The Medium Is the Mass: Marshall McLuhan's Catholicism and catholicism

Conflicting assumptions have been proffered about Marshall McLuhan's Roman Catholic beliefs: (a) that he was a "compartmentalized Catholic" who kept his Sunday beliefs separate from his Monday-to-Saturday academic thinking; (b) that his Catholicism was ubiquitous, and thus the "global village" is a longing for one world body as camouflaged Teilhard de Chardin; (c) that McLuhan was an academic who addressed all topics, including religious ones, orally and in writing but not with a proselytizing perspective; (d) that as a convert to Catholicism (in the spirit of Chesterton and Lewis) he was a clever and subtle evangelical who infused academe with adapted theology; and (e) that some mixture of these assumptions is likely to be true, although McLuhan kept his articles of faith largely off the record. Based on interviews with McLuhan and with some of his closest colleagues and friends, as well as on research about the religious vein within McLuhan's writing, I report aspects of the "Marist McLuhan," that is, the McLuhan moved by Mary, and by her church, as well as aspects of McLuhan's theological subtext within his writing and thinking.     

How to Listen More Efficiently: Self-monitoring Strategies in Listening

The efficiency of cognitive strategies in information processing has been established by a considerable body of research on text comprehension. Caution needs to be used, however, when it comes to generalizing the results to listening. It is argued that, in order to decide if cognitive strategies meet the processing demands of listening, and if so, which strategies, the specifics of the listening situation must be taken into consideration. An empirical basis is needed to investigate the facilitative and possibly interfering effects of using metacognitive strategies during listening. Using qualitative methodology, listening logs collected from 35 undergraduate students were evaluated for the effects - as perceived by listeners - of three types of cognitive strategies, namely, interest management, asking pre-questions, and elaboration techniques. The results support the hypothesis that these strategies, when appropriately adapted to the listening context, facilitate information processing from aural input.     

Going the Distance: Individualism and Interdependence in the Commuter Marriage

Commuter spouses—dual‐income couples who live apart for their professional careers—have been the subject of relatively little scholarly research. Another, largely theoretical body of scholarship has explored the fundamental cultural tension generated by the simultaneous embracing of personal autonomy and the institution of marriage in the United States, although few scholars have explicitly sought to understand how these seemingly conflicting cultural goals play out “on the ground.” Drawing on data from in‐depth interviews (N = 97), the analysis finds that commuter couples indeed engaged in two discourses about their marriages that operated in tension. Although they positioned themselves as highly individualistic, interdependence was a key theme in their responses as well. Surprisingly, a substantial minority of respondents indicated that their noncohabitation enhanced their interdependence. These results not only shed light on this understudied population but also broaden our understanding of the evolving cultural meaning of marriage.     

中国大众舞蹈的变迁

回首中国当代舞蹈,为人们津津乐道,让众人感慨最深的是那些从无到有,从小到大的民间舞种。六十年不凡的历程中,老百姓的每一个舞姿都透露着时代的印记,让人回味。     

Spiritual Competence: What It Is,Why It Is Necessary,and How to Develop It

Various professional standards underscore the importance of providing effective services to all people, including those from diverse religious backgrounds. Yet despite these standards, studies have repeatedly found that most social workers receive little training in navigating this aspect of diversity during their graduate educations. To address this lack of training, the present article discusses a concept that is foundational for effective service provision with spiritual clients from diverse religious backgrounds—spiritual competence. More specifically, this article outlines what spiritual competence is and why it is important in therapeutic work, and then offers a number of strategies for developing spiritual competence. As such, this article helps equip practitioners to provide more ethical, effective services in a nation characterized by increasing religious diversity.     

School Gangs of Yogyakarta: Mass Fighting Strategies and Masculine Charisma in the City of Students

In Yogyakarta twenty-three school gangs including secular, Catholic, Christian and Islamic school gangs were identified in 2007/2008. Gangs not only proliferated in city settlements or kampong after the fall of the New Order regime in 1998, but they also developed in urban secondary schools and many are beholden to political parties. The growth of gangs is due to a number of conditions, including weakening authority of the state, absence of state surveillance and the reduction in social control from families and schools. This article addresses three questions: how and why did schoolboy gangs emerge in Yogyakarta; what is the pattern of hostility and what drives the young men to confront each other through violence and; how do the leaders of the gangs express their identities and charisma both in front of their enemies and in front of their anak buah (followers)? The first part of this essay gives an overview of the emergence of Indonesian youth gangs; the second considers contestation and hostility including tawuran (mass fighting) and stealth and attack strategies, such as nglitih (a sudden attack by a few); and the third addresses the nature of charismatic leadership through depictions of gentho (the powerful leader). I also describe how a student builds prowess as a leader during the preparation of tawuran and when carrying out attacks on the enemy school.     

Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services: How Consumer Access Is Restricted by State Policies

State Medicaid programs have expanded home and community-based services (HCBS). This article compares trends and variations in state policies for Medicaid HCBS programs in 2005 and 2010. State limitations on financial eligibility criteria and service benefits have remained stable. Although the use of consumer direction, independent providers, and family care providers has increased, some states do not have these options. The increased adoption of state cost control policies have led to large increases in persons on waiver wait lists. Access could be improved by standardizing and liberalizing state HCBS policies, but state fiscal concerns are barriers to rebalancing between HCBS and institutional services.     

Calling Upon the Sacred: Migrants' Use of Religion in the Migration Process

The role of religion in the stages of the migration process has been overlooked by both immigration and sociology of religion scholars. This article draws on the migratory and religious history of a transnational Maya community with members in the western highlands of Guatemala and Houston, Texas. Drawing on field research of Mayas in both the sending and receiving areas, we show how migrants use religion in the following stages of the migration process: 1) decisionmaking; 2) preparing for the trip; 3) the journey; 4) the arrival; 5) the role of the ethnic church in immigrant settlement; and 6) the development of transnational linkages.     

Reason, Politics, and the Politics of Truth: How Science Is Both Autonomous and Dependent

The concept of "science" usually includes commitments to reason, objectivity, and disinterest in the search for truth about the nature of the world. In this view, politics, in the sense of maneuvering to gain power, corrupts both the process and the product of science. However, we show that science is political through and through—in the process of constructing scientific knowledge, in maintaining disciplines, and in being responsive to partisan sponsorship. Nevertheless, the practitioners of both science and politics maintain the boundary between the two fields; in fact, the disciplines most dependent upon government support tend also to be the most autonomous. This situation becomes understandable when both fields are considered as discursive practices. Then, scientific debates can be seen as productive precisely because they derive from an objective agreement about science as an autonomous intellectual enterprise, and science itself can be seen as a politics of truth .     

Recent Representations in Popular Environmental Discourse: Individualism,Wastefulness and the Global Economy*

À partir du concept de règie morale, on proc?ede à une déconstruction critique du récent discours environnemental axé sur l'individualisme et la gestion des déchets. Les sources analysées comprennent des emissions télévisées diffusées à la CBC telles que The Journal, Prime Time News et The Nature of Things ainsi que les programmes sco‐laires de l'Ontario. On soutient que, dans la compréhension populaire à l'égard de l'environnement, l'accent mis sur l'irres‐ponsabilite indi‐viduelle a été, de bien des façons, liéà des impératifs économiques, aux connaissances déterministes entourant l'économie mondiale ainsi qu'à la rationalité néolibérale. Par conséquent, de telles constructions contribueraient a créer un climat culturel, oú l'émergence d'un discours public critique remettant en cause les « réalités économiques » deviendrait moins probable. Making use of the concept of moral regulation, a critical deconstruction of the recent environmental discourse of individualism and waste is undertaken. Sources analysed include CBC's The Journal, Prime Time News and The Nature of Things, and Ontario curriculum guides. It is argued that the emergence in popular environmental understandings of a focus on individual irresponsibility was, in many ways, bound up with economic imperatives, deterministic understandings surrounding the global economy, and neoliberal rationality. As a result, such constructions are suggested to participate in a cultural climate where the emergence of critical public discourse that challenges “economic realities” becomes less likely.     

Individualism and Marriage: Ideal Types for Making Sense of the Relationship between Self and Sacrifice

The question of how the individual and group relate is one that has long interested social theorists. Changes in family form and structure in the contemporary West resituate this question in a contentious public debate regarding how the prevalence of new family forms may contribute or be deleterious to the well-being of individuals and families. Sociological discourse on marriage and the family generally tends to mirror this debate by dichotomizing individualism and commitment and self and marriage, resulting in an obfuscation of our understanding of the forms and styles in marriage. In order to clarify and advance this discussion, we show how individualism and commitment are mutually required in a modern world. We follow this by outlining a logically-derived typology that, along with a committed individualist and a group conformer, includes two intermediate types: a self-regulator and a relationship negotiator. We empirically demonstrate the utility of these types by showing how they correspond with the ways that interviewees talk about marriage in six local congregations, and we suggest various social factors that may particularly impact the development of local marriage cultures. These types provide a theoretical frame for understanding how individualism and commitment are intertwined and require each other.     

