A collection of linked stories.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis draws upon the qualitative findings of 20 interviews undertaken with female teachers in order to explore the topic of workplace friendships between women in an all-female organisational setting. The interview data sheds light on these friendships within the all-female workplace context, examining how the workplace setting can influence the forms of friendship women build with one another. This thesis explores this topic across three main areas: 1) the way in which women develop workplace friendships, and the forms that women-women relations take in all-female workplaces; 2) the importance of workplace friendships and the meanings attached to these friendships; and 3) the blurred boundaries between family and friends, which result in unique workplace-friendship relationships. This study contributes to current knowledge on friendship development and, specifically, the issues associated with women’s development of friendships within the all-female workplace context. The findings highlight the difficulties that some women experience in creating and developing friendships based on cultural boundaries. The findings also emphasise the weaker utility in female friendships, which remains both unacceptable and unchallenged yet nonetheless recognised by women. Furthermore, women are argued to create “other-self” friends and to experience another form of suffusion process in the workplace context. This study also contributes to the current literature on the barriers and opportunities associated with female friendship-building by highlighting how female misogyny employed in the workplace and that workplace friendship is a surviving tool used, adopting a sociological perspective to explore and analyse the findings.

This study presents qualitative research examining the relationship youth have with television. Information for this study was collected through media journals, personal essays, in-depth interviews, and focus groups held with eighteen sixth-graders who attended a charter elementary school in Lindon, Utah. The question posed to the students multiple times during the data collection was: “Would you give up television for $1 million?” Through the students’ answers and ensuing dialogue, the researcher examined the social value the pre-adolescents attributed to watching television. The findings identify three main categories the students said were reasons they were attached to television, which also corresponded adolescent-needs that have been identified by scholars. The categories are 1) youth need friendship and television offers potential to develop parasocial relationships 2) youth need intimacy and television is an activity they can do with and talk about with friends and 3) youth need to learn about the new group they’re being socialized into and television offers portrayals of future situations. The study also includes ideas about why television is so valuable to the youth; it concludes with suggestions for future research, including expanding this research to other demographics, and recommendations for parents and school teachers, including media literacy and parental mediation.

With more opportunities available to men and women to interact, both professionally and personally (i.e., the workplace, educational setting, community), friendships with members of the opposite sex are becoming more common. Increasingly, researchers have noted that one facet that makes cross-sex friendships unique compared to other types of relationships (i.e. romantic love, same-sex friendships, familial relationships), is that there is the possibility and opportunity for a romantic or sexual relationship to manifest. Communication research has yet to investigate how one decides whether to begin a romantic or sexual relationship or choose to remain platonic with their cross-sex friend. Given that cross-sex friendships deal with a lot of ambiguity regarding the nature of the friendship, this researcher sought to uncover what factors determine whether parties reciprocate romantic or sexual interest or opt to remain platonic through the theoretical lens of interaction adaptation theory. Specifically, the researcher sought to determine what expectations and desires predict compensation or reciprocity of romantic or sexual desires. At a large Southeastern university, quantitative data were collected from 307 participants. The results indicated that of the variables, Not Attracted, Incompatibility, and closeness were significant predictors of romantic reciprocation. In the case of 'friends with benefit' relationships, the results indicated that of the variables, Not Attracted, Sexual/Romantic Potential, sex, and sexual attitudes were significant predictors of sexual reciprocity. Further explanations of results, limitations, and future directions for research are discussed.

This thesis deals with the role of sponsorship and patronage in the process of migration and in the formation of Biraderi based relationships and various sociological questions posed in the local context within which ethnicity is a defining element. For example, it demonstrates how far Rochdale Pakistanis as an ethnic group are maintaining their culture in Britain; in particular, how kinship and friendship networks determine the dominant pattern of social interaction among Pakistanis. Further, it deals with the extent to which these networks help and facilitate the immigration and settlement of Pakistanis in this country and result in their "incapsulation" within the wider society. The analysis of these issues was. conducted at different levels: at the individual (case studies) and interactional level, at the social situations and community level and at the level of the wider society's institutions and structures. This included a consideration of the activities of the local Pakistani community in terms of their kinship networks, their economic"activites political participation, religious institutions, community leadership and ethnic organisations. It also includes an analysis of the actors in these different fields, highlighting each area of activity that led to the incapsulation of Pakistanis. It was found that the Pakistani community tends to be mobilized on ethnic lines. This mobilization, it seems, reinforces their ethnic identity and results in their unity, especially when threatened by hostile "out-groups". I The analysis strongly suggests that the whole complex of ethnic institutions manifests the Pakistani community's wish to express and, at the same time, perpetuate their traditional values, beliefs and culture, although this varies to some extent according to occupational background, educational level and generational differences.

No description available.

No description available.