A Medley of Potpourri

Monday, September 11, 2023

Post–civil rights era in African-American history

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post%E2%80%93civil_rights_era_in_African-American_history

In African-American history, the post–civil rights era is defined as the time period in the United States since Congressional passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, major federal legislation that ended legal segregation, gained federal oversight and enforcement of voter registration and electoral practices in states or areas with a history of discriminatory practices, and ended discrimination in the renting and buying of housing.

Politically, African Americans have made substantial strides in the post–civil rights era. Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson ran for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988, attracting more African Americans into politics and unprecedented support and leverage for people of colour in politics. In 2008, Barack Obama was elected as the first President of the United States of African descent.

In the same period, African Americans have suffered disproportionate unemployment rates following industrial and corporate restructuring, with a rate of poverty in the 21st century that is equal to that in the 1960s. African Americans have the highest rates of incarceration of any minority group, especially in the southern states of the former Confederacy.

1965–1970

On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X, an African-American rights activist with national and international prominence, was shot and killed in New York City.

1966 was the last year of publication of The Negro Motorist Green Book, informally known as "The Green Book". It provided advice to African-American travelers, during years of legal segregation and overt discrimination, about places where they could stay, get gas, and eat while traveling cross-country. For example, in 1956 only three New Hampshire motels served African Americans, and most motels and hotels in the South were segregated. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Green Book largely became obsolete.

The African-American cultural holiday Kwanzaa was first celebrated in 1966–1967. Kwanzaa was founded by Maulana Karenga as a Pan-Africanist cultural and racial-identity event, as an alternative to cultural events of the dominant society such as Christmas and Hanukkah.

The April 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. led to protests and riots in multiple U.S. cities, primarily in black-majority communities. Beginning in 1971, Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in numerous cities and states. A U.S. federal holiday was established in King's name in 1986. Since his death, hundreds of streets in the U.S. have been renamed in his honour. King has become a national icon in the history of American liberalism and American progressivism.

Fred Hampton, a prominent Black Panther activist, was murdered by police while sleeping in Chicago on December 4, 1969.

1970s

On April 8, 1970, the nomination of G. Harrold Carswell to the US Supreme Court was defeated by the US Senate, in part because of his history of racist remarks and actions. On May 27, 1970, the film Watermelon Man was released, directed by Melvin Van Peebles and starring Godfrey Cambridge.

In 1971, the release of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and Shaft marked the start of Blaxploitation films. The Blaxploitation genre catered to Black male fantasies surrounding violence, sex, the drug trade, pimping and overcoming "The Man".

On April 20, 1971, the Supreme Court, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, upheld busing of students to achieve integration. In June 1971, eight African-Americans were found shot dead in a house in Detroit, in the worst mass killing in Detroit's history.In December 1971, Jesse Jackson organized Operation PUSH in Chicago.

In 1972, Shirley Chisholm became the first major-party African-American candidate for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination. In 1976, Black History Month was founded by Professor Carter Woodson and the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History.

In 1972, DJ Kool Herc developed the musical blueprint for what later became hip-hop, later playing live shows for high school-age students in the Bronx, New York City.

In January 1973, gunmen stormed a house in Washington DC, and drowned four African-American children in bathtubs, and shot and killed two men and a boy. The house was occupied by members of the Hanafi Muslim sect, whose leader was in a dispute with the Nation of Islam.In 1977 the leader of the Hanafi sect led an armed takeover of 3 buildings in Washington DC, taking 149 hostages, to bring attention to the murder of his family. Two people were killed during the incident.

In the 1973 and 1974 MLB seasons, African-American baseball player Hank Aaron sought to pass Babe Ruth’s career home-run record. Between 1973 and 1974, Aaron broke the world record for most mail received in one year with over 950,000 letters. Over one-third of those letters were hate mail letters for beating a white man’s record, including death threats.

In June 1974, Martin Luther King's mother was assassinated. Alberta Williams King was shot dead at a church during a Sunday service.

Alex Haley published his novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family in 1976. It became a bestseller and generated great levels of interest in African-American genealogy and history. Roots was adapted into an eight part 1977 TV series that attracted a huge audience across the country.

President Jimmy Carter appointed Andrew Young to serve as Ambassador to the United Nations in 1977, the first African American to serve in the position. In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), the US Supreme Court barred racial quota systems in college admissions but affirmed the constitutionality of affirmative action programs giving equal access to minorities.

On November 18, 1978, six hundred and forty eight African-Americans died in the mass murder/suicide of the Peoples Temple religious group in Jonestown, Guyana. The religious group, led by Jim Jones, had relocated from California to establish a community in Guyana, South America.

