Chthonic Sovereigns? ‘Neak Ta’ in a Cambodian Village

Typically conflated with spirit or religion, territorial land entities known by various names across monsoon Asia are engaged in social relationships with human communities. Most often called neak ta in Cambodia (meaning the Ancient ones), but also known as maja tuk maja day, (the master of the water and the land), and arak (guardian or protector), many will tell you this is Brahminism, superstition from the ancient religion. More recently scholars use the term animism, and through this lens, neak ta becomes spirit—metaphysical guardians of territories, spirits of founding ancestors, or the earth-bound deities in Buddhist cosmologies. For locals they are guardians, people we cannot see, punishers, and healers, sometimes ancestors sometimes not. In the following treatment, empirical data complicates the prevailing paradigm and begins to detangle these entities from the constructed category of religion. In the context of an expanding discussion rethinking animism in Southeast Asia and its relationship to universal religions, these sovereigns of the land emerge beyond their confinement, or their assignation as spirits. They are in and of the water and the land and are instrumental social actors in the articulation of economic activity and political strategies as well as Buddhist practice.     

Medicalizing the optimal: Anti-aging medicine and the quandary of intervention

The emergence of anti-aging medicine over the past two decades has posed tremendous challenges for traditional categories that define the relationship between aging and biomedicine. The frameworks of nature and disease have been critical in marking how biomedicine can and should intervene. Anti-aging advocates posit that because aging is a predictable, biological universal, it is natural and can therefore be understandable. Moreover, proponents accept and perpetuate the pervasive construction that aging is a painful decline. Here, its undesirability coupled with its knowability render the process of aging ameliorable. Thus, anti-aging advocates argue that aging is natural, not a disease, but should nonetheless serve as a site of intervention. Situating the optimization of the aging process as their primary goal, many anti-aging advocates assert that it is more emblematic of human nature to liberate the body from its perceived biological constraints than it is natural to age.     

Informal Care Intensity and Caregiver Drug Utilization

Providing informal care has negative health consequences for informal caregivers. If these health consequences increase drug utilization among caregivers, estimates of health care savings from informal care—mainly realized through reductions in utilization among care recipients—should consider the increased drug costs incurred by informal caregivers. This paper evaluates whether more intensive informal caregivers have higher drug utilization than less intensive caregivers, controlling for initial health status and other factors. We find that informal care intensity is associated with higher drug consumption. An increase of 10% of total informal care per day is associated with a 0.7% increase in drugs. The small magnitudes indicate that, in this application, it is not important to consider caregiver drug utilization when quantifying the net savings to the health care system of informal care. For individual caregivers, such as those who take multiple drugs per month and/or have no drug coverage, the increase in drug utilization associated with intensive caregiving is likely to be costly.     

To Disclose or Not to Disclose Biracial Identity: The Effect of Biracial Disclosure on Perceiver Evaluations and Target Responses

Are biracial people perceived more negatively than their monoracial counterparts? Across two studies, we compared ratings of warmth, competence, and minority scholarship worthiness for biracial (Study 1: Black/White, Study 2: Asian/White), White, and minority (Study 1: Black, Study 2: Asian) college applicants. Findings suggest that both biracial applicants were perceived as colder and sometimes less competent than both White and corresponding minority applicants. Moreover, biracial people were also perceived as less qualified for minority scholarships than other racial minorities, which is partially explained by penalties to warmth and competence. Study 3 shows that disclosing one's biracial identity makes biracial people vulnerable to negative feedback. Taken together, these studies suggest that biracial people who disclose their biracial identity experience bias from perceivers and may be more vulnerable to that bias because of the personal nature of racial disclosure. Findings are discussed considering the stereotype content model ( Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2007 ), cultural stereotypes about biracial people ( Jackman, Wagner, & Johnson, 2001 ), and the costs of disclosing devalued identities.     

Navigating the Life Cycle of Trust in Developing Economies: One‐size Solutions Do Not Fit All

Trust is critical to the development and maintenance of collaborative and cohesive relationships in societies, broadly, and in organizations, specifically. At the same time, trust is highly dependent on the social context in which it occurs. Unfortunately, existing research involving trust remains somewhat limited to a particular set of developed economies, providing a window to explore a culture's stage of economic development as a key contextual determinant of trust within organizations. In this article, we review the state of the scholarship on trust and identify those qualities of trust that are common in organizations at similar stages of economic development, referred to as its etic aspects. We then also distinguish those elements of trust that are, to the contrary, culturally specific or emic in nature. We structure our discussion around the “life cycle of trust” (i.e., the creation, maintenance, and postfracture repair of trust) and consider unique factors in its application to developing economies. In doing so, we ground our examination in expository examples through field experience in Haiti. We conclude with the proposal of a framework for future research oriented toward the resolution of remaining theoretical and empirical queries as they relate to trust in developing economies.     

Victims’ Retrospective Explanations of Sibling Sexual Violence

ABSTRACT

While sibling sexual abuse may be the most common form of sexual violence within the family, relatively few studies have been conducted on this topic. The current study addresses this gap in the literature through analyses of thematic categories in narratives gathered from an online survey of sibling sexual violence. Survivors were asked to report why they believed their siblings had become sexually abusive toward them. Participants believed that their abusers had learned to be abusive due to their own victimization or exposure to pornography, were abusive to establish dominance over them, or had some undisclosed mental illness. While the study does not claim to test these explanations or include abusers’ own narratives, it offers insight as to how sibling sexual violence survivors make sense of their experiences and assign blame to abusers and their families. It also offers insights into future inquiries about sibling sexual abuse.     

Becoming Parents

Ninety-six lesbian adoptive parents were part of a cross-sectional study to explore their adoption experiences, specifically focusing on their sources of consultation/information and possible bias, adoption timeframes and costs, and their satisfaction with the adoption experience. Questions within each of these domains were tested for significant differences across international, private domestic and child welfare adoption venues. While their overall experiences were positive, several key significant findings are discussed, with practice considerations suggested for adoption professionals and other lesbians seeking adoption. Lastly, a call for future research is made to further our understanding of lesbian mothers' transition to adoptive parenthood.     

Chorus for Community Integration and Recovery for Men with Psychiatric Disabilities in a Supportive Housing Community

This study reports the findings from a mixed-methods evaluation of the effectiveness of a choral program for 34 homeless men with substance abuse and mental illnesses. The evaluation focused on the chorus experience as one way to promote community integration and recovery. Fifteen residents (44.1%) were chorus members (CMs), and their responses were compared with those of 19 nonmembers (NCMs). When examining the quantitative data only, significant differences were not found between CMs and NCMs. However, narrative data and participant observation revealed that the choral program may have helped CMs improve their subjective experience of community integration by enhancing psychosocial components.