Disempowering Minorities: A Critique of Wilkinson\u27s \u27Task for Social Scientists and Practitioners\u27

In this article, I examine Wilkinson\u27s (2000) injunction that practitioners omit entirely the \u27minority\u27 concept (pp. 124-25). I maintain that Wilkinson\u27s argument disempowers groups-such as gays and the disabledwho have used a minority identity effectively, and speciously indicates that African-Americans would benefit from such retrenchment, thereby implying that social justice is a zero-sum game. Rather, minority coalitions are effectively pursuing justice for all. Moreover, Wilkinson\u27s deconstruction of minority conflates conceptual breadth with conceptual vagueness, and conveniently ignores (or denies) the socially constructed character of race and ethnicity. I suggest that practitioners learn more about the historical development of all of these concepts and honor clients who self-identify as minority group members, lest they become alienated from them

Mental imagery and dreams : art therapy with visually impaired adolescents

Vision is considered to be the dominant sense modality in our society. Many of the colloquialisms we use tend to rely upon imagery that privileges sight. This exploratory study investigates visual imagery in relationship to the visually impaired. It questions whether creative expression can facilitate an articulation of mental imagery and dreams with this population. It reviews research in the areas of psychology, art education, art therapy, mental imagery, dreams and perception that has contributed insights into the art abilities of the visually impaired. Some of the primary findings in this literature demonstrate that those without sight have an understanding of perspective, occlusion, depth of field and motion. Additionally, research in the area of mental imagery shows that the visually impaired understand spatial knowledge in similar ways to sighted individuals. The dreams of the early and late blind demonstrate that both groups are able to perceive concrete spatial layouts while dreaming. Furthermore, absence of vision is shown to have no effect on the richness and narrative continuity of dreams. Art therapy is found to offer the visually impaired a space where they can communicate their dreams as well as their unique experiences through concrete visual forms. In turn, it serves as a vehicle through which the visually impaired enter into communication with the sighted world. Overall, this study offers insights into other methods of looking at and perceiving the worl

Race as stigma: positioning the stigmatized as agents, not objects

Using material from three qualitative studies into the social and psychological consequences of racism, this paper explores the insights gained from conceptualizing race as stigma. Not only does this shed light on the construction and contestation of racism in the lives of the research participants, the material presented raises important issues for a social psychology of stigma more generally. These include an assessment of the embodiment of stigma, the ideological construction of stigma within particular histories, the impact of stigma on identity and the ways in which we collectively contest and resist stigma. While acknowledging how stigma, particularly the stigma of race, acts to deny humanity, agency and liberty, I illustrate how stigma is collectively constructed, institutionalized and resisted in social and political relations. I conclude that a crucial part of the psychology of stigma must be a focus on the possibilities for communities to contest and transform representations and practices that stigmatize; that is, we need to explore the possibilities and conditions for stigmatized communities as agents and not (only) as objects or victims of stigma

Blood pressure responses to handgrip exercise but not apnea or mental stress are enhanced in women with a recent history of preeclampsia

Preeclampsia is a risk factor for future cardiovascular diseases. However, the mechanisms underlying this association remain unclear, limiting effective prevention strategies. Blood pressure responses to acute stimuli may reveal cardiovascular dysfunction not apparent at rest, identifying individuals at elevated cardiovascular risk. Therefore, we compared blood pressure responsiveness to acute stimuli between previously preeclamptic (PPE) women (34±5yr, 13±6 months postpartum) and women following healthy pregnancies (CTRL; 29±3yr, 15±4 months postpartum). Blood pressure (finger photoplethysmography calibrated to manual sphygmomanometry-derived values; PPE: n=12, CTRL: n=12) was assessed during end-expiratory apnea, mental stress, and isometric handgrip exercise protocols. Integrated muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) was assessed in a subset of participants (peroneal nerve microneurography; PPE: n=6, CTRL: n=8). Across all protocols, systolic blood pressure (SBP) was higher in PPE than CTRL (main effects of group all ). Peak changes in SBP were stressor-specific: peak increases in SBP were not different between PPE and CTRL during apnea (+8±6 +6±5mmHg, ) or mental stress (+9±5 +4±7mmHg, ). However, peak exercise-induced increases in SBP were greater in PPE than CTRL (+11±5 +7±7mmHg, ). MSNA was higher in PPE than CTRL across all protocols (main effects of group all ), and increases in peak MSNA were greater in PPE than CTRL during apnea (+44±6 +27±14burst/100hb, ) and exercise (+25±8 +13±11burst/100hb, ) but not different between groups during mental stress (+2±3 0±5burst/100hb, ). Exaggerated pressor and sympathetic responses to certain stimuli may contribute to the elevated long-term risk for cardiovascular disease in PPE