Social change, institutional anomie, and serious property crime in transitional Russia

PubMed Central

Kim, Sang-Weon; Pridemore, William Alex

2006-01-01

This study examined socioeconomic change, social institutions, and serious property crime in transitional Russia. Durkheim’s anomie theory and recent research on violence in Russia led us to expect an association between negative socioeconomic change and property crime. Based upon institutional anomie theory, we also tested the hypothesis that the association between change and crime is conditioned by the strength of non-economic social institutions. Using crime data from the Russian Ministry of the Interior and an index of socioeconomic change, we used OLS regression to estimate cross-sectional models using the Russian regions (n=78) as the unit of analysis. Results surprisingly showed no effect of socioeconomic change on two different measures of robbery, only very limited support for the hypothesis of direct effects of social institutions on crime, and obviously no support for the hypothesis that institutions moderate the effect of change on crime. We interpret these findings in the context of transitional Russia and conclude that rigorous research in other nations is important in determining the generalizability of criminological theories developed to explain crime in Western nations. PMID:17372622

[Children's oppositional behaviour, practice of parental authority and temporal anomie].

PubMed

Gadeau, L

2014-02-01

This article examines the relationship between children's oppositional behaviour and the exercise of parental authority. It seeks to explore the value of a heuristic approach to psychic temporality in exercising parental authority. The study aims to better understand the role of psychic temporality in operations producing symbolic law. It goes on to describe a disorder of temporality, known as temporal anomie, which may be involved in a child's oppositional disorders. Psychiatric or psychological consultations motivated by oppositional disorders in children have increased steadily in the past fifteen years in France. The primary reason for consultation is in the form of difficulties for children in accepting the social rules or constraints, but also the difficulties of parenting while coping with the opposition of their children. This increase is made in connection with the works analysing the social and psychological effects imposed by modernity and its acceleration. Correspondingly, we find that some parents do not prioritize their educational requirements, do not know when or how to frustrate their child, or even if it is legitimate to expect from him/her a certain type of behaviour. They seem more preoccupied with the fear of not being loved by their child more than their duty to educate. A general trend suggests an alteration of psychological time, characterized by: a) a disinvestment of links between present and past for the enjoyment of the moment and its extension in the immediate future ; b) a difficulty in supporting educational responses causing frustration for the child ; c) a lack of continuity and constancy in educational requirements. The author proposes to define temporal anomie as the psychical time that weakens the consistency of educational responses. A link between psychological temporality and the symbolic law is discussed. Specifically, the study notes that: in intersubjective relations, mastery of psychological time by parents is an integrating factor of the law for the child. In this sense, temporal anomie can affect the child's development of superego. Anomie time is the result of a weakening of the transitional temporality. Transitional temporality provides legitimacy for educational interventions. This allows parents to support conflicts and opposition of the child. To this end, transitional temporality promotes links between past, present and future, between tradition and innovation. Psychic temporality offers a new perspective, particularly heuristic because it is undoubtedly an essential dimension involved in the process of subjectivation and socialization. The concept of anomie time enables one to better understand the fragility of parenthood frequently encountered in child psychiatric consultations and allows one to link this to the evolution of society. Copyright © 2013 L’Encéphale, Paris. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Prospective effect of community distress and subcultural orientation on mortality following life-threatening diseases in later life.

PubMed

Wen, Ming; Christakis, Nicholas A

2006-07-01

We conducted a prospective and contextual study to examine the effects of community social-economic-physical distress and subcultural orientation on mortality following onset of 13 life-threatening diseases in later life. We also examined the inter-relationship between the effects of community social, economic and physical distress (i.e. poverty, physical disorder and low collective efficacy) and subcultural orientation (i.e. anomie and tolerance of risk behaviour) on the survival chances of seriously ill older patients. Three data sources were combined to construct the working sample: 1990 Census data, the 1994-95 PHDCN-CS, and the COSI data. Fifty-one ZIP code areas in Chicago and 12,672 elderly patients were studied. Community distress (HR = 1.04; 95% CI = (1.01, 1.07)) and anomie (HR = 1.26; 95% CI = (1.02, 1.54)) are found to be significantly and positively associated with a higher hazard of death. Moreover, community anomie contributes to the effect of community distress on post-hospitalisation mortality. The social, economic, physical and cultural environment in which people live appears to exert a significant impact on whether older people facing life-threatening illness live or die.

"The Great Transformation" and suicide: local and long-lasting effects of 1930 bank suspensions.

PubMed

Baller, Robert D; Levchak, Phil; Schultz, Mark

2010-12-01

Depression-era bank suspensions and failures are conceptualized as products of the first part of what Polanyi (1994) called "The Great Transformation," which involved an imbalanced institutional arrangement in which the economy dominated other institutions. Relying on Durkheim (1897/1951) and Merton (1938, 1968), it is argued that these banking problems accentuated the type of chronic anomie that Durkheim theorized would create normative deregulation and elevated suicide rates over the long-term. Results from county-level analyses are supportive as the 1930 bank suspension rate is positively related to the 2000 suicide rate, controlling for contemporary and historical factors. The mediating roles of integration and chronic anomie are considered, with the latter measured using data from the geocoded General Social Survey.

Anomic Strain and External Constraints: A Reassessment of Merton's Anomie/Strain Theory Using Data From Ukraine.

PubMed

Antonaccio, Olena; Smith, William R; Gostjev, Feodor A

2015-09-01

This study provides a new assessment of Merton's anomie/strain theory and fills in several gaps in the literature. First, using the data from the sample of adolescents in an especially suitable and interesting setting, post-Soviet Ukraine, it investigates the applicability of the theory to this context and reveals that predictive powers of anomic strain may be influenced by larger sociocultural environments. Second, it evaluates the possibility of theoretical elaboration of Merton's theory through identifying contingencies such as external constraints on behavior and finds limited support for moderating effects of perceptions of risks of sanctioning and social bonds on anomic strain-delinquency relationships. Finally, it confirms that additional clarifications of the concept of anomic strain may be promising. © The Author(s) 2014.

Contemplated Suicide Among Voluntary and Involuntary Retirees

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Peretti, Peter O.; Wilson, Cedric

1978-01-01

This study explored anomic and egoistic dimensions of contemplated suicide among voluntary and involuntary retired males. Results indicated a direct relationship between anomie and egoism on the one hand, and contemplation of suicide on the other. (Author)

Advancing institutional anomie theory: a microlevel examination connecting culture, institutions, and deviance.

PubMed

Muftić, Lisa R

2006-12-01

Institutional anomie theory (IAT) contends that crime can be explained by an examination of American society, particularly the exaggerated emphasis on economic success inherent in American culture, which has created a "cheating orientation" that permeates structural institutions, including academia. Consistent with its macrosocial perspective, previous tests of IAT have examined IAT variables at the structural level only. The current study tests the robustness of IAT by operationalizing IAT variables at the individual level and looking at a minor form of deviance, student cheating. The author also examines the role statistical modeling has in testing the theory at the microlevel. Undergraduates, 122 American born and 48 international, were surveyed about their cheating behaviors and adherence to economic goal orientations. Results related to the hypothesis that American students, relative to foreign-born students, will have an increased adherence to economic goal orientations that increase cheating behaviors are presented, as are suggestions for future studies.

A Social Control Perspective on Scientific Misconduct.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hackett, Edward J.

1994-01-01

Some explanations for scientific misconduct are examined, including those based on theories of individual psychopathology, anomie, and alienation. An alternative explanation, drawing on the concept of social control, is presented, and implications for research and policy are examined. (MSE)

Suicide among Veterans: Research, Models and Data

DTIC Science & Technology

2004-06-01

avoidance and numbing with anomy, the utter lack of values and norms as described by the famous sociologist Emile Durkheim . Durkheim (1960) has introduced...pp. 535-543. Durkheim , E. (1897): Le suicide. Paris. Fontana, A., Rosenheck, R. (1995): Attempted suicide among Vietnam veterans: a model of

Organized Programs of Study in France: Some Contributions of Stranger Theory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

De Ley, Herbert

1975-01-01

The anomie experienced by students in their first few months abroad, and ways of coping with unfamiliarity of the host society are discussed. The needs of groups as well as individuals are considered, and specific related concerns of program administration are highlighted. (MSE)

A Durkheimian Analysis of Youth Suicide: Canada, 1971 and 1981.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Trovato, Frank

1992-01-01

Examined relationship between social integration on young Canadians' (aged 15-29) suicide rate for 1971 and 1981: family integration (divorce), religious integration (no affiliation); and economic anomie (unemployment). Findings support hypothesis that religious detachment among young is associated with increased proneness to commit suicide.…

Problemes linguistiques des enfants de travailleurs migrants (Linguistic Problems of the Children of Migrant Workers).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

de Greve, Marcel, Ed.; Rosseel, Eddy, Ed.

Papers on language difficulties encountered by migrant workers' children include: "Anomie in Bicultural Education" (Hugo Baetens Beardsmore); "An Investigation into Bilingual Education for Children from Favoured Socio-Economic Backgrounds" (Hugo Baetens Beardsmore); "Orientations of Foreign Children Relating to Placement…

On the Usefulness of Merton's Anomie Theory: Academic Failure and Deviance Among High School Students.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Figueira-McDonough, Josefina

1983-01-01

Data on tenth graders indicated that delinquency increased as grades decreased, supporting the hypothesis that failing students are under high strain. Rejection of school educational goals reinforced the inverse association between grades and delinquency. Extent of delinquency among students considered rebellious, ritualist, retreatist, or…

Multilingualism in Transformative Spaces: Contact and Conviviality

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Williams, Quentin Emmanuel; Stroud, Christopher

2013-01-01

South Africa is a highly mobile country characterized by historical displacements and contemporary mobilities, both social and demographic. Getting to grips with diversity, dislocation, relocation and anomie, as well as pursuing aspirations of mobility, is part of people's daily experience that often takes place on the margins of conventional…

Popular Participation and Representation in the Urban Environment: The School Desegregation Issue in Los Angeles.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Weatherford, M. Stephen

Most scholarly literature on school desegregation treats opposition to busing as racist, reactionary, or as springing from deeper conditions of alienation or anomie. From this viewpoint, anti-busing demonstrations are episodic, unorganized and not founded on any thoroughgoing comprehension of the immediate policy issue. Busing is merely the…

Political Response to New Skills: The Conforming and the Deviant

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jaros, Dean

1970-01-01

Anomie theory holds that the provision of new resources and skills to an inarticulate and non-participatory population can produce two distinct responses: increased conformity or increased and more efficient use of deviant methods. Data on vocational education students suggest that there is such a differential reaction to formal training in the…

Infant Mortality on the Yakama Indian Reservation, 1914-1964.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Trafzer, Clifford E.

