern plays and their subversive female protagonists to respond to gender inequality in contemporary society, engaging with the concerns of Fourth Wave feminism by staging “roaring girls” who challenge societal strictures and unsettle conservative images of gender. I argue that in staging plays which privilege the portrayal of criminal women, the 2014 “Roaring Girls” season restored the hidden histories of both the popular source material that informed the drama of the early modern stage, and the women who become visible to history only through their transgressions.

From Virtual to Social: Transforming Concepts and Images of the Internet

One history of the Internet is the history of changing perceptions of this particular innovation over the course of time. This article argues that the societal perception, concepts, and images of the Internet and the changes to it are to a large extent affected by the traditional media. Against this background, the study gives a historical analysis of Internet-related news coverage in the leading liberal newspapers in Germany, Great Britain, and Italy between 2000 and 2012.

Security repertoires: towards a sociopragmatist framing of securitization processes

Security researchers have long been trying to distil general rules or procedures of what societies regard as insecurity or risk. But not with standing ideas of a universal ‘security logic’ or standard ‘felicity conditions’ underlying successful threat constructions, this paper takes a contrary view. ‘Security’ is understood differently in different sociopolitical and cultural contexts; consequently, societal threat construction is not graspable by general rules. From a sociopragmatist perspective, acts of securitization can be understood as discursive processes which evolve through one or more ‘security repertoires’. These repertoires bundle and constrain shared ways of perceiving, arguing, and interpreting societal issues such as threat or risk perceptions. However, the use of ‘successful’ security repertoires which lead to the construction of societal threat images varies in diverse sociocultural settings. Hence, the concept addresses the difficulties to apply universal rules to securitization processes in the face of different social contexts.

Green Management in High-Tech Industry: A Case Study of Sony Group

The purpose of this study is to explore and under purpose of green management, including both from the perspective of business management and the practitioners, the perspective of business management is the triple-bottom-line which consists of the environmental benefits, positive economics effect, and healthy societal images. The triple bottom line captures an expanded spectrum of values and criteria for measuring organizational (and societal) success: economic, ecological and social. Based on the perspective of the practitioners, this study will address two questions: First, what is the Environmental Positioning: Branding for green management? Secondly, what are some of the concerns (Environmental impact, the Economics, the Society)? Furthermore, this study discusses the case study of corporate company that has implemented green management practices. The analysis and understanding and the purpose of green management have been explored through the case study of Sony. As such, a detailed analysis of green management in high-tech industry has been covered.

The Blurring of Boundaries between Research and Everyday Life: Dilemmas of Employing One’s Own Experiential Knowledge in Disability Research

Researchers with experiential disability knowledge increasingly engage in socio-medical research. In this paper the author discusses her experiences with employing her own lived experiences with disability in academic and non-academic research projects. Incorporating one’s own lived experiences in research implies a blurring of boundaries between the private, the professional, and the public. The latter may give rise to dilemmas of double membership and dilemmas of disclosure in publications. Double membership may become problematic for disabled researchers who identify with the disability community if conceptualizations of disability in scientific communities unwittingly echo negative societal images of disability. Because of the low status of disabled people and of experiential knowledge, disclosure of own experiences with disability may negatively influence young disabled researchers’ careers. Key Words: deployment of experiential knowledge, the researcher in disability studies, dilemmas

Societal images of Cannabis use: comparing three countries

BackgroundDifferences in beliefs about Cannabis were compared between Canada, Sweden and Finland using nationally representative population surveys containing similar items.FindingsCompared to Finnish and Swedish respondents, Canadians were both more likely to have tried Cannabis and to view Cannabis as a less serious problem for society.ConclusionsThese findings emphasize the extent to which views about Cannabis can vary. It is possible that views about Cannabis are, at least in part, a social construction influenced by media, social policy and exposure to the drug that varies from country to country.

Social policy and the internal dynamics of the senior rights movement

To understand how the senior rights movement in the United States shapes social policy, it is necessary to look at the role played by large institutionalized organizations and those of smaller grassroots groups. This sociohistorical analysis compares AARP, the Alliance for Retired Americans (formerly NCSC), and the Gray Panthers as three key interest organizations contributing to the contemporary senior movement. Based largely on historical evidence, we examine how contemporary policy debates have been presented by various organizations and the impact of their framing efforts on old age policy outcomes and societal images of seniors. We discuss how decisions are made and why actions are taken (or not) by these groups. We outline the different strategies pursued by the various movement organizations on such issues as the proposed partial privatization of Social Security and the Prescription Drug Program as well as efforts to shape societal conceptions of aging. Our analysis shows how groups fighting for what are ostensibly the same interests—advocating senior rights—end up advancing different and at times competing strategies to achieve such ends. These differences have had two unintended consequences: (1) the movement's largely defensive approach rather than a concerted offensive for social change and (2) public portrayals of seniors that both diminish the social perception of their needs and homogenize their experiences of aging.

