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-Physical exercise
-Diet and nutrition
-Public health issues
-Concepts of beauty and health

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performance of some activity in order to develop or maintain physical fitness and overall health.

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The goal of a balanced diet is to consume an appropriate amount of calories, carbohydrates, protein, fat, vitamins, minerals, and water.

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https://www.rivier.edu/academics/online/resources/program-resources/top-10-public-health-challenges/

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top 10 areas of focus as reported by the CDC.
Alcohol-related harms

Approximately 88,000 deaths per year in the United States are attributed to excessive alcohol consumption. The short-term health risks of excessive alcohol use include: injuries such as motor vehicle crashes, falls, drownings and burns; violence such as homicide, suicide and sexual assault; alcohol poisoning; risky sexual behaviors; and miscarriage and stillbirth among pregnant women. Long-term health risks can develop as well: high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, liver disease and digestive problems; cancer; learning and memory problems; mental health problems; social problems; and alcoholism.

Food safety

Foodborne illness sickens one in six Americans each year and results in 3,000 deaths. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) calculates the cost of foodborne illnesses to be $15.6 billion annually. However, foodborne illness is preventable, and the CDC and USDA take a leading role in promoting food safety at the federal level.

Healthcare-associated infections

Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) happen when patients are being treated in a healthcare facility. Every day, about one in 25 patients in hospitals acquire an HAI such as central line-associated bloodstream infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections and surgical site infections. The CDC and its partners have developed tools and resources to prevent HAIs.

Heart disease and stroke

Both heart disease and stroke are leading causes of death in the United States. About 610,000 people die of heart disease each year. Prevention focuses on addressing high blood pressure, high LDL cholesterol and smoking. Meanwhile, there are about 130,000 deaths due to stroke annually. Because stroke can affect mobility, it is a major cause of disability as well.

HIV

The number of new HIV diagnoses is declining, but about 44,000 people were diagnosed with HIV in 2014. In total, approximately 1.2 million Americans are living with HIV, and about 13 percent do not know they are infected. Nearly 7,000 people per year die from HIV and AIDS. Educating the population about ways to prevent HIV infection, from abstinence to correct use of condoms to never sharing needles, continues to be important.

Motor vehicle injuries

More than 32,000 people die and another 2 million sustain injuries from motor vehicle accidents each year. One-third of deaths involve drunk driving and almost another third involve speeding. The CDC emphasizes seat belt use for adults, car seat use for children and driving without distractions or impairments like alcohol and drugs.

Nutrition, physical activity and obesity

The general population is aware that poor nutrition, lack of physical activity and obesity are causing numerous health problems. The CDC is tackling this complex public health issue beginning with schools, which should provide a quality meal program and ensure only healthy foods and beverages are available to students. As part of obesity prevention, multiple organizations can help individuals know their body mass index, maintain a healthy weight and incorporate physical activity into their lives.

Prescription drug overdose

The CDC reports that deaths from prescription opioids like oxycodone and hydrocodone have quadrupled since 1999. In response, the CDC has published prescribing guidelines for healthcare providers and encouraged states to adopt prescription drug monitoring programs. There is a push for expanding addiction treatment.

Teen pregnancy

While the rate of teen pregnancy continues to decrease every year, almost 250,000 babies were born to females ages 15-19 in 2014. Teens need support from parents and other trusted adults, who can play an important role in helping them make healthy choices about relationships and sexual activity, the CDC advises.

Tobacco use

Approximately 16.8 percent of adults ages 18 and older smoke, or 40 million Americans. The percentage continues to decline, but smoking is still a prominent health concern in the United States. It is the leading cause of preventable disease and death. The CDC recommends increasing the price of tobacco products, establishing statewide smoke-free policies to protect nonsmokers from secondhand smoke and sustaining tobacco control program funding.

If you are interested in addressing these health issues, you may want to consider a career in public health. Rivier University offers fully online public health degrees at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

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Top 10 Public Health Challenges - Rivier Academics

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In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) monitors top public health issues. Here are the top 10 areas of focus as reported by the CDC. Alcohol-related harms Approximately 88,000 deaths per year in the United States are attributed to excessive alcohol consumption.

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797041/

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Abstract

This paper deals with the question of beauty and health in women. It discusses changing definitions of beauty as a result of influences from the entertainment, beauty and health product industries. Advertisements are seen to be major players in defining beauty through promotion of cosmetic, skin, hair and slimming products. Concerns relating to beauty become inculcated in girls through the process of socialisation as they mature into womanhood. The media plays a significant role in portraying the meaning of beauty through its representation of women. These influences largely influence and alter women's perceptions of their body image and in trying to meet the goals of beauty as represented by the media. This may result in dissatisfaction with their body image. Advertisements can encourage women to indulge in smoking as a fashionable trend or opt for plastic surgery in attempts to acquire beauty. This paper concludes with implications of the issues relating to changing perceptions of beauty and suggests recommendations.

Keywords: beauty, health, impacts of advertisements, smoking, beauty enhancement, adolescent behaviour, health promotion, health education

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays women are showing more concern for beauty than for health. This tendency is possibly influenced by several factors - social processes, role of advertisements and mass media, local and global trends in the fashion industry, and adoption of foreign cultural practices. This article provides a critique of the obsession for beauty, argues for more research into this phenomenon and calls for the development of health promotion programmes to ameliorate this trend.

CONCEPTS AND MEANINGS OF BEAUTY

The Oxford English Dictionary 1 defines beauty as "excelling in grace or form, charm of colouring, qualities which delight the eye and call forth that admiration of the human face in figure or other objects". In practice, beauty may be easier to recognise than to define, as exemplified by the remark of the Hollywood producer, Aaron Spelling, who said, "I can't define it, but when it walks into the room, I know it". There is continuing debate as to whether beauty is "in the eye of the beholder" or that there is a universal aesthetic standard in the human body shapes and faces.

