Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Total Station Mapping: Practical Examples From Alta And Baja California, Tsim D. Schneider, Lee M. Panich

Faculty Publications

The use of electronic total data stations for mapping archaeological sites is examined through two California case studies. Mission Santa Catalina, located in the high desert of Baja California, and a cluster of three shell mounds, located in a forest in the San Francisco Bay area, represent two different examples of organizing and implementing a mapping program using a total station. In this article, we will discuss the basic use of total stations for mapping archaeological sites and provide an overview of the process of creating digital maps from data obtained using a total station. The two case studies will …

Why Multilevel Selection Matters, Alexander J. Field

Economics

In spite of its checkered intellectual history, and in spite of the myriadproposals of alternative models that claim both to account for the range of humanbehavior and to dispense with the need for selection above the organism level, a mul-tilevel selection framework allowing for biological as well as cultural group selectionremains the only coherent means of accounting for the persistence and spread ofbehavioral inclinations which, at least upon first appearance at low frequency, wouldhave been biologically altruistic. This argument is advanced on three tracks: througha r eview of experimental and observational evidence inconsistent with a narrow ver-sion of rational choice …

Introduction To Lgbtq America Today, John C. Hawley

English

l was born in Los Angeles in 1947 and learned from my classmates in seventh grade that boys who wrote with their left hand or wore green and yellow on Thursdays were homos. Because I did both, I knew I was in deep trouble from the start and might have some pretending to do. Such was the atmosphere for LGBTQ folks in the United States throughout the 1950s. Things loosened just a bit in the 1960s, when hippies were shaking society up. Then, in the 1970s, gay folks seemed to be-a lot more visible--disturbingly so, in the minds of many-and …

Impacts Of ‘Three Strikes And You’Re Out’ On Crime Trends In California And Throughout The United States, Elsa Y. Chen

Political Science

The impacts of Three Strikes on crime in California and throughout the U.S. are analyzed using cross-sectional time series analysis of state-level data from 1986 to 2005. The model measures both deterrence and incapacitation effects, controlling for pre-existing crime trends and economic, demographic, and policy factors. Despite limited usage outside California, the presence of a Three Strikes law appears to be associated with slightly but significantly faster rates of decline in robbery, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft nationwide. Three Strikes is also associated with slower declines in murder rates. Although California’s law is the broadest and most-frequently-used Three Strikes …

The Liberation Hypothesis And Racial And Ethnic Disparities In The Application Of California’S Three Strikes Law, Elsa Y. Chen

Political Science

This paper examines the extent to which racial and ethnic disparities exist in the implementation of California's “Three Strikes and You're Out” law and whether racial and ethnic disparities vary by type of offense. Logistic regression analysis of individual-level data on over 171,000 California prison inmates indicates that African-Americans are more likely than whites and Latinos to receive third-strike sentences, even when legally relevant variables are controlled. The analysis also finds that Latino defendants are significantly less likely to receive third-strike sentences. The results also indicate that the black-white gap is greater for offenses known as “wobblers,” which can be …

The Role Of Gender In Environmental Justice, Nancy Unger

History

Environmental Justice incorporates an inclusive definition of its subject matter, exploring the environmental burdens impacting all marginalized populations and communities. This expansive definition allows for the possibility that populations conventionally viewed as privileged can nevertheless be marginalized and suffer uniquely from environmental injustices. Employing such a definition can also reveal how an ostensibly powerless group can fight for environmental justice on its own terms—and win. Gender has played an important role in environmental justice (and injustice) throughout the history of the United States. Excerpts from my current book project, Beyond “Nature’s Housekeepers”: Gendered Turning Points for American Women in Environmental …

Social Exchange Orientation And Conflict Communication In Romantic Relationships, Justin P. Boren, Amy M. Bippus, Sabrina Worsham

Communication

Prior research has not conclusively established how individuals' social exchange orientation (EO) affects their communication in, and satisfaction with, romantic elationships. Surveying 466 individuals in romantic relationships, we found that concern about being underbenefitted was more strongly correlated with conflict behaviors than concern about overbenefittedness, and that conflict communication influenced the relationship between exchange orientation and relationship satisfaction. We discuss the need for further research to discover how EO may influence communication patterns as relationships develop.

