Can indigenous transborder migrants affect environmental governance in their communities of origin? Evidence from Mexico

Despite high rates of out-migration, Mexican indigenous communities play a crucial role in biodiversity conservation. However, little is known about migrants’ role in environmental management. This research brief explores the case of the Purépecha of San Pedro Ocumicho, Michoacán, and its transborder community in the Coachella Valley of California. We find that migrants maintain strong cultural ties to their community of origin. However, many are undocumented, are unable to access steady and well-paid employment, and would be unable to return to California were they to visit Mexico. Furthermore, government structures in Ocumicho are weak, providing few opportunities for migrants to contribute. These factors currently preclude migrants from influencing environmental decision making in their home community. Our findings point to the need for more comprehensive and longitudinal studies to better document and explain the variations in migrant support for environmental governance in their communities of origin.     

Teaching outside of the box: a short-term international internship for pre-service and in-service physical education teachers

This article reports on results from a qualitative study of a two-week international internship for pre-service and in-service physical education (PE) teachers in a developing nation (Belize). Relying upon data from questionnaires that were administered before and after the short-term international internship, participants’ perspectives related to their professional and personal development were investigated. Understanding the overlap that necessarily exists between professional and personal growth, five themes are identified and discussed. These include: (1) Kids are Kids (Or are they?), (2) Relationships Matter, (3) Cooperation and Collaboration in Teaching: Learning Together, (4) Teaching without Bells and Whistles, and (5) Recognising One’s Own Privilege. In light of these findings, some suggestions for future practice and inquiry are offered.     

Cooperative Accounts: Avoiding Conflict and Repairing Social Relations

The analytical concept of accounts has long presented sociologists with an excellent tool for the study of talk. Nonetheless, studies of accounts often neglect the fact that cooperation is common when an account for untoward behavior is constructed. Many studies tend to flatten the process of how accounts are created by routinely describing them as being “offered” by offenders and then “evaluated” by reproachers. We assume that accounts are often negotiated between parties as a means of avoiding conflict and preserving a relationship. As such, this paper develops the concept of cooperative accounts that are offered to (or projected upon) offenders as a means of explaining their untoward behavior. While also examining hostile accounts, this paper concentrates on developing the cooperative account in order to investigate more fully Scott and Lyman's (1968) argument that accounts are crucial for managing conflict and maintaining social order. Because offering cooperative accounts to others is a routine social interaction their examination provides an opportunity to reanchor the study of accounts back into the symbolic interactionist tradition.     

Family‐of‐Origin Influence on Career Thoughts

The family can exert an important influence on career decision making. This study investigated the impact of adaptability and cohesion in family‐of‐origin relationships on dysfunctional career thoughts in 269 college students (221 women, 48 men). The Career Thoughts Inventory and the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Scales–IV were used to assess family dynamics and dysfunctional career thoughts. The study addressed the following research question: What is the impact of family cohesion and adaptability in the participant's family of origin on dysfunctional career thoughts, specifically decision‐making confusion, commitment anxiety, and external conflict? Results revealed that higher levels of family cohesion were associated with lower levels of decision‐making confusion, commitment anxiety, and external conflict and that higher levels of family adaptability were associated with lower levels of external conflict.     

The lesser of two evils: Atypical trajectories in English dialect evolution

Schneider's Dynamic Model of Postcolonial English Development (2007) suggests that distinct local identities and their associated varieties of English emerge as a result of British colonization, and reach maturity only when ties to the colonial power are finally severed. While this developmental trajectory is well documented in many of the case studies discussed in, and since, Schneider (2007), a comparison of Hong Kong and Gibraltar shows, in certain cases, that association with Britain can be seen as the best guarantor of these local identities and varieties of English. The present article sketches this alternate developmental trajectory, and examines under what circumstances it may emerge and how widely it might be applied.     

Rural Depopulation: Growth and Decline Processes over the Past Century

This article highlights the rise and geographic spread of depopulation in rural America over the past century. “Depopulation” refers to chronic population losses that prevent counties from returning to an earlier period of peak population size. In this article, we identify 746 depopulating counties—mostly nonmetropolitan—representing 24 percent of all U.S. counties. More than 46 percent of remote rural counties are depopulating compared to 24 percent of the adjacent nonmetropolitan counties and just 6 percent of metropolitan counties. Rural county populations often peaked in size during the 1940s and 1950s, especially in the agricultural heartland. Depopulation today reflects a complex interplay of chronic net out‐migration and natural decrease that is rooted in the past. Depopulation not only is a direct result of persistent out‐migration but also reflects large second‐order effects expressed in declining fertility and rising mortality (usually associated with population aging). Depopulation has become a signature demographic phenomenon in broad regions of rural America.     

Doing it differently: emancipatory autism studies within a neurodiverse academic space

Abstract

In the current research climate, in which many autistic and autism communities are increasingly calling for a move towards collaborative forms of research, we consider how a loosely formed epistemological community may serve to challenge ‘business as usual’ in the academy. Mindful of the need to move beyond theory, we use this experience to concretely consider how knowledge about autism and neurotypicality can be meaningfully (co)-produced, and made available both to the research community and also to autistic and autism communities. Here, we use our own co-production of this article to explore how autistic experience may trouble normative meanings of academic knowledge production. We also consider the limits and possibilities of a neurodiverse research collaboration to reflect on ways in which a loose epistemological space may serve to contribute to knowledge about both autism and neurotypicality, adding to debate around collaborative research.     

Religion and Comparative Political Sociology

In the last decade, religious politics seemed to sweep the world. Calls have been issued for religion to regain its rightful place in the study of politics. We contend that the influence of religion on politics is hardly novel and that religious beliefs and organizations have had a profound effect on polities both in the developed democracies and in developing societies. Drawing widely on the comparative sociology of politics, we trace the role of religion in the generation of political attitudes and preferences, in the process of democratization, in the formation of interest organizations and confessional parties, and consider the contemporary debate concerning religious violence. We will demonstrate the importance of religion in inspiring political behavior, including both electoral and non-electoral politics, and in the shaping of political institutions and the regulatory framework surrounding the religious sphere. Our survey indicates that neither arguments concerning the secularization of polity and society nor for the recent return of religious fervor to politics is persuasive. Religion is, and has been, fundamental to modern politics.     

Immigration and the Transformation of American Unionism

Does immigration hamper union organizing in the United States? The prevailing literature strongly suggests that it does and for two reasons: first, immigrants increase the labor pool and diminish union influence over the labor market. And second, immigrants may be harder to organize than native workers. In this dominant view, unions are well served to restrict immigration and have always done so. But how, then, to explain the fact that American labor has long been deeply divided over the response to immigration? Drawing on new archival research and interviews, this paper uncovers a neglected side of American labor history in which many union leaders have extended solidarity to immigrants and sought to organize them. Moreover, analysis of time series data on immigration and union density corroborates the implicit theory of this alternate account of labor history: immigration has, in fact, no statistically significant effect – either positive or negative – on union density over time. Depending on specific conditions and strategies, unions can and have been successful in organizing during periods of high immigration.