The asymmetric environmental consequences of population change: an exploratory county-level study of land development in the USA, 2001-2011

In this exploratory study, we decompose population growth and decline into their constituent elements to examine how demographic change drives environmental change. Using the example of land development, the analysis integrates county-level measures of births, deaths, in-migration, and out-migration with data on built-up land area from the National Land Cover Database for the years 2001–2006 and then 2006–2011. Drawing from human ecology and environmental demography, we hypothesize that the components of population change will have asymmetric impacts on the construction of the built environment as a form of land development. Results from spatial error models, with a contemporaneous and a temporarily lagged dependent variable, show conditional support for these hypotheses. While each component of demographic change has a unique effect on the dependent variable, the rate at which births increase built-up land area is significantly greater than the rate at which deaths slow this process down.     

Intersecting Contexts: Understanding Rural Utah Veterans’ Experiences with Accessing VA Health Care

Since the passage of the Rural Veterans Care Act of 2006 research has focused on health care provider issues with less attention given to individual and contextual factors that contribute to the remaining service gap. Adopting the health care user's viewpoint, we focus on two questions: How do health care users perceive access to health care, and which contextual factors are relevant to explaining the failure of recent efforts to increase access by rural veterans? We collected detailed data through focus groups and individual interviews involving veterans and knowledgeable community members in four rural areas of Utah. Framing the analysis of interview data using the sociospatial approach reveals key dimensions of several contexts that affect rural veterans’ access to health care: the historical period of military service that influences attitudes toward use of Veterans Administration health care and access to specialists, regulations of regionally and locally organized insurance coverage that affects access to and coordination of health care, and local social aspects of rural communities that inform use of specific health care sources. These dimensions provide new insights into the conditions that contribute to variations in the vulnerability of rural Utah veterans.     

The Development Manager's Advisory System: A Knowledge-Based DSS Tool for Project Assessment*

This research investigates whether the knowledge-based decision support system (KBDSS) paradigm provides the necessary supporting structure and developmental framework for product development evaluation. To address the research questions posed in this study, it is necessary to develop and implement KBDSS's at specific decision points along the product development cycle. This paper describes the design, development, and implementation of a KBDSS to support a product development manager's decision concerning full-scale development of a new product. From the systems design perspective, this paper addresses the integration and innovative use of a variety of techniques for knowledge acquisition, modeling, and processing. The approach utilized obtains the benefits of normative modeling as well as the flexibility and developmental advantages of knowledge-based systems. Since its implementation, the system has been successfully used by a development manager to support his recommendation for an ongoing project. His complete satisfaction with this system served as the impetus for the design and development of a multi-expert system which was implemented at the strategic level.     

Are we all equally at home socializing online? Cyberasociality and evidence for an unequal distribution of disdain for digitally-mediated sociality

Online social media are an increasingly important arena of social interaction. This rapid transition to digitally mediated sociality is far from trivial in both the consequences it engenders and the tensions it generates. In this paper, we find that some people do not take as readily to accepting digitally mediated sociality as others, and that this mode of connectivity appears fulfilling and engaging to some while it appears hollow and vacant to others due to variations in a personality disposition which we dub ‘cyberasociality' which was defined as the inability or unwillingness of some people to relate to others via social media as they do when physically present by Tufekci [2010. Who acquires friends through social media and why? Rich get richer versus seek and ye shall find. Proceedings of the fourth international conference on weblogs and social media, Washington, DC]. Using two purposive samples of college students (n?=?410 and n?=?417 completed surveys), we develop a scale to test cyberasociality as a construct. We show that cyberasociality is neither a mere reflection of offline sociability nor a proxy for other well-studied traits such as extraversion or neuroticism, nor a simple reflection of Internet experience or cohort effects. We find that cyberasociality impacts how people use digital social tools more than whether they use them, and that the cyberasocial are less likely to use platforms for digitally mediated social interaction to broaden their social networks or to forge new social ties online while they are equally likely to use digital channels for utilitarian purposes such as coordinating plans or finding out about class assignments. Such differences in dispositions toward online sociality hint toward new wrinkles, advantages and disadvantages for consequences of variations in Internet use.     

