Persistence of Horned Lizards (Phrynosoma spp.) in urban preserves of Central Arizona

Urbanization is rapidly enveloping isolated remnants of Sonoran Desert habitat in southern Arizona. Understanding the means by which herpetofauna can persist in these habitats in the face of multiple impacts is vital to conservation efforts to retain intact biotic communities, especially those with a high diversity of reptile species. We surveyed ten preserves in the Phoenix Metropolitan region for Desert (Phrynosoma platyrhinos) and Regal (Phrynosoma solare) horned lizards, members of an iconic group of lizards of the Southwest. At least one horned lizard species is found in preserves across the range in size, age and habitat axes we assessed, provided that their primary prey, seed-harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex rugosus) are present. Horned lizards are apparently absent from one large preserve where they were once present, perhaps as a result of a decline in seed-harvester ants, but they may have been absent from other preserves due to the lack of appropriate habitat for their prey rather than due to direct anthropogenic impacts.     

Health Care and Disability NGOs in Croatia: State Relations,Privatization, and Professionalism in an Emerging Field

Although nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in post-socialist countries have been under a microscope since their inception, their relations with the state are only beginning to come into focus and to be the subject of comparative and theoretical assessment. What these relationships mean to different stakeholders, whether they take trajectories similar to those in the West, and how they will be shaped by socialist legacies, are important questions to address before such relations are naturalized as “the way things are.” This paper examines NGO/state relations in the development of health care and disability services in Croatia, a nation newly admitted to membership in the European Union. The paper explores policy and institutional legacies, health care privatization, and relations with health professionals as forces affecting the financing, structure, and experience of relationships between NGOs and the post-socialist state.     

Becoming fascinating

The conservative Christian women's movements which include Fascinating Womanhood, the Total Women, and the Philosophy of Christian Womanhood are described. These three groups share the beliefs that men and women are interestingly different; that women ought to submit themselves to their husbands; and that women must keep themselves attractive and well-groomed in order to maintain their husbands' interest and affection. This article attempts to portray some of the processes through which women become involved in each of these groups. With the assistance of Kanter's model of commitment mechanisms involved in participation in communes, this article analyzes the techniques used by the Fascinating Womanhood movement to gain the commitment of new members. Many aspects of this movement are similar to meaning-seeking movements discussed by Klapp.     

Gambling Harms and Gambling Help-Seeking Amongst Indigenous Australians

This paper aimed to analyze the harms arising from gambling and gambling-related help-seeking behaviour within a large sample of Indigenous Australians. A self-selected sample of 1,259 Indigenous Australian adults completed a gambling survey at three Indigenous sports and cultural events, in several communities and online. Based on responses to the problem gambling severity index (PGSI), the proportions of the sample in the moderate risk and problem gambler groups were higher than those for the population of New South Wales. Many in our sample appeared to face higher risks with their gambling and experience severe gambling harms. From PGSI responses, notable harms include financial difficulties and feelings of guilt and regret about gambling. Further harms, including personal, relationship, family, community, legal and housing impacts, were shown to be significantly higher for problem gamblers than for the other PGSI groups. Most problem gamblers relied on family, extended family and friends for financial help or went without due to gambling losses. Nearly half the sample did not think they had a problem with gambling but the results show that the majority (57.7 %) faced some risk with their gambling. Of those who sought gambling help, family, extended family, friends and respected community members were consulted, demonstrating the reciprocal obligations underpinning traditional Aboriginal culture. The strength of this finding is that these people are potentially the greatest source of gambling help, but need knowledge and resources to provide that help effectively. Local Aboriginal services were preferred as the main sources of professional help for gambling-related problems.     

Polyfidelity

Kerista Village is an equalitarian, nonmonogamous, utopian community in San Francisco whose members claim to have eliminated sexual jealousy. Responses of 15 Keristans to a specially designed “Sexual Jealousy Inventory” were compared to responses given by 87 Americans and 17 Israelis. Results indicate that Keristans indeed report significantly less sexual jealousy than the other two groups. Various interpretations of these results are offered, all within a social psychological perspective.     

