Department of Sociology
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Browsing Department of Sociology by Author "Bereska, Tami"
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Item Adolescent sexuality and the changing romance novel market(1994) Bereska, TamiAfter initial success, the adolescent series romance genre rapidly declined in the literary market during the 1980s. This research explores that decline through a comparative content analysis with other romance genres. Results suggest a key factor to be the relative lack of sexuality in the content of the adolescent series romances. Given the changing socio-sexual environment of adolescent girls in the 1980s, the adolescent series romances became increasingly remote from girls' own life experiences. Implications warranting further analysis include the salience and acceptability of sexuality in their daily lives, as well as their resistance to its denial.Item The changing boys' world in the 20th century: reality and “fiction”(2003) Bereska, TamiIn university and college classrooms today gender is a hot topic and the issue that raises the most discussion is that of how much gender roles have changed or remained the same. This issue has been studied among both adults and adolescents over the last several decades in a variety of ways including analyses of popular cultural representations. However, more research has been done on representations of femininity than on masculinity in adolescent popular cultural products, and the area of young adult literature has been relatively ignored by social scientists. This paper presents the results of a study exploring the structure of masculinity in young adult novels for boys from the 1940s through the 1990s. Over this 50-year period, the components that make up the structure of masculinity remain static, indicating that at least a portion of the discourse on masculinity has remained unchanged for more than 50 years. This has implications not only for the lives of boys and men today, but also for the maintenance of patriarchy itself. In trying to create equity in society, we appear to have focused all of our attention on the girls' world, but left the boys' world virtually untouched.Item Delays in traffic and motorist yielding to pedestrians(1992) Harrell, W. Andrew; Bereska, TamiA field experiment was carried out in which a pedestrian attempted to cross a busy residential street. Associations of the amount of time a motorist was delayed at a four-way stop and the volume of traffic with the decision whether to stop were assessed. For 190 motorists both delay and volume were significantly related to stopping. The longer the delay at the four-way stop and the greater the volume of traffic, the less likely the pedestrian was to elicit a stop. Regression analysis showed that delay was a better predictor of motorists' stopping. These findings are consistent with Piliavin's costs/benefits theory of helping behavior.Item Gap acceptance by pedestrians(1992) Harrell, W. Andrew; Bereska, TamiThe riskiness of street crossing behavior of 75 individuals and groups of pedestrians was observed. Gap acceptance, or the elapsed time before a pedestrian initiated a crossing at a marked crosswalk and the time until a vehicle passed through the crosswalk, was the measure of risk. Pedestrian groups containing at least one infant tended to choose longer gaps, i.e., they were less risky in their crossing. Gap acceptance was also more conservative as the mean age of the pedestrian group increased. Gap was not affected by the sex ratio of the group or the volume of traffic passing through the intersection.Item Review of All the right stuff (directed by C. Littlefield), Lost borders (directed and produced by K. Shelton), and It takes a child: Craig Kielburger’s study: A journey into child labour(2000) Bereska, TamiThese three videos represent something that is relatively rare in the social sciences; they are all high quality, well-produced videos that look at the lives of youth in contemporary society. Rather than falling into the all-too-frequent trap of treating adolescents as part of some circus freak show that we are privy to watch, these videos show the lives of ordinary youth living in extraordinary times. Taken together, these three videos illustrate the important fact that while we tend to group all adolescents together under the generic umbrella of ‘youth culture’ or ‘youth subculture’, not all youth are the same. Each video focuses on a particular segment of youth culture and/or a particular set of experiences within youth culture.Item Review of Gender and politics in contemporary Canada(1997) Bereska, TamiThe book Gender and Politics in Contemporary Canada edited by François-Pierre Gingras is reviewed.