1999-01-01

Infants under age 1 constituted the most deaths recorded for any age group among Native people on the Yakama Indian Reservation (Washington), between 1914 and 1964. Poverty conditions, including poor diet and unsanitary housing; social anomie; and lack of adequate health care contributed to infant deaths. Data tables and figures detail infant…

Pyramids, Balloons, and Squishy Spheres: The Dynamic Context of Military Grade Creep. Volume 2

DTIC Science & Technology

1974-11-20

altering its configuration. The great sociologists Max Weber, Emile Durkheim , and Talcott Parsons elaborated on Galilio’s proposition: "... as...determi- nation"); from the sense of "anomie" of which Durkheim , Mayo, and others have written with such telling effect, to the life values which

French Medical Schools: From Hierarchy to Anomy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hardy-Dubernet, Anne-Chantal

2008-01-01

In order to successfully match students and jobs in the medical profession of their choice, and at the same time meet the country's health care needs, it has become evident that access to medical schools and the various medical professions should be tightly regulated, in particular by a "numerus clausus." In most Western countries,…

Consuming Anomie: Children and Global Commercial Culture. Research Note

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Langer, Beryl

2005-01-01

This article locates George Herbert Meads account of self-formation in the context of global consumer capitalism, in which the "generalized other" is constructed as a desiring consumer. It argues for a sociology of consumer childhood that, via Mead, takes children's agency as a given and explores the implications of their interaction with the…

Community Structural Instability, Anomie, Imitation and Adolescent Suicidal Behavior

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thorlindsson, Thorolfur; Bernburg, Jon Gunnar

2009-01-01

The current study examines the contextual effects of community structural characteristics, as well as the mediating role of key social mechanisms, on youth suicidal behavior in Iceland. We argue that the contextual influence of community structural instability on youth suicidal behavior should be mediated by weak attachment to social norms and…

Paranormal Beliefs and Their Implications in University Students from Finland and the United States.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tobacyk, Jerome J.; Pirttila-Backman, Anna-Maija

1992-01-01

Compares 117 Finnish and 351 southern U.S. college students for the following: (1) paranormal beliefs; (2) personality adjustment constructs (anomie, death concerns, alienation, and death threat); and (3) relationships between the beliefs and constructs. The secularization process, further advanced in Finland than the United States, moderates…

The Effect of Communicative Impediments on Interpersonal Attachment and Deviance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Richardson, Nick J.; Barnum, Christopher C.

2010-01-01

This article introduces a theory describing the relationship between factors that increase social isolation and deviance. The theory is examined in the context of virtual visitation. We integrate social exchange, anomie, and strain theories to argue that as communication is impeded between two actors, the less satisfied either will be with the…

Understanding the devaluation of vulnerable groups: A novel application of Institutional Anomie Theory.

PubMed

Hövermann, Andreas; Groß, Eva M; Zick, Andreas; Messner, Steven F

2015-07-01

Prejudices legitimize the discrimination against groups by declaring them to be of unequal, especially of less, worth. This legitimizing power is highly relevant in social conflicts of modern societies that are governed by market-oriented value systems. However, prejudice research has yet to be linked to sociological discourses on the marketization of society. We argue that Institutional Anomie Theory (IAT), a theory originally developed to explain crime rates, offers a fruitful macro-sociological framework for a better understanding of micro-social prejudices that emerge along with processes of marketization. Extending IAT to explain prejudices in a German study based on survey data offers a first attempt to underpin our theoretical hypotheses with empirical data. Although the results need to be interpreted with due caution, they suggest that the extended IAT model can be usefully applied to explain how a marketized mentality is related to different forms of institutional integration, and how it is conducive to specific prejudices that emerge in market-dominated societies against purported economically burdening social groups. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

UNDERSTANDING THE DEVALUATION OF VULNERABLE GROUPS: A NOVEL APPLICATION OF INSTITUTIONAL ANOMIE THEORY

PubMed Central

Groß, Eva M.; Zick, Andreas; Messner, Steven F.

2015-01-01

Prejudices legitimize the discrimination against groups by declaring them to be of unequal, especially of less, worth. This legitimizing power is highly relevant in social conflicts of modern societies that are governed by market-oriented value systems. However, prejudice research has yet to be linked to sociological discourses on the marketization of society. We argue that Institutional Anomie Theory (IAT), a theory originally developed to explain crime rates, offers a fruitful macro-sociological framework for a better understanding of micro-social prejudices that emerge along with processes of marketization. Extending IAT to explain prejudices in a German study based on survey data offers a first attempt to underpin our theoretical hypotheses with empirical data. Although the results need to be interpreted with due caution, they suggest that the extended IAT model can be usefully applied to explain how a marketized mentality is related to different forms of institutional integration, and how it is conducive to specific prejudices that emerge in market-dominated societies against purported economically burdening social groups. PMID:26004470

[Anomie in the multigenerational family: children and the care of their elderly parents].

PubMed

Knipscheer, C P

1986-01-01

When one of the older parents starts to require intensive and lasting care, to a certain extent an anomic situation will arise in the older family, between children and parents as well as between the children themselves. There is some kind of ambivalence between the generations within the kinship system, which can also be shown historically. It is possible that this ambivalence may even be enlarged by recent structural and cultural developments within the kinship system. Based on a family crisis model a lack of clarity within the older family is shown as to the expectations and obligations to each other. The spiral of the failing competence of the family to handle the care question mostly has its roots in the anomic situation surrounding the organisation of the care activities. To support our anomy hypothesis some problems in taking care of the older parents are analyzed; how they are looked at and handled by the children and how they are negotiated by the parents. Open interviews and some cases are the basis for this analysis and some conclusions in handling the anomic situation are presented.

Motherhood and the "Madness of Hunger": "...Want Almal Vra vir My vir 'n Stukkie Brood" ("...Because Everyone Asks Me for a Little Piece of Bread").

PubMed

Kruger, Lou-Marié; Lourens, Marleen

2016-03-01

It is widely assumed that the social and economic conditions of poverty can be linked to common mental disorders in low-, middle- and high-income countries. Despite the considerable increase in quantitative studies investigating the link between poverty and mental health, the nature of the connection between poverty and emotional well-being/distress is still not fully comprehended. In this qualitative study, exploring how one group of Coloured South African women, diagnosed with depression and residing in a semi-rural low-income South African community, subjectively understand and experience their emotional distress, data was collected by means of in-depth semi-structured interviews and social constructionist grounded theory was used to analyse the data. We will attempt to show (1) that the depressed women in this group of respondents frequently refer to the emotional distress caused by hungry children and (2) that the emotional distress described by the respondents included emotions typically associated with depression (such as sadness, hopelessness and guilt), but also included emotions not necessarily associated with depression (such as anxiety, anger and anomie). In our attempt to understand (both psychologically and politically) the complex emotional response of mothers to their children's hunger, we argue that powerful gender and neo-liberal discourses within which mothers are interpellated to care for children, and more specifically, to make sure that children are not hungry, mean that the mothers of hungry children felt that they were not fulfilling their responsibilities and thus felt guilty and ashamed. This shame seemed, in turn, to lead to anger and/or anomie, informing acting out behaviours ranging from verbal and physical aggression to passive withdrawal. A vicious cycle of hunger, sadness and anxiety, shame, anger and anomie, aggression and withdrawal, negative judgement, and more shame, are thus maintained. As such, the unbearable rebukes of hungry children can be thought of as evoking a kind of "madness" in low-income mothers.

The Ombudsman. An Informal Survey of the Implementation of the Ombudsman Concept, Summer, 1968.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bloland, Paul A.; Nowak, Daniel B.

College and university response to the sense of anomie experienced by students --especially those attending large, complex institutions-- has been to implement several plans for reducing the students' feelings of impersonality and estrangement. In one of these plans, based on the "ombudsman" concept, students register complaints to 1 individual,…

Optimizing Schedules for Maritime Humanitarian Cooperative Engagements from a United States Navy Sea Base

DTIC Science & Technology

2010-01-01

Amphib upon com- pletion of its mission, which is scheduled to finish on day 82. Because of its exclusive dedication to the Anomie- OPLAT mission, a...add 29 mission– country pairs as follows: 3 in Dakar, 13 in Lagos, 8 in Cotonou , Benin, and 5 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. The purple stars in Figure 1

Between Bethan and Me: A Dialogue on the Uncertain Promise of Education, Precarious Employment and What It Means to Be Productive

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Low, Remy Yi Siang

2014-01-01

The experience of precarious employment is growing across the occupational spectrum and some scholars have predicted that there will be a corresponding rise in anger, anomie, anxiety and alienation amongst those affected. Exploring more intimately how precarity might be differently experienced and confronted, this paper bases itself on a dialogue…

Avoiding the Leviathan: A Strategy to Limit Post-Conflict Normative Breakdown

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-03-01

Emile Durkheim in his seminal work Suicide hypothesized that societies that go through periods of rapid change (such as the industrial revolution...French 4 sociologist and philosopher Emile Durkheim in his seminal work Suicide.13 Anomie (from the Greek a nomos, meaning without norms) is a...and Effervescence,” Durkheim and Violence. ed. S. Romi Mukherjee, (West Sussex, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2010), 5-7. 13 Emile Durkheim , Suicide

Writing Prozāk Diaries in Tehran: Generational Anomie and Psychiatric Subjectivities.

PubMed

Behrouzan, Orkideh

2015-09-01

I explore the historical and cultural shifts that underlie the normalization of the term dépréshen and the emergence of public psychiatric discourses in 1990s Iran. I do this by investigating the cultural sensibilities of a particular generation, the self-identified 1980s generation, and the ways they situate what is perceived as dépréshen in social anomie and the memories of the Iran-Iraq war. I argue that psychiatrization of psychological distress in Iran was not simply a de-politicizing hegemonic biomedical discourse, but that the contemporary Iranian discourses of psychological pathology and social loss evolved in public, hand-in-hand, through the medicalization of post-war loss. Psychiatric subjectivity describes conditions where individuals internalize psychiatry as a mode of thinking, and performatively articulate not only their desires, hopes, and anxieties, but also historical losses as embodied in individual and collective brains. I underscore my interlocutors' simultaneous historicization and medicalization of their dépréshen, arguing that psychiatrically medicalized individuals are performative actors in the discursive formation of both biomedical and social truth. Dépréshen, in the larger sense of the word, has become one way to navigate ruptured pasts, slippery presents, and uncertain futures.

