Conflict management in the modern world-system

What is the relationship between the status of nation-states in the modern world-system and their strategies for conflict management? Using Wallerstein's world-systems theory, Kick's empirical specifications of core, semiperiphery, and periphery, and Black's theory of conflict management, I examine the use of self-help, avoidance, negotiation, and third-party settlement by nation-states. These possible tactics are variously used as forms of social control from below, social control from above, and social control between equals. I argue that the status of nations within the world-system is correlated with the primary mode of conflict management they use at a given time. I speculate that the use of a particular strategy may also subsequently contribute to changes in nations' status.     

Mother–child and teacher–child relationships and their influences on Chinese only and non-only children's early social behaviors: The moderator role of urban–rural status

Investigations regarding the differences between Chinese only and non-only children primarily examine children's social behaviors, which are closely related to their early relationships with mothers and teachers. In recent years, the number of non-only children born in urban areas has increased because of the softening of the One-Child Policy, which leads to the distribution of non-only children shifting from being primarily in rural areas to being in both urban and rural areas. The present study investigates the current characteristics and influences of mother–child and teacher–child relationships on Chinese only and non-only children's early social behaviors from the perspective of urban and rural differences. Data were obtained from 126 rural only children, 94 rural non-only children, 168 urban only children and 155 urban non-only children from 38 semi-urban kindergartens in Beijing, China. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses found that mother–child closeness positively predicted children's social skills particularly in non-only children, whereas mother–child conflict positively predicted internalizing behavior problems in all four groups. Teacher–child conflict negatively predicted children's social skills most strongly in urban only children. Teacher–child conflict aggravated rural only children's, urban only children's and non-only children's internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, but mother–child closeness buffered rural only children's externalizing behavior problems. Findings underscore the importance for mothers to improve closeness, especially with rural only children, and for teachers to avoid conflict with both urban only and non-only children, as well as with rural only children.     

The Spiritual Reality: A Christian World View

SUMMARY

Every human being must answer the question, does God exist? If the answer is no, God does not exist, the follow-up question is, where or how will I anchor myself in life? If the answer is yes God exists, the follow-up question must be, what is God's nature? To acknowledge that God exists and not seek God's nature is to ignore that which we ourselves believe created and rules the universe. The Christian World View addresses the nature of God from a very specific perspective. It is a perspective that organizes the lives of many of our clients. In this article the author presents a non-theological summary of the Christian spiritual perspective and relates some of the main Christian beliefs to family systems thinking as well as to implications for practice.     

Assessing God Locus of Control as a Factor in College Students’ Alcohol Use and Sexual Behavior

Abstract. Objectives: This study explored God locus of control beliefs (ie, God's control over behavior) regarding their influence on alcohol use and sexual behavior as an alternative religiosity measure to religious behaviors, which does not capture perceived influence of religiosity. Additionally, demographic differences in religious beliefs were explored. Methods: College students aged 18–24 (N = 324) completed a survey between April 2012 and March 2013. Principal components and multivariate analyses were conducted. Results: Findings suggest that measures provide reliable, valid data from college students. God locus of control is linked to not consuming alcohol or engaging in sex. There were differences regarding relationship status and religious denomination. Conclusions: God locus of control beliefs are an appropriate construct for collecting data about college students’ religiosity. Furthermore, health educators at faith-based institutions could incorporate this construct into their programming, encouraging abstinence but also behaving responsibly for those who do drink and are sexually experienced.     

‘Thank you Israel,for supporting America’: the transnational flow of Christian Zionist resources

This article seeks to understand what it means when, in 2006, a noted British pastor and Bible teacher stood up in front of 8000 evangelical Zionists from all over the world at the convention centre in Jerusalem and addressed the audience with the following counter-intuitive words: ‘Thank you Israel, for supporting America!’ Evangelical Christianity has complex relations and ambivalent relations to the nation state and globalisation. Supernaturally speaking, Israel is the only nation state in the world that matters. Contemporary Israel becomes a kind of litmus test, both for manifesting the truth of the word of God and for manifesting the individual's or the nation's commitment to realising God's will in this world. For Christian Zionism, this transnational flow of resources into and out of Israel ultimately redeem locality, offering ‘the nations’ a place in the story, and the opportunity to serve as vehicles for God's will.     

