3 results
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2. A Community Responds to Collective Trauma: An Ecological Analysis of the James Byrd Murder in Jasper, Texas
- Author
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Roxane Cohen Silver and Thomas Wicke
- Subjects
Adult ,Male ,Mental Health Services ,Health (social science) ,Ecological analysis ,Poison control ,Community and Environmental Psychology ,Criminology ,Social Environment ,Health(social science) ,Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic ,Social capital ,Catchment Area, Health ,Homicide ,Collective trauma ,Psychology ,Humans ,Sociology ,Mass Media ,Natural disaster ,Applied Psychology ,Demography ,Government ,Original Paper ,Health Psychology ,Prisoners ,Law enforcement ,Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health ,Community Participation ,Social environment ,James Byrd murder ,Texas ,Clinical Psychology ,Socioeconomic Factors ,Personality and Social Psychology ,Educational Status ,Female ,Crime ,Public Health/Gesundheitswesen - Abstract
The brutal murder of James Byrd Jr. in June 1998 unleashed a storm of media, interest groups, high profile individuals and criticism on the Southeast Texas community of Jasper. The crime and subsequent response—from within the community as well as across the world—engulfed the entire town in a collective trauma. Using natural disaster literature/theory and employing an ecological approach, Jasper, Texas was investigated via an interrupted time series analysis to identify how the community changed as compared to a control community (Center, Texas) on crime, economic, health, educational, and social capital measures collected at multiple pre- and post-crime time points between 1995 and 2003. Differences-in-differences (DD) analysis revealed significant post-event changes in Jasper, as well as a surprising degree of resilience and lack of negative consequences. Interviews with residents conducted between March 2005 and 2007 identified how the community responded to the crisis and augmented quantitative findings with qualitative, field-informed interpretation. Interviews suggest the intervention of external organizations exacerbated the severity of the events. However, using strengths of specific local social institutions—including faith based, law enforcement, media, business sector and civic government organizations—the community effectively responded to the initial threat and to the potential negative ramifications of external entities.
- Published
- 2009
3. Scientists in the Swamp: Narrowing the Language-Practice Gap in Community Psychology.
- Author
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Hess, Jacob
- Subjects
SOCIAL sciences ,PSYCHOLOGY ,SOCIOLOGY ,COMMUNITY psychology ,LANGUAGE & languages ,HERMENEUTICS - Abstract
As a confluence of unique values and activities, the collective practice of community psychology is difficult to characterize in a simple way. Increasingly, however, professional contexts are laden with pressure to define any practice-from library work to medical interventions-in the orderly, compact language of traditional science. This trend has historically been resisted in the field by those sensing a fundamental lack of fit between the fluid, emergent aspects of community psychological practice and the fixed, precise language of classic science. In response to this “language-practice gap,” some have attempted to adapt the traditional language of science to better fit the field’s practice, while others have explored alternative languages of practice seemingly more indigenous to the messy “swamp” of actual communities. While the former effort leaves some theoretical contradictions intact, the latter tends to discount scientific identity entirely. This paper proposes a potential step forward by resituating questions of disciplinary language and identity within a current philosophical discourse where the nature of social science itself remains sharply contested. This suggests shifting attention away from “should webe a science?” to “what kindof science might we be after all?”; in turn, alternative languages may be re-cast as legitimate contributors to a kind of science more authentic to human communities-even a viable “science in the swamp.” One such language-philosophical hermeneutics-is presented as a particularly valuable supplement to traditional science. Illustrations highlight ways that hermeneutics may advance the formal language of the field towards a closer fit of what actually happens in practice, while preserving and even bolstering the empirical rigor and scientific identity of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2005
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