This study synthesises three conceptual areas-identity, fictional television programmes and memory to examine what young people remember about their fictional television viewing and how it impacts their identity. Memory is used as a window through which long-lasting identity influencers can be analysed; this takes the analysis beyond the level of 'effects' to a more contextualised view. Focus group research and a quantitative overview work to uncover which fictional programmes stand out in young people's memory and why. Research further interrogates what events, characters or story lines young people recall and why these elements are important. The answers to these two research questions crystallises the ways in which South African youths' memories of fictional programmes impact their identity formation. The hypothesis that young South Africans remember that which directly affirms or contradicts their lived experience, is found to be partially true. Similarly, the second hypothesis that fictional memories of South African 15- to 20-year-olds impact youth identity through a direct link between memory selection, interaction and application is found to be fractionally substantiated. The final conclusion of the study is that while memories of fictional programmes do impact the identity of young people, it must be viewed within the larger context of lived experience. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2001.

Research on social judgment typically emphasizes one of three processes that enable unequivocal understanding of events with ambiguous causality. In the social influence perspective, people are susceptible to the interpretations offered by others. In the explicit attitudes perspective, people interpret events in line with their consciously held attitudes and values. In the implicit attitudes perspective, people interpret events in line with unconscious biases. The model investigated in the present study assumes that these processes vary in salience depending on people's mindset. Participants with low versus high implicit racial bias toward Blacks read a narrative concerning this altercation under either a lowlevel or a high-level mindset and then read a summary that blamed one of the parties or they did not read a summary. As predicted, low-level participants allocated responsibility to the African-American if they had a high implicit racial bias and to the White if they had a low implicit racial bias, regardless of the summary manipulation. Contrary to prediction, however, high-level participants' allocation of responsibility did not reflect their explicit prejudicial attitudes. Instead, they corrected for their implicit biases in their trait inferences and affective reactions, in line with research suggesting that a high-level mindset promotes self-regulatory processes in social judgment. / by Susan D. Sullivan. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

