On Boundaries

In this essay, I discuss the consequences of establishing boundaries and categories and the consequences for peoples, the need to consider insider and outsider categories in the sociological endeavor, and some of the current problems in our society that have been revealed by research and the communication of boundary research.     

Transcending Boundaries

SUMMARY

This paper presents a participatory research and planned change effort to develop a coordinated community response system to domestic violence in a United States culturally diverse community with a large immigrant population. This work grew out of an international, interdisciplinary project that was designed to establish ongoing collaborative relationships between university and community practitioners in the United States, Honduras, and Costa Rica around the theme of intra-familial violence, particularly gender-based violence against women. The paper analytically describes the international collaborative project, the local community-based participatory research and community development project, and lessons learned from both the local and international interdisciplinary collaboration. Examination of differences across disciplinary and cultural contexts generated critical reflection on the need to consider reframing domestic violence in the context of fundamental human rights, as is the case in Central America. At the same time, challenges around developing a coordinated community response, addressing inadequacies in the legal system, and implementing education and training were echoed across boundaries, demonstrating the need for continued international collaboration.     

Volunteering and Civic Action: Boundaries Blurring,Boundaries Redrawn

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - The aim of this introduction to the special issue is to call into question the presumed conceptual divide between...     

精神的边界－－网德教育视野中“黑客精神”的解读

几年来,“黑客”情结一直在纠缠青少年网民,难以理顺。本文通过对黑客精神的哲理分析,进一步揭示其实质内涵,以提高青少年网络意识。     

高职院校违纪学生跟踪教育制度探究

构建对高职院校违纪学生的跟踪教育制度,既是体现以人为本的现代化高校学生管理总趋势,也是高职院校制度化建设的必要步骤,对良好校风的形成将会产生积极的推动作用。     

Race, Risk, and the Emergence of Gender Boundaries: Kids Crossing Boundaries in Summer Camps

My study explores how children established and crossed gender boundaries in four recreational settings with different racial compositions and patterns. Children generally marked boys' gender boundary crossing as more deviant than girls' crossing. However, the amount of gender salience structured into each setting and the salience of race in each setting affected campers' perceptions of the risks from gender boundary crossing and, thus, their strategies for crossing. My findings suggest that the perceived race of the actor may be less important than the race of the audience. Also crucial are the ways in which race category membership gives meaning to gender boundaries and to gender deviance in a particular situation.     

Sibling Family Practices: Guidelines for Healthy Boundaries

A questionnaire was given to 500 mental health and child welfare professionals asking for maximum acceptable ages for siblings to engage jointly in certain family practices related to hygiene, affection, and privacy. A large proportion of respondents felt it was never acceptable for siblings to take showers together (40%), kiss on the mouth (37%), or toilet together (32%). Some significant differences occurred based on the gender of the older sibling within sets of same gender or mixed gender pairs, with older brothers being acceptable up to lower ages than older sisters. The effects of child abuse, age, race, and the amount of education on the respondents' answers are investigated. The limitations of the age guidelines are discussed.     

乡村地理学：界限的模糊与跨学科联系的构建

近年来,一系列反映乡村地理学本质属性、历史沿革与案例实践的评论和文章相继发表。在人们普遍认为乡村地理学经历了复兴阶段之后,一种内省的氛围出现了,但它同时也提出了对乡村地理学的不均衡发展以及这一学科分支是否已准备就绪迎接新挑战的关切。本文是关于乡村地理学的三份进展报告中的第一篇,焦最集中在尝试重新思考乡村地理学的边界及其与其他研究领域的关系。第一,剖析了重新兴起的关于乡村的定义和定界的讨论,包括乡村的再物质化。第二,考虑重振城乡关系方面的研究,包括城市地区、城市远郊化和再城市性等概念。第三,讨论乡村地理学家建立密切的跨学科联系．包括与物理学和自然科学领域的专家展开合作。     

