“Projecting the Future by Looking Over One's Shoulder at the Past”: The Milken Institute's One-Sided Analysis of California's Future

The first Michael Milken Institute conference on the state of the state of California, held November 5, 1999, identified 21st century opportunities and challenges in light of recent economic and demographic trends. The panelists came from the banking/venture capital, industrial, real estate development, think tank and political spheres. Notably absent were delegates from the environmental community. Optimism reigned: The presenters considered that the shortage and soaring price of housing are major concerns, yet they could not view this as a contra-indication to future population increase. Possibilities of major ethnic clashes in a state where no ethnic group commands a majority went unaddressed. Both the conference materials and those present subscribed to the view that growth is good and bigger is better; no other indicators of quality of life were mentioned. Ecological overload and threats of collapsing eco-systems, the permanent water shortage foreseen by state planners beginning as early as 2015, and the increasing vulnerability to inevitable natural disasters as major earthquakes and droughts should population projections be fulfilled (today's 35 million will grow to 50 million by 2020; carrying capacity level is about 10 million) all went unmentioned. Those present left falsely reassured that for California the 21st century will largely be a replay of the 20^th.     

Managed growth and optimum population: Irreconcilable concepts

Managed growth is a politically popular rallying point which offends no faction by insisting upon nonnegotiable limits. Subscribers to this philosophy focus upon short-run accommodations to growth which apparently mitigate its physical consequences. Managed growthers react to longterm numerical projections with rejection, if not outright hostility. They may be more amenable to quality-of-life rationales for population limitation evolving from the biophilia hypothesis and ecopsychology. These theories claim that our species needs to exist in proximity to untrammelled wilderness and a natural environment for psychic health and creativity.     

Role Expectations and Role Evaluations in Daughtering: Constructing the Good Daughter

The relationship between mother and daughter is unlike other family dyads and important to both parties over a lifespan. One underexplored area of this relationship is how adult daughters construct and perform the daughtering role. The present study explores how daughters talk about the ways they enact daughtering and evaluate their role in a social world. The findings reveal how daughters position themselves within a family system and, more broadly, in society. This paper includes interview data with 33 adult daughters about their mothers. We illuminate more about how daughters, as role players, conceive of the expectations for their roles and evaluate their role performance in light of role expectations. Analysis revealed four role expectations tied to good daughtering: showing respect, providing protection, eliciting mothering, and making time for connection. Our analysis supports that daughters assess themselves based on their understanding of these role expectations. We present a matrix to illustrate these findings.     

Raising awareness of transformative ecosocial work: Participatory action research with Australian practitioners

This article reports on Participatory Action Research with social work practitioners who collaboratively explored the effects on professional practice when practitioners raise their awareness of an ecosocial work approach. Although contemporary research in the profession has contributed to the ongoing development of ecosocial work, there is a notable lack of collaboration with social work practitioners. Using a transformative ecosocial work model of practice, researchers together with social workers from a range of practice contexts met as co‐inquirers to plan, implement and evaluate ecosocial work interventions. As part of a larger international study, this article reports on research outcomes within the Australian context. Overall, results indicate that practitioners incorporated interventions across personal, individual, group and organisational levels of practice, but were constrained by structural elements at broader levels. Continuing the development of ecosocial work requires further collaborative exploration with practitioners, which takes into consideration communities and broader social and political systems. Key Practitioner Messages: ? This research endeavours to contribute to the evidence‐base for progressing transformative ecosocial work in professional practice; ? Using Participatory Action Research (PAR), this research was done in collaboration with social work practitioners as co‐inquirers to develop ecosocial work interventions; ? A range of ecosocial work interventions were implemented at the personal, individual, group and organisational levels.     

Children's abilities and strategies in managing the facial display of affect

To examine children's ability to control their affective expression facially, 68 second- and fourth-grade boys and girls were unobtrusively videotaped while discussing six self-chosen activities about which they felt positively, neutrally, or negatively. Children then performed three facial management tasks: (a)inhibition (showing no emotion instead of a felt emotion); (b)simulation (showing an emotion when not feeling anything); and (c)masking (showing an emotion that is different than what is felt). Twelve raters judged the edited tapes of the children's performance for affect positivity and deceptiveness. Repeated measures ANOVAs indicated, in contrast to previous research, that children were highly competent in managing facial displays. To understand children's techniques for managing affective displays, two raters categorized the primary cognitive strategies children used. Results showed that fourth graders used more complex strategies more often than second graders. These results highlight children's skill and strategies in affect management.Funding for this project was provided by a NICHHD grant (#HD22367) to the first author. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Nancy A. Ballard and Michael G. Rakouskas in data collection and preparation. We also thank the children whose participation and cooperation made this research possible.     

Social Contagion of Risk Perceptions in Environmental Management Networks

An important requisite for improving risk communication practice related to contentious environmental issues is having a better theoretical understanding of how risk perceptions function in real‐world social systems. Our study applied Scherer and Cho's social network contagion theory of risk perception (SNCTRP) to cormorant management (a contentious environmental management issue) in the Great Lakes Basin to: (1) assess contagion effects on cormorant‐related risk perceptions and individual factors believed to influence those perceptions and (2) explore the extent of social contagion in a full network (consisting of interactions between and among experts and laypeople) and three “isolated” models separating different types of interactions from the full network (i.e., expert‐to‐expert, layperson‐to‐layperson, and expert‐to‐layperson). We conducted interviews and administered questionnaires with experts (e.g., natural resource professionals) and laypeople (e.g., recreational and commercial anglers, business owners, bird enthusiasts) engaged in cormorant management in northern Lake Huron (n = 115). Our findings generally support the SNCTRP; however, the scope and scale of social contagion varied considerably based on the variables (e.g., individual risk perception factors), actors (i.e., experts or laypeople), and interactions of interest. Contagion effects were identified more frequently, and were stronger, in the models containing interactions between experts and laypeople than in those models containing only interactions among experts or laypeople.