The issue of psychological security within an increasingly unstable, interconnected world has become a defining challenge of modern individual and cultural life. The terror attacks of September 11, 2001 and the global financial crisis that unfolded in 2008 have intensified a sense of global and personal insecurity. This concern with psychological insecurity is reflected in contemporary culture, politics, the business world, consumer behavior, the arts, and other areas. Within this context, the psychological sciences have kept pace, vigorously investigating these issues. This handbook features the latest theory and research examining cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to security threats. It expands the conceptual focus from specific security threats to the broader range of antecedents, processes, and consequences of psychological security/insecurity. The chapters are organized into four content areas: personal security in individual contexts, personal security in interpersonal contexts, personal security with cultural and health contexts, and interdisciplinary analyses of personal security. They represent a new and vibrant area of research unified by the common goal of understanding the factors that shape a sense of personal security. Together, these provocative chapters provide specific starting points that will shape future theory, policy, and practice on this dominant social issue of the 21st Century and, more importantly, offer opportunities to connect social and personality psychology to its scientific kin.

The issue of psychological security within an increasingly unstable, interconnected world has become a defining challenge of modern individual and cultural life. The terror attacks of September 11, 2001 and the global financial crisis that unfolded in 2008 have intensified a sense of global and personal insecurity. This concern with psychological insecurity is reflected in contemporary culture, politics, the business world, consumer behavior, the arts, and other areas. Within this context, the psychological sciences have kept pace, vigorously investigating these issues. This handbook features the latest theory and research examining cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to security threats. It expands the conceptual focus from specific security threats to the broader range of antecedents, processes, and consequences of psychological security/insecurity. The chapters are organized into four content areas: personal security in individual contexts, personal security in interpersonal contexts, personal security with cultural and health contexts, and interdisciplinary analyses of personal security. They represent a new and vibrant area of research unified by the common goal of understanding the factors that shape a sense of personal security. Together, these provocative chapters provide specific starting points that will shape future theory, policy, and practice on this dominant social issue of the 21st Century and, more importantly, offer opportunities to connect social and personality psychology to its scientific kin.

"Carroll provides abundant evidence of the importance of the Longoria incident for Mexican Americans, for a rising Lyndon Johnson, for Texas politics, and, indirectly, for U.S. society. His insights ...have the potential of appealing to both historians and general readers, particularly those interested in Mexican American and/or Texas history." -- Julie Leininger Pycior, author of Lyndon Johnson and Mexican Americans: The Paradox of Power

Private First Class Felix Longoria earned a Bronze Service Star, a Purple Heart, a Good Conduct Medal, and a Combat Infantryman's badge for service in the Philippines during World War II. Yet the only funeral parlor in his hometown of Three Rivers, Texas, refused to hold a wake for the slain soldier because "the whites would not like it." Almost overnight, this act of discrimination became a defining moment in the rise of Mexican American activism. It launched Dr. He ctor P. Garci a and his newly formed American G.I. Forum into the vanguard of the Mexican civil rights movement, while simultaneously endangering and advancing the career of Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, who arranged for Longoria's burial with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

In this book, Patrick Carroll provides the first fully researched account of the Longoria controversy and its far-reaching consequences. Drawing on extensive documentary evidence and interviews with many key figures, including Dr. Garci a and Mrs. Longoria, Carroll convincingly explains why the Longoria incident, though less severe than other acts of discrimination against Mexican Americans, ignited the activism of a whole range of interest groups from Argentina toMinneapolis. By putting Longoria's wake in a national and international context, he also clarifies why it became such a flash point for conflicting understandings of bereavement, nationalism, reason, and emotion between two powerful cultures-- Mexicanidad and Americanism.

Beginning with the Spanish conquest, Mexico has become a racially complex society intermixing Indian, Spanish, and African populations. Questions of race and ethnicity have fueled much political and scholarly debate, sometimes obscuring the experiences of particular groups, especially blacks. Blacks in Colonial Veracruz seeks to remedy this omission by studying the black experience in central Veracruz during virtually the entire colonial period.

The book probes the conditions that shaped the lives of inhabitants in Veracruz from the first European contact through the early formative period, colonial years, independence era, and the postindependence decade. While the primary focus is on blacks, Carroll relates their experience to that of Indians, Spaniards, and castas (racially hybrid people) to present a full picture of the interplay between local populations, the physical setting, and technological advances in the development of this important but little-studied region.