Consumer Culture, Identity and Well-Being: The Search for the 'Good Life' and the 'Body Perfect' (European Monographs in Social Psychology) Review

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(More customer reviews)Books like this walk a difficult line. How do you include enough detail about the scientific research to make the text worth the reader's time but not so much as to bore the layperson? It's a tough job. While I think some points were harped on for a bit too long, the book does a fairly good job overall of achieving the balance.

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Advertising, materialism and consumption are central aspects of contemporary Western culture. We are bombarded with idealised images of the perfect body, desirable consumer goods, and affluent lifestyles, yet psychology is only just beginning to take account of the profound influence these consumer culture ideals have on individuals’ sense of identity and worth.Consumer Culture, Identity, and Well-Being documents the negative psychological impact consumer culture can have on how individuals view themselves and on their emotional welfare. It looks at the social psychological dimensions of having, buying and wanting material goods, as well as the pursuit of media-hyped appearance ideals. In particular, it focuses on:the purchasing of material goods as a means of expressing and seeking identity, and the negative consequences of thispsychological buying motivations in conventional buying environments and on the Internetthe unrealistic socio-cultural beauty ideals embodied by idealized models. Throughout, different approaches from social psychology are integrated, such as self-completion, self-discrepancy and value theory, to create a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding the impact of internalising core consumer culture ideals on how individuals see themselves and the implications this has for their psychological and physical health.This book is of interest to anybody who wants to find out more about the psychological effects of living in modern consumer societies on children, adolescents, and adults. More specifically, it will be of interest to students and researchers in social psychology, sociology, media studies, communication and other social sciences, as well as to psychologists, health workers, and practitioners interested in the topics of identity, consumption pathologies, body image, and body-related behaviours.

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Black Feminist Voices in Politics Review

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(More customer reviews)Black Feminist Voices in Politics appears to be a book written based on a dissertation, which is a technical education document of public policy. The author is concerned that the political process recognized male or white female voices on feminism, but although there are some black females who would qualify, nothing of substance is attributed to them. The greatest benefit is to identify a sub-culture. But that point was missed or just wasn't her focus.
The real problem is that there is no such thing as Black Feminism. Black women ascribe to a philosophy that is greater than the tenants of Feminism. The author operationalizes some means of making hypotheses that just doesn't work for me. For example, economically "women" would have to be employed with a telephone to qualify as well as a registered voter, active in the political process. That disqualifies too many, especially since many black women have cell phones but no home phone. Many black women are unemployed, by choice.
Every time I think about the author seriously, I get upset but she wrote what would be accepted. This is a technical read. Maybe political scientists would benefit from it, but other social scientists would take serious issue with it. The attempt was good, but the author concedes the literature research on this topic is famished. Also, the title is too strong for its content.
Reviewed by: Gail

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Studies black feminist approaches to political science and African American women as political actors.

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Children Who Murder: A Psychological Perspective Review

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(More customer reviews)I liked this book a lot. It is a concise, thoughtful, and meticulously researched book that examines the causes and consequences of preteen homicide. It not only looks at traditional psychological factors, but expands the scope of the discussion to include moral reasoning and other sociological considerations. Geared towards a professional audience, though an educated lay person can get a lot from the book as well. A must read for anyone studying juvenile violence.

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Due to the extensive changes in family structure such as the increase of single parent families, a high divorce rate, and the decline of the extended family, support systems for young children are in decline. This decline disrupts the support systems' ability to shape children's prosocial values. Because of the fear of lawsuits and limited financial resources, community services and schools no longer provide the framework needed to balance changes in the contemporary family structure. This book provides insight into voids that have created social skills affecting this young population using an integrative approach to examine the casual factors of violent behavior in preteens. It offers suggestions for alleviating some of the causative factors that have created this nationwide problem.

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Adolescents after Divorce Review

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(More customer reviews)If interested in the more psychological aspect of divorce and how it is viewed by the children that are affected, read this book! It's applicable to a variety of audiences and offers a seldom-mastered look at what it means for an adolescent to live through their parents' divorce and how it affects him or her in a variety of ways. It's a great look at how adolescents' lives change after a divorce.

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Media Choice: A Theoretical and Empirical Overview Review

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(More customer reviews)If you are looking for an unique book on Media Choice, this is the only one comprehensive option. Today it is new, but it will be the standard for several years.

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This volume represents the next generation of research in media psychology, bridging selective exposure into a larger framework of choice in media usage. Considering the myriad media options available to use, this work seeks to answer such questions as: What mechanisms guide an individual's exposure to/choice of media? How can researchers model them? The questions why and how people decide to use media offerings are key in current communication scholarship. Research on selective exposure has addressed this area in the past, but the term 'media choice' is used here to represent any implicit/automatic/spontaneous or explicit/deliberate 'decisions' of the users and subsequent behavioral consequences that lead to a contact with a media stimulus.

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Nuclear Cardiac Imaging: Principles & Applications Review

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(More customer reviews)If you are looking for an easy to read and concise nuclear cardiology text book, then this is a book for you.
I wouldn't waste my time reading the physics part ( get the Chandra book)but otherwise this is a superb book for the clinician.
If you are a cardiology fellow setting for the nuclear cardiology boards you might want to consider using this book as your main text.

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Univ. of Alabama, Birmingham. Reference represents the technical aspects and clinical applications of nuclear imaging of the heart. Updated edition contains additional authors, a description of nonnuclear techniques, cost effectiveness, and special considerations in female patients. Color plates and halftone illustrations. Previous edition: c1996. DNLM: Heart--Radionuclide imaging.

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Immigration and Crime: The Effects of Immigration on Criminal Behavior (The New Americans) Review

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(More customer reviews)After reading this book for a Behavioral Science project, I found it statistically interesting, but boring otherwise.
If you need lots of statistics on Immigration and Crime, this is the book. Not written for the average Joe.
Joscelyn Lauren, Carmel CA

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Stowell examines the impact of immigration on violent crime.Crimiological theory, and particularly social disorganization theory, has held that immigration is inextricably linked to crime.Stowell tests whether patterns of neighborhood-level violence are partially attributable to the population characteristics of an area, and, in particular, to its nativity composition.His analyses offer both support for and challenges to social disorganization theory.Consistent with theoretical expectations, immigration is found to be indirectly associated with levels of violence.Little support, however, is found for the notion that immigrants are a largely homogeneous population, or that immigration is positively associated with property crime.The results call for a refinement of the disorganization theory, one that is sensitive to the differences among the foreign-born population and one that does not assume a negative impact of immigration on neighborhood social structure and violence.

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