MEAD AND THE ART OF TRASH TALKING: I GOT YOUR GESTURE RIGHT HERE

ABSTRACT

Trash talking has rarely been studied within sociology at a time when the behavior itself has been flourishing in amateur and professional sports. George Herbert Mead's ideas on gestures, symbols, and language, in conjunction with the overarching transcendency of the community aid in understanding the development of self and the subsequent behaviors that emanate from and within trash talking in college athletics. Here a Meadian perspective is used to explain the act of trash talking at both macro- and micro-levels. Three areas were identified where Meadian philosophy applies: (1) the game and the role of the generalized other; (2) play and significant communication; and (3) self-development.     

Parental Conflict During Divorce as an Indicator of Adjustment and Future Relationships: A Retrospective Sibling Study

We assessed parental conflict during divorce and divorce stories, quality of relationship among siblings during divorce, and attitudes about romantic relationships later in life. Thirty-two undergraduate female participants (18–23 years old) whose parents divorced during the 7 to 13 year old age range completed the Sibling Relationship Questionnaire and an adapted version of the Adult Divorce and Sibling Relationship Interview. Older sibling participants endorsed higher levels of dominance toward younger siblings, more caretaking behavior, and higher levels of parental conflict than younger siblings. Analyses revealed overt conflict exposure related to less confidence in relationship sustainability as young adults. Content analysis demonstrated relationship formation problems and trust in partners.     

Solidarity and Responsibility,Ontologically (Categorically)

Vygotsky proposed that schools have an essential role to play in the socialization of scientific or academic concepts. The aim of this article is to expand and revise Vygotsky's proposal using Grice's work on the informal logic underlying everyday conversations. We argue that both academic and everyday conversations rely on Grice's Cooperative Principle and his maxims of quantity, quality, relation, and manner. These two types of conversations do differ, however, in terms of the degree and type of accountability to which the participants are subjected. For example, even among familiar interlocutors, mathematics explanations must exhibit informativeness, logical coherence, veridicality, relevance, and clarity. One teacher's requesting and revoicing strategies (types of conversational metamessages) are examined to illustrate the contributions of a Gricean perspective to our understanding of the socialization of the mathematics register.     

Reading Activity,Consciousness, Personality Dialectically: Cultural-Historical Activity Theory and the Centrality of Society

Whereas cultural-historical activity theory has proven to be fruitful, providing a framework to those scholars interested in understanding human knowing and learning from a more holistic perspective, essential aspects of the original theory either have not been taken up or have been transformed in the take up. In part, the problems arise from the difficulties of translating Leont'ev—as the work of Marx on which the theory is built—into English, where several originally distinct pairs of (Russian, German) categories and concepts are conflated into one (English). The purpose of this article is to bring into the foreground some of the fundamental aspects of cultural-historical activity theory that have disappeared during translation and uptake into Anglo-Saxon scholarship.     

Exposure to violent conflict and environmental conservation behaviors in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo

Population and Environment - The vast majority of conflicts in Africa occur in biodiversity hotspots, threatening efforts to conserve protected natural environments and endangered species. This...     

The Influence of ISO 9000 Certification on Process Compliance

This article examines the influence of ISO 9000 certification on plant‐level process compliance, which arguably is its first‐order, targeted performance dimension. The empirical setting is the medical device manufacturing industry. Process compliance is measured through Food and Drug Administration inspections of manufacturing plants. We control for several observable factors that possibly affect process compliance by matching certified plants with non‐certified plants. Using longitudinal data, we find plants that obtained certification in the earlier diffusion period (early‐certified plants) tend to have significantly better process compliance than a matched, non‐certified control group of plants. The compliance difference between early‐certified plants and their matched control group is greater than the compliance difference between late‐certified plants and their matched control group. We also find deterioration in process compliance over time after certification. Because we capture longitudinally the first‐order effects of ISO 9000 on process compliance, this study provides a useful baseline for assessing causality in ISO 9000‐performance linkages. Also, we explain, in part, the inconsistencies observed in related ISO 9000 literature examining the performance effects of certification. Further, this research offers managerial insights on the dynamics of certification and process compliance with time, and highlights the need for continued vigilance post certification.     

Sisterhood and Solidarity? Women's Organizations in the Expanded European Union

European Union (EU) accession has been a highly ambivalent andcontradictory process both for women's mobilization and networking,and the introduction of gender equality policies in the newmember states. While EU membership gave women's NGOs in Centraland Eastern Europe better access to EU institutions and EU funding,it also resulted in a loss of financial support from previousdonors. Some, in general bigger, organizations benefited fromthese changes, whereas smaller groups now struggle. Furthermore,although accession offered women's movements political opportunitiesto put pressure on their governments, the adaptation to EU regulationsis characterized by top-down reforms and the unequal complianceof national governments.     

Mobbing — Herkunft des Begriffs und sein theoretischer Hintergrund

In his palae-anthropological work on the ‘aggressiveness of taking offence’, German medical researcher Rudolf Bilz initially developed the present-day meaning of the term ‘mobbing’. Building on Bilz’s theory, we develop two schemes that allow a differentiated classification of conflicts within and between groups, and corresponding group phenomena including mobbing and bossing. The implications of applying this framework to diagnosis, intervention and prevention of mobbing are discussed. Key issue is the implementation of group norms, which is the essence of the atavistic mobbing mechanism and has to be brought into the open. There is a need for replacement by alternatives such as more intensive group contact, supervision, group leadership, works councils, and mediation.