There are claims that physical beauty has an evolutionary basis in that beautiful people are more likely to be healthier and able to reproduce. 2 Averageness of features (i.e. neither too large or too small), bilateral symmetry and skin free of blemishes not only suggest the absence of inherited or acquired medical disorders, but are also commonly judged to be relatively beautiful. Female faces are judged to be more attractive if they have delicate jaws, full lips, small noses, high cheekbones, and large eyes. 2

Feminist writers such as Naomi Wolf 3 contended that beauty is but a male-dominated construct. They argue that beauty myths are created through images in magazines, films, and beauty contests; they work in tandem with highly effective marketing of the beauty products and fashion to transmit ideas about how women should look like.

THE INFLUENCING FACTORS

Whether physical beauty in the females is a biological reality or has evolutionary advantage is difficult to verify. What is obvious and disturbing is the current obsession on beauty by the general population. The factors that bring about this beauty craze are examined below.

The encoding of beauty: the role of advertisements

A survey among seventy female respondents in Kuala Lumpur found that 43.3% of them were attracted to the models in beauty product advertisements. 4 Nine out of ten of them said that women in beauty advertisements were portrayed as 'beautiful', while three-quarters thought they were 'young and attractive'. One cursory glance at the women's magazines and one finds page after page of advertisements on beauty products and fashion. A typical example reads "... night after night, your complexion is perfected and a pure radiance is revealed..." The text of the advertisement highlights that a well known cosmetic the advertisement highlights that a well known cosmetic manufacturer has discovered a product that can do wonders to the skin while the user sleeps at night - the face brightens for the next 24 hours. The advertisement reassures that women need not worry about its suitability as the product was specifically made for Asian women. The whole text aims to instil in women readers a fear about melanin production, an element that makes the body age and darken. Advertisements urge women to care for their complexion by recommending products that could help to achieve a perfect complexion without losing their radiance.

Reconstructing the new self in diet products

Another advertisement hinges on the importance of body image and describes the ease and miraculous transformation that can occur by consuming a slimming product or joining a weight loss programme. Among other things, it proclaimed "...this product shows results in just 8 days!" "...it involves no starvation, no drugs, no injections..." By using the principles of semiology (the study of signs and symbols and their meanings), advertisers are telling readers that there is an answer to their dreams. The advertisement on weight reduction has these words "Lose fat - not water or muscle - PERMANENTLY" and the visuals that go with it attempt to convince women of how a miracle can be achieved.

Socialisation for womanhood

In our society, boys and girls are brought up differently. Norms and rules exist to ensure that females know their roles in comparison to those of males. Though there is new social role for females (such as women can now be the primary income earner), they are still being pressured to conform to prevailing societal expectations. Although bodily changes are expected and differential effects are experienced by females and males, females are more concerned with aging than males are. Physical appearance, especially for women is heavily subjected to social judgements. As stated by Abu Laban & McDaniel, 5 beauty is held out as an intrinsic goal for both girls and women. In infancy, females are judged by standards of "cuteness" and "prettiness," that shifts with age into standards of "beauty" and "glamour". Hence, beauty and health are entwined in the women's socialisation process. Early learning can predispose individuals to accept and enact traditional sex-typed behaviour and attitudes. These may later change with new experiences, which may dramatically alter their perceptions and values.

Globalisation and changing view of beauty

Globalisation has impacted virtually all aspects of human activities. As rapidly as news travel across the continents, so do ideas about beauty. The holding of the Miss World 2001 in South Africa generated intense media publicity and public interest in the African continent. The subsequent crowning of the Nigerian beauty Agbani Darego was reported to have significantly swayed the African women's perception about beauty - they now prefer to be thin like Agbani Darego. 6

HEALTH RISKS IN BEAUTY PURSUIT

According to Psychology Today, "body preoccupation has become a societal mania". 7 Both men and women are increasingly becoming unhappy about their body image; the resulting poor self-esteem in many of them lead to a search for cosmetic enhancement. 8 In the local context, a concerned medical doctor has expressed fears that "people are killing themselves to look beautiful," 9 e.g. by injecting Botox to hide their wrinkles. The extraordinary demand for Botox in USA has raised valid security concern due to an increasing demand for the nasty bug Clostridium botulinum. 10 Believing in the miraculous effects of slimming pills, a Singaporean actress nearly lost her life as result of acute liver damage. 11 According to Utusan Malaysia, more than 30 people in the USA have died of heart disease after taking slimming preparations that contained phentermine. 12 During an investigation of a case of mercury poisoning in an adolescent, it was found that many users of a Mexican beauty cream had significantly higher urine mercury concentration. 13 The above are but a small fraction of the reported health risks linked to beauty products.

The preoccupation with beauty has made significant inroad among the adolescent females. It is possible that the desire to reduce appetite and hence to lose weight could be a major motivation to start and continue smoking among the adolescent girls. These impressionable youth are also more likely to partake in various procedures to alter their external appearance, such as eyebrow plucking, ear and lips piercing, and body-tattooing. Extreme concern with weight and body size among female adolescents is an important factor in the increasing incidence of the eating disorders anorexia nervosa and bulimia. 14

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR HEALTH EDUCATION AND HEALTH PROMOTION PROGRAMMES

We all recognise that the physical appearance of a person can affect her/his social or economic success in life. What is of major concern is the preoccupation with physical attractiveness and the questionable medical necessity of cosmetic surgery. The clamour for more regulation for cosmetic procedures, whether performed by medically qualified personnel or otherwise, need to be tempered by the public demand for freedom and self-expression. 15, 16

Women, who are the major targets of endless efforts by the beauty, cosmetic and fashion industries, need not fall into the traps set by the sophisticated advertisements. Females should develop a more enlightened understanding of beauty and health by resisting the persuasive advertisements solely designed to stimulate consumption of the products they represent. To become discerning users of the information doled out by the mass media, they need to distinguish between sublimed advertisements that sometime camouflage as public education.

