Martyrdom is a controversial and disputed concept. Just as religion is often hijacked by politics, martyrdom is frequently ascribed to a narrow, partisan, and parochial foundation. This is the first book to present varied views on the topic of martyrdom, reaching beyond cliches and simplistic explanations to provoke deep consideration of the essential nature of human beings and society. The volume's authors--experts in the disciplines of psychology, theology, and politics--examine martyrdom in thoughtful and thought-provoking chapters. A closing conversation between the authors is designed to inspire further discourse and debate.

Readers engaged in the exploration of social justice, conflict, psychology, religion, and the politics of memory will find this book unique and stimulating. The authors have appeared on public television and public radio, as well as ABC, CBS, and NBC news and discussion programs.

This book presents cutting-edge research and theory in the emerging field of the indigenous psychology of religion. Its authors examine the influence of colonization and illustrate the use of novel research methodologies utilised in studies with communities in India, Korea, China, Indonesia, America, and Poland. Whereas Western psychology has traditionally viewed religion through an institutional lens and from a Euro-American perspective, this book aims to facilitate an understanding of indigenous spiritualities on their own terms and from the indigenous people's lived experience. In doing so, the contributors seek to support indigenous communities in the recovery of their voice, original vision, and ancient practices, and to follow their yearning as echoed in T. S. Eliot's words: "In my beginning is my end." The book is replete with examples of this recovery of indigeneity in, for example, Chinese notions of harmony and resilience; cultural differences in hearing the voice of the divine; the influence of animism on Christians in Korea; and in savoring the bereavement of loved ones. This novel collection presents fresh insights for students and scholars of the psychology of religion, indigenous studies, cultural psychology, and anthropology.

This scholarly and personal exploration of what it is like to grow up feeling unloved describes personality types and syndromes that often manifest, regardless of whether the family unit was "dysfunctional" or not. Though recent decades have seen a great deal of discussion on the "dysfunctional" family, many people share a different problem, regardless of whether their family was "functional" or not: they are never given love, or taught how to receive it. This book will establish the concept of the loveless family by investigating scholarship on the subject as well as through the personal reflections and experiences of author Jon P. Bloch. The Loveless Family: Getting Past Estrangement and Learning How to Love explains what a loveless family is, some of the typical syndromes seen within it, how families may cope with serious physical or mental issues, and how adults who came from a loveless family can develop meaningful relationships. This book is written to be engaging and accessible to the average reader, yet authoritative and also of value to scholars. In-depth examinations of seven personality types and syndromes that manifest in the loveless family Bibliographic reference sources A subject index

Personal narrative and its significance for social change is a prominent topic in the psychological and wider social sciences. Yet while the importance of narrative for social change is commonly assumed by narrative researchers, no single text addresses it exclusively and from a variety of scholarly perspectives. Stories Changing Lives explores the strong and qualified significance of personal stories and how they catalyze and contribute to social change. The first of the book's three sections examines the embeddedness of personal narratives within larger narratives, and how these narratives shift towards justice. The second section considers how narrative language supports and generates social change. Finally, the concluding section addresses the ways in which re-narrations of the past taking place in the present, and narrations of the future using the present and past, impact social change. Stories Changing Lives sets out the theory and methodology underpinning a range of narrative projects that are committed to progressive change, delineating the strengths and limitations of that research. Chapters focus on projects in Africa, South and North America, and Europe, and bring to the fore the multiplicity of stories, narrative multimodalities, and the importance of intersectionality; they also highlight the interdisciplinarity, historical reach, and transnationalism of narrative research. This volume will further develop our understanding of generating narratives and pursuing social change as two intertwined processes that exemplify the personally and socially transformative characteristics of politics.

This book pioneers evidence-based research on healthy aging through the application of self determination theory (SDT). Its uniqueness is located in the fact that to date, no other work has applied SDT to the empirical study of aging populations. The authors focus on how SDT drives healthy, successful and active aging, and note that the motivation factors underpinning healthy aging are often neglected, or altogether absent, in the existing literature. This edited volume is particularly timely given the expanding aging crisis in many North American, European and Asian contexts. The collection of chapters meets this challenge head-on in comparing these contexts vis-a-vis a broad international scope, and subsequent discussions on important specialty issues in aging, such as hearing and memory loss. The work offers global perspectives on aging, autonomy and associated life challenges, as well as factors relating to the sustainability of healthy aging in terms of physical and mental well-being. This book will be highly relevant to researchers in the SDT community, as well as specialists in aging and gerontology. It will also be of interest to lifespan psychologists and developmental psychologists.