Societal Determinants of Productive Aging: A Multilevel Analysis across 11 European Countries

This article aims to improve our understanding of the societal determinants of older people's participation in non-market productive activities. Based on micro-data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, we estimate logistic multilevel models for individuals' engagement in formal volunteering, informal helping, and caring across 11 countries. The results partially support hypotheses regarding the relationship between specific macro-level variables and individuals' productive engagement at older ages. While our measure of societal images of aging does not exhibit statistically significant associations with any of the activities considered here, our hypotheses concerning a positive relationship between greater political and religious freedom as well as the provision of welfare state services and older individuals' propensity to engage in productive aging are largely confirmed. We interpret these findings as evidence suggesting that both longstanding cultural elements of a society as well as contemporary welfare state interventions constitute reference frames and opportunity structures which older individuals perceive as relevant for their decision whether to participate in volunteering, helping, or caring.

Societal images of youth: representations and interpretations by youth actively engaged in their communities

In this paper, the authors explore representations and interpretations of images of youth that surfaced in discussions with groups of adolescents in four community youth organizations. As part of a larger multi‐method study, adolescents created photo‐essays on the theme ‘Youth Making a Difference in the Community.’ These projects then served as triggers for small‐group discussions around the product and meaning of the exercise. In the analysis of the discussion‐group transcripts, one of the striking findings was how these youth, in the processes of creating and reflecting on their photo‐essays, perceived and challenged dominant societal images; reconstructed alternative images based on their personal and peer experiences; and valued visibility and recognition of youth's contributions to the community as a way of changing the image of youth. The authors discuss implications for research and educational practices aimed at youth empowerment and recasting societal images.

“Girl Power” and Participation in Macho Recreation: The Case of Female Harley Riders

This study examines females' participation in the male-dominated sport of motorcycling. Group interviews with female motorcyclists explore the meaning of this leisure activity in their lives and various factors that facilitate their participation. A grounded-theory approach reveals five sources of empowerment that women gain by participating in motorcycling. This study demonstrates the role facilitators play in creating and cultivating sources of empowerment. It also exposes how feelings of guilt, vulnerability, and concern about societal images can undermine women's feelings of empowerment. “Girl power” represents women's attempts to redefine femininity in a way that embraces the positive aspects of both femininity and masculinity and resists negative stereotypes that restrict women's choices of leisure pursuits.

Epilepsy and self‐identity among the Dutch

This article discusses the relationship between societal images of epilepsy and the self‐identity of Dutch people with epilepsy. I show that the condition of having epilepsy is only constructed as chronic if people continue to have seizures. Chronic epilepsy, or “real epilepsy” as it is sometimes called, is not burdened with such classic stereotypes as “the epileptic personality” or “the epileptic genius.” However, Dutch people replace these stereotypes with stereotypes based on ideas about “tension” and “weak spots"—phenomena that are allegedly linked to “sensitive,” “brooding” types of people and that are thought to trigger epileptic seizures. Thus there develops a notion of self related to frequency of epileptic seizures. Those who are close to people with epilepsy—relatives and non‐medical professionals—play an important role in this development.

Institutional Racism and Sentencing Disparities for Cocaine Possession

With the advent of the Reagan-Bush years came the contemporary “war on drugs” and a mounting drug frenzy that has had a profound impact on the lives of black men in American society. Connections between race and drug use are nothing new. At one time or another, many racial and ethnic groups in this country have been victimized by being linked as a group to some type of illicit drug use. Most recently, such links can be seen in the 1986 and 1988 federal legislation regarding cocaine possession. In 1986, the U.S. Congress for the first time established minimum mandatory sentences for federal cocaine offenses. While initially the legislation applied to trafficking, it was extended to simple possession in 1988. The critical element was a distinction between crack and powder cocaine, and societal images of which racial groups use which form of the drug and beliefs about violence involved with crack cocaine. This paper is an effort to document the role of institutional racism in the making and implementation of social policy. Institutional racism refers to practices in social institutions and organizations that favor one racial group over another. In terms of possession of cocaine, black men are far overepresented in terms of arrests, convictions, and sentences to prison. These policies have deeply affected the lives of many young black men and their families, friends, and communities.

Radiation Protection Information

Public acceptance of information concerning radiation risks has been impacted by the erosion of trust in government agencies and by societal images that personify radiation or its effects in terms of monsters and ogres. The loss of trust in government agencies, particularly the Atomic Energy Commission and later the Department of Energy, has been influenced by a number of key events and individuals. Examples of these are given, including the anti-Viet Nam war movement, the Watergate incident, the activities of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Ralph Nader and the Critical Mass movement, the claims of Ernest Sternglass, and the widely publicized views of John Gofman and Arthur Tamplin. The use of negative images, pictures, and symbols in the mass media has reinforced the public perception of radiation as a thing to be feared. There is growing evidence that the public perception of radiation risks is related more to mistrust and negative images than it is to the technical information health physicists provide or to the issue of whether or not the linear no-threshold theory of radiation risks is correct. Attempts by federal agencies to regain public trust in radiation risk information generated by health physicists or other radiation scientists appear to be largely unsuccessful. If health physicists hope to be successful in changing such public perceptions, they may have to focus efforts on the next generation and concentrate on assuring that elementary and secondary school children receive sound instruction on radiation risks. Additional research at the molecular biology level is needed to elucidate the risks, if any, at low doses so that the practice of extrapolating low dose responses from high dose data can be eliminated.