What Are We Really Afraid Of? The Practitioner View of the Terrorist Threat in the United States

DTIC Science & Technology

2005-03-01

theories that provide explanations for the creation of almost all motivated terrorists- anomie and strain. Consider the foundations of Emile ...Durkheim’s classic theory. Durkheim called the uniformity found in a mechanical (modern) society the collective conscience. To the extent that a society...ostracism and later criminal sanctions drive these groups to desperate measures. Durkheim argued, "society cannot be formed without our being

SELF SYSTEMS, ANOMIE AND SELF ESTEEM,

DTIC Science & Technology

The perceived social self and the ratings of the Dymond Scale were used as measures of selfesteem. As hypothesized, on both measures of self - esteem ...3, 4 and 2. Thus persons functioning in terms of the more abstract level of System 4 were higher in self - esteem than were Ss of the other systems...addition to showing that self - esteem does not depend on internalization of or adherence to dominant social norms, these results were interpreted as

Are Competitive Materialism and Female Employment Related to International Homicide Rate?

PubMed

Chon, Don Soo

2017-04-01

The institutional anomie theory is a proposal that states competitive materialism, an intense cultural pressure for economic success at any costs, and increased female employment may be related to a high homicide rate. The current work tested this proposition by utilizing homicide data collected from 45 developed and developing countries. Regression results did not support the proposition. Competitive materialism and female employment were not significantly related to the cross-national variation of homicide rates.

Psychosocial determinants of premature cardiovascular mortality differences within Hungary.

PubMed

Kopp, Maria; Skrabski, Arpád; Szántó, Zsuzsa; Siegrist, Johannes

2006-09-01

The life expectancy gap between Central-Eastern European (CEE) countries, including Hungary, and Western Europe (WE) is mainly attributable to excess cardiovascular (CV) mortality in midlife. This study explores the contribution of socioeconomic, work related, psychosocial, and behavioural variables to explaining variations of middle aged male and female CV mortality across 150 sub-regions in Hungary. Cross sectional, ecological analyses. 150 sub-regions of Hungary. 12 643 people were interviewed in Hungarostudy 2002 survey, representing the Hungarian population according to sex, age, and sub-regions. Independent variables were income, education, control in work, job insecurity, weekend working hours, social support, depression, hostility, anomie, smoking, body mass index, and alcohol misuse. Gender specific standardised premature (45-64 years) total CV, ischaemic heart disease, and cerebrovascular mortality rates in 150 sub-regions of Hungary. Low education and income were the most important determinants of mid-aged CV mortality differences across sub-regions. High weekend workload, low social support at work, and low control at work account for a large part of variation in male premature CV mortality rates, whereas job insecurity, high weekend workload, and low control at work contribute most noticeably to variations in premature CV mortality rates among women. Low social support from friends, depression, anomie, hostility, alcohol misuse and cigarette smoking can also explain a considerable part of variations of premature CV mortality differences. Variations in middle aged CV mortality rates in a rapidly changing society in CEE are largely accounted for by distinct unfavourable working and other psychosocial stress conditions.

Selfish cells in altruistic cell society - a theoretical oncology.

PubMed

Chigira, M

1993-09-01

In multicellular organisms, internal evolution of individual cells is strictly forbidden and 'evolutional' DNA replication should be performed only by the sexual reproduction system. Wholistic negative control system called 'homeostasis' serves all service to germ line cells. All somatic cells are altruistic to the germ line cells. However, in malignant tumors, it seems that individual cells replicate and behave 'selfishly' and evolve against the internal microenvironment. Tumor cells only express the occult selfishness which is programmed in normal cells a priori. This phenomenon is based on the failure of identical DNA replication, and results in 'autonomy' and 'anomie' of cellular society as shown in tumor cells. Genetic programs of normal cells connote this cellular autonomy and anomie introduced by the deletion of regulators on structure genes. It is rather paradoxical that the somatic cells get their freedom from wholistic negative regulation programmed internally. However, this is not a true paradox, since multicellular organisms have clearly been evolved from 'monads' in which cells proliferate without wholistic regulation. Somatic cells revolt against germ cell DNA, called 'selfish replicator' by Dawkins. It is an inevitable destiny that the 'selfishness' coded in genome should be revenged by itself. Selfish replicator in germ cell line should be revolted by its selfishness in the expansion of somatic cells, since they have an orthogenesis to get more selfishness in order to increase their genome. Tumor heterogeneity and progression can be fully explained by this self-contradictory process which produces heterogeneous gene copies different from the original clone in the tumor, although 'selfish' gene replication is the final target of being. Furthermore, we have to discard the concept of clonality of tumor cells since genetic instability is a fundamental feature of tumors. Finally, tumor cells and proto-oncogenes can be considered as the ultimate parasite to germ line cells.

A healthy mistrust: how worldview relates to attitudes about breast cancer screening in a cross-sectional survey of low-income women.

PubMed

Klassen, Ann Carroll; Smith, Katherine C; Shariff-Marco, Salma; Juon, Hee-Soon

2008-01-31

Perceived racial discrimination is one factor which may discourage ethnic minorities from using healthcare. However, existing research only partially explains why some persons do accept health promotion messages and use preventive care, while others do not. This analysis explores 1) the psychosocial characteristics of those, within disadvantaged groups, who identify their previous experiences as racially discriminatory, 2) the extent to which perceived racism is associated with broader perspectives on societal racism and powerlessness, and 3) how these views relate to disadvantaged groups' expectation of mistreatment in healthcare, feelings of mistrust, and motivation to use care. Using survey data from 576 African-American women, we explored the prevalence and predictors of beliefs and experiences related to social disengagement, racial discrimination, desired and actual racial concordance with medical providers, and fear of medical research. We then used both sociodemographic characteristics, and experiences and attitudes about disadvantage, to model respondents' scores on an index of personal motivation to receive breast cancer screening, measuring screening knowledge, rejection of fatalistic explanatory models of cancer, and belief in early detection, and in collaborative models of patient-provider responsibility. Age was associated with lower motivation to screen, as were depressive symptoms, anomie, and fear of medical research. Motivation was low among those more comfortable with African-American providers, regardless of current provider race. However, greater awareness of societal racism positively predicted motivation, as did talking to others when experiencing discrimination. Talking was most useful for women with depressive symptoms. Supporting the Durkheimian concepts of both anomic and altruistic suicide, both disengagement (depression, anomie, vulnerability to victimization, and discomfort with non-Black physicians) as well as over-acceptance (low awareness of discrimination in society) predict poor health maintenance attitudes in disadvantaged women. Women who recognize their connection to other African-American women, and who talk about negative experiences, appear most motivated to protect their health.

A healthy mistrust: how worldview relates to attitudes about breast cancer screening in a cross-sectional survey of low-income women

PubMed Central

Klassen, Ann Carroll; Smith, Katherine C; Shariff-Marco, Salma; Juon, Hee-Soon

2008-01-01

Background Perceived racial discrimination is one factor which may discourage ethnic minorities from using healthcare. However, existing research only partially explains why some persons do accept health promotion messages and use preventive care, while others do not. This analysis explores 1) the psychosocial characteristics of those, within disadvantaged groups, who identify their previous experiences as racially discriminatory, 2) the extent to which perceived racism is associated with broader perspectives on societal racism and powerlessness, and 3) how these views relate to disadvantaged groups' expectation of mistreatment in healthcare, feelings of mistrust, and motivation to use care. Methods Using survey data from 576 African-American women, we explored the prevalence and predictors of beliefs and experiences related to social disengagement, racial discrimination, desired and actual racial concordance with medical providers, and fear of medical research. We then used both sociodemographic characteristics, and experiences and attitudes about disadvantage, to model respondents' scores on an index of personal motivation to receive breast cancer screening, measuring screening knowledge, rejection of fatalistic explanatory models of cancer, and belief in early detection, and in collaborative models of patient-provider responsibility. Results Age was associated with lower motivation to screen, as were depressive symptoms, anomie, and fear of medical research. Motivation was low among those more comfortable with African-American providers, regardless of current provider race. However, greater awareness of societal racism positively predicted motivation, as did talking to others when experiencing discrimination. Talking was most useful for women with depressive symptoms. Conclusion Supporting the Durkheimian concepts of both anomic and altruistic suicide, both disengagement (depression, anomie, vulnerability to victimization, and discomfort with non-Black physicians) as well as over-acceptance (low awareness of discrimination in society) predict poor health maintenance attitudes in disadvantaged women. Women who recognize their connection to other African-American women, and who talk about negative experiences, appear most motivated to protect their health. PMID:18237395

How do Durkheimian variables impact variation in national suicide rates when proxies for depression and alcoholism are controlled?

PubMed

Fernquist, Robert M

2007-01-01

Sociological research on Durkheim's theories of egoistic and anomic suicide has given Durkheim continued support more than a century after Durkheim published his work. Recent criticism by Breault (1994), though, argues that Durkheim's theories of suicide actually have not been empirically supported given the lack of psychological variables included in sociological research on suicide rates. Using proxy measures of depression and alcoholism, two known psychological variables to impact suicide, as well as classic Durkheimian variables, suicide rates in eight European countries from 1973-1997 were examined. Results indicate that Durkheim's theories of egoism and anomie, while not completely supported in statistical analysis of suicide rates, received moderate support. Results suggest the continued usefulness of Durkheim's work in aggregate analyses of suicide.

Sport, and use of anabolic androgenic steroids among Icelandic high school students: a critical test of three perspectives.

PubMed

Thorlindsson, Thorolfur; Halldorsson, Vidar

2010-12-20

This study investigates the use of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) among a national representative sample of high school students in Iceland. We test several hypotheses drawn from three perspectives. The first perspective focuses on the use of AAS as an individual phenomenon motivated by the desire to succeed in sport. The second perspective views the use of AAS as shaped by norms and values embedded in social relationships of formally organized sport. The third perspective suggests that factors outside sport, which have been shown to correlate with the use of other substances, predict the use of AAS. We use logistic regression and predicted probabilities to analyze data from a national representative survey of 11,031 Icelandic high school students. Our results indicated that the use of AAS is not significantly related to participation in formally organized sports. However, it positively relates to fitness and physical training in informal contexts. We found a relatively strong relationship between the use of AAS and the use of illicit substances and a moderate relationship between AAS use and alcohol and tobacco consumption. We also found a significant negative relationship between AAS use and school integration and school achievement, and a significant positive relationship between AAS use and school anomie. The relation between AAS use and family-related variables was weaker. Finally, we found that the relationship between sport participation, physical exercise, and AAS use varies across levels of anomie and integration. Our findings suggest that the use of AAS and especially illegal substances should be considered more as a social and a health problem rather than a sport specific issue. We found that high school students participating in fitness and informal training outside of formally organized sport clubs are the main risk group and should be the target of prevention efforts. However, this should not be done at the expense of general risk factors that affect AAS and other substances used by the general population. Finally, we suggest that prevention efforts should target both groups and individuals.

