ETHNIC PILGRIMAGES: PEOPLE OF LITHUANIAN DESCENT IN LITHUANIA

A fascinating element in ethnic identity construction and reconstruction processes is the role of homelands. Ethnic identity is dependent in part on whether homelands are constructed as a place or as an idea. This social construction is partially determined by when and how individuals or their ancestors emigrated. The experiences of Lithuanian American economic immigrants, political emigres, and their offspring are explored. For many European Americans (including Lithuanian Americans), traditional measures of ethnicity (such as language retention and endogamy) are not as important as contemporary constructed or invented symbols of ethnic identity (such as ethnic festivals and display of ethnic artifacts). I argue that trips or "ethnic pilgrimages" to the ancestral homelands have received relatively little attention in the ethnicity literature but are central mechanisms of ethnic reconstruction and renewal.     

A Collaborative University Model for Employee Wellness

Abstract

Universities are taking a more active approach in understanding and monitoring employees’ modifiable health risk factors and chronic care conditions by developing strategies to encourage employees to start and sustain healthy behaviors. WellBama, the University of Alabama's signature health and wellness program, utilizes a collaborative model in partnership with select colleges and departments to implement strategies to improve employees’ health status. The program provides onsite health screenings and assessments, timely health advising sessions, assistance in setting and monitoring individual health goals to promote improved health, and preventive examination referrals.     

Personal Trauma and Risk Behaviors Among Youth Entering Residential Treatment

The focus of this study was to determine the prevalence and types of traumas experienced by adolescents prior to admission to long term mental health residential care and the impact of these traumas on their risk behaviors. The research was conducted at a state-supported residential mental health treatment facility functioning under the authority of the Department of State Health Services. Client level data was extracted from social assessment forms (N = 457) in case records of clients. Results confirmed that exposure to trauma was pervasive among adolescents admitted to the facility. Findings also revealed a link between trauma and risk behaviors among youth entering residential treatment facilities. Increased trauma exposure significantly impacted the risk behaviors of youths entering the residential treatment facility. The results indicate that the total number of traumas experienced was a greater predictor of risk behaviors among these youth than the specific traumas experienced. Internalizing behaviors such as self-harm and suicide attempts also increased with the number of traumas experienced by the adolescent. The study demonstrates the need for further exploration of the complex relationship between personal trauma, mental health, and social development in adolescents.     

Nursing Home Deficiencies: An Exploratory Study of Interstate Variations in Regulatory Activity

This study examines nursing home regulatory activity by the states, assesses interstate variations in the volume and severity of nursing home deficiencies, and explores state-level factors that may account for these differences. Nursing home deficiency citation data over a 5-year period (2000–2004) were obtained from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. We examined interstate variations in regulatory activity and identified predictors of deficiency volume and severity at the state level (demographics, elected officials, industry characteristics, etc.) using the linear mixed model. Deficiency volume remained stable across the 50 states from 2000 to 2004, while deficiency severity decreased significantly. California had the highest volume of deficiencies per nursing home; Wisconsin had the lowest. New Hampshire had the highest percentage of severe deficiencies; California had the lowest. Higher deficiency volume was found in states with lower median household income, a lower proportion of residents aged 85 and older, and a Democratic legislature. Higher deficiency severity was associated with higher median household income and a higher proportion of Medicaid nursing home residents in a state. In contrast, greater state agency funding, higher state standards for nursing home administrators, and a Democratic and more professional legislature predicted lower deficiency severity. Nursing home residents in the United States receive unequal protection from abuse and neglect, and this is partly due to their state of residence. Interstate variations in deficiency volume and severity are due to a complex set of factors beyond nursing home quality.     