The Atlanta Child Murders which were committed between 1979 and 1981 set Atlanta's Black community on edge. At least 28 Black children and teenagers were abducted and murdered in similar circumstances in less than two years before their killer was caught.

1520 Sedgwick Avenue where DJ Kool Herc threw his first parties in the Bronx, New York City in 1973, considered to be the birth of hip-hop.
The cast of The Jeffersons in 1976. The Jeffersons ran from 1975 to 1985, and was the second-longest running TV series with a mainly African-American cast.
Followers of Jim Jones in San Francisco in January 1977

1980s

In 1982, Michael Jackson released Thriller, which became the best-selling album of all time.

The Miracle Valley shootout in October 1982 saw two Black churchgoers killed and seven Arizona law enforcement officers injured.

In 1983, Guion Bluford became the first African American to go into space in NASA's program. President Ronald Reagan signed a bill in 1983 to create a federal holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated in 1968 and considered a martyr to civil rights. Established by legislation in 1983, Martin Luther King Jr. Day was first celebrated as a national holiday on January 20, 1986. Alice Walker received the Pulitzer Prize in 1983 for her novel The Color Purple. In September 1983, Vanessa L. Williams became the first African American to win the title of Miss America as Miss America 1984.

The crack cocaine epidemic had a devastating effect on Black America. As early as 1981, reports of crack were appearing in Los Angeles, San Diego, Miami, and Houston. In 1984, the distribution and use of crack exploded. In 1984, in some major cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Houston, Los Angeles, and Detroit, one dosage unit of crack could be obtained for as little as $2.50 (equivalent to $7.04 in 2022).

Between 1984 and 1989, the homicide rate for black males aged 14 to 17 more than doubled, and the homicide rate for black males aged 18 to 24 increased nearly as much. During this period, the black community also suffered a 20%–100% increase in fetal death rates, low birth-weight babies, weapons arrests, and the number of children in foster care.

The beginning of the crack epidemic coincided with the rise of hip hop music in the Black community in the mid-1980s, strongly influencing the evolution of hardcore hip hop and gangsta rap, as crack and hip hop became the two leading fundamentals of urban street culture.

The Cosby Show begins as a TV series in 1984. Featuring an upper-middle-class family with comedian Bill Cosby as a physician and head of the family, it is regarded as one of the defining television shows of the decade.

11 members of the Black liberation and back-to-nature group MOVE died during a standoff with police in West Philadelphia on May 13, 1985. John Africa, the founder of MOVE was killed, as well as five other adults and five children. 65 homes were destroyed after a police helicopter dropped an incendiary device, causing an out of control fire in surrounding houses.

The film The Color Purple was released to box office success in December 1985. Set in the early 20th Century, The Color Purple tells the story of a young Black girl named Celie Harris who faces issues both public and socially hidden, including domestic violence, incest, pedophilia, poverty, racism, and sexism. The Color Purple has been described as "a plea for respect for Black women."

In January 1987 in rural Forsyth County, Georgia, about 20,000 demonstrators took part in a march after a previous march in the county was disrupted by white supremacists and Klansmen in one of the largest civil rights demonstrations since the 1960s.

Beloved by Toni Morrison was published in 1987. In 2006, a New York Times survey of writers and literary critics ranked it as the best work of American fiction in the last 25 years. After producing additional masterworks, Toni Morrison was later awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

1988 saw the first major African-American gangsta rap album - N.W.A's Straight Outta Compton. Gangsta rap would be recurrently accused of promoting anti-social behavior and broad criminality, especially assault, homicide and drug dealing, misogyny, promiscuity and materialism.

In 1988, track and field athlete Florence Griffith Joyner, also known as "Flo Jo", won three gold and one silver medal at the 1988 Summer Olympics. At the time, her medal haul was the second most for a female track and field athlete in history.

Ron Brown was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 1989, becoming the first African American to lead a major United States political party. Colin Powell was appointed as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1989.

In 1989, Douglas Wilder was elected as the first African-American governor of Virginia, and the first African-American elected governor of the United States.

Michael Jackson's 1982 album Thriller became the best selling album of all time.
Track and field star Florence Griffith Joyner won three gold and one silver medal at the 1988 Summer Olympics.

1990s

Clarence Thomas was confirmed to the US Supreme Court in 1991.

In July 1991, serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested. Eleven of Dahmer's 17 victims were African-Americans.

The 1992 Los Angeles riots erupted after the officers accused of beating Rodney King in March 1991 were acquitted. In 1992 Mae Carol Jemison became the first African-American woman to travel in space when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Carol Moseley Braun (D-Illinois) became the first African-American woman to be elected to the United States Senate on November 3, 1992.

Director Spike Lee's film Malcolm X was released in 1992, a serious biography of the leader of the Nation of Islam.

