This collection brings together leading scholars to explore the 'doing' and 'making' of identities. Drawing on the highly innovative ESRC Identities and Social Action Programme, the chapters take core social actions – such as performing, excluding, mixing, bonding – and demonstrate how social practices and identities unfold together.
Includes established theories and cutting-edge developments. Presents the work of an international group of experts. Presents the nature, origin, implications, an future course of major unresolved issues in the area.
Should African Americans be construed as a race or as an ethnic group? If African Americans are defined as an ethnic group, what role does culture play in their lives and how can we measure their culture? This groundbreaking volume argues that we should reject the concept of race and define African Americans as a cultural group. It presents the first scale ever devised for measuring acculturation among African Americans, along with powerful studies that empirically explore the role of culture and acculturation in African American behavior, health, and psychology. Among the authors' findings are how acculturation predicts symptoms, such as depression and anxiety, and physical problems, such as hypertension.
Historically, Black Americans have easily found common ground on political, social, and economic goals. Yet, there are signs of increasing variety of opinion among Blacks in the United States, due in large part to the influx of Afro-Latino, Afro-Caribbean, and African immigrants to the United States. In fact, the very definition of “African American” as well as who can self-identity as Black is becoming more ambiguous. Should we expect African Americans’ shared sense of group identity and high sense of group consciousness to endure as ethnic diversity among the population increases? In Black Mosaic, Candis Watts Smith addresses the effects of this dynamic demographic change on Black identity and Black politics. Smith explores the numerous ways in which the expanding and rapidly changing demographics of Black communities in the United States call into question the very foundations of political identity that has united African Americans for generations. African Americans’ political attitudes and behaviors have evolved due to their historical experiences with American Politics and American racism. Will Black newcomers recognize the inconsistencies between the American creed and American reality in the same way as those who have been in the U.S. for several generations? If so, how might this recognition influence Black immigrants’ political attitudes and behaviors? Will race be a site of coalition between Black immigrants and African Americans? In addition to face-to-face interviews with African Americans and Black immigrants, Smith employs nationally representative survey data to examine these shifts in the attitudes of Black Americans. Filling a significant gap in the political science literature to date, Black Mosaic is a groundbreaking study about the state of race, identity, and politics in an ever-changing America.
What makes a space Jewish? This wide-ranging volume revisits literal as well as metaphorical spaces in modern German history to examine the ways in which Jewishness has been attributed to them both within and outside of Jewish communities, and what the implications have been across different eras and social contexts. Working from an expansive concept of “the spatial,” these contributions look not only at physical sites but at professional, political, institutional, and imaginative realms, as well as historical Jewish experiences of spacelessness. Together, they encompass spaces as varied as early modern print shops and Weimar cinema, always pointing to the complex intertwining of German and Jewish identity.
The new edition of the classic text on group dynamics theory and research—extensively revised, expanded, and updated Offering a critical appraisal of theory and research on groups, Group Processes: Dynamics with and Between Groups is one of the most respected texts in the field. This comprehensive volume covers all the essential dynamics of group processes and intergroup relations, ranging from group formation, norms, social influence and leadership to group aggression, prejudice, solidarity, intergroup contact and collective action. Contemporary examples and plentiful charts, graphs, and illustrations complement discussions of the latest themes and current controversies in group psychology. Now in its third edition, this book has been thoroughly revised with a significant amount of new and updated content. New topics include the contribution of groups to health and wellbeing, group-based emotions, hierarchy and oppression, intergroup helping and solidarity, acculturation and reconciliation. Sections on social influence, crowd behavior, leadership, prejudice, collective action and intergroup contact have been comprehensively revised and updated to reflect two decades of development in these fields. Three inter-linked themes—social identity, social context, and social action—illustrate the influence of groups on self and self-worth, the meaning and consequences of membership in groups, and how groups can be vehicles for members to achieve change in their environments. A key text in the field for over thirty years, Group Processes: Offers broad, balanced coverage of group processes, including in-depth examination of intergroup relations Incorporates theoretical themes inspired by the social identity perspective Includes topical examples drawn from the world of politics, popular culture, and sports Provides up-to-date content on major new developments in the field Integrates modern theory, current research, and classic sources Group Processes: Dynamics with and Between Groups, 3rd Edition is ideal for core reading in undergraduate and postgraduate courses in social psychology, particularly in modules dedicated to group processes and intergroup relations.
In recent years the topic of acculturation has evolved from a relatively minor research area to one of the most researched subjects in the field of cross-cultural psychology. This edited handbook compiles and systemizes the current state of the art by exploring the broad international scope of acculturation. A collection of the world's leading experts in the field review the various contexts for acculturation, the central theories, the groups and individuals undergoing acculturation (immigrants, refugees, indigenous people, expatriates, students and tourists) and discuss how current knowledge can be applied to make both the process and its outcome more manageable and profitable. Building on the theoretical and methodological framework of cross-cultural psychology, the authors focus specifically on the issues that arise when people from one culture move to another culture and the reciprocal adjustments, tensions and benefits involved.
The Handbook of Contemporary Families explores how families have changed in the last 30 years and speculates about future trends. Editors Marilyn Coleman and Lawrence H. Ganong, along with a multidisciplinary group of contributors, critique the approaches used to study relationships and families while suggesting modern approaches for the new millennium. The Handbook looks at how changes within the contemporary family have been reflected in family law, family education, and family therapy. The Handbook of Contemporary Families is an excellent resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, educators, and practitioners who study and work with families in several disciplines, including Family Science, Human Development and Family Studies, Sociology, Marriage & Family Therapy, and Social Work.
The Classic Edition of 'Immigrant Youth in Cultural Transition', first published in 2006, includes a new introduction by the editors, describing the ongoing relevance of this volume in the context of future challenges for this vital field of study. It emphasizes the importance of continued actions and policies to improve the quality of interactions between multiple ethno-cultural groups, and highlights how these issues have developed the field of cross-cultural psychology. In the original text, an international team of psychologists with interests in acculturation, identity, and development describes the experience and adaptation of immigrant youth, using data from over 7,000 immigrant youth from diverse cultural backgrounds and national youth living in 13 countries of settlement. They explore the way in which immigrant adolescents carry out their lives at the intersection of two cultures (those of their heritage group and the national society), and how well these youth are adapting to their intercultural experience. It explores four distinct patterns followed by youth during their acculturation: *an integration pattern, in which youth orient themselves to, and identify with both cultures; *an ethnic pattern, in which youth are oriented mainly to their own group; *a national pattern, in which youth look primarily to the national society; and *a diffuse pattern, in which youth are uncertain and confused about how to live interculturally. The study shows the variation in both the psychological adaptation and the sociocultural adaptation among youth, with most adapting well. This Classic Edition continues to be highly valuable reading for researchers, graduate students, and public policy makers who have an interest in public health, psychology, anthropology, sociology, demography, education, and psychiatry.