From Multi-User Virtual Environment To 3d Virtual Learning Environment, Daniel Livingstone, Jeremy Kemp, Edmund Edgar

Academic Technology

While digital virtual worlds have been used in education for a number of years, advances in the capabilities and spread of technology have fed a recent boom in interest in massively multi-user 3D virtual worlds for entertainment, and this in turn has led to a surge of interest in their educational applications. In this paper we briefly review the use of virtual worlds for education, from informal learning to formal instruction, and consider what is required to turn a virtual world from a Multi-User Virtual Environment into a fully fledged 3D Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). In this we focus on …

The Impact Of The Second World War On U.S. Productivity Growth, Alexander J. Field

Economics

This paper considers the productivity impact on the US economy of the period of war mobilization and demobilization lasting from 1941 to 1948. Optimists have pointed to learning by doing in military production and spin-offs from military R & D as the basis for asserting a substantial positive effect of military conflict on potential output. Productivity data for the private non-farm economy are not consistent with this view, as they show slower total factor productivity (TFP) growth between 1941 and 1948 than before or after. The paper argues for adopting a less rosy perspective on the supply side effects of …

Homeless Women With Children In Shelters: The Institutionalization Of Family Life, Kathryn Feltey, Laura Nichols

Sociology

In this chapter, we examine the shelter experience for homeless mothers, particularly those with young children. We review the literature on women with children living in homeless shelters and draw from the findings of our research on homeless women living in shelters and transitional housing in the midwestern United States from 1990 through 2002. This research included in-depth interviews conducted over a twelve-year period with almost 200 women residing in emergency homeless shelters, battered women's shelters, or transitional housing for single-parent families. For this chapter, we draw from the data on sheltered homeless mothers living with or separated from their …

Civic Engagement, Pedagogy, And Information Technology On Web Sites For Youth, Christine Bachen, Chad Raphael, Kathleen-M. Lynn, Kristen A. Mckee, Jessica Philippi

Communication

Scholars of political socialization are paying increasing attention to how the Internet might help cure the civic disengagement of youth. This content analysis of a sample of 73 U.S.-based civic Web sites for youth introduces a framework for evaluating Web sites’ strategies for fostering active communication for citizenship. We offer the first systematic assessment of the extent to which a broad range of Web sites aim to develop young people’s abilities to use information and communication technology (ICT) as a vehicle for civic participation and to engage with ICT as a policy domain that encompasses issues (such as freedom of …

Immersive Learning Environments In Parallel Universes: Learning Through Second Life, Jeremy Kemp, Ken Haycock

Academic Technology

Opportunities for more creative and innovative environments for learners continue to develop through distance education. Especially at the post-secondary level, these immersive environments can involve high-end video game technologies to create multi-user virtual worlds that can both replicate and far extend physical classrooms. At San Jose State University's School of Library and Information Science, courses offered in and through Second Life develop both competence and comfort in working with library users. Several useful lessons have also been learned.

Biafra As Heritage And Symbol: Adichie, Mbachu, Iweala, John C. Hawley

English

Eddie Iroh made the observation that writers of his generation, who had lived through the Biafran conflict, were too close to the suffering to write the definitive accounts of the war, and that the task would fall to later generations. This essay looks at three later accounts Dulue Mbachu’s War Games (2005), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), and Uzodinma Iweala’s Beast of No Nation (2005) to assess the war’s impact on Nigerian cultural expression in the twenty-first century. As the eldest of the three writers, Mbachu lingers more on the war itself than do the other …

Introduction: Unrecorded Lives, John C. Hawley

English

When anthropology student (and later, novelist) Amitav Ghosh set out from Oxford to Egypt in 1980 to find a suitable subject for his research, he may not have suspected the impact the trip would have on his life. He succeeded in completing the required tome for his degree and then went on to write In an Antique Land (1992), an unusually constructed book that deals with themes of historical and cultural displacement, with alienation and something we might these days, under the influence of postcolonial theory, call "subaltern cosmopolitanism." Others might recognize the genre in which Ghosh is writing as …

Darfur: Rainfall And Conflict, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray

Economics

Data on rainfall patterns only weakly corroborate the claim that climate change explains the Darfur conflict that began in 2003 and has claimed more than 200,000 lives and displaced more than two million persons. Rainfall in Darfur did not decline significantly in the years prior to the eruption of major conflict in 2003; rainfall exhibited a flat trend in the thirty-years preceding the conflict (1972-2002). The rainfall evidence suggests instead a break around 1971. Rainfall is basically stationary over the pre- and post-1971 sub-periods. The break is larger for the more northerly rainfall stations, and is less noticeable for En …