Pulling ads,making apologies: Lowe's use of Facebook to communicate with stakeholders

This study examines the use of Facebook by Lowe's to reach its stakeholders after the controversial decision to pull its advertising from TLC's All-American Muslim. Through an online survey, the study gauges people's thoughts about the use of Facebook to apologize. Results showed significant differences based on age, race/ethnicity, and political affiliation regarding the use of Facebook and significant differences based on education, time spent on Facebook, political affiliation and race/ethnicity regarding the wording of Lowe's apology.     

UNRAVELING RELIGIOUS WORLDVIEWS: The Relationship between Images of God and Political Ideology in a Cross‐Cultural Analysis

Not only do few studies address the issue of how religious belief relates to political ideology, but little attempt has also been made to analyze this relationship from a comparative perspective. Using data from the International Social Survey Program, we examine how images of God, as measured by God's perceived level of engagement and authority, relate to political ideology in seven Western industrial and postindustrial societies. We find that variation in images of God has no effect on whether individuals are politically liberal or conservative in five of seven countries. Nonetheless, beliefs about God are strongly related to abortion and sexual morality attitudes in every country, but only sporadically related to ideas about social and economic justice. In the end, we argue that theological beliefs tend to be unrelated to a general measure of political ideology, not because religious beliefs are politically unimportant in these societies, but rather because religious perspectives are rarely fully liberal or conservative in their political orientation. In addition, we find that Americans hold unique views of God in comparison to other countries in our sample and that the American tendency to view God as more active and authoritative affects policy attitudes in ways contrary to the effects of church attendance.     

Jacques Ellul's Conversions and Protestant Theology

Jacques Ellul was converted to Marx and then to Christianity 4 years later. He lived with this contradiction until his death in 1994. Marx and the Bible were dialectical in his mind, with his sociological pole rooted in Marx and his religious commitments in Karl Barth. God's otherness and His freedom in Barth are the central components of Ellul's theology and theological method. Thus, he was not a pessimist but dialectically saw God's perfect freedom as the source of human freedom over against technological necessity. For life to be meaningful in high-tech societies, a total personal transformation is necessary. Ellul challenged Christians to prophetic witness—not as fatalists but to confront la technique without compromise.     

Micropolitics of race and ethnicity in women's prisons in two political contexts

Research over the past two decades has focused on the topic of race as important for understanding order and compliance in men's prisons. However, relatively little research considers how subjective understandings of imprisonment are influenced by race, particularly in the case of women prisoners. The current study analyses 139 interviews conducted with women prisoners in California and England in order to determine how race and ethnicity shape prisoners' experiences and abilities to cope with institutional confinement. Findings suggest that women's understandings of their racial identities differ substantially in these two contexts. In California, where the conditions of confinement are more extreme and white women assume a minority status, racial identity emerges as a salient factor in coping with the adversities of prison life. By contrast, in England, it is the women of colour, and particularly foreign nationals, who have a greater appreciation of the role of race and ethnicity in their daily lives. These findings have implications for our understanding of how prisoners draw on their lived experiences to make sense of their carceral worlds.     

My Pride and Joy? Predicting Favoritism and Disfavoritism in Mother–Adult Child Relations

In this article, we compare predictors of mothers' differentiation among their adult children regarding emotional closeness, pride, conflict, and disappointment. We distinguish between predictors of relational (closeness, conflict) and evaluative (pride, disappointment) dimensions of favoritism and disfavoritism. Multilevel modeling using data collected from 381 older mothers regarding their relationships with 1,421 adult children indicated that adult children's similarity of values played the most prominent role in predicting mothers' favoritism and disfavoritism, followed by children's gender. Children's deviant behaviors in adulthood predicted both pride and disappointment but neither relational dimension. Contrary to expectations, the quantitative analysis indicated that children's normative adult achievements were poor predictors of both relational and evaluative dimensions of mothers' differentiation. Qualitative data shed additional light on mothers' evaluations by revealing that disappointment was shaped by children's achievements relative to their mothers' values and expectations, rather than by the achievement of specific societal, educational, career, and marital milestones.     

