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.     

Community Economic Development Strategies in Rural Washington: Toward a Synthesis of Natural and Social Capital*

Abstract Routes to economic development attract considerable attention in community and rural sociology. Social scientists draw increasingly on studies of social capital and environmental surroundings as they examine the factors that facilitate and inhibit economic development. However, few empirical analyses exist that analyze the impact of the combination of social infrastructure and natural capital on different forms of economic development such as on industrial recruitment and self‐development. Using data collected from six communities in Washington State, the interaction of a community's social infrastructure and natural capital on industrial recruitment and self‐development efforts is examined. Results suggest that while natural capital positively impacts a community's successful recruitment of outside industries, it is not significant for a community's level of self‐development. However, a community's social infrastructure, measured by the existence of active civic organizations, local businesses that support local community projects, community‐wide fund‐raising capacity, and extra‐local linkages to nearby communities, state, and national agencies, positively affects both industrial recruitment and self‐development. These findings illustrate the need for communities and local activists to carefully weigh their advantages and potential shortcomings when deciding on an economic development strategy.     

Poor People in Poor Places: Local Opportunity Structures and Household Poverty*

Abstract Accounts of poverty generally fall into either “individualist” or “structuralist” camps. Often these are seen as irreconcilable and incompatible competing perspectives. This paper integrates individualist and structuralist accounts of poverty by examining the relationship between “person poverty” and “place poverty” in nonmetropolitan and metropolitan labor markets, using a multilevel framework. I fashion a general model of poverty production and allocation, drawing on the labor market ecology perspective. After a discussion of this perspective, I develop a multilevel framework for analyzing data from the 1990 Census PUMS‐L sample, STF‐3c, and other sources to show how compositional and contextual factors affect households' likelihoods of being in poverty. These multilevel models also allow us to estimate the degree to which labor market conditions influence the magnitude of household labor supply characteristics. Results suggest that both compositional and contextual factors contribute to the metro‐nonmetro difference in poverty rates, and that the effects of employment vary in accordance with labor market characteristics.     

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.     

Asylum Seeking in Australia

The rise in the number of asylum seekers in Australia presents considerable challenges to the state as they are a self‐selected, demand‐driven group, whose numbers, country of origin, ethnic background, and social demographic characteristics cannot be determined in advance of their arrival. People who apply for protection at the border are regarded primarily as illegal immigrants, and only secondarily as asylum seekers, and the illegality of their entry has become the primary factor in the way they are treated by the state, rather than their need for protection. Two streams of asylum seekers and two streams of refugees have been created. There are marked differences in the treatment given while claims for protection are examined and once decisions have been made in their favor. This article examines the development of asylum policy in Australia and sets the discussion within a review of the number of people who have applied for and been granted protection in recent years.