Sincere but Naive: Methodological Queries Concerning the British Columbia Polygamy Reference Trial

Academics frequently serve as expert witnesses in legal cases, yet their role as transmitters of social scientific knowledge remains under‐examined. The present study analyzes the deployment of social science within British Columbia's polygamy reference trial where research is used to support the assertion that polygamy is inherently harmful to society. Within the trial record and the written decision, the protection of monogamy as an institution is performed in part through the marginalization of qualitative methodology and the concurrent privileging of quantitative studies that purportedly demonstrate widespread social harms associated with the practice of polygyny. Les universitaires servent souvent témoins experts dans les cas juridiques, mais leur rôle comme les transmetteurs de connaissance en sciences sociale restent sous‐examinés. La présente étude analyse le déploiement de sciences sociale dans l'essai de référence de polygamie de la Columbia britannique où la recherche est utilisée pour soutenir l'assertion que la polygamie est naturellement malfaisante pour la société. Dans le record de procès et la décision écrite la protection de monogamie comme une institution est exécutée partiellement par la marginalisation de méthodologie qualitative et le privilégier d'études quantitatives qui démontrent que la polygamie est intrinsèquement néfastes pour la société.     

Land and leña: linking transnational migration, natural resources, and the environment in Guatemala

This article examines the relationships between international migration, natural resources, and the environment. Rather than looking at environmental change as a cause of population movements, the article reveals how migration affects the environment in sending countries. Empirically, we rely on a case study in Guatemala. Although migrants and cash remittances make significant contributions to Guatemala’s changing economy, little is known about the relationships between migration and the environment in this Central American country—a country, which continues to have a large rural population and that relies heavily on its natural resources. Drawing on ethnographic research and household surveys in a Maya community, we reveal how migrants and their earnings, as well as their ideas, behavior and attitudes, affect land use, land cover, and firewood use. We reveal, for example, how in addition to investments in land for home building and pick-up trucks to help improve agricultural production, some migrant households purchase more land and often dedicate it to the cultivation of vegetable crops for local and foreign markets. Cultural practices and beliefs directly linked to land and the environment, particularly maize cultivation, also alter due to migration processes. And, despite the ability of migrant households to transition to more efficient fuels like liquid propane gas (LPG), we show how they continue to use firewood. In all, the study contributes important insights into the environmental implications of migration.     

Get a job and keep it! High school employment and adult wealth accumulation

Wealth inequality receives substantial scholarly attention, but mounting evidence suggests that childhood and adolescent traits and experiences contribute to financial disparities in the United States. This study examines the relationship between adolescent labor force participation and adult wealth accumulation. I argue that employed high school students gain practical life skills, abilities, and knowledge from work experience and business exposure that shape investment decisions and affect overall net worth. I use the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 cohort, to empirically explore this idea. This study extends the wealth literature by identifying adolescent employment as an important mechanism that improves adult net worth and financial well-being.     

创办全新一流学府探索

100余年来,我国的大学教育一直是在借鉴欧美、前苏联等的经验中发展壮大起来的。尤其从20世纪80年代开始,我国＂创办全新的世界一流大学＂的探索步伐明显加快。     

The Janus‐Face of Whiteness: Toward a Cultural Sociology of White Nationalism and White Antiracism

While the sociological study of white identity has traversed many stages, its most recent turn emphasizes the contextual heterogeneity of whiteness. Because of this increased attention to context and locality, the study of whiteness has never been more amenable to cultural analysis than it is today. Hence, an emphasis on different white racial formations that span a political spectrum from conservative to liberal and racist to antiracist is now dominant. In this vein, white nationalists and white antiracists represent the distinct polarities of contemporary inquisitions into white identity formation. Motivated by this academic milieu, this article first reviews the common perception that whiteness is in ‘crisis’ and polarizing into antagonistic political projects. Second, the article scans the literature on white nationalist and white antiracist groups, making explicit the relation to cultural theory. Third, the article questions why these two groups are consistently juxtaposed against one another and how such a conceptualization hinders, rather than advances, cultural analysis. Fourth and last, the article advanced a cultural sociological framework for understanding white racial identity formation that neither collapses white identities into a monolithic collective nor reifies white formations as a static typology. Such an approach considers the general processes and contexts which produce ‘whiteness’ and give it meaning, as well as illuminates the social relationships and practices in which white racial identity formations become embedded.