Culture and cooperation in a spatial public goods game

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Stivala, Alex; Kashima, Yoshihisa; Kirley, Michael

2016-09-01

We study the coevolution of culture and cooperation by combining the Axelrod model of cultural dissemination with a spatial public goods game, incorporating both noise and social influence. Both participation and cooperation in public goods games are conditional on cultural similarity. We find that a larger "scope of cultural possibilities" in the model leads to the survival of cooperation, when noise is not present, and a higher probability of a multicultural state evolving, for low noise rates. High noise rates, however, lead to both rapid extinction of cooperation and collapse into cultural "anomie," in which stable cultural regions fail to form. These results suggest that cultural diversity can actually be beneficial for the evolution of cooperation, but that cultural information needs to be transmitted accurately in order to maintain both coherent cultural groups and cooperation.

A Durkheimian analysis of youth suicide: Canada, 1971 and 1981.

PubMed

Trovato, F

1992-01-01

Durkheim hypothesized that suicide varies inversely with the extent of social integration in family, religious, political, and economic life. In this study I examine the relationship between three of these sources of social integration on young Canadians' (aged 15-29) suicide rate for 1971 and 1981: family integration (as measured by divorce), religious integration (as measured by the percent of the population reporting no religious affiliation), and economic anomie (unemployment). The findings of this research provide confirmation for the hypothesis that religious detachment among the young is associated with increased proneness to commit suicide. The effect of family dissolution was positive and significant for both young men and women in 1981 but not in 1971, giving partial confirmation for the family integration explanation of suicide. These results pertaining to unemployment are not consistent with the American-based literature that calls for a significant and positive impact on the odds of self-destruction.

Liberation psychological implications for pastoral care of Korean military wives.

PubMed

Chang, Bocheol

2010-01-01

Native Korean women frequently suffer poverty, sexual violence, and Confucian gender discrimination. Once in America Korean military wives also experience racial and sexual oppression, intercultural familial conflicts and violence, and identity crisis and lead to feelings of isolation and non-belonging, a sense of anomie. Korean American pastors tend to understate and oversimplify the complexity of psychological and spiritual suffering of Korean military wives and overemphasize individual faith development as a solution. Liberation psychology evolved from an awareness of similar dehumanizing realities. The context-based perspective of liberation psychology offers a model to interpret and assist in the psychological and spiritual healing of Korean military wives. The healing power of conscientization offered in Liberation psychology for oppressed individuals encourages self-awakening suggesting it as an ideal interventional model to help Korean military wives and would be a useful approach for Korean American pastors.

When West Meets East: Generalizing Theory and Expanding the Conceptual Toolkit of Criminology

PubMed Central

Messner, Steven F.

2016-01-01

This paper considers the ways in which established criminological theories born and nurtured in the West might need to be transformed to be applicable to the context of East Asian societies. The analyses focus on two theoretical perspectives—Situational Action Theory and Institutional Anomie Theory—that are located at opposite ends of the continuum with respect to levels of analysis. I argue that the accumulated evidence from cross-cultural psychology and criminological research in East Asian societies raises serious questions about the feasibility of simply transporting these perspectives from the West to the East. Instead, my analyses suggest that the formulation of theoretical explanations of crime that are truly universal will require criminologists to create and incorporate new concepts that are more faithful to the social realities of non-Western societies, societies such as those in East Asia and Asia more generally. PMID:27087864

When West Meets East: Generalizing Theory and Expanding the Conceptual Toolkit of Criminology.

PubMed

Messner, Steven F

2015-06-01

This paper considers the ways in which established criminological theories born and nurtured in the West might need to be transformed to be applicable to the context of East Asian societies. The analyses focus on two theoretical perspectives-Situational Action Theory and Institutional Anomie Theory-that are located at opposite ends of the continuum with respect to levels of analysis. I argue that the accumulated evidence from cross-cultural psychology and criminological research in East Asian societies raises serious questions about the feasibility of simply transporting these perspectives from the West to the East. Instead, my analyses suggest that the formulation of theoretical explanations of crime that are truly universal will require criminologists to create and incorporate new concepts that are more faithful to the social realities of non-Western societies, societies such as those in East Asia and Asia more generally.

[Social values and addiction: applicability and psychometric properties of VAL-89 questionnaire].

PubMed

Pedrero Perez, Eduardo Jose; Rojo Mota, Gloria; Olivar Arroyo, Alvaro

2008-01-01

To study the psychometric properties of the VAL-89 questionnaire and its possible use in addict individuals who ask for treatment. Analysis of the psychometric properties of the questionnaire and its factorial structure, applying it to 792 individuals. 365 of them were substance users seeking treatment and 427 were general population. Reliability of the questionnaire is confirmed, although its factorial structure appears to be different from the original. In our study appear 12 factors, instead of the original 10. These factors are named: Power, Stimulation, Submission, Tradition, Spirituality, Self-Sufficience, Hedonism, Sociability, Universality, Convencionalism, Idealism and Self-Realization. These factors are distributed through several dimensions represented by four axis: individual-social, dominance-equality, tradition-pleasure and great values-anomie. The VAL-89 questionnaire seems to be a useful tool to explore which are the more appreciated social values, being of special interest to know which are specially selected by addict individuals.

Democratization and Political Change as Threats to Collective Sentiments: Testing Durkheim in Russia

PubMed Central

PRIDEMORE, WILLIAM ALEX; KIM, SANG-WEON

2006-01-01

Durkheim argued that acute political crises result in increased homicide rates because they pose a threat to sentiments about the collective. Though crucial to Durkheim’s work on homicide, this idea remains untested. The authors took advantage of the natural experiment of the collapse of the Soviet Union to examine this hypothesis. Using data from Russian regions (N = 78) and controlling for measures of anomie and other covariates, the authors estimated the association between political change and change in homicide rates between 1991 and 2000. Results indicated that regions exhibiting less support for the Communist Party in 2000 (and thus greater change in political ideals because the Party had previously exercised complete control) were regions with greater increases in homicide rates. Thus, while democratization may be a positive development relative to the Communist juggernaut of the past, it appears that the swift political change in Russia is partially responsible for the higher rates of violence there following the collapse of the Soviet Union. PMID:16880894

Democratization and Political Change as Threats to Collective Sentiments: Testing Durkheim in Russia.

PubMed

Pridemore, William Alex; Kim, Sang-Weon

2006-05-01

Durkheim argued that acute political crises result in increased homicide rates because they pose a threat to sentiments about the collective. Though crucial to Durkheim's work on homicide, this idea remains untested. The authors took advantage of the natural experiment of the collapse of the Soviet Union to examine this hypothesis. Using data from Russian regions (N = 78) and controlling for measures of anomie and other covariates, the authors estimated the association between political change and change in homicide rates between 1991 and 2000. Results indicated that regions exhibiting less support for the Communist Party in 2000 (and thus greater change in political ideals because the Party had previously exercised complete control) were regions with greater increases in homicide rates. Thus, while democratization may be a positive development relative to the Communist juggernaut of the past, it appears that the swift political change in Russia is partially responsible for the higher rates of violence there following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A science confidence gap: Education, trust in scientific methods, and trust in scientific institutions in the United States, 2014.

PubMed

Achterberg, Peter; de Koster, Willem; van der Waal, Jeroen

2017-08-01

Following up on suggestions that attitudes toward science are multi-dimensional, we analyze nationally representative survey data collected in the United States in 2014 ( N = 2006), and demonstrate the existence of a science confidence gap: some people place great trust in scientific methods and principles, but simultaneously distrust scientific institutions. This science confidence gap is strongly associated with level of education: it is larger among the less educated than among the more educated. We investigate explanations for these educational differences. Whereas hypotheses deduced from reflexive-modernization theory do not pass the test, those derived from theorizing on the role of anomie are corroborated. The less educated are more anomic (they have more modernity-induced cultural discontents), which not only underlies their distrust in scientific institutions, but also fuels their trust in scientific methods and principles. This explains why this science confidence gap is most pronounced among the less educated.

Halbwachs and Durkheim: a test of two theories of suicide.

PubMed

Travis, R

1990-06-01

The social integration hypothesis forms the basis of this study. It was first asserted by Durkheim in late nineteenth-century France and many of his assumptions are based on a social disorganizational model. This model tended to equate social change with the breakdown of social control and many of Durkheim's notions about anomie are derived from this view of industrial society. Halbwachs, on the other hand, proposed a social psychological theory of suicide. His model specifies more clearly the conditions under which lack of social integration may induce suicide. This study shows that among a population in transition, the Alaska Natives, the suicide rate was explained by the Halbwachsian model at least as well as the Durkheimian one and sometimes better. The Durkheimian model is shown to reflect a Cartesian dualism, which accounts only for that which is observable, thus making for biased studies of suicide. Moreover, psychopathological research confirms the Halbwachsian model. These findings restore the social isolation theory, once long neglected, to its rightful place among theories of suicide and opens up an important field for researchers seeking to understand high rates of suicide.

Poisoned social climate, collective responsibility, and the abuse at Abu Ghraib--Or, the establishment of "rule that is lack of rule".

PubMed

Mestrovic, Stjepan G; Romero, Rachel

2012-01-01

The authors draw upon the experiences of one of the co-authors as an expert witness in sociology for mitigation at three of the courts-martial pertaining to the abuse at Abu Ghraib that were held at Ft. Hood, Texas in the year 2005 (for Javal Davis, Sabrina Harman, and Lynndie England). In addition, this paper is based upon the thousands of pages of affidavits, testimony, and U.S. Government reports concerning Abu Ghraib. These internal government reports, as well as the Levin-McCain report, point to collective responsibility and the responsibility of individuals high in the chain of command for establishing unlawful techniques. We review the shortcomings of a purely psychological approach for understanding the abuse, and turn to Durkheim's original understanding of anomie as a state of social derangement or rule by lack of rule to introduce the ideas of the social origins of and social responsibility for the abuse. We conclude with sociological suggestions for reforming some of the legal, medical, psychiatric, and other professional complicity in the abuse at Abu Ghraib. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Principles of Sociology in Systems Engineering

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Watson, Michael D.; Andrews, James G.; Larsen, Jordan A.

