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This note questions the usefulness of certain data sources, specifically the AHA Guide to the Health Care Field and the Directory of Social and Health Agencies in New York City, for studies of such interorganizational variables as autonomy, fragmentation, complexity, and differentiation. It identifies problems concerning ambiguities in the data themselves and ambiguities in the basic concepts which appear when empirical specification is attempted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article an economist presents a highly critical review of a standard economic attack on the advertising industry. He pinpoints errors in economic analysis, and shows how the advertising industry is in an excellent position for a counterattack. In this connection, see "Marketing's Challenge to Economists," by Quentin L. Coons, pp. 11-15. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, measures of division of labor are derived for 44 manufacturing industries, and the hypothesis that the division of labor increases as the hardness of product increases is investigated. Two dimensions of the division of labor, structural differentiation and dispersion-concentration, are shown to be related to product hardness as predicted. Analysis suggests that although complexity of the product, machine technology, and industry size may influence the relationship, the relationship between hardness of product and division of labor remains. Production technology appears clearly to modify the effects of hardness, and may account for some of the deviant and marginal cases; for soft-product industries, the effects of hardness and production technology appear to conflict. The relevance of the findings for a theoretical perspective on complex organizations is considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A secure job that pays above-poverty wages is a fundamental economic underpinning of a good life, but one that is absent or precarious for many workers in the rural United States. This paper examines the link between work and poverty in rural America, drawing comparisons over time and in relation to national averages and conditions in urban areas. Using data from the 2001 to 2014 Current Population Surveys, we address three analytic objectives. First, we track changes in the share of poor householders in work, and compare the prevalence of work between the rural and urban poor. Second, we estimate trends in the share of rural and urban workers who are poor, and highlight key social and demographic differentials. Third and finally, we estimate a series of logistic regression models to assess whether and to what extent rural-urban and temporal differences can be explained by the composition of the workforce and changes therein. Results show that an increasing share of the rural poor are out of work, and that the risk of poverty among those who are employed has also increased. While some of the longstanding rural disadvantage appears to have moderated in recent years, these changes are largely due to declining conditions in urban areas. Overall, our results support pessimistic conclusions about the economic status of rural America's workforce, and the ability of rural American's to meet the basic requisites of the good life through work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This article explores a process that typifies social worlds during late-capitalist globalization: people's lives regularly involve the negotiation of conflicting visions of ethico-moral life. Such negotiations require people to reckon with complex social differentiation, wherein the boundaries between 'good' and 'bad' are overlapping, contradictory, and ever shifting. In the face of such complexity, we need ways to understand the assemblages that emerge as actors construct ethico-moral people and collectivities inside acts of reckoning. A crucial activity highlighted in assembly is reflexivity: the ability to step outside of and critically evaluate unfolding events and one's place(s) in them. Existing scholarship spotlights the importance of conscious moments of reflection. In this article, I highlight a different source of reflexivity: the implicit forms of positioning and critique entailed in language practices. My central claim is that the production of ethico-moral assemblages relies fundamentally on a form of linguistic reflexivity called interdiscursivity, through which actors lay claim to and can be read as possessing multiple, overlapping, and potentially contradictory forms of ethico-moral personhood. I show that the construction of 'proper Mexicanness' unfurls in relationship with imagined foils of immoral US personhood, producing hierarchical distinctions that are raced, classed, and gendered. [ migration, morality, ethics, interdiscursivity, assemblages] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using discourse analysis, this article explores how Mexican-American students at an Arizona high school exploited intersections of race, gender, and socioeconomic class to position themselves and their peers along a racial continuum from less to more Mexican. Thus, private social distinctions among students both mirrored and transformed publicly circulating discourses of belonging, foreignness, and civility. The findings inform understandings of the complex, day-to-day construction of race and other social categories among students in U.S. schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study examines two 10th-grade US History teachers who collaborated to create and implement an integrated, thematic eight-week unit on war with an emphasis differentiated instruction. Drawing on the National Council for the Social Studies (2010) framework for powerful and purposeful social studies instruction, the case study uses multiple sources of data, including 38 lesson observations, analyses of the teachers' lesson plans and student work, and interviews of teachers. Initially, the teachers were successful at engaging students in simulations, small-group discussions, and higher-order