Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Community Engagement Newsletter, September 2024, University Of Northern Iowa. Office Of Community Engagement.

Community Engagement Newsletter

Contents:

--- Panthers Give Back
--- Events
--- Engagement Opportunity
--- National Credential
--- Funding

Ritual Child Homicides In Ghana And Kenya: A Criminological Analysis, Emmanuel Sarpong Owusu

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Child homicide is a frequent occurrence in many African communities, and juju beliefs trigger a sizable proportion of this crime. Yet a systematic and critical analysis of juju’s impact on pedicides is lacking in the literature. The sparse extant studies on juju-driven homicide or ritual murder mainly offer historical perspectives rather than criminological analysis of the phenomenon. The present study explores the magnitude, characteristics, and motivations, as well as the socio-cultural and economic contexts of ritual child homicide or juju-driven pedicide (i.e., the killing of children for ritual or occult purposes) in Ghana and Kenya. This aim is achieved by …

Books Of Interest, Stephen T. Satkiewicz

Comparative Civilizations Review

The journal is adding this section since there are books that may be of interest to scholars of the comparative study of civilizations and that may add significantly to the body of scholarship in the civilizational field. The books listed below are also available to be reviewed in the Book Review section of future editions of Comparative Civilizations Review.

Book Review: The Americans: The Democratic Experience And The Creators, Robert Bedeski

Comparative Civilizations Review

Two classics by American historian Daniel Boorstin should be central in the analysis of civilization.

孫輩照顧者面對的挑戰研究報告, Chak Kwan, Dickon Chan, Kong Sang Lou, Meng Soi, Florence Fong, Sheung Wan, Wanda Wong, Ka Chung, Tom Kwong

APIAS Research Report 研究報告

背景和目的
香港人口老齡化和長期病患者的增加，令到更多老年人需要人照顧。現時社會對孫輩照顧者的認識不足，使到他們缺乏適切支援服務。本研究旨在探索孫輩照顧殘疾或患有慢性疾病的祖父母的情況，並提出政策與服務建議。嶺南大學亞太老年學研究中心聯同救世軍護老者協會及救世軍護老者服務於2024年4月25日舉辦了「孫輩照顧者的需要、實踐及政策」研討會，各方持份者分享他們對支援孫輩照顧者的經驗和看法，共同尋找方案支援這類照顧者。

研究方法
本研究於2023年4月至12月期間，採用深度訪談 (in-depth interview) 方式，訪問了共40位年齡介乎13至63歲的孫輩照顧者，瞭解他們成為照顧者的主要原因、提供了甚麼照顧，以及照顧過程中面對的困難。

研究結果

• 大部分受訪的孫輩照顧者 (67.5%) 為次照顧者，近半受訪者每周提供20小時以上的照顧工作。
• 共有47位祖父母/外祖父母受到照顧，年齡介乎62至99歲。大部分被照顧者 (91.5%) 行動不便，或患有長期病患 (76.6%)。被照顧祖父母當中過半 (57.4%) 沒有與孫輩同住，8.5%為獨居。
• 孫輩成為照顧者有數個原因，包括家庭成員無法提供照顧、減輕父母的壓力和回饋祖父母過往照顧之恩。
• 孫輩照顧者的照顧角色與他們的年齡、生活狀態、能力，以及被照顧者的需要有關。大部分孫輩照顧者和家人分擔照顧工作，並得到他們的協助。孫輩照顧者會主動運用各種輔助設備，以提高照顧成效。
• 孫輩照顧者除了要面對一般照顧者的困難外 (如支援服務及資訊不足、身心壓力和社交限制)，他們面對的壓力還包括學業及就業、家庭角色的衝突、「夾心」照顧者面對多重壓力，以及缺乏社會的認同。
• 政策建議
  研究報告建議政府須加強院校對就學照顧者的支持、提供額外假期予在職照顧者、將照顧者主題納入中學課程、推廣朋輩支援小組、提供線上及晚間照顧技巧課程、開發多元化暫託服務、建立個案管理制度，以及推動樂齡科技之運用。