2017-01-01

Systems engineering involves both the integration of the system and the integration of the disciplines which develop and operate the system. Integrating the disciplines is a sociological effort to bring together different groups, often with different terminology, to achieve a common goal, the system. The focus for the systems engineer is information flow through the organization, between the disciplines, to ensure the system is developed and operated with all relevant information informing system decisions. Robert K. Merton studied the sociological principles of the sciences and the sociological principles he developed apply to systems engineering. Concepts such as specification of ignorance, common terminology, opportunity structures, role-sets, and the reclama (reconsideration) process are all important sociological approaches that should be employed by the systems engineer. In bringing the disciplines together, the systems engineer must also be wary of social ambivalence, social anomie, social dysfunction, insider-outsider behavior, unintended consequences, and the self-fulfilling prophecy. These sociological principles provide the systems engineer with key approaches to manage the information flow through the organization as the disciplines are integrated and share their information. This also helps identify key sociological barriers to information flow through the organization. This paper will discuss this theoretical basis for the application of sociological principles to systems engineering.

A rhetoric of retribution and redemption: Burke's terms for order in the drama of child sexual abuse.

PubMed

Schultz, Pamela D

2011-01-01

Law consists of a series of stories, narratives that embody the values and integrity of a culture. We define crimes, and label the individuals who commit them, along a continuum that moves from the merely unacceptable to the monstrous. One of the most heinous crimes in American society is considered to be child sexual abuse. The sexual abuser of children is firmly established in the public imagination as a modern-day bogeyman, and approaches to prevention and punishment reflect this artificially accelerated panic. Although public policies and correctional measures ostensibly are geared at preventing the crime, they reflect a fundamental misunderstanding as to the motivation of many offenders and the way in which child sexual abuse is perceived as a source of social anomie. This paper uses Kenneth Burke's interpretative framework to examine the social and legal perceptions and treatment of child sexual abusers. First discussed are Burke's conceptions of identity and orientation, which form the basis of human motivation and thus can illuminate the source of offenders' impulses. Next, Burke's "terms for order" are used to show the ways in which the dominant hierarchy compels us to scapegoat and sacrifice in the quest for social redemption. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contact: Releasing the news

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pinotti, Roberto

The problem of mass behavior after man's future contacts with other intelligences in the universe is not only a challenge for social scientists and political leaders all over the world, but also a cultural time bomb as well. In fact, since the impact of CETI (Contact with Extraterrestrial Intelligence) on human civilization, with its different cultures, might cause a serious socio-anthropological shock, a common and predetermined worldwide strategy is necessary in releasing the news after the contact, in order to keep possible manifestations of fear, panic and hysteria under control. An analysis of past studies in this field and of parallel historical situations as analogs suggests a definite "authority crisis" in the public as a direct consequence of an unexpected release of the news, involving a devastating "chain reaction" process (from both the psychological and sociological viewpoints) of anomie and maybe the collapse of today's society. The only way to prevent all this is to prepare the world's public opinion concerning contact before releasing the news, and to develop a long-term strategy through the combined efforts of scientists, political leaders, intelligence agencies and the mass media, in order to create the cultural conditions in which a confrontation with ETI won't affect mankind in a traumatic way. Definite roles and tasks in this multi-level model are suggested.

The role of community, family, peer, and school factors in group bullying: implications for school-based intervention.

PubMed

Mann, Michael J; Kristjansson, Alfgeir L; Sigfusdottir, Inga Dora; Smith, Megan L

2015-07-01

Although an ecological perspective suggests the importance of multiple levels of intervention, most bullying research has emphasized individual- and school-focused strategies. This study investigated community and family factors that influence school efforts to reduce odds of group bullying behavior and victimization. We used multilevel logistic regression to analyze data from the 2009 Youth in Iceland population school survey (N = 7084, response rate: 83.5%, 50.8% girls). Parental support and time spent with parents were protective against group bullying behavior while worsening relationships with teachers and disliking school increased the likelihood of such behavior. Knowing kids in the area increased the likelihood of group bullying while intergenerational closure was a protective factor. Normlessness was consistently positively related to group bullying. We found no indication of higher-level relationships across the bullying models. Parental support was protective against victimization. Disliking school, intergenerational closure, and anomie/normlessness were strongly and negatively related to victimization. We found some indication of multilevel relationships for victimization. Findings support efforts to increase family and community connection, closure, and support as a part of school-based intervention. These factors become more important as young people participate in or experience greater odds of group bullying behavior and victimization. © 2015, American School Health Association.

Dynamics and diffusion mechanism of low-density liquid silicon

DOE PAGES

Shen, B.; Wang, Z. Y.; Dong, F.; ...

2015-11-05

A first-order phase transition from a high-density liquid to a low-density liquid has been proposed to explain the various thermodynamic anomies of water. It also has been proposed that such liquid–liquid phase transition would exist in supercooled silicon. Computer simulation studies show that, across the transition, the diffusivity drops roughly 2 orders of magnitude, and the structures exhibit considerable tetrahedral ordering. The resulting phase is a highly viscous, low-density liquid silicon. Investigations on the atomic diffusion of such a novel form of liquid silicon are of high interest. Here we report such diffusion results from molecular dynamics simulations using themore » classical Stillinger–Weber (SW) potential of silicon. We show that the atomic diffusion of the low-density liquid is highly correlated with local tetrahedral geometries. We also show that atoms diffuse through hopping processes within short ranges, which gradually accumulate to an overall random motion for long ranges as in normal liquids. There is a close relationship between dynamical heterogeneity and hopping process. We point out that the above diffusion mechanism is closely related to the strong directional bonding nature of the distorted tetrahedral network. Here, our work offers new insights into the complex behavior of the highly viscous low density liquid silicon, suggesting similar diffusion behaviors in other tetrahedral coordinated liquids that exhibit liquid–liquid phase transition such as carbon and germanium.« less

The Athletic Body.

PubMed

Edgar, Andrew

2016-09-10

This paper seeks to explore the attraction and the beauty of the contemporary athletic body. It will be suggested that a body shaped through muscular bulk and definition has come to be seen as aesthetically normative. This body differs from the body of athletes from the early and mid-twentieth century. It will be argued that the contemporary body is not merely the result of advances in sports science, but rather that it is expressive of certain meanings and values. The visual similarity of the contemporary athletic body and that of the comic book superhero suggests that both bodies carry a similar potential for narrative story-telling, and that their attraction is bound up with this narrative potential. The superhero and athlete live meaningful lives, pursuing clear and morally unambiguous goals. The aesthetic attraction of the body lies in its capacity to facilitate the articulation of a story of a meaningful life, and to do so in the face of the growing anomie and thus meaninglessness of life as experienced in contemporary society. Athleticism offers an illusion of meaning, serving to reproduce dominant justificatory narratives and social stereotypes. Yet, as an illusion of meaning, it may be challenged and negotiated, not least with respect to its bias towards a certain form of the male body. The female athletic body disrupts the illusion, opening up new existential possibilities, new ways of living and being, and thus new, and potentially disruptive, narratives.

Strikes and the National Health Service: Some legal and ethical issues

PubMed Central

Dworkin, Gerald

1977-01-01

This paper is sadly opportune. The general public is angry and bewildered if not hurt by the variety of strikes which are brought more or less forcibly to their attention. People used to understand what lay behind a strike - a demand for more pay, better conditions - but today a political element often intrudes, and it is this that worries those who ask themselves whether this or that dispute is either lawful or morally acceptable. Professor Dworkin, a lawyer, first sets out the legal issues surrounding strikes and then advances the ethical arguments, closely relating them to the legal framework. The most interesting part of the paper, however, may well be that devoted to the moral obligation of example, in particular the example to be set by members of the medical profession and by all those caring for the sick. As public attitudes to industrial disputes `become dulled and quiescent' it is absolutely necessary that there should be a reappraisal of the moral standards of the past which coincide with a respect for the law. In the last century the term `anomie' was used to describe a `society which has shaken off its former restraints such as religion, respect for law and order and a definite moral code as to what is right and wrong'. We are living in that sort of society today, and one need not be a professional `ethicist' to recognize the signs, and hopefully, to work for the return of `ethical' values. PMID:874982

Social Psychological Origins of Conspiracy Theories: The Case of the Jewish Conspiracy Theory in Malaysia

PubMed Central

Swami, Viren

2012-01-01

Two studies examined correlates of belief in a Jewish conspiracy theory among Malays in Malaysia, a culture in which state-directed conspiracism as a means of dealing with perceived external and internal threats is widespread. In Study 1, 368 participants from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, completed a novel measure of belief in a Jewish conspiracy theory, along with measures of general conspiracist ideation, and anomie. Initial analysis showed that the novel scale factorially reduced to a single dimension. Further analysis showed that belief in the Jewish conspiracy theory was only significantly associated with general conspiracist ideation, but the strength of the association was weak. In Study 2, 314 participants completed the measure of belief in the Jewish conspiracy theory, along with measures of general conspiracist ideation, and ideological attitudes. Results showed that belief in the Jewish conspiracy theory was associated with anti-Israeli attitudes, modern racism directed at the Chinese, right-wing authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation. General conspiracist ideation did not emerge as a significant predictor once other variables had been accounted for. These results suggest that there may be specific cultural and social psychological forces that drive belief in the Jewish conspiracy theory within the Malaysian context. Specifically, belief in the Jewish conspiracy theory among Malaysian Malays appears to serve ideological needs and as a mask for anti-Chinese sentiment, which may in turn reaffirm their perceived ability to shape socio-political processes. PMID:22888323

Social psychological origins of conspiracy theories: the case of the jewish conspiracy theory in malaysia.

PubMed

Swami, Viren

2012-01-01

Two studies examined correlates of belief in a Jewish conspiracy theory among Malays in Malaysia, a culture in which state-directed conspiracism as a means of dealing with perceived external and internal threats is widespread. In Study 1, 368 participants from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, completed a novel measure of belief in a Jewish conspiracy theory, along with measures of general conspiracist ideation, and anomie. Initial analysis showed that the novel scale factorially reduced to a single dimension. Further analysis showed that belief in the Jewish conspiracy theory was only significantly associated with general conspiracist ideation, but the strength of the association was weak. In Study 2, 314 participants completed the measure of belief in the Jewish conspiracy theory, along with measures of general conspiracist ideation, and ideological attitudes. Results showed that belief in the Jewish conspiracy theory was associated with anti-Israeli attitudes, modern racism directed at the Chinese, right-wing authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation. General conspiracist ideation did not emerge as a significant predictor once other variables had been accounted for. These results suggest that there may be specific cultural and social psychological forces that drive belief in the Jewish conspiracy theory within the Malaysian context. Specifically, belief in the Jewish conspiracy theory among Malaysian Malays appears to serve ideological needs and as a mask for anti-Chinese sentiment, which may in turn reaffirm their perceived ability to shape socio-political processes.