Television, as the dominant form of mass media, can and should provide a more balanced views concerning beauty and health. There is currently under-representation of women in health campaigns shown on the television, thus perpetuating the misinformation that health problems are only prevalent in men. Documentary films projecting a positive aspects of health and a more culturally sensitive view of physical beauty are sorely needed. The potential health risks of beauty products and procedure are not well publicised. On the other hand, many females prefer the quick route to weight loss by consuming slimming products rather than taking care of their diet or engage in more physical activity. For the obese, an appropriate level of body weight concern is actually useful but preoccupation with body image can be unhealthy in normal weight adolescent girls. In this regard, magazines targeting at this impressionable group should not go overboard in giving information on health, health risks, and health-related products. 17

Health education is a life-long process, it is therefore crucial that it should be started early in life. How can we as parents and concerned member of the community encourage a positive regard for health and beauty, in particular for the girls as they grow up to be women? There is a dearth of publication that takes into account our cultural context. More research should be done regarding how television and advertising are shaping opinions of the viewers and consumers, especially in relation to health and beauty.

REFERENCES

1. Brown L, Stevenson A. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2002. Oxford Dictionary. [ Google Scholar]

4. Haliza MR. Periklanan dalam Majalah Wanita: Tumpuan Terhadap Pemaparan Kecantikan dan Pengaruhnya Terhadap Imej dan Sikap Pembaca [thesis] Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya: 2003. [ Google Scholar]

5. Abu Laban SM, McDaniel SA. Mandel N. Beauty, Status, and Aging. 2nd edition. Ontario: Prentice Hall; 1998. Feminist Issues. [ Google Scholar]

6. Kompas.com. Globalisasi dan Perubahan Nilai Kecantikan. 2002 Oct 14;

13. Weldon MM, Smolinksi MS, Maroufi A. et al. Mercury poisoning associated with a Mexican beauty cream. West J Med. 2000 Jul;173((1)):15-8. [[ PMC free article] [ PubMed] Google Scholar]

15. Wijsbek H. The pursuit of beauty: The enforcement of aesthetics or a freely adopted lifestyle. J Med Ethics. 2000 Dec;26((6)):454-8. [[ PMC free article] [ PubMed] Google Scholar]

17. Duerksen S, Mikail A, Tom L. et al. Health disparities and advertising content of women's magazines: a cross-sectional study. BMC Public Health. 2005 Aug 18;5:85. [[ PMC free article] [ PubMed] Google Scholar]

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This paper deals with the question of beauty and health in women. It discusses changing definitions of beauty as a result of influences from the entertainment, beauty and health product industries. Advertisements are seen to be major players in defining ...

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Here's a mixed present simple exercise (it includes positive sentences, negative sentences and questions)

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display incorrect answers
Complete the sentences using the verbs in brackets and the following tenses: simple past, past progressive, past perfect simple, past perfect progressive.

1. A plumber to our house yesterday.

2. He to repair our washing machine that a few days before.

3. Before he at my door, he for a parking space for about ten minutes.

4. While the plumber (repair) the washing machine, I the news.

5. While I carefully to what , someone at my door.

6. He for the plumber.

7. In his haste, the plumber to put the handbrake on.

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display incorrect answers Complete the sentences using the verbs in brackets and the following tenses: simple past, past progressive, past perfect simple, past perfect progressive. A plumber to our house yesterday. He to repair our washing machine that a few days before. Before he at my door, he for a parking space for about ten minutes.

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Free English online grammar exercises future tense.

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-Minorities
-Subcultures
-Migration and population diversity
-Language diversity

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The term “minority” is applied to various groups who hold few or no positions of power in a given society.

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Minority Groups

The term "minority" is applied to various groups who hold few or no positions of power in a given society.

Learning Objectives

Define a minority group

Key Takeaways

Key Points

The term minority doesn't necessarily refer to a numeric minority. Women, for example, make up roughly half the population but are often considered a minority group.

Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors, such as race, religion, sexual orientation, or national origin into account in order to benefit an underrepresented group.

Key Terms

affirmative action: A policy or program providing advantages for people of a minority group who are seen to have traditionally been discriminated against, with the aim of creating a more egalitarian society through preferential access to education, employment, health care, social welfare, etc.

minority group: a sociological category that is differentiated, defined, and often discriminated against by those who hold the majority of positions of social power

minority: Categories of persons who hold few or no positions of social power in a given society.

In the social sciences, "minority" does not just refer to a statistical measure and can instead refer to categories of persons who hold few or no positions of social power in a given society.

Sociologist Louis Wirth defined a minority group as "a group of people who, because of their physical or cultural characteristics, are singled out from the others in the society in which they live for differential and unequal treatment, and who therefore regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination. " This definition includes both objective and subjective criteria: membership of a minority group is objectively ascribed by society, based on an individual's physical or behavioral characteristics, such as ethnicity and race or gender and sexuality. It is also subjectively applied by its members, who may use their status as the basis of group identity or solidarity.

Minority group status is also categorical in nature: an individual who exhibits the physical or behavioral characteristics of a given minority group will be accorded the status of that group and be subject to the same treatment as other members of that minority group.

