Social remittances: migration driven local-level forms of cultural diffusion

"Many studies highlight the macro-level dissemination of global culture and institutions. This article focuses on social remittances--a local-level, migration-driven form of cultural diffusion. Social remittances are the ideas, behaviors, identities, and social capital that flow from receiving- to sending-country communities. The role that these resources play in promoting immigrant entrepreneurship, community and family formation, and political integration is widely acknowledged. This article specifies how these same ideas and practices are remolded in receiving countries, the mechanisms by which they are sent back to sending communities, and the role they play in transforming sending-country social and political life." The data concern migrants from the Dominican Republic to the Boston area of the United States.     

Being Transgender: The Experience of Transgender Identity Development

This article is based on a grounded theory analysis of interviews with transgender-identified people from different regions of the United States. Participants held a variety of gender identities under the transgender rubric (e.g., crossdresser, transman, transwoman, butch lesbian). Interviews explored the participants’ experiences in arriving at their gender identity. This article presents three clusters of findings related to the common processes of transgender identity development. This process was made possible by accessibility of transgender narratives that injected hope into what was a childhood replete with criticism and scrutiny. Ultimately, participants came to their identities through balancing a desire for authenticity with demands of necessity—meaning that they weighed their internal gender experience with considerations about their available resources, coping skills, and the consequences of gender transitions. The implications of these findings are considered in terms of their contribution to gender theory, research, and clinical support for transgender clients.     

Exploring how the social model of disability can be re-invigorated: in response to Mike Oliver

In his 2013 article in Disability & Society, Oliver recommended that the social model should either be replaced or re-invigorated. I argue here that the social model’s current emphasis reflects the social conditions in which it was introduced, and that the model’s impact on disabled people’s lives would increase if its emphasis was to more accurately reflect the current social conditions in the geographical regions in which it is applied. In order to help foster its re-invigoration, I ask five questions for discussion on the way forward for the social model. I identified my questions through examining published writing on the scope of the social model and on the model’s relationship with other models of disability.     

Developing a model of disability that focuses on the actions of disabled people

Disabled people, writers on disability and disability activists stress the importance of disabled people being included in all aspects of society. I argue that a major omission from this inclusiveness is that no current model of disability focuses on the impact of the actions of disabled people on disability. Disabled people are not passive bystanders, powerless to reduce the restrictions of disability. On the contrary, we are central to actively limiting its constraints. I develop a model of disability, called ‘active’, which focuses on the effects on disability of the individual and collective actions of disabled people. I describe published findings which indicate that engaging in self-help, using support groups and deploying assistive technology can all reduce the limitations of disability. Recent increases in the number of disability support groups and developments in assistive technology have substantially augmented the potential for disabled people to combat the effects of disability.     

Intergenerational Relations with In-Laws in the Context of the Social Convoy: Theoretical and Practical Implications

Intergenerational relations among in-laws are involuntary ties emerging as a consequence of marriage. As such, these relations provide a window through which the dynamics involved in restructuring social networks following life transitions may be observed. A questionnaire, based on the social convoy model, was given to an ethnically diverse sample of adults with living in-laws (N = 170), married 2–15 years. About half of the respondents included in-laws in a concentric circle network diagram of persons close and important to them. The strongest unique predictors of convoy placement for the mother-in-law were support, frequency of contact, relationship quality, and length of marriage, and for the father-in-law were support, relationship quality, and value similarity. This study sheds light on the dynamics of an intergenerational relationship that has been largely ignored in the literature, laying the groundwork for conceptualizing ways to foster positive in-law relationships as a necessary tool in managing the care of the growing numbers of elderly in the new millennium.     

Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society1

This article explores the social theory and consequent methodology that underpins studies of transnational migration. First, we propose a social field approach to the study of migration and distinguish between ways of being and ways of belonging in that field. Second, we argue that assimilation and enduring transnational ties are neither incompatible nor binary opposites. Third, we highlight social processes and institutions that are routinely obscured by traditional migration scholarship but that become clear when we use a transnational lens. Finally, we locate our approach to migration research within a larger intellectual project, taken up by scholars of transnational processes in many fields, to rethink and reformulate the concept of society such that it is no longer automatically equated with the boundaries of a single nation‐state.     

Court-ordered foster family care reform: a case study

The authors examine the implications of G. L. v. Zumwalt, a case that resulted in a far-reaching consent decree that mandates specific reforms in policy and practice to be implemented by a public social welfare agency in its delivery of services to foster children and their families.     

A business version of the prisoner’s dilemma: A teaching technique

The “prisoner’s dilemma” is an archetypal choice dilemma widely used for teaching and research in the social sciences. A version of the prisoner’s dilemma which set the problem in an ordinary business context was used as a pedagogic instrument with graduate business students, fully employed and aspiring to upward mobility, and nurses—both male and female—employed at various supervisory levels. The site was a college in metropolitan Detroit. The method engages students in verbal expression, explanation, and justification of their choices and thus departs from mainstream research which treats the prisoner’s dilemma mainly in mathematical terms, usually based upon experiments requiring many iterative choices. Also, whereas the prisoner’s dilemma places the subjects in the frame of mind of being prisoners, this version is of choice-making by free people, with the additional unspecified choice available of not to play the game. Replication outcomes were similar enough to support tentative generalization, although statistical analysis was not significant because of the small number of cases. Results suggest that the method may be useful to managers in their analysis of ethical choice situations and development of alternate scenarios. Vivid lessons regarding the ethical dimensions of business behavior can be learned from the use of the prisoner’s dilemma.     

Open Basic Science Needed for Significant and Fundamental Discoveries

Basic science is about new things.A fundamental principle for basic science is luck.I have been very,very lucky throughout my life.Early on,I got to work with some of the most outstanding scientists globally,including British scientists in Cambridge,people like Francis Crick,John Kendrew,and Max Perutz.These are the scientists who redefined life as physics and chemistry in the 50s and 60s of the 20th century.