Suburban class habitus: applying Pierre Bourdieu’s visual sociology to the city

Streetscapes of two middle-upper-class suburbs in Melbourne, the State capital city of Victoria, Australia, are photographically compared. Selected pairs of pictures from each streetscape are discussed and contrasted, each pair being considered for how it illustrates one of the five aspects or dimensions in the chosen photographs from the respective suburbs. The near-similarity, yet subtle differences, seen from the street, in the housing and property facades in these suburbs, makes the comparison more difficult, but potentially more useful in terms of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus manifesting not just in people as individuals but in their lived environment. This embodied class imperative is described in interpreting the selected photograph pairs as producing a suburban class habitus in how inhabitants inscribe suburban class distinction into where they live. Using photographs as a methodological tool like Bourdieu means that the point of these visual streetscape representations of each suburb is not summative, deploying the term as a neat or easy label, but aims to be consistent with Bourdieu’s approach as a way of investigating the complex socioeconomic and sociocultural mechanisms by which the naturalised class sense is expressed physically in these presentations of self from the street-views they offer.     

The role of organizational facilitators in promoting job-related mental health and group service effectiveness: a two-wave analysis

This study aimed to add to knowledge by providing a more systematic integration of work characteristics, workers’ health and performance. The two-wave multi-source study was conducted to test the relationship over time between the healthy states of groups of service-oriented workers and their service effectiveness when their organizations provide facilitators such as training, technical support and autonomy. The study takes healthy states to be a composite of affective-motivational and competent collective states (collective vigour and service competence) and service effectiveness. Service effectiveness was a combination of service quality as assessed by customers and their loyalty intentions. Data from 53 hotels and restaurants in Spain were aggregated from 256 boundary workers (i.e. workers in direct contact with customers) and 530 customers at Time 1 and from 470 customers at Time 2 six month later. Structural equation modelling showed that organizational facilitators at Time 1 were related to the service effectiveness reported by customers at Time 2, and also that there was a relationship between service effectiveness at Time 1 and the healthy states reported by the groups at Time 2. That is, contrary to what is widely believed, there was an influence of performance on well-being.     

Creating SPOTs for Successful Aging: Strengthening the Case for Developing University-Based Retirement Communities Using Social-Physical Place Over Time Theory

Five elements are cited as being critical for a university-based retirement communities’ (UBRCs’) success: proximity to the university, two-directional programming, continuing care, a financial link to the university, and a minimum 10% resident connection to the university. We illustrate these criteria using examples from existing UBRCs. The comparisons are then contextualized in the broader framework of Social-Physical Place Over Time (SPOT) theory. SPOT theory focuses on the interactions between social and physical places among older adults. By analyzing the intersections between SPOT theory and UBRC criteria, we identify additional criteria to improve the definition of a UBRC: transportation support and facilitating activity. UBRCs offer value because they provide the social and physical place where older adults can live when they retire, thereby improving changes in individual agency and belongingness needs, which are key tenets of SPOT theory. The integration of the UBRC criteria and the SPOT theory framework builds on this relatively new meta-theory in environmental gerontology. SPOT theory effectively highlights how UBRCs benefit older adults and the community; UBRCs provide significant benefits not only to older adult residents, but also to the university communities that house them.     

Young Children's Affective Responses to Acceptance and Rejection From Peers: A Computer‐based Task Sensitive to Variation in Temperamental Shyness and Gender

This study presents a novel task examining young children's affective responses to evaluative feedback—specifically, social acceptance and rejection—from peers. We aimed to determine (1) whether young children report their affective responses to hypothetical peer evaluation predictably and consistently, and (2) whether young children's responses to peer evaluation vary as a function of temperamental shyness and gender. Four‐ to seven‐year‐old children (N = 48) sorted pictures of unknown, similar‐aged children into those with whom they wished or did not wish to play. Computerized peer evaluation later noted whether the pictured children were interested in a future playdate with participants. Participants then rated their affective responses to each acceptance or rejection event. Children were happy when accepted by children with whom they wanted to play, and disappointed when these children rejected them. Highly shy boys showed a wider range of responses to acceptance and rejection based on initial social interest, and may be particularly sensitive to both positive and negative evaluation. Overall, the playdate task captures individual differences in affective responses to evaluative peer feedback and is potentially amenable to future applications in research with young children, including pairings with psychophysiological measures.     

