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The argument of this paper is that social ties beyond the boardroom matter. At the structural level, social ties from non-profit foundations, cultural organizations, university boards, policy planning organizations, and private social clubs add unique ties to those established by interlocking directorates. In addition, the multiple configurations of these social affiliations increase the centrality and reduce the social distance among the corporate directors. Although visualizations of these social networks underscore the changing roles these extra-corporate ties play in uniting corporate directors, they cannot precisely capture the unique effects of ties created by social affiliations outside the boardroom. Utilizing the concepts of structural redundancy and multiplicity, the paper describes the unique contribution each set of ties makes in constructing the social mosaic of corporate America during the second half of the 20th century. The results indicate a dramatic reduction in the role private clubs play in supplementing corporate ties, and an equally significant rise in the importance of social ties generated by policy planning organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of South Sudanese-Australians arrived in Australia, and other host countries outside Africa, after spending a greater part of their lives in refugee camps or conflict-affected areas. In addition, refugees are often not able to return to their home countries because the causes of their departure (wars, insecurity, hunger) continue to apply in their country of origin. The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the mental health and wellbeing issues some South Sudanese-Australians experience as a result of settlement difficulties and their earlier experience of conflict. The study looks at experiences of resettlement and settlement difficulties, and, more importantly, mental health and wellbeing issues in the wake of the aforesaid challenges. The data was collected from a qualitative method which comprised a series of semi-structured, one-on-one interviews with a total of 20 South Sudanese-Australians living in Melbourne. There were 11 males and nine females, with ages ranging from 18 to 64 years, who volunteered to participate in this study. Findings indicated that, as with many other people from refugee backgrounds, South Sudanese-Australians face a range of settlement-related challenges, and a host of post-resettlement adaptation experiences such as limited change of gender roles, language proficiency, unemployment, host society unacceptance or intolerance, constrained recreational opportunities, lack of community connectedness and overall mental health and general wellbeing issues. Experiencing conflict can be traumatic and refuge in neighbouring countries that are socio-culturally different can be challenging. In conclusion, these issues can not only be troublesome on a day-to-day basis, but also adversely affect the long-term mental health and wellbeing of refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research investigates resettlement stress among African migrants in Australia and how migrants manage stress. The research used 30 semi-structured interviews with African migrants in Western Australia. Participants used various strategies, including reliance on family as a community and on God – usually constructed by alliance rather than kinship – to manage stress. The article's key contribution highlights the multilayered approach for social work to integration strategies for migrants. The study identifies three significant issues emerging: the importance of 'families' as community networks, the experience of discrimination and the significance of faith in God as crucial migrant support factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated contributors of undergraduate nonmusic majors’ preferences for world musics, specifically those from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Drawing upon the reciprocal feedback model as a theoretical framework, we determined the extent to which predictor variables (familiarity with the music, personality, and music absorption) were related to music preference. Participants were 401 undergraduate nonmusic majors from South Korea (n = 208) and the USA (n = 183). Participants took an online survey via Qualtrics that included demographic information, the World Musics Preference Rating Scale, the Big-Five Inventory, and the Absorption in Music Scale. Results indicated that, familiarity, followed by openness to experience, was the strongest predictor of participants’ preferences for world musics. For the U.S. participants, familiarity, followed by openness to experience, was the strongest predictor of participants’ preference for musics from each continent. By contrast, for the South Korean participants, although familiarity was also the strongest predictor for African, Latin American, and Asian musics, openness to experience was not consistently the second strongest contributor. For African music, openness to experience was ranked second; for Latin American and Asian music, agreeableness and music absorption were ranked second, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following article offers a critical engagement with recent economic constructivist scholarship as a means of understanding the nature of the European Union’s ‘market power’. It does so by focusing on the African, Caribbean and Pacific group of countries, and seeks to explain why — in spite of the European Union’s preponderant market power — the goal of promoting trade liberalisation and regulatory harmonisation through regional Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) ultimately fell short of original ambitions. We highlight the inadequacies of materialist accounts of the European Union’s market power in this case and instead take our cue from the (predominantly) constructivist literature emphasising the role of transnational advocacy coalitions. We argue, however, that the latter do not go far enough in their exploration of the non-material correlates of the European Union’s market power by considering fully its discursive dimension. To address this shortcoming, we draw on Craig Parsons’ distinction between ideational and institutional logics of explanation to understand how the invocation of institutional constraints affects the impact of particular discursive strategies. We argue that, in our specific case, the success or failure of the Economic Partnership Agreements rested not just on the fungibility (or otherwise) of the European Union’s material power or the campaigning of transnational coalitions, but on the congruence between the ideas used by European Union policy actors to justify the Economic Partnership Agreements and the institutional norms associated with the setting in which these ideas were deployed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian settlement policy has stressed social cohesion for new refugee-background migrants, including the importance of integration into rental housing. The authors argue that the transitory nature of rental property is an obstacle for many migrants of African background, for it is the inability to have land on which to plant a tree, that there is non-belonging. For spiritual continuity, and in order for connection to the living-dead ancestors to be real, it is critical to have a home and land. Through the use of story and proverb, the article argues that Congolese ways of knowing the non-material world offer a point of radical departure from Western ways of knowing and experiencing belonging to place, particularly in the post-colonial context of Australia, where belonging has become inimically tied to possession of a home and land. Further, the authors argue that the decisions as to what is known are embedded in questions of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One hears much these days about the African renaissance at the heart of which is the persistent call for a development-enhancing and durable peace in what is still a largely marginalized continent. Here it is proposed that an oral, rhetorical and epistolary analysis of the theme of peace in Ephesians, against the backdrop of a contemporary postcolonial and predominantly African oral environment in which the Bible is currently being translated, predisposes us to hear and, perhaps, better appreciate the political ring of peace. This allows us to hear not only an echo of when rightly understood against the backdrop of the Hebrew Scriptures and traditions, but also acoustic resonances of the Pax Romana or Pax Augusti within the more immediate Graeco-Roman environment as well-one within which the original and mostly marginalized listeners to the orally performed epistle were themselves situated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]