Scholarly Communication: Solving A Global Crisis - Farrell, Thomas Farrell

Staff publications, research, and presentations

This is part of a presentation from the 2008 12th Biennial CARL Conference. It offers an overview of the history of Scholarly Communication and the Open Access movement, with examples from around the world. Other presentations from this CARL panel are available at: http://carl-acrl.org/Archives/ConferencesArchive/Conference08/during/breakout.html

Cotton Production In Burkina Faso: International Rhetoric Versus Local Realities, Leslie C. Gray

Environmental Studies and Sciences

Voices ranging from the editorial page of the New York Times to organizations such as Oxfam and the presidents of Burkina Faso and Mali have argued that U.S. cotton subsidies depress world cotton prices and hurt African farmers. These policies deny West African countries their comparative advantage in cotton, which they can produce more cheaply and with lower environmental impacts than farmers in the United States. Some have gone as far as phrasing this as a national security issue; editorials in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have suggested that removing subsidies would have a strong auxiliary …

Introduction: Cotton, Globalization, And Poverty In Africa, William G. Moseley, Leslie C. Gray

Environmental Studies and Sciences

This volume employs a modified commodity chain approach, focusing on the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of cotton production in Africa, and the links between this production and the global market. Individual chapters may examine one or multiple levels in the commodity chain and employ different theoretical approaches, from ethnography, to agroecology, to political ecology, to classic economic analysis. We want to acknowledge, however, that while the commodity chain is an important part of cotton dynamics, it is not the only force at work in African cotton. There are new and interesting developments outside the commodity chain that work for …

Conclusion: Hanging By A Thread: The Future Of Cotton In Africa, Leslie C. Gray, William G. Moseley

Environmental Studies and Sciences

Several broad themes emerge from the chapters in this volume. While declining world prices are a serious issue, the ability of farmers to weather declines in prices is often determined by national and local issues. These include government policy, institutions that provide marketing and supply services, access to resources such as land, labor, and agricultural inputs, and individual decision making. Despite declining world prices, some cotton growing economies have had success with cotton production while others have not fared well. In particular, the failure of cotton institutions in many countries is striking.Whether it comes to managing input distribution, new technologies, …

Faculty Attitudes And Behaviors Concerning Student Cheating, Rebecca Volpe, Laura Davidson, Matthew C. Bell

Psychology

The relationship between university faculty attitudes concerning student cheating and syllabus statements on academic integrity were evaluated to determine the relationship between faculty attitudes and their actual attempts to deter cheating rates through their syllabi. No relationship was found between attitudes about student cheating and the number of integrity-related syllabus statements, but this lack of relationship demonstrated an important inconsistency between faculty attitudes and behaviors: the amount of cheating that faculty believed happens does not correspond with written guidelines. In addition, faculty generally underestimated the levels of cheating in their classroom, particularly when faculty was on a non-tenured track. This …

The Development Of The Santa Clara Brief Compassion Scale: An Abbreviation Of Sprecher And Fehr’S Compassionate Love Scale, Jeong Yeong Hwang, Thomas G. Plante, Kathleen Lackey

Psychology

This purpose of this study is to develop a brief version of Sprecher and Fehr’s Compassionate Love Scale (2005). This was accomplished by administering the 21-item scale to college student participants and subsequently selecting five items for a brief version. The five items were selected based on the evaluation of high correlation coefficients between individual item responses and the overall total 21 questions from the original scale, the results of factor analysis, and items that had moderate means and high standard deviations. The correlation between the original and brief version is 0.96, while the internal reliability of the brief version, …

Communication Within The Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment, Laura L. Ellingson

Communication

The comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA) forms a cornerstone of geriatric care; the process is designed to assess the complex interaction of biological , psychological, and social challenges often faced by elder patients (e .g ., Extermann, 2003). Using a narrative case study of a patient undergoing a CGA by members of an interdisciplinary geriatric oncology team. I explore some of the communication challenges and opportunities for healthcare providers caring for geriatric patients. My goal in offering readers narratives of geriatric patient-healthcare provider communication-rather than only analysis of those interactions - is to complement typical analysis of research findings with an …

Technology, Theology, Thinking, And The Church, Paul A. Soukup

Communication

From the midst of what sometimes seems a brave new world of communication—Web 2.0, blogs, mobile phone service from almost anywhere, video by mobile phone—we should not forget that the Church and humanity have lived through it all before. In fact, our communication revolution follows several others, dating back at least 3500 years, starting with the invention of writing, jumping to the mechanical writing of the printing press, to the electrical communication of the telegraph, and finally to our electronic world. At each stage, humans encoded communication in ever more complex symbolic and technical systems, which make communication more powerful …