In 1993, civil rights activist C. Delores Tucker started publicly campaigning against misogyny in rap music. Tucker believed that the attacks upon Black women in hip-hop lyrics threatened the moral foundation of African American society. In response, Delores Tucker was lyrically disparaged by multiple rappers, including Tupac, and Eminem.

Cornel West's text, Race Matters, was published in 1994.

The Million Man March was held on October 16, 1995, in Washington, D.C., co-initiated by Louis Farrakhan and James Bevel. The Million Woman March was held on October 25, 1997, in Philadelphia.

The racially charged murder trial of O.J. Simpson transfixed America between January and October 1995. The trial of the already famous NFL star and actor O. J. Simpson was the most publicized in US history.

Michael Jordan was the most dominant basketball player of the 1990s, becoming a global cultural icon.

2000s

Colin Powell was appointed as the first African American to be Secretary of State on January 20, 2001. Supreme Court in Grutter v. Bollinger upheld the University of Michigan Law School's admission policy on June 23, 2003. However, in the simultaneously heard Gratz v. Bollinger, the university is required to change a policy.

In 2004, the founder of the New York based Nuwaubian Nation, Dwight York, was sentenced to 135 years for child molestation and racketeering.

The Millions More Movement held a march in Washington D.C on October 15, 2005. Rosa Parks died at the age of 92 on October 25, 2005. Rosa Parks was a noted civil rights activist who had helped initiate the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955. As an honor, her body lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., before her funeral.

In March 2007, the Cherokee Nation voted to expel African American descendants of slaves held by the Cherokee from the Cherokee tribe. This ruling ignited a 10-year legal battle, with the Black Cherokee freedmen regaining their legal status within the Cherokee Nation in 2017.

On June 28, 2007, the US Supreme Court in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, decided along with Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, ruled that school districts could not assign students to particular public schools solely for the purpose of achieving racial integration; it declined to recognize racial balancing as a compelling state interest.

On June 3, 2008, Barack Obama received enough delegates by the end of state primaries to be the presumptive Democratic Party of the United States nominee. On August 28, 2008, at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, in a stadium filled with supporters, Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. Obama was elected 44th President of the United States of America on November 4, 2008, opening his victory speech with, "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer."

On January 20, 2009, Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, the first African American to become president. Former Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele, an African American, was elected as Chairman of the Republican National Committee on January 30, 2009.

The U.S. Postal Service issued a commemorative six-stamp set portraying twelve civil rights pioneers in 2010. Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on October 9, 2009.

2010s

On July 19, 2010, Shirley Sherrod was pressured to resign from the U.S. Department of Agriculture because of controversial publicity; the department apologized to her for her being inaccurately portrayed as racist toward white Americans.

In 2013, protests were held across the United States following the death of an unarmed African-American teenager, Trayvon Martin, who was shot by George Zimmerman in Florida. Zimmerman was charged with murder, but later acquitted. In reaction to Martin's death and Zimmerman's acquittal, Black activists Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi popularized the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter.

In 2014, massive protests were held in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting death of Michael Brown, Jr. by Ferguson police. The death of Eric Garner while being held in a chokehold by a New York City policeman, Daniel Pantaleo, in July 2014, sparked additional outrage and protests across the country. In the wake of these deaths, and others, Black Lives Matter developed into a nationwide non-violent movement.

Nine Black churchgoers were murdered in the racially motivated Charleston church shooting on June 17, 2015.

From 2019, the American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) political movement began to differentiate themselves from the growing number of Black African immigrants in the United States and Black immigrants in the US from the Caribbean.

2020s

In later May 2020, a video was posted on social media platforms showing George Floyd being murdered by a Minneapolis Police Department officer, Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd's neck for over ten minutes. Floyd's murder sparked outrage and condemnation across the country and the globe. Despite restrictions on public gatherings of large sizes due to the COVID-19 pandemic, large protests were held in cities across the United States as well as in many other nations.

On August 28, 2020, thousands of people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., for the Commitment March, organized by Rev. Al Sharpton and joined by Martin Luther King III, in support of black civil rights.

The Portland foreclosure protest was a response to the eviction of an Afro-indigenous family in Portland, Oregon.

Across 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic had a disproportionately negative impact upon Black Americans. Black Americans died from the virus at a higher rate than the general population. Black Americans also suffered significant economic hardship due to the virus.

On November 3, 2020, Kamala Harris was elected the first black Vice President of the United States.

Political representation

In 1989, Douglas Wilder became the first African American to be elected governor in U.S. history. In 1992 Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois became the first black woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate. In 2000 there were 8,936 black officeholders in the United States, showing a net increase of 7,467 since 1970. In 2001 there were 484 black mayors.