This highly original new book addresses the mobility of diplomats, an important facet of migration flows in the modern world. Diplomatic mobility has had a profound effect on family arrangements, working lives, and future plans. But despite being one of the earliest forms of expatriation, very little is known about the experiences of wives of diplomats who decided to embark on this journey alongside their husbands. This book gives them a voice by exploring their experiences as "Wives of Diplomats" across diplomatic assignments. Data is collected from eight participants using semi-structured interviews and analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). In light of the rapid growth in globalization, mobility and expatriation, researchers have advocated for the re-examination of personal identity. The concept of frequent relocation has raised many basic questions over the management of identity: Who am I? Which dimensions of my identity do I want to preserve, and which parts can I let go or change? Where do I belong? How do I experience my identity in foreign countries? How can I manage this sense of self and help those whom I love manage their own identities? Real Housewives of Diplomacy sheds new and original light on these issues by focusing on the experiences, feelings, and meanings of women who decided to accompany their spouses on diplomatic assignments. Its main focus is on the implications of multiple relocations for the identities of Wives of Diplomats and their relevance to counseling psychology. It demonstrates that their experiences are a novel but relevant phenomenon that has never before received proper psychological investigation. The book's inquiry will adopt a phenomenological philosophical standpoint that puts human experiences and meaning at the center of understanding, both for psychology and for diplomacy.

Gathering leading thinkers in social and clinical psychology, public health, medicine, and sociology, Interpersonal Relationships and Health considers theoretical and empirical issues relevant to understanding the social and clinical psychological mechanisms linking close relationship processes with mental and physical health outcomes. The volume arises out of a recent explosion of interest, across multiple academic and research fields, in the ways that interpersonal relationships affect health and well-being. This volume pulls together a range of scholars who focus on different aspects of relationships and health in order to encourage both collaboration and cross-disciplinary initiatives. This is the first edited volume to pull together noted experts across myriad disciplines whose research is at the intersection of human relationships and health. Topics addressed include key biological processes that influence and, in turn, are influenced by close relationships. Interpersonal Relationships and Health presents research that demonstrates the connections between interpersonal relationships, mental and physical health outcomes, and biophysical markers that figure prominently in the fields of psychoneuroimmunology, endocrinology, and cardiology. In addition, it highlights recent work on marital, family, and social relationships and their interplay with health and well-being. Chapters also address sexual health among young and older adults, as well as clinical intervention efforts that focus on the role of relational factors in influencing health. Each chapter highlights extant theoretical and empirical findings and suggests future avenues for research in this burgeoning area.

According to the author, in Australia, men drink alcohol as a mark of masculinity, and women take care of drinking men as a part of normative femininity. And while research on alcoholics and alcoholism is common, very few studies consider the lives of the women who are married to alcoholics. Here, Zajdow details and explores the lives of such women who belong to Al-Anon, where they may share their experiences and offer their stories in a nonthreatening and supportive environment. The author presents the narratives of these women in the context of her analysis of the self-help group to demonstrate how people construct and reconstruct their lives as coherent stories about themselves, and to show how these self-stories can be changed and reconceptualized within the context of the group. Unique in its examination of self-stories offered within a self-help group, this book challenges sociological knowledge about the way these mutual-aid groups operate as communities of interest and help.

Zajdow begins by laying the groundwork through a discussion of the professional and lay discourses on women's relationships to alcoholic men. She then provides the basis for using self-stories to examine a group of people, the individuals in the group, and the behavior of the group in general. A history of Al-Anon as a self-help group is also detailed, and the author compares the Australian meetings to meetings in other parts of the world. The stories themselves are then examined and discussed in terms of how they relate to group processes and individual change through Al-Anon. Tracing the way that these women move from a place of despair to one of hope and meaningful change, this also represents a sociological exploration of gender, families, and communities.

This first-of-its-kind volume brings discursive psychology and peace psychology together in a compelling practical synthesis. An array of internationally-recognised contributors examine multiple dimensions of discourse-official and casual, speech, rhetoric, and text-in creating and maintaining conflict and building mediation and reconciliation. Examples of strategies for dealing with longstanding conflicts (the Middle East), significant flashpoints (the Charlie Hebdo case), and current heated disputes (the refugee 'crisis' in Europe) demonstrate discursive methods in context as they bridge theory with real life. This diversity of subject matter is matched by the range of discursive approaches applied to peace psychology concepts, methods, and practice. Among the topics covered: Discursive approaches to violence against women. The American gun control debate: a discursive analysis. Constructing peace and violence in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Discursive psychological research on refugees. Citizenship, social injustice, and the quest for a critical social psychology of peace. The emotional and political power of images of suffering: discursive psychology and the study of visual rhetoric. Discourse, Peace, and Conflict offers expansive ideas to scholars and practitioners in peace psychology, as well as those in related areas such as social psychology, political psychology, and community psychology with an interest in issues pertaining to peace and conflict.

