The Role of Ethnicity in the Emergency Decision-Making Process*

Although sociologists have studied for decades the process whereby citizens make emergency decisions in response to disaster warnings, very little attention has been given to understanding the role of ethnicity in this process. Data derived from fatality and injury counts following disasters, though sparse, documents that minority group citizens tend to suffer disproportionately high negative consequences in connection with the impact of disasters. On the basis of this information, it is inferred that differences exist between the emergency decision-making processes of minority and majority citizens. This paper lays the theoretical groundwork for beginning to revise existing conceptual models of warning response behavior to more adequately address the variation associated with minority group status. This goal is accomplished through pursuing three general tasks: (1) examining the process through which personal emergency decisions are made, (2) delineating social factors which impinge upon the outcomes of this decision-making process, and (3) integrating into an existing model of warning response behavior, additional variables which are related to minority status.     

EFFECTS OF A FAMILY-ORIENTED TRAINING EXPERIENCE ON THE ROLE OF THE PHYSICAL THERAPIST

This article describes ways in which a family-oriented psychologist contributed to a reconceptualization of the appropriate role for the physical therapist in patient care. The article identifies aspects of the changing role of the physical therapist, specifically its expansion to include skilled psychosocial interaction with patient and family for the purposes of reassurance, support and instruction. A primary shift involved changing from focus on the individual and his or her disability to focus on the patient in the context of his or her family. The article briefly describes elements of appropriate psychological training which can be incorporated successfully in a physical therapy educational experience, and concludes with a case example illustrating the basic points relevant to this type of interdisciplinary collaboration.     

The role of interagency collaboration for substance-abusing families involved with child welfare

Meeting the needs of families involved with the child welfare system because of a substance abuse issue remains a challenge for child welfare practitioners. In order to improve services to these families, there has been an increasing focus on improving collaboration between child welfare, treatment providers, and the court systems. This paper presents the results from qualitative interviews with 104 representatives of these three systems that explore how the collaborative process works to benefit families, as well as the barriers and supports for building successful collaborations. Results indicate that collaboration has at least three major functions: building shared value systems, improving communication, and providing a "team" of support. Each of these leads to different kinds of benefits for families as well as providers and has different implications for building successful collaborative interventions. Despite these putative benefits, providers within each system, however, continue to struggle to build effective collaborations, and they face such issues as deeply ingrained mistrust and continued lack of understanding of other systems' values, goals, and perspectives. Challenges that remain for successful collaborations are discussed.     

Gender-based violence and the Arms Trade Treaty: reflections from a campaigning and legal perspective

The Arms Trade Treaty, the first treaty to regulate the international transfer of conventional arms and ammunition, was adopted in 2013 at the United Nations. It aims to regulate the flow of weapons around the world by requiring governments to assess all arms transfers against a set of criteria, before the transfer is authorised or denied. The agreed criteria include language on the risks of gender-based violence. This is a landmark provision, and shows that the issues of women, peace and security have successfully moved into the realm of mainstream security. This article explores how this happened, and the lessons campaigners can learn from this campaign success. The article also explores what the implications are for progress on reducing gender-based violence in conflict, and the areas of uncertainty as attention turns to the treaty's implementation.     

Discussion of Hughes’ “There’s No Such Thing as a Whole Story”

The discussion of Elizabeth Hughes’ essay “There’s No Such Thing as the Whole Story” seeks to argue that a biopsychosocial perspective can flesh out understanding of what occurs at the level of discourse by adoptees. Underpinning such discourses, it is argued, is an experience-dependent view of the embodied mind. From this perspective understanding of the unconscious is situated biopsychosocially and includes aspects of how an autobiographical sense of self (Damasio, 2011) is embedded in memory.     

Subjective sexual arousal and involvement: Development of multiple indicators

Three measures of subjective sexual arousal were observed across four erotic conditions in a sample of 241 college men and women (a) to refine two multi‐item scales of subjective sexual arousal, (b) to determine the convergent and discriminant validity of three measures of sexual arousal, and (c) to relate these operational definitions of subjective sexual arousal to the construct of subjective sexual arousal within Mosher's (1980) involvement theory. From the perspective of involvement theory, subjective sexual arousal is conceived to be an affect‐cognition blend, consisting of awareness of physiological sexual arousal, sexual affects, and affect‐cognition blends, which is transmuted into consciousness and deepens involvement by amplifying the perception of sexual stimulation, sexual cognitions, sexual behavior, physiological sexual response, and itself. Evidence of convergent validity was strong with a median validity coefficient of .51 for the three measures across the four conditions.     

The New Jersey Ethnic Life Series

The circular flow of income diagram is a traditional starting point for economics taught at the high school and college level. Although it is an incredibly useful tool for illustrating how money flows through the economy, the model can be abstract and relies on a sophisticated vocabulary that makes it impractical for use with younger students. This paper offers techniques for making the model accessible to middle school students and offers activities for reinforcing the concepts taught.     

Quantitative sources for studying urban industrial slavery in the antebellum US South

The composition of antebellum Southern urban industrial labour forces is an area requiring careful quantitative analysis. Southern elites worried about slaves in urban industry (especially hired slaves) because they experienced wage‐labour freedoms and so had greater opportunites to resist slavery. The distribution of late antebellum Richmond tobacco factory workers between hired slaves and owned slaves is studied by examining property tax records and census of manufacturing records. Tax records are shown to understate by 11–12 per cent the number of slaves used in factories. This error is due to tax evasion, assessment inefficiency, and seasonal variations between census and tax record collection dates. Furthermore, tax records cannot be used to distinguish between owned and hired slaves in factories, as previous researchers allege. Only the 1860 census of manufacturers explicitly divides the slave force between hired and owned slaves. This record shows that 58 per cent of Richmond tobacco workers were hired slaves, lending credence to the fears of southern elites that urban industry would erode the master‐slave relation they preferred.