Taking a comparative perspective, the current research examines national and European identities in Britain and Italy, using a multi-methodological approach. The aims of the research are twofold: firstly, to examine current limitations with psychological theorising on social identity, and secondly, to enhance social psychological knowledge of European integration and its effects upon national and European identities. The theoretical perspective adopted is a hybrid synthesis of social identity (Tajfel, 1974; Turner, 1987) and social representations (Moscovici, 1984) approaches. Evidence for a European identity amongst British respondents and interviewees proved to be minimal: few felt any sense of European pride, and most construed European integration in instrumental terms. Italian constructions of European identity were more robust than those of the British, and consisted of both instrumental and symbolic attachments to the European ideal. Some of the social psychological bases for such cross-national differences are explored, and the prospects for the development of a European identity examined. Applying social identity theory to questions of national and European identity construction, raises questions about the current applicability of the paradigm to large-scale social categories of this type. The social representational context of intergroup relations has often been ignored, and social influence processes in large-scale entities seem more complex than previously assumed. It becomes apparent that issues of key conceptual importance to the social identity and self-categorisation paradigms are in need of urgent clarification. These include: the differences between face-to-face groups and abstract social categories; the adequacy of motivational constructs within the paradigm; and the role of the wider ideological milieu in which identity construction takes place. Along with a discussion of these issues, some of the key features of social identity construction in large-scale social categories and groups are examined, and ways in which the social identity and social representations paradigms might be reconciled explored.

This thesis provides an ethnographic account of the lives of single mothers subsisting on Department of Social Security (DSS) benefits in a large public housing estate where unemployment rates are very high and traditional nuclear families are the exception rather than the rule. The aims and objectives of the thesis are to explain and interpret the survival strategies of working-class women whose lives are characterised by physical and emotional hardships, multiple deprivation and violence. Two issues in particular are addressed. The first is the construction of gender role norms and to significance in the way women interpret their own actions and those of others and the second is the importance of resources derived from informal female social networks for the survival of individual women.The thesis relies largely on data gathered during two and a half years of participant observation within the estate, combining interviews with a total of 96 single mothers and cases studies in the form of life histories of eight women. These methods are described in chapter 1.Chapter 2 focuses on the impact of economic change, patterns of male and female employment and their impact on family structures, gender roles and gender identity. It begins with a discussion of women and social change, firstly from an historical perspective and then in the light of recent changes in the western economy and women's changing position relative to men. It argues that the extent to which women are able to bring about social and economic change has been underestimated. To portray women universally as the victims of oppression by men, individually or collectively, denies the role of women as agents of social change in their own right. The influence of women in the 'domestic sphere' can have widespread and far-reaching consequences for society as a whole. The chapter argues that for many women, single-motherhood is a strategy for survival, just as marriage itself can be a strategy for survival. Where marriage offers the best or only option for women and their children, they will tolerate inequality, exploitation and even abuse in return for financial support from men. Where such material support is not available or is not the best option, women reject marriage in favour of single parenthood. They have evaluated the potential advantages and disadvantages -a cost-benefit analysis often based on real experience - and opted to remain single.Chapter 3 offers a brief discussion of some American case material. There are many similarities between the responses of individuals and families to economic disadvantage and marginalisation in the black ghettos of the USA and those in the Green Fields estate. The American studies demonstrate the fragility of the nuclear family in areas of widespread poverty.Chapter 4 describes the setting of the study.Chapter 5 presents case studies in the form of life-histories of eight single mothers in Green