Book Review: Current Perspectives on Ageism

Book reviewed in this article:
T. D. Nelson (ed.), Ageism: Stereotyping and Prejudice against Older Persons     

新人类与我们可能的未来

上个世纪末的最后几年里 ,70年代出生的新一代成为大众媒体的热门话题。他们自称新人类 ,在许多方面有着引人注目的表现和骄人的成绩 ,也有世人不解的种种举动。有人说他们是中国垮掉的一代 ,仿佛他们就是世风日下 ,道德滑坡的象征。身为70年代的一员 ,我们总觉得对新人类的看法不能简单化。他们不是父辈想象中的那样 ,只要消费不要头脑 ,只要快乐不要思考。他们有自己的奋斗目标 ,也有自己的生活规则。从某些方面说 ,他们是异常孤独的一群     

偏见的生成与消解:评奥尔波特《偏见的本质》

《偏见的本质》是一部经典著述,初版于1954年,1979年又出版了25周年纪念版。它的篇章结构为讨论和理解群际关系尤其是偏见问题设定了界域。它的智识创见对后世启发深远,"当我们中的许多人正要为自己的新发现而惊喜时,却发现奥尔波特早已在那里等我们了"     

印度对华反倾销的原因与对策思考

随着中国与印度经济的腾飞 ,两国经贸关系发展迅速 ,双边贸易额逐年大幅上升。但近几年来 ,在中印经贸关系发展中 ,反倾销问题日益凸显。中国出口到印度的商品受到印度大规模的反倾销调查 ,使中印经贸关系的发展蒙上了一层阴影。本文分析了造成这一现象的原因并提出了对策     

Educating Our Future Colleagues: Creating an MSW Palliative Care Practicum

As the number of older adults and those with chronic medical conditions continues to rise, the need to train social work students in palliative and end-of-life competencies becomes critical. To address this growing need, the social work team at a large urban academic medical center in the Midwest developed an MSW concentration practicum in palliative and end-of-life care. During the practicum, students receive immersive training in palliative care social work values and the skills required for these specialized assessments, interventions, and evaluations. Their training culminates in their participation on an interdisciplinary team to provide psychosocial support to patients and families receiving palliative and end-of-life care throughout the medical center. This article describes the curriculum, practice immersion, training manual, teaching modules, and structure of student supervision which is applicable to and adaptable for other palliative care social work field instructors.     

Ageism: A Review of Research and Policy Implications

The current literature on aging and ageism is summarized in support of a theoretical perspective that includes both the biological and the psychosocial components of these processes. Conceptual and methodological problems are identified in models that rely on a deficit approach to aging. We suggest that the biased responses of others foster older adults' stress-related emotional and hormonal responses—responses that may effectively reduce their social and cognitive competence. This negative feedback process ultimately acts in a stereotype-maintaining fashion. Implications are drawn for possible changes in social policy and institutional practices that may reduce or prevent the harmful effects of ageism. Examples are given of existing policies and practices that limit the lives of older adults (in the guise of protection), along with newly instituted policies and practices (including those at an international level) that place the welfare of older adults in the context of life course issues shared by all.     

Reducing Prejudice: Lessons From Social-Cognitive Factors Underlying Perceiver Differences in Prejudice

This article describes research findings on individual differences in stereotyping and shows how these findings have been and can be further applied to prejudice reduction efforts. A notable strength of this 'new' generation of individual difference work is its dynamic nature—that individual differences can be both stable and malleable. The first section of this article reviews work showing that both adults and children differ in social-cognitive factors related to stereotyping, namely the way theyprocess social information and their endorsement of social ideologies. The second section describes intervention strategies that target these factors. In the final section, limitations and future directions of basic and applied research on individual differences and stereotyping arediscussed.     

Ageism and Abuse in the Workplace: A New Frontier

The economic crisis in the United States has led to increased media coverage of older workers being laid off, forced to retire, or working longer than planned. Embedded in these reports are the intimations of workplace abuse. Social workers need to start taking into account ageism and abuse in the workplace as possible cooccurring issues to effectively implement policy, and organizational change that will address both issues. This brief article discusses ageism and abuse in the workplace using a human rights framework, the current state of the literature, and directions for future research.     