The routinization of hybris

This essay explores an aspect of Weber's theory of charisma and its routinization. It argues that charisma can be seen as a form of a more general phenomenon calledhybris. Classics scholars use the term hybris to denote a tragic hero's defiance of the order laid down by the gods. Hybris is identified here as any idiosyncratic challenge to a larger social order. Examples treated in this article are love, failure, brillance, and charisma. Included among society's responses to hybris are outright suppression, routinization, toleration, accommodation and cooptation. Society can conceive of no more powerful menace to its culture than would arise from the liberation of the sexual impulses. - Sigmund Freud.A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. With it they will be chaotic and refresh their lives outside the law. - Richard Hornsey.Lunch Hour.     

Older People's “Voices”—On Paper: Obstacles to Influence in Welfare States—A Case Study of Sweden

The official rhetoric of welfare states unconditionally pays tribute to older people's right to express dissatisfaction. In practice, users of older services in welfare states may be deprived of their “exit” options and face considerable constraints when it comes to raising their “voices.” For example, when older people in nursing homes would like to lodge a complaint, they may well be referred to the very staff members they depend on in their everyday lives. This article analyzes a national case study in which these contradictory tendencies are especially explicit: formal influence channels for older people in Sweden. Using data from structured interviews with 100 representatives of Swedish municipalities and drawing on Hirschman's (1970) Hirschman, A. 1970. Exit, voice, and loyalty: Responses to decline in firms, organisations, and states, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.  [Google Scholar] theory on exit and voice, the article analyzes obstacles to older service users' influence in Sweden and develops explanations for these obstacles in terms of social contexts.     

Reflections on My PSA Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Experiences

This essay reflects upon the author’s Pacific Sociological Association (PSA)-related experiences with regards to the scholarship of teaching and learning over the past 28 years. Labeling this time period the “Golden Age of Scholarship on Teaching and learning,” the author proposes that the PSA has promoted and encouraged scholarship in this area in three ways: 1) by providing access to best practices, 2) by facilitating members networking with scholars who share similar interests, and 3) by exposing graduate students to best practices of teaching and learning. The author then supports this contention with examples of the increase in the number of sessions at the annual PSA meetings on both Service-Learning and On-Line Teaching during this time period. The author concludes this essay by noting how his research on supporting first-generation college students greatly benefited from PSA-facilitated networking with other scholars working in this area.     

The Influence of Parental Financial Socialization on Youth’s Financial Behavior: Evidence from Ghana

How youth manage their money may influence their transitions to adulthood. This may be particularly true for youth in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where many youth and young adults lack access to economic opportunities. Parental financial socialization is associated with youth financial knowledge, attitudes, and behavior in research studies conducted mostly in the US, yet little is known about the financial lives of youth living in SSA. Propensity score analysis and robust standard errors with multiple regression were used to examine the relationship between parental financial socialization and youth financial behaviors among a sample of 3,623 youth ages 12–19 and a parent or other adult guardian living in eight out of 10 regions of Ghana. Findings indicated that both parent- and youth-perceived parental financial socialization was a strong and consistent predictor of youth financial behaviors, as was receipt of earned income. Practitioners interested in empowering youth through financial education and inclusion programs might consider how to involve parents and other family members in programs and capitalize on opportunities for youth to have some earned income while they learn how to manage money.     

Hidden Eating Disorders: Attachment and Affect Regulation in the Therapeutic Relationship

From the time I began working at a clinic that specialized in therapy with individuals with eating disorders, I have repeatedly encountered cases of clients hiding these symptoms from their therapists. When they finally do reveal the disorder, their therapists often worry that their clients are more disturbed than they thought and that, they, the therapists, did something wrong in the therapy. Although some therapeutic rupture can be part of the picture, I have found that these disclosures often reflect a client’s growing trust in the therapist’s presence and ability to help with feelings that have been, until now, dealt with through the eating behaviors themselves. In my attempts to understand what happens before and after an individual shares a hidden eating disorder with a therapist, I have found ideas from attachment theory, in particular those that explore links between attachment, affect regulation, and self-reflection, to be very helpful. Many authors have noted that eating disorders are related to problems with attachment, loss and separation, and affect regulation. Difficulties in these areas make it hard for clients to be self-reflective or use insight productively. In this article, I discuss my experience with the integration of these dynamics, which I have found to be key to successful psychotherapy with clients who hide their eating disorders.