Fields. The cases illustrate the capacity of the majority of women to manipulate and manage their lives with varying degrees of success.Chapter 6 examines the incidence and experience of male violence within sexual relationships in Green Fields. From the accounts of the women's experiences we discover why they tolerate violence in relationships and why, if at all, they eventually leave the relationships. It argues that within the cultural framework of the Green Fields setting violence in sexual relationships is, to a greater or lesser extent, accepted as normal by both men and women. Where men are denied legitimate means to express their masculinity through work and wages, the need to express their masculinity manifests itself in alternative and less conventional forms of behaviour. Their economic , powerlessness' in the broader society is compensated for by displays of conspicuous and exaggerated 'machismo', often in the form of aggressionChapter 7 discusses women and crime in the light of social change. It explores issues concerning the unequal propensity for men to engage in crime compared to women, and questions whether theories used to explain and predict male criminality actually stand up to scrutiny if they are applied to women. The chapter goes on to argue that the linkage between the single-motherhood and rising crime rates since 1955 is at best inconclusive and ignores other social changes which have occured during the same period.Chapter 8, investigates patterns of illicit activities within Green Fields, and focuses on the implications of such activities in terms of gender, resources and individual survival. The chapter shows that the women of the estate, if they break the law, do so in order to provide adequately for their children, and even then their illicit activities are on a very small scale. In Green Fields women's primary identity is tied up with the role of 'motherhood'. Women define, justify and legitimise their own actions and those of other women in terms of their perceived qualities as mothers, and utilise whatever opportunities, illicit or otherwise, that are available in order to provide for their children. The role of traditional working class motherhood, in which women have always had primary responsibility for child care, has been extended to include making financial provision for their children in the absence of support from fathers. It is from this that they derive their self-esteem and self-respect.Chapter 9, in conclusion, explains the implications of the previous chapters, and in particular the social networks, in terms of individual survival and identity. Despite their impoverished circumstances, the majority of women are able to maintain traditional bonds of parenthood, female friendship networks and their social identity. The minority who are not able to do so are disabled not by men, but by other women who exclude them from the female social networks from which important material and other support is derived.The chapter also discusses how the men of Green Fields have become peripheral to domestic and family life, and that this has led to a crisis of identity for men. The traditional construction of working-class gender roles in which men provided for and dominated their partners and children has changed to one in which poor women, through the welfare system, are financially better placed than men and often better off without them. Nonetheless, men can and do bring resources (through crime) into the estate and these resources, directly and indirectly, benefit some women and children.

This study examines the impact of free time activities and companions on juvenile delinquency in the city of Riyadh, in the context of social change in Saudi society as a whole, as new forms of leisure and recreation seem to have arisen as a result of the process of urbanization taking place in the country.The field work was conducted in 1990-91 in the Social Observation Home in Riyadh. Social survey and case study methods were employed in the research.The findings of the study show that the major factors influencing juvenile delinquency in the city of Riyadh, fall into four groups concerning: the family, the school, the community and the society. As expected, the recent economic growth in Saudi Arabia has had a particular influence upon the situation of the youth in the society, in various social and cultural aspects, as a result of the cultural contact with foreigners in and outside the Kingdom and other factors.It is found that the peer-group has a strong influence on its members through many aspects of play, enjoyment, friendship and passing time which may, eventually, lead them to misbehaviour and delinquency. The impact of delinquent companions is visible from many indications: a) The majority of the sample had committed their offences in groups. b) A large number of them mentioned the desire to follow or please friends as the reason for committing the offence. c) Most importantly, about two thirds of the whole sample reported that they had friends with a previous history of delinquency.