Racial or Ethnic Minorities

Every large society contains ethnic minorities: subgroups that share a common heritage, which often consists of a shared language, culture (often including a religion), or ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy. In this case, while minority status can be conditioned by a clear numerical difference, more significantly it refers to issues of political power. In some places, subordinate ethnic groups may constitute a numerical majority, such as blacks in South Africa under apartheid.

In addition to long-established ethnic minority populations in various nation-states, ethnic minorities may consist of more recent migrant, indigenous, or landless nomadic communities residing within, or between, a particular national territory.

Gender and Sexuality Minorities

Recognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people as a minority group or groups has gained prominence in the Western world since the nineteenth century. The abbreviation "LGBT" is currently used to group these identities together. The term queer is sometimes understood as an umbrella term for all non-normative sexualities and gender expressions but does not always signify a minority; rather, as with many gay rights activists of the 1960s and 1970s, it sometimes represents an attempt to highlight sexual diversity in everyone.

While in most societies the numbers of men and women are roughly equal, the status of women as a oppressed group has led some, such as feminists and other participants in women's rights movements, to identify them as a minority group.

Religious Minorities

Persons belonging to religious minorities have a faith which is different from that held by the majority population or the population group that is in power. It is now accepted in many multicultural societies around the world that people should have the freedom to choose their own religion, including not having any religion (atheism or agnosticism), and including the right to convert from one religion to another. However in some countries this freedom is still either formally restricted or subject to cultural bias from the majority population.

People with Disabilities

The disability rights movement has contributed to an understanding of people with disabilities as a minority or a coalition of minorities who are disadvantaged by society, not just as people who are disadvantaged by their impairments.

Advocates of disability rights emphasize differences in physical or psychological functioning, rather than inferiority: for example, some people with autism argue for acceptance of neuro-diversity, in the same way in which opponents of racism argue for acceptance of ethnic diversity. The deaf community is often regarded as a linguistic and cultural minority rather than a group with disabilities, and some deaf people do not see themselves as having a disability at all. Rather, they are disadvantaged by technologies and social institutions that are designed to cater to the dominant, hearing-unimpaired group.

Affirmative Action

Affirmative action is a controversial issue, which refers to policies that take factors including race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or national origin into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group. This is usually justified as countering the effects of a history of discrimination. Affirmative action can, for example, take the form of a government program to provide immigrant or minority groups who primarily speak a marginalized language with extra teaching in the majority language, so that they are better able to compete for places at university or for jobs.

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The term "minority" is applied to various groups who hold few or no positions of power in a given society. Define a minority group Key Points The term minority doesn't necessarily refer to a numeric minority. Women, for example, make up roughly half the population but are often considered a minority group.

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Members of a subculture share beliefs and common experiences that set them apart from others in the larger culture.

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Methodology

Subculture researchers have relied mainly on ethnographic methods, as qualitative approaches afford insight into valuable details difficult to capture with a broader lens. Due to previous conceptions of subculture as local and therefore convenient (both in the traditions of the Chicago and Birmingham Schools) and the tendency of researchers to study deviant subcultures that are difficult to enter, much of the research on subcultures has specifically involved participant observation. Nonetheless, as many researchers, including Fine and Kleinman (1979), acknowledged years ago, the narrowness of such methods embodies their own limitations. For example, a case study of one gang could not claim representation of all gangs in a given population or yield any definite findings regarding the degree of interrelatedness between them.

Some subculture researchers have thus instead conducted surveys of samples of general populations (e.g., King, 2007; Latysheva, 2011), but this method can be ineffective, especially if the interviewer is not identified with the subculture or when the interviewer's values differ from the subculture's. Returning to the aforementioned limitations of a finer lens, "while case studies provide valuable information about the culture, it is unclear to what extent they provide evidence of the culture as a population segment" (Fine and Kleinman, 1979: p. 4). Yet, the broader study of general populations also yields difficulty, particularly in identifying subcultural groups (King, 2007). Given that in order to demonstrate a subculture's existence, a subpopulation's relative agreement on a set of attitudes, behaviors, or values must be identified, the researcher must necessarily show that communication occurs within that subpopulation and that its members identify as a group. For this reason, even in the challenging case of studying migrating or intermittently territorial subcultures, researchers examining them have tended to supplement any survey or documentary research with their observations (e.g., Hunt, 2008, 2010; Riley, 1988).

The globalization of culture and the introduction of the Internet and related technologies have not only challenged theoretical conceptions of subculture, but have also led to changes in how they are studied. As exemplified by McArthur (2009) in his study of 'geeks,' the Internet allows new formats for data to be gathered on subcultures, at the same time that it allows for new forms of expressing subcultural identity, as well as influencing those identities themselves. The future of subculture analysis may benefit from the accessibility of information and even the resurfacing of past information and data previously obscured by data security policies (although individuals participating in subcultures through different mediums in the past may never have realized that information would one day be made available electronically and via search engines). The criticism that studies are focused on subcultures at one point in time can now be addressed by expanding the search backward and more broadly to include an ever-increasing amount of information available online. The Internet also makes it possible to study distant subcultures remotely. Finally, videos and multimedia files produced by other researchers are shared in the advent of a very open attitude toward information sharing.

Although the advent of the Internet facilitates research on subcultures, it also complicates it. Despite the growth of the Internet, it is not equally accessible to all populations. The 'digital divide' represents the absence or limitation of access to the Internet for certain people or groups based on affordability, knowledge, or motivation. Furthermore, even in the hypothetical scenario that all potentially desired participants would have similar access to and know-how regarding these technological means, self-selection would remain an issue.

