Quality of Life in Intentional Communities

The present study was initiated to investigate levels and predictors of wellbeing among inhabitants of intentional communities (ICs). An anonymous, Internet-based questionnaire was distributed to US and Canadian ICs. Responses were obtained from 913 members. Wellbeing was measured by the widely used satisfaction with life scale (SWLS). Hierarchical linear regression analyses were run to test the predictive validity of Social support, Identity fusion, Meaning in life, Community satisfaction and Life change, and Religious activity above and beyond demographic variables and personality traits. Mean scores on the SWLS were estimated to 5.27 and 5.47 (1–7 scale) for men and women, respectively. The full model explained 41.4% of the variance for men and 38.2% for women. Personality explained 13.4 (men) and 14.4% (women) of the variation, while demographic variables only had a minor impact. Overall, presence of Meaning in life and Social support were the most important predictors. The IC inhabitants reported wellbeing on par with the highest scores previously published. The findings support the contention that sustainability, in the form of a communal lifestyle of low ecological footprint, may be promoted without forfeiting wellbeing.     

Resolving complex community problems: Applying collective leadership and Kotter's change model to wicked problems within social system networks

How does collective leadership within social networks resolve chronic and complex problems common to communities? Unfortunately, sometimes it does not, but when it does, the outcome may be truly extraordinary. We use a case study approach to explain how one Midwest community within the USA applied collective leadership within a community network to reduce teen births. It took ten years of what many identified as provocative media campaigns and comprehensive sex education programs to reduce teen births by 65%, significantly exceeding the stated goal. Using Kotter's change model as a backdrop, powerful strategies and provocative creativity reveal courageous leadership within a social network of diverse people and organizations focused on improving the social well being of their community.     

The effects of traffic noise on tadpole behavior and development

Urban Ecosystems - Traffic noise is known to negatively affect many wildlife species by interfering with foraging behavior. Frogs often lay their eggs in roadside ditches because they are...     

Understanding foraging flexibility in urban vervet monkeys,Chlorocebus pygerythrus,for the benefit of human-wildlife coexistence

Urban Ecosystems - Generalist wildlife species often thrive in urban environments because of increased anthropogenic resources. However, human-wildlife interactions, especially if negative, raise...     

Kinship Reconsidered: Research on a Neglected Topic

This article reviews the recent history of kinship research, noting the relative neglect of the topic in recent decades. The lack of scholarly and empirical work on kinship has been hampered by both the absence of survey and qualitative research on contemporary kinship practices. The author focuses on what is known and not known about how individual put into practice kinship in the standard, nuclear form of the family. There is surprising in attention to the ceremonial family and, little is know about how families draw boundaries and construct kinship on ritual occasions in the literature. The author concludes by suggesting research strategies for examining both how kinship is constructed and practiced in the United States and in other advanced economies.     

THE EXTENT OF THE MARKET AND INTEGRATION THROUGH FACTOR MARKETS: EVIDENCE FROM WHOLESALE ELECTRICITY

We document the influence of factor markets in determining the extent of the market, appealing to the Mundell hypothesis that trade in goods and factor markets are substitutes. We confirm this influence using the U.S. wholesale market for electric power. Although the Eastern, Western, and Texas regions cannot trade electricity, inputs such as natural gas move freely across these regions. Through a set of price transmission ratios, and a supply model for natural gas, we find regional electricity shocks do propagate across regions. We conclude output markets institutionally in autarky achieve modest degrees of economic integration through factor markets. (JEL C32, L94, Q41)     

Roads to American Empire: U.S. Military Public Works and Capitalist Transitions, 1898–1934.

Between 1898 and 1934, in synchronous and successive U.S. military interventions and occupations in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, American soldiers made public works, and especially roads, into a global technology of imperial power. This essay examines infrastructure as a factor in state formation and capitalist transition in these five different imperial spaces as a way to study U.S. empire, and its effects on foreign societies, through a comparative, global, and intra‐imperial approach often precluded by the methodological nationalism of historical and sociological literatures. Despite significant differences between these sites of U.S. war and occupation, both prior to American interventions and during them, U.S. military public works expressed and advanced a common political‐economic logic of state centralization and capital accumulation. Colonial and post‐colonial political institutions and political economies, the strength of central governments, the extent of plantation agriculture and rural proletarianization, world commodity markets, and geography and natural events varied, but determined U.S. imperial infrastructure's outcomes. By the 1930s, the U.S. military had elevated infrastructural improvement to a key repertoire of American imperial power in the world, and one which persisted as the United States turned away from formal colonialism in the era of the Cold War and decolonization.     

A Hitchhiker's Guide to caring for an older person before and during coronavirus‐19

Coronavirus‐19 (COVID‐19) has reconfigured working lives with astonishing velocity. Older people have suffered the worst effects of the pandemic, with governments marginalizing or overlooking their needs. Women perform the majority of care for older people, often compromising their working lives and health. Yet in academic articles their voices are often filtered or aggregated in quantitative studies. Based on a weave of personal experiences and secondary research, the article traces a path through UK forms of care and shows how the inadequate response to COVID‐19 stemmed from existing policies embedded in health and social care. COVID‐19 has severed important informal care work, rendering the vulnerable yet more exposed and carers anxious and bereft. Longitudinal research capturing the trajectory of care from the perspective of older people and their carers would lead to improved support hence gender equality.     

Training Intraverbal Naming to Establish Matching-to-Sample Performances

The current study evaluated whether training intraverbal naming would be sufficient to establish visual-visual matching-to-sample (MTS) performances in college students. In the first experiment, we used a multiple-probe design across stimulus sets to assess whether six participants could match arbitrary visual stimuli (AB) after learning to tact their two experimentally defined classes (A’ and B’) and then intraverbally relate their names (i.e., “A’ goes with B’”). All participants matched the stimuli accurately after training, as well as emitted the trained intraverbals. In the second experiment, we used a multiple baseline design across four participants to assess whether the same training would produce bi-directional intraverbals in the form of “B’ goes with A’,” and MTS performance consistent with symmetry (BA). All participants responded accurately during matching and intraverbal tests. Across both experiments, participants stated the trained intraverbals while performing the matching task. Results showed that MTS performance can be established solely by verbal behavior training.     

Differential Developmental Profiles of Adolescents Using Sexually Explicit Internet Material

This study used a person-centered approach to examine whether different developmental trajectories of boys’ and girls’ use of sexually explicit Internet material (SEIM) exist, which factors predict these trajectories, and whether sexual behavior develops differently for adolescents in these trajectories. A combination of latent class growth analysis on SEIM use and latent growth curve analysis on sexual behavior was used on four-wave longitudinal data of 787 eighth through tenth grade Dutch adolescents. Among boys, four SEIM use trajectories were identified, which were labeled Nonuse/Infrequent Use, Strongly Increasing Use, Occasional Use, and Decreasing Use. Among girls, a large Stable Nonuse/Infrequent Use and smaller Strongly Increasing Use and Stable Occasional Use trajectories were distinguished. Higher initial levels and/or stronger increases in SEIM use were predicted by demographic, social contextual, personal, and media use characteristics, including a stronger sexual interest, a higher degree of perceived realism regarding sexualized Internet content, and more permissive sexual attitudes. Moreover, initial levels of and, to some extent, developmental changes in sexual behavior varied for boys and girls in the different SEIM use trajectories. Whereas some adolescents showed concurrent low levels, or parallel strong increases in SEIM use and sexual behavior, a subgroup of boys decreased their SEIM use while increasing their sexual behavior.