Introduction: There is a large literature across disciplines aimed at understanding the causes of the depression gap, defined as an excess of depression among women compared with men. Based on the totality of evidence to date, social stress appears to be an important explanation for the depression gap. Social stress theory highlights women’s disadvantaged social position relative to men, positioning gender differences in socio-economic opportunities as social stressors, while also acknowledging how gender socialization teaches women to respond to stressors in depressogenic ways from an early age. This dissertation applied social stress theory to better understand the social causes of the depression gap with three related aims. Aim 1 summarized the evidence for variation or stability in the depression gap in recent decades, through a systematic review and meta-regression of depression gap studies over time and by age. Aim 2 examined the evidence for a changing depression gap across birth cohorts, and tested the extent to which any changes over time were mediated by changing gender differences in education, employment, and housework rates, three indicators of broader trends in gendered social position through the 21st Century. Aim 3 examined whether women in the workforce with competing domestic labor roles were at increased risk of depression, and whether pro-family workplace benefits buffered the effects of competing roles. Methods: In aim 1, depression gap estimates were extracted through a systematic review of published literature (from 1982-present). Analytic datasets were comprised of 76 diagnostic-based estimates and 68 symptom-based estimates. For each dataset, meta-regression models estimated time and age variation in the depression gap, as well as the interaction between time and age group, to estimate the variation in the gap over time by age. Data from the National Longitudinal Surveys were utilized for aims 2 and 3. Depression was measured with the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CESD), and the depression gap was defined as differences in mean CESD scores for women vs. men. The aim 2 sample included 13,666 respondents interviewed from 1992-2014. Hierarchical mixed models estimated the magnitude of the gender depression gap over time, and its relationship with 10-year birth cohort (range: 1957-1994) and whether any variation was mediated by gender differences in: those with a college degree or more, those who were employed full-time, and the average number of hours spent doing housework per week. The sample in aim 3 was limited to employed women ages 17-57 (n=3993). Generalized estimating equations estimated the relationship between competing roles and depression, and the interaction between competing roles and pro-family employee benefits on depression. Interaction results were compared to models estimating the effect of non-family-related benefits on the relationship between competing roles and depression. Results: In aim 1, there was no evidence of change in the depression gap over time. Compared with the reference group (i.e., respondents ages 60+), the age effect was appreciable among the youngest age group (age 10-19) (RR=1.44; 95% CI=1.19, 1.74), but did not differ for any other age groups. The age by time interaction was elevated for youngest age group (RR=1.27; 95% CI=1.0, 1.61), suggesting that, compared to the oldest age group, the diagnostic depression gap had increased among the youngest ages from 1982 to 2017. There was no evidence of time changes among any other age group. Results were similar for symptom-based studies. In aim 2, there was a linear decrease in the depression gap by 0.18 points across birth cohort (95% CI= -0.26, -0.10). The results of the mediation analysis estimated that an increasing ratio of college degree attainment mediated 39% of the gender depression gap across cohorts (95% CI= 0.18, 0.78). There was no evidence of mediation due to changing employment or housework ratios. In aim 3, there was evidence that women in competing roles reported a 0.56-point higher CESD score (95% CI= 0.15, 0.97), compared with women not in competing roles. The interaction between pro-family benefits and competing roles was associated with CESD scores (B=-0.44, p=0.023). More specifically, among women without access to pro-family benefits, those in competing roles reported a 6.1 point higher CESD score (95% CI=1.14, 11.1), compared with those not in competing roles, however, among women with access to these benefits, there was no association between competing roles and CESD scores (difference=0.44; 95% CI=-0.2, 1.0). Results were similar for non-family-related benefits. Women in competing roles without non-family-related benefits reported a 3.59 point higher CESD score than those not in competing roles (95% CI=1.24, 5.95) while among women with access to these benefits, there was no association between competing roles and CESD symptoms. Conclusion: This dissertation provided evidence to partially support the hypothesis that the depression gap is changing over time and is meaningfully related to the social environment, through which gender roles, responsibilities, and opportunities available to women and men are defined and reinforced. The results of these studies suggest that the depression gap may be expanding and contracting over time for different age groups. Understanding the social causes of the depression gap is important to reduce the present and future burden of the depression gap, and to understand the fundamental processes through which depression disparities may be perpetuate or attenuated in adolescence and beyond.

Parents are the first source of a child's learning of her or his gender. In fact, sex-role stereotyping of infants by parents may occur within the first 24 hours of birth. This study examined the nature of parental stereotyping on the basis of their infant's sex by obtaining parents' descriptions of their newborn and toy and clothing preferences for their newborn. In 1974, Rubin found that parents responded stereotypically to their infants on the basis of sex. Following Rubin's interview approach, 50 parent pairs from two urban hospitals were asked to participate in a parent-infant study and were subsequently interviewed 24 hours postpartum. Parents were asked open-ended descriptive questions about their newborn, given a semantic differential scale of 18 bi-polar objectives, asked about the importance of others recognizing their baby's sex, and asked a set of questions relating to the preference of clothing and toy choices for their newborn. Findings suggest that parents do stereotype their infants on the basis of biological sex. Sons were more likely to be described as strong, perfect, big or big-featured and energetic,--while daughters received more descriptions that mentioned their eyes, skin, or facial features and were also more likely to be described as small, tiny, or weak. Parents of boys were also more likely to state a preference for gender-specific toys and clothing. Infant sex did not make a notable difference on the importance that parents attributed to others recognizing their baby's sex. Fathers were more likely to perceive and describe their daughters more stereotypically than were mothers of either daughters or sons. Further studies to investigate gender stereotyping and its consequences as well as the interplay between the macro and micro levels of gender relations in society are suggested.

