Resource Dependence and Community Well‐Being in Rural Canada*

Abstract The well‐being of residents of resource dependent communities is a question of traditional interest to rural sociologists. The label “resource dependent” obscures how this relationship may vary between particular resource industries, regions, or indicators of well‐being. Few analyses have compared the relationship between well‐being and resource dependence across different industries, nor tested competing theories about the relationship between resource dependence and well‐being. Our paper presents an overview of the relationship between resource dependence—agriculture, fisheries, mining, energy, forestry—and human well‐being in Canada. Analysis of 1996 Statistics Canada data revealed a great deal of variation in the effect of “resource” dependence on indicators of well‐being (e.g., human capital, unemployment, income): some industries exhibit fairly positive outcomes (e.g., agriculture), others more negative outcomes (e.g., fishing). Consistent with analyses conducted in the United States, these relationships vary by region, suggesting the need for models that incorporate the particulars of place and industry.     

Child Support Obligations and Low‐Income Fathers

Using the 1994–1998 waves of the Current Population Survey—Child Support Supplement (N =5,387), the aims of this study are to document child support obligation rates of nonresident fathers, to examine the effect of the obligation rate on child support compliance, and to calculate the trade‐off between fathers’ financial responsibility and children's well‐being, paying particular attention to low‐income fathers. The results indicate that low‐income fathers have high child support obligation rates, which significantly reduce their child support compliance. Although lowering the obligation rate for these fathers may improve their compliance, it does not fully offset the lowered obligation amounts and leads to a 30% net payment loss for welfare mothers and a 43% loss for nonwelfare mothers. Policy implications are discussed.     

Discrimination and Well‐Being: Perceptions of Refugees in Western Australia

This paper reports the apparent paradox of high levels of discrimination experienced by humanitarian migrants to Australia, in the labor market and everyday life, yet simultaneous reporting of positive well‐being. How can people feel discriminated against, yet still be relatively satisfied with life? The study draws on quantitative and qualitative data from a study of 150 refugees from the former Yugoslavia, the Middle East, and Africa. Possible reasons for the level of well‐being are explored, including “relative deprivation theory,” as well as various resiliency and mitigating factors, including personal and social supports. The notion of eudaimonic well‐being – whereby experiences of difficulty produce positive well‐being – is also applied to the findings. The negative experiences and perceptions appear to map onto low‐level dissatisfaction or disgruntlement, and specifically directed or contained disappointment, rather than serious dissatisfaction with life generally, orientation to Australia, or negative subjective well‐being.     

Dimensions of Job Quality,Mechanisms, and Subjective Well‐Being in the United States

How does job quality predict subjective well‐being in the United States? Prior research suggests that various job quality dimensions such as job security and individual task discretion affect subjective well‐being, but the theoretical mechanisms are implied rather than tested and aspects of job quality are rarely tested together. I use structural equation modeling and General Social Survey data to assess the impact of five job quality dimensions—individual task discretion, monetary compensation, job security, low work intensity, and safe work conditions—on subjective well‐being. Then, I show that job quality influences subjective well‐being by improving social life, altering class identification, affecting physical health, and increasing amounts of leisure time. Finally, while I find that job quality dimensions do have statistically significant effects on subjective well‐being, the way in which job quality affects subjective well‐being differs by job dimension. In other words, job quality has a statistically significant impact on subjective well‐being, but different job quality domains are connected to subjective well‐being in different ways.     

Volunteer Work and Hedonic,Eudemonic, and Social Well‐Being

Using two waves of panel data from the National Survey of Midlife in the United States (MIDUS), we examine the relationship between volunteer work and three dimensions of well‐being: hedonic (e.g., positive mood), eudemonic (e.g., purpose in life), and social (e.g., feeling of belonging to the community). We test for the effects of volunteering measured as a binary and a continuous variable. Results show that volunteering enhances eudemonic and social well‐being (but not hedonic well‐being) although the number of hours contributed makes no difference. Conversely, people who have greater hedonic, eudemonic, and social well‐being are more likely to volunteer and, in the case of hedonic and eudemonic well‐being, volunteer more hours.     

