Improving HIV prevention programs: the role of identity in shaping healthy sexual behavior of rural adolescents in South Africa

A large body of literature highlights the role of culture and identity in how individuals manage and maintain health. Disappointingly there was no statistically significant decline in HIV prevalence in the 15–24 years age group in South Africa since 2007, Millennium Development Goal 6 indicator. This warrants a new approach to youth HIV prevention, which considers identity and culture, in male-dominant environments. We used identity-based motivation theory, which predicts that possible identities have a crucial influence on health-promoting behavior, to argue that girls are not currently attaining their low risk possible identities because sociocultural factors influence their behavior and compromise their health and economic outcomes. This study employed a cross-sectional survey among 285 rural black South African adolescents (mean age 16.7 years; 48.8% boys) to determine the salient social identity and the associated possible identities. We then tested whether youth behave in accordance with their possible identities. The dependent variables are non-risky behavior, risky behavior, and confidence to discuss sex. The independent variables are age, previous sex experience, and poverty. The adolescents chose gender as the most prominent social identity. Girls chose a safer possible identity than boys did, and girls do not actualize their possible identities while boys do. For girls, no dependent variables were significant. These results show that sociocultural barriers prevent the girls from actualizing their non-risky possible identity. Future adolescent HIV prevention programs aimed at reducing HIV should promote rights and responsibilities and consider cultural norms and beliefs to create a more gender-equal society that embraces less risky sexual behavior, in line with the idealized identity of girls. This to convince both male and female adolescents of the benefits, risks, and social harms embedded in certain traditional practices in a high HIV-prevalent environment

Boundary lines between Private and Public Care; Living independently at home or in a home.

This Deliverable 5.4 ETHOS’ Workpackage 5, ‘Justice as lived experience’. Its aim is to analyse the divide between the public and private domain as a fault line of justice in the area of social policy, with special focus on issues of moral obligations and (inter)dependency. It compliments Deliverable 5.3 that explicitly focused on the subjective experiences elderly and disabled persons and their caregivers who all might be vulnerable to injustice

Social capital and job search behaviour of long-term welfare recipients"

Purpose – Long-term welfare recipients in the Netherlands are either long-term unemployed or part-time employed in jobs that generate incomes below the subsistence level. The question is whether reintegration policies aiming at their return to – a fulltime – job should consider individual social network factors besides psychological and human capital factors. The purpose of this paper is to investigate welfare recipients’ job search behaviour, in particular how individual social capital is distributed, and whether it is related to job search activities. Design/methodology/approach – Standardised and structured interviews were conducted with 189 long-term unemployed welfare recipients. An adapted version of the Resource Generator instrument was used to measure individual access to social capital. Findings – Social capital scales measuring domestic social resources, status-related social resources, expert advice on regulations and financial matters, and advice on finding a job were developed and psychometrically tested. Status-related social resources were more easily accessible to men and higher educated persons. Advice on finding a job was more easily accessible to recently unemployed individuals. Domestic social resources were less accessible to ethnic minorities. Persons with more social capital, specifically status-related social resources and advice in finding a job, showed more active job search behaviour. Social implications – The differences in job search activities between respondents with more social capital and those with less social capital were present but to a small degree, and therefore there is no argument for reintegration activities to focus on enlarging social capital. Originality/value – This study addresses the instrumental functions of the social network by multidimensionally scrutinising the resources that social relationships provide access to

Putting the “I” and “Us” in Justice: Derogatory and Benevolent Reactions Toward Innocent Victims in Self-Focused and Other-Focused Individuals

Reactions toward innocent victims can range from harsh derogatory reactions to great effort to alleviate the victims’ ill fates. Using insights from research on just-world theory and perspective taking, the current paper investigates both negative and positive reactions toward innocent victims. Specifically, we propose that self-focused versus other-focused motives can evoke derogatory versus more benevolent reactions, respectively, toward innocent victims. By manipulating self-focus versus other-focus, we indeed show in two studies that a self-focus enhanced indirect victim blaming and derogation and decreased helping of innocent victims. Furthermore, when participants were focused on another person these effects attenuated. Taken together, these findings extend previous studies on just-world theory and show that both blaming and helping can be viable strategies to deal with unjust situations

Empowerment as Contested Terrain: Employability of the Dutch workforce

Sociological analysis has mainly portrayed empowerment as a manipulative, masking discourse. However, various actors in society view it as the opposite of domination and espouse it as a goal. Empowerment can constitute a discursive field shaped by its internal contractions between autonomy and control, between ambition and risk of programmed failure, exacerbated by the emphasis on responsibility, and between focus and stigmatization. The paper presents a case study of controversies and interventions concerning employability in The Netherlands. Employability can be seen as empowerment in matters of career. The study is based on 41 interviews with policy makers, managers, union and employers' leaders and politicians. It shows that actors drawing on the principle of empowerment as a goal in itself can reset or reclaim a drifting empowerment project in its inceptive phase and add their own twist during execution, evaluation and efforts to engineer improvements

Understanding Solidarity in Society: Triggers and Barriers for In- and Outgroup Solidarity

In this chapter we take a closer look at solidarity, focusing on solidarity (to whom do we owe) in relation to social justice (what do we owe). We will do so on both the social and the individual level guided by two main questions: 1) Why do people express solidarity with 'the other' (inclusionary (outgroup solidarity) in addition to or instead of with ‘the same’ (exclusionary ingroup solidarity)? 2) What does solidarity imply at the macro-meso level of society and what are social-psychological triggers of solidarity? In reviewing psychological and sociological literature, the chapter will highlight (a) the way solidarity can be inclusive as well as exclusive, and (b) triggers and barriers of solidarity between different identities, groups and communities. The chapter will conclude that new forms of inclusive outgroup solidarity are a reaction to the absence of collective/civic solidarity (within and between groups) by including marginalized people. These new forms of solidarity challenge existing boundaries between 'us' and 'them', requiring new modes of identification and classification. The ambiguity inherent to solidarity practices of including and excluding others also asks for a revision of solidarity theory