Suchergebnisse

Children with physical disabilities are frequently excluded by classmates and discouraged from participating in such typical childhood experiences as physical activity. By being restricted from this context, these children have fewer opportunities to enhance physical and social skills. The purpose of this study is to examine the socialization potential of physical activity for children with physical disabilities. In-depth, tape-recorded interviews were conducted with 21 boys and girls with physical disabilities (age 10 to 17 years) regarding perceived outcomes of their physical activity and reactions of others toward their participation. Findings indicate that physical activity is a normalizing experience for these children because it facilitates perceptions of legitimating their social identity as children and provides a setting in which social networks with peers are enhanced. Implications of physical activity as a context for socialization of children with physical disabilities as well as a setting for their identity work are discussed.

This study investigates the existence of various social types in a young gay community (I 7-24 age group) located in the southeastern United States. The social types are identified "emically" through the use of a specific domain of knowledge, gay argot. Gay terms and expressions are grouped using a method similar to factor analysis to locate specific dimensions of behavior in this community. A central concern of this paper is to determine how the concept of "binary opposition" operates among the resulting social types. Binary opposition, which has been identified in studies constructing other folk taxonomies (classification schemes created from the participants' perspective), means that for every entity created in the taxonomy there must be an opposite to that entity (an example would be the "butch-femme" distinction among lesbians). Next, through interviews we investigate the specific attributes that define each of the resulting social types. Finally, we employ componential analysis to determine if there is any logical scheme operating among the types.