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Drawing on ethnographic data collected over a 9-year period, from 1998 through 2006, we examine the foundations of community among a non-geographic, mobile, identity-based community of touring motorcyclists. Although traditionally oriented geographic communities continue to exist, the literature shows a growing trend toward non-geographic, identity-based communities, whose cohesiveness is based on collective identity, in-group/out-group boundaries, shared values, and symbols. Our focus on a mobile identity-based community contributes to this literature by examining a collectivity that is not only non-geographically situated, but is also based on a strong value placed on travel. Within the touring BMW motorcycling community, we found a strong collective identity that was founded on the shared values of adventure touring; long-distance, all weather endurance riding; proficient, and highly skilled riding; and safety. Our findings contribute to the literature on identity-based communities by demonstrating the salience of ritualized interaction that rewards those who conform to (or excel at) group values and reinforces the sense of collective identity that exists among this dispersed, mobile community. Additionally, our research demonstrates that a recreational subculture can provide some of the traditional benefits of community without many of the demands present in the more comprehensive forms of community.

Interactive media strategies and digital tools have enabled advertisers to target children with promotional offers and creative appeals.

Based on theories related to metaphors in advertisements, cognitive comprehension by children, promotional appeals, and presentation techniques, the research for this study comprised a content analysis of 1,980 online banner advertisements with reference to use of metaphors, promotional appeals, creative content, and selling techniques.

The research study concludes that online advertising to children, in contrast to traditional advertising vehicles, is characterized by (a) a vibrant visual metaphor, (b) surfeit of animated content, (c) interactive features, (d) myriad product types, and (e) creative content for a mixed audience of adults and children.

This study argues that the impact and content of the Internet as a new advertising medium are distinctly different from traditional characteristics of television and print.

Filicide, the killing of a child by a parent, is one of the only crimes committed by women and men in roughly equal numbers. Women's violence against their children, however, more profoundly confounds common understandings of the links between gender and family violence, leading to its ambivalent treatment within the media. When men kill their children, they are usually characterised as either monsters or as sad, failed men. When women kill their children, they are usually represented as bad mothers or mad mothers suffering under the burdens of the pathological female body. In both cases, a mental illness/distress lens is common, though how it manifests is inflected by gender. This chapter examines recent Australian news representations of maternal filicide-suicide. Focussing on the mental illness/distress frame in news, it examines the ideological work this frame does in decontextualising and de-gendering maternal filicide, framing women's mental illness/distress in ‘psychocentric’ terms that strip it of political or social significance and subjecting it to an individualised lens that obscures the gendered aetiologies of women's use of violence.

The purpose of this paper is to test whether, in the context of blood donation, the predictive ability of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) extends from behavioural intention to actual donation behaviour, and whether extended versions of the TPB perform better than the standard version.

Intentions to donate blood predicted by the TPB are compared with an accurate measure of blood donation behaviour obtained following a mobile blood drive by the New Zealand Blood Service.

When the observed outcome is donation behaviour rather than behavioural intention, the TPB model's performance drops. Extending the variables in the model to include moral obligation and past behaviour does not improve its predictive ability, and neither does the use of belief‐based variables.

The TPB is much less effective in predicting blood donation behaviour than it is in predicting intentions to donate blood. But only actual donation behaviour yields medical supplies. This study suggests that to advance the goal of increasing donation rates, attention needs to turn to methods other than the TPB to identify variables that do predict donation behaviour.

The present study gathered one of the largest samples used for TPB blood donation research; this enabled predictions made using the TPB to be tested against actual behaviour, rather than behavioural intention, the measure typically used in blood donation studies. Because blood donation is a low‐incidence behaviour, previous studies have been hampered by small sample sizes, that inevitably contain few donors, and no measure of actual donation behaviour.

