Moving Forward or Taking a Stand? Discourses Surrounding the Politics of Wisconsin High-speed Rail

The 2010 launch of a national high-speed rail (HSR) initiative became heavily politicized in some parts of the U.S. Research on HSR, however, has predominantly focused on quantitative variables at the national scale, while the fraught sub-national politics of HSR have been mostly overlooked. Using discourse theory, I explore the politics of Wisconsin HSR, arguing that HSR figured heavily in a larger state-based political struggle over conflicting spatial visions of how Wisconsin ‘ought’ to be. This research highlights the significance of spatiotemporally contingent meanings and the scale of analysis in politics of mobility research.     

Confirming and Expanding the Usefulness of the Extended Satisfaction With Life Scale (ESWLS)

The role of stress, particularly economic hindrance,in the prediction of global life-satisfaction wascontrasted between typically younger (n = 109)and more mature (n = 66) undergraduate students. Participants completed a Personal Projects AnalysisAppraisal Matrix including six stress dimensions, aswell as a single-item measure of globallife-satisfaction. Discriminant function analysesconducted on the students' Personal Project appraisalsrevealed that project challenge and economic hindranceaccounted for 25% of the variability inlife-satisfaction for the mature students, but none ofthe stress dimensions predicted life satisfaction forthe younger students. These results indicate that therole of stress in the prediction of life-satisfactionvaries as a function of age, with project challengeand economic hindrance playing a significant role inolder students' lives. The results are discussed inrelation to the developmental context of personalprojects as life tasks and the varying contexts foracademic pursuit between mature and typically youngerundergraduate students.     

Labour Market Policy in the United States, Canada and Sweden: Addressing the Issue of Convergence

'Convergence theorists' suggest that domestic and/or global challenges and pressures are rendering welfare states broadly similar across national boundaries. 'Resilience theorists', in contrast, argue that a range of socio-political factors have allowed states to respond differentially to these pressures and maintain their distinct national social policy approaches. However, both research streams have addressed the 'welfare state' writ large in a multitude of nations and typically relied upon narrow, quantitative budgetary indicators. This study examines qualitative changes to key income security and social service programmes in one central social policy domain – labour market policy – in three nations, the United States, Canada and Sweden. It suggests that there is evidence of some degree of 'convergence' in the broadest sense of the term across these three nations. However, while both the USA and Canada have readily embraced genuinely neo-liberal restructuring, and become increasingly similar over the past two decades in this policy area, Sweden has managed to retain its distinctive social policy approach so far, despite notable changes, developments and trends. It also suggests that the character and direction of change may vary across and within policy domains in a single nation. The conclusion provides a discussion of universality, equality and solidarity, concepts that are commonly employed in accounts of welfare state change.     

Rumour of angels and heavenly midwives: anthropology of transpersonal events and childbirth

Some contemporary women can experience non-ordinary states of consciousness when childbearing. The purpose of this paper is to bring a ‘transpersonal’ frame to these non-ordinary states of consciousness (hereafter: NOSC). Transpersonal psychology is an interdisciplinary movement in Western science that studies ‘religious’, ‘peak’ or ‘healing’ experiences in different cultures and social contexts. Between 2001 and 2006 in Auckland, New Zealand, while engaged in anthropological fieldwork, I collected stories from mothers, fathers, and midwives who had participated in transpersonal events during childbirth.I will compare the local women's NOSC with ethnographic accounts of spirit-possession and its relationship to indigenous midwifery then revisit and reconstruct the witch-hunts of Medieval Europe from this perspective. Midwives are encouraged to learn to identify and support women's NOSC during labour and birth as many women find strength and wisdom by passing through these states in labour. The subject is also critical to men, whether they are present with women and birth as fathers or health professionals. The hoped for result of this inquiry is to revalorise NOSC among birth-giving mothers, and to educate birth attendants in this field.     

Disability and climate change: A critical realist model of climate justice

Existing literature on climate change as an issue of environmental justice documents the heightened vulnerability of people with disabilities to the effects of climate change. Additionally, there are numerous studies showing that access to information is a prerequisite for perceiving risk and taking action. Building on this work, our review seeks to understand how physical disability relates to perceptions of climate-related risk and adaptations to climate-related events. We introduce a critical realist model of climate justice to understand the relationships between the environmental features that disable, risk perception and information seeking, and adaptive capacity and resilience to climate change. In understanding the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of people with disabilities to climate change, this review synthesizes research on one of the U.S.’s largest minority communities with the goals of better understanding how vulnerable populations cope with climate change and integrating them into climate action and policy.     

Raising Considerations: Public Opinion and the Fair Application of the Death Penalty*

Objectives. A major justification for capital punishment is its perceived public support, yet common measures of public opinion do not capture the complexity of death penalty attitudes. This research, first, examines the stability of attitudes regarding the fair application of the death penalty when those attitudes are expressed within the context of an enlarged pool of considerations about its administration and, second, evaluates the directional effect of the considerations on those attitudes. Methods. Data from a national telephone survey that capture the complexity of these attitudes are analyzed using ordered probit estimation. Results. These results indicate substantial instability in attitudes regarding the fair application of capital punishment given the context of more pertinent considerations. Furthermore, within this context respondents tend to indicate that the death penalty is less fairly applied. Conclusion. The justification for capital punishment may rest on oversimplified conceptions of attitudes toward the death penalty and its application.     

The 1960s Black Riots Revisited: City Level Explanations of Their Severity

This paper involves a city-level investigation of the 1964–1971 black rioting. It attempts to explain inter-city variations in the severity of the rioting with inter-city variations in black population size, political structure, black-white income inequality, and regional location. The research charts two new areas of inquiry: (1) It is the first study to use data on the entire rioting period (1964–71). (2) Most previous investigators have concentrated on linear hypotheses, e.g., most have posited and tested for a linear relationship between riot activity and black-white economic inequality. However, a review of theoretic commentary on rebellion reveals that some potential relationships should be hypothesized as curvilinear; more specifically, plausible hypotheses can be developed that rebellious activity is highest where economic inequality and political responsiveness are moderate. Such hypotheses are developed and tested. The overall pattern of results supported the posited curvilinear relationships.     

Psychiatric Disorder Dramaturgically Considered*

This paper reports the results of an investigation into the empirical applicability of conceptualizing mental illness as dramaturgic incompetence and a corresponding attempt to operationalize dramaturgical thought. It was found that dramaturgic incompetence and subsidiary components were strongly associated with degree of psychiatric disturbance and general diagnosis as determined by psychiatric staff. It also was found that attainment of psychiatric identities proceeded through a series of stages consisting of performative incompetence, empathic incompetence, motive incompetence, meaning loss, and identity loss. This sequence was particularly evident in cases of psychosis.