Digital technologies are deeply embedded in everyday life with opportunities for information access and perpetual social contact now mediating most of our activities and relationships. This book expands the lens of Cyberpsychology to consider how digital experiences play out across the various stages of people's lives. Most psychological research has focused on whether human-technology interactions are a 'good' or a 'bad' thing for humanity. This book offers a distinctive approach to the emergent area of Cyberpsychology, moving beyond these binary dilemmas and considering how popular technologies have come to frame human experience and relationships. In particular the authors explore the role of significant life stages in defining the evolving purpose of digital technologies. They discuss how people's symbiotic relationship with digital technologies has started to redefine our childhoods, how we experience ourselves, how we make friends, our experience of being alone, how we have sex and form romantic relationships, our capacity for being antisocial as well as the experience of growing older and dying. This interdisciplinary book will be of great interest to scholars and practitioners across psychology, digital technology and media studies as well as anyone interested in how technology influences our behaviour.

Although New England boarding schools have been educating America's elite for four generations, they, along with their privileged students, rarely have been the subject of study. Living in a senior boys' dorm at a co-ed school, Sarah Chase was able to witness the inner workings of student culture and the dynamics of their peer groups. In an environment of ivy-covered buildings, institutional goals of excellence and aspirations to Ivy League colleges, the boys and girls acted extremely masculine or feminine. While girls typically worked themselves into a state of sleep deprivation and despair during exam period, the boys remained seemingly unconcerned and relaxed. As much as the girls felt pressure to be "cute" and "perfect," the boys felt pressure to be "bad ass" and the "best at everything." Tellingly, the boys thought that "it would suck" to be a girl, while over one third of the girls wanted to be male if given the chance.
From her vantage point of sitting in the back of the football and field hockey buses, attending prom and senior pranks, and listening to how students described their academic and social pressures, competition, rumors, backstabbing, sex, and partying, Chase discovered that these boys and girls shared similar values, needs and desires despite their highly gendered behavior. The large class, ethnic and individual differences in how the students perform their genders reveal the importance of culture in development and the power of individual agency. This book examines the price of privilege and uncovers how student culture reflects and perpetuates society and institutional power structures and gender ideologies.

Over the past several decades, researchers as well as social policymakers and educators have acknowledged the importance that fathers play in their children's lives. A good deal of research on fathering has been conducted among Euro-American families in North America. However, our understanding of fathering across various ethnic groups remains limited. Throughout Canada and the United States, the immigrant population has been growing rapidly. Currently, no book has delineated the field of immigrant fathering from a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary perspective which includes theory, research, and social policy. Researchers are widely recognizing that the theoretical frameworks and models of parenting, and more specifically, fathering, that were based on Euro-American families may not be relevant to other ethnic groups. As researchers refine theoretical and methodological approaches to understand fathering within sociocultural contexts, they become more cognizant of the varying meanings of parenting between and within ethnic groups. On New Shores extends the understanding of fathering in ethnic minority families and specifically focuses on immigrant fathers an area which has remained fairly unchartered. The book provides readers with a richer and more comprehensive approach to how researchers, practitioners, and social policymakers can examine fathering among ethnic minority families."

Housing fulfills a basic human need for shelter. It protects us from the weather and from hostile intruders. Often it is an expression of personal identity and social status. A home is a major personal financial investment and housing is an important part of the economy. The home is also invested with profound psychological and social meaning. It helps meet our needs to feel rooted and to belong. It is a center of privacy, a refuge from the world, and at the same time the place where we interact with our family, friends, and acquaintances. As such the home is an important factor in personal and social development, particularly in childhood.

Because of the complex role of housing in human life, residential environments are an important area of study in a wide variety of fields, including anthropology, architecture, economics, environmental design, geography, psychology, and sociology. The dwelling is the nucleus around which the discourse about residential environments is articulated, but it is not its only component. Residential environments also involve other elements such as the neighborhood, neighbors, and the larger urban community. This multidisciplinary study of residential environments conveys the complex nature of people's experiences with thier residences, neighborhoods, and communities.

This book will make a first contribution to identify the gaps in current practices and provide alternative mechanisms to conceptualize professionalism that is reflective of changing requirements, culture, and demographics of the contemporary military force.The military profession promotes the development, sustainment, and embodiment of ethos, which guides conduct across operational contexts, from times of national and international crises and security challenges (e.g., war, natural disasters, and peace support operations). It is imperative for military leaders to understand how ethos and doctrine shape professional frameworks, which guide the conduct of military members.