thinking. As the unit progressed, however, the teachers reverted to transmission-style teaching with an emphasis on breadth over depth. Changing teaching practice requires overcoming barriers associated with prior experiences and deeply-held beliefs about teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the emergence and persistence of curriculum differentiation in the comprehensive high school. We argue that curriculum differentiation has roots in Plato's Republic, where it is proposed that education (and later work, especially the work of ruling) should be distributed on the basis of ability. The concept ofideologyis used here to help explain why the practice of curriculum differentiation has remained a defining—and largely unchallenged—characteristic of the comprehensive high school. The persistence of curriculum differentiation matters because it is a means by which different groups of students are given access to different kinds of knowledge. Not all knowledge is equally valued, and access to certain kinds of this educational good has implications for young persons’ well-being that extend well beyond their formal schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines the schemata underlying the social dimensions and relationships associated with the processes of Latino identity construction in 500 YouTube postings in response to the Obama Reggaeton video. According to Van Dijk (1998), such schemata allow members of a given group to provide answers to questions such as who they are, what criteria need to be met for membership in their group, and what kinds of relationships are established among their group and other social groups. Along the lines of Wodak et al. (1999), our study unveils six main thematic contents or categories that discursively realize the social dimensions and relationships associated with the Latino identity, and tests them in a corpus of unsolicited data in a deindividuated environment, YouTube, in which social identity, such as the Latino identity, is salient. The analysis lends validity to these categories, as they were found to be highly relevant to the corpus. We argue that the Latino identity is essentially political, both in the narrow and the broad senses of the word (see Gee 2005; Joseph 2006). Furthermore, the Latino identity can only be properly understood within the identity politics climate of the US. Keywords: Latino identity, CMC, YouTube, social identity, ethnic identity, diasporic, migrant on-line communities [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Essay isolates and assesses an overlooked consideration on an emerging and significant issue in employment discrimination law. The emerging issue: When should employers be held liable for established widespread differential treatment within their organizations? The overlooked consideration: the relationship between law and social science. Although this Essay focuses closely on a specific doctrinal issue in employment discrimination law, it also sets broad theoretical groundwork for thinking about the implications of the relationships that might emerge between law and social science in a variety of legal realms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined how the federal Promise Neighborhoods program shapes leadership networks and objectives in diverse tribal and urban settings. The program calls for diverse stakeholders to provide families with resources such as parenting workshops, childcare, preschool, health clinics, and other social services that affect learning and development. We focused particularly upon how Promise Neighborhoods planning and development creates new “frontiers of educational leadership.” We analyzed Promise Neighborhoods planning grant applications—21 that were funded and 21 from tribal settings—as well as interview data and program and community-specific archival data to learn about applicants’ purposes and compositions of partners. These data were analyzed with insights from Burt’s notion of structural holes, which suggests that leadership in “social frontier” spaces is often dependent upon negotiation, entrepreneurship, and relationship brokering. While both urban and tribal applicants were found to have highly diverse compositions of partners, tribal partners were more heterogeneous and separated by greater geographic distances. Additionally, tribal applicants’ stated purposes and goals were tied more closely to local cultures and customs. We note that the sprawling spaces and significant inter- and intracommunity differences of the tribal Promise Neighborhoods ensure that leadership practice in these settings is especially dependent upon negotiation and relationship brokering. As Promise Neighborhoods and other place-based initiatives are developed, diverse networks of leaders will be called to bridge organizational boundaries, cultural differences, socioeconomic differences, and physical distances to develop coherent plans of action for collective “Neighborhoods.” [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines how the design of current age discrimination policy, particularly employer use of the bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ) defense, affects the social construction of age in America. Using a series of federal cases involving truck drivers, airline pilots, and police officers, I argue that the use of the BFOQ defense in Age Discrimination in Employment Act cases originates in and ratifies inter-subjective stereotypes. Managerial and governance implications emanate from the way policy design associates aging with degeneration and incapacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions of educational equity have played an important role in educational policy in the United States over the past 50 years, and advocates with a broad range of perspectives on reform have sought to claim the equity mantle. In this article, I examine aspects of equity, including the distribution of “inputs” to public education, the process of delivering education, and the outcomes of the educational process. I surveyed a series of