Le Musée national à Amsterdam possède un portrait de Gresham, un tableau à l'huile de toute beauté, peint dans la seconde moitié du seizième siècle par Antonio Moro. Sir Thomas Gresham, un financier anglais réputé (1519–1579), est considéré comme le fondateur de la Bourse de Londres. Cette ville était également le berceau des assurances. Si paradoxal que cela puisse sembler, il est un fait certain que l'assurance dont le rôle consiste à prévenir l'individu des risques et à lui donner une plus grande sécurité dans la vie sociale, trouve son origine dans un pays, également connu pour la passion des paris dans tous les domaines. Un des paris les plus fantastiques qui est entré dans la littérature, fut décrit par Jules Verne dans son livre «Le Tour du Monde en 80 Jours», où Phileas Fogg, un Anglais, après bon nombre d'aventures extraordinaires gagne enfin sa gageure.

While a number of scholars have observed that the contemporary self has to negotiate a “push and pull” between autonomy and a desire for community (Austin & Gagne, 2008; Bauman, 2001a, p. 60; Coles, 2008; Giddens, 2003, p. 46, the struggle between the “self” and “others” that is at the heart of symbolic interactionist (SI) understandings of the self is often missing from sociological discussion on the “making of the self” (Coles, 2008, p. 21; Holstein & Gubrium, 2000), and the current chapter contributes to this literature.

To gain insight into “the making of the self,” in-depth life history interviews were conducted with 23 former members of new religious movements (NRMs) specific to their construction of self. Interview data was analyzed for variations in the ways in which individuals describe their construction of self. To make sense of these variations, SI understandings of the self are applied.

Analysis indicates that the extent to which individuals are informed by the social versus the personal in their self-construction is a continuum. From an SI perspective the self is conceptualized as to varying degrees informed by both the personal and the social. These two “domains” of the self are interrelated or connected through an ongoing process of reflexivity that links internal experiences and external feedback. From this perspective, “healthy” selves reflexively balance a sense of personal uniqueness against a sense of belonging and social connectedness. While a reflexive balance between the “self” and “others” is optimal, not everyone negotiates this balance successfully, and the extent to which individuals are informed by the social versus the personal in their self-construction varies and can be conceptualized as on a continuum between autonomy and social connectedness. The current findings suggest that where individuals are positioned on this continuum is dependent on the availability of cultural and personal resources from which individuals can construct selves, in particular in childhood. Those participants who described themselves as highly dependent on others report childhood histories of control, whereas those who described themselves as disconnected from others report histories of abuse and neglect.

The problems of relying on retrospective accounts of former members should be noted as such accounts are interpretive and influenced by the respondents’ present situation. However, despite their retrospective and constructionist nature, life history narratives provide meaningful insights into the actual process of self and identity construction. The analysis of retrospective accounts is a commonly recommended and chosen method for the study of the self (Davidman & Greil, 2007; Diniz-Pereira, 2008).

The current findings suggest that significant differences may exist in the way in which individuals construct and narrate their sense of self, in particular in regards to the way in which they experience and negotiate contemporary tensions between social connectedness and individuality. In particular, the findings highlight the importance of childhood environments for the construction of “healthy” selves that can negotiate contemporary demands of autonomy as well as social connectedness.

At the core of SDT is the postulation of three basic psychological needs, that is, the needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The satisfaction of these three needs is said to be of utmost importance in its own right as it contributes to people’s functioning. Moreover, need satisfaction forms the basis for the development of more optimal forms of motivation (i.e., intrinsic motivation, internalization) and contributes to individual differences in people’s general motivational orientation, called general causality orientations, and differences in values that also affect how we live and thrive.

The purpose of this study is to investigate conditions that facilitate shop-floor operators to fulfil their needs to carry out job roles and whether the need fulfilment affects their job performance in lean-implemented textile and apparel firms in Sri Lanka.

The data were collected from 922 shop-floor employees and their immediate supervisors. Statistical methods were used for the data analysis.

The results of the analysis imply the importance of managerial autonomy support and need fulfilment for enhanced job performance; the duration of lean production in operation moderates job performance in such a way that the longer the duration, the higher will be job performance.

It could be expected that academics and practitioners alike are motivated by a desire to clearly apprehend work systems in lean-implemented textile and apparel firms.