Subjective and Occupational Well-Being in a Sample of Mexican Workers

This article examines the well-being of workers, observing that subjective and occupational well-being are interrelated but independent dimensions and analyzing their interaction with their modulating factors. Specifically, the relationships between well-being and personal value structures are examined, hypothesizing that congruence between personal and socially predominant values improves the well-being of workers. The influence of various occupational and personal factors is also analyzed. We studied 209 workers of a multinational company in Mexico using different standardized questionnaires. The results demonstrate that subjective and occupational well-being are related but are independent variables influenced by differentiated variables. Specifically, the occupational wellbeing of workers is influenced by the nature of their work, whereas subjective well-being is affected by their social values and level of education. We present a model for the interaction of these variables and their consequences with the intention of the worker to stay with or leave the company. We discuss some practical issues raised by the study and make recommendations for future.     

Home Equity of New Legal Immigrants in the United States: An Evaluation of Three Key Theoretical Perspectives

Housing in the U.S. is a substantial expenditure, but possessing equity in a home also represents an important source of wealth. This study employs 2003 data from the New Immigrant Survey to examine the home equity of legal immigrants who have come to the U.S. from around the world. We empirically test the relevance of three key theoretical frameworks for predicting immigrants' home equity and evaluate each framework's ability to account for differences in home equity among origin groups. We find strong support for the assimilation and the segmented assimilation frameworks, and little support for the place stratification perspective, net of other factors. Substantial differences in the home equity between origin groups persist even in the presence of multiple controls, with implications for legal immigrants' current economic position and future well‐being in the U.S.     

U.K. Foot and Mouth Disease: A Systemic Risk Assessment of Existing Controls

This article details a systemic analysis of the controls in place and possible interventions available to further reduce the risk of a foot and mouth disease (FMD) outbreak in the United Kingdom. Using a research‐based network analysis tool, we identify vulnerabilities within the multibarrier control system and their corresponding critical control points (CCPs). CCPs represent opportunities for active intervention that produce the greatest improvement to United Kingdom's resilience to future FMD outbreaks. Using an adapted ‘features, events, and processes’ (FEPs) methodology and network analysis, our results suggest that movements of animals and goods associated with legal activities significantly influence the system's behavior due to their higher frequency and ability to combine and create scenarios of exposure similar in origin to the U.K. FMD outbreaks of 1967/8 and 2001. The systemic risk assessment highlights areas outside of disease control that are relevant to disease spread. Further, it proves to be a powerful tool for demonstrating the need for implementing disease controls that have not previously been part of the system.     

Individual differences in infancy research: Letting the baby stand out from the crowd

Within the developmental literature, there is an often unspoken tension between studies that aim to capture broad scale, fairly universal nomothetic traits, and studies that focus on mechanisms and trajectories that are idiographic and bounded to some extent by systematic individual differences. The suitability of these approaches varies as a function of the specific research interests at hand. Although the approaches are interdependent, they have often proceeded as parallel research traditions. The current review notes some of the historical and empirical bases for this divide and suggests that each tradition would benefit from incorporating both methodological approaches to iteratively examine universal (nomothetic) phenomena and the individual differences (idiographic) factors that lead to variation in development. This work may help isolate underlying causal mechanisms, better understand current functioning, and predict long‐term developmental consequences. In doing so, we also highlight empirical and structural issues that need to be addressed to support this integration.     

The Lost Inner World of Grantmaking Foundations (or,as Willie Sutton Once Said, “That's Where the Money Is”)

How Foundations Work: What Grantseekers Need to Know About the Many Faces of Foundations, by Dennis P. McIlnay. San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass, 1998. 204 pp., $29.95 cloth. Give and Take: A Candid Account of Corporate Philanthropy, by Reynold Levy. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999. 235 pp., $24.95 cloth.