experts in educational policy to identify influential actors in national debates. Based on that survey, I conducted 12 semistructured interviews with individuals and representatives of organizations identified as “influential,” and collected documents from the same groups. Beliefs about equity among those with influence are both nuanced and, at times, in tension with other perspectives on equity. Important areas of common ground include an emphasis on outcomes as an important component of an equitable system of public education and a focus on groups identified as having been treated inequitably in the past. Despite common ground, critical differences emerged throughout this process. One clear point of differentiation was between those who focused on addressing issues of equity through market-oriented reforms and those who focused more on issues of school-level practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Investigating immigrant residential patterns in 1880 offers a baseline for understanding residential assimilation trajectories in subsequent eras. This study uses 100% count information from the 1880 Census to estimate a multilevel model of ethnic isolation and exposure to native whites in 67 cities for individual Irish, German and British residents. At the individual level, the key predictors are drawn from assimilation theory: nativity, occupation, and marital status. The multilevel model makes it possible to control for these predictors and to study independent sources of variation in segregation across cities. There is considerable variation at the city level, especially due to differences in the relative sizes of groups. Other significant city-level predictors of people’s neighborhood composition include the share of group members who are foreign-born, the disparity in occupational standing between group members and native whites, and the degree of occupational segregation between them. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Using two discourse-analytical lenses, one genealogical and the other textual, this article traces the interdiscursive history through which the social categories 'Mexican immigrant' and 'illegal alien' have become conflated in the United States, effectively criminalizing Mexican immigrants as dangerous Others. Today, this conflation is a prime source for the racialization of not only Mexican immigrants, but other Latin American immigrants as well, where racialization is understood as a form of social differentiation that marks people as inherently threatening and foreign. This article focuses on the ways this conflation has been established and circulated in U.S. immigration policy. After offering a genealogy of the relevant federal policy, I provide a textual analysis of an anti-immigrant ordinance penned in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. I trace the interdiscursive strategies used by municipal officials in constructing the ordinance, showing that they extend the 'legal racialization' in federal code by expanding the categories of behavior associated with immigrant illegality. [Legal discourse; racialization; interdiscursivity; performative nomination; Latin American immigration; Hazleton] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author presents his views on an article titled, "Renegotiating Gender and Class in the Berry Fields of Michoacán, Mexico," by Donna Chollett. He discusses the differentiation processes in Michoacán, Mexico, encouraged by the region's households. He also emphasizes on the impact of the consumption of the consumers living in North America, on the production of South American people.

Ideas from Randall Collins's Sociology of Philosophies are applied to U.S. criminology, a policy-oriented field and one case of differentiation out of a fragmented sociological discipline. Building on previous quantitative work, in-depth interviews with eight prominent scholars provide the empirical material. As in philosophy, vertical network ties are important. Yet, they may take different forms, with consequences for the shape of horizontal networks and the nature of scholarship. Comparable to philosophy, horizontal network ties provide social capital and opportunities for interaction rituals that generate collective effervescence and emotional energy. Further, the nature of these interactions is dependent on the changing institutional environment in which they are embedded. Such institutional settings, themselves affected by changes in the political economy, also provide material resources, constituting dependencies that produce mediated effects and, in this policy-oriented field, also direct effects on the nature of scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars who have examined the legal recognition of same-sex partnerships in European countries have concluded that the path to the legalization of same-sex marriage follows an incremental process involving specific stages. They suggest that it is possible to predict, based on certain visible social and legal processes or assessable parameters, which U.S. states will be the next to recognize same-sex marriage. These scholars argue that such small cumulative legal changes at the state level constitute the best means of legalizing same-sex marriage in the United States, and that civil unions are a necessary step in this process. This article shows that predictions based on these theories have not been accurate and that attempts to generalize the experience of legalizing same-sex marriage overlook a variety of often significant and sometimes subtle social, political, and legal differences between the United States and Europe. Therefore, these theories cannot sufficiently explain how social change happens and cannot be used to formulate strategic plans for legalizing same-sex marriage in the United States. This article also proposes that the adoption of civil unions can significantly delay legal acceptance of same-sex marriage. It suggests that the theories overlooked the fact that in some European countries, lesbian and gay organizations were more interested in securing partnership rights for same-sex couples, rather than marriage itself. This path is the one that advocates in the United States should take. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many Western governments have sought to encourage people to adopt more active lifestyles, as a way of reducing the growing costs of a seemingly infinite demand for health care. In this regard, sport, exercise and physical activity are often seen as equivalent tools to achieve the same goal. The central object of this paper is to subject such claims to a critical examination. More specifically, the paper seeks to examine: (i) the assumptions underlying what is one of the stated objectives of government sport programmes in Britain and the United States, namely to improve the nation's health; (ii) some of the key social differences between sport and physical activity, (iii) some of the health consequences of these social differences and (iv) some of the health implications for public policy designed to encourage greater participation in sport. It is argued that, while the health benefits of physical activity are clear, the health arguments in favour of competitive sport, and especially contact sport, are not persuasive and that public health policy should focus on promoting regular, moderate-intensity physical activity rather than competitive sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: For this study, European WAIS III performance subtest norms were compared to the original US norms. When European WAIS III raw scores were scored using US norms, the resulting perceptual organization index (POI) means were significantly higher than the processing speed index (PSI) means. The POI/PSI difference is roughly 5–10 points for the German (n =1897), Spanish (n =1369), French (n =1104), British (n =370) and Finnish (n =446) WAIS III standardization samples. The POI mean was higher than the PSI mean in all age groups in each European sample. It is concluded that cross-national differences in any one factor (such as general intelligence) are unlikely to cause such effects. It is hypothesized that cultural factors, differences in education and test-taking attitudes, underlie the difference between US and European test profiles. The results of the study suggest that national test norms may have poor cross-national validity even when the effects of age, sex and education are controlled for. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper reviews published research and presents new analyses from the 1995 nationally representative sample from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study to investigate whether there is support for the paradox of race and health in the United States. Findings reveal that Blacks have lower rates of several common mental disorders, but Blacks also have higher rates of flourishing than Whites. Blacks are mentally resilient in the face of greater social inequality and exposure to discrimination as well as high rates of physical morbidity—all of which are distinctive risk factors for mental distress and mental illness in the general population. Findings also show that controlling for perceived discrimination increases the Black advantage in 12 of the 13 signs of flourishing, suggesting that Blacks would have even better mental health were it not for discrimination. This paper concludes by considering what mechanisms—both adaptive and maladaptive—might explain this particular example of resilience in the Black population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. and Canada are countries that have been shaped and defined by immigration. In recent decades, however, changes in the immigration policies of both countries have resulted in more heterogeneous immigrant flows than ever before. These new waves of immigration have transformed the demography, as well as social, economic, and political structures of North American urban and suburban areas. Given the importance of immigration as an engine of social and political change as well as economic development, it is imperative that scholarship addresses these new realities in our metropolitan areas. This theme issue on “Immigrant and Refugee Experiences in North American Cities” explores some of the important links between immigration and the opportunities and challenges in two complex multicultural societies—the U.S. and Canada. The six articles that comprise this special issue are organized around three broad themes: (a) immigration, discrimination, and identity; (b) settlement and life experiences; and (c) housing incorporation and economic integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores those factors that raise the level of access for oppositional voices in the news media. The Politics-Media-Politics principle argues that cross-national differences in the role of the news media in most political processes can be best understood by examining how variations in political environments affect media performance, which in turn leads to different types of effects on politics. Based on this principle, it is argued that the news media operating in polarized multiparty democracies will allow greater access to oppositional voices than those in two-party democracies. This thesis is examined by comparing the news coverage of major news stories in the United States and Israel in 1984, 1990, and 2000. These two countries provide a useful comparison because they have similar media systems but polar opposite political systems. The results provide strong support for the thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the suicidal behavior of African American and Caribbean American adolescents in the U.S. Results of the National Survey of American Life-Adolescent show that majority of the African American and Caribbean adolescents have suicidal ideation and attempts. The data alerts the medical care providers to learn screening adolescents with suicidal behavior to better help them forget attempting suicide. Moreover, their preventive efforts should also consider ethnic differences in suicide risk.

