Social Justice Commons^™

Getting Short‐Changed? The Impact Of Outside Money On District Representation, Anne E. Baker

Political Science

Objective
As incumbent House members increasingly recruit campaign contributions from individuals who reside outside of their districts, this raises the question of whether a dependency on outside money affects members’ responsiveness and ideological proximity to district constituents.

Method
Using data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Studies of 2006, 2008, and 2010 as well as individual contribution data corresponding to those years from the U.S. Federal Election Commission, I examine this relationship using responsiveness and proximity models of representation.

Results
I find a dependency on outside contributions decreases members’ responsiveness to their districts and increases the members’ ideological extremity. Moreover, within‐district …

Nurturing Compassion Development Among College Students: A Longitudinal Study, Thomas G. Plante, Katherine Halman

Psychology

Little research exists on the development of compassion among college undergraduates. This study tracks changes in compassion and identifies factors associated with these changes over the course of undergraduate students’ college careers, from the time of admittance to the time of graduation. Compassion levels assessed at the point of college entrance accounted for 25% of the variance in compassion at the time of graduation. These findings provided evidence for the notion that compassion can continue to be cultivated once in college. Predictors such as diversity training, the frequency of religious service attendance, participation in community-based service-learning, political identification, and feeling …

Compassion Predictors In Undergraduates: A Catholic College Example, Erin S. Callister, Thomas G. Plante

Psychology

Compassion is sorely needed in contemporary society, including within faith-based colleges. Past research has examined the prevention of compassion fatigue in healthcare professions, but relatively little research exists on the predictors of compassion, particularly among student populations. This study examines the factors associated with higher compassion levels in graduating college seniors, revealing demographic, experiential, and beliefrelated factors contributing to compassion. Results suggest that the general profile of a highly compassionate graduating college senior is a student who is female, politically liberal, religious, studying the natural or social sciences, actively involved in community service or volunteering, and who has undergone workshops …

Hegel, History, And Evil, Philip J. Kain

Philosophy

In the Philosophy of Right, Hegel tells us that what he means by "right" includes not merely morality (Moralität) and ethics (Sittlichkeit) but world history. He even tells us that the right of world history "is the highest right" (PR [White] §33, §33A).2 He tells us that, through interaction with other nations, the spirit of a people realizes itself in world history (PR §33). This can involve a collision of rights, and such collision will mean that one right gets subordinated to another: "Only the right of world spirit is absolute without restriction" (PR [White] §30R).3 It is quite clear, …

That The Worst Shooting In Us History Took Place In A Gay Bar Is Unsurprising, Nancy Unger

History

The selection of Pulse, a gay Orlando nightclub, as the site for a murderous homophobic rampage makes the killer’s crime a special outrage in view of the role that nightclubs have played in this nation’s LGBTQ history. Like many popular LGTBQ clubs, Pulse serves not only as a welcoming place to party, but also as a community partner, hosting a variety of social and educational events including, for example, Breast Cancer Awareness and HIV/AIDS prevention. According to its website, Pulse Orlando serves as “a driving force within the GLBT community” and strives to “to make strides towards equality awareness, and …

Reconsidering Citizenship Models And The Case For Cultural Citizenship: Implications For A Social Psychology Of Social Justice, Regina Day Langhout, Jesica S. Fernández

Ethnic Studies

This chapter reviews citizenship constructions in the United States and examines how historic, legal, economic, schooling, and multicultural “melting pot” ideology landscapes shape citizenship and its performance. It introduces cultural citizenship as an alternative starting point for citizenship and its performance, providing a theoretical foundation and empirical evidence for cultural citizenship, and argues in support of incorporating this framework into social psychology when working toward collective social justice. It also discusses the implications of adopting a cultural citizenship perspective for social psychology and how this perspective can extend our understanding of citizenship practices to enact social justice. We conclude with …