The 38 African-American members of Congress formed the Congressional Black Caucus, which serves as a political bloc for issues relating to African Americans. The appointment of blacks to high federal offices—including General Colin Powell, Chairman of the U.S. Armed Forces Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1989–1993, United States Secretary of State, 2001–2005; Condoleezza Rice, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, 2001–2004, Secretary of State in, 2005–2009; Ron Brown, United States Secretary of Commerce, 1993–1996, Eric Holder, Attorney General of the United States, 2009–present; and Supreme Court justices Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas—also demonstrates the increasing contributions of blacks in the political arena.

In 2009 Michael S. Steele was elected as the first African-American chairman of the national Republican Party.

In 2021 Ebenezer Baptist Church pastor Raphael Warnock became the first African American Democratic Senator from a former Confederate state.

2008 presidential election of Barack Obama

In 2008 presidential elections, Illinois senator Barack Obama became the first black presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, the first Black presidential candidate from a major political party. He was elected as the 44th President of the United States on November 4, 2008, and inaugurated on January 20, 2009.

At least 95 percent of African-American voters voted for Obama. Obama won big among young and minority voters, bringing a number of new states to the Democratic electoral column. Obama became the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter to win a popular vote majority. He also received overwhelming support from whites, a majority of Asians, and Americans of Hispanic origin. Obama lost the overall white vote, but he won a larger proportion of white votes than any previous non-incumbent Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter.

Interracial marriages

Marriages between African-Americans and people of other races have significantly increased since all race-based legal restrictions on interracial marriage ended following Loving v. Virginia in 1967. The overall rate of marriages between African-Americans and non-Black spouses more than tripled between 1980 and 2015, from 5% to 18%. 24% of all Black male newlyweds married outside their race in 2015, compared to 12% of Black female newlyweds.

Economic situation

Nearly 25% of all black Americans live below the poverty line in the early 21st century, approximately the same percentage as the percentage of all black Americans who lived below the poverty line in 1968. The child poverty rate has also increased among African Americans and their rate of unemployment is disproportionately high in comparison to the rate of unemployment among members of other ethnic groups.

In public opinion, these sobering facts have sometimes been masked by the spectacular achievements of successful individuals. African Americans are underrepresented in the rapidly expanding and lucrative fields related to computer programming and technology, where innovations have led to some people making huge new fortunes.

Economic progress for blacks' reaching the extremes of wealth has been slow. According to Forbes "richest" lists, Oprah Winfrey was the richest African American of the 20th century and has been the world's only black billionaire in 2004, 2005, and 2006. Not only was Winfrey the world's only black billionaire but she has been the only black on the Forbes 400 list nearly every year since 1995. BET founder Bob Johnson briefly joined her on the list from 2001 to 2003 before his ex-wife acquired part of his fortune; although he returned to the list in 2006, he did not make it in 2007. Blacks currently comprise 0.25% of America's economic elite; they make up 13% of the total U.S. population.

Social issues

Despite the gains of the civil rights movement, other factors have resulted in African-American communities suffering from extremely high incarceration rates of their young males. Contributing factors have been the drug war waged by successive administrations, imposition of sentencing guidelines at the federal and state levels, cutbacks in government assistance, restructuring of industry since the mid-20th century and extensive loss of working-class jobs leading to high poverty rates, and government neglect, an erosion of African American two parent families, and unfavorable social policies. African Americans have the highest imprisonment rate of any major ethnic group in the United States and the world, and are sentenced to death at a rate higher than any other ethnic group.

The southern states of the former Confederacy, which historically had maintained slavery longer than in the remainder of the country and imposed post-Reconstruction oppression, have the highest rates of incarceration and application of the death penalty.

Imaginary friend

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Imaginary friends (also known as pretend friends, invisible friends or made-them-up friends) are a psychological and a social phenomenon where a friendship or other interpersonal relationship takes place in the imagination rather than physical reality.

Although they may seem real to their creators, children usually understand that their imaginary friends are not real.

The first studies focusing on imaginary friends are believed to have been conducted during the 1890s. There is little research about the concept of imaginary friends in children's imaginations. Klausen and Passman (2007) report that imaginary companions were originally described as being supernatural creatures and spirits that were thought to connect people with their past lives. Adults in history have had entities such as household gods, guardian angels, and muses that functioned as imaginary companions to provide comfort, guidance and inspiration for creative work. It is possible the phenomenon appeared among children in the mid-19th century when childhood was emphasized as an important time for play and imagination.

