Introduction to Special Issues on Cross-Cultural Aspects of Self-Help/Mutual Aid

Abstract

The special call for papers on the cross-cultural aspects of self-help/mutual aid began in mid-2007 with the solicitation of manuscripts from a variety of social science listservs and professional associations including ones in anthropology, sociology, public health, and community psychology. Ten interesting papers have survived the blind peer review and revise and resubmit process and will be published in three special issues of this journal. The issues are truly international as we have authors from Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, Norway, Sweden, and the United States; their research includes those countries as well as Malawi, Africa. My vision for these special issues was inspired by several papers presented at the International Conference on Self-Help/Mutual Aid in Ottawa, Canada in 1992. First, Benjamin Gidron and Mark Chesler’s (1994) paper “ Universal and Particular Attributes of Self-Help: A Framework for International and Intranational Analysis” was and remains the first broad and inclusive framework for investigating self-help/mutual aid comparatively and globally. While the research on self-help/mutual aid during the last three decades has increased our understanding of its variety, its internal processes and its benefits to participants, most research known to us and our readers has been conducted within one country, especially the United States, Canada or Europe. In contrast, the systematic comparative study of self-help/mutual aid in different cultural, social, and health care contexts which Gidron and Chesler advocated is in its infancy. These special issues address those lacunae.