Place-based urban ecology: A century of park planning in Seattle

This research responds to calls from within the field of urban ecology to explicitly incorporate humanities-based research in order to achieve robust interdisciplinarity. Our research provides an example of a place-based urban ecological analysis. We use this framework to analyze over a century of park planning and development within the city of Seattle. We identify four eras of park planning that are linked by a comprehensive 100-year park plan. This case study examines how the political, cultural, and economic aspects of park planning have produced and been influenced by long-term trends and historical contingencies. This research also offers practical insights for effective contemporary urban planning, emphasizing the need for flexible and adaptive long-term plans when confronted with unpredictable events, emerging political arrangements, changing cultural priorities, and shifting fiscal climates.     

A Content Analysis of Violence in American War Movies

In a content analysis of movie violence, we randomly selected twelve top-grossing American war films from four decades (1970 to 2002). We coded for implements of violence, length of violence, gore, and violence directed at noncombatants. We hypothesized that recently released war movies would be more violent than those released earlier. We found that films released since 1990 did contain more violence compared to others. Further, the intensity of gore increased in recently released movies.     

The interaction of depersonalization and deindividuation

Abnormal experiences of the self defined here in terms ofdepersonalization may predispose individuals to aggressive behavior in situations that further alter their self-awareness. Conditions that raise self-awareness may inhibit the aggressive behavior of individuals prone to these abnormal experiences of self. In the current research, individuals prone to a distorted body image were least likely to express attitudes reflecting verbal hostility when their self-awareness was raised. Individuals prone to a sense of unreality about others were most likely to express attitudes that reflect physical aggression when their sense of social identity was raised. However, these attitudes were less likely in individuals prone to self-criticism whose social identity was enhanced. The results suggest that a multidimensional construct of depersonalization may aid in the prediction of aggressive behavior that is facilitated by situations that alter the individual’s sense of self.     

The Effects of Managerial Succession on Organizational Performance

Boyne and Dahya (2002) posit that the means, motives, and opportunitiesavailable to top managers will affect their ability to impactorganizational performance. In this analysis, I test the theoryposited by Boyne and Dahya and expand the model by exploringwhether the performance effects of executive succession differbetween an internal promotion and an external hire. Using Texasschool superintendents as the managers in question, I use pooled,time-series data to test both the immediate and the long-termeffects of managerial succession on performance. The findingsreveal that an immediate, negative effect of executive successionis present only in the case of an externally hired replacementand that the long-term effect of managerial change on organizationalperformance is positive. These findings suggest that publicmanagerial succession does influence organizational performance.     

Struck by speech revisited: Embodied stance in jurisdictional discourse1

This paper illustrates how stance functions as a semiotic resource that feeds into and mediates institutional context. I consider stance not only as linguistic expression but as interactive, bodily engagement, synchronized in multimodal layers of participation. Using data from a focus group interview, I examine how stance emerges in the collaborative rhythms of linguistic, paralinguistic and, most prominently, embodied conduct between speaker and listener to index socio‐cultural knowledge about the jurisdictional division of labor among legal professionals. Drawing on Charles Frake's classic ‘Struck by speech,’ I illustrate not only how a speaker strikes his listener with speech, but also how the body of the listener displays being struck.     

The Frequency of Warfare: an Evolutionary Perspective*

This research stresses the utility of evolutionary theory and comparative methodology for explaining warfare frequency. It is hypothesized that warfare frequency (external war, civil war, rioting, and feuding) is related to sociocultural development as indicated by cross-cultural measures of technology and social differentiation. The hypotheses were supported utilizing data drawn from the Human Relations Area microfilm Files on 132 contemporary and historical societies.     

A Review of the High-Level Nuclear Waste Repository Siting Analysis

We critique two 1986 Department of Energy reports concerning the selection of sites for characterization as the nation's first high-level nuclear waste repository. We find that the multiattribute utility analysis of the five nominated sites was well done, although we express concern about the assessed probabilities, question the construction of two important attribute scales, and disagree with some of the value tradeoffs that were used. In contrast, we find the logic of the recommendations report to be weak and unconvincing.     

Huck Finn and the game model gloss

Several authors have cited the metaphor of game playing as an analytical device to study social behavior. Traditionally, the game model has been used either to promote a more strict or instrumental control upon actual social behavior or to match a formal game model construction of a social event with actual behavior in everyday life, and through this method shed light upon aspects which otherwise would be overlooked. In another connection, various authors have discussed the concept of glossing in social relations. This paper uses Mark Twain's last chapters ofThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to explicate how the game model can be used as a gloss. The game model gloss then is a unique combination of sociological conceptualizations presented through the medium of a lively literary allegory. We feel this paper extends the concept of glossing and furthers the understanding of the game metaphor in sociological theory.This paper has been presented at the Spring 1977 meetings of the Southern Sociological Society in Atlanta, Georgia.