Description

In some studies, imaginary friends are defined as children impersonating a specific character (imagined by them), or objects or toys that are personified. However, some psychologists will define an imaginary friend only as a separate created character. Imaginary friends can be people, but they can also take the shape of other characters such as animals or other abstract ideas such as ghosts, monsters, robots, aliens or angels. These characters can be created at any point during a lifetime, though Western culture suggests they are most acceptable in preschool- and school-age children. They often function as tutelaries when played with by a child. They reveal, according to several theories of psychology, a child's anxieties, fears, goals and perceptions of the world through that child's conversations. They are, according to some children, physically indistinguishable from real people, while others say they see their imaginary friends only in their heads, and still others cannot see the friend at all but can sense his/her presence. Most research agrees that girls are more likely than boys to develop imaginary friends. Once children reach school age, boys and girls are equally likely to have an imaginary companion. Research has often reiterated that there is not a specific "type" of child that creates an imaginary friend. Whenever children creates imagination in their mind so that they believe some imaginary world would have exist to another universe or create imaginary world for imaginary friends to live.

Research has shown that imaginary friends are a normative part of childhood and even adulthood.Additionally, some psychologists suggest that imaginary friends are much like a fictional character created by an author. As Eileen Kennedy-Moore points out, "Adult fiction writers often talk about their characters taking on a life of their own, which may be an analogous process to children’s invisible friends." In addition, Marjorie Taylor and her colleagues have found that fiction writers are more likely than average to have had imaginary friends as children.

There is a difference between the common imaginary friends that many children create, and the imaginary voices of psychopathology. Often when there’s a psychological disorder and any inner voices are present, they add negativity to the conversation. The person with the disorder may sometimes believe that the imagined voices are physically real, not an imagined inner dialog.

Imaginary friends can serve various functions. Playing with imaginary friends enables children to enact behaviors and events they have not yet experienced. Imaginary play allows children to use their imagination to construct knowledge of the world. In addition, imaginary friends might also fulfill children's innate desire to connect with others before actual play among peers is common. According to psychologist Lev Vygotsky, cultural tools and interaction with people mediate psychological functioning and cognitive development. Imaginary friends, perceived as real beings, could teach children how to interact with others along with many other social skills. Vygotsky's sociocultural view of child development includes the notion of children's “zone of proximal development,” which is the difference between what children can do with and without help. Imaginary friends can aid children in learning things about the world that they could not learn without help, such as appropriate social behavior, and thus can act as a scaffold for children to achieve slightly above their social capability.

In addition, imaginary friends also serve as a means for children to experiment with and explore the world. In this sense, imaginary companions also relate to Piaget's theory of child development because they are completely constructed by the child. According to Piaget, children are scientific problem solvers who self-construct experiences and build internal mental structures based on experimentation. The creation of and interaction with imaginary companions helps children to build such mental structures. The relationship between a child and their imaginary friend can serve as a catalyst for the formation of real relationships in later development and thus provides a head start to practicing real-life interaction.

Research

It has been theorized that children with imaginary friends may develop language skills and retain knowledge faster than children without them, which may be because these children get more linguistic practice than their peers as a result of carrying out "conversations" with their imaginary friends.^[11]

Kutner (n.d.) reported that 65% of 7-year-old children report they have had an imaginary companion at some point in their lives. He further reported:

Imaginary friends are an integral part of many children's lives. They provide comfort in times of stress, companionship when they're lonely, someone to boss around when they feel powerless, and someone to blame for the broken lamp in the living room. Most important, an imaginary companion is a tool young children use to help them make sense of the adult world.

Taylor, Carlson & Gerow (c2001: p. 190) hold that:

despite some results suggesting that children with imaginary friends might be superior in intelligence, it is not true that all intelligent children create them.

If imaginary friends can provide assistance to children in developing their social skills, they must function as important roles in the lives of children. Hoff (2004 – 2005) was interested in finding out the roles and functions of imaginary friends and how they impacted the lives of children. The results of her study have provided some significant insight on the roles of imaginary friends. Many of the children reported their imaginary friends as being sources of comfort in times of boredom and loneliness. Another interesting result was that imaginary friends served to be mentors for children in their academics. They were encouraging, provided motivation, and increased the self-esteem of children when they did well in school. Finally, imaginary friends were reported as being moral guides for children. Many of the children reported that their imaginary friends served as a conscience and helped them to make the correct decision in times where morality was questioned.

Other professionals such as Marjorie Taylor feel imaginary friends are common among school-age children and are part of normal social-cognitive development. Part of the reason people believed children gave up imaginary companions earlier than has been observed is related to Piaget's stages of cognitive development. Piaget suggested that imaginary companions disappeared once children entered the concrete operational stage of development. Marjorie Taylor identified middle school children with imaginary friends and followed up six years later as they were completing high school. At follow-up, those who had imaginary friends in middle school displayed better coping strategies but a "low social preference for peers." She suggested that imaginary friends may directly benefit children's resiliency and positive adjustment. Because imagination play with a character involves the child often imagining how another person (or character) would act, research has been done to determine if having an imaginary companion has a positive effect on theory of mind development. In a previous study, Taylor & Carlson (1997) found that 4-year-old children who had imaginary friends scored higher on emotional understanding measures and that having a theory of mind would predict higher emotional understanding later on in life. When children develop the realization that other people have different thoughts and beliefs other than their own, they are able to grow in their development of theory of mind as they begin to have better understandings of emotions.