Love In The Time Of Dating Apps: Exploring Latino Young Adults’ Experiences Constructing Online Identity, Partner Preferences, And Plans For Happily Ever After, Dakota Z. Ross-Cabrera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how Latino young adults navigate dating apps; construct their dating app profiles, select partners and develop preferences, and conceptualize their futures. While earlier dating app research explores these themes with quantitative data or with non-Latino samples, the qualitative experiences of Latino young adults have been broadly excluded. Latinos are a large portion of the dating app market, and their relationships, outcomes, and future family formation are integral to understand. Drawing on 60 qualitative interviews with Latino young adult dating app users, I find that app users encounter five stages of dating app usage including constructing and often …

Claiming The Right To Belong: Diversity And The Politics Of Inclusion In Queens, New York, Susan J. Tanenbaum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines social integration in a diverse civic and political mainstream. The social science research on intergroup contact in U.S. cities undergoing significant demographic change tends to focus on encounters between members of majority “in-groups” and minority “out-groups” in the context of workplaces, neighborhoods, and families. I contend that civic politics is another compelling strategic site for observing intergroup contact between emerging and established players. My study presents three cases of claims-making activity during the post-9/11 period in New York City’s borough of Queens, where close to 50% of the population is foreign-born and no single racial group predominates. …

Exploring The Correlation Between Google Trends And Crime Statistics: A Focus On Motor Vehicle Theft In The United States, Yu-Hsuan Liu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the linear relationships between motor vehicle theft (MVT) estimates from Google Trends--a form of digital trace data--and official crime statistics, including the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), and 911 calls for service (CFS 911). It offers a comprehensive analysis of the limitations inherent in current crime statistics, discusses measurement errors, and explores statistical models to mitigate the impact of measurement error, applying these methods to validate Google Trends MVT data and other official MVT statistics. Furthermore, this study incorporates social disorganization theory and …

Bodies For Catastrophe: A Montage Study Of Palestinian Digital Labor, Francisco Ramos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis investigates Palestinian digital labor through the method of montage. Digital labor, understood as bodily activity transfigured by digital machines into exploitable information, is examined within the context of Israeli surveillance technologies used against Palestinians. The study critically explores the dual political functions of these technologies: as tools of settler-colonial domination aiming to dispossess Palestinians, and as neoliberal mechanisms seeking to profit from the surveillance of Palestinian bodies. The second half of the thesis turns to the ways Palestinians engage with such technologies and unsettle the economic and colonial logics embedded in them.

The research is structured nonlinearly using …

Brain Injury And Psychosocial Trauma: Outcomes Among Justice-Involved Individuals, Mahathi D. Kosuri

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Justice-involved individuals experience disproportionately high rates of both traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and psychosocial traumas. However, these traumas have yet to be conceptualized together, leaving a chasm of research on how they interact and influence this population. The current study was the first to measure the effects of TBIs as well as psychosocial trauma among justice-involved men, within the context of executive functioning, history of justice involvement, and recidivism. A sample of men (N=95) from a private correctional facility were given the Ohio State University Traumatic Brain Injury Questionnaire (OSU-TBI-ID), the Lifetime Stressor Checklist- Revised (LSC-R), along with …

Ethnoracial Inequality In Egalitarian Sweden: Swedish Exceptionalism And Racial Legacies, Beiyi Hu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Ethnoracial Inequality in Egalitarian Sweden: Swedish Exceptionalism and Racial Legacies investigates the persistence of ethno-racial disparities in Sweden, a country often celebrated for its humanitarianism, egalitarianism, and tolerance. I explore several key questions: How do ethnic and racial minorities, as well as majority Swedes, perceive and understand race and ethno-racial inequalities in a country that does not officially recognize race? What sociohistorical legacies and institutionalized practices have contributed to contemporary ethnoracial inequalities in Sweden? And for ethnic and racial minorities, what are their day-to-day experiences of racism? Combining analysis of governmental data and in-depth interviews as well as exploratory spatial …

Digital Environments Of Reception And Governance: A Landscape Analysis Of Immigration-Related Webpages On U.S. State Websites, Orunima Chakraborti

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

American state governments occupy unique political roles when it comes to critical public-facing policy areas like education, health, transportation, and commerce, and therefore they administer many public services and benefits that affect immigrants and their communities. This study expands the existing knowledge of the ways in which U.S. state governments digitally engage with their immigrant populations, doing so through a landscape analysis that maps the information and resources provided for and about immigrant communities on 413 immigration-related webpages across all 50 U.S. state governments’ official websites. Data was collected in four categories for each webpage: its bureaucratic orientation, the government …

