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This chapter takes up the “as if” worlds of play. The first half discusses how the literature on play helps reveal important variations in the world of ritual by clarifying how ritual relates to notions of self and a social role. Special attention is paid to the work of Roger Caillois and Johan Huizinga on play. The analysis helps focus the idea of “ritual” more clearly by asking how it differs from play. The second half of the chapter continues the discussion of boundaries by turning to issues of framing in play and ritual, both of which invariably have boundaries around them but also have mechanisms for crossing those boundaries. It is argued that this ability to both establish and cross boundaries is crucial to the human capacity for empathy.

This chapter argues that gender is the principle of normative unity for social individuals. First, it explains further what a principle of normative unity is and why social individuals might need one. It develops the idea that a social agent must act under a coherent, unified set of norms, and that a coherent, unified set of norms requires a principle of normative unity. Aristotle's discussion of the relationship between a life of virtuous activity and other kinds of lives (and the goods that correspond to them) is used as a model for the relationship between the social role that serves as a principle of normative unity for an agent—referred to as the mega social role—and that agent's other social roles. Second, the chapter explains why it is reasonable to think that gender provides a principle of normative unity for social individuals in societies like ours. Third, it shows that gender norms provide the principle of normative unity for agents in human societies. It considers two alternative views: firstly, that for some agents in some societies the principle of normative unity is another mega social role, like race; and, secondly, that the principle of normative unity is variable depending upon the individual's self-understanding. After considering, and rejecting, these alternatives, it is argued that gender is essential to social individuals because gender normatively unifies social role occupiers so that an individual social agent exists. The relationship between the thesis that gender is uniessential to social individuals and other conceptions of gender essentialism is discussed.

This chapter briefly explores the consequences of gender uniessentialism for feminist politics. It argues that gender uniessentialism directs our attention away from individual psychologies, their conscious and unconscious biases, and “deformed” processes of choice, and toward the social world, its available social roles, and the ways in which its available social roles can and cannot be blended into a coherent practical identity. Moreover, according to gender uniessentialism, our practical identities are essentially gendered. Taken together, these ideas suggest that political and social change for women will require changing existing social roles that (as they overlap, clash, and thread through a life) disadvantage and oppress women.

This chapter compares the privileges and duties of rulers in central Sahel and north-west Europe. It provides a factual overview of the political history of the central Sahel and north-west Europe and compares their rulers in terms of boundary control, economic control and taxation, and religious and social roles. It suggests that many medieval polities in north-west Europe and central Sahel were the result of economic interference or of military campaigns imposing a new framework on disparate societies.

This chapter examines generational differences and gender differences in self-silencing amidst changing social values in Finland. Finnish women have historically taken part in the labor market outside of the home and have been breadwinners for many generations. In recent decades, there has been an even more pronounced movement away from traditional gender roles in Finnish families, with women often sharing many childcare and household tasks with men. Given this social and historical context, the author investigates whether younger generations of Finnish women differ from older Finnish women on self-silencing, and whether Finnish men and women differ on self-silencing. The chapter reports the author's findings that show younger women scoring lower than older women, and men scoring higher than women on self-silencing. These findings are discussed in light of social expectations for women in Finnish society, and in light of the social dictates that lead Finnish men to be relationally and emotionally distant.

Sociologists and anthropologists always have a sense of unease over what education is doing to society. Does education really make any difference? Or is it only reproducing inequality? And how can one know the answer? This chapter highlights some of the ways in which recent social theory can help us grapple with these questions. This chapter evaluates the notion that education leads to the reproduction of inequality in society, culture, and economy, and examines the roles played by structure and agency. It argues that a literal interpretation of the reproduction thesis is misleading, and suggests that a more nuanced understanding—with a more differentiated conceptual treatment—is needed. This author identifies the ways by which social theory can help illuminate the role of education in inequality, and discusses the views of Margaret Archer and Anthony Giddens who integrated systemic theorizing with the play of individual agency. In conclusion, the author suggests that we need a vision that encapsulates a wider view of the concrete roles, groups, and processes in society. Only then may one begin to address the question of whether education is making any difference at all.

This chapter provides insight about the role that actual ethical life plays in the possibility of value. Careful classification of the social dependence thesis is brought about for an argument and the chapter considers the politically and socially conservative position of the author on this matter. The chapter then cites ‘Future of an Illusion’ by Sigmund Freud as a typical example of a non-evaluative account and discusses confusing points of view as exemplified on interpretative issues. In conclusion, the chapter states that social roles are made by the people actively doing them and are not just dispositions, and argues in favor of breaking free from misleading ideas on social practices and instead reflecting on more valuable concepts.

This chapter places psychiatric ethics within professional and biomedical ethics more generally, and introduces the “role morality” notion: that some ethical imperatives derive from particular social roles. Some differences between psychiatry and other medical practices are illustrated through three issues: questions of patient autonomy, rules governing the ‘boundaries’ around the therapeutic relationship, and concerns over psychiatric diagnostic categories. Building on previous work in biomedical ethics, the authors adopt the methodology employed in the American Psychiatric Association's Annotations with Particular Application to Psychiatry (2001), which identifies the ethical implications of particular features distinctive to the practice of psychiatry. When practiced with severely ill patients, it is asserted, psychiatry makes extra ethical demands on practitioners.