Positive psychology

The article, "Pretend play and positive psychology: Natural companions" defined many great tools that are seen in children who engage pretend play. These five areas include creativity, coping, emotion regulation, empathy/emotional understanding and hope. Hope seems to be the underlying tool children use in motivation. Children become more motivated when they believe in themselves, therefore children will not be discouraged to come up with different ways of thinking because they will have confidence. Imaginary companionship displays immense creativity helping them to develop their social skills and creativity is frequently discussed term amongst positive psychology.

An imaginary companion can be considered the product of the child's creativity whereas the communication between the imaginary friend and the child is considered to be the process.

Adolescence

"Imaginary companions in adolescence: sign of a deficient or positive development?" explores the extent to which adolescents create imaginary companions. The researchers explored the prevalence of imaginary companions in adolescence by investigating the diaries of adolescents age 12-17. In addition they looked at the characteristics of these imaginary companions and did a content analysis of the data obtained in the diaries. There were three hypotheses tested: (1) the deficit hypothesis, (2) the giftedness hypothesis, (3) the egocentrism hypothesis. The results of their study concluded that creative and socially competent adolescents with great coping skills were particularly prone to the creation of these imaginary friends. These findings did not support the deficit hypothesis or egocentrism hypothesis, further suggesting that these imaginary companions were not created with the aim to replace or substitute a real-life family member or friend, but they simply created another "very special friend". This is surprising because it is usually assumed that children who create imaginary companions have deficits of some sort, and it is unheard of for an adolescent to have an imaginary companion.

Tulpa

Following the popularizing and secularizing of the concept of tulpa in the Western world, these practitioners, calling themselves "tulpamancers", report an improvement to their personal lives through the practice, and new unusual sensory experiences. Some practitioners use the tulpa for sexual and romantic interactions, though the practice is considered taboo. A survey of the community with 118 respondents on the explanation of tulpas found 8.5% support a metaphysical explanation, 76.5% support a neurological or psychological explanation, and 14% "other" explanations. Nearly all practitioners consider the tulpa a real or somewhat-real person. The number of active participants in these online communities is in the low hundreds, and few meetings in person have taken place.

Birth order

To uncover the origin of imaginary companions and learn more about the children who create them, it is necessary to seek out children who have created imaginary companions. Unfortunately young children cannot accurately self-report, therefore the most effective way to gather information about children and their imaginary companions is by interviewing the people who spend the most time with them. Often mothers are the primary caretakers who spend the most time with a child. Therefore, for this study 78 mothers were interviewed and asked whether their child had an imaginary friend. If the mother revealed that their child did not have an imaginary companion then the researcher asked about the child's tendency to personify objects.

In order to convey the meaning of personified objects the researchers explained to the mothers that it is common for children to choose a specific toy or object that they are particularly attached to or fond of. For the object to qualify as a personified object the child had to treat it as animate. Furthermore, it is necessary to reveal what children consider an imaginary friend or pretend play. In order to distinguish a child having or not having an imaginary companion, the friend had to be in existence for at least one month. In order to examine the developmental significance of preschool children and their imaginary companions the mothers of children were interviewed. The major conclusion from the study was that there is a significant distinction between invisible companions and personified objects.

A significant finding in this study was the role of the child's birth order in the family in terms of having an imaginary companion or not. The results of the interviews with mothers indicated that children with imaginary friends were more likely to be a first-born child when compared to children who did not have an imaginary companion at all. This study further supports that children may create imaginary friends to work on social development. The findings that a first-born child is more likely to have an imaginary friend sheds some light on the idea that the child needs to socialize therefore they create the imaginary friend to develop their social skills. This is an extremely creative way for children to develop their social skills and creativity is frequently discussed term amongst positive psychology. An imaginary companion can be considered the product of creativity whereas the communication between the imaginary friend and the child is the process.

In regards to birth order there is also research on children who do not have any siblings at all. The research in this area further investigates the notion that children create imaginary companions due to the absence of peer relationships. A study that examined the differences in self-talk frequency as a function of age, only-child, and imaginary childhood companion status provides a lot of insight to the commonalties of children with imaginary companions. The researchers collected information from college students who were asked if they ever had an imaginary friend as a child (Brinthaupt & Dove, 2012). There were three studies within the one study and they found that there were significant differences in self-talk between different age groupings.