Sexual excess is one of an increasing list of ‘excessive’ behaviours which have in recent times been pathologised by the psycho-medical establishment, increasing regulation and control of spheres previously accepted as ‘normal.’ This study analyses the genealogy of the events, institutions, organisations and individuals in post-World War II United States of America to the present which made it possible to think scientifically and nosologically about ‘excessive’ male sexual behaviour as ‘sexual addiction.’ / The grass-roots twelve-step ideologies of Alcoholics Anonymous in the mid-1970s gave birth to twelve-step programs for ‘sex addicts’ predicated on admitting powerlessness over sex and lust rather than over alcohol as the key to recovery as the first step. The publication of Patrick Carnes’ Out of the Shadows: Understanding and Treating Sexual Addiction in 1983 created the academic concept and discourse of sex addiction, which in turn paved the way for widespread scientific debate and investigation of the concept. The AIDS phenomenon offered a platform for many groups to highlight their own causes amid the chaos of illness and death. The sex addiction movement was one such group which made use of the hysteria by pathologising homosexuality and the gay lifestyle as symptomatic of ‘sexual addiction.’ This forged an inexorable conceptual nexus between sexual addiction and AIDS and death motifs, thereby legitimising the concept of sexual addiction as a harmful and often fatal disorder. / Analysis of psycho-medical and public discourse on the sex lives of two American presidents, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, in two different eras revealed changing understandings of male sexual excess. Journalistic mores, socio-cultural values and psycho-medical ideologies (or the lack thereof) played a great role in pathologising Clinton’s behaviour while leaving Kennedy’s, at the time of his presidency but not so in the decades following it, unscathed. / This study has far-reaching implications because sex is an issue affecting and involving people from all walks of life, irrespective of gender, race, colour, creed or religion. Analyses demonstrated how the sexual addiction movement’s assault on traditional conceptions of masculinity predicated on promiscuity as a rite of passage or envied and admired behaviour has precipitated a convergence of the genders in respect of prescriptive sexual behaviour. The pendulum of power is subtly shifting from males embracing notions of sexual liberation and sexual self-determination to mental health professionals whose new diagnostic labels pathologise and stigmatise.

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This narrative inquiry study explores the past and present relationships between the personal and professional experiences of teachers and their evolving teacher identities. In this study, I take on the role of participant-researcher to work together with two other teachers in my school to share and study our personal and professional stories of lived experience in order to better understand how our teacher identities might be evolving in response to the South African educational context. The diverse contexts from which we have journeyed frame the different experiences that we share. In considering the question of how teachers’ past lived experiences might have shaped our teacher identities, I identify political, social, educational and economic forces as well as teacher and family legacies that have emerged from our personal and professional narratives. In looking at the question of how teachers’ current professional experiences might be affecting our evolving teacher identities, I highlight the daily lives of the teachers in this study, their influences and experiences, their inter-personal relationships, their passion for their subject and finally their future expectations that may or may not bring about change. Overall, this study draws attention to the value of teachers examining the personal and professional experiences that they have had in order to understand why they take on and project the identities that they do and how these identities might evolve and change in response to new situations and challenges. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Edgewood, 2010.

Sexual excess is one of an increasing list of ‘excessive’ behaviours which have in recent times been pathologised by the psycho-medical establishment, increasing regulation and control of spheres previously accepted as ‘normal.’ This study analyses the genealogy of the events, institutions, organisations and individuals in post-World War II United States of America to the present which made it possible to think scientifically and nosologically about ‘excessive’ male sexual behaviour as ‘sexual addiction.’ / The grass-roots twelve-step ideologies of Alcoholics Anonymous in the mid-1970s gave birth to twelve-step programs for ‘sex addicts’ predicated on admitting powerlessness over sex and lust rather than over alcohol as the key to recovery as the first step. The publication of Patrick Carnes’ Out of the Shadows: Understanding and Treating Sexual Addiction in 1983 created the academic concept and discourse of sex addiction, which in turn paved the way for widespread scientific debate and investigation of the concept. The AIDS phenomenon offered a platform for many groups to highlight their own causes amid the chaos of illness and death. The sex addiction movement was one such group which made use of the hysteria by pathologising homosexuality and the gay lifestyle as symptomatic of ‘sexual addiction.’ This forged an inexorable conceptual nexus between sexual addiction and AIDS and death motifs, thereby legitimising the concept of sexual addiction as a harmful and often fatal disorder. / Analysis of psycho-medical and public discourse on the sex lives of two American presidents, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, in two different eras revealed changing understandings of male sexual excess. Journalistic mores, socio-cultural values and psycho-medical ideologies (or the lack thereof) played a great role in pathologising Clinton’s behaviour while leaving Kennedy’s, at the time of his presidency but not so in the decades following it, unscathed. / This study has far-reaching implications because sex is an issue affecting and involving people from all walks of life, irrespective of gender, race, colour, creed or religion. Analyses demonstrated how the sexual addiction movement’s assault on traditional conceptions of masculinity predicated on promiscuity as a rite of passage or envied and admired behaviour has precipitated a convergence of the genders in respect of prescriptive sexual behaviour. The pendulum of power is subtly shifting from males embracing notions of sexual liberation and sexual self-determination to mental health professionals whose new diagnostic labels pathologise and stigmatise.

