Digital Commons Network^™

The Tale Of Two Community Gardens: Green Aesthetics Versus Food Justice In The Big Apple, Sofya Aptekar, Justin S. Myers

Publications and Research

There has been a vibrant community gardening movement in New York City since the 1970s. The movement is predominantly located in working class communities of color and has fought for decades to turn vacant land into beneficial community spaces. However, many of these communities are struggling with gentrification, which has the potential to transform access to and use of community gardens in the city and the politics around them. Drawing on separate multi-year ethnographic projects, this article compares two community gardens in food insecure communities in Queens and Brooklyn: one that is undergoing gentrification and one that is not. We …

Excavating A Future Vision Past: Mike Davis’ City Of Quartz, William Blick

Publications and Research

When Mike Davis published City of Quartz in 1990, his work was widely praised by many and dismissed as liberalist hysteria by others. The reflections it contains on architectural design as a reflection of sociopolitical tumult still strike chords today. This article sets out a reexamination of the text through hindsight, using contemporary and subsequent reviews to consider how the book was relevant at the time of its publication, how it may be relevant today and how it has had a profound impact on sociological and cultural studies.

Public Education, The State, And The Crisis, Hakan Yilmaz

Publications and Research

This paper aims to construct a framework for understanding the causes and dynamics of the wave of teacher strikes that took place in 2018-19. To do this, the paper first analyzes the constraints under which the state managers function and describes the relationship between the state and public education. Second, it summarizes a theoretical framework for understanding the Great Recession and describes the influence of neoliberal policy orthodoxy on the reaction to the Great Recession. Third, it provides empirical evidence that displays how following the Great Recession, the constraints of the state actors and implementation of certain policies reduced spending …

“It’S A Lot To Take In” - Undergraduate Experiences With Assigned Reading, Maura A. Smale

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Anti-Lgbtq Hate: An Analysis Of Situational Variables, Jill Kehoe

Publications and Research

The current study aimed to augment the scant body of literature on anti-LGBTQ hate by providing an in-depth examination of anti-LGBTQ hate incident situational characteristics including offender substance use, number of offenders, crime location, and victim-offender relationship. Analysis of situational dynamic variables provided support for the notion that anti-LGBTQ hate is a distinct type of criminal incident. Significantly increased levels of offender substance use, crimes perpetrated by multiple offenders, crimes perpetrated by acquaintances, and crimes taking place in open spaces substantiates the theory that anti-LGBTQ hate is qualitatively unique, typified by different characteristics than other forms of crime. The data …

Participatory Action Research In Schools: Unpacking The Lived Inequities Of High Stakes Testing, Tiffany A. Dejaynes, Tabatha Cortes, Israt Hoque

Publications and Research

Purpose – This paper aims to examine a school-based Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project on educational inequity and high stakes testing.

Design/methodology/approach – A former high school teacher (currently a university professor) and two former students (currently research assistants and university students) take up a youth studies framework to collaboratively resee multimodal artifacts from a tenth-grade course in qualitative research.

Findings – Findings illustrate the power of finding allies in peers and educators; the transformative power of deep participation; and the longitudinal nature of social change and action. Thus, this research demonstrates that when students are positioned as researchers, …

Representaciones De La Identidad Neoleonesa En Los Spots De Las Campañas A La Gubernatura De Nuevo León De 2015representations Of Nuevo León’S Identity Within The Campaign Spots For The 2015 State Election, Xavier Moyssén Álvarez

Publications and Research

This article parts from the sociological model of voting behavior, according to which social characteristics deter-mine political preferences. It is proposed that regional identity, because of its socialized nature, might’ve had effects on the voting behavior of the 2015 Nuevo León election. This work isn’t focused on the result of the election, it rather intends to verify, through content analysis, the presence of elements belonging to Nuevo Leon’s identity within the campaign spots for the main candidates:Felipe de Jesús Cantú (PAN), Ivonne Álvarez García (PRI), and Jaime Heliodoro Rodríguez Calderón (independ-ent). Furthermore, we propose a theoretical explanation of the possible …

Resource Ecologies, Political Economies And The Ethics Of Audio Technologies In The Anthropocene, Eliot Bates

Publications and Research

Understanding how recorded and amplified stage musics contribute towards producing the Anthropocene necessitates attending to complex transnational flows of material, capital and labor, and how they coalesce into technological objects. This is complicated by the wide array of sites, practices and knowledges involved during various stages of the production process, from initial resource extraction, to smelting, component manufacturing, technology assembly, and distribution. To develop a suitable technological ethics, and to understand what happens to environments and to human, animal and plant lifeworlds, requires one to resist abstraction and undertake a global accounting of resource ecologies with recourse to planetary-scale political …

