Popular music and urban regeneration: The music industries of Merseyside

In this article I address the origins of America's national parks, particularly as they figure in the environmentalist discourse surrounding the institution of Yosemite Valley as a public park. Although technically speaking Yosemite did not become a national park until 1890, its cession to the State of California in 1864 provides an important cultural site for the emergence of environmentalism as part of a broader concern with the relations between aesthetic, social and natural agency. In mapping out these relations in Frederick Law Olmsted's 1865 report on the management of Yosemite, I claim that the preservation of Yosemite reproduces nature as a public park in which human agency can be simultaneously produced and elided by means of the aesthetic agency of nature. I read Olmsted's report as a discursive site on which we can trace the structural parallels between the preservation of Yosemite and several related cultural practices in which the origins of American environmentalism are embedded. I also read it as sketching out the configurations of human and natural agency within which these parallel practices are articulated.

My study operates from the assumption that science and technology need to be understood not simply by explaining how they are socially or culturally constructed, but also by looking at how certain fundamental ideas of metaphors (like natural agency or the reproduction of nature) are worked out at the same historical moment in different discursive practices. In taking up the idea of America as it both defines and is defined by the network of relations among science, technology and culture, I outline certain myths of American environmentalist origins as played out across a number of diverse and heterogeneous discourses and technologies of representation and reproduction. I hope also to illuminate the way in which American cultural origins are simultaneously constructed and destabilized through the act of reproducing nature.     

What Age Is Shame?

The author ponders the various meanings of growing older in the gay male community, focusing on the phenomenon of shame and its intergenerational origins.     

The Role of Active Listening in Teacher–Parent Relations and the Moderating Role of Attachment Style

This study tested the perceived effectiveness of “Listening-Ask questions-Focus on the issue–Find a first step” method (McNaughton et al., 2008) in a parent–teacher conversation using a scenario study (N?=?208). As expected, a scenario based on this method compared with a scenario of a conversation omitting the four steps of the method was perceived both by teachers and parents as more effective (d?=?1.43). Moreover, it was hypothesized that the effectiveness of this listening method would be found largely among secure participants. Indeed, the findings suggested that anxious people were less sensitive to the manipulation. Research hypotheses regarding avoidant attachment style were not supported, suggesting that more research is needed to better understand the moderating role of attachment style.     

Organizational Linkages among the Inner Group of the Capitalist Class

Abstract

This study investigates the non-corporate organizational linkages among the inner group of the capitalist class, defined as those who are interlocked with three or more corporations. To the extent that persons already linked through corporate ties also are connected through common memberships in business organizations, social clubs, and other voluntary organizations, the likelihood of a national cohesive power elite is increased. The corporate data used are from the 1976 government study of the 130 major companies in the United States, controlling collectively 25 percent of all assets. The biographical data on the 66 individuals found to sit on three or more boards among these 130 companies were taken from Who's Who. Several key organizations were found where the members of the elite were especially interconnected. A cluster of 15 individuals with 13 or more common memberships within the 66 were identified as having the greatest linkages. The analysis of the number of common links for each possible pair among these 15 individuals revealed an average of 2.76. Moreover, one-third of the 15 had four links or more, with at least five persons among this inner circle, revealing the nucleus of the inner group. These data show that there is a social network, national in scope, which provides a basis for unity among leaders of the capitalist class.     

The Perception of Societal Models of Power Distribution by Recent Male College Graduates

Abstract

This study examines the perception of power among young adult males. A sampleof 1971 male graduates of a state university were asked in 1974 to choose from among pluralistic and elitist models of power in the U.S. The correlates of the various perceptions of power were elaborated using political attitudes, degree of political activism, change in political beliefs, locus of control, and status inconsistency. The findings were that: (1) the respondents tended to perceive an elitist model, although they preferred a pluralist model; and (2) those most likely to perceive power in elitist terms were activists, those with changed political beliefs, those most status inconsistent, and those with external locus of control.