Rebuilding Communities After Natural Disasters: The 2009 Bushfires in Southeastern Australia

ABSTRACT

Through nonrandom purposive sampling, this article examines the ways three Catholic agencies offered bushfire recovery assistance after the 2009 bushfires in the Australian state of Victoria. Participants from Catholic welfare agencies (29), local and state government (8), international recovery agencies (2), and others such as clergy, church, and medical (6) were selected, and senior managers, middle managers, and workers on the ground were interviewed up to 3 times during a 3-year period. The forty-five people were interviewed a total of 74 times. Study results illustrate the importance of adaptability, flexibility, and preplanning as the core of recovery assistance. Linking with local and state government disaster management plans and developing mechanisms to inform other groups as to the services that new agencies could provide were essential for filling gaps in services and establishing cooperative ventures. Recommendations are provided but more research is needed on how other agencies can benefit from the knowledge gained in this study.     

Creating SPOTs for Successful Aging: Strengthening the Case for Developing University-Based Retirement Communities Using Social-Physical Place Over Time Theory

Five elements are cited as being critical for a university-based retirement communities’ (UBRCs’) success: proximity to the university, two-directional programming, continuing care, a financial link to the university, and a minimum 10% resident connection to the university. We illustrate these criteria using examples from existing UBRCs. The comparisons are then contextualized in the broader framework of Social-Physical Place Over Time (SPOT) theory. SPOT theory focuses on the interactions between social and physical places among older adults. By analyzing the intersections between SPOT theory and UBRC criteria, we identify additional criteria to improve the definition of a UBRC: transportation support and facilitating activity. UBRCs offer value because they provide the social and physical place where older adults can live when they retire, thereby improving changes in individual agency and belongingness needs, which are key tenets of SPOT theory. The integration of the UBRC criteria and the SPOT theory framework builds on this relatively new meta-theory in environmental gerontology. SPOT theory effectively highlights how UBRCs benefit older adults and the community; UBRCs provide significant benefits not only to older adult residents, but also to the university communities that house them.     

Book Review

This article is concerned with current understandings of the relevance of urban community studies within sociology. It starts by revisiting some of the major critiques made of community studies in the 1960s and 1970s, and briefly reviews whether network analysis, and in particular a focus on ‘personal communities’, provided a satisfactory alternative approach. The main part of the article argues that despite the criticisms there have been there is still much to be gained from a focus on people's attachments to locality, including the networks to which they are linked. Taking processes of globalization and migration as its major themes, the article explores how research has demonstrated the continuing relevance of ‘locality’ and ‘community’ for understanding the ways that contemporary social and economic transformations shape people's experiences. As well as considering different aspects of social exclusion, the article reviews how recent studies have explored the increasingly complex interplay of locality and identity.     

“You're not getting married for the moon and the stars”: The uncertainties of older British widowers about the idea of new romantic relationships

Older widowers are more likely to remarry than older widowed women. However, relatively little is known about the attitudes of older widowers to new romantic relationships and remarriage or repartnering. In this study of 60 widowers, more than half spontaneously discussed their attitudes toward, and experiences of, these relationships. However, none of the widowers had remarried and of those who described themselves as repartnered only one was cohabiting. We examine these data in the light of Lopata's concept of ‘husband sanctification’ (1981). We identify four themes. First, some widowers do sanctify their late wives. Second, we argue that wife sanctification contributes to widowers' uncertainties about repartnering. Third, when widowers make decisions to repartner, wife sanctification does not appear to make an important contribution. Finally, there is evidence to suggest that wife sanctification influences how men refer to their new women friends. Thus, we conclude by arguing that wife sanctification influences widowers' decisions surrounding remarriage/repartnering.     

Exploring Differences in Family Involvement and Depressive Symptoms across Latino Adolescent Groups

This study investigated the association between family involvement and depressive symptoms among a sample of 187 Dominican, Mexican, and Central American adolescents from the Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation Study. The study used the transactional stress model as its theoretical foundation. Findings from a multiple regression model suggest that low levels of family involvement were significantly related to higher levels of depressive symptoms for Dominican youths but not for Mexican or Central American youths. Latina adolescents were significantly more likely to have higher rates of depressive symptoms than their male counterparts. Research and practice implications are discussed.     