“Should I Trust the Bank or the Social Movement?” Motivated Reasoning and Debtors' Work to Accept Misinformation

How can people believe corporate and state misinformation even if a social movement organization in their community has been countering this misinformation for years? Why do people knowingly accept misinformation without even being upset about it? I address these questions by analyzing ethnographic data and interviews with 84 Chilean low‐income housing debtors, whom, like many Chileans, are victims of financial misinformation. While the state and banks had significant agency in inducing the unproblematic acceptance of misinformation, debtors also played an active role in the processes. First, debtors had to decide whom to trust, which was not only a cognitive problem about evidence but also a behavioral and practical problem involving risks. Second, debtors engaged in “motivated reasoning”—affect‐driven biased information processing—to dismiss the possibility of being misinformed, to downplay the significance of misinformation, and to direct blame away from misinforming institutions. The latter two practices reduced debtors' anger about being misinformed. The findings have implications for studies of social movement framing and counterinformation, for the cognitive psychology of misinformation, and for the sociology and social psychology of acquiescence.     

Identity and the Definition of the Situation in a Mass‐Mediated Context

The importance of identity and the definition of the situation for symbolic interactionist theory and research are discussed. These two concepts have been separated in much research since the 1970s, with identity being used in a variety of ways. This separation is partly attributed to paradigm shifts in social science, as well as to popular culture treatments of identity. Popular culture's emphasis on “collective” and “personal” identities is processed through entertainment formats that emphasize emotional and vicarious involvement, drama and action. Materials illustrate the presence of a mass‐mediated generalized other, media communities, and the significance this has for realist and postrealist ethnography. Suggestions are offered for a reintegration of identity and the definition of the situation in ethnographic work. Sex videos are total fantasy. But people have to realize that even in a fantasy you have to deal with reality. —Pornographic film actress     

Three Ecologies: Urban Metabolism and the Society‐Nature Opposition

This article is an intellectual history of two enduring binaries—society‐nature and city‐countryside—and their co‐identification, told through evolving uses of the concept of “urban metabolism.” After recounting the emergence of the modern society‐nature opposition in the separation of town and country under early industrial capitalism, I interpret “three ecologies”—successive periods of urban metabolism research spanning three disciplines within the social sciences. The first is the human ecology of the Chicago School, which treated the city as an ecosystem in analogy to external, natural ecosystems. The second is industrial ecology: materials‐flow analyses of cities that conceptualize external nature as the source of urban metabolism's raw materials and the destination for its social wastes. The third is urban political ecology, a reconceptualization of the city as a product of diverse socio‐natural flows. By analyzing these three traditions in succession, I demonstrate both the efficacy and the limits to Catton and Dunlap's distinction between a “human exemptionalist paradigm” and a “new ecological paradigm” in sociology.     

Moving “Up and Out” Together: Exploring the Mother–Child Bond in Low‐Income,Single‐Mother‐Headed Families

Bearing children is often viewed as negatively impacting the social mobility of low‐income single mothers. This analysis draws on 66 in‐depth interviews with low‐income, single‐mother participants in an antipoverty program in Boston. The author argues that the mother–child relationship is at the center of efforts by these single mothers to move out of poverty. Interviewees repeatedly expressed the primacy of their children's needs being met in order for them to move forward. Mothers tried to include their children in efforts to move out of poverty, thus fulfilling the role of a “good mother” while exhibiting proper behavior for a poor person trying to achieve economic independence. The data here highlight the limitations of policy initiatives that fail to acknowledge the centrality of children's well‐being to the lives of single mothers and suggest that the mother–child bond may be an untapped resource for policies and programs serving this community.     