Nonetheless, the increased availability of information will certainly aid in research on subcultures that exist in a variety of modes and will address some of the previously articulated, but nonetheless still valid, challenges of qualitative research identified by Fine and Kleinman (1979): the Internet makes it possible to discover linkages among groups, track the transmission and forms of information and exchanges of communication, and identify kinds of information that is transmitted. Furthermore, given the progression of technology to allow for more remote and anonymous participation in a subculture, many studies themselves may in turn become focused purely on online cultures (King, 2007). While ethnography remains an important method for studying subculture, the existence of the Internet may lead to the realization of a new form of interdisciplinary research, combining ethnography with methods such as textual analysis (Pollex, 1997), an approach some have called 'postmodern ethnography' (Tyler, 1986). Such a new method would have to be focused on mining data and organizing it in such a way that large numbers of disparate pieces can be integrated and interpreted in meaningful ways. The Internet spreads information quickly and retains it forever, so future subcultural analysts will need to develop methods for sampling this vast array of information and deciding how valid it is. As the information age continues to unfold, the challenges and benefits the Internet poses to theorists and researchers will no doubt lead to substantial changes in how subculture is understood and studied.

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URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780080970868321559

Role of Subcultural Values

Subcultures exert even a greater influence upon their members in terms of behavior than the dominant culture. They are easily carved out for market segmentation, and can be easily reached with specific marketing campaigns. Religious groups are a common subculture in society-one that has overwhelming influence on their followers. Every religion stipulates for its members what should be regarded as good or bad behavior in terms of what to eat, where to visit, what to wear and so forth. Through their teachings, some of the religions condition their members to accepting a lifestyle that anticipates gratification in the life to come at the expense of material gains in this world. As a result of such indoctrination, evaluation of certain goods and services by the members tend to be below par relative to what happens in the larger society. Religion is particularly powerful in shaping people's behavior in this way because religious beliefs are typically construed so as to make it impossible for people to demonstrate the truth or falsity of the beliefs they hold. Instead, the true believer finds in daily experience some confirmation of religious faith ( Goode, 1971: 51).

Marketing officers in banks have really had to join some religious groups so as to attract deposits from them. Joining religious groups in this way may achieve the desired results. In doing so, for instance, the religious groups might have the impression that they are accepted even by the larger society. Yet, there could be more aggressive marketing strategies to tap into the overwhelming business opportunities that abound in sub-cultural groups and institutions in the societies. Consider the case of the defunct IBTC Ethical Fund in Nigeria which appeals to the devout religious practitioners. This is a capital market product that promises to pool funds from individuals, especially the religious adherents, for investment in quoted stocks of companies other than those that produce alcoholic drinks, cigarettes, and all such products. These are products the consumption of which certain religious beliefs prohibit. Perhaps the making of this product originated in the thinking of the bank's management that as many people dislike alcohol, smoking, and similar products, it would be appropriate and profitable to develop such a special product to serve their religious belief. In order to convert this thought into a profitable business opportunity, the bank introduced the Ethical Fund which is targeted mainly at those who by their religious inclinations dislike alcohol and cigarettes.

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URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128054796000055

4.1 Subcultures and Reference Groups

Members of a subculture share beliefs and common experiences that set them apart from others in the larger culture. Whether "Dead Heads" or "Skinheads," each group exhibits its own unique set of norms, vocabulary, and product insignias (e.g., the skull and roses that signifies the Grateful Dead subculture).

A reference group is an actual or imaginary individual or group that influences an individual's evaluations, aspirations, or behavior. As a rule, reference group effects are more robust for purchases that are (a) luxuries (e.g., sailboats) rather than necessities and (b) socially conspicuous or visible to others (e.g., living room furniture, clothing).

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URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B0126574103002191

2.4.3 Fan fiction

Frequently mentioned in relation to transmedia, but very much opposed to the idea of canonicity, is the phenomenon of fan fiction. The term initially referred to fan-created short stories and other literary texts, but with the rise of digital technologies, it came to include expressions in other media as well.

Generally, a fan is a person with a strong and enthusiastic interest in something or somebody: a sports team, an individual celebrity or a particular story. A variety of ways in which fans enact their knowledge and support of a given subject is what makes up shared spaces known as fan subcultures or fandoms. Fans engage with their area of interest at many different levels. At the most passive level they dedicatedly follow their object of interest and seek information about it in multiple sources. At a more participatory level they take part in what Beddows (2012, p. 85) calls 'extra-textual activities', sharing information on the web, engaging in discussions on social media, attending conventions or organising events such as live action role-playing to enact or expand the events from their favourite story. The genre of science fiction has been characterised by organised fandom as early as 1920s (Moskowitz, 1974, pp. 4-5).

Finally, the highest level of fan engagement is the appropriation of the narrative, manifested in the attempt to influence the course of the story. For example, in an online discussion a fan of the Game of Thrones series suggested that, in the case one of the most eagerly awaited battle scenes would not be filmed due to the budget shortage, the audience should raise funds through crowdfunding campaigns. Another appropriative practice is the enhancement of the narrative space through sequels, spin-offs, parodies and other intertextual/transfictional forms that usually borrow main characters or settings from an original story, but develop them in non-canonical directions.