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The study reported here was designed to analyse the social and economic conditions underlying the development of class relations in an Egyptian industrial town, al-Mehalla al-Kubra. The research was directed at understanding social and economic relations among groups in the textile industry in al-Mehalla in terms of the reality which exists there, without a priori assumptions regarding the nature of groupings in that community. In investigating the socio-economic conditions underlying the development of class relations, the question of to what extent there is class alignment, class identity and class consciousness is emphasised. Very little such work has ever been done in the Middle East, and it is hoped that the findings of this study will prove useful in illuminating some of the processes of development in the region as a whole. Al-Mehalla provides a particularly good setting for the study and analysis of industrial development and the emerging of certain classes and class conflict. A large, modern industrial centre, it has a long history of textile production. Not only is the transformation of the town due to industrialisation completely within the memories of many living informants, which is of great importance given the absence, of documentation on working and social conditions in earlier years, but various phases in the development of the industry can still be seen in operation. Quite apart from its interest as a case of industrialisation in Egypt, al-Mehalla merits close study because it is inherently fascinating as a community. As will become clear in the course of this study, developments there in many ways contradict commonplace assumptions about the nature of Egyptian industry and Egyptian character. It is a vital, active, committed community of weavers whose history and patterns of social relations throughout the period of industrialisation must be documented at the micro-level now or not at all. Also, in order to meaningfully evaluate the development of al-Mehalla and its contemporary reality, it is imperative to analyse its past history. This thesis is therefore intended primarily as an anthropological study which may serve future social historians as well.Although there is a growing body of sociological studies on urban Egypt, only a handful of these have dealt with class and related topics such as class conflict and class consciousness. Those which do attempt to deal with these phenomena can be broadly classified into two groups: studies which take an economic determinist position (roughly, a Marxist orientation), and those which seek cultural explanations of variables associated with class. The studies in both categories leave something to be desired, though for somewhat different reasons. The present study seeks to overcome these limitations in the literature by examining present-day social relations in the textile industry of al-Mehalla from a broad perspective. Clearly the relations between workers and managers or owners cannot be dealt with properly if they are isolated from the wider socio-economic structure in which they are located, and from the historical development of the Egyptian economy as a whole. On the other hand, questions about class formation and class conflict cannot be understood merely on the basis of gross statistics related to the national economy. Rather, the dynamics of the process must also be investigated at the microlevel. The question of class identity and class relations in Egypt is a very complex one, requiring an elaborate framework for analysis. No pre-established body of theory can be assumed to be suitable for such analysis, although certainly various Western schools of thought regarding social class have much to contribute to the analysis. Nevertheless, these bodies of theory remain, so far as Egypt is concerned, empirically unverified. My main concern, therefore, is to provide as broad a view as possible, in order to highlight the significant elements in the class-relation development in al-Mehalla. Thus from the outset emphasis has been on investigating the complementarity between the macro-level and the micro-level of society. While the research was designed to account for present-day patterns of class relations, a full understanding of these relations requires an examination of the historical development of the industry and the patterns of social relations which developed along with patterns of production, with an analysis of the manner in which international and national economic and political forces have influenced developments within the community of al-Mehalla. Such concern with the impact of external forces and events in no way implies that the community itself may be seen as passively responding to external occurrences. Rather, examination of the dynamics of community responses and adaptations helps to bring to light the linkages which exist, with differential intensity and consequences, between macro-level structures and micro-level processes. This in turn enhances the subjectively-oriented investigation of the various groupings within the textile industry, and an evaluation of, the class structure and the positions of individuals within this structure in terms of people's own definitions and perceptions.