Latinos are the fastest-growing ethnic minority group in the United States and face great environmental challenges (e.g., unemployment, loss of social support networks, displacement, and disruption of the family) as well as prejudice and discrimination. These contextual factors are significant risk factors for Latino depression. A behavioral treatment for depression, behavioral activation (BA), may be particularly relevant in treating Latino depression because of its emphasis on contextual factors. This case study presents a cultural modification of BA for Latinos with depression. The treatment of a 25-year-old Latina illustrates a successful application. It suggests that, with some modifications, BA may be a suitable treatment for this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives. We sought to quantify the extent of health selection (i.e., the degree to which potential immigrants migrate, or fail to migrate, on the basis of their health status) among contemporary US immigrant groups and evaluate the degree that selection explains variation in self-rated health among US legal permanent residents. Methods. Data came from the New Immigrant Survey 2003 cohort. We estimated the extent of positive and negative health selection through a unique series of questions asking immigrants in the United States to evaluate their health and compare it to that of citizens in their country of origin. Results. The extent of positive health selection differed significantly across immigrant groups and was related to compositional differences in the socioeconomic profiles of immigrant streams. Conclusions. The salience of socioeconomic status and English-language ability in explaining health differentials across immigrant groups reinforces the importance of further research on the role of these factors in contributing to the health of immigrants above and beyond the need for additional attention to the health selection process. (Am J Public Health. 2008;98:2058-2064. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2006.100974) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the key issues encompassing the integrated curriculum and its implications for music teacher education in the U.S. It includes a one way of model in which music is used to reinforce content in other academic areas is what commonly passes for integration. Another one is a two-way integrated curriculum in which music and other subject areas are included and provides comprehensive learning that can cross cultural boundaries and individual student differences, resulting in a productive experience for learners and opportunities for teachers.

Background: While social differences in childhood injuries are recognized, less is known about how social and demographic differences relate to injury mechanism. The purpose of the study was to reveal how sociodemographic factors affect the incidence of unintentional home injuries in Danish children for specific injury mechanisms and involved products. Methods: Information on injuries in 173 504 children treated at emergency departments was recorded for the period 1998-2003. The information was linked to data including parents' education and income and family type, and the results were compared with those for a random sample of the population. Results: A total of 50561 injuries were analysed. The risk was 1.5 (1.5-1.6) for children with mothers having only primary education compared to tertiary education, and 1.5 (1.4-1.6) for children in families with the lowest vs. the highest income. Risk differences were found for all injury mechanisms; however the risk for burns was 1.9 (1.6-2.3) times higher in the lowest-income group than in the highest-income group, the relative risk for poisoning was 1.7(1.4-2.1). For scalds from hot water, tea or coffee, the relative risk for the lowest-income group was 2.4(1.8-3.2). Living in a one- or two-parent family and size of the dwelling had little or no effect on risk. Conclusion: Childhood injury incidence depended on sociodemographic factors. The effect of the sociodemographic factors varied between injury mechanisms and products involved in the injury. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the counterculture at the Columbia University Protest of 1968, particularly the relationship between African American and white students, and political and cultural radicalism. It offers a thorough analysis of how Columbia's communes grappled with conflicts rooted in political and social difference. It seeks to explain the rise and rapid deterioration of this consensus at Columbia. The internal space that the protestors created and occupied is also explored in order to understand how the Columbia coalition resolved the radical differences between protestor ideologies.

This article examines the ideological determinants related to the life and works of Leopoldo Alas in the U.S. It is remarkable that his works has greatly influenced criticism in the publication of the book "La Regenta" and it has a possible effect on the Hispnaic studies. There are various studies on the difference between human agency and determinism as well as their significance to the society. People should also be aware that everyday living may affect one another, the movement of the politics, and the way the society behaves and corresponds to people's actions. Rational choice differs from philosophical judgment and reasoning because the society have different perspectives in issues like this.

The article offers information about privacy and antidiscrimination. It also discusses Megan's Law, the computerization of bankruptcy records, and other policies whereby the government made previously private information freely available to the public. It is said that these policies are helpful in social welfare and in fighting morally problematic statistical discrimination. However, the problem in Megan's Law and internet availability of bankruptcy filings, is that they show too much and they show too little.