These practices are not a novelty: all major forms of folk literature, from classical epic poems to the medieval cycles, were developed through the process of appropriation and collective authorship. Participatory storytelling may have been overshadowed by the rise of the modern concept of authorship, but it hardly disappeared: as a matter of fact, with the advent of the web it was encouraged on a global scale. Therefore it comes as no surprise that modern fan productivity is sometimes referred to as the folklore of the digital age (Jenkins, 2006, p. 136), although the phenomenon can be clearly traced to the times prior to digital technologies. For example, in the 19th century England there was a considerable amount of amateur rewrites inspired by Jane Austen's novels and the adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Hellekson & Busse, 2014, pp. 5-6). Science-fiction fanzines - or fan-written magazines - containing news, reports on fan activities, debates, but also short stories and art, emerged in the 1930s mostly to fill in the period between the issues of professionally published magazines (Coppa, 2006, pp. 42-43). Produced in relatively small print runs and circulated mostly via subscription and postal mail, fanzines remained the most common form of fan communication in the pre-internet era. With the increasing popularity of new media such as cinema and television, the 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of the so-called media fandom, or fan subcultures established around films and television series rather than literary works (Coppa, 2006). The cult science-fiction television drama Star Trek (1966) was one of the milestones in the history of fan fiction, marking the beginning of the modern fan culture. During the 1990s, fan communication moved online and gained new momentum, shifting from being focused on a single story such as Star Trek or Doctor Who to the creation of platforms dedicated to fan fiction in general, as a genre per se (Hellekson & Busse, 2014, pp. 6-7). Moreover, we are recently witnessing the phenomenon of fan works turning into commercial blockbusters, from E. L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey (2011), which began its life online as fan fiction for the Stephanie Meyer's popular fantasy romance saga Twilight, but ended up as a best-seller trilogy with more than 100 million copies sold worldwide, to Beautiful Bastard (2013) by Christina Lauren, based on the same original work, but less successful with 'only' 1.3 million copies sold.

Aside from launching fan subculture from the niche to the mainstream, the Internet has also provided a means for researchers to study more closely and actively the patterns of fan communication (Beddows, 2012, p. 84). Fan studies emerged in the 1980s, eventually growing into a prosperous interdisciplinary field that draws on diverse academic disciplines such as literary theory, semiotics, ethnology, psychology, law and education studies (Hellekson & Busse, 2014, pp. 8-10). Much research has been focusing on fan participation as a form of resistance to consumeristic practices. Since fan fiction generally builds on storyworlds that are made widely known through mainstream production, fans are often seen by the industry as allies whose creative work helps develop the story and reinforce the brand; however, since fan appropriation is expressed in parodies, travesties and other forms that fail to respect the discourse of the original narrative, some creators and rightholders strongly oppose it, treating it as plagiarism or copyright infringement. As Jenkins explains

[...] the media industry is increasingly dependent on active and commited consumers to spread the word about valued properties in an overcrowded media marketplace, and in some cases they are seeking ways to channel the creative output of media fans to lower their production costs. At the same time, they are terrified of what happens if this consumer power gets out of control [ ...].
Jenkins (2006, p. 134)

Aside from becoming a symbol of power relations between consumers and media industry, fan fiction has been viewed through many other lenses as well. Gender studies, for example, see it as a voice of women and minorities, whereas media and educational studies explore the role of fan fiction in teaching language and literature (Jenkins, 2008), and cultural studies focus on the breaking down of distinctions between high and popular culture.

From the point of view of bibliographic information organisation, fan fiction has been going below radar due to the fact that during the most of its history it was not intended for professional publishing and therefore not included in library collections. However, the web has extended both the notion of publishing and library collection. As the popularity of fan fiction was followed by a growing cultural impact and, consequently, academic interest, libraries have increasingly started to collect it - even though, as reported by Price and Robinson (2017), systematic collection and management is still limited for reasons that vary from enormous volume and mixed quality of works to copyright and preservation issues. Nevertheless, in their study on fan fiction in libraries the authors cite several examples of library fanzine collections, some of which are born digital, while others are digitised from print material. The authors also report that library and information science students generally recognise cultural significance of fan fiction, which opens the way for a more systematic approach to this kind of resources in the future.

From the perspective of transmedia storytelling, fan fiction is not a necessary ingredient for a story to be transmedial. A lot of amateur productivity is based on non-transmedia fiction, while on the other hand the basic definition of transmedia does not imply the existence of fan content, despite some authors claiming otherwise (Scolari, Bertetti, & Freeman, 2014, p. 3). While the very nature of transmedia is highly encouraging of participatory practices, fan fiction is often excluded from definitions of transmedia storytelling due to its tendency to break the cohesion of a story and move away from the canon (Long, 2007, p. 164). The question of whether a definition of transmedia work should include fan fiction - widely known as canon vs. fanon dispute - boils down to the problem of choosing a set of criteria by which to define canon. As we have seen in the previous section, this task is anything but simple, particularly if the notion of 'personal canon' is taken into consideration. Beddows (2012) has shown that the consumers may choose different elements, from narrative consistency to author, medium or characters, as a thread that holds the parts together. However, she also reports that while some consumers openly denounce fan practices, others are less restrictive, but nevertheless regard these works as ancillary or secondary in the overall story structure (Beddows, 2012, pp. 196, 198). Fan fiction is also more closely scrutinised for inconsistencies compared to canonical works, even if canon itself is inconsistent (Beddows, 2012, p. 181).

In conclusion, as much as the notion of canon is important for understanding transmedia, its ambiguity hardly makes it a reliable measure in deciding what to include and what to keep out when determining the outlines of a transmedia work. If an original work is extended by non-official, amateur creations, bibliographic information organisation should reflect their relationships irrespective of the type of transfictionality that they belong to. Aside from being critical for the process of assembling and interpreting the story, this approach is also supported by a growing acknowledgement of fandom as a cultural force.

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6.1.3 Subcultures and Psychosocial Effects of Pets

Epidemiological studies of entire communities identify subcultures where certain individual circumstances, neighborhoods, geographical or economic features, or special situations are associated with beneficial or adverse health parameters ( Ory & Goldberg, 1983, 1984). A study among older rural adults showed that higher levels of attachment to pet dogs were associated with higher depression; being able to meet the dogs' medical, food, and housing needs was associated with lower levels of depression (Miltiades & Shearer, 2011).

