Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social Psychology and Interaction

The University of Maine

Series

Articles 1 - 6 of 6

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Sustainability Science: A Call To Collaborative Action, David D. Hart, Kathleen P. Bell Apr 2013

Sustainability Science: A Call To Collaborative Action, David D. Hart, Kathleen P. Bell

Publications

Sustainability science is an emerging field directed at advancing sustainable development. Informed by recent scholarship and institutional experiments, we identify key roles for economists and encourage their greater participation in this research. Our call to collaborative action comes from positive experiences with the Sustainability Solutions Initiative based at the University of Maine, where economists collaborate with other experts and diverse stakeholders on real-world problems involving interactions between natural and human systems. We articulate a mutually beneficial setting where economists’ methods, skills, and norms add value to the problem-focused, interdisciplinary research of sustainability science and where resources, opportunities, and challenges from …

Go to article

Harassment Of Older Adults In The Workplace, Amy Blackstone Jan 2013

Harassment Of Older Adults In The Workplace, Amy Blackstone

Sociology School Faculty Scholarship

This chapter reviews research on harassment of older adults in the workplace and highlights results from my recent study of harassment of older workers in Maine. I suggest that the power that older people hold at work, at home, and in their communities shapes their workplace harassment experiences. Based on a survey of nearly 200 Maine workers aged 62 and above, four questions framed the study: (1) What is the content of older workers’ harassment experiences?; (2) Which older workers are most likely to become targets of workplace harassment?; (3) How do older workers respond to potentially harassing behaviors?; and …

Go to article

Choosing To Be Childfree: Research On The Decision Not To Parent, Amy Blackstone, Mahala Dyer Stewart Sep 2012

Choosing To Be Childfree: Research On The Decision Not To Parent, Amy Blackstone, Mahala Dyer Stewart

Sociology School Faculty Scholarship

Decisions about whether to have or rear children, as well as perceptions of people who choose not to parent are linked to a variety of social processes and identities. We review literature from a variety of disciplines that focuses on voluntarily childless adults. Early research in this area, emerging in the 1970s, focused almost exclusively on heterosexual women and utilized a childless rather than a childfree framework. Later work saw a shift to a “childless-by-choice” or “childfree” framework, emphasizing that for some, not being parents is an active choice rather than an accident. While more recent research includes lesbian women …

Go to article

The Impact Of Sexual Harassment On Depressive Symptoms During The Early Occupational Career, Jason N. Houle, Jeremy Staff, Jeylan T. Mortimer, Christopher Uggen, Amy M. Blackstone Jul 2011

The Impact Of Sexual Harassment On Depressive Symptoms During The Early Occupational Career, Jason N. Houle, Jeremy Staff, Jeylan T. Mortimer, Christopher Uggen, Amy M. Blackstone

Sociology School Faculty Scholarship

Sexual harassment has been theorized as a stressor with consequences for the physical and mental health of its targets. Although social scientists have documented a negative association between sexual harassment and mental health, few longitudinal studies have investigated the association between sexual harassment and depressive symptoms. Using longitudinal survey data from the Youth Development Study, combined with in-depth interviews, this article draws on Louise Fitzgerald’s theoretical framework, stress theory, and the life course perspective to assess the impact of sexual harassment on depressive affect during the early occupational career. In support of Fitzgerald’s model, the authors’ findings confirm that sexual …

Go to article

Doing Good, Being Good, And The Social Construction Of Compassion, Amy Blackstone Feb 2009

Doing Good, Being Good, And The Social Construction Of Compassion, Amy Blackstone

Sociology School Faculty Scholarship

Activists and volunteers in the United States face the dilemma of having to negotiate the ideals of American individualism with their own acts of compassion. In this article, I consider how activists and volunteers socially construct compassion. Data from ethnographic research in the breast cancer and antirape movements are analyzed. The processes through which compassion is constructed are revealed in participants’ actions and in their identities. It is through their actions (or “doing good”) and their perceptions and presentations of themselves (“being good”) that participants construct compassion as a gendered phenomenon. Together, the processes of doing good and being good …

Go to article

Forum To Discuss Issues Of Safety In Schools And Society, Kay Hyatt, Robert Cobb Jan 1999

Forum To Discuss Issues Of Safety In Schools And Society, Kay Hyatt, Robert Cobb

General University of Maine Publications

The Task Force on Safe Schools, a regional collaborative of education and community leaders chaired by Robert Cobb, dean of the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Maine, will sponsor a public form on Wednesday, January 13. The purpose of the forum is to hear the concerns and seek the ideas of a broader constituency on addressing issues of incivility and violence in schools and society. The Task Force has spent the past six months examining issues, trends, existing policy and resources, and the barriers schools and communities face in preventing and responding to youth violence.

Go to article