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This study examines the connections between subculture theory, symbolic interaction and the work of David Matza with a special focus on exploring alcohol consumption by young adults in the UK. We apply Matza ideas of the “techniques of neutralization,” “subterranean values,” and “drift” within an ethnographic study on alcohol to suggest that young people's “calculated hedonism” can be understood as a strategy of agency in the context of a subcultural setting. This article adds to the literature of symbolic interaction, subculture and the discipline of sociology by critically focusing on the work of David Matza from its reception in the 1960s to today as a central element of the new paradigm of cultural criminology. For us the sociological imagination is “alive and well” through Matza's advocacy of naturalism whereby he sought to integrate the work Chicago School under Park and Burgess with his assessment of the so-called Neo-Chicago School. In the literature Matza's work is often defined as symbolic interactionist we see his ambition in a wider sense of wanting sociology to recover human struggle and the active creation of meaning. Our approach is to understand the calculated hedonism of young adult use of alcohol through their humanity.

Understanding of the effects of formal education on HIV/AIDS infection in South Saharan Africa (SSA) has been a complex task because consecutive waves of research offer different, seemingly contradictory results and explanations of what exactly are the schooling effects on HIV/AIDS and the causal mechanisms driving those effects. This chapter concentrates on the narrative and implications of the key substantive findings from a multidisciplinary scientific team that was formed to explore the precise nature of the relationship between population education and the HIV/AIDS pandemic in SSA and to determine the main causal mechanisms behind the association. As members of this team, this chapter reviews and synthesizes our technical demographic, epidemiological, and health research. This, and other relevant research, suggests that, like in other cases of education and health risk, because of a historical change in the public health and information environment during the pandemic there was a shift in which outcomes of education dominated individual's sexual and disease prevention behavior. The SSA HIV/AIDS case is thoroughly examined, and then used to bridge to a general discussion of the effects of educational development on population health.

I don’t remember exactly when I began to be interested in music, but my mother and godmother would laughingly recall when they knew I would be musically inclined. Though I was then in diapers, whenever Tommy Dorsey's recording of Boogie Woogie was played, I would immediately begin to pat my feet. My first conscious memory of reacting to music when I was very young were the times my father would sing little ditties and play his banjo. He could carry a tune, and he played the banjo quite well. His greatest musical feat, however, was as a whistler, and I would try to imitate his whistling style, without success as I grew older. Then too, my siblings and I would sing and recite little nursery rhymes before our parents, and I would compose songs for my sisters to sing. Before he died an early death at 37 my father gave me a mouth harp and a harmonica which I kept for many years; I later misplaced it while in college. I later bought another harmonica which I kept throughout my years in the U.S. Army, my travels throughout Europe, and throughout my years in graduate school. How and why we each possess the talents and skills we have are questions I’ve never fully understood. So I’ve concluded that we just have them, and we’ll never be able to explain it. Throughout this chapter four reference points will be used to explain my exposure to music and my music biculturality: schools, churches, home, and my neighborhood. If I make very few references to whites, it is simply because during my early life my contact with whites was minimal, and white individuals played a minor role in my life, as at home my world centered around my parents and godparents, siblings, and other family members, and neighborhood friends; at school my world was a completely black world. The first white I got to know outside of my early work experiences was the white Presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church who visited St. John's Episcopal Church at least six or seven times a year.

This paper deals with the organizing of interactive product development. Developing products in interaction between firms may provide benefits in terms of specialization, increased innovation, and possibilities to perform development activities in parallel. However, the differentiation of product development among a number of firms also implies that various dependencies need to be dealt with across firm boundaries. How dependencies may be dealt with across firms is related to how product development is organized. The purpose of the paper is to explore dependencies and how interactive product development may be organized with regard to these dependencies.

The analytical framework is based on the industrial network approach, and deals with the development of products in terms of adaptation and combination of heterogeneous resources. There are dependencies between resources, that is, they are embedded, implying that no resource can be developed in isolation. The characteristics of and dependencies related to four main categories of resources (products, production facilities, business units and business relationships) provide a basis for analyzing the organizing of interactive product development.

Three in-depth case studies are used to explore the organizing of interactive product development with regard to dependencies. The first two cases are based on the development of the electrical system and the seats for Volvo’s large car platform (P2), performed in interaction with Delphi and Lear respectively. The third case is based on the interaction between Scania and Dayco/DFC Tech for the development of various pipes and hoses for a new truck model.

The analysis is focused on what different dependencies the firms considered and dealt with, and how product development was organized with regard to these dependencies. It is concluded that there is a complex and dynamic pattern of dependencies that reaches far beyond the developed product as well as beyond individual business units. To deal with these dependencies, development may be organized in teams where several business units are represented. This enables interaction between different business units’ resource collections, which is important for resource adaptation as well as for innovation. The delimiting and relating functions of the team boundary are elaborated upon and it is argued that also teams may be regarded as actors. It is also concluded that a modular product structure may entail a modular organization with regard to the teams, though, interaction between business units and teams is needed. A strong connection between the technical structure and the organizational structure is identified and it is concluded that policies regarding the technical structure (e.g. concerning “carry-over”) cannot be separated from the management of the organizational structure (e.g. the supplier structure). The organizing of product development is in itself a complex and dynamic task that needs to be subject to interaction between business units.

In the midst of a public health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, journalists play an important role of sharing information of consequence with the public. As first responders to precarious events, they work in close proximity to the threat they are reporting on yet at the same time struggle with other personal and professional responsibilities which are strenuous on their mental health. This chapter qualitatively interrogated journalists in order to understand their experiences with mental health during COVID-19 and how they worked through personal and social acceptability, biases and stigma as well as diagnosis. Of importance as well was to understand how they disclose, if they disclose at all, mental health issues and the different copying mechanisms. Findings show that journalists have a textbook but not applicable understanding of mental health, declaring that they many of them have experienced mental disorders without knowing. The consequences of COVID-19 measures such as layoffs, increased workload, inconsiderate media houses, brutality from law enforcement agencies were key contributors to mental health stresses. Journalists with supportive families seemed to have coped better while some buried themselves in multiple jobs to circumvent the stress that comes with financial privation.