Demoralization

The aim of this study was to investigate how individuals;who had been victims of school bullying;perceived their bullying experiences and how these had affected them;and to generate a grounded theory of being a victim of bullying at school. Twenty-one individuals;who all had prior experiences of being bullied in school for more than one year;were interviewed. Qualitative analysis of data was performed by methods from grounded theory. The research identified a basic process of victimising in school bullying;which consisted of four phases: (a) initial attacks;(b) double victimising;(c) bullying exit and (d) after-effects of bullying. Double victimising refers to a process in which there was an interplay between external victimising and internal victimising. Acts of harassment were repeatedly directed at the victims from their social environment at school – a social process that constructed and repeatedly confirmed their victim role in the class or the group. This external victimising affected the victims and initiated an internal victimising;which meant that they internalised the socially constructed victim-image and acted upon this image;which in turn often supported the bullies’ agenda and confirmed the socially constructed victim-image. The findings also indicate the possible positive effect of changing the social environment.

Prior research has yielded mixed findings regarding the relation of ostracism to prosocial behavior, with studies indicating ostracism leads people to become less prosocial, more prosocial, or that prosocial behavior is unaffected by workplace ostracism. By conceptualizing prosocial behavior at work as a social dilemma, we hypothesized that whether or not individuals reduce prosocial behaviors following ostracism can be understood by how individuals manage the conflict between the immediate temptation to treat others poorly and the long-term benefits of not giving in to such temptations. Across three studies – a scenario (Study 1), experimental (Study 2), and field study on employed adults (Study 3) – we find support for the hypothesis that individuals who are less (vs. more) oriented towards future outcomes engage in less prosocial behaviors with others who have ostracized them during prior interactions. We discuss both the practical and theoretical implications of these findings.

El estallido de la Gran Guerra supuso la implicación de toda la población nacional en el conflicto bélico, lo que derivó en su transformación como objetivo militar permanente para el enemigo. Con el comienzo de la Guerra Civil española este proceso se mantiene pero con un aumento exponencial de las víctimas, siendo una de sus causas la mejora de los bombardeos estratégicos. En este caso, se han querido investigar las acciones aéreas que llevaron a cabo los republicanos contra la retaguardia sublevada, analizando los planos y la forma en que se realizaron. De este modo, se podrá averiguar las razones por las que la Aviación republicana bombardeó ciudades alejadas del frente y las consecuencias que estos actos produjeron.

Teacher demoralization is a concept describing the negative emotional experiences affecting teachers’ well-being and quality of teaching. However, since the dominant discourse about teacher demoralization is influenced by psychological perspectives, especially the theory of burnout, most of effort to promote teachers’ well-being and quality of teaching reply on psychological approaches. Nevertheless, teacher demoralization is more socially constructed other than psychologically constructed. Thus, this study aims to identify the potential social causes instead of psychological roots of teacher demoralization. Using in-depth interview data, the study illustrates that school administration may, from teachers’ perspectives, structurally demoralize teachers by disempowering teachers to control over labor process of teaching and to appreciate the instructional values of work and working condition. Thus, school reformers are recommended to empower teachers to exercise control over labor process of teaching and to appreciate the instructional values of their work and working conditions.

"The introduction can be found on the uvk-website at URL: http://www.uvk.de/uploads/tx_gbuvkbooks/PDF_L/9783867643207_L.pdf.

Blurb/Klappentext: "Selbsttötungen provozieren. Sie stellen das menschliche Leben in Frage, erfordern eine Reaktion und bedürfen der Deutung. Warum hat sich ein Mensch das Leben genommen? Wie stehen wir als Gesellschaft dazu … und was sagt Gott?

Noch heute zeigt die gängige Bezeichnung ›Selbstmord‹ an, dass Selbsttötungen einst als Sünde und Verbrechen gesehen wurden. Am Beispiel Kursachsens wird gezeigt, wie Menschen in der Frühen Neuzeit Selbsttötungen deuteten und auf diese in ihrer Lebenswelt reagierten. Dabei wird gefragt, in welchem Verhältnis Praktiken und Normen zueinander standen und wie sich diese vom 16. bis zum frühen 19. Jahrhundert veränderten."

Reviews
6) Hiram Kümper, in: Zeitschrift für historische Forschung 40, 4 (2013), 712-714.

5) Stefan Kroll, in: Vierteljahrschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte 4/2013, 508.

4) Evelyne Luef in: H-Soz-u-Kult 2013-5-28
http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/rezensionen/2013-2-144

3) Magdalena Gehring in: Neues Archiv für Sächsische Geschichte 83 (2012), 315-317.

2) Gerhard Koebler in: ZIER (URL: http://www.koeblergerhard.de/ZIER-HP/ZIER-HP-02-2012/KaestnerAlexander-ToedlicheGeschichte%28n%29.htm)

1) it seems that amazon customers were the first reviewers, thank you :-)
http://www.amazon.de/product-reviews/3867643202/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt/278-5030501-8463041?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1"

Recently, the leitmotif of much anthropological writing became that of the virtue of precarity: the belief that people continue to exercise their ethical imagination in the most trying circumstances. While refreshingly non-deterministic, the Foucauldian approach to freedom that guides this vision neglects those situations in which people see their ability to be moral as irreparable, and structurally compromised. Such is the case of a Serbian firm selling spare car parts, where policies of financing unprofitable employment gradually involved workers in everyday, ritualized performances of productivity for the state – what I call mock-labour. Unable either to meaningfully fulfil or to renounce the ethos of work, workers remain in an affective blend of nonchalance and failure, experiencing mock-labour as both a source of material security and an abandonment of their creative capacities – a mocking of moral self. I call for a reconciliation of the anthropologies of ethics and precarity through the notion of demoralization, as a state in which the deficits of structural agency and the limits of reflective freedom overlap.