Prevalence Of Left-Handedness In China 2011: Small-Area Estimates, Hongwei Xu

Publications and Research

Nationally representative survey data and small-area estimation techniques are used to assess the geographic prevalence of left-handedness in China 2011. Measures of individuals’ handedness are their self-reported dominant hand and their hand grip strength, which yield four estimates of left-handed prevalence, and these statistics are recorded at the provincial level. These estimates concord with one another. There are several geographic clusters of high-prevalence rates of left-handers located in ethnic minority-designated autonomous areas or historically revolutionary base areas, which may reflect a deep-rooted sense of defiance to authorities and promote such cultural values as individual autonomy and equality among local people.

Reducing Distance Through Online International Collaboration, Brooke R. Schreiber, Mihiri Jansz

Publications and Research

Online and hybrid courses offer many benefits for ESL teacher education, but can be hampered by ‘transactional distance’, a lack of interpersonal closeness which can cause misunderstanding and disengagement. This article describes a pedagogical project in which in-service teachers studying in a distance-learning MA TESL programme in Sri Lanka participated in an asynchronous discussion forum with peers from a university in New York City to discuss varieties of World Englishes. The project increased dialogue between learners, and between learners and the instructor, providing space for informal interactions through text, images, and video, as well as multiple methods for responding to …

Gathering And Lending Support: Relationships, Linda Miles, Susanne Markgren

Publications and Research

What roles can professional relationships play across a career? How do overlapping and networked relationships help an individual develop professionally, succeed, get ahead, and provide satisfaction and meaning? And what can a librarian do to foster these connections in their own practice? In this chapter, we consider the why, what, who, and how of networking and relationships.

The Impact Of A Supplemental Instruction Program On Diverse Peer Leaders At A Two-Year Institution, Sarah Hoiland, Silvia Reyes, Antonio Varelas

Publications and Research

Supplemental Instruction (SI) is a peer-led academic support program in which SI Leaders help students develop study habits and note-taking strategies as well as facilitate test preparation. While the effects of SI on students receiving the instruction have been thoroughly investigated, there have been far fewer studies that have assessed the impact of SI on its Leaders. Furthermore, research on Leaders has yet to adequately consider community colleges or Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), or to employ qualitative methodologies. Thus, this paper details an SI program developed at a two-year HSI and the impact of the SI Leaders’ experience via qualitative data …

Federalism As A Double-Edged Sword: The Slow Energy Transition In The United States, Roger Karapin

Publications and Research

Much literature on federalism and multi-level governance argues that federalist institutional arrangements promote renewable-energy policies. However, the U.S. case supports a different view, that federalism has ambivalent effects. Policy innovation has occurred at the state level and to some extent has led to policy adoption by other states and the federal government, but the extent is limited by the veto power of fossil-fuel interests that are rooted in many state governments and in Congress, buttressed by increasing Republican Party hostility to environmental and climate policy. This argument is supported by a detailed analysis of five periods of federal and state …

Pandemics And Methodological Developments In Epidemiology History, Alfredo Morabia

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Is Lying Contagious? Spatial Diffusion Of High-Yield “Satellites” During China’S Great Leap Forward, Hongwei Xu, Geng Tian

Publications and Research

Situated in China’s Great Leap Forward (GLF) campaign in 1958, this study examines the spatial diffusion of “launching high-yield satellites”— exaggerating grain yields, which contributed to the 1959–61 GLF famine that claimed millions of human lives. The authors conceptualize exaggerating grain yields as a political innovation adopted by local cadres to endorse the GLF and signal political loyalty to their superiors. Using geocoded county-level event history data from historical newspaper archives, the authors found that the diffusion of exaggerating grain yields across the country was primarily driven by the interaction between geographic proximity and political proximity.

Biography And Sociology: Berger On Religion As Choice Rather Than Fate, Samuel Heilman

Publications and Research

Is there a connection between biography and sociology for Peter Berger? The short answer, as demonstrated by his own memoir, Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist, is “yes.” But in his book, he traces this connection to his own arrival and training at the Graduate Faculty of the New School. I would like to suggest that the process begins earlier in his life. Known for his work on the sociology of knowledge, the examination of how “society influences thought,” I suggest an examination of how one’s biography influences thought, the environment in which Berger grew played a major role in his …

Relationships Between Dress And Gender In A Context Of Cultural Change, Alyssa Dana Adomaitis, Diana Saiki, Kim K. P. Johnson

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Easily Overstated: Estimating The Relationship Between State Justice Policy Environments And Falling Rates Of Youth Confinement, Douglas N. Evans, Gina Moreno, Kevin T. Wolff, Jeffrey A. Butts