Professional Relationship Boundaries: A Social Work Teaching Module

Social workers are often challenged by the complex and ever‐changing dynamics within their relationships with clients, and struggle to find ethical responses within professional boundary grey zones where boundaries with clients can be difficult to identify, yet easy to cross. Social work educators attempt to prepare students for these complex situations, yet in the United States research reveals rates of social work boundary violations that lead one to question the efficacy of social work ethics education. This article describes the educational competencies and instructional strategies that comprise an adaptable course module which was developed in response to this challenge, and intended to increase students' self‐awareness, motivation and professional judgment‐making abilities related to their professional boundaries. The educational competencies for this course include the abilities to: identify boundary violations, apply critical thinking skills to complex professional relationship contexts, increase awareness of self and other, and initiate prevention strategies. In contrast to traditional approaches to education, this article describes instructional strategies that are based on adult‐learning principles, which have the purpose of effectively and creatively teaching topic areas in such a way as to produce behavioural change. These course topic areas include a ‘Professional Relationship Boundaries Continuum’ conceptual framework, boundary violation impacts, personal boundary vulnerabilities, blurring boundary indicators, and risk‐minimizing strategies.     

LOSING SAMSON: Nature,Crime, and Boundaries

This article examines a community's reaction to the poaching of a large elk. Extending the Durkheimian approach to nature, crime, law, and social control, this study discusses the anguish and anger provoked by the infraction, tributes to the fallen animal, calls for more severe and certain sanctions for poaching, and the boundaries affirmed in the incident's aftermath. The implications of this communal response to a wildlife offense for criminalization and conceptions of community are considered.     

The Boundaries of Europe: Deconstructing Three Regional Narratives

The shifting boundaries of Europe as lines of enclosure and mobility restriction in the ‘longue duree’are analysed here at the European/supranational level through the deconstruction of three regional narratives on “Europe” and its reborderings in different millennia. These narratives have had a lasting significance in identity construction and spatialities around the Mediterranean and are evidence of the historically specific and constructed nature of the boundaries of Europe, as well as the power relations involved in changing spatialities. Europe is a cultural construct that emerged around the Mediterranean in a captivating Greek myth, much earlier than the period of written history. The notion of Europe then ‘shifted’ to the northwest as a colonial cultural–religious construct of ‘Christendom’ during the Middle Ages, before nation-states emerged. Much later, European integration—in the context of globalization after the end of bipolarity—not only did not melt borders, but in fact created some new and often bizarre hierarchies supported by a bureaucratic narrative and an institutional discourse for unification after two devastating world wars. Unpacking these narratives is important in understanding sociopolitical constructions of ‘Europe’ and its boundaries, their hardening or relaxation, and criticizing essentialism, as well as commenting upon the ambivalent placing in the European Union of certain candidate and neighboring nations.     

Boundaries and barriers: Racialized dynamics of political power

Recent sociological works establish the significance and role of the state and political sphere in the enactment of racial oppression and construction of racial categories. However, less understood are the racialized dynamics that mediate exclusion and access to political power, particularly at the meso‐ and micro‐levels. Synthesizing extant theory and research on racial inequality, the state, politics, and power, this article advances a framework centering on boundaries and barriers. First, it discusses the relationship between the state and political sphere, political power, and racial inequality. Next, it explores the literature on the deployment and contestation of racialized boundaries to the symbolic and material benefits of the state. It then examines the literature on racialized barriers to engagement, participation, and influence in the political sphere . The article concludes by suggesting future research in the related areas of agenda‐setting and influence and the microdynamics of political power.     

Boundaries and the Functioning of Family and Business Systems

The purposes of the present study were to: (1) examine connections between performance success and the boundaries between families and the businesses they own and (2) explore whether boundary-performance links were mediated by satisfaction. Tests of the mediation hypothesis revealed that family satisfaction partially mediated connections between boundaries and family functioning. Business satisfaction fully mediated connections between boundary characteristics and business strengths, but did not mediate the relationship between boundary characteristics and cash flow problems. Although previous literature suggests that permeable boundaries (i.e. enmeshment) are especially problematic for family firms, this appears to be only partially true.     

Perceptions of Immigrant Criminality: Crime and Social Boundaries

Researchers studying the relationship between immigration and crime frequently note the discrepancy between actual rates and public perceptions of criminal behavior by immigrants. Analyzing staff‐ and reader‐generated texts in a local newspaper, we find that this connection is maintained through a conflation of key terms, assumptions of the legal status of immigrants, and a focus on high‐profile criminal acts. We argue that the discourse of immigrant criminality has been critical in constructing social boundaries used in recent immigration legislation. Our analysis helps explain why current scholarly findings on immigration and crime have had little influence in changing public opinion.     

Leadership in Nonprofits: Social Innovations and Blurring Boundaries

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - With an increasing need for social innovations that rely on cross-sector partnerships, traditional ways of managing and...