Does gender matter? Policies,norms and the gender gap in work-to-home and home-to-work conflict across Europe

This article examines gender differences in work-to-home conflict (WHC) and home-to-work conflict (HWC) in 10 European countries and considers to what extent such differences can be linked to the institutional/societal context. This study combines the conventional demand-resource approach and an institutional framework on work–family reconciliation policies and gender norms by using data from the European Social Survey. The analyses reveal that work and home demands affect men's and women's perceived conflict somewhat differently, and that the two conflict dimensions are gender asymmetrical and linked to patterns that result from men's and women's traditional home and work spheres. This cross-country comparative analysis shows greater gender gap in perceived conflict in countries with weaker policy support for work–family reconciliation and more traditional gender norms suggesting that individuals' perceptions of WHC and HWC are institutionally embedded.     

Why the paradigm of work–family conflict is no longer sustainable: Towards more empowering social imaginaries to understand women's identities

The paradigm of work–family conflict is challenged by the fluid realities of the actual world. Through an innovative phenomenographic study of women's understanding of their lives, we show that the social imaginary of work–family conflict assumes that vulnerability is a constitutive reality for women. Consequently, with respect to the perspectives through which women are invited to make sense of their lives, the metaphor of conflict enforces a worldview based on traditional gender roles. Organizational policies that rely heavily on a social imaginary of work–family conflict may prove ineffective. On the one hand, they ignore the diversity of morphologies and vocabularies used by women today to understand themselves in relation to their family and workplace. On the other, work–family conflict arises as a product of policy measures and bureaucratic practices rather than as an experiential reality. Policy statements on work–family conflict have a performative character: they communicate a message about women's social status and identity. Therefore, effective organizational policies should integrate vocabularies and assumptions that make women aware of themselves in a confident manner by relying on social imaginaries that encourage agency and empowered participation in the world.     

Continuity and Change in Grandchildren's Closeness to Grandparents: Consequences of Changing Intergenerational Ties

Drawing on data from Waves 2 and 3 of the National Survey of Families and Households, this study examines whether grandchildren's (N = 496) previous patterns of closeness to grandparents are associated with their current closeness to grandparents and whether changes in parents’ intergenerational ties make a difference in the development of grandchildren's closeness to grandparents when grandchildren experience young adulthood. The findings suggest that there is a possibility for both continuity and change in grandchildren's bonds to grandparents. Grandchildren's closeness to grandparents was associated not only with their earlier patterns of closeness to grandparents and with parents’ concurrent relations with the grandchild and grandparent generations but also with changes in parents’ intergenerational ties over time. Also, the grandchild's gender moderated linkages between certain intergenerational ties in the family.     

La calidad de vida. Juicios de satisfacción y felicidad como indicadores actitudinales de bienestar

Abstract

This article argues that institutional apologies are rituals that can be conceived from a neo-Durkheimian viewpoint as external social tools of collective emotion, which allow people to assume collective guilt and shame, increase agreement with reparatory behaviors, and reinforce social cohesion. The review of studies presented in this monograph shows that an apology reactivates and intensifies collective emotions, mainly of shame and guilt, above and beyond merely reminding people of past misdeeds, and increases support for reparation. Shame and sorrow fuel and support reparative tendencies. Finally, salience of past collective violence together with an apology improves social climate to some extent, enhances intergroup reconciliation by decreasing prejudice and improving intergroup contact, and helps to reconstruct in-group collective memory in a more critical way. Changes in collective emotions and representations of the past mediate the positive effects of apologies on reparation and social cohesion.     

Loyalty Conflicts and Family Relationships in Latency Age Boys

Forty boys aged 6-11, 20 living in maternal and 20 in joint physical custody, were administered tests assessing specific aspects of divorce-related emotional adjustment. An original child-administered loyalty conflict measure found no custody group difference despite the fact that joint custody parents perceived significantly higher levels of loyalty conflict in their sons than did maternal custody parents. Tests assessing children's feelings toward their parents (Family Relations Test) and children's perception of the post-divorce family structure (Kinetic Family Drawing Test) indicated that boys in joint custody were comfortable in expressing negative as well as positive feelings toward both parents and were not preoccupied with fantasies of parental reconciliation.     