Publications and Research

Researchers used state-level data on youth justice policies and practices to explore the association between state policy environments and recent changes in the use of residential placements for adjudicated youth (i.e., confinement). The study assigned a score to each of the 50 states based on the extent to which their youth justice policy environments could be considered "progressive" as opposed to punitive or regressive. Using data from the National Center for Juvenile Justice's compendium of justice system characteristics, "Juvenile Justice, Geography, Policy, Practice & Statistics" (JJGPS), the research team created an index that accounts for 16 policies that are more …

Care In Crisis: Covid-19 As A Catalyst For Universal Child Care In The United States, Nicole Elias, Maria J. D’Agostino

Publications and Research

School closings during COVID-19 exposed an under-addressed gender equity issue in the United States: child care in crisis. To better understand the child care crisis in the current U.S. context, we detail how New York City is addressing child care during COVID-19. We then connect the current approaches to the Lanham Act that was instituted during WWII as a historical parallel. Ultimately, we argue for the adoption of a universal system that is affordable, high-quality, federally-funded with local involvement and discretion, and flexible for primary caregivers seeking care support. This potential system builds on current congressional proposals and should take …

Student Success In Psychology-English Learning Communities., Jillian Grose-Fifer, Kimberly A. Helmer

Publications and Research

Participation in a learning community has been widely recognized as a high impact educational practice. Here, we focus on a highly successful partnership between a psychology professor (JGF) and an English professor (KAH), who codesigned and cotaught a first-year cocurricular (Psychology/English Composition) learning community (LC) course for multiple semesters at a large public Minority/Hispanic Serving Institution in the Northeast. We describe how we created co-curricular links between our courses, which hinged in part on a collaborative podcast assignment based on psychology-themed books. We detail how we built a strong sense of community, designed scaffolded assignments targeting skills, such as information …

Did Juvenile Domestic Violence Offending Change During Covid-19?, Michael T. Baglivio, Kevin T. Wolff, Joan A. Reid, Sherry L. Jackson, Alex R. Piquero

Publications and Research

The current study adds some of the first light into the initial impacts of the largest global health crisis in a generation on family and domestic violence, the long-term repercussions of which may take decades to unpack. Statewide trends in juvenile arrests for domestic violence (DV)-related offending are examined, taking into account school closures for in-person learning in March 2020 and the subsequent mandate for an in-person learning option in Florida in August 2020. Additionally, trends by sex, race/ethnicity, and severity of the offense are examined. Contrasting with growing studies demonstrating an increase in DV-related arrests among adults, we find …

Popular Culture Informing Public Administration: Messages And Prospects For Social Equity, Sean Mccandless, Nicole M. Elias

Publications and Research

In the discipline of public administration, popular culture remains under-examined in scholarship and under-utilized in pedagogy. However, the field would benefit from greater integration of popular culture to expand understandings of governance, especially in that it provides important representations of and messaging about some of today's most pressing social equity issues. To contextualize popular culture in public administration, we use critical discourse analysis as a frame to demonstrate how popular culture can inform public administration, especially regarding social equity. We argue that popular culture should be more extensively covered in public administration, because it offers a lens for better understanding …

Examining Public Opinion About Abortion: A Mixed-Methods Systematic Review Of Research Over The Last 15 Years, Amy Adamczyk, Chunrye Kim, Leevia Dillon

Publications and Research

Although abortion became legal four decades ago, Americans remain staunchly divided over its acceptability. While researchers have been interested in the factors shaping abortion attitudes, there are almost no reviews of this work. We examine the factors shaping Americans’ abortion attitudes and assess the state of published peer-reviewed articles in this area over the last 15 years. Using a mixed-methods systematic review, we analyze and critique the findings from 116 journal articles that have examined attitudes about abortion between 2001 and 2016. Amongst the many predictors and outcomes examined, we show that religion is by far the most utilized statistically …

A Five-Sample Confirmatory Factor Analytic Study Of Burnout-Depression Overlap, Renzo Bianchi, Irvin Sam Schonfeld, Jay Verkuilen

Publications and Research

Objective: It has been asserted that burnout—a condition ascribed to unresolvable job stress—should not be mistaken for a depressive syndrome. In this confirmatory factor analytic study, the validity of this assertion was examined.

Methods: Five samples of employed individuals, recruited in Switzerland and France, were mobilized for this study (N = 3,113). Burnout symptoms were assessed with the Shirom–Melamed Burnout Measure, the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI)—General Survey, and the MBI for Educators. Depressive symptoms were measured with the PHQ‐9.

