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The purpose of this paper is to evaluate cost efficiencies and health outcomes after one academic year of course delivery, in a recovery college.

The paper used service evaluation and review of data.

There is significant impact on health outcomes when standardised measures of Patient Activation Measure and Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale were completed pre- and post-intervention, with indications of possible financial efficiencies identified within secondary care mental health pathways.

The current evaluation sample is only representative of community mental health populations rather than broader communities. However, indications are that the model is effective from a wider public health perspective (early intervention/prevention) in producing significant health outcomes in terms of improved wellbeing and increased levels of activation/self-management. More in-depth research collaboration with an academic institution is now required.

There is an implication that the recovery college needs to be fully embedded within the mental health pathway as part of the core offer. This would require significant service redesign and culture change within the organisation.

There is a need to continue to work with other statutory service providers, key stakeholders, voluntary and community sectors to embed the college with wider public health services and ensure a holistic approach across local communities and the whole health pathway.

Although the model is based on the widely recognised national recovery college model, it has moved away from the usual boundaries of access only being for those attached to secondary care mental health services to a more holistic and integrative approach of offering access to the whole population. Social value is indicated in the ownership and co-production of the model by the collaboration of student expertise, experts by experience and experts by expertise. The co-produced integrated volunteering and work pathway offers positive and cost-efficient health outcomes from a co-designed and co-delivered educational approach.

Using the perspectives of dramaturgy and symbolic interactionists like George Herbert Mead and Carl Couch this study focuses on paid sex work in the hypermodern, virtual world of Second Life. Using seventeen semi-structured interviews and six months of ethnographic fieldwork, I find that the employment of sexual scripts, carrying off a successful erotic scene, and the creative use of communication and embodiment are highly valued in escorts’ performance of Second Life sex work. Escorts craft an online persona that is a digital representation of the self, which is manifested in the embodiment of their digital body or avatar. In addition to digital representations of the physical self, Second Life allows for multiple methods of computer-mediated communication, and escorts are able to re-embody the first life body through the trading of first life pictures, voice cybersex, and web cam cybersex. The data allow the conclusion that most escorts are unwilling to re-embody the first life body for reasons of personal safety and the desire to restrict access to the first life self. I find, however, that there is a porous boundary between first life and Second Life in which the first life self comes through in the Second Life persona. In the concluding remarks, I explore the implications this study has for the negotiation of privacy for new social media actors who are reluctant to fully disclose their lives yet perform a persistent, archived persona for friends and followers on the Internet. This study contributes to a small, but growing, body of literature on Second Life and expands the existing work on embodiment and privacy in the digital realm.

The purpose of this conceptual chapter is to analyze the current state of the astructural bias in symbolic interactionism as it relates to three inter-related processes over time: (1) the formalization of critiques of symbolic interactionism as ahistorical, astructural, and acritical perspectives; (2) an ahistorical understanding of early expressions of the disjuncture between symbolic interactionism and more widely accepted forms of sociological theorizing; and (3) persistent and widespread inattentiveness to past and present evidence-based arguments that address the argument regarding symbolic interactionism as an astructural, ahistorical, and acritical sociological perspective. The argument frames the historical development of the astructural bias concept in an historically and socially conditioned way, from its emergence through its rejection and ultimately including conclusions about contemporary state of the astructural bias as evidenced in the symbolic interactionist literatures of the last couple of decades. The analysis and argument concludes that the contemporary result of these intertwined historical and social conditioning processes is that the astructural bias myth has been made real in practice, and that the reification of the myth of an astructural bias has had the ruinous effect of virtually eradicating a vital tradition in the interactionist perspective which extends back to the earliest formulations of the perspective. As a result, a handful of suggestions that serve to aid in reclaiming the unorthodox structuralism of symbolic interactionism and the related interactionist study of social organization are provided in the conclusion.

Reviews the historical origins of behavioral style and overviews the most commonly used behavioral style assessment instruments. The perceived benefits of behavioral style assessments and their similarities to and differences from personality instruments are discussed. Suggests that research is needed to validate the perceived organizational benefits of using style assessments in the workplace. Research is also needed to validate the perceived impact of work style diversity among members of an organization on the organization’s performance. Also recommends additional research to examine the relationships among behavioral style, job fit, and work environment, as well as the impact these variables have on individual, team and organizational effectiveness.

The illness of no Sovereign, with the exception of that of Her late Majesty QUEEN VICTORIA, has ever aroused feelings of sympathy and anxiety so widespread and sincere as those which have been called forth by the onset and development of the dangerous ailment from which His Majesty the KING has now happily recovered.

This chapter assesses the power focus in contemporary interactionist theory, and advances several premises about power based on recent research and theory. I first examine the main assumptions of the view of power that emerged in the wake of the astructural bias debate, which became an implicit standard for assessments of power in the tradition. Next, I explore the criticisms of the astructural bias thesis and related conceptualization. My argument is that while the debate correctly spotlighted the power deficit of interactionism, it had theoretical implications that distracted us from the task of fully conceptualizing power. In the second part of this chapter, I examine recent interactionist work in order to build general premises that can advance interactionist theory of power. Based on this analysis, I elaborate four premises that interactionists can use, regardless of theoretical orientation. Drawing on examples from my ethnographic research, I illustrate how researchers can benefit from the use of these premises.

In this chapter I attempt to merge Athens’ conception of domination as a complex interactionist concept with Goffman’s notion of demeanor and deference as lynchpins of dramaturgical analysis. I ground the merger in an analysis of metaphorical duel between a superordinate and subordinate in the TV show Mad Men. The examination of this metaphorical dual also implies a connection between a radical interactionism as defined by Athens and a radical dramaturgy informed by Athens’ conception of domination. In particular, I propose an examination of civil domination within institutionalized settings in which use of shared pasts and concomitant acts of demeanor and deference enhance the construction of domination between superordinates and subordinates. The fictional representation of a metaphorical duel in the television show Mad Men depicts a struggle for control in which the superordinate demands that a willful subordinate sign a contract which will bind the subordinate to a particular place for an extended period of time. The examination of events leading to signing reveals a complex weave of social acts that combines the force of domination with the artistry of demeanor and deference.

My project is to develop a phenomenological, constructionist, symbolic interactionist theory of the narrative productions of meaning in the public realm. Situated within our globalized, technologically mediated world characterized by extraordinary social, political, economic, and moral fragmentation, my basic question is quite practical: How can public communication be understandable and persuasive to audiences whose experiences, world views, and moral sensibilities are so different? Here I explore how the more-or-less widely shared systems of meaning in symbolic codes and emotion codes are incorporated into narratives that circulate in the public sphere. I conclude with arguing that more attention by symbolic interactionists to these productions of meaning would be good for the study of culture and good for symbolic interactionism.