Social science & medicine
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Social science & medicine · Jun 2019
'Hopeful adaptation' in health geographies: Seeking health and wellbeing in times of adversity.
Living with adversity can create wide-ranging challenges for people's health and wellbeing. This adversity may arise through personal embodied difference (e.g. acquiring a brain injury or losing mobility in older age) as well as wider structural relations that shape a person's capacity to adapt. ⋯ We highlight the transformative potential in these adaptive practices, rather than solely focusing on how people persist and absorb adversity. The paper outlines an agenda for a health geography of hopeful adaptation, introducing a collection of papers that examine varied forms of adaptation in people's everyday struggles to find health and wellbeing whilst living with and challenging adversity.
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Social science & medicine · May 2019
Well-being and volunteering: Evidence from aging societies in Asia.
This study examines whether and how volunteering is associated with the well-being of older people in rapidly aging Asian societies; this topic has received remarkably little attention in the literature. Based on the severity of their population aging problem, five Asian societies are selected for an empirical study, namely Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. We conduct analysis of the latest World Values Survey data set collected from 2011 to 2012 and the effect of volunteering on four aspects of well-being, namely self-reported life satisfaction, happiness, health, and life mastery. ⋯ Moreover, immersion in volunteer work is crucial, particularly for retired people and people aged more than 65 in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. The results suggest people should be encouraged to engage in longer hours (or longer duration) of voluntary service. This study identifies the types of volunteer work that most effectively enhance the well-being of older people, which might help older adults transition to retirement and age with higher well-being and help aging societies alleviate their labor shortage problems by involving productive older people.
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Social science & medicine · Apr 2019
Quantifying intersectionality: An important advancement for health inequality research.
Intersectionality is a powerful theoretical framework that is useful in describing the lived experiences of people with multiple marginalized statuses. By focusing on power and domination (e.g., racism, sexism), and the ways in which they are inextricably linked and mutually constructing, researchers can better understand experiences of all people, not just those with one or more master statuses. This framework is valuable in understanding how discrimination relates to health and in attempts to reduce health disparities. ⋯ The pair of articles in this issue by Scheim and Bauer (2019), and Bauer and Scheim (2019), offer important new data collection instruments and data analytic strategies to advance our ability to measure discrimination intersectionally. When using these new tools, it is important to not lose track of the origins and historical underpinnings of intersectionality and to focus on the transformative goal of intersectionality to eradicate inequality.