Practical Application of Sociology in Systems Engineering

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Watson, Michael D.; Andrews, James G.; Eckley, Jeri Cassel; Culver, Michael L.

2017-01-01

Systems engineering involves both the integration of the system and the integration of the disciplines which develop and operate the system. Integrating the disciplines is a sociological effort to bring together different groups, who often have different terminology, to achieve a common goal, the system. The focus for the systems engineer is information flow through the organization, between the disciplines, to ensure the system is developed and operated will all relevant information informing system decisions. The practical application of the sociology in systems engineering brings in various organizational development concepts including the principles of planned renegotiation and the application of principles to address information barriers created by organizational culture. Concepts such as specification of ignorance, consistent terminology, opportunity structures, role-sets, and the reclama (reconsideration) process are all important sociological approaches that help address the organizational social structure (culture). In bringing the disciplines together, the systems engineer must also be wary of social ambivalence, social anomie, social dysfunction, and insider-outsider behavior. Unintended consequences can result when these social issues are present. These issues can occur when localized subcultures shift from the overarching organizational culture, or when the organizational culture prevents achievement of system goals. These sociological principles provide the systems engineer with key approaches to manage the information flow through the organization as the disciplines are integrated and share their information and provides key sociological barriers to information flow through the organization. This paper will discuss the practical application of sociological principles to systems engineering.

Crystal methamphetamine use among American Indian and White youth in Appalachia: Social context, masculinity, and desistance.

PubMed

Brown, Ryan A

2010-06-01

Rural areas and American Indian reservations are hotspots for the use of crystal methamphetamine ("meth") in the United States, yet there is little ethnographic data describing meth use in these areas. This study draws upon three years of ethnographic work conducted with American Indian and White youth in Appalachia during the height of the meth epidemic. It describes how historical, cultural, and socioeconomic processes influence vulnerability to meth use in Appalachia, and highlights the role of social relationships and meaning-making in facilitating desistance and recovery from meth use. The first section shows how crystal meth filled a particular functional niche in the lives of many young men, alleviating boredom and anomie linked to recent socioeconomic changes and labor opportunities in the region, and intersecting with local understandings of masculinity and forms of military identity. Here, ethnographic and interview data converge to illustrate how social role expectations, recent socioeconomic change, and meth's pharmacological properties converge to create vulnerability to meth use in Appalachia. The second section draws upon two American Indian narratives of desistance. These youth described recently severed social relationships and acute feelings of social isolation during the initiation of meth use. Both also described dramatic close calls with death that facilitated their eventual desistance from use, involving repaired social relationships and the establishment of new lives and hope. These interviews illustrate how changes in social relationships were linked with both initiation and desistance from meth use, and how religious interpretations of near-death experiences structured narratives of cessation and redemption.

[Does work have a meaning? Basis for a positive work culture].

PubMed

Sapelli, G

2010-01-01

From the anthropological point of view work is the expression and fulfilment of the absolute spirit in the finite sense and is, by its essence, cooperation. This obliges us to reverse the question: "does work have a meaning?", to: "does work have a meaning for workers? Does it allow self-fulfilment?" Work has a meaning if the worker's psychophysical integrity is safeguarded, if by working the individual achieves self-fulfilment as a person, if it has a sense of community. Man as an "actor" achieves self-fulfilment through technical and professional competence, thereby overcoming organizational and social conflicts. Today reducing human and social relations to an economic transaction will lead to the destruction of the meaning of life and work. The study of suicide cases in France Telecom shows that a human being inserted in the working environment wants most of all to obtain recognition. He or she will accept praise or even punishment if this is done with transparency, because the person will acknowledge in such decisions a recognition of his/herself. Many enterprises and consequently many personnel managers do not, in their essence, perceive of any meaning of work, but consider only the instrumental element. The workforce cannot be considered as a commodity, work is embodied in human beings. So either people aim at self-fulfilment or fall into anomie and depression, even to the point of the destructive impulse of elimination. The re-humanization of work and the treatment of enterprises (which are "ill" because they no longer possess any meaning of work) is the challenge that awaits us.

Where have all the flowers gone? A sociological analysis of the origins and content of youth values of the seventies.

PubMed

Leger, R G

1980-01-01

This paper presents a theoretical explanation of the origins and content of youth values of the seventies. These values are hypothesized as revolving around various dimensions of a self orientation--hendonism, escapism and a present orientation. It is argued that youth's self orientedness is a function of the affluence of the times where individuals no longer have to devote their daily life routines to a blind compulsive pursuit of the success goal. Rather, the complexities and competitive pressures of modern life combined with the symbols of success being universally available to practically everyone has produced an anomic condition which manifests itself in self oriented activity. The specific content of the values which are indicative of this self orientation are traced to the countercultural movement of the Viet-Nam war generation. Use of drugs and permissive sexual standards, behaviors which characterize the present generation of youth, represented the means by which the Viet-Nam war generation instilled solidarity against the war. Today, drug use and sexual permissiveness symbolizes the hedonistic, escapist self orientation which dominates young people of our time. Faced with the disillusioning events of the past decade coupled with the introspective pressures generated by the anomie of affluence, today's youth have withdrawn from expressing concern about events occurring in society (which they feel helpless to control) to a concern about one's self. It appears that in the modern mass society, escapism and hedonism are symptomatic of the feeling that today people have nothing to believe in--no wars, no causes, no villains, no heroes. All that remains is the overwhelming cynicism of the times due to peoples' declining faith in the viability of the basic institutions of the society.

Bt Jute Expressing Fused δ-Endotoxin Cry1Ab/Ac for Resistance to Lepidopteran Pests

PubMed Central

Majumder, Shuvobrata; Sarkar, Chirabrata; Saha, Prosanta; Gotyal, Bheemanna S.; Satpathy, Subrata; Datta, Karabi; Datta, Swapan K.

2018-01-01

Jute (Corchorus sp.) is naturally occurring, biodegradable, lignocellulosic-long, silky, golden shiny fiber producing plant that has great demands globally. Paper and textile industries are interested in jute because of the easy availability, non-toxicity and high yield of cellulosic biomass produced per acre in cultivation. Jute is the major and most industrially used bast fiber-producing crop in the world and it needs protection from insect pest infestation that decreases its yield and quality. Single locus integration of the synthetically fused cry1Ab/Ac gene of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) in Corchorus capsularis (JRC 321) by Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated shoot tip transformation provided 5 potent Bt jute lines BT1, BT2, BT4, BT7 and BT8. These lines consistently expressed the Cry1Ab/Ac endotoxin ranging from 0.16 to 0.35 ng/mg of leaf, in the following generations (analyzed upto T4). The effect of Cry1Ab/Ac endotoxin was studied against 3 major Lepidopteran pests of jute- semilooper (Anomis sabulifera Guenee), hairy caterpillar (Spilarctia obliqua Walker) and indigo caterpillar (Spodoptera exigua Hubner) by detached leaf and whole plant insect bioassay on greenhouse-grown transgenic plants. Results confirm that larvae feeding on transgenic plants had lower food consumption, body size, body weight and dry weight of excreta compared to non-transgenic controls. Insect mortality range among transgenic feeders was 66–100% for semilooper and hairy caterpillar and 87.50% for indigo caterpillar. Apart from insect resistance, the transgenic plants were at par with control plants in terms of agronomic parameters and fiber quality. Hence, these Bt jutes in the field would survive Lepidopteran pest infestation, minimize harmful pesticide usage and yield good quality fiber. PMID:29354143

Who are the European youths willing to engage in radicalisation? A multidisciplinary review of their psychological and social profiles.

PubMed

Campelo, Nicolas; Oppetit, Alice; Neau, Françoise; Cohen, David; Bronsard, Guillaume

2018-08-01

A new model of radicalisation has appeared in Western countries since the 2010s. Radical groups are smaller, less hierarchical and are mainly composed of young, homegrown individuals. The aim of this review is to decipher the profiles of the European adolescents and young adults who have embraced the cause of radical Islamism and to define the role of psychiatry in dealing with this issue. We performed a systematic search in several databases from January 2010 to July 2017 and reviewed the relevant studies that included European adolescents and/or young adults and presented empirical data. In total, 22 qualitative and quantitative studies were reviewed from various fields and using different methodologies. Psychotic disorders are rare among radicalised youths. However, they show numerous risk factors common with adolescent psychopathologies. We develop a comprehensive three-level model to explain the phenomenon of radicalisation among young Europeans: (1) individual risk factors include psychological vulnerabilities such as early experiences of abandonment, perceived injustice and personal uncertainty; (2) micro-environmental risk factors include family dysfunction and friendships with radicalised individuals; (3) societal risk factors include geopolitical events and societal changes such as Durkheim's concept of anomie. Some systemic factors are also implicated as there is a specific encounter between recruiters and the individual. The former use sectarian techniques to isolate and dehumanise the latter and to offer him a new societal model. There are many similarities between psychopathological manifestations of adolescence and mechanisms at stake during the radicalisation process. As a consequence, and despite the rarity of psychotic disorders, mental health professionals have a role to play in the treatment and understanding of radical engagement among European youth. Studies with empirical data are limited, and more research should be promoted (in particular in females and in non-Muslim communities) to better understand the phenomenon and to propose recommendations for prevention and treatment. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

[Forensic importance of homicide].

PubMed

Novaković, Milan

2009-01-01

This study encompassed the total number of homicides in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) in the period from 1st January 1997 to 31st December 2006 and then analysed homicidal behaviour. The aim is to assess the differences between the people who committed violent and those who committed accidental homicide in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In a multicentric, retrospective study of comparing the groups with equal number of respondents we analysed the individuals who had committed violent (n=135) and accidental homicides (n=135). The homicides were tested by using sociodemographic and psychosocial items. Measurement instruments were: General data list, Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ), Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS), Emotions Profile Index (EPI). The descriptive and multivariable logistic analysis was done statistically. In the descriptive analysis the socio-demographically violent murderers were: male gender (chi 2=3.340, P=0.009), more workers than officials (chi 2=7.340, P=0.011), fathers were more often workers/farmers (chi 2=1.430, P=0.046), gambling (chi 2=13.100, P=0.001) and possible recidivism (chi 2=6.770, a P=0.001). The accidental murderers were family people (chi 2=4.100, P=0.041), with more frequent drug abuse (chi 2=3.190, P=0.012) and they would not repeat the delict. In the multivariate analysis the violent murderers were highly discriminated (P=0.001) from accidental ones by: war involvement r=0.1148, OR=2.971 (95%), CI=1.040-7.890; age, father's education, psychoticism (EPQ) r =-0.1085, OR=0.291 (95%), CI=0.110-0870, HDRS-total r=-0.1797, OR=0.830 (95%), CI=0.710-0.930, destructiveness r=0.1270, OR=1.560 (95%), (CI=1.197-2.032, and deprivation in the P. I. E. tests. By the violence of their acts murderers confirm micro-social model of transferring the violence, and transition and heredity confirm the ecological-developmental trans-generation model of violence. Accidental murderers commit homicide in anomy, with intoxications and prolonged psycho-traumatism.