Public Perceptions of Florida Red Tide Risks

This research integrates theoretical frameworks of risk perception, social amplification of risk, and the role of place-specific contexts in order to explore the various perceptions surrounding Florida red tides. Florida red tides are naturally occurring events that are increasing in frequency, duration, and severity. This has implications for public health, the local economy, and ecosystem health. While many of the negative impacts of Florida red tides are not easily controlled, some of the secondary impacts may be mitigated through individuals' responses. However, public perception and consequent reactions to Florida red tides have not been investigated. This research uses questionnaire surveys, and semi-structured interviews, to explore the various perceptions of the risk surrounding red tides. Surveys and interviews were conducted along two Florida west coast beaches. The results indicate that the underlying foundations of the social amplification of the risk framework are applicable to understanding how individuals form perceptions of risk relative to red tide events. There are key differences between the spatial locations of individuals and corresponding perceptions, indicating that place-specific contexts are essential to understanding how individuals receive and interpret risk information. The results also suggest that individuals may be lacking efficient and up-to-date information about Florida red tides and their impacts because of inconsistent public outreach. Overall, social and spatial factors appear to be influential as to whether individuals amplify or attenuate the risks associated with Florida red tides.     

"There Must Be a Reason": Osama, Saddam, and Inferred Justification

One of the most curious aspects of the 2004 presidential election was the strength and resilience of the belief among many Americans that Saddam Hussein was linked to the terrorist attacks of September 11. Scholars have suggested that this belief was the result of a campaign of false information and innuendo from the Bush administration. We call this the information environment explanation. Using a technique of "challenge interviews" on a sample of voters who reported believing in a link between Saddam and 9/11, we propose instead a social psychological explanation for the belief in this link. We identify a number of social psychological mechanisms voters use to maintain false beliefs in the face of disconfirming information, and we show that for a subset of voters the main reason to believe in the link was that it made sense of the administration's decision to go to war against Iraq. We call this inferred justification : for these voters, the fact of the war led to a search for a justification for it, which led them to infer the existence of ties between Iraq and 9/11.     

The Undeserving Rich: “Moral Values” and the White Working Class1

White working‐class citizens who vote for the Republican Party have been fodder for much political discussion and speculation recently, and a debate has arisen about the role that “moral values” played in the political decision making of this segment of voters. In this article, we defend a version of the moral values claim. We show that although the Republicans’ policies are unpopular, they are bundled with an overarching moral framework that is extremely resonant to this set of voters, and we use in‐depth interviews to uncover this framework. A key feature of this framework, on which in the 2004 presidential election George W. Bush scored high and John Kerry scored low, is the appropriate attitude to wealth, which serves as an indicator for a candidate’s general moral philosophy and as a heuristic about whether the candidate will govern with working‐class voters’ interests in mind. National Election Studies data support the argument that this was a key influence on the voting decision in 2004, even controlling for voters’ partisan identification.     

Migrants in liminal time and space: an exploration of the experiences of highly skilled Indian bachelors in Amsterdam

ABSTRACT

This paper sheds light on the relationship between individual agency, transnational social relations, geographic place, and cultural constructions of life phase and gender among highly skilled Indian migrants to the Netherlands. Amsterdam is attracting an increasing number of Indian migrants who work primarily in the fields of information technology, engineering and business management. The nature of this highly skilled work requires mobile, flexible workers, and therefore mainly attracts single men between 25 and 34. Their migrant experiences and choices are marked by a ‘performance of liminality’: migration is part of a coming of age ritual that both structures their lives and is structured by circumstances and agency. The experience of bachelors in particular can be understood as a ‘double liminality’ in that it is both temporary and spatial. Many of our bachelor informants felt they were ‘betwixt and between’ the socio-cultural expectations they grew up with and what they perceive to be Dutch or Western culture, and between those that pertain to childhood and to adulthood. They live on a metaphorical threshold, shaped by their masculine ideals, beliefs about ‘Indian culture’, their expected life trajectories, and their experiences in and expectations of the Netherlands and the city of Amsterdam.