Urban biodiversity hotspots are not related to the structure of green spaces: a case study of tenebrionid beetles from Rome,Italy

At global and regional scales, area prioritisation is frequently done by the identification of hotspots based on species extinction risk. The logic of the hotspot identification has never been used in urban contexts. In this paper, the tenebrionid beetles (Coleoptera Tenebrionidae) of urban Rome were studied as an exercise to show how the hotspot approach can be profitably used in an urban area to identify priority areas for biodiversity conservation. For this, tenebrionid species from 16 green spaces were scored according to their vulnerability on the basis of their geographical distribution, habitat specificity and abundance. Species vulnerability scores were then used to calculate two indices of area prioritisation (the Biodiversity Conservation Concern and the Biodiversity Conservation Weight) for each green space. Values of these indices were correlated with site characteristics and compared with those obtained from other, more natural contexts. Except for distance to other sites, no significant correlation was found between conservation values and site characteristics, which indicates that the conservation importance of green spaces cannot be predicted on the basis of their geographical characteristics, but must be established on the basis of the species that they actually host. The importance of urban green spaces for biodiversity conservation may be questioned because of the large presence of ubiquitous and alien species in urban areas. Conservation values obtained for tenebrionids of green spaces in Rome are similar to those of various animal groups in more natural contexts and hence highlight the actual importance of green areas for insect biodiversity conservation.     

The transition to marriage

Cohabitation has often been viewed as easing the transition to marriage. The question is therefore asked, what characterizes relationships in which couples live together for an extended period of time prior to marriage, then decide to marry, and within two to three years are divorced? Four groups were interviewed (cohabitated/married; cohabitated/married/divorced; dated/married; dated/married/divorced) with the hope of analyzing the differences or similarities in the marital transitions made by individuals within these groups. The total sample consisted of 40 respondents who were given an in-depth, face-to-face interview. It was found that the degree of congruence between dyad members regarding perceptions and expectations surrounding marriage and marital life was an important factor in the success with which couples were able to make the marital transition.     

From Health Crisis to Rights Advocacy? HIV/AIDS and Gay Activism in China and Singapore

The relationship between HIV/AIDS and gay activism has been primarily informed by the American experience and understudied in nondemocratic contexts. Drawing upon qualitative research on China and Singapore, we refine understanding of HIV/AIDS’ influence on the development of gay activism under authoritarian conditions, by examining the processes through which activist organizations interact with laws and regulations, political norms, HIV/AIDS funding, and government responses to both HIV/AIDS and collective organizing. We show how HIV/AIDS’ influence plays out in multiple patterns, depending on the strategic responses that gay activists select from a constrained range of options to shape their organizations’ destinies. Therefore, we provide insights for development agencies and international donors into whether and how international assistance intended to encourage activism and wider social change are mediated by political and legal controls on local activism.     

The Shi'i ulama and the state in Iran

Conclusion In this article I attempted to explain the politics of the ulama in terms of class struggle. I indicated that ulama political orientations, and the emergence of politically divergent factions in their midst, were historically correlated with the interests of the traditional petty bourgeoisie, the merchants, and the landlords. In other words, from the political class struggle viewpoint, diverse factions among the ulama tended to represent these diverse social classes. The ulama, it is true, defended their divergent political positions through their interpretations of the Islamic laws. Therefore, the assertion that a particular group of the ulama were political representatives of a particular class, say, the petty bourgeoisie, is not to suggest that they consciously interpreted their religious texts so as to justify the petty bourgeoisie interests, or that they were the enthusiastic champions of the petty bourgeoisie. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie, says Marx, is the fact that in their mind they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically. This is, in general, the relationship between the political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent. I should stress that the relationship between class representatives and the class they represent is not unproblematic. Whenever the ulama have defended a particular issue, they have done so according to their own ideological mode of discourse. In their interpretations of the teachings of Shi'ism they all must follow, and submit to, the internal logic of the ideology of Shi'ism and its specific modes of discourse, which are considered proper and acceptable by all the ulama. In other words, all the ulama, conservative or radical, must base their argument on the same set of ideological premises. Thus the content of the (Usuli) teachings of Shi'ism, as well as its specific modes of discourse put limits on the range of ideologically defensible political actions. (Such limits might explain why the ulama never attempted to defend the interests of workers and peasants.) This factor combined with the ulama's conscious efforts to maintain an ideological uniformity and organizational unity may provide them with a certain degree of relative autonomy in the field of class struggle. How these factors affect the course and direction of class struggle is another aspect of ulama politics that needs an in-depth investigation.