The Unexpected Belle La Follette, Nancy Unger

History

Although the New York Times eulogized Belle Case La Follette in 1931 as perhaps "the most influential of all American women who have had to do with public affairs in this country," she faded quickly from popular memory.1 And when she is recalled, it's usually in relation to her husband and sons. This minimization of her own accomplishments began with progressive reform giant Robert M. La Follette famously calling her "my wisest and best counselor." He openly deferred to his wife's judgment throughout his storied professional life: as a district attorney, three-term congressman (1885-1891), lawyer (1891—1900), three-term governor of Wisconsin …

Even Judging Woodrow Wilson By The Standards Of His Own Time, He Was Deplorably Racist, Nancy Unger

History

The news that Princeton acquiesced to student demands that the university confront the racism of Woodrow Wilson set off a series of responses. Some protest that it is unfair to judge the 28th president by present day standards. These pundits, almost all white, proclaim that Wilson must be understood within the context of his own time. The inference of such an assertion is that in times of pervasive racism it is reasonable for a leader to perpetuate it. Setting aside the assumption that morals are relative rather than absolute, let’s examine Wilson’s actions within his times.

Civic Play And Civic Gaps: Can Life Simulation Games Advance Educational Equity?, Christine Bachen, Pedro F. Hernández-Ramos, Chad Raphael, Amanda Waldron

Communication

Digital games and simulations (DG&S) could help mitigate inequities in civic education and participation, which are found in many contemporary democracies. Yet incorporating DG&S into the curriculum may reinforce or introduce inequities for students who are less engaged by game-based learning. A quasi-experimental study of 301 U.S. high school students in social studies classes examined whether prior academic performance, civic engagement, civic game play experience and gender affected how (and which) students benefit from playing a life simulation game. Dependent variables included several civic dispositions: justice-oriented citizenship norms and interest in politics, news, and global issues. The simulation game especially …

Hegel On Sovereignty And Monarchy, Philip J. Kain

Philosophy

Hegel is not a democrat. He is a monarchist. But he wants monarchy because he does not want strong government. He wants to deemphasize power. He develops an idealist conception of sovereignty that allows for a monarch less powerful than a president—one whose task is to expresses the unity of the state and realize the rationality inherent in it. A monarch needs to be a conduit through which reason is expressed and actualized, not a power that might obstruct this process.

Hegel, Recognition, And Same-Sex Marriage, Philip J. Kain

Philosophy

To understand Hegel's concepts of love, marriage, and Sittlichkeit, which are closely related, we must begin to understand his very important theory of recognition. This will be the task of Section II of this article. In pursuing this task, we must be careful to avoid the mistake, made by some commentators, of thinking that mutual recognition between equals is sufficient either for marriage or for Sittlichkeit. For Hegel, I hope to show, the more significant and powerful the recognizer, the more real the recognized—such that, ultimately, recognition must come from spirit (Geist). Then, to better understand Hegel's theory of recognition, …

Gay And Lesbian Culture And Politics, John C. Hawley

English

As laws change and we move several generations away from the times of greatest struggle, the atmosphere that created the contemporary scene for gay and lesbian citizens, their culture and politics, becomes increasingly remote and potentially forgotten. As recent historians have recalled, though, “This was a population too shy and fearful to even raise its hand, a group of people who had to start at zero in order to create their place in the nation’s culture,” –an “invisible people” (Clendinen, 11). The movement for gay and lesbian rights in the United States, considered by many to have originated with the …

Postcolonial Theory, John C. Hawley

English

Rather than agreeing to any one meaning or referent, most critics these days speak of ‘post-colonialisms’ to refer principally to ‘historical, social and economic material conditions’ and at other times to ‘historically-situated imaginative products’ and ‘aesthetic practices: representations, discourses and values’ (McLeod 2000: 254). Arising from subaltern studies, its theorists embrace hybridity, indict alterity, analyze colonial discourse, and employ strategic essentialism to promote identity politics. Under its influence, a strain of self-interrogation has for decades run as an undercurrent through much of anthropology and archaeology. Topics including looting, repatriation, stewardship, and the transformation of disciplinary identity are now persistent tropes …