Their first study indicated that only children who create imaginary companions actually engage in high levels of positive self-talk had more positive social development. They also found a gender difference within their study that women were more likely than men to have an imaginary companion. Their findings were consistent with other research supporting that it is more common for females to have imaginary companions. One possible explanation the researchers suggested that women may be more likely to have imaginary companions is because they are more likely to rely on feedback from other than themselves supporting the conclusions that men were found to have more self reinforcing self-talk.

Furthermore, other research has concluded that women seek more social support than men, which could be another possibility for creating these imaginary companions. The second study found that children without siblings reported more self-talk than children with siblings and the third study found that the students who reported having an imaginary friend also reported more self talk than the other students who did not have imaginary friends. Self-talk is often associated with negative effects such as increased anxiety and depression when the self-talk is specifically negative. The researchers found that "Individuals with higher levels of social-assessment and critical self-talk reported lower self-esteem and more frequent automatic negative self-statements".

However, there is also a positive side to positive self-talk and in this study they found that, "people with higher levels of self-reinforcing self-talk reported more positive self-esteem and more frequent automatic positive self-statements". They also found that men had a more frequent self-reinforcing self-talk than females. This particular finding is important because there are not many general findings comparing men and women in adult self-talk in today's research. Self-talk and imaginary companionship contain many similarities therefore it is possible that they can be related. Through positive self-talk children can increase their self-esteem, which leads to the possibility that a positive relationship with an imaginary companion could predict a similar outcome.

Industrial society

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_society

In sociology, industrial society is a society driven by the use of technology and machinery to enable mass production, supporting a large population with a high capacity for division of labour. Such a structure developed in the Western world in the period of time following the Industrial Revolution, and replaced the agrarian societies of the pre-modern, pre-industrial age. Industrial societies are generally mass societies, and may be succeeded by an information society. They are often contrasted with traditional societies.

Industrial societies use external energy sources, such as fossil fuels, to increase the rate and scale of production. The production of food is shifted to large commercial farms where the products of industry, such as combine harvesters and fossil fuel-based fertilizers, are used to decrease required human labor while increasing production. No longer needed for the production of food, excess labor is moved into these factories where mechanization is utilized to further increase efficiency. As populations grow, and mechanization is further refined, often to the level of automation, many workers shift to expanding service industries.

Industrial society makes urbanization desirable, in part so that workers can be closer to centers of production, and the service industry can provide labor to workers and those that benefit financially from them, in exchange for a piece of production profits with which they can buy goods. This leads to the rise of very large cities and surrounding suburb areas with a high rate of economic activity.

These urban centers require the input of external energy sources in order to overcome the diminishing returns of agricultural consolidation, due partially to the lack of nearby arable land, associated transportation and storage costs, and are otherwise unsustainable. This makes the reliable availability of the needed energy resources high priority in industrial government policies.

Industrial development

Prior to the Industrial Revolution in Europe and North America, followed by further industrialization throughout the world in the 20th century, most economies were largely agrarian. Basics were often made within the household and most other manufacturing was carried out in smaller workshops by artisans with limited specialization or machinery.

In Europe during the late Middle Ages, artisans in many towns formed guilds to self-regulate their trades and collectively pursue their business interests. Economic historian Sheilagh Ogilvie has suggested the guilds further restrained the quality and productivity of manufacturing. There is some evidence, however, that even in ancient times, large economies such as the Roman empire or Chinese Han dynasty had developed factories for more centralized production in certain industries.

With the Industrial Revolution, the manufacturing sector became a major part of European and North American economies, both in terms of labor and production, contributing possibly a third of all economic activity. Along with rapid advances in technology, such as steam power and mass steel production, the new manufacturing drastically reconfigured previously mercantile and feudal economies. Even today, industrial manufacturing is significant to many developed and semi-developed economies.

Deindustrialisation

Historically certain manufacturing industries have gone into a decline due to various economic factors, including the development of replacement technology or the loss of competitive advantage. An example of the former is the decline in carriage manufacturing when the automobile was mass-produced.

A recent trend has been the migration of prosperous, industrialized nations towards a post-industrial society. This has come with a major shift in labor and production away from manufacturing and towards the service sector, a process dubbed tertiarization. Additionally, since the late 20th century, rapid changes in communication and information technology (sometimes called an information revolution) have allowed sections of some economies to specialize in a quaternary sector of knowledge and information-based services. For these and other reasons, in a post-industrial society, manufacturers can and often do relocate their industrial operations to lower-cost regions in a process known as off-shoring.

Measurements of manufacturing industries outputs and economic effect are not historically stable. Traditionally, success has been measured in the number of jobs created. The reduced number of employees in the manufacturing sector has been assumed to result from a decline in the competitiveness of the sector, or the introduction of the lean manufacturing process.