The authors investigated the acculturation of 108 Jewish young adults who had immigrated to the United States between the ages of 9 and 21 from the former Soviet Union as a function of differentiation of self (M. Bowen, 1978) and acculturative stress. One aspect of differentiation, the ability to take an "I-position" with others, uniquely predicted greater American acculturation and less Russian acculturation, indicating that participants who reported an ability to act on their own needs in the context of social pressure tended to be more assimilated. Russian acculturation was also uniquely associated with more frequent perceived discrimination (one aspect of acculturative stress) during adolescence. Participants who had spent a greater proportion of their lifetime in the United States were more American acculturated and less Russian acculturated, reflecting assimilation rather than biculturalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines changes in aspects of the eating habits of the populations of five countries between the early 1970s and the end of the 1990s. Time-use diary data provide the main evidence, which is subjected to techniques of statistical description and regression analysis. The study of France, UK, USA, Norway and the Netherlands shows considerable national variation in patterns of food preparation, eating at home and eating out. Each of these components of the practice of eating is examined for indications of whether there are any tendencies towards dedifferentiation within countries or convergence across countries. There are some common patterns across countries, notably a decline in the amount of time devoted to food preparation. Time spent on eating at home reduces in all countries except France. In the USA, time devoted to domestic food preparation and consumption is minimal. Internal differentiation shows continuities -- of gender divisions and agerelated behaviour -- but also new emergent tendencies -- with the presence of children and levels of cultural capital becoming significant predictors of behaviour. It is maintained that the analysis of time-use provides a useful framework for comparing practices in different countries and that the variation revealed might best be understood in terms of different modes of institutionalization of consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study tested a contextual model of disaster reaction by examining regional differences in the psychosocial impact of Hurricane Katrina. A total of 386 individuals participated in this study. All were recruited in the primary areas affected by Hurricane Katrina and included residents of metropolitan New Orleans (Orleans Parish, Louisiana), Greater New Orleans (i.e., Metairie, Kenner, Gretna), and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (i.e., cities along the coast from Waveland to Ocean Springs, Mississippi). Participants were assessed for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, other psychological symptoms, perceptions of discrimination, perceptions of social support, evacuation distance, and the extent to which they experienced hurricane-related stressful events. Results were consistent with previous research on the impact of disasters on mental health symptoms. Findings extended research on individual differences in the response to trauma and indicated that regional context predicted unique variance in the experience of discrimination, social support, and emotional symptoms consistent with the theoretical model presented. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Although researchers have deconstructed the myth of stark social differences between the various North American sub-societies, an assimilating American melting pot and an ethnically oppressive monocultural Québec are still popular representations within Canadian majority discourses, such as the English-language mainstream media and parts of academia. In this paper, I argue that images of ‘America’ and ‘Québec’ play important roles for the multicultural reconstruction of Canadian nationhood. Examining selected op-ed articles from two Toronto-based mainstream newspapers during the 1990s, I develop and exemplify a theoretical understanding of how national identities are constituted and transformed within inter- and intra-national relations of power and alterity. I pay special attention to the particularisation of Canada through the confrontation with American nationhood, the ambiguities of recognising the distinctiveness of Québec inside Canada, and the consequences of projecting Québec's supposedly ‘ethnic’ nationalism outside the boundaries of Canadianness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following an ecological framework, the primary purpose of this study was to examine the adjustment needs of international students within their academic and social communities. Focus group interviews revealed that students are more in need during their initial transition after arrival to the U.S. and that they experience a number of barriers in their attempts to adjust. Some of these barriers were related to academic life, health insurance, living on or off campus, social interactions, transportation, and discrimination. The implications of these findings are discussed. Recommendations are made for how higher education institutions can help facilitate these students' integration into their communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Persistent and vexing health disadvantages accrue to African Americans despite decades of work to erase the effects of race discrimination in this country. Participating in these efforts, psychologists and other social scientists have hypothesized that African Americans' continuing experiences with racism and discrimination may lie at the root of the many well-documented race-based physical health disparities that affect this population. With newly emerging methodologies in both measurement of contextual factors and functional neuroscience, an opportunity now exists to cleave together a comprehensive understanding of the ways in which discrimination has harmful effects on health. In this article, we review emerging work that locates the cause of race-based health disparities in the external effects of the contextual social