Reducing Poverty In California…Permanently, Conway Collis, David Grusky, Sara Kimberlin, Courtney Powers, Sandra Sanchez, Marion Coddou, Erin Cumberworth, Jonathan Fisher, Jared Furuta, Jasmine Hill, Molly M. King, Yana Kucheva, Ryan Leupp, Ana Matosantos, Natassia Rodriguez, Rachel Wright

Sociology

If California were to seriously commit to equalizing opportunity and reducing poverty, how might that commitment best be realized?

This is of course a hypothetical question, as there is no evidence that California is poised to make such a serious commitment, nor have many other states gone much beyond the usual lip-service proclamations. There are many reasons for California’s complacency, but an important one is that most people think that poverty is intractable and that viable solutions to it simply don’t exist.

When Californians know what needs to be done, they tend to go forward and get it done. When, …

Compassion Development In Higher Education, Roxanne Rashedi, Thomas G. Plante, Erin S. Callister

Psychology

Many schools of psychology and religious studies intend to promote the cultivation of compassion. Compassion is currently an integral area of study in psychology, religious studies, and higher education, specifically in faith-based higher education. While secular universities in the United States strive to generate disciplinary-based knowledge through scholarship, their ability to promote students' use of the information they are learning to create positive social change has typically lagged. Conscious of the magnitude of today's global issues and dissatisfied with the current disparity between the world's reality and university curricula, scholars have begun to re-imagine the role of higher education in …

Why Is There So Much Poverty In California? The Causes Of California’S Sky-High Poverty And The Evidence Behind The Equal Opportunity Plan For Reducing It, David Grusky, Marion Coddou, Erin Cumberworth, Jonathan Fisher, Jared Furuta, Jasmine Hill, Sara Kimberlin, Molly M. King, Yana Kucheva, Ryan Leupp, Marybeth Mattingly, Natassia Rodriguez, Charles Varner, Rachel Wright

Sociology

The purpose of this report is to describe the current state of poverty in California, to discuss concrete steps that could be taken to reduce poverty in California, and to present the best available evidence on the likely effects of those steps. We take on an important but infrequently-posed question: If California were to seriously commit to reducing poverty, how might that commitment best be realized?

This is of course a hypothetical question, as there is no evidence that California is poised to make such a serious commitment, nor have many other states gone much beyond the usual lip service …

Women And Gender: Useful Categories Of Analysis In Environmental History, Nancy Unger

History

In 1990, Carolyn Merchant proposed, in a roundtable discussion published in The Journal of American History, that gender perspective be added to the conceptual frameworks in environmental history. 1 Her proposal was expanded by Melissa Leach and Cathy Green in the British journal Environment and History in 1997. 2 The ongoing need for broader and more thoughtful and analytic investigations into the powerful relationship between gender and the environment throughout history was confirmed in 2001 by Richard White and Vera Norwood in "Environmental History, Retrospect and Prospect," a forum in the Pacific Historical Review. Both Norwood, in her provocative contribution …

In Search Of A Jewish Audience: New York’S Guild Art Gallery, 1935-1937, Andrea Pappas

Art and Art History

How did Jewishness affect the relationships among artists, galleries, artists’ groups and collectors?” Scholars have scrutinized the Jewish presence in American art in the twentieth century over the last fifteen years or so in essays, monographs and surveys. Studies of Jewish artists and their works continue to proliferate, and scholars have even examined the connections between art history as a discipline and Jewishness, contributing to both the history and the sociology of art history and to the range of Jewish studies. The re-evaluation of the work of artists such as Raphael Soyer, Theresa Bernstein, Jack Levine, Mark Rothko, Audrey Flack …

If You Can’T Take The Heat, Stay Out Of The Kitchen: A Reflection On “Student Beliefs, Multiculturalism, And Client Welfare.”, Thomas G. Plante