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The White Management of ‘Volunteering’: Ethnographic Evidence from an Israeli NGO

The article examines the recent emergence of ‘volunteering’ as a publicly significant notion and practice. Based on an extensive fieldwork in a prominent intermediary NGO in Israel, the article follows the efforts to promote and expand ‘volunteering’ pursued by the organization’s board and staff members. Affiliated with the privileged social strata of Ashkenazi (European) Jews, whose hegemonic position has been eroded during the neoliberal transformations in Israel, the NGO staff seek to retain their privileged status through a managerial activity in the field of ‘volunteering’. They promote a particular, liberally inspired construction of ‘volunteering’, while universalizing it as a professional, a-political and consensual realm. Inspired by critical studies of ‘whiteness’, the article describes how the privileged character of this managerial activity is being successfully obscured through the representation of ‘volunteering’ as an all-inclusive aspiration.     

Level of physical activity and anthropometric characteristics in old age—results from a national health survey

Advanced age is associated with degenerative changes in body composition. There is evidence suggesting that changes may vary upon differences in lifestyle, environment, or gender. Physical activity engagement is considered an important component of lifestyle definition. There are suggestions that engaging in physical activity might alleviate degenerative body compositional changes. The objective is to assess the relationship between adherence to recommended guidelines of physical activity and anthropometric parameters in Israeli older adults. Anthropometric measures, including height, weight, and waist circumference, were taken, and BMI was calculated, from a random sample of 1,663 elderly adults (799 men and 864 women), aged 74.31 (±6.05) years old. Participants reported their physical activity habits and, based on official guidelines recommendations, they were divided into sufficiently active, insufficiently active, and inactive groups. One-way ANOVA (level of physical activity) for both genders was conducted for each anthropometric variable. In both genders, an association between level of physical activity and weight, waist circumference, and BMI was found, with lower values among the sufficiently active. In addition, a relationship between level of physical activity and height was indicated among women, implying that the more active women were taller than the less active. In addition to the already known health benefits of physical activity in old age, it is possible that adherence to recommended guidelines of physical activity is associated with favorable anthropometric characteristics.     

Understanding Parental Grief as a Response to Mental Illness: Implications for Practice

ABSTRACT

Parents who are raising children with mental illness struggle with feelings of grief and loss. Kubler-Ross' (1969 Kubler-Ross , E. ( 1969 ). On death and dying . New York : Scribner . [Google Scholar]) stages of grieving (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) are examined as experienced by parents raising children with chronic mental illness. Practice implications for social workers who are working with children and their parents are discussed. Acknowledging and understanding parental grief, while providing emotional support, leads to a more effective working partnership. This collaboration of parents and social worker can result in more effective treatment for the child with mental illness. Examples from one of the co-author's personal experiences are included.     

Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking: Assessing and Reducing Risk

This exploratory study represents one of the preliminary phases in a larger study conducted in efforts to develop the Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking (DMST) Risk and Resiliency Assessment. The purpose of this study was to examine the factors that may put youth at risk for DMST. Because of Social Works ethical responsibility to marginalized populations, the promotion of protective factors through a 10-session group intervention to counteract against such risks was also explored. Thus, over a three-month period, 10 psychoeducational group interventions were facilitated with 23 runaway, homeless, and street youth (RHSY) at an urban drop-in center with the primary goals of: (a) increasing awareness of healthy versus unhealthy relationship patterns, (b) increasing knowledge on how to set healthy relationship boundaries, (c) increasing the desire and expectation of mental, physical, and sexual respect, and (d) assisting in safe exits from abusive and/or exploitive relationships. Results of the pre-test post-test design indicate a myriad of risk factors for DMST. Findings also support that when provided a psychoeducational intervention within a safe, encouraging, and youth friendly environment, RHSY are able to define and develop protective factors against sex trafficking. Implications are relevant to practitioners and researchers in the field.