Monotheistic Theodicy as Imaginary Face‐Work

In this article, I outline the cognitive process involved in accomplishing monotheistic theodicy, or the act of reconciling the belief in an omnipotent and morally perfect God with personal experiences of suffering. Based on in‐depth interviews with intimate partner violence victims, I argue that believers accomplish monotheistic theodicy by performing imaginary face‐work—or protective face‐work on the behalf of significant imagined others—that saves God's face as a morally perfect being. Believers perform this imaginary face‐work by constructing accounts that portray God as morally innocent of their suffering. These accounts fall into three main types: (1) fidelity to a higher principle, (2) ultimate benefit, and (3) shifting blame. These accounts serve as new cognitions that resolve the cognitive dissonance and concomitant negative emotions believers experience because of their suffering. Overall, the findings and analysis contribute to sociological theory by further extending the concepts of face and face‐work to imagined others.     

Re‐framing the Analysis: A 3‐dimensional Perspective of Prisoners’ Children's Well‐being

This article highlights three dimensions to understanding children's well‐being during and after parental imprisonment which have not been fully explored in current research. A consideration of ‘time’ reveals the importance of children's past experiences and their anticipated futures. A focus on ‘space’ highlights the impact of new or altered environmental dynamics. A study of ‘agency’ illuminates how children cope within structural, material and social confines which intensify vulnerability and dependency. This integrated perspective reveals important differences in individual children's experiences and commonalities in broader systemic and social constraints on prisoners’ children. The paper analyses data from a prospective longitudinal study of 35 prisoners’ children during and after their (step) father's imprisonment to illustrate the arguments.     

The political mobilization of corporate directors: socio‐economic correlates of affiliation to European pressure groups

Business has played a central role in the debate over Britain's place in the European Union. This paper examines the socio‐economic characteristics of directors of Britain's largest corporations who affiliated either to Business for Sterling or Britain in Europe. It reports associations between directors' social backgrounds and their probabilities of affiliation. Elite university education, club membership, wealth and multiple directorships were all associated with higher propensities to affiliate. The associations are consistent with the idea that directors' social resources allow them to overcome collective action problems as well as supplying them with the motivations to affiliate. They also indicated that directors form a privileged group in that they have a number of very powerful actors who can take unilateral political actions.     

The Making of Childhood Mortality in Modern South Africa

This article examines the ways in which childhood mortality as an ideological tool is constituted as a shared moral order in modern society. The examination of record‐keeping as an ideological practice that produces a governable and self‐regulating population allows us to identify how and where it is incorporated into social life as an everyday morality. Under this moral order, death must be constituted as a medical necessity, rendering it culturally relevant, in order for social life to continue to be considered a meaningful and purposeful endeavour. The child's status in society as a sacred citizen ensures that children's deaths are constituted in even more particular ways, so that the possibility of medically ‘unnecessary’ child death remains morally unthinkable and thus does not expose the ideological underpinnings that continue to produce social life as a moral and thus meaningful affair.     

Religious Belief Transformation: A Study of This Worldly Religion*

The controversy over contemporary this worldly religious beliefs’social effects is reviewed. Critics of cultic religious degenerations and eroding moral consensus disagree with cultural relativists on the central themes of today's this worldly religions, their relation to more classical other worldly religious themes, and the appropriate group for evaluating this worldly religions’effects. These general issues are addressed through a content analytic study of the Transcendental Meditation Movement's belief system. Over a twenty-year span, other worldly Hindu themes were displaced by familiar this worldly religious themes, including this worldly benefits, practical utilitarianism, instrumentalized techniques, scientific authority, and God's accessibility for humanity's purposes. Religious belief transformation advanced as an integrated process interacting with movement organizational developments. Still, it is argued that criticisms of contemporary this worldly religions as causes of classical other worldly religious decline are spurious and obscure the integrative potential of minority religious beliefs.