The heightened risk of immigrants developing schizophrenia

Association between degrees of social defeat and themes of delusion in patients with schizophrenia from immigrant and ethnic minority backgrounds

From Transcultural Psychiatry

Immigrants have a heightened risk of developing schizophrenia, suggesting that social factors play an important role in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia. In this free podcast the authors of the featured article discuss the relationship between degrees of social defeat and themes of delusion in patients with schizophrenia from immigrant and ethnic minority backgrounds.

Focussing on where British Muslims belong, rather than where they come from

British Muslims, memory and identity: Representations in British film and television documentary

From European Journal of Cultural Studies

The British media’s preoccupation with Britain’s Muslim populations has ebbed and flowed, especially in the wake of 9/11, the London bombings of 2005 and the 2007 attack on Glasgow Airport. This article explores representations of the memories of British Muslims of South Asian origin in British television documentary and film. Across media output, scant attention is paid to the memories of British Muslims of South Asian origin, media investigations focus on where British Muslims belong, rather than where they come from. British Muslims’ belonging to Britain is challenged when Muslims are cast in a familiar everyday British world and in contexts that demonstrate their humanity and diversity. Britain’s diverse Muslim populations are regularly reduced to a homogeneous unity and are increasingly associated with ‘terrorism’. In addition, interest focuses on synchro­nous definitions of identity that refuse attention to the significant role of memory in shaping identity. If television fails to incorporate these memories more routinely within mainstream programming, it will continue to perpetuate another insidious but effective form of silencing.

Minority children at a higher risk for weight problems in both the US and England

Race/Ethnicity and nativity disparities in child overweight in the United States and England

From American Academy of Political and Social Science

With ties to diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol, childhood obesity in wealthy countries is certainly of growing concern to researchers. This study explores the ties between childhood weight problems, socioeconomic status, and nationality and finds that race, ethnicity, and immigrant status are risk factors for weight problems among children in the US and England. The researchers studied data of 6,816 children from the US and the UK to analyze childhood weight problems among certain demographics. This research highlights the consequences of migration for children, an area of study that is often overlooked by immigration researchers. “In the United States, both Hispanic and black children of native-born mothers have a higher risk of overweight than children of native-born whites,” the authors observe “In England, children of native-born black mothers have a higher risk of overweight, and in some models, children of native-born Asian mothers have a higher risk.” They recognize that migration requires children to make sense of a new country, often facing unwelcoming communities, whilst learning to navigate the social institutions of their host society and, more often than not, a new language.

My pet saved my life: Redemption stories from the homeless

Animals as lifechangers and lifesavers: Pets in the redemption narratives of homeless people

From Journal of Contemporary Ethnography

Scholars maintain that stories constitute “the self’s medium of being”. In this formulation, people construct and revise their sense of themselves by telling stories. This article examines personal narratives in which homeless and formerly homeless people construct their companion animals as having changed or saved their lives. It outlines how personal narratives in which the homeless portray a pet dog or cat as either motivating them to change their lives or preventing them from taking their lives. The relationship with an animal encourages a sense of responsibility, commitment and self worth. The pet provides unconditional love and companionship. The relationship can contribute to the construction of a positive moral identity. By showing how stories about commitment to animals construct such moral identities, this analysis reveals the social origins of what we consider uniquely autobiographical.

The haunting spectacle of crystal meth: A media-created mythology?

From  Crime Media Culture 

Media-fuelled panics about drug use and drug control have occurred throughout the history of the modern press. This study examines the creation of current concerns about crystal methamphetamine (crystal meth) over the last decade, and how popular perceptions of drugs and drug users have been influenced by disproportionate and sensationalised alarmist media reporting. This movement can be seen as a case demonstrating the use of both propaganda and myth. The representation in the British mediahas created its own hyper-reality, influencing political debate, drug policy and public reaction. What is striking about the coverage of crystal meth, or ‘ice’ as it is commonly known, is that the media’s predicted epidemic in the UK has proved to be an exaggeration of mythic proportions. Quite simply, indicators measuring drug use in the UK suggest its use is almost non-existent.  This article has demonstrated that crystal meth represents a unique story.  The predicted arrival of an ‘ice age’ in Britain has not materialised. The article recognizes how the use of graphic visual images is pervasive in the24-hour, global, technology-driven, mobile, multi-mediascape and is even more significant in communicating the message and manipulating meaning.

It is concluded that the reality has become lost in the visual representation, and a hyper-reality of crystal meth use has been constructed in order to distract people from the veracity of social life and from more urgent socio-political issues. The haunting spectacle of crystal meth has become a central aspect of social order and culture; a ‘permanent opium war’ and an instigator of change.  The press has become the new battleground for this war on drugs.