Research in human-animal interactions (HAIs) is generally published from the United States, Australia, and European countries, with less from Asia and Africa. Cultural differences affect how we interact with and see the animals: As Jegatheesan (2012) mentioned, "It is evident that the nature of the human-animal relationship and interactions will vary depending upon the cultural, religious, and social background of the respondents." Studying cardiovascular responses in the presence of a dog, Friedmann, Locker, and Lockwood (1993) showed that individuals having positive perceptions toward animals showed better outcomes than individuals having less positive perceptions. Therefore, the HAIs might provide somewhat different psychological and physiological effects for people living in different cultures.

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Cultural Socialization

Throughout the world, cultures and subcultures transmit information about the meanings of human appearance. Societal messages convey 'standards' or expectations about appearance - what physical characteristics are or are not socially valued and what it means to possess or lack these characteristics. Of course, developed cultures with extensive communication media ubiquitously disseminate these values. Cultural messages not only articulate and reinforce normative notions about physical attractiveness and unattractiveness but also express gender-based expectations, linking 'femininity' and 'masculinity' to certain physical attributes. Western culture's emphasis on beauty and thinness as standards for girls and women permeates all levels of mass media. Boys and men do not escape the media's messages about the meaning and ideal of the male body - tall, handsome, lean, broad shouldered, and powerfully muscular. Exposure to these messages has multiple effects - establishing the importance of human appearance (e.g., the power and necessity of attractiveness), transmitting specific appearance standards for individual internalization (i.e., adoption as personal ideals), and provoking self-comparisons with these standards in everyday life.

Cultural socialization also prescribes body-altering means to attain societal expectations (e.g., by dieting, exercising, bodybuilding, using beauty and fashion products, or seeking surgical/medical procedures). When personally internalized, these strong, gender-related cultural messages and norms foster the acquisition of basic body image attitudes (e.g., body image evaluation and investment), which predispose how individuals construe and react to their own appearance and life events that are seen as pertinent to their appearance.

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Andronovo Subsistence and Settlement

The peoples of the various Andronovo subcultures are thought to have practiced settled agro-pastoralism during the early periods and gradually transitioned to a greater dependency on herd animals and increased mobility by later phases. Very little direct botanical evidence for agriculture has been discovered, though researchers believe agricultural production was practiced based on the presence of grain-processing toolkits having mortars and pestles and occasional finds of millet and barley, especially at larger habitations. The settlement record for the Mature Bronze Age in eastern Central Eurasia is substantial and lends support to the model of village-oriented lifeways, at least until the Fedorovo period when many settlement sites had intermittent occupations, possibly related to seasonal movements of peoples and herds. Interlaced with settlement sites are Andronovo cemeteries of monumental kurgan burials.

Although much of the Andronovo period is characterized by small- to moderate-sized settlements located near water sources and having a number of rectangular house structures, large settlements up to 3 ha in size are known from the Sintashta-Petrovka phase. These settlements are clearly defensive sites with oval, circular, or rectangular layouts which were pre-planned and comprised walled fortifications and cellular domicile arrangements. Several sites from the eastern slopes of the Ural mountains, called by archaeologists the 'Country of Towns', could be considered type sites, including Bersuat, Stepnoe, and the best known of the circular variety, Arkaim. In all, there are approximately 20 known fortified settlements in this region which stretches along the eastern base of the Urals for 400 km. A number of these settlements have extensive remains of smelting ovens, bronze slag, copper ore, crucibles, and molds, providing evidence for highly specialized and intensive bronze artifact and copper ingot production, leading some researchers to describe these settlements as Bronze Age industrial centers.

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Subcultures

The study of youth and class-based subcultures has pointed to the significance of popular music as a means of solidifying collective identification. The academic discipline of cultural studies has focused on class and youth subcultures and identified the importance of popular music in their formation. While British-based cultural studies have called attention to the resistance to incorporation they thought youth culture represented, North American researchers and parents' groups in the 1950s worried over the emergence of rock and roll, associating it with aggression, alienation, and violence. A similar debate about the meaning of musical subcultures continues today regarding rap music. Music-based subcultures exist almost everywhere around the globe, as the spread and diffusion of rap and hip-hop culture generally attests. Richard Ssewakiryanga (2004), for example, discusses the significance of Western popular music among youth in Uganda in the 1980s and 1990s. This significance can only in part be explained by the power of a mass media and a mass culture music industry; some of the explanation must lie in the power of the music itself and its ability to provide a resourse in dealing with structural transformations.

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Introduction

"Perhaps being heavy in the black subculture does not carry with it the negative connotations that exist in the white subculture" (Desmond et al., 1989, p. 357). The oft-cited research report in which this speculative statement appears was a carefully conducted survey of attitudes toward weight among 341 Black and White students in two Midwestern inner-city high schools. The notion of weaker association between body image and weight among African Americans compared to White Americans, and indeed all other racial groups, has been asserted repeatedly, both by investigators pursing research questions testing this premise and by others who have taken it up as a plausible assumption upon which to base related investigations. The above quotation, then, may be said to symbolize the current scientific consensus regarding African American body image. Rendered as common scientific knowledge it could be summarized as: "African Americans tend to express positive body image." This positive regard is generally not negatively affected by higher weight category.

This statement, affirmed as it has been in multiple studies, is embraced in the United States as both scientific and common knowledge. However, this general acceptance, coupled with the regular resort to racial explanation that is part of the US cultural fabric, makes this simple observation vulnerable to misapplication in at least two ways. The first vulnerability is created by the frequency with which the qualifier, 'compared to Whites', is left off of the statement "African Americans tend to express positive body image." This omission creates the conditions for a between-group categorization (race) and a between-group difference (race-associated body image) to be misapplied as an explanation of a within-group phenomenon (body image among African Americans). The result of this misapplication is a broad resort to acculturation as the explanation for variability in body image among African Americans. That is, African American persons who do not exhibit positive body image in the face of overweight and/or do not express preference for larger body size are frequently thought to have experienced loss or attenuation of authentic racial identity. This resort to acculturation explanations fails to recognize that cultural categories like race serve to identify within-group similarity, but cannot reliably account for within-group difference. Findings from recent research exploring body image among African Americans support this observation of within-group variation. The most consistent revelation of these studies is that body image is a multifaceted concept whose varied manifestation among African Americans is not well understood.