Objections to life extension often focus on its effects for individual well-being. Prominent amongst these concerns is the possibility that life extending technologies will extend lifespan without preventing the ageing of the mind. Writers on the subject express the fear that life extending drugs will keep us physically youthful whilst our minds decay, succumbing to dementia, boredom, and loneliness.

Generally these fears remain speculative, in part due to the absence of genuine life extending technologies. In this paper, however, I examine the implications of an existing life extension technology. Caloric restriction (CR) and drugs that mimic its effects, such as rapamycin, metformin and resveratrol have been shown to increase average and maximum lifespan in a wide variety of organisms, and seem likely to do so in humans. Moreover, some CR mimetic drugs (CRMs) are already widely used. This means that they present a pressing test case for fears about mental ageing in an extended life.

Misgivings about mental ageing can be divided into biomedical factors such as the likelihood of brain ageing, and psychological factors such as loss of meaning and boredom. I argue that studies of CR suggest that brain ageing will be beneficially slowed. However, it is less clear that deleterious aspects of psychological ageing can be similarly retarded. I argue that this reduces the desirability of life extension unless major social changes can be made.

The introduction of the Internet has given rise to a debate on whether online communication impacts positively or negatively on social adjustment and psychological well-being. Subjective well-being, whose assessments include both cognitive and affective components, refers to how people experience their lives in regard to dimensions of life satisfaction and positive emotions. However, two of the conditions affecting a person’s well-being are being associated with negative emotions: these are loneliness and depression. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate if depression and loneliness differed in relation to chatting habits among undergraduate students. Special focus was also on motivation behind, and time spent on chatting. Two hundred and twenty three undergraduate Physical Education students aged 18-22 years completed a self-report questionnaire, using 3 factors (Contacting friends, Social Compensation, Social Entertainment) for motivation and 2 items to measure time (how often, how long). Following, loneliness was measured with the UCLA Loneliness Scale developed by Russell (1996), whereas Depression was assessed with the Child Depression scale (Schoenbach, Kaplan, Grimson, and Wagner, 1982). Person correlation analyses were used for calculating associations among the variables examined. The results indicated that depression was significantly related to loneliness. Further, depression seems to be related to all three motivational factors while loneliness only seems to be related to social compensation. This supports the idea that different motivations for chatting have different relations to well-being depending on what aspects of well-being is being tested (at least for loneliness and depression). Regarding the time spent, only depression had a significant relationship with chatting in general. Students who felt more depressed used chatting both more often and longer than students who were less depressed. Students, who felt lonelier, used chatting neither more nor less often or longer than students who did feel less lonely.

Objectives: The aims of this study were to evaluate the prevalence of demoralization in a sample of end-of-life cancer patients’ family caregivers and investigate the association between demoralization and different factors, such as distress, hope, quality of life, and caregiver burden. Methods: The study used a cross-sectional design and 142 participants were sampled. Family caregivers were included if they were caring for a cancer patient in palliative care with a limited life expectancy. Socio-demographic data were gathered, and Italian versions of the following scales were administered: Demoralization Scale (DS), Herth Hope Index (HHI), Caregiver Reaction Assessment (CRA), Short Form-36 Health Survey (SF-36), and Distress Thermometer (DT). Results: The average total demoralization score was 29.04 (SD 1⁄4 13.62). 19.50% of caregivers was the low scorers at DS (0-25th percentile), 27.50% was the middle scorers (25th-75th percentile), and 39.00% was the high scorers (75th-100 percentile). 19.50% of the caregivers showed mild demoralization, 27.50% moderate demoralization, and 39.00% showed severe demoralization. Strong Moderate correlations were found between the total DS score and the Temporality and Future HHI subscale (r 1⁄4 .520); the HHI total score (r 1⁄4 .528); the Social functioning (r 1⁄4 .536) and Mental health (r 1⁄4 .675) SF-36 subscales. The HHI total score and the Mental health SF-36 subscale emerged as the main predictors of demoralization. Conclusions: The results show that not only end-of-life patients but also family caregivers may experience demoralization. This demoralization seems to be more associated to spiritual and psychological suffering rather than difficulties relating to caregivers’ personal time, social roles, physical states, and financial resources.

COVID-19 is changing lives. Less attention has been paid to the future of young people by governments since the onset of the pandemic. We suggest that young people are vulnerable to demoralization, a state of hopelessness and helplessness, during and post-COVID-19. This reflection drawn from journaling and ongoing reflexive conversation from December 2019 to April 2020 offers a critical perspective on the circumstances of young Australians that encompasses consideration of the structural factors that impact on health, life chances, equality and social justice as well as the personal aspects of reflection.

Висоцький О.Ю. Цинічна деморалізація суспільства в контексті сучасного політичного розвитку // Актуальні проблеми соціально-гуманітарних наук. Матеріали всеукраїнської наукової конференції. 7-8 жовтня 2012 р., м.Дніпропетровськ. Частина І. / Наук. ред. О.Ю.Висоцький. –
Дніпропетровськ: «Свідлер», 2012. – С.59-62.