A culture of mania: A psychoanalytic view of the incubation of the 2008 credit crisis

Winner of the Imagination Lab Foundation Award for Innovative Scholarship

From Organization

This article draws on psychoanalytic ideas and their application to social and orga­nizational dynamics, to develop a conceptual framework around the notion of a manic culture and apply it to our understanding of the 2008 credit crisis. It recognises that there was a pperiod lasting two decades preceding the crisis of mania. This manic culture played a significant role in creating the conditions for the problems that led to the credit crisis. The study highlights that warning signs can be observed, but that they served not as warnings but as provocations to act manically in taking on more extreme risks. The paper explores history hhoping to better our understanding of our limited awareness and control to go some way to diminish the power of these forces in the future. It makes contributions both to theory and to the understanding of the credit crisis.

Have magic, will travel’: Tourism and Harry Potter’s United (Magical) Kingdom

From Tourist Studies

This article examines the expanding global tourist trade for fictional places derived from popular narratives that are recreated for the tourist’s pleasure. The study is concerned with a form of tourism whereby imaginary, invented places, as represented in various media, are recreated for tourists with strong fan affiliations to a text. Tourism involving imaginary places has the powerful ability to rework cultural identity in the national and international imagination and transform landscapes. Through a case study of a Harry Potter UK tour, the author argues that the design of such ventures equalize the importance of the (f)actual and imaginary geographies to create affective, liminal spaces where the tourist anticipates and partakes in the trans­formation of sights/sites.  If the fantasy genre creates an ‘expansion of reality, to intensify the realization of experience’ it could be said that travelling to a Harry Potter associated site provides the tourist with more details and paratexts in which to create narratives and play with (even more) possibilities. While millions of fans around the world celebrated and heralded the end of an era and the hero’s completed rite of pas­sage with the release of the final film, the Harry Potter phenomenon is far from over. The ability to walk in the footsteps of Harry Potter will guarantee its longevity.

Children having children? Religion, psychology and the birth of the teenage pregnancy problem

From History of the Human Sciences

In recent years the phrase ‘children having children’ has been used by politicians, academics, policy focussed NGO’s and Children’s charities to describe the worrying trend in the UK of rising teenage parenthood. This expression is not exclusively British and has been a recurring theme in the public discussion of ‘teenage pregnancy’ in the USA. Five decades after London County Council officers began separating ‘pregnant children’ from older women who conceived out of wedlock, governmental concern with ‘children having children’ persists.  This article explores government work with ‘unwed mothers’ and identifies the shifts associated with the ascent of governmental concern with ‘teenage motherhood’. There is much debate regarding young people’s bodily and mental ‘maturity’ in relation to parenthood. Much consideration fails to acknowledge the historical and cultural contingency of contemporary western notions of ‘teenage’. This article suggests as long as contemporary scientific claims regarding young people’s maturity go unchallenged, the ‘problem’ of teenage parenthood will persist.

Teenage pregnancy is not a racial issue

Black teenage pregnancy: A dynamic social problem

From SAGE Open

While researchers have long set to determine if there is a tie between race and teenage pregnancy, according to this study, equating black teenagers with the problem of teenage pregnancy is a misrepresentation of today’s real­ity. The authors studied data from 1,580 teenage girls and found that while black teens are about twice as likely as white teens to ever be pregnant, pregnancy rates for black minors are in reality declining while rates for minor whites, although sporadic, have increased and from 2005-2006 and even exceeded those of poor minor blacks. “Apparently, teen pregnancy is becoming more of a problem for affluent and poor white minors of late compared with their black counterparts as reflected in their recent rates”.

The paper reveals that poor economic conditions are a true marker of disparity between black and white pregnant teens. When unemploy­ment rates were high, black teenagers were seven times more likely to have ever been pregnant than white teenagers. Conversely, in better economies, when unemployment rates are low, there is almost no difference between reported teenage pregnancies for black and white teenagers. Black teenagers and teenagers from lower-income homes have a greater likelihood of reporting having ever been pregnant than white teenagers or teenagers who come from higher-income homes.

Tobacco consumption and the poor

Tobacco consumption and the poor: An ethnographic analysis of hand-rolled cigarette (bidi) use in Bangladesh

From Ethnography

There are an estimated 1.1 billion smokers worldwide, among whom 80 percent live in low and middle income countries. This paper explores the link between cultural norms of reciprocity and hierarchy as well as the socio-economic structure of Bangladesh with its inequality, poverty and exploitation contribute to the tobacco consumption and related health problems of the poor. It specifically examines Bidis, or hand-rolled, filterless tobacco cigarettes, marketed to and consumed by the poor in Bangladesh. Inexpensive Bidis offer smokers relief from physical ailments specific to the poor: hunger, indigestion and constipation. More than this they are a socially accepted mood-altering drug offering relief from their everyday tensions, angers, perceived exploitations and disappointments.

This study considers the bigger picture and highlights how Consideration of tobacco use goes far beyond health to aspects of education and social justice: it is on the wane amongst the wealthy and on the rise amongst the poor, and profits from its production are heavily concentrated amongst the elitist few. Meanwhile, the workers – who represent so many of the users – live in abject poverty.