scholarly journals Smoke gets in your eyes: what is sociological about cigarettes?

2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 882-897 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donncha Marron
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Cigarette Smoking ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Social Distribution

Contemporary public health approaches increasingly draw attention to the unequal social distribution of cigarette smoking. In contrast, critical accounts emphasize the importance of smokers’ situated agency, the relevance of embodiment and how public health measures against smoking potentially play upon and exacerbate social divisions and inequality. Nevertheless, if the social context of cigarettes is worthy of such attention, and sociology lays a distinct claim to understanding the social, we need to articulate a distinct, positive and systematic claim for smoking as an object of sociological enquiry. This article attempts to address this by situating smoking across three main dimensions of sociological thinking: history and social change; individual agency and experience; and social structures and power. It locates the emergence and development of cigarettes in everyday life within the project of modernity of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It goes on to assess the habituated, temporal and experiential aspects of individual smoking practices in everyday lifeworlds. Finally, it argues that smoking, while distributed in important ways by social class, also works relationally to render and inscribe it.

Public Health and Social Justice: An Argument Against Stigma as a Tool of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Blacksher
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Promotion ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Fair Share ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
The Social ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
Shared Humanity

This chapter argues against the use of stigma-inducing measures as tools of public health on grounds of social justice. The value of social justice in public health includes both a distributive demand for a fair share of health and the social determinants thereof and a recognitional demand to be treated as a peer in public life. The use of stigma-inducing measures violates the first demand by thwarting people’s access to important intra- and interpersonal, communal, and institutional resources that confer a health advantage; it violates the second by denying people’s shared humanity and ignoring complex non-dominant identities. The position taken in this chapter does not preclude public health measures that regulate and ban health-harming substances or try to move people toward healthier behaviors. It does require that public health partner with people to identify their communities’ health challenges and opportunities and to treat people as resourceful agents of change.

Organizational Social Context

2017 ◽  
pp. 76-126
Author(s):  
Albert J. Simard
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Tacit Knowledge ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Organizational Social Context ◽  
The Social ◽  
Tacit Knowledge Management

Understanding the social context of an organization is a precursor to managing tacit knowledge. This chapter describes a three-dimensional social-context framework comprising factors, trust, and manageability. Factors are underlying characteristics - situation, interaction, and scale - that affect all aspects of the social structure. Trust classifies criteria that affect trust at individual, group, and organizational levels. Manageability lists methods of enhancing indicators for each social context criteria. The framework is based on patterns and clusters of 1200 terms found in a survey of the social-science literature related to social structures. The framework is presented in a format that facilitates prioritizing the most important criteria for an organization to focus on. Understanding how social context affects organizations will greatly facilitate tacit knowledge management.

scholarly journals How to Survey Citizens’ Compliance with COVID-19 Public Health Measures: Evidence from Three Survey Experiments

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-François Daoust ◽  
Richard Nadeau ◽  
Ruth Dassonneville ◽  
Erick Lachapelle ◽  
Éric Bélanger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
Choice Making ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
The Social ◽  
Survey Experiments ◽  
Current Context ◽  
Face Saving ◽  
Answer Choice

Abstract The extent to which citizens comply with newly enacted public health measures such as social distancing or lockdowns strongly affects the propagation of the virus and the number of deaths from COVID-19. It is however very difficult to identify non-compliance through survey research because claiming to follow the rules is socially desirable. Using three survey experiments, we examine the efficacy of different ‘face-saving’ questions that aim to reduce social desirability in the measurement of compliance with public health measures. Our treatments soften the social norm of compliance by way of a short preamble in combination with a guilty-free answer choice making it easier for respondents to admit non-compliance. We find that self-reported non-compliance increases by up to +11 percentage points when making use of a face-saving question. Considering the current context and the importance of measuring non-compliance, we argue that researchers around the world should adopt our most efficient face-saving question.

scholarly journals Perspectives on the Future of Burnout in Sport

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Daniel J. Madigan ◽  
Henrik Gustafsson ◽  
Andrew P. Hill ◽  
Kathleen T. Mellano ◽  
Christine E. Pacewicz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Context ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Work ◽  
First Time

The present editorial provides a series of perspectives on the future of burnout in sport. Specifically, for the first time, seven burnout researchers have offered their opinions and suggestions for how, as a field, we can progress our understanding of this important topic. A broad range of ideas are discussed, including the relevance of the social context, the value of theory and collaboration, and the use of public health frameworks in future work. It is hoped that these perspectives will help stimulate debate, reinforce and renew priorities, and guide research in this area over the coming years.

