Rocky Balboa: The Innocent and the Invincible Hero of Low Income Class

This study is aiming to scrutinize that how American low income class is represented in Rocky Balboa film series in regards of Rocky Balboa character. It will try to understand the mission which is given to Rocky along the film series by examining the concepts such as the values which Rocky represents, class standing, moving up in social ladder, etc. in the scripts of Rocky movies. The life line of Balboa which we have begun to witness while he was living in a poor neighborhood leads us to the different faces of his life along the six films of series: firstly, the world championship that he got by defeating Apollo Creed, then keeping his belt for a long time and defeating Ivan Drago, then losing all his wealth and has to return to the neighborhood where he was living previously and the last fight that he did during his retirement. The hypothesis of the study is that the films of Balboa series are reflecting the life of American low income class ‘realistic’ with Rocky Balboa’s character, and the hypothesis is going to want to verify it along the study.

Impact of Housing and Neighborhood on Depression Among Older Adults in the Health and Retirement Study

Prior research has suggested that poor neighborhood and housing conditions can lead to worse psychological wellbeing. Most studies examine either neighborhood or housing conditions, but not both. Since neighborhood and housing conditions may be correlated it raises the question of whether one is a proxy for the other. We use data from the 2006 and 2008 waves of the Health and Retirement Study to examine associations between perceived neighborhood and housing conditions in 2006 and depressive symptoms (CES-D 8) score in 2008. We find that worse housing conditions and neighborhood safety are associated with more depressive symptoms two years later, even when controlling for prior depressive symptoms. Furthermore, housing and neighborhood conditions are independently related to increased depression symptoms over time. Our research contributes to a deeper understanding of the relationship between home and neighborhood environments and psychological wellbeing in older adults.

Is Current Depressive Symptoms Associated with the Perception of Poor Neighborhood Quality in Childhood? A Population-based Study

Background Elderly depressive symptoms are an increasing important issue worldwide. Poor neighborhood quality in childhood may increase the risk of depressive symptoms in old age from the perspective of life span theory. The aims of this study were to examine the association between the perception of neighborhood quality during childhood and depressive symptoms in older age.Methods Data was taken from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), and a total of 7207 individuals aged 60 years or older were included. Robust multivariable linear regression analysis was applied to estimate the association between the perception of childhood community quality and depressive symptoms, and to examine the interaction effects of education and childhood community quality on depressive symptoms.Results This study suggested that individuals who perceived the childhood community as unsafe, deficient in close relationship, unclean demonstrated higher risk in suffering from depression. Furthermore, a significant gender difference has been found. However, no significant interaction effect of education revealed.Conclusion This study proposed that the perception of neighborhood quality during childhood is an important factor associated with depressive symptoms in old age. We urge that older adults’ mental health issues could be examined from a childhood neighborhood quality perspective, and call for further steps to promote neighborhood quality lived by Chinese citizens.

Housing Conditions, Neighborhood Physical Environment, and Secondhand Smoke Exposure at Home: Evidence from Chinese Rural-to-Urban Migrant Workers

Over the past two decades, health-related issues among rural-to-urban migrant workers in China have been widely discussed and documented by public health scholars. However, little, if any, scholarly attention has been paid to migrant workers’ secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure at home. This study aims to explore the contours of SHS exposure at home and investigate the effects of inadequate housing conditions and poor neighborhood physical environments on such in-home exposure among Chinese migrant workers. A respondent-driven sampling method was employed to interview 1854 rural-to-urban migrant workers from the period June 2017 to June 2018 in Chengdu, China. The results indicate that Chinese migrant workers are at high risk of SHS exposure at home. Migrant workers who live in homes with inadequate conditions, such as substandard housing and crowdedness, are especially at high risk of SHS exposure at home. Moreover, poor neighborhood physical environments are significantly and positively associated with SHS exposure at home. These findings suggest that strategies that can help improve housing conditions and neighborhood physical environments should be developed and promoted to protect rural-to-urban migrant workers from SHS exposure at home.

Are Youth at Risk, Juveniles or Just Kids? Analysis of the Current Educational Resistance of Minors from Attendance Centers in Culturally Diverse Societies

The phenomenon of educational resistance shown by minors from disadvantaged backgrounds and placed in attendance centers is the main subject of interest in this article. This is a special group of students, because their attitude towards education is shaped by factors determined by dysfunctional families, antisocial pressure from peers, poor neighborhood, poor infrastructure, experience from the foster care institutions and a school curriculum, implemented without taking into account their specifics. Resistance is a reaction to their educational experience and perceived as a manifestation of a dominant culture associated with a form analyzed by Paul Willis. According to this concept, the connection between the hegemonic culture and subordinate groups is created not only by ethnic or national, but also by socio-cultural and economic factors. Young people from the underclass, shaped by various cultural patterns, norms, values, language and socio-economic conditions, reject the educational offer of the cultural hegemon, generating behaviors leading to school abandonment and truancy. Based on the research material collected during in-depth interviews, the educational resistance of minors was analyzed with particular attention to its causes, patterns and trajectories. Keywords: educational resistance, juveniles, multicultural societies, social diversity, in-depth interview

When the Road Is Covered in Nails: Making Sense of Madness in an Urban Mosque

This study returns to the classic interactionist approach of earlier work on mental illness to understand how communities attribute nonconforming behaviors as symptoms of mental illnesses and how their informal labels shape the ways in which they interact with people perceived as ill. It draws on six years of in-depth fieldwork in a low-income urban mosque community, where members frequently interacted with fellow Muslims they labeled “crazy.” Through repeated interaction, members come to understand madness as part of living in a poor neighborhood and then perceive themselves as also at risk of developing mental health problems. Many members avoided getting close to people with mental illnesses, but their shared religious identities meant that at the end of life someone who had previously been excluded from social networks could receive burial care. I discuss the implications of their responses for understanding the role of community care.

Introduction

The introduction begins with the story of Carolina, a mother who struggles with her son’s addiction to paco, a cheap and pernicious drug that is increasingly common in the poor neighborhood where she lives. In describing her plight, Carolina articulates what constitutes the empirical object of this book: the illicit collaboration between police and drug dealers. The remainder of this chapter sets up the focus on not only overt and visible state interventions, but also the clandestine, hidden relations that structure life at the urban margins. To do so, it introduces the book’s unique combination of data: ethnographic evidence in a poor neighborhood combined with an original legal archive of court cases and, in particular, highly revealing wiretapped phone conversations between drug market actors and agents of the state. It concludes with an overview of the book and a note on the ethics of studying poverty and violence.

Drug Violence in the Streets and at Home

Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork collected in the poor neighborhood of Arquitecto Tucci, this chapter describes residents’ everyday experiences with violence. It begins by explaining the structural factors that have increased the presence of drugs and violence in the neighborhood. Through a rich description of residents’ experiences, it details how drug market activity has shaped interpersonal violence as consumers commit crimes to finance their addiction and dealers use violence to resolve market disputes. It then documents three pathways through which the “systemic” violence of the illicit drug market enters the home, showing how violence invades homes, how family members resort to violence to protect their scarce material possessions, and how parents use violence to preempt what they perceive as more dangerous forms of violence that their children confront on the street.