Considering A Catholic View Of Evangelical Media, Paul A. Soukup

Communication

Several years ago, the National Catholic Reporter carried a story warning readers about the popular Left Behind series of Christian apocalyptic novels. Writers in The Living Light, a quarterly publication of the United States bishops’ Department of Education, point out to their readers that the series denies a number of Catholic teachings and is both subtly and overtly anti-Catholic.1 While the staff of the Catholic bishops’ Department of Education probably wanted to prepare teachers for questions from their students who read the Left Behind series, the charge of anti-Catholicism in evangelical discourse was not new.

At the same time, evangelicals …

Cultivating Sustainable Coffee: Persistent Paradoxes, Christopher M. Bacon, V. Ernesto Méndez, Jonathan A. Fox

Environmental Studies and Sciences

This chapter discusses the relationship and interconnections among changing the livelihoods of farmers, initiatives for sustainable coffee, and the production of shade-grown coffee. It examines the advantages and opportunities for farmers and producers engaged in coffee certification and diversification programs. The role of Fair Trade and organic networks in creating awareness of biodiversity conservation, the social and environment costs of coffee systems, and the need for supporting small farmers are also discussed. The methods to increase accountability and improve the efficiency of coffee cooperatives are presented in this chapter, as are the importance of understanding the sustainability initiatives and their …

From Differentiated Coffee Markets Towards Alternative Trade And Knowledge Networks, Roberta Jaffe, Christopher M. Bacon

Environmental Studies and Sciences

This chapter presents a case study focusing on the Community Agroecology Network (CAN), an organization started by the United States and Mesoamerica’s activists, whose effort is to create an alternative trade and knowledge network. The basic aim behind CAN is to benefit conservation and social development efforts by linking producers, consumers, and producer organizations. CAN is a response to the problems arising out of the dominance of certification processes in Fair Trade and organic coffee networks, and the chapter discusses the organization’s main goals of intercommunity relationship development, direct coffee marketing, and ecological sustainability. It moots a comparison between alternative …

Raise Your Profile: Build Your Program, Jennifer E. Nutefall, Deborah Gaspar

Staff publications, research, and presentations

To raise the library's profile within the campus community, it is critical to create a strategic plan and align library goals with those of the university. At George Washington University's Gelman Library, the instruction librarians gained internal and external support to hire two new instruction librarians to better support collaboration with the new university writing program. The library then used assessment data to successfully advocate for an additional two positions.

Autoethnography As Constructionist Project, Laura L. Ellingson, Carolyn Ellis

Women's and Gender Studies

In this chapter, we explore autoethnography as a social constructionist project. We want to resist the tendency to dichotomize and instead explore how autoethnography makes connections between seemingly polar opposites. Though we see it as a sign of progress that authors desire to tease out differences in autoethnographic projects, we argue that concentrating on dichotomies is counterproductive, given that autoethnography by definition operates as a bridge, connecting autobiography and ethnography in order to study the intersection of self and others, self and culture.

After further detailing in this chapter the limits of dichotomous thinking, we sketch the meanings and goals …

Land Tenure And Rental In Western Sudan, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray

Economics

This paper reports on aspects of land tenure in western Sudan, especially the nature of tenure insecurity and the functioning of the land rental market. The active land rental market accounted for about one-third of cultivated land. Patterns of land rental transactions, and tests of the importance of insecurity in renting land, where the owner may not be able to reclaim land rented out, do not support the presumption that rental markets perform poorly. The role of the sheikh as administrator of village land, and the claims of large landowners to vast tracts, are, however, important political problems that must …

Diminished Access, Diverted Exclusion: Women And Land Tenure In Sub-Saharan Africa, Michael Kevane, Leslie C. Gray

Economics

Increasing commercialization, population growth and concurrent increases in land value have affected women's land rights in Africa. Most of the literature concentrates on how these changes have led to an erosion of women's rights. This paper examines some of the processes by which women's rights to land are diminishing. First, we examine cases where rights previously utilized have become less important; that is, the incidence of exercising rights has decreased. Second, we investigate how women's rights to land decrease as the public meanings underlying the social interpretation and enforcement of rights are manipulated. Third, we examine women's diminishing access to …