The lack of language to identify emotional abuse and its aftermath among couples is a major barrier to recognition and treatment. From Charm to Harm breaks down this barrier by providing simple words and definitions that name and explain harmful interactions between intimate partners. Many of these interactions, although emotionally toxic, are hard to distinguish from the normal experience of being in a relationship. From Charm to Harm will empower you to recognize and describe the psychological destruction wrought by an intimate partner who claims to love you. It will provide you with ways to protect yourself and your loved ones in current and future relationships. Determine if your mate is emotionally abusive, the effects on you, and how you may be enabling the abuse. Find out how and why charm turns to harm when one partner has a deep-seated need to control the other partner. Discover why people abuse their lovers, why their lovers allow it, how it happens, and its aftermath. Learn how easy it is to get caught up in the oppressive cycle of emotional abuse and how you might be contributing to your own suffering. Learn how to stand up to an abusive partner, get treatment for both partners, and make the choice to leave or stay in the relationship. From Charm to Harm will help you stop the cycle of emotional abuse and claim your right to be loved and respected by your mate.

Autism is a complex phenomenon that is both individual and social. Showing both robust similarities and intriguing differences across cultural contexts, the autism spectrum raises innumerable questions about self, subjectivity, and society in a globalized world. Yet it is often misrepresented as a problem of broken bodies and disordered brains. So, in 2015, a group of interdisciplinary scholars gathered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for an intellectual experiment: a workshop that joined approaches from psychological anthropology to the South American tradition of Collective Health in order to consider autism within social, historical, and political settings. This book is the product of the ongoing conversation emerging from this event. It contains a series of comparative histories of autism policy in Italy, Brazil, and the United States; focuses on issues of voice, narrative, and representation in autism; and examines how the concept of autism shapes both individual lives and broader social and economic systems. Featuring contributions from: Michael Bakan Benilton Bezerra Pamela Block M. Ariel Cascio Jurandir Freire Costa Barbara Costa Andrada Cassandra Evans Elizabeth Fein Clara Feldman Roy Richard Grinker Rossano Lima Francisco Ortega Dawn Prince-Hughes Clarice Rios Laura Sterponi Thomas S. Weisner Enrico Valtellina

Theorizing about the nature, control, and implications of adolescent development has been going on for at least 2000 years in Western culture, utilizing observational and essentially irrelevant and indiscriminate measurement research techniques. However, because these investigations were flawed by prejudgment and excessive subjectivity, the findings tended to be disorganized, irrelevant, incredible, non-explanatory and platitudinous. The most scientifically significant conceptual and research approach to adolescent development in my lifetime was made by Muzafer Sherif (Sherif

This book explores the contribution of discursive psychology and discourse analysis to researching the relationship between history and collective memory. Analysing significant manifestations of the moral vocabulary of the Romanian transition from communism to democracy, the author demonstrates how discursive psychology can be used to understand some of the enduring and persistent dilemmas around the legacy of communism. This book argues that an understanding of language as an action-oriented, world-building resource can fill an important gap in the theorizing of public controversies over individual and collective meaning of the recent (communist) past. The author posits that discursive social psychology can serve as an intellectual and empirical bridge that can overcome several of the difficulties faced by researchers working in transitional justice studies and cognate fields. This reflective book will appeal to students and scholars of transitional justice, discursive psychology, memory studies, and the sociology of change.

Providing an invaluable resource for scholars and researchers, this book investigates positive psychology and relationships theory and research across a range of settings and life stages-intimate, work, educational, senior/retirement, and in the context of diversity. Nearly universally, relationships are a key source of what we all seek in life: happiness, fulfillment, and well-being. The experts who contributed to this novel volume apply the framework of positive psychology to the findings of relationships research across a variety of practical contexts. What actions create and sustain respectful, caring, joyous, stimulating, and loving relationships? How do people rich in friendship, intimacy, and interpersonal skills think and behave? How do they unconsciously cultivate positive relationships? This book brings together authoritative reviews, cutting-edge research, and thoughtful scholarship that serve to answer these questions and document the benefit of positive relationships in a variety of settings and across the human life span. Following a comprehensive introduction, the book addresses positive intimate relationships, positive relationships at work, positive relationships during different stages of life (in youth, in adolescence, and among older adults), and positive relationships intersecting with diversity. The chapters underscore the simple concept that relationships are central to what makes life worth living and are fundamental to well-being across all life domains as they play out at home, in school, at work, in retirement homes, and in the community at large. Explores recent relationships research in the most important life domains and life stages-in romance and at work, during youth and in old age, and in contexts of diversity Brings together contributions from renowned leaders and prolific thinkers in positive relationships Presents science-based information that will be useful to scholars and students as well as general readers