Downshifting: An Exploration of Motivations,Quality of Life,and Environmental Practices

“Downshifting,” reducing work hours, thereby income, to increase leisure time, offers a possible individual‐level solution to the stress many experience from long working hours and work intensification. Recently, some have argued that an increase in leisure time with a reduction in income might also foster pro‐environmental lifestyles as has been demonstrated for the “voluntary simplicity” movement. Quantitative research on the relationship between downshifting and quality of life is scant, with equivocal results, and studies of the relationship between downshifting and environmental lifestyles are even more rare. Survey data from a western Canadian city reveal nonsignificant impacts of downshifting on two measures of quality of life (subjective well‐being and satisfaction with time use) as well as on sustainable transportation practices. However, downshifting is significantly associated with sustainable household practices. In order for downshifting to have more widespread positive effects, further structural changes in broader domains such as work culture, urban design, and support for families will be required.     

Dancing with discrimination: managing stigma and identity

Fans are a group that are stigmatized and discredited, at least to some degree, by their “deviant” and common form of symbolic consumption. At stake in the process of stigmatization is the very identity of the individual fan, and their symbolic and emotional well‐being. This paper reports on an empirical study of one particular group of fans—Star Trek fans (or “Trekkies”)—and explores the complex identity issues articulated by them as they “manage” their problematic public identity. Drawing upon interviews conducted with 18 Trekkies, the article describes how this stigmatic identity is organized within a disciplinary matrix that operates at a micro level through two key processes: humour and self‐surveillance. In particular, we highlight their struggle with the dilemmas of exposing their private “fandom” in a public context, and the highly ambivalent manner in which they seek to escape stigmatization.     

Homeownership and Volunteering: An Alternative Approach to Studying Social Inequality and Civic Engagement1

Previous research on volunteering finds significant differences by race and social class. We augment these findings by examining a largely ignored measure of social class: tenure status, the distinction between renters and homeowners. We test a theory that predicts people volunteer more if they have a “stake” in their community and we use the value of their home as a measure of the size of this stake, with renters having no stake at all, using data from the 2003 Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We find that although homeowners volunteer more than renters, the value of their home has no influence on their volunteer work. Length of residence in the neighborhood has a positive effect on volunteerism. Tenure status partially mediates the influence of race and family income on volunteering but not education.     

RETIREMENT,PERSONALITY, AND WELL‐BEING

This study investigates how two sources of individual heterogeneity—personality and gender—impact the well‐being effects of retirement. Using data on older men and women from the British Household Panel Survey and its continuation, Understanding Society, we estimate the causal effect of retirement on satisfaction with overall life and domains of life in the presence of personality characteristics. As retirement is often considered to be a choice and thus may be endogenous to individual‐level characteristics, we use the eligibility ages for basic state pension in the United Kingdom as instruments for retirement. We find that retirement increases leisure satisfaction of both males and females but not necessarily life satisfaction and income satisfaction. We further show that certain personality characteristics affect the well‐being of female retirees. For males, however, personality does not seem to matter in how they cope with retirement. (JEL I31, J26, A12, C23)     

Philadelphia‐based harm‐reduction advocate joins CleanSlate

Brooke Feldman is well‐known to the Philadelphia world of drug users as a peer counselor active in harm‐reduction work. But starting this week, she will be Center Manager for two sites owned by CleanSlate Centers, a treatment program focused on opioid and alcohol addiction. Feldman has a master's in social work and is able to bridge the “street” world and that of the established treatment center—but acknowledges that there was a leap of faith involved in joining the treatment field.     

Collaborative Music‐Making with Digital Audio Workstations: The “nth Member” as a Heuristic Device for Understanding the Role of Technologies in Audio Composition

This article examines amateur music‐making using a digital audio workstation, showing how audio and software are used as resources for creating compositions. The article has two aims. Firstly, to depict how digital music‐making is formed from routine interactional techniques. Secondly, to probe how researchers might account for such multi‐modal activity through a heuristic device: the “nth member.” Whereas sociology has typically been concerned with the cultural facets of how music is made and consumed, we explore the material practices of collaborative song creation utilizing conversation analytic techniques—“turn‐taking” and “next‐selection”—to capture two key interactional moments.     