Do schools differ in suicide risk? The influence of school and neighbourhood on attempted suicide, suicidal ideation and self-harm among secondary school pupils.

PubMed

Young, Robert; Sweeting, Helen; Ellaway, Anne

2011-11-17

Rates of suicide and poor mental health are high in environments (neighbourhoods and institutions) where individuals have only weak social ties, feel socially disconnected and experience anomie - a mismatch between individual and community norms and values. Young people spend much of their time within the school environment, but the influence of school context (school connectedness, ethos and contextual factors such as school size or denomination) on suicide-risk is understudied. Our aim is to explore if school context is associated with rates of attempted suicide and suicide-risk at age 15 and self-harm at age 19, adjusting for confounders. A longitudinal school-based survey of 1698 young people surveyed when aged 11, (primary school), 15 (secondary school) and in early adulthood (age 19). Participants provided data about attempted suicide and suicide-risk at age 15 and deliberate self-harm at 19. In addition, data were collected about mental health at age 11, social background (gender, religion, etc.), and at age 15, perception of local area (e.g. neighbourhood cohesion, safety/civility and facilities), school connectedness (school engagement, involvement, etc.) and school context (size, denomination, etc.). A dummy variable was created indicating a religious 'mismatch', where pupils held a different faith from their school denomination. Data were analysed using multilevel logistic regression. After adjustment for confounders, pupils attempted suicide, suicide-risk and self-harm were all more likely among pupils with low school engagement (15-18% increase in odds for each SD change in engagement). While holding Catholic religious beliefs was protective, attending a Catholic school was a risk factor for suicidal behaviours. This pattern was explained by religious 'mismatch': pupils of a different religion from their school were approximately 2-4 times more likely to attempt suicide, be a suicide-risk or self-harm. With several caveats, we found support for the importance of school context for suicidality and self-harm. School policies promoting school connectedness are uncontroversial. Devising a policy to reduce risks to pupils holding a different faith from that of their school may be more problematic.

Do schools differ in suicide risk? the influence of school and neighbourhood on attempted suicide, suicidal ideation and self-harm among secondary school pupils

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Background Rates of suicide and poor mental health are high in environments (neighbourhoods and institutions) where individuals have only weak social ties, feel socially disconnected and experience anomie - a mismatch between individual and community norms and values. Young people spend much of their time within the school environment, but the influence of school context (school connectedness, ethos and contextual factors such as school size or denomination) on suicide-risk is understudied. Our aim is to explore if school context is associated with rates of attempted suicide and suicide-risk at age 15 and self-harm at age 19, adjusting for confounders. Methods A longitudinal school-based survey of 1698 young people surveyed when aged 11, (primary school), 15 (secondary school) and in early adulthood (age 19). Participants provided data about attempted suicide and suicide-risk at age 15 and deliberate self-harm at 19. In addition, data were collected about mental health at age 11, social background (gender, religion, etc.), and at age 15, perception of local area (e.g. neighbourhood cohesion, safety/civility and facilities), school connectedness (school engagement, involvement, etc.) and school context (size, denomination, etc.). A dummy variable was created indicating a religious 'mismatch', where pupils held a different faith from their school denomination. Data were analysed using multilevel logistic regression. Results After adjustment for confounders, pupils attempted suicide, suicide-risk and self-harm were all more likely among pupils with low school engagement (15-18% increase in odds for each SD change in engagement). While holding Catholic religious beliefs was protective, attending a Catholic school was a risk factor for suicidal behaviours. This pattern was explained by religious 'mismatch': pupils of a different religion from their school were approximately 2-4 times more likely to attempt suicide, be a suicide-risk or self-harm. Conclusions With several caveats, we found support for the importance of school context for suicidality and self-harm. School policies promoting school connectedness are uncontroversial. Devising a policy to reduce risks to pupils holding a different faith from that of their school may be more problematic. PMID:22093491

Political myths and totalitarianism: an anthropological analysis of their causal interrelationship.

PubMed

Svilicić, Niksa; Maldini, Pero

2014-06-01

This paper discusses the key political, anthropological and socio-cultural functions of political myths in the appearance and functioning of totalitarian regimes. A special emphasis is put on structural elements of the myth (mythemes) and the mythic content (narratives) in the processes of artificial construction of a new society (community) based on the myth-inspired ideological postulates. The paper argues that the establishment of totalitarianism marked a certain anthropological devolution. This devolution, in turn, proceeds through the deconstruction of civil society as an organic social sphere and the artificial construction of a new political community based on ideological postulates and political myths. In support of this assertion, it is first shown how the mythical narratives--transformed into political concepts and programs--were the basis of (re)interpretation of the world, society and individual, and essentially determined the nature and functioning of the totalitarian regimes. Then, the specific political myths are analyzed and compared, as well as their content and origin, and particularly their dual function. It in turn is analyzed in the framework of the classical society-community dichotomy, where the (civil) society is founded socio-politically on the social contract, and the (political) community socio-anthropologically on political myth. In a situation of identity and legitimacy crisis, anomie and the weakening of social cohesion--the characteristic conditions of the great economic and political crisis of the early twentieth century that enabled the emergence of totalitarianism--society as a contracting community does not work. A strong need for meaning (at the individual and societal level) affects the citizens' susceptibility to (political) concepts of (re)constitution of (political) community with which they can identify. Right there, totalitarian movements use the cohesive power of the political myth that replaces the rationally based constitution of society, and becomes a means of ideological mystification and political manipulation. Affecting the mind of the citizens, it moves their feelings and motivations and directs their behavior toward the goals of the totalitarian political power. Recent iterations of totalitarianism (Great-Serbian aggression), with the same tragic consequences, were a warning on the actuality of political myths and the danger of a resurgence of totalitarian tendencies.

Public health and peace.

PubMed

Laaser, Ulrich; Donev, Donco; Bjegović, Vesna; Sarolli, Ylli

2002-04-01

The modern concept of public health, the New Public Health, carries a great potential for healthy and therefore less aggressive societies. Its core disciplines are health promotion, environmental health, and health care management based on advanced epidemiological methodologies. The main principles of living together in healthy societies can be summarized as four ethical concepts of the New Public Health essential to violence reduction equity, participation, subsidiarity, and sustainability. The following issues are discussed as violence determinants: the process of urbanization; type of neighborhood and accommodation, and consequent stigmatization; level of education; employment status; socialization of the family; women's status; alcohol and drug consumption; availability of the firearms; religious, ethnic, and racial prejudices; and poverty. Development of the health systems has to contribute to peace, since aggression, violence, and warfare are among the greatest risks for health and the economic welfare. This contribution can be described as follows: 1) full and indiscriminate access to all necessary services, 2) monitoring of their quality, 3) providing special support to vulnerable groups, and 4) constant scientific and public accountability of the evaluation of the epidemiological outcome. Violence can also destroy solidarity and social cohesion of groups, such as family, team, neighborhood, or any other social organization. Durkheim coined the term anomie for a state in which social disruption of the community results in health risks for individuals. Health professionals can make a threefold contribution to peace by 1) analyzing the causal interrelationships of violence phenomena, 2) curbing the determinants of violence according to the professional standards, and 3) training professionals for this increasingly important task. Because tolerance is an essential part of an amended definition of health, monitoring of the early signs of public intolerance is important. The vital interplay between the informed public and efficient administration, however, can only exist in an open society. The link between democracy and health of the people, and between public health and economic welfare is real. The Public Health Collaboration in South Eastern Europe (PH-SEE) evolved just in time to reconnect and strengthen disrupted professional networks in the region as a prerequisite of effective public health action.

NIDA-Drug Addiction Treatment Outcome Study (DATOS) Relapse as a Function of Spirituality/Religiosity

PubMed Central

Schoenthaler, Stephen J.; Blum, Kenneth; Braverman, Eric R.; Giordano, John; Thompson, Ben; Oscar-Berman, Marlene; Badgaiyan, Rajendra D.; Madigan, Margaret A.; Dushaj, Kristina; Li, Mona; Demotrovics, Zsolt; Waite, Roger L.; Gold, Mark S.

2015-01-01

Background The connection between religion/spirituality and deviance, like substance abuse, was first made by Durkheim who defined socially expected behaviors as norms. He explained that deviance is due in large part to their absence (called anomie), and concluded that spirituality lowers deviance by preserving norms and social bonds. Impairments in brain reward circuitry, as observed in Reward Deficiency Syndrome (RDS), may also result in deviance and as such we wondered if stronger belief in spirituality practice and religious belief could lower relapse from drugs of abuse. Methods The NIDA Drug Addiction Treatment Outcome Study data set was used to examine post hoc relapse rates among 2,947 clients who were interviewed at 12 months after intake broken down by five spirituality measures. Results Our main findings strongly indicate, that those with low spirituality have higher relapse rates and those with high spirituality have higher remission rates with crack use being the sole exception. We found significant differences in terms of cocaine, heroin, alcohol, and marijuana relapse as a function of strength of religious beliefs (x2 = 15.18, p = 0.028; logistic regression = 10.65, p = 0.006); frequency of attending religious services (x2 = 40.78, p < 0.0005; logistic regression = 30.45, p < 0.0005); frequency of reading religious books (x2 = 27.190, p < 0.0005; logistic regression = 17.31, p < 0.0005); frequency of watching religious programs (x2 = 19.02, p = 0.002; logistic regression = ns); and frequency of meditation/prayer (x2 = 11.33, p = 0.045; logistic regression = 9.650, p = 0.002). Across the five measures of spirituality, the spiritual participants reported between 7% and 21% less alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and marijuana use than the non-spiritual subjects. However, the crack users who reported that religion was not important reported significantly less crack use than the spiritual participants. The strongest association between remission and spirituality involves attending religious services weekly, the one marker of the five that involves the highest social interaction/social bonding consistent with Durkheim’s social bond theory. Conclusions Stronger spiritual/religious beliefs and practices are directly associated with remission from abused drugs except crack. Much like the value of having a sponsor, for clients who abuse drugs, regular spiritual practice, particularly weekly attendance at the religious services of their choice is associated with significantly higher remission. These results demonstrate the clinically significant role of spirituality and the social bonds it creates in drug treatment programs. PMID:26052556

NIDA-Drug Addiction Treatment Outcome Study (DATOS) Relapse as a Function of Spirituality/Religiosity.