This thesis presents a multi-sited and multi-scalar ethnography of the processes and practices through which producers attempt to designate food as heritage. Grounded in cultural geography, it adopts a cultural economy approach to addressing concerns within agro-food studies by joining in conversation notions of heritage, place-making and time. By underlining the intrinsic relation between articulations of time and constructions of place, this thesis further maps the alternative geographies of food. It engages with three overarching questions, drawing on research conducted within two heritage-based food initiatives in Mexico and Scotland, both linked to the Slow Food movement. These produce, respectively, a traditional sweet called pinole and 'real' bread. The thesis asks: what objectives are pursued through the heritagisation of food whereby various actors strategically coin foods as heritage? How is time articulated in the discourse of heritage food, and how do heritage food networks and producers understand time as a component of food quality? Finally, what senses of place emerge from the various uses of time as a quality in global, translocal and local heritage food discourses? This thesis explores Slow Food's heritage qualification scheme and the ensuing commodification of heritage food, as well as translocal networks, and practices of 'slow' production. Through empirical engagements it argues that the qualification of heritage foods is multifunctional and that various articulations of time enable small-scale producers to engage with a plethora of socio-economic and political issues. Numerous and at times conflicting constructions of place surface from the discourses woven around these two heritage products and problematise identity formation and narratives of the past linked to producers and communities. This thesis concludes that the constructions of place associated with heritage foods depend not only upon the authority and circumstances of actors articulating a heritage discourse, but also on the scale of the dissemination of that discourse, and on the notions and understandings of time associated with heritage and place.

Fernand Braudel (1972) in his study The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II suggested, among other things, that the Mediterranean world despite its differences should be conceived of as a unit. The present study is not an attempt to challenge Braudel's entire work on historical, empirical or pragmatological grounds, but an effort to question the unitary and totalitarian conception of the Mediterranean region. Specifically, I explore how a small Mediterranean town, Rethemnos, Crete, Southern Greece, was theorized on the back of this widespread conception that wants the Mediterranean to be a unit, and how a differential reading of the town is possible once various theories and conceptions of postmodernism and poststructuralism are put forward with respect to Rethemnos. I will be drawing on theories of the consumer society (Jean Baudrillard's and Zygmunt Bauman's analyses) in an attempt to document that Rethemnos is a society that is currently organized by recourse to the internal contradictions of the consumer society and on theories of the event and the subject (Alain Badiou's analysis) in order to explain that the Rethemniot subject is undecidable and bound to truth procedures as long as there is an event named after an intervention. Prior to that, I will be challenging, with respect to how the Greek subject was depicted on the back of the unitary fashion of conceiving of the Mediterranean region, a variety of studies of anthropological origin, based on Greece; and I will be also criticizing with respect to how the Greek social formation was dissected, on the back of the same unitary fashion, a variety of other studies of politico-economic origin this time, based on Greece as well, by focusing and drawing on certain aspects of Jacques Derrida's deconstructive strategies and Gilles Deleuze's and Felix Guattari's geo-philosophy's lines of flight.