Search

Via analysis of online survey data of 262 people aged 18 to 70 in the United States who have been involved in a long-distance romantic relationship (LDR) since 2005, we investigate how paper, audio, visual, and digital communication formats may be used and viewed as differentially meaningful. While in most intimate relationships, digital formats such as e-mail, messaging, and texts are frequently used, LDR couples are more likely to use and find most meaningful video chat and audio platforms compared with paper or digital formats. The reason for each platform’s meaningfulness varies according to survey respondents’ subjective understandings. Audio and visual formats are seen as meaningful because they offer intimacy, paper formats offer thoughtfulness, and digital formats offer ease as well as thoughtfulness. This research contributes to understanding the subjectively constructed meaning of ever-changing communication platforms, as well as definitions of shared sociomental spaces, for couples who are geographically separated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the issue of political deception by exploring the role of self-deception in democratic politics. Within politics, deception of the people is actually very often produced by the self-deception of political leaders and officials, which is then supplemented by mechanisms of self-deception of the public itself. That self-deception, rather than simply straightforward deception, is a significant obstacle to truth and transparency in democratic politics is often hinted at by political scientists and historians but never properly pursued. And yet it should be, for which one of them is the case has important normative implications. This paper briefly presents the notion of self-deception and offers some reasons to take its presence in politics seriously. It also counters possible objections to doing so. Different kinds of political self-deception are presented and illustrated through historical examples so as to provide a clear typology and make the case for self-deception in politics stronger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the United States, the construction of “illegality” of undocumented Latino workers is predicated upon multiple interacting social, economic, political, and sociological factors and consignment to an inferior social status, harsh living conditions, and exploitation. These “cumulative vulnerabilities” contribute to increased stressors and poor psychological health outcomes. However, little is known about these marginalized workers’ experience of negotiating life in “illegality.” This qualitative study adopts a social constructivist perspective to examine the strategies these undocumented workers use to manage “illegality” and psychosocial stress. We conducted four focus groups with 27 participants and in-depth interviews with eight of these participants. Thematic analysis combined with constant comparison yielded the overarching theme of living sin papeles (without legal papers). Findings reveal that, phenomenologically, sin papeles extends far beyond legal status, being a condition of ever-present instability, insecurity, and hypervigilance that affects the social, work, health, and living conditions of undocumented Latino immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional wisdom suggests that partisanship is the “unmoved mover” in the minds of American voters. Revisionist theories hold that party updating is conditional on individual/contextual factors. By delimiting the scope conditions of the Michigan model, revisionist models do not fundamentally challenge the classic view. This paper proffers an unconditional model of party revision. We theorize that beliefs about government activism—operational ideology—are widely available and heuristically efficacious, and easily map onto party labels. Hence, operational ideology should drive party updating. Using data from seven panel studies covering 1990–2012, we demonstrate that (1) party shapes operational ideology, (2) operational ideology shapes party, (3) the ideology-to-party effects are as large as the party-to-ideology effects, and (4) neither sophistication nor education or elite polarization condition these relationships. These results push the revisionist model of party farther than it has gone before and suggest that operational ideology is a core predisposition in mass belief systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the “new father” conversion process undertaken by participants of the worldwide, South Korean–inspired Father School movement. Focusing on first-generation Korean immigrant men living in the United States, men pursue an alternative Western paradigm of fatherhood emphasizing an emotionally expressive and caring “new father” ideal at odds with the distant and domineering fatherhood style that traditionally characterizes much of this population. Based on the ethnographic study of multiday seminars and content analyses of movement rhetoric and men’s personal letters, I assess how immigrant fatherhood is reconstituted within the stew of intensive interaction and affective bonding. The gender conversion process undertaken by these men involves five core elements: (1) trying participation, (2) defining fatherhood models, (3) following organizational roles and guidelines, (4) confessing fatherhood transgressions, and (5) projecting new fatherhood. This study extends conversion theory by explicating the processual and time-specific nature of how these distant immigrant patriarchs learn to become expressive dads. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]