Disappearing Immigrant Shadows: A New Analytical Framework And Typology For Second-Generation Chinese American Ethnic Engagement, Annie Wang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone challenges the predominant narrative that upwardly mobile, second-generation individuals prefer to socially distance themselves from working-class, first-generation co-ethnics, a concept referred to here as ethnic distancing. It argues that this narrative fails to capture the second generation’s affinity and capacity for ethnic engagement, which includes desired and actual participation in ethnic-based activities ranging from casual consumption to more meaningful volunteerism, activism, and community building with co-ethnics of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. Drawing on 32 interviews with second-generation Chinese Americans aged 18-35, I argue that we can better understand ethnic engagement in New York City’s Manhattan Chinatown by …

Ordinary Care: Affective Politics Of Migration And The Everyday Lives Of Syrian Refugees In Istanbul, Yasemin Ozer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation makes two significant interventions into the literature on Syrian refugees in Turkey and the anthropology of migration and refugee studies more broadly. First, it focuses on the everyday lives of working-class urban refugees and argues that “ordinary care” is a crucial means by which they build sustainable and dignified lives while living in precarity in an often hostile environment in the aftermath of war and displacement. Ordinary care, as I theorize in this ethnography, includes sharing of resources, information, and advice as well as the formation of mutual relationships between kin, neighbors, and friends. Compared to the more …

Integrating Computer Science Education And Ethnic-Racial Identity Exploration Within A Social Justice Youth Development Framework, Steven Worker, Fe Moncloa, Vernelle Mitchell-Hawkins

Journal of Youth Development

No abstract provided.

Assessing Staff-Youth Interaction Quality: Using The Class To Evaluate Afterschool Programs, Joel M. Hektner, Debarati Kole, Vimbayi Chinopfuktwa, Shawn L. Carlson

Journal of Youth Development

No abstract provided.

Development Amidst Psychological Difficulties: Parents As Developmental Assets, Kimia Shirzad, Sunhye Bai, Jennifer P. Agans

Journal of Youth Development

No abstract provided.

The Seattle Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Als) Patient Project Database: Observational, Longitudinal, Dyadic Characterization Of People With Als And Their Partners, Suzanne C. Segerstrom, Edward J. Kasarskis

Neurology Faculty Publications

Introduction: The median survival time in ALS is approximately 3 years, but survival times range from less than a year to more than 10 years and much variance in disease course remains to be explained. As is true for physical outcomes, there is considerable variance in QOL, which is influenced by psychological health, coping, and social support, among other psychosocial factors. The Seattle ALS Patient Project Database (SALSPPD) provides a unique opportunity for researchers to address established and novel hypotheses about disease progression and QOL in ALS.

Methods: The SALSPPD is a longitudinal dataset of people with ALS (n = …

The Long Arm Of School Punishment: The Role Of School Suspension On Self-Rated Health From Adolescence To Midlife, Michael Niño, Alexa Angton, Kathryn Norton-Smith, Kayla Allison

Sociology and Criminology Faculty Publications and Presentations

School suspension has been linked to numerous adverse social outcomes in adolescence and adulthood. While research continues to highlight the deleterious consequences tied to suspension, less is known about how exposure to suspension influences health over the life course. Drawing from panel data, we address this gap by investigating whether school suspension is associated with self-rated health from adolescence to midlife. Compared to youth with no history of suspension, suspended youth were more likely to report poorer health in adolescence. Findings also demonstrate that school suspension plays a significant role in self-rated health patterns over time. Specifically, we find suspended …

Experiences With Coming Out: A Study Of Lgbtq+ Music Students’ Perceptions Of Music Education Pedagogy, Sid Adams

Educational Studies Dissertations

Because LGBTQ+ people are disclosing their non-heterosexual and/or non-cisgender identities at younger ages, music educators should consider how their pedagogical decisions impact an LGBTQ+ person’s decision to disclose their identity (come out). Previous research has explored how to create affirming and inclusive space for LGBTQ+ students to learn within music education spaces. However, past research has been limited on how those decisions impact the LGBTQ+ student’s decision to disclose their identity. I used data from five participants to discover how they perceived music education pedagogical practices and how those practices facilitated or hindered their decision to disclose their LGBTQ+ identity. …

Civilizations From Toynbee To Coker: The Quest Of Christopher Coker (1953 – 2023) To Reinstate Comparative Civilizational Thinking In Western Scholarship, Greg Lewicki Vice President

Comparative Civilizations Review

In the gentlemen’s heaven, Christopher Coker must surely have his separate suite, one with golden busts of travelers, old-fashioned English furniture, and cold-toned walls resembling those of Athenaeum, a Pall Mall club in London, one of a few clubs where he liked to dine.