Patenting Our Food Future: Intellectual Property Rights and the Global Food System

Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) underpin the new knowledge economy and their ownership and control affects the distribution of wealth and power. This paper explores the changing international IPRs regime and its possible impact on the food system, in particular through their connection with biotechnology and marketing. It outlines how IPRs have been extended into agriculture globally through the Agreement on the Trade–Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights ( TRIPS) at the World Trade Organization ( WTO) and the other related international agreements. It identifies two problems. One is with the way the global rules are made—which is unbalanced with too few of the interested parties taking part in the process. The other is with whether the rules themselves are appropriate in food and agriculture. Their possible impact, especially patents, on increasingly proprietary, agricultural research and development is discussed as well as the possible effects on seed provision of the requirement for some form of IPRs protection to be available for plant varieties in all WTO members, sooner or later. Possible options for rethinking the rules to make them more appropriate for food and agriculture are discussed, as well as effects on market structure and the environment. Brief mention is made of other IPRs—trademarks, trade secrets and geographical indications—upon the way business in the food system is carried out. The paper concludes that this complex subject area is worthy of much more scrutiny because of the potential impact of these esoteric and complex rules.     

Ageism Across the Lifespan: Towards a Self-Categorization Model of Ageing

This article uses this collection of articles on ageism as a springboard to discuss empirical lacunae in the literature as well as propose a self-categorization model of ageing phenomena. In particular, we argue that research would benefit from a more lifespan communication perspective. This includes the social origins of ageism that can be laid down early in development and perpetuated through collusive processes as individuals themselves age. Further, problems of interactively managing ageism, its intragenerational parameters, and the variable consequences of making death salient, are identified. Finally, we elaborate and illustrate a self-categorization model of ageing processes before critically examining panaceas proposed by others to ameliorate ageism.     

The Social Separation of Old and Young: A Root of Ageism

Ageism has been the focus of numerous publications, while age segregation is a neglected topic. Ageism on a micro-individual level is linked to segregation on a macro level in a segregation-ageism cycle. Possible linking mechanisms, which might help break this cycle, can be found on a meso level of social networks—their structure and functions. Data from the United States and the Netherlands show that non-family networks are strongly age homogeneous. Based on earlier work by a range of scholars, we suggest that time, group identity, perspective-taking, and affective ties are factors that must be considered with regard to the functions of networks. Addressing meso level mechanisms poses challenges to social policy as well as research.     

When Prejudice Is Popular: Implications for Discriminatory Behavior

Prejudice and popularity represent two major areas of research. Yet studies have not considered whether prejudiced adolescents actually can be popular. Among 572 high school students (M_age = 15.80 years), the current study tested the association between popularity (based on sociometric peer nominations) and sexual prejudice against gay and lesbian individuals, moderated by gender and perspective taking. As hypothesized, the association was significant for males but not females, and it was significant for adolescents lower on perspective taking but not those higher on perspective taking. Moreover, adolescents who were popular and expressed strong sexual prejudice were more likely to engage in homophobic behavior than prejudiced adolescents who were less popular. Popular adolescents with strong sexual prejudice beliefs may be more prone to use homophobic behavior as a way to maintain their dominant position. Similarly, prejudiced adolescents who are popular may face less pushback for their engagement in homophobic behavior. Continued attention to the connection between sexual prejudice and popularity is important because of the high status, influence, and visibility of popular adolescents.     