Cigarette Smoking and Schizophrenia: A Public Health Issue

1996 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Polgar ◽  
Michael McGartland ◽  
Tracey Hales
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Cigarette Smoking ◽  
Symptomatic Relief ◽  
Public Health Issue ◽  
Social Situations ◽  
Australian Population ◽  
Disadvantaged Groups ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
Community People

Cigarette smoking has been causally linked with a range of detrimental health consequences. Following the introduction of population-wide anti-smoking measures there has been an overall reduction in the prevalence of smoking to about 25% of the Australian population. These results, however, do not apply across the board as one of the most disadvantaged groups in our community, people with schizophrenia, do not appear to be receiving benefit from these public health measures. Further, the quality of life and even the ability to live independently in the community for this group might be compromised by these very same public health measures. Approximately 75% of people with schizophrenia smoke and those who have a psychiatric disability on average spend about 30% of their income on this habit. Recent research suggests that at least for some of these people, smoking is not simply a vice, but a means of obtaining a medication necessary for symptomatic relief of their disorder. Public health measures are required which take into account the evidence concerning the specific needs and social situations of people with schizophrenia.

Gladiators as a Class

2021 ◽  
pp. 556-566
Author(s):  
Valerie M. Hope
Keyword(s):  
Social Isolation ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cohesive Group

The amphitheatre has been described as a microcosm of Roman society. In the amphitheatre the social divisions and distinctions that defined Roman society were exposed to all. From the worst seats to the best seats, from slaves to the emperor, from dirty clothes to regal purple, visually (and audibly) society was on show. At the heart of this was the arena itself, where the gaze of all fell upon the gladiators. These men (and women) were, in principle, the lowest of the low; despised and hated, debased outcasts from society. In reality their place in society and their relationship to and with those who gazed upon them was more complex. This chapter will investigate how gladiators were viewed both by others and by themselves, and the extent to which gladiators were regarded as a cohesive group, even a ‘class’. It will explore how the lowly legal status of gladiators, their social isolation and the stigma of infamia, co-existed with society’s admiration for fighting prowess and its need for heroes and sex-symbols. It will also explore how gladiators shaped their own identity and created their own social structures, ‘families’ and hierarchies within the gladiatorial barracks. One of the challenges in investigating gladiators is moving beyond the stereotypes and prejudices created by elite authors; to this end this chapter will look not just at literary sources, but also inscriptions, epitaphs and gladiatorial tombstones and burials. This evidence highlights the central dichotomy that faced gladiators and defined their life; that they were both isolated from but integral to Roman society.

Social Norms in Artefact Use

2006 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Scheele ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
General Framework ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Proper Function ◽  
The Social ◽  
Joseph Raz ◽  
Proper Functions ◽  
Traditional Norms ◽  
Reasons For Use

The use of artefacts by human agents is subject to human standards or norms of conduct. Many of those norms are provided by the social context in which artefacts are used. Others are provided by the proper functions of the artefacts. This article argues for a general framework in which norms that are provided by proper functions are related to norms provided by the (more general) social context of use. Departing from the concept, developed by Joseph Raz, of “exclusionary reasons” it is argued that proper functions provide “institutional reasons” for use. Proper use of artefacts (use according to the proper function) is embedded in the normative structures of social institutions. These social normative structures are complementary to traditional norms of practical rationalityand are a kind of second-order reasons: exclusionary reasons. It is argued that proper functions of artefacts provide institutional reasons, which are up to a certain extent similar to exclusionary reasons. The most notable difference concerns the fact that proper functions not so much exclude other types of use, but rather place that use (and the user) in particular social structures with particular rights and obligations. An institutional reason not only gives a reason for action, it also provides reasons for evaluating actions according to such reasons positively (and other negatively). The upshot of the analysis is that it provides an additionaltool for understanding and evaluating the use of artefacts.

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