Personal Network Bridging Potential Among Rural and Older Populations

Personal social networks play a fundamental role in the daily lives of older adults. Although many studies examine how life course factors and personal preferences shape network formation, fewer consider how the places in which older adults live present opportunities and obstacles to cultivate social relationships. In the present study, we explore how geographic context is associated with the ability to interact with non-overlapping social groups within one’s personal network (i.e., network bridging). This unique network formation offers older adults access to diverse social stimuli, non-redundant information, and social autonomy. By analyzing data from the Person-to-Person Health Interview Survey (N=709), we found that a minority of respondents reported the ability to bridge social groups within their networks. Respondents residing in rural and semi-rural counties engaged in fewer non-overlapping social groups compared to those residing in urban counties. These findings suggest that the communities in which older adults live condition opportunities for accessing unique social resources. Identifying the link between geographic residence and personal network structure has important implications for how individuals navigate the uncertainty and elevated support needs of later life. Additional research adopting a social network perspective is needed to provide insight into geographic health disparities occurring among the older population.

Psychotic symptoms associate inversely with social support, social autonomy and psychosocial functioning: A community-based study

Background: Population-based studies exploring psychotic symptoms (PS) show that their prevalence in the community is higher than previously thought. Psychosocial functioning and social support are poorer among people presenting clinical and subclinical PS. Aims: We aimed to estimate the prevalence rate of PS in Andalusia and to explore the association between PS and psychosocial functioning, social support and social autonomy in a Southern European population. Material and methods: This is a cross-sectional study. We undertook multi-stage sampling using different standard stratification techniques. Out of 5496 households approached, we interviewed 4507 (83.7%) randomly selected participants living in the autonomous region of Andalusia (Southern Spain). The Spanish version of the MINI International Neuropsychiatric Interview was used to elicit PS. We also gathered information on socio-demographic factors, suicidality risk, psychosocial functioning, social support and social autonomy. Results: The overall prevalence of PS was 6.7% (95% CI: 5.99–6.45). PS were associated with lower age (OR 0.975; 95% CI (0.967–0.983); p < .0001), female gender (OR = 1.346; 95% CI (1.05–1.07) p = .018), not living in a rural area (OR = 0.677; 95% CI (0.50–0.90) p = 0.009), lower social support (OR = 0.898; 95% CI (0.85–0.94) p < .0001), lower scores on social autonomy (OR = 0.889; 95% CI (0.79–1.00) p = .050), having an increased suicidality risk score (OR = 1.038; 95% CI (1.005–1.07); p = .023) and having lower scores on psychosocial functioning (OR = 0.956; 95% CI (0.95–0.96); p < 0.0001). Conclusions: Social outcomes seem to be strongly inversely associated with PS in spite of presumed higher levels of social support among Southern European cultures.

Social Autonomy among Married Men and Women

Numerous studies highlight the value of spouses spending quality time together. Although it is undoubtedly important to make sufficient time for each other, minimal research considers the degree to which married individuals socialize with others outside the presence of their spouses. These latter interactions provide an opportunity to practice social autonomy (i.e., time during which one’s actions are not directly influenced by their spouse). Drawing on data from the American Time Use Survey, the author finds that (1) the number of minutes married women engage in nonspousal interactions peaks in midlife and declines in later life, (2) married men spend more time engaging in nonspousal interactions at work than married women, and (3) the number of minutes married men engage in nonspousal interactions in nonwork settings steadily decreases as they age. These findings suggest that age and gender play central roles in the social lives of married couples.

Sociologia, universidade e política / Sociology, university and politics

Este artigo fez parte do colóquio “A Sociologia Brasileira: contrafogos”, organizado pela SBS no âmbito do 43º Encontro Anual da ANPOCS. Discute a feição assumida pela sociologia nas democracias contemporâneas; sobre a universidade, entendida como rede material de atores e recursos, capaz de alcançar e articular públicos muito diversos; e sobre as mediações sociotécnicas como dispositivo de organização e autonomização social.AbstractThis article was part of the colloquium “A Sociologia Brasileira: contrafogos”, organized by SBS as part of the 43rd Annual Meeting of ANPOCS. It discusses the aspect assumed by sociology in contemporary democracies; about the university, understood as a material network of actors and resources, capable of reaching and articulating very diverse audiences; and on socio-technical mediations as a device for organization and social autonomy.

SENSIBILITY AND SEMIO-CAPITALISM – A BODILY EXPERIENCE OF CRISIS IN URSULA ANDKJÆR OLSEN’S THE CRISIS NOTEBOOKS

In The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance (2012), Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi unfolds a political and clinical diagnosis of contemporary society, stating that the crisis we experience today is a permanent state of absent social autonomy and political agency. This crisis is not solely economic but is caused by semio-capitalism impacting all spheres of human life, affecting sensibility in particular—the linguistic and physical-sensuous link between the individual and the world. Taking up the term sensibility as a bodily basis of experience and as an aesthetic notion, in this article I will explore the relation between individual and collective bodies, the crisis as a suspension of change, and literature, focusing on the Danish poet Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s 2017 lunatic and fragmented novel of love and economy The Crisis Notebooks, but also with reference to some of her other work(s). I argue that the bodily experience of crisis, as expressed in this novel, leads to an inhibited social sensibility but also, paradoxically, to a radical openness towards the world. With reference to the Danish literary scholar Anne Fastrup’s interpretation of French vitalism’s idea of sensibility in The Movement of Sensibility (2007), I suggest that a more ambiguous, material notion of both a constructive and a destructive sensibility is crucial for its understanding, and hence—for an understanding of the relationship between body and crisis as expressed in The Crisis Notebooks. Finally, I suggest that an aesthetic notion of sensibility can provide a prism through which relations between today’s financial mechanisms and a sociocultural experience of crisis are rendered visible—if not sensuous—and it is from here that alternatives to the crisis can be found, felt, formulated or fabulated.

Aeromania and Enlightenment: The Politics of Hot Air Balloons in Karamzin's "Letters of a Russian Traveler"

This paper focuses on Karamzin’s depiction, in Letters of a Russian Traveler, of Abbé Miolan’s failed hot air balloon flight in Paris in July 1784. After briefly tracing the history of aeromania in late eighteenth-century France and England, as well as its contemporary Russian reception, notably by Catherine the Great, the paper identifies Karamzin’s sources of information on the event and analyses the reasons why the Russian writer mentioned it in his travelogue. It demonstrates that Karamzin’s depiction of a physical experiment embodying European capacity for innovation in the late eighteenth century was not an expression of scientific curiosity. Instead, the young writer used the episode as a metaphor of social and political management, in order to reflect on the questions of social autonomy and the relation of the enlightened public with State power in both France and Russia. By depicting Miolan’s failed flight as a condemnable nuissance to public order, reminiscent of the revolutionary trouble he had witnessed during his journey through France, Karamzin showed his endorsement of Catherine’s conservative conception of the Enlightenment. By depicting how the French public sphere dealt with Miolan and possibly implicitly comparing it with the way Catherine had dealt with Radishchev, he nevertheless showed the superiority of self-regulation over political violence in managing the nobility’s growing longing for autonomy.