The second way in which the finding of positive body image among African Americans is vulnerable to misapplication concerns gender. Until recently, body image studies including males have concluded that males are less concerned than females with conformity to an appearance ideal because masculine identity has traditionally emphasized performance over appearance. The cultural association of size with power and authority made leanness, weight control, and body fat less of an issue for males in the past. However, this lack of male concern with a size and shape ideal has coexisted with male concern with size as a symbol of power, and with a desire for muscularity. These concerns have increased markedly over the last 40 years, and have been accompanied by an increased concern with reducing body fat among men. More than three dozen currently published studies compare weight perception between racial groups and include males, and some of these investigations exclusively targeted males. The finding of a higher proportion of positive body image at greater weight among African Americans compared to Whites generally holds in these studies. However, African American males' responses to existing body image measures are different in important ways from those of both African American females and White males. For example, the meanings of larger body size (whether it refers to fat, muscle, or frame and whether the meanings are the same for all African American males) are unclear.

This observation does not invalidate the published findings concerning African American body image, but it does indicate limits for the conclusions that should be drawn from these studies. It also provides a baseline from which to formulate questions about body image in this group. These include: How do experiences of gender and gender roles interact with experiences of race and racial ethos to inform body image among African Americans? In what ways do African Americans' myriad experiences of being raced - having their physical appearance interpreted as symbolizing fundamental qualities of their personhood - express themselves in issues of bodily appearance and weight? And given that the argument of cultural protection against weight stigma has been applied to gendered and racial differences in body image and weight concern, how can the contribution of culture (which is neither synonymous with race nor dominated by race in all circumstances) to body image be meaningfully assessed? This article will engage these questions through addressing its aims: (1) to present an overview of the historical and current state of knowledge regarding African American body image; (2) to demonstrate the limits of racial framing and the effect of those limits on how body image is understood and investigated; and (3) to assert the importance of person-centered, intersectional investigations of body image among African Americans to the overall understanding of this phenomenon, including their potential to strengthen larger scale comparative investigations.

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James F. ShortJr., Lorine A. Hughes, in Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, & Conflict (Second Edition) , 2008

Subcultures, Group Processes, and Youth Violence

Young people are influenced by a variety of subcultures, some of which promote violence. Street gang culture has diffused widely across the United States and in some other countries, for example. Items of clothing, graffiti, and hand signals associated with gangs have become widely known via media portrayals. Youths who know little beyond their gang symbolism may affect such symbols, and behaviors associated with them, in a 'wannabe' fashion. They may, thereby, become identified as gangs by others, thus enhancing their gang status. This is but one form of the cycle of gang formation and perpetuation and its influence on young people.

However, more than gang culture is diffused. An even more general cultural phenomenon - youth culture - is now widely diffused throughout much of the world. Macroeconomic and social forces fail to provide meaningful roles for young people in the adult world, separating them from participation in that world. Because social separation produces cultural differentiation, a variety of youth cultures have been created. These subcultures influence and are influenced by a broader youth culture that contains elements common to many such varieties, such as youth-oriented preferences in music, media, and some types of behavior. Together with media advertising that caters to youthful appetites, fads, and currency, youth culture and its many variants become major influences in the lives of young people. The seductions of commercial products among less-affluent youth, and the thefts and assaults that often are associated with their acquisition, have been documented by a number of observers.

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Subculture researchers have relied mainly on ethnographic methods, as qualitative approaches afford insight into valuable details difficult to capture with a broader lens. Due to previous conceptions of subculture as local and therefore convenient (both in the traditions of the Chicago and Birmingham Schools) and the tendency of researchers to study deviant subcultures that are difficult to enter, much of the research on subcultures has specifically involved participant observation.

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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16304466

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Highlights

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Data on global bilateral migration during 1960-2010 to compute diversity indices.

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Gravity-based instrumental variable strategy to overcome endogeneity issues.

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Fractionalization and polarization have positive impacts on economic growth.

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Developing economies seem to benefit the most from diversity.

Summary

When migrants move from one country to another, they carry a new range of skills and perspectives, which nurture technological innovation and stimulate economic growth. At the same time, increased heterogeneity may undermine social cohesion, create coordination, and communication barriers, and adversely affect economic development. In this article we investigate the extent to which cultural diversity affects economic growth and whether this relation depends on the level of development of a country. We use novel data on bilateral migration stocks, that is the number of people living and working outside the countries of their birth over the period 1960-2010, and compute indices of fractionalization and polarization. In so doing, we explore the effect of immigration on development through its effect on the composition of the destination country. We find that overall both indices have a distinct positive impact on real GDP per capita and that the effect of diversity seems to be more consistent in developing countries.

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Migration, Diversity, and Economic Growth

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Data on global bilateral migration during 1960-2010 to compute diversity indices. * Gravity-based instrumental variable strategy to overcome endogeneity issues. * Fractionalization and polarization have positive impacts on economic growth. * Developing economies seem to benefit the most from diversity.

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Broad term used to describe the differences between different languages and the ways that people communicate with each other.

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Linguistic Diversity | Definition, Types & Examples - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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Explore linguistic diversity. Learn what linguistic diversity is and know its types in classrooms. See linguistic diversity examples and language…