The Abject Embodiment of Cancer Patients: Dignity,Selfhood, and the Grotesque Body

The body is the empirical quintessence of the self. Because selfhood is symbolic, embodiment represents the personification and materialization of otherwise invisible qualities of personhood. The body and experiences of embodiment are central to our sense of being, who we think we are, and what others attribute to us. What happens, then, when one's body is humiliating? How does the self handle the implications of a gruesome body? How do people manage selfhood in light of grotesque physical appearances? This study explores these questions in the experiences of dying cancer patients and seeks to better understand relationships among body, self, and situated social interaction.     

Volume 30

Theory and Society -     

Behavior, Belonging, and Belief: A Theory of Ritual Practice

A new model of ritual based on Durkheim's ([1912] 1995) theory is developed. It is argued that ritual practices generate belief and belonging in participants by activating multiple social–psychological mechanisms that interactively create the characteristic outcomes of ritual. Specifically, the distinctive elements of ritual practice are shown to induce altered subjective states and effortful and/or anomalous behaviors, which are subsequently misattributed in such a way that belief and belonging are created or maintained around the focus of ritual attention. These processes are traced in detail, and the resulting model is shown to be empirically credible, comprehensive, and theoretically fertile.     

Adolescent Protective Factors Promoting Resilience in Young Adults at Risk for Depression

In a longitudinal, community-based study, adolescent protective factors for those at risk for depression were identified that were associated with resilient outcomes in young adulthood. For those with childhood risk factors for major depression, significant protective factors included family cohesion, positive self appraisals, and good interpersonal relations. Findings may help inform the development of prevention and treatment programs for adolescents vulnerable to depression. Implications for future research and clinical practice are discussed.     

Career Self‐Efficacy and Perceptions of Parent Support in Adolescent Career Development

The authors examined the relative contributions of both proximal and distal supports to the career interests and vocational self‐efficacy in a multiethnic sample (N = 139) of middle school adolescents. Consistent with Social Cognitive Career Theory, it was found that (a) vocational self‐efficacy and career planning/exploration efficacy consistently predicted young adolescents' career interests across Holland (J. L. Holland, D. R. Whitney, N. S. Cole, & J. M. Richards, 1969) themes; (b) gender and career gender‐typing predicted interests in Realistic, Investigative, and Social careers; and (c) perceived parent support accounted for 29% to 43% of the total unique variance in vocational self‐efficacy for all Holland theme careers.     

Media Publicity and the Voluntary Sector: The Case of Nonprofit Organizations in New York City

Media publicity is an important resource for contemporary voluntary associations, but very little is actually known about the resources and organizational characteristics that are most important for getting media attention. To address this question, we collected and analyzed data on the organizational attributes and news publicity of 739 nonprofit organizations in New York City. We find that an organization's income, paid staff, membership size, and library resources are significantly related to getting media publicity, whereas the number of chapter affiliations is inversely related to publicity. Association type is also a significant factor that influences an organization's ability to get publicity. We discuss the implications that these findings have for current debates about advocacy and civic engagement in the nonprofit sector.     

Generationswechsel im Management ost- und westdeutscher Unternehmen

Currently, in the top-management of German enterprises a generational shift is taking place. The paper looks at the consequences of this change concerning the future of the ‘German model of capitalism’. Are the managers of the new generation still holding on to the traditional German management culture or are they orienting themselves more strongly towards the US-American shareholder-value model? In order to clarify this question, the existing empirical results of management research are systematically evaluated. According to the results of this analysis we are not going to face a far-reaching Americanization of the management culture. However, under the pressure of globalization a significant differentiation between management culture in large enterprises on the one hand and management culture in small and medium-sized enterprises on the other hand occurs. While managers of large enterprises adopt elements of the American management model to a great degree, German management seems to become even more accentuated in the culture of small and medium-sized enterprises. In the context of this recent development existing differences between the management in Eastern and Western German enterprises dissolve along with the alternation of generations.     

The Existential Side of Kohut's Tragic Man

This article explores the way in which Kohut's concept of Tragic Man functions as a response to criticisms of self psychology as proffering a partial, utopian, strife-denying theory of human development. After citing several representative critiques in this respect, I review the concept of Tragic Man as defined by Kohut, and then seek to deepen the clinical usefulness of this concept through a discussion of affects, empathy, and free association. A clinical vignette concludes the paper, through which some of these ideas find illustration.     

Book Review: A Generation Divided: The New Left,The New Right,and the 1960s. By Rebecca E. Klatch. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. 386 pages,paperback, ISBN: 0-520-21714-4

Qualitative Sociology -