Eating disorders are found nearly exclusively in Western countries, and mainly affect women. This chapter explores the social issues around eating disorders. It attempts to explain why the majority of sufferers is represented by women, and explores the social changes that seem to have contributed to the appearance of the syndrome. It reviews clinical literature, which shows that the unrealistic aesthetic expectations of women, combined with the change in the role of the woman in contemporary society, have contributed to the genesis of eating disorders.

This chapter views illness narratives as guides to present and future actions, specifically through the refashioning of social roles in local cultural worlds. It draws on fieldwork with Mexican cancer patients and studies the illness narratives of two Mexican cancer patients who have had surgery where part of their reproductive systems were removed. This chapter connects the strategic construction of illness narratives with the reconstruction of gender roles, a process that effectively transformed suffering into a social asset, and role destruction into a chance for personal empowerment.

This chapter examines behavior in social roles as a form of inauthenticity and under what conditions being immersed in certain social relations manifests itself as self-alienation. More specifically, it considers the extent to which certain forms of role behavior represent cases of self-alienation, even if the absence of alienation cannot be understood as a condition existing prior to or outside sociality—as a condition in which one is a “human being in general” behind all social roles. Its main thesis is that self-alienation is a symptom that emerges in the absence of (the possibility of) appropriating roles; what is alienating is not roles per se but the impossibility of adequately articulating oneself in them. The chapter begins with some examples to demarcate the problem and contrast it with other phenomena. It then analyzes the concept of a role as it is used both in sociological theory and in everyday usage, as well as the assumption that roles are inherently alienating. It also discusses the notion that roles are constitutive for the development of individuality, the various aspects of role behavior, and the distinction between alienating and nonalienating roles or between alienated and unalienated role behavior.

This chapter proposes a new way of making sense of female serial killers. Firstly, the potential value of an ‘intersectional’ approach, which considers a range of social divisions simultaneously, is considered. Thereafter, the chapter explores institutionalism, an approach putting the social institutions of family, economy, polity, religion, education at the centre of analysis. Criminological engagement with the institutional perspective to date is described and the potential value of such an approach in conjunction with an intersectional outlook is explored in relation to the Mary Ann Cotton case.

This book has proposed two conditions sufficiently widespread to account for the patterns or motifs that we might uncover in women's religions situated in dissimilar cultural contexts: patriarchy and motherhood. It has also argued that women's religions tend to occur in societies characterized by a relatively high level of autonomy for women. Most of the patterns described in this book can be understood as functions of women's social role as mothers in societies in which that role is granted both esteem and structurally recognized authority. Ornate fertility rituals, myths of mother goddesses who gave birth to the world, and ceremonies that extol the wonders of lactation are almost totally absent from women's religions. What does receive attention and elaboration in these religions is women's social roles as nurturers and healers, women's rights and responsibilities as primary childcare providers, women's emotional experiences of pain at the illness and death of children, women's social ties with other mothers, matrifocality, and women's proclivity for discovering the sacred which is immanent in this everyday world of care and relationships.

This chapter reviews the HIV prevention landscape in regard to Latinas, rooted in both the experience of community-based organizations (CBOs), as implementers of interventions, and Latino-specific cultural scripts and values, providing concrete examples of HIV prevention programs currently being delivered. The chapter deconstructs four HIV prevention interventions, recently implemented by CBOs in different parts of the United States, into surface and deep level cultural considerations. Engaging with the structural and environmental contexts of HIV risk, the interventions addressed barriers to participation, took women out of their often-constrained social roles, promoted local activism, and engaged participants in conversations about migration and transnational identity as Latinas. The chapter ends by addressing future opportunities as well as structural barriers by looking at microbicides and PReP, interventions with the potential to place protection control in the hands of women.

Epictetus characteristically views moral action in relation to a person's identity and social roles. To be human, in his view, is to be engaged in a profession, calling for excellent performance in terms of one's rational nature and contingent circumstances. As a Stoic, he treats the passions as malfunctions of reason, but he emphasizes tolerance towards those who err, and a controlled empathy towards those in distress.

This chapter discusses the ways in which a literary character from The Grandmother: A story of country life in Bohemia, written in 1855 by Božena Němcová, is translated into the contemporary conceptualization of the ‘typical’ grandmother in popular culture and an archetype in the sociological meaning of the word, and how it serves as a frame of reference for narrative expressions of identity among contemporary Czech grandmothers. The results are based on the analysis of cultural production and qualitative interviews with Czech active agers, who connect the literary character both positively and negatively to changing social role performances via everyday practices such a food preparation, care and appearance. The chapter concludes by enhancing existing typologies of grandparental roles and shows how the normativity of the ideal operates within the narrative accounts of today´s young-old persons..

This chapter looks at the festivals, rituals, and myths associated with ancient Athens. A central dilemma in the analysis of ritual has been that of giving it an effective definition, and, although the difficulty is compounded once so-called secular rituals are taken into account, it quickly emerges even within the confines of religious activity. Not all Greek rituals are festivals, obviously; an oath sworn, a vow contracted, a sacrifice performed by an individual is not a festival. But are festivals rituals, and in what sense? Whether one favours the language of ritual or of ritualisation, the difficulty is in fact, in relation to festivals, the same. A central issue is the way in which the festivals defined and prescribed the social roles of those who participated in them. What is clear, though, is that whatever intensity there was in Greek religious experience was a product of ritual, and of festivals above all.