A Social Psychology of National and International Group Relations

This concluding article provides a framework for a social psychological analysis of intergroup conflict and conflict resolution. The framework highlights the individual and intergroup factors that shape the nature of perceptions of intergroup relations and group representations, and describes how these perceptions lead to cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses toward groups. Included in the framework are the metatheoretical, theoretical, and practical contributions of the articles in this issue toward understanding intergroup relations. The potential and responsibility of social psychologists to move beyond the laboratory to applied national and international issues is also discussed.     

Pragmatics of Self- and Other-Reference in Young Children

During the first years of life, children come to understand and talk about a self separate from others. This study examined self- and other-reference and communicative intents expressed by children and parents in dyadic interaction at 14, 20 and 32 months. Research questions included whether children's early use of self- and other-reference pronouns occurred for expression of particular communicative intents, how use changed with age, and whether parent and child pragmatic expressions of self and other were similar. Results showed that children's early explicit reference to self tended to take the form of I rather than me/my/mine, and was used primarily in making statements about their intended actions, in making requests or proposals to their parents and in stating propositions about the world around them. Children during this developmental period were only beginning to refer to the present other with the pronoun you and these instances occurred primarily in making requests or proposals. Despite age-related increases in pronominal forms and intents, a small set of intents continued to provide the context for most self- and other-reference pronouns. In the communicative contexts in which they explicitly refer to self and other, children did not appear to exclusively mirror those which were observed in parental speech.     

Governance in Public-Private Community Health Partnerships: A Survey of the Community Care Network SM Demonstration Sites

This review of the governance practices of twenty-five public-private partnerships involved in addressing a broad range of community health needs shows that governance in public-private community partnerships departs significantly from traditional notions of institutional governance. Governance structures and degrees of progress toward governance goals vary widely and appear to be systematically related to the organization, composition, location, and activity of each partnership.     

Young Children's Emotional Attachments to Stories

In the interest of developing a more holistic and integrated understanding of young children's experience of stories, this study describes preschoolers' emotional attachments to stories and the cultural beliefs and practices which surround such attachments. Thirty-two European-American, middle-class families, participated in an interview study of their children's story attachments, and five of these mothers also participated in a short-term, longitudinal diary study. Every child experienced at least two emotional attachments to stories. Children were captivated by stories presented in different media, with many attachments occurring around video stories in addition to books. They expressed their attachments by repeatedly requesting the story, expressing strong feelings, and enacting the story in pretend play. Story attachments were social in two fundamental ways: children created relationships with the characters in their favorite stories, and story attachments emerged in the context of relationships with caregivers whose beliefs and practices supported such attachments.     

What is educational entrepreneurship? Strategic action,temporality, and the expansion of US higher education

Theory and Society - The massive expansion of US higher education after World War II is a sociological puzzle: a spectacular feat of state capacity-building in a highly federated polity. Prior...