Psychology

In Student beliefs, multiculturalism, and client welfare, Professor Kristin Hancock offers a thoughtful description of and reflection on the contemporary challenges associated with psychology graduate trainees managing their personal and religious beliefs and practices with the training and professional demands of the psychology profession and their educational training institutions. She reviewed several recent court cases (e.g., Ward v. Polite et al., Keeton v. Anderson-Wiley et al., Ward v. Wilbanks et al.) where psychology students sued their graduate programs (typically secular state universities) because their training requirements included multicultural competency training involving sexual issues such as homosexuality. These graduate training …

Chattering Classes/Twittering Revolutionaries: Journalism, Social Media, And The Arab Spring, John C. Hawley

English

In Culture and Imperialism Edward Said discusses internationality and cosmopolitanism against the backdrop of the Gulf War, and Ree's view that the "nation-form is a kind of false consciousness", as if it were "an expression of popular subjective will" (Said, 1993: 10). But the monopolization of power by central national authorities results in a kind of façade, whereby "processes which are actually the effect of internationality are experienced as an expression of the natures of different nations and their individual members" (Said, 1993: 10, emphasis added). Yet nationalism sits uncomfortably in countries that, some might say, were in some cases …

Hegel And The Failure Of Civil Society, Philip J. Kain

Philosophy

On what might be called a Marxist reading, Hegel’s analysis of civil society accurately recognizes a necessary tendency toward a polarization of classes and the pauperization of the proletariat, a problem for which Hegel, however, has no solution. Indeed, Marxists think there can be no solution short of eliminating civil society. It is not at all clear that this standard reading is correct. The present paper tries to show how it is plausible to understand Hegel as proposing a solution, one that is similar to that of social democrats, and one that could actually work.

Introduction To Deliberation, Democracy, And Civic Forums: Improving Equality And Publicity, Chad Raphael, Christopher F. Karpowitz

Communication

Innovative forums that integrate citizen deliberation into policy making are revitalizing democracy in many places around the world. Yet controversy abounds over whether these forums ought to be seen as authentic sources of public opinion and how they should fit with existing political institutions. How can civic forums include less powerful citizens and ensure that their perspectives are heard on equal terms with more privileged citizens, officials, and policy experts? How can these fragile institutions communicate citizens' policy preferences effectively and legitimately to the rest of the political system? Deliberation, Democracy, and Civic Forums proposes creative solutions for improving equality …

Health Inequality, Sarah A. Burgard, Molly M. King

Sociology

There are many reasons why poverty matters, but it is especially troubling that it affects such fundamental outcomes as health and access to health care. If poverty did not bring about all manner of health risks, we would likely be somewhat less troubled by it. But of course poverty and other forms of social and economic disadvantage do often translate into deficits in health and health care. The purpose of this brief is to examine long-term trends in American health and to lay out the current state of evidence on the extent to which health and health care are unequally …

Food Sovereignty: An Alternative Paradigm For Poverty Reduction And Biodiversity Conservation In Latin America, M Jahi Chappell, Hannah Wittman, Christopher M. Bacon, Bruce G. Ferguson, Luis García Barrios, Raúl García Barrios, Daniel Jaffee, Jefferson Lima, V. Ernesto Méndez,, Helda Morales, Lorena Soto-Pinto, John Vandermeer, Ivette Perfecto

Environmental Studies and Sciences

Strong feedback between global biodiversity loss and persistent, extreme rural poverty are major challenges in the face of concurrent food, energy, and environmental crises. This paper examines the role of industrial agricultural intensification and market integration as exogenous socio-ecological drivers of biodiversity loss and poverty traps in Latin America. We then analyze the potential of a food sovereignty framework, based on protecting the viability of a diverse agroecological matrix while supporting rural livelihoods and global food production. We review several successful examples of this approach, including ecological land reform in Brazil, agroforestry, milpa, and the uses of wild varieties in …