PubMed

Schoenthaler, Stephen J; Blum, Kenneth; Braverman, Eric R; Giordano, John; Thompson, Ben; Oscar-Berman, Marlene; Badgaiyan, Rajendra D; Madigan, Margaret A; Dushaj, Kristina; Li, Mona; Demotrovics, Zsolt; Waite, Roger L; Gold, Mark S

The connection between religion/spirituality and deviance, like substance abuse, was first made by Durkheim who defined socially expected behaviors as norms. He explained that deviance is due in large part to their absence (called anomie), and concluded that spirituality lowers deviance by preserving norms and social bonds. Impairments in brain reward circuitry, as observed in Reward Deficiency Syndrome (RDS), may also result in deviance and as such we wondered if stronger belief in spirituality practice and religious belief could lower relapse from drugs of abuse. The NIDA Drug Addiction Treatment Outcome Study data set was used to examine post hoc relapse rates among 2,947 clients who were interviewed at 12 months after intake broken down by five spirituality measures. Our main findings strongly indicate, that those with low spirituality have higher relapse rates and those with high spirituality have higher remission rates with crack use being the sole exception. We found significant differences in terms of cocaine, heroin, alcohol, and marijuana relapse as a function of strength of religious beliefs (x 2 = 15.18, p = 0.028; logistic regression = 10.65, p = 0.006); frequency of attending religious services (x 2 = 40.78, p < 0.0005; logistic regression = 30.45, p < 0.0005); frequency of reading religious books (x 2 = 27.190, p < 0.0005; logistic regression = 17.31, p < 0.0005); frequency of watching religious programs (x 2 = 19.02, p = 0.002; logistic regression = ns); and frequency of meditation/prayer (x 2 = 11.33, p = 0.045; logistic regression = 9.650, p = 0.002). Across the five measures of spirituality, the spiritual participants reported between 7% and 21% less alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and marijuana use than the non-spiritual subjects. However, the crack users who reported that religion was not important reported significantly less crack use than the spiritual participants. The strongest association between remission and spirituality involves attending religious services weekly, the one marker of the five that involves the highest social interaction/social bonding consistent with Durkheim's social bond theory. Stronger spiritual/religious beliefs and practices are directly associated with remission from abused drugs except crack. Much like the value of having a sponsor, for clients who abuse drugs, regular spiritual practice, particularly weekly attendance at the religious services of their choice is associated with significantly higher remission. These results demonstrate the clinically significant role of spirituality and the social bonds it creates in drug treatment programs.

Diseases of poverty and lifestyle, well-being and human development.

PubMed

Singh, Ajai R; Singh, Shakuntala A

2008-01-01

The problems of the haves differ substantially from those of the have-nots. Individuals in developing societies have to fight mainly against infectious and communicable diseases, while in the developed world the battles are mainly against lifestyle diseases. Yet, at a very fundamental level, the problems are the same-the fight is against distress, disability, and premature death; against human exploitation and for human development and self-actualisation; against the callousness to critical concerns in regimes and scientific power centres.While there has been great progress in the treatment of individual diseases, human pathology continues to increase. Sicknesses are not decreasing in number, they are only changing in type.The primary diseases of poverty like TB, malaria, and HIV/AIDS-and the often co-morbid and ubiquitous malnutrition-take their toll on helpless populations in developing countries. Poverty is not just income deprivation but capability deprivation and optimism deprivation as well.While life expectancy may have increased in the haves, and infant and maternal mortality reduced, these gains have not necessarily ensured that well-being results. There are ever-multiplying numbers of individuals whose well-being is compromised due to lifestyle diseases. These diseases are the result of faulty lifestyles and the consequent crippling stress. But it serves no one's purpose to understand them as such. So, the prescription pad continues to prevail over lifestyle-change counselling or research.The struggle to achieve well-being and positive health, to ensure longevity, to combat lifestyle stress and professional burnout, and to reduce psychosomatic ailments continues unabated, with hardly an end in sight.WE THUS REALISE THAT MORBIDITY, DISABILITY, AND DEATH ASSAIL ALL THREE SOCIETIES: the ones with infectious diseases, the ones with diseases of poverty, and the ones with lifestyle diseases. If it is bacteria in their various forms that are the culprit in infectious diseases, it is poverty/deprivation in its various manifestations that is the culprit in poverty-related diseases, and it is lifestyle stress in its various avatars that is the culprit in lifestyle diseases. It is as though poverty and lifestyle stress have become the modern "bacteria" of developing and developed societies, respectively.For those societies afflicted with diseases of poverty, of course, the prime concern is to escape from the deadly grip of poverty-disease-deprivation-helplessness; but, while so doing, they must be careful not to land in the lap of lifestyle diseases. For the haves, the need is to seek well-being, positive health, and inner rootedness; to ask science not only to give them new pills for new ills, but to define and study how negative emotions hamper health and how positive ones promote it; to find out what is inner peace, what is the connection between spirituality and health, what is well-being, what is self-actualisation, what prevents disease, what leads to longevity, how simplicity impacts health, what attitudes help cope with chronic sicknesses, how sicknesses can be reversed (not just treated), etc. Studies on well-being, longevity, and simplicity need the concerted attention of researchers.THE TASK AHEAD IS CUT OUT FOR EACH ONE OF US: physician, patient, caregiver, biomedical researcher, writer/journalist, science administrator, policy maker, ethicist, man of religion, practitioner of alternate/complementary medicine, citizen of a world community, etc. Each one must do his or her bit to ensure freedom from disease and achieve well-being.Those in the developed world have the means to make life meaningful but, often, have lost the meaning of life itself; those in the developing world are fighting for survival but, often, have recipes to make life meaningful. This is especially true of a society like India, which is rapidly emerging from its underdeveloped status. It is an ancient civilization, with a philosophical outlook based on a robust mix of the temporal and the spiritual, with vibrant indigenous biomedical and related disciplines, for example, Ayurveda, Yoga, etc. It also has a burgeoning corpus of modern biomedical knowledge in active conversation with the rest of the world. It should be especially careful that, while it does not negate the fruits of economic development and scientific/biomedical advance that seem to beckon it in this century, it does not also forget the values that have added meaning and purpose to life; values that the ancients bequeathed it, drawn from their experiential knowledge down the centuries.The means that the developed have could combine with the recipes to make them meaningful that the developing have. That is the challenge ahead for mankind as it gropes its way out of poverty, disease, despair, alienation, anomie, and the ubiquitous all-devouring lifestyle stresses, and takes halting steps towards well-being and the glory of human development.

Diseases of Poverty and Lifestyle, Well-Being and Human Development

PubMed Central

Singh, Ajai R.; Singh, Shakuntala A.

2008-01-01

The problems of the haves differ substantially from those of the have-nots. Individuals in developing societies have to fight mainly against infectious and communicable diseases, while in the developed world the battles are mainly against lifestyle diseases. Yet, at a very fundamental level, the problems are the same-the fight is against distress, disability, and premature death; against human exploitation and for human development and self-actualisation; against the callousness to critical concerns in regimes and scientific power centres. While there has been great progress in the treatment of individual diseases, human pathology continues to increase. Sicknesses are not decreasing in number, they are only changing in type. The primary diseases of poverty like TB, malaria, and HIV/AIDS-and the often co-morbid and ubiquitous malnutrition-take their toll on helpless populations in developing countries. Poverty is not just income deprivation but capability deprivation and optimism deprivation as well. While life expectancy may have increased in the haves, and infant and maternal mortality reduced, these gains have not necessarily ensured that well-being results. There are ever-multiplying numbers of individuals whose well-being is compromised due to lifestyle diseases. These diseases are the result of faulty lifestyles and the consequent crippling stress. But it serves no one's purpose to understand them as such. So, the prescription pad continues to prevail over lifestyle-change counselling or research. The struggle to achieve well-being and positive health, to ensure longevity, to combat lifestyle stress and professional burnout, and to reduce psychosomatic ailments continues unabated, with hardly an end in sight. We thus realise that morbidity, disability, and death assail all three societies: the ones with infectious diseases, the ones with diseases of poverty, and the ones with lifestyle diseases. If it is bacteria in their various forms that are the culprit in infectious diseases, it is poverty/deprivation in its various manifestations that is the culprit in poverty-related diseases, and it is lifestyle stress in its various avatars that is the culprit in lifestyle diseases. It is as though poverty and lifestyle stress have become the modern “bacteria” of developing and developed societies, respectively. For those societies afflicted with diseases of poverty, of course, the prime concern is to escape from the deadly grip of poverty-disease-deprivation-helplessness; but, while so doing, they must be careful not to land in the lap of lifestyle diseases. For the haves, the need is to seek well-being, positive health, and inner rootedness; to ask science not only to give them new pills for new ills, but to define and study how negative emotions hamper health and how positive ones promote it; to find out what is inner peace, what is the connection between spirituality and health, what is well-being, what is self-actualisation, what prevents disease, what leads to longevity, how simplicity impacts health, what attitudes help cope with chronic sicknesses, how sicknesses can be reversed (not just treated), etc. Studies on well-being, longevity, and simplicity need the concerted attention of researchers. The task ahead is cut out for each one of us: physician, patient, caregiver, biomedical researcher, writer/journalist, science administrator, policy maker, ethicist, man of religion, practitioner of alternate/complementary medicine, citizen of a world community, etc. Each one must do his or her bit to ensure freedom from disease and achieve well-being. Those in the developed world have the means to make life meaningful but, often, have lost the meaning of life itself; those in the developing world are fighting for survival but, often, have recipes to make life meaningful. This is especially true of a society like India, which is rapidly emerging from its underdeveloped status. It is an ancient civilization, with a philosophical outlook based on a robust mix of the temporal and the spiritual, with vibrant indigenous biomedical and related disciplines, for example, Ayurveda, Yoga, etc. It also has a burgeoning corpus of modern biomedical knowledge in active conversation with the rest of the world. It should be especially careful that, while it does not negate the fruits of economic development and scientific/biomedical advance that seem to beckon it in this century, it does not also forget the values that have added meaning and purpose to life; values that the ancients bequeathed it, drawn from their experiential knowledge down the centuries. The means that the developed have could combine with the recipes to make them meaningful that the developing have. That is the challenge ahead for mankind as it gropes its way out of poverty, disease, despair, alienation, anomie, and the ubiquitous all-devouring lifestyle stresses, and takes halting steps towards well-being and the glory of human development. PMID:22013359