Related to this change is the upgrading of the quality of the product being manufactured. While it is possible to produce a low-technology product with low-skill labour, the ability to manufacture high-technology products well is dependent on a highly skilled staff.

Industrial policy

Today, as industry is an important part of most societies and nations, many governments will have at least some role in planning and regulating industry. This can include issues such as industrial pollution, financing, vocational education, and labour law.

Industrial labour

In an industrial society, industry employs a major part of the population. This occurs typically in the manufacturing sector. A labour union is an organization of workers who have banded together to achieve common goals in key areas such as wages, hours, and other working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members (rank and file members) and negotiates labour contracts with employers. This movement first rose among industrial workers.

Effects on slavery

Ancient Mediterranean cultures relied on slavery throughout their economy. While serfdom largely supplanted the practice in Europe during the Middle Ages, several European powers reintroduced slavery extensively in the early modern period, particularly for the harshest labor in their colonies. The Industrial revolution played a central role in the later abolition of slavery, partly because domestic manufacturing's new economic dominance undercut interests in the slave trade.^[9] Additionally, the new industrial methods required a complex division of labor with less worker supervision, which may have been incompatible with forced labor.

War

The Industrial Revolution changed warfare, with mass-produced weaponry and supplies, machine-powered transportation, mobilization, the total war concept and weapons of mass destruction. Early instances of industrial warfare were the Crimean War and the American Civil War, but its full potential showed during the world wars. See also military-industrial complex, arms industries, military industry and modern warfare.

Use in 20th century social science and politics

“Industrial society” took on a more specific meaning after World War II in the context of the Cold War, the internationalization of sociology through organizations like UNESCO, and the spread of American industrial relations to Europe. The cementation of the Soviet Union’s position as a world power inspired reflection on whether the sociological association of highly-developed industrial economies with capitalism required updating. The transformation of capitalist societies in Europe and the United States to state-managed, regulated welfare capitalism, often with significant sectors of nationalized industry, also contributed to the impression that they might be evolving beyond capitalism, or toward some sort of “convergence” common to all “types” of industrial societies, whether capitalist or communist. State management, automation, bureaucracy, institutionalized collective bargaining, and the rise of the tertiary sector were taken as common markers of industrial society.

The “industrial society” paradigm of the 1950s and 1960s was strongly marked by the unprecedented economic growth in Europe and the United States after World War II, and drew heavily on the work of economists like Colin Clark, John Kenneth Galbraith, W.W. Rostow, and Jean Fourastié. The fusion of sociology with development economics gave the industrial society paradigm strong resemblances to modernization theory, which achieved major influence in social science in the context of postwar decolonization and the development of post-colonial states.

The French sociologist Raymond Aron, who gave the most developed definition to the concept of “industrial society” in the 1950s, used the term as a comparative method to identify common features of the Western capitalist and Soviet-style communist societies. Other sociologists, including Daniel Bell, Reinhard Bendix, Ralf Dahrendorf, Georges Friedmann, Seymour Martin Lipset, and Alain Touraine, used similar ideas in their own work, though with sometimes very different definitions and emphases. The principal notions of industrial-society theory were also commonly expressed in the ideas of reformists in European social-democratic parties who advocated a turn away from Marxism and an end to revolutionary politics.

Because of its association with non-Marxist modernization theory and American anticommunist organizations like the Congress for Cultural Freedom, “industrial society” theory was often criticized by left-wing sociologists and Communists as a liberal ideology that aimed to justify the postwar status quo and undermine opposition to capitalism. However, some left-wing thinkers like André Gorz, Serge Mallet, Herbert Marcuse, and the Frankfurt School used aspects of industrial society theory in their critiques of capitalism.

Selected bibliography of industrial society theory

Adorno, Theodor. "Late Capitalism or Industrial Society?" (1968)
Aron, Raymond. Dix-huit leçons sur la société industrielle. Paris: Gallimard, 1961.
Aron, Raymond. La lutte des classes: nouvelles leçons sur les sociétés industrielles. Paris: Gallimard, 1964.
Bell, Daniel. The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties. New York: Free Press, 1960.
Dahrendorf, Ralf. Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959.
Gorz, André. Stratégie ouvrière et néo-capitalisme. Paris: Seuil, 1964.
Friedmann, Georges. Le Travail en miettes. Paris: Gallimard, 1956.
Kaczynski, Theodore J. "Industrial Society and its Future". Berkeley, CA: Jolly Roger Press, 1995.
Kerr, Clark, et al. Industrialism and Industrial Man. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960.
Lipset, Seymour Martin. Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1959.
Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964.
Touraine, Alain. Sociologie de l'action. Paris: Seuil, 1965.