Introduction To Empowered Partnerships: Community-Based Participatory Action Research For Environmental Justice, Christopher M. Bacon, Saneta Devuono-Powell, Mary Louise Frampton, Tony Lopresti, Camille Pannu

Environmental Studies and Sciences

This article introduces a special section on empowered partnerships that deepens a dialogue initiated during the 2010 symposium titled EmPowered Partnerships: Community-Based Participatory Action Research for Environmental Justice. The articles in this section will be divided between issues 1 and 2 of the Journal. After briefly reviewing the definitions and the steps associated with community-based participatory action research (CBPAR), we identify the synergies connecting the underlying principles and values of the environmental justice (EJ) movement and CBPAR. The principles-based comparison is part of an ongoing effort to craft a framework that produces research partnerships that are simultaneously more responsive to …

Distancing The Past: New Forms Of Discomfort With Aids In The U.S, John C. Hawley

English

In his Introduction to this collection, Gustavo Subero makes reference to the AIDS Quilt, a reference made especially significant since the year 2012 marked its 25th anniversary. The whole quilt had been last displayed in 1996; in the summer of 2012, 8.000 panels were rotated each day in the National Mall in Washington, DC. The quilt, composed of thousands of 3’ x 6’ panels (intentionally the size of a human grave), currently consists of over 48.000 panels honoring more than 94.000 individuals who have died of AIDS. In the early days of the quilt, in the 1980s and 1990s, the …

Good Publicity: The Legitimacy Of Public Communication Of Deliberation, Chad Raphael, Christopher F. Karpowitz

Communication

Although deliberative democratic theory values the principle of publicity, few empirical studies systematically assess the public communication of civic groups that deliberate over policy. The proliferation of such groups in contemporary politics, and of uncertainty about their legitimacy, suggests the need for such study. Drawing on contemporary deliberative theory, we derive a set of legitimate publicity indicators for assessing how well groups report their deliberative processes and policy conclusions. We demonstrate the reliability and utility of these measures in a comparative content analysis of the final reports of three common kinds of deliberative bodies: a governmentstakeholder task force, an activist …

Get Rich U Or Get Transformed U: Reflections On Catholic Liberal Arts Education In The 21st Century, Thomas G. Plante

Psychology

Catholic liberal arts educators can proclaim boldly that we are in the business of formation and transformation of students at multiple levels and in multiple ways. We want our students to be competent, ethical, and compassionate global citizens who are thoughtful, savvy, deep thinkers who love learning and who love helping others. Research and best practices support the claim that the virtues cultivated by the liberal arts contribute to the flourishing of individuals and society as a whole. Catholic colleges and universities have a long history of promoting the liberal arts, and data from various sources suggest that we are …

Quality Revolutions, Solidarity Networks, And Sustainability Innovations: Following Fair Trade Coffee From Nicaragua To California, Christopher M. Bacon

Environmental Studies and Sciences

Nicaraguan smallholder cooperative leaders working in partnership with a California-based small-scale roasting company pioneered an alternative approach to confronting the post-1999 coffee crisis. They built coffee tasting laboratories and integrated grassroots organizing efforts to create a national smallholder cooperative association that dramatically improved the quality, consistency, and prices from of the coffee they exported. Cooperative leaders used this development project to gain a more significant share of political economic power in a domestic coffee industry historically dominated by colonial powers, and corporate and domestic elites. This alliance between the artisanal small-scale roasting companies and cooperative leaders also proved that smallholders …

Hetch Hetchy Redux: An Effort To Turn Back The Environmental Clock, Nancy Unger

History

If San Francisco voters pass Measure F on November 6, the city will conduct an $8 million study on the feasibility, costs, and benefits of draining the 300-foot deep reservoir created by the O’Shaughnessy Dam in 1923. The measure’s proponents see it as a first step in restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley, sister valley to Yosemite, to its natural state. That the measure is even on the ballot is a significant indication of the shift in attitudes towards the ongoing conflict between nature preservation and traditional notions of progress.