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Alcohol-related problems are a worldwide phenomenon and, in the latter part of the twentieth century, have generated substantial academic interest. Some of this research has focussed on the alcohol use and misuse of young people. The present thesis falls squarely into this area, bringing to the investigation of adolescent drinking behaviour an emphasis on family environment from recent studies into problem drinking. The aim of this study, therefore, was to increase understanding of the formation of early drinking patterns by investigating perceived family socialization factors associated with self-reported adolescent alcohol use and misuse. The results should have implications for alcohol education and intervention strategies in the U.K.. Research into problem drinking and drug use/misuse, previous adolescent drinking research, developmental psychology, social psychology, family psychology, family systems and the sociology of deviance all informed this thesis, by contributing to the development of a theoretical model of family socialization influences on adolescent drinking behaviour. Two main areas of family environmental influence are outlined in this model, and demographic and structural variables form a third component of the model. In this study, family process behaviours are viewed as those aspects of family relationships and interactional styles which are important in the socialization of adolescent behaviours and the internalization of norms, are non-alcohol specific, and are characterized by two major dimensions of family functioning - support and control. Underlying the role of alcohol-specific family behaviours in the development of adolescent drinking is family social learning, which is characterized by family models and social reinforcement for drinking. The main study involved administering a fully piloted questionnaire to a large, cross-sectional, random sample of school students, aged 11-18, in Humberside (N=4386). In addition, a small number of semi-structured interviews were carried out, and each written up as a case study, to supplement the quantitative questionnaire data. Data from the questionnaire were analyzed on three levels. Descriptive statistics are presented and comparisons made with information from previous studies. ANOVA's tested for disordinal interactions and for nonlinear effects of family socialization variables on adolescent drinking behaviour. As no marked non-linear patterns or disordinal interactions were found a third level of analysis was carried out, involving structural equation modelling techniques. The main results from the study are summarized below: (i) As expected, both heavy drinkers and non/very light drinkers were more likely to report extreme patterns of family socialization behaviours. Low support and control, indifferent parents and more frequent family drinking were all linked with more self-reported adolescent drinking, whilst high support and control, disapproving parents and non/light family drinking were all linked with less adolescent drinking. The family profile linked with normative levels of adolescent drinking was moderate support and control, a moderating parental attitude, and moderate (mid-range) family drinking. (ii) Multivariate analyses pointed to the predominantly independent and additive effect of each family socialization variable on adolescent drinking behaviour. (iii) On the whole, family social learning variables, particularly parental attitude, were more important statistical predictors of adolescent drinking behaviour than family process variables. (iv) Contrary to predictions, when each school year/sex group was examined separately, an interesting transitional effect was found. For younger males and females, family social learning variables were significant predictors of drinking behaviour, but family process variables were not. However, in older year groups, the effect of family support and control on , drinking behaviour increased whilst, in a complementary fashion, the effect of family models and, in particular, parental attitude, decreased. (v) As expected, knowledge of friends' drinking predicted the respondent's drinking behaviour, but the impact and pattern of family socialization influences on drinking behaviour was not moderated by this peer influence variable. In addition, knowledge of friends' drinking was not as important, statistically, as family social learning influences. The thesis concludes by discussing the above findings and commenting on the generalizability of the results and the implications of the results for current alcohol education paradigms and for future research. The value of the family socialization model for the investigation of other adolescent

In this thesis I examine globalisation as an ongoing social change to understand how it is routinely reproduced by social actors. To do this I consider the impacts of globalisation in an existing social setting and use a conceptual framework from the sociological literature to interpret and explain the evidence. The empirical materials were gathered during an ethnographic case study of The Vegetarian Society - an interest group that actively promoted social change by presenting everyday individual food consumption in the manner of reflexive 'life politics'. I use the concepts of 'interpenetration', 'relativisation', 'detraditionalisation' and 'institutional reflexivity' to indicate that processes of globalisation were routinely reproduced as contexts and consequences of the organisation's motivated social activity. I define globalisation as a change evident in individual consciousness, social systems and in the reflexive relation between them and accordingly, the findings centre on three issues. The first is the use of global images and language in the promotional literature (instrumentally recontextualised to promote vegetarianism) and its relation to global consciousness. The second is the relations between The Vegetarian Society and other agents within globalised social systems (where negotiations to initiate change often required compromise and pragmatism) and the contribution to systemic reproduction. The third is The Vegetarian Society's changing role (as vegetarianism entered the 'mainstream') where it was reflexively repositioning to continue achieving its aims in a 'post-traditional' (global) social order. The Vegetarian Society was enabled and constrained by these intersecting processes of globalisation as it continued to instigate change within globalised social structures (evident in changing opportunities and emerging dilemmas). In this case study, ongoing globalisation was produced and reproduced as an unintended consequence of a social actor's purposeful, localised activity.

No description available.