Comfort with discussions about death,religiosity, and attitudes about end‐of‐life care

In end‐of‐life (EOL) care research, death anxiety and religiosity are often overlooked. Terror management theory (TMT) may provide a useful conceptual model with which to examine how comfort discussing death and religiosity influence attitudes related to EOL care. A telephone‐based survey was conducted among community‐dwelling adults in the Unites States. Via random sampling, with over‐sampling of Hispanics/African Americans, 123 completed survey interviews (response rate = 46%) were analyzed. Respondents were more likely to have better attitudes toward EOL care if they were older or white, religiously active, and comfortable with the subject of death. Religiosity and comfort discussing death were correlated with each other and remained significant predictors of attitudes about EOL care even without demographic covariates. Findings suggest that promoting an open dialogue about mortality may improve attitudes about EOL care and utilization of palliative care services. The study also provides evidence about the utility and applicability of TMT for EOL care.     

Participatory shaping of community futures in e‐waste processing hubs: Complexity,conflict and stewarded convergence in a Palestinian context

This article describes an unconventional participatory development approach carried out in an informal e‐waste hub in South‐West Hebron, an area that has collected and processed the bulk of Israeli e‐waste for over a decade. Our approach contributes to the critique and recovery of community representation in participatory development and the search for ways to facilitate representative community engagement. Specifically, we describe our use of a novel Delphi‐like method that allowed us to facilitate a broadly endorsed development trajectory within a heterogeneous and conflicted community. We show how the results yielded by this approach diverged from those that were likely to emerge from more facile forms of participation in ways that are important for other similar e‐waste hubs internationally, which face a destructive status quo on the one hand, or the economically ruinous international policies that ban e‐waste trade from “developed” to “developing” countries on the other. Despite real tensions and cleavages within the affected communities, the process described facilitated a shift from deadlocked environmental versus livelihood positions towards building capacity and regulating existing informal e‐waste trades to preserve livelihoods dependent on these.     

Social cognition,social neuroscience,and evolutionary social psychology: What's missing?

In this paper I argue that something important, and something social, is missing from contemporary accounts of social cognition, social neuroscience and evolutionary social psychology. Contemporary accounts of social cognition focus on cognition directed towards social objects, that is, towards persons and social groups. In contrast, early twentieth century accounts of socially engaged cognition focused upon beliefs and attitudes oriented to the represented beliefs and attitudes of members of social ‘reference groups’ and directed towards both social and non‐social objects. I argue that this earlier conception of socially engaged cognition should be integrated with contemporary research on social cognition, social neuroscience and evolutionary social psychology, since it poses a challenge but also an opportunity for these disciplines.     

‘Surrounded with so much uncertainty’: asylum seekers and manufactured precarity in Australia

In Australia, nearly 30,000 asylum seekers have the legal right to work, but their temporary and conditional migration status exposes them to work-related precarity. This article draws on a small qualitative study that examined asylum seekers’ experiences of seeking work and achieving economic security. Over an 18-month period, 29 semi-structured interviews with asylum seekers who had work rights in Australia were conducted. It provides insights into how restrictive immigration policies manufacture precarity through short-term, conditional visas, resulting in employer risk aversion, segmentation into insecure work, and in-work instability and mistreatment. Asylum seekers manage their experiences and feelings of pervasive insecurity through individual coping and survival strategies.     

A ONE-PERIOD STOCHASTIC INVENTORY PROBLEM WITH A LUMP-SUM PENALTY COST

This paper presents an inventory problem related to the one-period stochastic inventory (or “newsboy”) problem. In this problem, the firm has to decide how much product to order to meet a random one-period demand. The version of the problem presented is novel in two respects. First, demand is explicitly permitted to be negative, and second, the penalty (or shortage) cost is assumed to be independent of the magnitude of the shortage. This situation is shown to change the form of the cost function and to complicate the determination of optimal policies. The form of the optimal policy is developed, and two example problems are presented in some detail.     

ON THE SOLUTION OF SPATIAL EQUILIBRIUM MODELS*

Recent advances in mathematical programming methods and computing technology have the potential for overcoming the many formidable barriers to the widespread solution of nonlinear spatial models. In particular, the recent public availability of the software package MINOS/AUGMENTED has major implications for both policy and theoretical research involving spatial models. In this paper, mathematical programming formulations of two highly nonlinear spatial models are provided, model solutions presented, and associated computational experience discussed. In addition, related work is discussed briefly and suggestions are advanced concerning the potential role of the package in furthering the objectives of this related work. Subject Areas: Mathematical Programming, Transportation, and Urban and Regional Planning.     

Power play: the use of space to control and signify power in the workplace

ABSTRACT

The findings of this article emerge from an eight-month study examining career identity practices amongst a select group of fitness professionals in the U.K. We examine how the inter-relationship between physical and social space can denote how power is acquired, displayed, and used by individuals interacting in a shared space. The findings show that power is signified through spatial practices as individuals negotiate through triadic space, creating an identity of space and place for both trainer and client that identifies power, and signifies who has power. Fitness professionals with high levels of symbolic power are able to subvert organizational spatial norms to better serve themselves and their clients, while those with lower levels of symbolic power are forced to, or choose to, negotiate or abdicate space to others. These findings are relevant to a wide range of occupations where self-employment and contract workers interact in shared space.