Confronting Sexual Stigma and Prejudice: Theory and Practice

This article explores theoretical and applied questions that are relevant to social scientists' efforts to understand and confront sexual stigma. A framework is presented for conceptualizing such stigma as a cultural phenomenon with structural and individual manifestations. The latter include enacted stigma and felt stigma, as well as internalized stigma, which encompasses self-stigma among sexual minorities and sexual prejudice among heterosexuals. Insights suggested by the model for reducing sexual prejudice are discussed. At the structural level, the framework highlights processes whereby heterosexism legitimates and perpetuates sexual stigma and the power differentials that it creates. Social and behavioral scientists, roles in working to eliminate heterosexism are discussed, and psychologists' contributions to court cases challenging state sodomy laws are described. It is argued that confronting sexual stigma will not only address an important social problem but will also enrich scientific understanding of human behavior.     

Ageism and Ageist Language Across the Life Span: Intimate Relationships and Non-intimate Interactions

The possible effects of ageist language and ageism on the structure and function of intimate and non-intimate relationships have received significant attention from social scientists. Recent research grounded in communication accommodation theory ( Giles, Mulac, Bradac, & Johnson, 1987 ), the communication predicament model of ageing ( Ryan, Giles, Bartolucci, & Henwood, 1986 ), the communication enhancement model of ageing ( Ryan, Meredith, MacLean, & Orange, 1995 ), and ageing and stereotype research by Hummert (1994) and colleagues ( Hummert & Mazloff, 2001 ; Hummert, Shaner, & Garstka, 1995 ) point toward the numerous consequences of both negative and positive attitudes toward ageing. Focusing specifically on health care settings, this article reviews recent theoretical positions and empirical findings that link ageist language and ageism to these positive and negative social consequences, and offers pragmatic suggestions and directions for future research .     

信息社会下的民法典——兼论法典化之时代使命

一如两百年前一样,人们似乎依旧习惯于仰仗国家来统筹整理法律,并借助综合性法典来展现法律。文章将探讨这种信赖在法典编纂中的合理性。文章着力论证,在信息化时代,法典编纂的法律信息供给功能可以借由比依赖国家创设法律体系更好的方式予以实现。信息化社会使得法律渊源具有多元性,并赋予了市民选择法律来经营生活的可能性。从传统来说,大陆法系以及普通法系国家在编纂法典以实现法律信息的系统化供给方面的经验表明,这些法典化活动能够满足当时的法律信息管理需要,但是传统的法律编纂方式却难以应对信息化社会的挑战。这促使法律需要以不同的姿态面向大众——在国家编纂法典或法律科学的形式之外,借助多元的可供受众选择的法律信息管理模式。     

On the Nature of Contemporary Prejudice: The Third Wave

This article examines how social and historical developments have influenced the intellectual climate surrounding the study of prejudice and illustrates how these advances are reflected in the study of one type of racial bias, aversive racism. Three waves of research are identified. In the first wave, prejudice was assumed to reflect psychopathology. In the second, it was viewed as rooted in normal processes. The third wave emphasizes the multidimensional aspect of prejudice and takes advantage of new technologies to study processes that were earlier hypothesized but not directly measurable. Research on aversive racism is presented to demonstrate the transition of research across the second and third waves and to show how unconscious biases can significantly influence race relations.     

Black Immigrants in Portugal: Luso–Tropicalism and Prejudice

This article analyzes the relationship between the luso–tropicalist representation of the history of Portuguese colonization and overt as well as covert expressions of anti-immigrant prejudice. The luso–tropicalist representation emphasizes the uniqueness of the Portuguese colonial relations based on Portuguese empathy and capacity to deal with people from different cultures. This representation was created during Salazar's dictatorial regime and is still assumed to be a dimension of Portuguese national identity. The empirical findings presented in this article show that this luso–tropicalist representation may explain the salience of the norm against prejudice in Portugal and may contribute to weaken the traditional association between national identity and overt prejudice. A second dimension of the association between luso–tropicalism and integration of Black immigrants in Portuguese society was examined, that is, the impact of luso–tropicalism on the attribution and covert evaluation of cultural differences between White Portuguese and Black immigrants. Results show that despite the luso–tropicalist representation, White Portuguese individuals express a covert negative evaluation of cultural differences attributed to Black immigrants. This means that the luso–tropicalist representation can protect against the expression of overt prejudice but not against its covert dimensions.