Identity Agents: Parents as Active and Reflective Participants in Their Children's Identity Formation

The paper introduces the concept of identity agents. This concept refers to those individuals who actively interact with children and youth with the intention of participating in their identity formation, and who reflectively mediate larger social influences on identity formation. This contrasts with the focus of mainstream research in the identity field that tends to portray adolescents as the sole reflective agents involved in mature identity development. The paper presents a theoretical analysis presenting the importance of the concept for the formulation of a comprehensive contextual theory of identity formation. The particulars of this concept are illustrated through the presentation of a qualitative report of religious parents actively encouraging their children's processes of identification, co‐participating in their children's identity's formation, and reflectively deliberating their parental roles and goals in regards to this process.     

Self,Emotions, and Extreme Violence: Extending Symbolic Interactionist Theorizing

Extreme violence revolves around actions of individuals who are emotionally aroused and willing to kill themselves, if need be, to inflict harm on enemies. Terrorism, gangbanging, and genocide are conspicuous examples of extreme violence. This violence is ultimately driven by repressed negative emotions about self that are transmuted into variants of anger and combinations of anger with satisfaction‐happiness to produce emotions such as hatred, righteous anger, and vengeance. This theory combines symbolic interactionism's emphasis on identity and self with key ideas from gestalt theories, psychoanalytic theories, and interaction ritual theory as well as data from primatology, evolutionary biology, and neurology. I explain extreme violence as the outcome of several converging forces: the neurological capacity for humans as evolved apes to experience and express a large palate of high‐intensity emotions, the experience of shame in key institutional spheres, the repression of shame (and, at times, guilt and alienation as well as other highly charged negative emotions), the intensification and transmutation of these repressed emotions into variants and elaborations of anger, the making of external attributions blaming external targets for negative experiences, the portrayal of these targets in highly negative terms, and the charging up of positive emotions in interaction rituals directed at inflicting harm on external enemies.     

Cost of Living Variation,Nonmetropolitan America,and Implications for the Supplemental Poverty Measure

Population Research and Policy Review - Poverty scholarship in the United States is increasingly reliant upon the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) as opposed to the Official Poverty Measure of...     

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Exposure,Industry Sector,and Child Health

Population Research and Policy Review - The historic 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill (DHOS) led to public distress regarding potential impacts on children in nearby Gulf Coast communities....     

Does Social Capital Make You Generous?*

Objectives. This article tests the hypothesis that social capital—measured in terms of civic group involvement, social and racial trust, and political engagement—leads to charitable behavior by individuals. Methods. I introduce measures of the “social capital elasticity of giving,” which facilitate comparisons between the effects on charity of different social capital types. Using data from the 2000 Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, I estimate these elasticities with tobit regression models. Results. I find strong links between changes in social capital stocks and changes in giving levels. Furthermore, I find that different social capital types have differing levels of impact on giving. Conclusions. Charitable giving appears to be a beneficial consequence of some types of social capital.     

Care, control and change in child care proceedings: dilemmas for social workers, managers and lawyers

This paper draws on findings from an interview‐based study of the ways that local authority social workers, social services managers and lawyers work together in child care cases in England. The study shows how stressful social workers can find care proceedings, and how much they look to the lawyers for support. It also shows how the lawyers’ involvement can bring new stresses and dilemmas. The managers are especially likely to resent ‘over‐involvement’ (as they see it) from lawyers, but lawyers are quick to defend their role and responsibilities. The paper shows how the complex, multifaceted dimensions of care, control and change interweave with professional differences in care proceedings: care for children, parents and social workers; struggles for control against the court, the other parties and sometimes the other professionals on one's own side; and responsiveness to change set against wariness about ‘lawyers’ deals’ and undue risk to children. The paper concludes that the valuing of difference, rather than its avoidance or suppression, is at the heart of effective inter‐professional work. It calls for greater recognition of this in current initiatives to promote interdisciplinary working in children's services in England.