The Sociology Of Crisis: Pitirim Sorokin’S Scholarly Legacy And Current Problems, Resilience, And Community, Emiliana Mangone

Comparative Civilizations Review

In his writings on crises, Sorokin highlighted their complexity and their multiple consequences on a personal, cultural, and social level. In this paper, crises in the 21st century are analyzed from Sorokin’s incisive perspective. The significant points include:

1. the study of crises cannot be enclosed within the confines of individual disciplines but rather must incorporate interdisciplinary approaches.
2. the category “crisis” does not encompass only those conditions that are the consequences of specific disastrous events such as natural disasters, wars, and terrorism but also all those phenomena that produce the conjunction of harm to human beings and social disturbances.
3. successive crises …

Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Divergence Between The Teachings And Practice Of Islam: A Civilizational Analysis Of Muslims In Indonesia, Hisanori Kato

Comparative Civilizations Review

Indonesia is a country of cultural as well as religious diversity. Even before the advent of Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism were widespread in the region. Some think that Islam in Indonesia spread to the archipelago through interaction with local civilizations. Although Islam has become a majority religion in Indonesia today, long-standing local cultural traditions, ones that have existed throughout its recorded history, are often still maintained and practiced widely in Indonesia. These pre-Islamic traditions have a profound association with nature, and the people tend to appreciate animistic entities.

The Geographic Clash Of Civilizations?, Mojtaba Sadeghi

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Geographic Clash of Civilizations represents a significant geographic-civilizational reality and process, a phenomenon that has occurred and is expected to unfold increasingly in the third millennium. Understanding, analyzing, and forecasting this phenomenon relies solely on the geographic conceptualization of civilization. Through that perspective, the world is undergoing another instance of the geographic clash of civilizations, a clash more profound than the Clash of Civilizations, impacting the survival or collapse of human civilizations. The geographic clash of civilizations epitomizes an inescapable conflict between the soul (das-man) and the body (no-da-sein) of a civilization, stemming from …

Book Review: Arabia Felix: From The Time Of The Queen Of Sheba (Eighth Century B.C. To The First Century A. D.), Tseggai Isaac

Comparative Civilizations Review

Arabia Felix is a book about Sheba, “modern Yemen” with added highlights on the broader region of Arabia. The author gives an in-depth analysis on how Arabia captured the attention of ancient empires. Arabia also conducted rich trade with her contemporary civilizations such as the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Persians who “encountered caravans of aromatic products coming from South Arabia.”

The Dravidian And Āryan Migrations In Europe And India, Alexander Jacob

Comparative Civilizations Review

Much has been written about the relationship between the Indo-Āryans and the Dravidians. Debates have proliferated on the question of whether the Āryans invaded Dravidian India or whether they were indigenous to Dravida. If we consider the literary evidence of the ancient Indians we can inform a different view of the origins of Indian Brāhmanical religion and the historical relationship between the two major population groupings of India.

Book Review: Why War?, Stephen T. Satkiewicz

Comparative Civilizations Review

Pay any attention to current events and it seems that war and conflict are everywhere: from the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, to the eruption of conflict in the Middle East in October 2023, to on-going geopolitical tensions in the Pacific over the status of Taiwan. It was only a decade or so ago that many were confidently predicting not only the decline but the outright end of war, as Steven Pinker boldly argued in his The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Are Corporations Responding To Civil Society Pressure?: A Multilevel Analysis Of Corporate Emissions, Annika Rieger

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Previous research in the world-society tradition associates improvements in nation-level environmental outcomes with greater civil society integration. However, research in the world-systems tradition indicates these improvements depend on a nation’s position in the global political-economic hierarchy. To test whether these patterns are present at the organizational level, I estimate a multilevel model using corporate emissions data from the Carbon Disclosure Project and include interactions between world-system position and three measures of civil society integration: number of NGOs, proportion of corporations with climate-management incentives, and number of corporate UN Global Compact signatories. I find that the relationship between civil society pressure …