Results: In all five samples, the latent factors pertaining to burnout’s components correlated on average more highly with the latent Depression …

Neoliberalism And Financialization In Turkey, Hakan Yilmaz

Publications and Research

This paper summarizes the process of financialization under the neoliberal restructuring of the Turkish economy. First, it discusses the political and economic context that led to the restructuring. Then, it elaborates the first stage of Turkish neoliberalism and financialization under the ANAP government, and the various coalition governments throughout 1990s. Then, it describes the second stage of this process under the Neoliberal Populist regime of the AKP government. Finally, it tries to locate neoliberalism and financialization in the country’s long-term capitalist development. In this context, the paper aims to display the connection between Marx’s tendency of the rate of profit …

The Distributional Short-Term Impact Of The Covid-19 Crisis On Wages In The United States, Yonatan Berman

Publications and Research

This paper uses Bureau of Labor Statistics employment and wage data to study the distributional impact of the COVID-19 crisis on wages in the United States by mid-April. It answers whether wages of lower-wage workers decreased more than others', and to what extent. We find that the COVID-19 outbreak exacerbates existing inequalities. Workers at the bottom quintile in mid-March were three times more likely to be laid off by mid-April compared to higher-wage workers. Weekly wages of workers at the bottom quintile decreased by 6% on average between mid-February and mid-March and by 26% between mid-March and mid-April. The average …

Leveraging Technology To Blend Large-Scale Epidemiologic Surveillance With Social And Behavioral Science Methods: Successes, Challenges, And Lessons Learned Implementing The Unite Longitudinal Cohort Study Of Hiv Risk Factors Among Sexual Minority Men In The United States, H. Jonathon Rendina, Ali J. Talan, Nicola F. Tavella, Jonathan Lopez Matos, Ruben H. Jimenez, S. Scott Jones, Brian Salfas, Drew Westmoreland

Publications and Research

The use of digital technologies to conduct large-scale research with limited interaction (i.e., no in-person contact) and objective endpoints (i.e., biological testing) has significant potential for the field of epidemiology, but limited research to date has been published on the successes and challenges of such approaches. We analyzed data from a cohort study of sexual minority men across the United States, collected using digital strategies during a 10-month period from 2017 to 2018. Overall, 113,874 individuals were screened, of whom 26,000 were invited to the study, 10,691 joined the study, and 7,957 completed all enrollment steps, including return of a …

High Tech, High Risk: Tech Ethics Lessons For The Covid-19 Pandemic Response, Emanuel Moss, Jacob Metcalf

Publications and Research

The COVID-19 pandemic has, in a matter of a few short months, drastically reshaped society around the world. Because of the growing perception of machine learning as a technology capable of addressing large problems at scale, machine learning applications have been seen as desirable interventions in mitigating the risks of the pandemic disease. However, machine learning, like many tools of technocratic governance, is deeply implicated in the social production and distribution of risk and the role of machine learning in the production of risk must be considered as engineers and other technologists develop tools for the current crisis. This paper …

Improving Law Enforcement’S Victim-Centric Responses To Sexual Assault: Global Best Practice Catalog, Ayesha Ashraf, Sebastián Galleguillos Agurto, Frederick Geyer, Kamela Gjoka, Jasmine Hwang, Stanley Montinat, Jessica Moor, Pierre Reyes, Tara Ventimiglia, Hongda Xu

Publications and Research

This catalog was compiled as part of a U.S. State Department Diplomacy Lab Project entitled “Improving Law Enforcement’s Victim-Centric Responses to Sexual Assault,” in fall semester of 2019, for American Citizens Services, US Embassy Bangkok. It is intended to cover best practices in law enforcement response to sexual assault across the globe, including laws, policies and programs.Ten multilingual graduate students in the capstone seminar of the Master of Arts Degree Program in International Crime and Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) established criteria for inclusion and standardized elements for each entry in this catalog. The ultimate aim …

Community-Based Responses To Negative Health Impacts Of Sexual Humanitarian Anti-Trafficking Policies And The Criminalization Of Sex Work And Migration In The Us, Heidi Hoefinger, Jennifer Musto, P.G. Macioti, Anne E. Fehrenbacher, Nicola Mai, Calum Bennachie, Calogero Giametta

Publications and Research

System-involvement resulting from anti-trafficking interventions and the criminalization of sex work and migration results in negative health impacts on sex workers, migrants, and people with trafficking experiences. Due to their stigmatized status, sex workers and people with trafficking experiences often struggle to access affordable, unbiased, and supportive health care. This paper will use thematic analysis of qualitative data from in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldwork with 50 migrant sex workers and trafficked persons, as well as 20 key informants from legal and social services, in New York and Los Angeles. It will highlight the work of trans-specific and sex worker-led initiatives …