Telling Others How You Live—Refining Goffman's Stigma Theory Through an Analysis of Housing Strugglers in a Homeowner Nation

This article revisits Goffman's stigma theory from the perspective of housing studies. We elaborate on Goffman's approach by exploring how housing tenure can work as a proxy for moral character. We interviewed twenty‐seven people who are excluded from access to homeownership in two cities in Norway, which is a “homeowner nation.” These individuals are unable to enter the dominant “homeowner class” for different reasons, including drug‐dependency, mental illness, refugee background, low socioeconomic status; thus, they must access housing through other tenures; private renting or social housing. To many of them, housing becomes a stigma, in Goffman terms, an “undesired differentness.” Social housing is known to carry stigma in Norway. It was thus a paradox, that those with the softest differentness—private rental—were most likely to practice (Goffman:) “information control” over their housing situation. Goffman's theoretical apparatus, and his distinction between the discreditable and the discredited in particular, helped us make this paradox comprehensible. Through this analysis, refinements to Goffman's theory were discovered. We suggest that “multiple stigmas,” which was not seen clearly by Goffman himself, should be a key notion in stigma studies. We use this notion to distinguish between possible sub‐types to the discredited‐discreditable distinction.     

Individual versus Household Migration Decision Rules: Gender and Marital Status Differences in Intentions to Migrate in South Africa

This research tests the thesis that the neoclassical microeconomic and the new household economic theoretical assumptions on migration decision‐making rules are segmented by gender, marital status, and time frame of intention to migrate. Comparative tests of both theories within the same study design are relatively rare. Utilizing data from the Causes of Migration in South Africa national migration survey, we analyse how individually held “own‐future” versus alternative “household well‐being” migration decision rules effect the intentions to migrate of male and female adults in South Africa. Results from the gender and marital status specific logistic regressions models show consistent support for the different gender‐marital status decision rule thesis. Specifically, the “maximizing one’s own future” neoclassical microeconomic theory proposition is more applicable for never married men and women, the “maximizing household income” proposition for married men with short‐term migration intentions, and the “reduce household risk” proposition for longer time horizon migration intentions of married men and women. Results provide new evidence on the way household strategies and individual goals jointly affect intentions to move or stay.     

Marriage,Money, and African American Mothers’ Self‐Esteem

This study examined the effects of marital status and family income on the self‐esteem of 292 African American mothers. Counter to previous studies with European American mothers, family income moderated the effects of marital status. Those mothers with higher family income had higher self‐esteem, regardless of their marital status. For those with less family income, married mothers had much higher self‐esteem than unmarried mothers. Low‐income married mothers had the same levels of self‐esteem as high income mothers. It was concluded that financial resources can buffer the effects of being single, and being married can buffer the effects of being low income. Policy initiatives that focus on reducing the financial hardship on single mothers and increasing the marriage rate among lower income parents were also discussed.     

General symbolic definitions and subjective well‐being

In recent years evidence has suggested that demographic factors such as income and status have only a modest relationship to subjective well‐being. As a result, much attention has been paid to internal rather than external factors. Discrepancy perceptions approaches, particularly multiple discrepancy theory, link internal subjective factors with external conditions in explaining subjective well‐being. This study suggests that discrepancy perceptions are only one way people differ in defining reality, and that symbolic interaction theory provides a broader and better framework with which to examine subjective well‐being. Specifically, using the General Social Survey, this study tests whether differing general symbolic definitions have an independent influence on subjective well‐being. Results indicate that general symbolic definitions influence subjective well‐being, and this influence does not depend on their conditioning discrepancy perceptions or demographic life conditions.