scholarly journals The Tenuous Attachments of Working-Class Men

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Edin ◽  
Timothy Nelson ◽  
Andrew Cherlin ◽  
Robert Francis

In this essay, we explore how working-class men describe their attachments to work, family, and religion. We draw upon in-depth, life history interviews conducted in four metropolitan areas with racially and ethnically diverse groups of working-class men with a high school diploma but no four-year college degree. Between 2000 and 2013, we deployed heterogeneous sampling techniques in the black and white working-class neighborhoods of Boston, Massachusetts; Charleston, South Carolina; Chicago, Illinois; and the Philadelphia/Camden area of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. We screened to ensure that each respondent had at least one minor child, making sure to include a subset potentially subject to a child support order (because they were not married to, or living with, their child's mother). We interviewed roughly even numbers of black and white men in each site for a total of 107 respondents. Our approach allows us to explore complex questions in a rich and granular way that allows unanticipated results to emerge. These working-class men showed both a detachment from institutions and an engagement with more autonomous forms of work, childrearing, and spirituality, often with an emphasis on generativity, by which we mean a desire to guide and nurture the next generation. We also discuss the extent to which this autonomous and generative self is also a haphazard self, which may be aligned with counterproductive behaviors. And we look at racial and ethnic difference in perceptions of social standing.

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna E. Price ◽  
Sara J. Corwin ◽  
Daniela B. Friedman ◽  
Sarah B. Laditka ◽  
Natalie Colabianchi ◽  
...  

Messages promoting physical activity (PA) to maintain cognitive health (CH) may increase PA and enhance CH among older persons. This study examined older adults’ perceptions of PA and CH. We conducted 10 focus groups with irregularly active older Black and White women and men ( N = 55), ages 65 to 74 in South Carolina. Constant comparison methods compared themes by gender and race/ethnicity groups. Most participants perceived cognitive decline as a severe threat, and they were primarily concerned about losing their independence. Most reported feeling susceptible to cognitive decline. Although most recognized the link between PA and CH, several White men said the association was not clear. Participants recommended a wide range of PA amounts needed to achieve CH benefits. Many suggested that evidence of PA benefits for CH would enhance message credibility. Participants suggested messages be paired with social support to increase PA. Results suggest a need for evidence-based, credible communication promoting PA and CH.


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Arkadiusz Urbanek

The aspiration to keep the synergy in relations between majorities and minorities repeatedly emerges as the cause of conflicts in social relations. It is also a subject of the interest of the multicultural education, particularly in countries of Eastern Europe, building contacts with the culturally and ethnically diverse groups to a wider scale. Relations in culturally, religiously and ethnic diverse societies, are becoming more and more related to the personal attitudes and a given policy. These issues acquire in the prison circumstances even greater significance, as given moods and personal attitudes of the prison staff create the pragmatic aspects of the professional activities addressed to the sentenced. Additionally, the key role is played by the quality of the penitentiary policy and the legal culture. The article presents the comparative analysis of the research carried out in 2016 amongst the prison staff in Poland. The subject of the research concerned attitudes that influence the decisive processes. The personal relations have been analyzed in the context of the relation with the sentenced Muslims. The aim of the research was not only to reveal the quality of the decisions concerning the sentenced Muslims, but also the sources of such decisions. The latter, in consequence, may shift, as the research results prove, towards synergy or discrimination. The diversification of the discrimination was one of the intriguing aspects, disclosed at various levels that not always explicitly concerned the discrimination of the minority.


Cancer ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hari S. Iyer ◽  
Scarlett L. Gomez ◽  
Jarvis T. Chen ◽  
Quoc‐Dien Trinh ◽  
Timothy R. Rebbeck

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-82
Author(s):  
Joseph Cesario

Abstract This article questions the widespread use of experimental social psychology to understand real-world group disparities. Standard experimental practice is to design studies in which participants make judgments of targets who vary only on the social categories to which they belong. This is typically done under simplified decision landscapes and with untrained decision makers. For example, to understand racial disparities in police shootings, researchers show pictures of armed and unarmed Black and White men to undergraduates and have them press "shoot" and "don't shoot" buttons. Having demonstrated categorical bias under these conditions, researchers then use such findings to claim that real-world disparities are also due to decision-maker bias. I describe three flaws inherent in this approach, flaws which undermine any direct contribution of experimental studies to explaining group disparities. First, the decision landscapes used in experimental studies lack crucial components present in actual decisions (Missing Information Flaw). Second, categorical effects in experimental studies are not interpreted in light of other effects on outcomes, including behavioral differences across groups (Missing Forces Flaw). Third, there is no systematic testing of whether the contingencies required to produce experimental effects are present in real-world decisions (Missing Contingencies Flaw). I apply this analysis to three research topics to illustrate the scope of the problem. I discuss how this research tradition has skewed our understanding of the human mind within and beyond the discipline and how results from experimental studies of bias are generally misunderstood. I conclude by arguing that the current research tradition should be abandoned.


1998 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 80-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Frank

In Towards the Abolition of Whiteness David Roediger tells the story of Covington Hall, the editor of a newsletter published by the Brotherhood of Timber Workers in Louisiana in 1913 and 1914. Roediger deftly analyzes efforts by Hall and other white writers in the brotherhood to construct cross-racial unity within an otherwise racially torn working class. He shows how Hall redrew the lines of solidarity: On one side were the degraded, of any race.On the other were enlightened workers who eschewed racial divisions, racist language, and stereotypes. “There are white men, Negro men, and Mexican men in this union, but no niggers, greasers or white trash,” proclaimed Ed Lehman, a soapbox speaker for the Brotherhood. A headline in the newsletter similarly asked readers to choose, “SLAVES OR MEN, WHICH?” Still more graphically, a cartoon commanded, “Let all white MEN and Negro MEN get on the same side of this rotten log.”


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