space on the internal world of brain functioning and physiologic response. These approaches reflect the growing interdisciplinary nature of psychology in general, and the field of race relations in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is now convergent evidence from classic quantitative genetics (family, twin, and adoption studies) and molecular genetic studies for specific genetic risk factors for suicidal behavior. This emerging research field has recently been sup- plemented by geographical studies concerned with the Finno-Ugrian Suicide Hypothesis (FUSH), which states that population differences in genetic risk factors may partially account for conspicuous geographical patterns seen in suicide prevalence. In particular, the European high-suicide-rate nations constitute a contiguous, J-shaped belt, spanning from Finland to Austria. This area maps onto the second principal component identified for European gene distribution, most likely reflecting a major migration event of the past (i.e., the ancestral adaptation to cold climates and the Uralic language dispersion) still detectable in modern European populations. The present research tested the hypothesis in the United States. Consistent with the hypothesis, available historical (1913–1924 and 1928–1932) U.S. state suicide rates were uniformly positively associated with available state proportions of reported American ancestries from European high-suicide-rate countries (Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, and the Ukraine). However, contrary to the hypothesis, available contemporary (1990–1994) suicide rates were uniformly negatively associated with these ancestry proportions. The findings of this first test outside Europe are therefore conflicting. A proposal based on the geographical study approach is offered to further the progress of investigations into the genetics of suicide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The entrenchment of neoliberalism in the United States has coincided with an unprecedented expansion of punishment practices that intensify social divisions rooted in class and race. We explore the political culture of this hyperpunitiveness through a discussion of two popularized explanations for urban crime: broken windows and situational crime prevention. These popular criminological theories help legitimate the deepening of social and spatial divisions. They also rest their precepts upon the foundation of a particular geographic imagination. We use this paper to reveal and critique the core assumptions about space upon which each of these theories critically relies. We suggest that each theory understands society-space interactions too simplistically to provide comprehensive insight into the dynamics of landscape construction and interpretation. We argue further that the logics and practices of broken windows and situational crime prevention possess significant elective affinities with social dynamics characteristic of neoliberalism. For these reasons, these popularized criminologies both reflect and reinforce the processes through which neoliberalism exacerbates social differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious diversity—the suite of options available to believers in a given area—is an intriguing phenomenon that is under-researched by geographers, though not by other social scientists. This paper examines the geography of religious diversity in the southeastern U.S. It offers an alternative to the neoclassical economics and social ecology perspectives by employing an approach borrowed from island biogeography to explain the spatial structure of religious diversity. Regression analyses using data from the Glenmary Research Center reveal that the relationship between denomination counts and county population size is strong and consistent over a wide range of southern states. Several interpretations of the data are provided, including an evaluation of positive and negative residuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bowen's theory (1978) of differentiation is the personality variable most critical to mature development and the attainment of psychological health. The study of psychological differentiation has been confounded by confusion regarding the constructs being studied and the measurement tools used to assess them. The purpose of this review is to introduce and demonstrate the utility and importance of the Chabot Emotional Differentiation Scale (CED; Chabot, 1993), a self-report instrument specifically designed to measure Bowen's intrapsychic aspect of differentiation, or an individual's ability to distinguish between emotional and intellectual functioning and utilize intellect in emotionally charged situations. Psychometric support for the CED, validation and cross-cultural studies to date, and implications for theory, research, and practice are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper bridges two lines of research. One line shows that social relations in the southern United States are more "collectivist" than social relations in non-southern regions. The second line of work argues that collectivist social relations generate lower levels of general trust than individualist social relations. At the intersection of these two arguments is the prediction that Southerners are, on average, less trusting than non-Southerners. I test this prediction using trust measures taken from the General Social Survey. As expected, results from whites, but not blacks, show the predicted regional differences. Importantly, regional differences in trust occur after controlling for regional variation in other factors related to trust. I conclude by outlining various implications of the findings and questions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines African American inequality in the U.S. It highlights the ways in which inequality has worked throughout the history of the U.S. It aims to raise the place of gender in the history of African American inequality. It also emphasizes the role employment in African American history. The rest of the article will examine changes in the status of African American inequality by examining inequality through five factors, namely, participation, distribution, differentiation and geography.