Medicine on the line? Computer‐mediated social support and advice for people with diabetes

The advent of thousands of Usenet groups on the Internet, covering a vast range of medical and welfare issues and ostensibly devoted to the mutual social support of participating members, has raised the potential for the development of new forms of 'virtual' health care. This article critically analyses the use by people with diabetes of one such Usenet group. It seeks to establish, first, the extent to which such a site provides some demonstrable measure of social support to its participants. This is approached by undertaking a structural analysis of the site to identify the extent of usage, and the nature of supporting interventions using a fivefold classification (instrumental, informational, esteem and social companionship and other). Second, the article attempts to identify any disparity between the lay health-knowledge in evidence and biomedical opinions proffered by the use of a panel of consultant diabetiologists. The results of the analysis suggest that the diabetes newsgroup provides an example of an active forum for largely well-informed participants who routinely use the media as an aid to the reflexive management of their medical condition. It also raises the prospect of a renegotiated relationship between medical knowledge and lay experience based upon shared learning     

Stress at work and psychological and immunological parameters in a group of Norwegian female bank employees

This study concerned the immunological correlates of stress and work. Self reported stress, emotional state, ego-strength, and defensiveness were examined in relation to measures of cellular immunity (T-cell response to Con A and number of T4 and T8 cells) and humoral immunity (concentrations of immunoglobulins and complement components in plasma) in a group of 96 Norwegian female bank employees. The analyses showed that workload, the stress factor with the highest group mean, was associated with number of T-cells, while strain due to body posture during work was related to concentrations of IgM and C3. Further, depression was significantly correlated with IgM concentration and T-cell number, and anxiety with C3 concentration. T-cell activity was the immunological parameter most consistently associated with psychological well-being, showing positive correlations with defensiveness and ego-strength and negative correlations with anxiety and depression. In conclusion, T-cell number and concentrations of IgM and C3 were sensitive to both work-related stress experience and emotional distress. Coping abilities, indicated by the MMPI Ego-strength scale and emotional distress, were reflected in T-cell activity; insufficient coping was associated with low T-cell activity.     

Women with Turner's Syndrome: helping them reach their full potential

The physical and psychological effects of Turner's Syndrome, a female sex chromosome abnormality, briefly are described. Principles for helping women master the special challenges posed by the disorder are discussed. The authors argue that women with TS must take control of defining their identities and potential in order to attain full status within society.     

Factors Affecting Children’s Adjustment to the Death of a Parent: The Social Work Professional’s Viewpoint

This study investigated factors affecting the adjustment of parentally bereaved children by reviewing existing literature and comparing it to observations made by professional social workers. Interviewees had between 1 1/2 and 22 years of experience in counseling bereaved children. The specific factors examined were age and sex of the bereaved child, circumstances of the death, and adjustment of remaining caregiver. Participants (n = 5) responded to an interview instrument specifically designed for this study which contained seven in-depth, open-ended questions. Participants’ replies were mostly in accordance with the literature, but also generated some new perspectives that had not been previously considered for this study and had not appeared in the literature. This study has implications for practice with parentally bereaved children and their surviving caregivers.Rebecca M. Hope, LCSW, Outpatient Clinician, New River Valley Community Services, 700 University City Boulevard, Blacksburg, VA 24060.Diane M. Hodge, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Social Work, Radford University, P.O. Box 6958, Radford, VA 24141; e-mail: dmhodge@radford.eduAddress correspondence to Rebecca M. Hope, LCSW, Outpatient Clinician, New River Valley Community Services, 700 University City Boulevard, Blacksburg, VA 24060; e-mail: rmhope@verizon.net     

Mapping Gender and Migration in Sociological Scholarship: Is It Segregation or Integration?

A review of the sociological research about gender and migration shows the substantial ways in which gender fundamentally organizes the social relations and structures influencing the causes and consequences of migration. Yet, although a significant sociological research has emerged on gender and migration in the last three decades, studies are not evenly distributed across the discipline. In this article, we map the recent intellectual history of gender and migration in the field of sociology and then systematically assess the extent to which studies on engendering migration have appeared in four widely read journals of sociology (American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Demography, and Social Forces). We follow with a discussion of these studies, and in our conclusions, we consider how future gender and migration scholarship in sociology might evolve more equitably.     

Networks, Communication and the Irish Protestant Diaspora in Northern England, c.1860-1914

This study seeks to explore transnational communication among migrants of the Irish diaspora through an examination of the Orange Order's networks. It draws upon rare local and district records and press accounts to explain the migratory links and social worlds of Orange emigrants from Ulster. The substance of the study echoes the findings of Canadian historians who have much richer records than exist in the public domain in Britain. It demonstrates how Orangemen in Ireland came to recognise the diasporic dimension of their movement, and how members used the Order to negotiate some of the pathways of migration that were an important feature of their lives, and in the lives of the working class more generally. The essay generally seeks to demonstrate that the Orange Order acted as a network of friendship, camaraderie and support for emigrants and immigrants in the British World in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.     

The Naked Self: Being a Body in Televideo Cybersex

Unlike text‐based cybersex, televideo is an embodied experience. Participants present their bodies as an object to be looked at. Through in‐depth interviews this study examines the relationships among selfhood and the body and the context in which both are located. The body, much like the self, exists as both a viewed object and an experienced subject. Televideo cybersex participants manipulate this relationship by presenting themselves as only a body, the experience of which acts back in an erotic “looking glass” affecting how the self conceives of the body. While in some cases the medium serves to create a “disembodied” context for interaction, as this study illustrates, it may also serve to fully embody. The obvious relationships among self, body, and social situation made evident in any form of sexual experience are largely unexplored in sociology, yet fully within the realm of interest and theoretical models of symbolic interaction.