scholarly journals Medicalization and Naturalization

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek P. Siegel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Standard Procedure ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Scientific Research ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Pro Choice

This article offers a naturecultural intervention to the abortion literature, which characterizes abortion as a standard procedure, from the perspective of both biomedical and social scientific research. In contrast, by examining interviews with feminists and pro-choice people about their recent abortions (n=27) and my own experiences as an abortion counselor, I find that no singular “abortion” exists; rather, there are many embodied abortions. I discuss how participants negotiate medical and natural ideologies, arguing that these ideologies produce the conditions under which people come to experience abortion in the United States. I also discuss the material consequences of defining abortion as a standard event. I find that universalizing abortion leads to the underrepresentation of marginalized stories, a lack of personalized support, and racialized and classed disparities in who can achieve their desired biosocial state (“normal” or “natural”).

Life Sentences and Perpetual Confinement

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 287-309
Author(s):  
Christopher Seeds
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Life Without Parole ◽  
The Past ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Social Scientific Research ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Life Sentences

The past 40 years have been a time of great change in life sentencing, during which the use of life sentences has dramatically grown and the quality of life sentences has markedly hardened. The rise of life without parole in the United States is a particularly recognizable development, but life sentencing has increased worldwide, and the use of other forms of punishment that hold people in prison until death has also intensified. This article focuses on these transformations by examining several important areas in which thinking and scholarship on life sentencing have been altered and spurred by recent developments. The review concludes by pointing to gaps in the field of research and highlighting issues on which social scientific research on life sentencing has more to contribute going forward.

Social-Scientific Research Competency

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 737-750 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Gess ◽  
Christoph Geiger ◽  
Matthias Ziegler
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Test Scores ◽  
Research Performance ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Research Education ◽  
Crystallized Intelligence ◽  
Research Competency ◽  
Social Scientific Research ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Education Courses

Abstract. Although the development of research competency is an important goal of higher education in social sciences, instruments to measure this outcome often depend on the students’ self-ratings. To provide empirical evidence for the utility of a newly developed instrument for the objective measurement of social-scientific research competency, two validation studies across two independent samples were conducted. Study 1 ( n = 675) provided evidence for unidimensionality, expected differences in test scores between differently advanced groups of students as well as incremental validities over and above self-perceived research self-efficacy. In Study 2 ( n = 82) it was demonstrated that the competency measured indeed is social-scientific and relations to facets of fluid and crystallized intelligence were analyzed. Overall, the results indicate that the test scores reflected a trainable, social-scientific, knowledge-related construct relevant to research performance. These are promising results for the application of the instrument in the evaluation of research education courses in higher education.

Racial and Political Dynamics of an Approaching “Majority-Minority” United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 677 (1) ◽  
pp. 204-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maureen A. Craig ◽  
Julian M. Rucker ◽  
Jennifer A. Richeson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Research ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
Political Outcomes ◽  
Essential Questions ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Demographic Shifts ◽  
Projected Changes

Do demographic shifts in the racial composition of the United States promote positive changes in the nation’s racial dynamics? Change in response to the nation’s growing diversity is likely, but its direction and scope are less clear. This review integrates emerging social-scientific research that examines how Americans are responding to the projected changes in the racial/ethnic demographics of the United States. Specifically, we review recent empirical research that examines how exposure to information that the United States is becoming a “majority-minority” nation affects racial attitudes and several political outcomes (e.g., ideology, policy preferences), and the psychological mechanisms that give rise to those attitudes. We focus primarily on the reactions of members of the current dominant racial group (i.e., white Americans). We then consider important implications of these findings and propose essential questions for future research.

Imagining Generations and Social Change

2018 ◽  
pp. 11-35
Author(s):  
Peter Hart-Brinson
Keyword(s):  
Generation X ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Gay Marriage ◽  
Cultural Dimensions ◽  
Generational Change ◽  
Social Imagination ◽  
Generational Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific Research ◽  
Social Scientific

This chapter explains the generational theory of Karl Mannheim and enumerates five challenges that scholars face when studying generational change. It shows how these changes have impeded social scientific research on generations and why research on Millennials, Generation X, and other broad cohorts is flawed from its first premises. To counteract the existing generational mythology, this chapter outlines what is required to produce social scientific studies of generational change. Recent scholarship on the “social generation” provides a theoretical and methodological opening for finally solving Mannheim’s “problem of generations.” Building on cross-disciplinary scholarship on the cognitive and cultural dimensions of the process of imagination, this chapter argues that the “social imagination” is the key concept that helps explain how public opinion about gay marriage changed.

The Transformation of Religion

2021 ◽  
pp. 194-218
Author(s):  
Matthew S. Hedstrom
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Liberal Protestantism ◽  
Religious Liberalism ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Religious Nature

This chapter examines religious disaffiliation as itself a potentially religious act. It argues that “nothing in particular,” a religious option commonly presented to respondents on social scientific surveys, often entails an affirmation of religious cosmopolitanism rather than simple secularization or the rejection of religion altogether. This kind of religious cosmopolitanism—this preference for religion “in general” rather than “in particular”—has a long history in the United States, which this chapter tracks across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It attends especially to liberal Protestantism and other forms of religious liberalism as the source of modern religious cosmopolitanism and argues that the development of religious cosmopolitanism made religious disaffiliation easier for many Americans and even necessary for some. Understanding the religious nature of some religious disaffiliation is essential to understanding the broader phenomenon of religious disaffiliation in the twenty-first century.

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