SO,HOW DID BOURDIEU LEARN TO PLAY TENNIS? HABITUS,CONSCIOUSNESS AND HABITUATION

Bourdieu's development of the notion of ‘habitus’ has proved a rich vein for cultural theory. Habitus has been useful, with the growing interest in processes of embodiment, in countering the cognitive and representational bias in much cultural analysis, and in providing a basis for avoiding the dualisms - of mind and body, structure and agency - that trouble social theory. However, in stressing the unconscious nature of embodiment, and refusing to engage with the question of consciousness, an implicit form of mechanistic determinism has crept into Bourdieu"s implementation of habitus. By returning to the Spinozan monism that informs Bourdieu's work, this paper elaborates a productive conceptualization of habitus that attends to the various intensities of consciousness, the relations between multiple mind-bodies and processes of habituation through a focus on the literature of sports training.     

Neighborhood resources, racial segregation, and economic mobility: Results from the Gautreaux program

This study uses the unique design of the Gautreaux residential mobility program to estimate the long-run impacts of placement neighborhood conditions on the AFDC receipt (N = 793) and employment levels (N = 1258) of low-income Black women. We find that women initially placed in neighborhoods with few Black residents and moderate to high neighborhood resources experienced significantly more time employed when compared with women placed in neighborhoods with higher concentrations of Blacks and a low level of resources. Women placed in neighborhoods with high levels of resources and low Black populations also spent significantly less time on welfare than women placed in highly Black segregated areas with low levels of resources.     

Wife or frau,women do worse: A comparison of men and women in the United States and Germany after marital dissolution

Longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the German Socio-Economic Panel show that in the Federal Republic of Germany, women experience even sharper drops in economic status immediately after a marital split than in the United States, while German and American men fare about the same. German social policy does little to reduce the disparities.     

Infant Mortality and Socioeconomic Status: New Bottle,Same Old Wine

This paper presents the results of an ecological analysis of the relationship between infant mortality and economic status in metropolitan Ohio for the period 1960–2000. The data examined are centered on the five censuses undertaken during this 40-year period. The basic unit of analysis is the census tract of mother’s usual residence, with economic status being determined by the percentage of low income families living in each tract. For each of the five periods covered, census tracts were aggregated into broad income areas and three-year average infant mortality rates were computed for each area, by age, sex, race and exogenous-endogenous causes of death. The most important conclusion to be drawn from the data is that in spite of some very remarkable declines in infant mortality at all class levels since 1960, there continues to be a very clear and pronounced inverse association between income status and infant mortality. Indeed, the evidence indicates that the relationship has become stronger over the years. These observations are applicable for both sexes, for whites and nonwhites, for neonatal and postneonatal deaths, and for both major cause of death groups. It is concluded that while public health programs are important, any progress in narrowing this long-standing differential is unlikely unless ways can be found to enhance the economic well-being of the lower socioeconomic groups.     

Diversity and change in the institutional context of immigrant adaptation: California schools 1985-2000

This article brings attention to a structural dimensions of the schooling context that may affect the incorporation of immigrant youths. Using administrative data about students in California public schools, we found that Spanish-speaking, limited English-proficient (LEP) children have become increasingly more likely to attend schools with low-income, minority, and LEP students than other non-LEP and LEP groups. Nearly all the change in school composition can be attributed to statewide shifts in the composition of the school-aged population. But compositional changes have disproportionately occurred in schools attended by Spanish-speaking LEP students as a result of district-level patterns of segregation by income, race/ethnicity, and language.     

Increasing fertility in cohabiting unions: evidence for the second demographic transition in the united states?

As cohabitation becomes increasingly common and accepted, one might expect the meaning of this arrangement to change. In some countries in Europe (e.g., Sweden), as cohabitation became more prevalent, it moved from a deviant status to an acceptable alternative to marriage. Will the same thing happen in the United States? To investigate this question, I examine increases in the proportion of births occurring in cohabiting unions, using data from the 1987–1988 National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) and the1995 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). The standardization and decomposition procedure shows that most of the growth in the proportion of births to cohabitors is the result of increases in the proportion of women cohabiting, rather than changes in union formation behaviors surrounding pregnancies.