How to Inform: Comparing Written and Video Education Interventions to Increase Human Papillomavirus Knowledge and Vaccination Intentions in Young Adults

Abstract

Objective: To compare the efficacy of 2 human papillomavirus (HPV) educational interventions on increasing HPV knowledge and vaccination intentions in college students. Participants: Male (n = 60) and female (n = 140) undergraduates (M _age = 20.4, SD = 2.3) recruited from a university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, from October 2009 to March 2010. Methods: Using theory-based interventions, participants were randomly assigned to either a written HPV pamphlet, an HPV video, or a control. HPV knowledge and vaccination intentions were assessed pre and postintervention. Results: Low baseline knowledge and intentions were found across groups. Postintervention, participants in the written and video interventions had significantly higher knowledge and intentions than the control. No differences were found between written and video interventions on knowledge or intentions. Conclusion: This study, a first in comparing HPV educational formats, suggests that both written and video interventions are equally effective in educating about HPV and increasing young adults’ vaccination intentions.     

How to Deal With Moral Tales: Constructions and Strategies of Single‐Parent Families

This study explored how normative understandings based on the nuclear family ideology are linked to constructions of single‐parent families and sheds light on the strategies single parents and their children adopt in dealing with negative accounts. Guided by social constructionist and configurational approaches, the in‐depth analysis is based on an Austrian qualitative study, comprising interviews with 50 ten‐year‐old children and their 71 parents, living in nuclear, reconstituted, and single‐parent families. The results showed that single‐parent families are constructed predominantly in terms of deficits and disadvantages, with the nuclear family serving as an ideological code along the dimensions of normalcy, complementarity, and stability. To deal with negative accounts, single parents and their children use three basic types of strategy: (a) imitation, (b) compensation, and (c) delimitation.     

How It Was/Is Told,Recorded and Remembered: The Discontinued History of the Third Front Construction

By comparing different historical narratives of the Third Front Construction that was built as a home‐front defensive industrial base against the threat of war from both the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1960s, this paper aims to explore a particular aspect of China's socialist history in a relational manner that contrasts but also connects past and present, archives and subjectivity, top‐down and bottom‐up perspectives. It is part of a larger effort to understand the complexity of China's socialist history and its relation to the present.     

呼唤解绑的童年:儿童玩商现状分析及培育构想

玩耍是儿童的天性,儿童想象力、创造力的发展离不开玩耍。儿童成长过程中应当重视玩商的培育。人本主义、积极心理学以及休闲学为玩商提供了坚实的理论基础。当今儿童玩商状况总体低下,不敢玩、没空玩、不会玩,却也玩得狠。培育儿童玩商可从四个维度入手:引导儿童形成健康的玩商概念;家长更新教育观念,形成理性的可持续的教子意识;学校利用自身优势,有效促进儿童玩商的提高;社会全力营造尊重鼓励儿童玩乐的氛围。以期构建立体、和谐的教育场。     

Nonresponse in the American Time Use Survey: Who Is Missing from the Data and How Much Does It Matter?

This article examines nonresponse in a large government survey,the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), which interviews personsin households previously interviewed in the Current PopulationSurvey. The response rate for the ATUS has been below 60 percentfor the first two years of its existence, raising questionsabout whether the results can be generalized to the target population.The article begins with an analysis of the types of nonresponseencountered in the ATUS. Noncontact accounts for roughly 60percent of ATUS nonresponse, with refusals accounting for roughly40 percent. We find little support for the hypothesis that busypeople are less likely to respond to the ATUS but find considerablesupport for the hypothesis that people who are weakly integratedinto their communities are less likely to respond, mostly becausethey are less likely to be contacted. When we compare aggregateestimates of time use calculated using the ATUS base weightswithout any adjustment for nonresponse, estimates calculatedusing the ATUS final weights with a nonresponse adjustment,and estimates calculated using weights that incorporate ourown nonresponse adjustment based on a propensity model, we findsome modest differences, but the three sets of estimates arebroadly similar. The article ends with suggestions for furtherresearch and analysis.