Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Ovicaprine Mystique: Livestock Commodification In Postindustrial Lesotho, Colin Hoag

Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Economic anthropologists often look to goods that resist commodification to understand how culture determines what can be exchanged and on what terms. Livestock in Africa have served as prominent examples of such “recalcitrant commodities.” In this article, I argue that goods that do not resist commodification—what I call “clean‐break commodities”—also illuminate the culture of the economy. Drawing on fifteen months of fieldwork in Lesotho, I contrast the reticence to sell cattle in African societies, long the focus of anthropologists as well as experts in conservation and development, with the prodigious sale of sheep and goats (i.e., ovicaprids). Narrow focus on …

Using Implementation Science To Strengthen The Child Welfare Workforce, Quality Improvement Center For Workforce Development

Other QIC-WD Products

The QIC-WD is using implementation science to strengthen the child welfare workforce in eight child welfare agencies across the U.S. According to a synthesis of the literature, implementation can be defined as a specified set of activities designed to put into practice and activity or program of known dimensions. The QIC-WD is using the implementation science framework developed by NIRN and the guide created by the Permanency Innovations Initiative to support our sites through the stages of implementation: Exploration, Installation, Initial Implementation, and Full Implementation as described below. The QIC-WD knows that high quality implementation of a selected intervention is …

Implementation Of Recurrent Neural Nets In Forecasting Macroeconomic Indicators, Christ Rytting, Dr. Kerk Phillips

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Drivendata.org says “In the year 2000, the member states of the United Nations agreed to a set of goals to measure the progress of global development. The aim of these goals was to increase standards of living around the world by emphasizing human capital, infrastructure, and human rights.”

Advancing Research On Psychological Stress And Aging With The Health And Retirement Study: Looking Back To Launch The Field Forward, Alexandra D. Crosswell, Madhuvanthi Suresh, Eli Puterman, Tara Gruenewald, Jinkook Lee, Elissa S. Epel

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Objectives

The Health and Retirement Study (HRS) was designed as an interdisciplinary study with a strong focus on health, retirement, and socioeconomic environment, to study their dynamic relationships over time in a sample of mid-life adults. The study includes validated self-report measures and individual items that capture the experiences of stressful events (stressor exposures) and subjective assessments of stress (perceived stress) within specific life domains.

Methods

This paper reviews and catalogs the peer-reviewed publications that have used the HRS to examine associations between psychological stress measures and psychological, physical health, and economic outcomes.

Results

We describe the research to date …

Chimes: September 14, 2018, Calvin College

Chimes

Library cafe plans make 'latte' progress by Sam Ballast

Calvin hires across 13 departments by Yolanda Chow

Bunker Interpretive Center & Nature Preserve going through major upgrades by Josh M. Hernandez

Calvin Prison Initiative serves, grows by Ellington Smith

"KHv-Far' snags 'far-out" win at 50th annual Chaos Night by Annette Espinoza

John Mark MacMillian tours at Calvin by Mimi Mutesa

Calvin Dining Staff debuts new software by Bernard Boadu

Integrating Affect And Advocacy: Suicide Prevention Education And Community-Based Performance, Sharon L. Green

Spect-actor: A Journal of Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed

In this analysis of a performance-based collaboration, I argue that affect and relationship-building are vital tools in shifting cultures that stigmatize mental illness and social difference. I explain the context, logistics, and impact of a project which served as a community-based learning experience for college students. Embracing an ethics of care complemented the foundational principles of community-based performance to deepen the project's educational and affective impact on participants.

Skooz Be Hat’In: My Story Navigating And Negotiating Standard American English, Lisa M. Westbrooks

Spect-actor: A Journal of Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed

In most education systems, African American Vernacular English is not considered a language or variety of English and students who speak it are coerced into using Standard American English only. Using autoethnographic methodology I examine my personal language navigation and negotiation of Standard American English and the oppression of language and identity that accompanied it. I use storytelling to draw the reader into my childhood memories and the drifting away of my first language. As a young student and English as a Second Language teacher I have learned from these experiences and share strategies so that others may successfully reduce …

Strategic Uses Of Essentialism In Boal’S Forum Theatre, Cameron N. Coulter

Spect-actor: A Journal of Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed

Although Forum Theatre (FT) welcomes diverse perspectives to the stage, practitioners have often remarked that FT performances work best in communities that are in some way “homogeneous.” In this essay, I suggest that homogeneity is a recurrent theme in FT discussions because the structure of FT relies on consensus, and I propose that Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s paradigm of strategic uses of essentialism is a productive tool for understanding and evaluating moments of consensus in FT. Although Spivak eventually critiqued the term, I propose that strategic essentialism can nonetheless provide a useful model for understanding how consensus ideally operates within FT …

Language Of Liberation? A Dialogue On Image Theatre Practice, Pavla Uppal, Wolfgang Vachon

Spect-actor: A Journal of Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed

Image work is a central and integral modality of Theatre of the Oppressed. This article examines liberatory, oppressive, and (at times) neglected aspects of Image work. Starting with the desire to know what the Image is really about, the authors invite the reader into a conversation by asking: why do we use Images, who are the Images for, how are Images experienced, and are they doing what is intended? Recognizing the inherent contradictions of using words alone to engage with Images, the authors employ a combination of text and photographs to facilitate this conversation.

Writing The Official History Of The Joint Intelligence Committee, Michael Goodman

Secrecy and Society

This article recounts the experience of a professional historian in being given the keys to the kingdom: access to the classified vaults of Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee. This article includes some of the problems in having access, but complying with the sensitivities around official accounts, difficulties in writing a global history, or trying to make the work of a committee interesting and accessible, and of trying to determine the impact of intelligence on policy.

Historical Amnesia: British And U.S. Intelligence, Past And Present, Calder Walton

Secrecy and Society

Many intelligence scandals in the news today seem unprecedented - from Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, to British and U.S. intelligence agencies monitoring activities of their citizens. They seem new largely because, traditionally, intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were excessively secretive about their past activities: even the names “GCHQ” and “NSA” were airbrushed from declassified records, and thus missing from major historical works and scholarship on on post-war international relations. The resulting secrecy about British and U.S. intelligence has led to misunderstandings and conspiracy theories in societies about them. Newly opened secret records now …

Collaboration And Research Practice In Intelligence, Minna Räsänen

Secrecy and Society

Close, intensive research collaboration between universities, companies, and the public sector can open up new and different opportunities for qualitative research, and provide analytic and empirical insights that otherwise might be difficult to obtain. The aim of this paper is to explore collaboration as a means of doing research with the intelligence community. Experiences from a research project concerning dilemmas the practitioners face in their organization within the Swedish Armed Forces, serve as a starting point for this reflective discussion. It is argued here that collaboration is suitable when change is required. The mutual learning between the actors feeds into …

Ethnographic Research In The U.S. Intelligence Community: Opportunities And Challenges, Bridget Nolan

Secrecy and Society

This article considers lessons learned from conducting research inside the intelligence community. Drawing on a year of ethnographic field work and interviews at the National Counterterrorism Center, I show that “boundary personnel”- people who navigate between the worlds of academia and national security - provide value added in the form of tacit knowledge that outside researchers would not be able to deliver. At the same time, these people face delays, challenges to freedom of information, and ethical considerations that are unique to their positions. Despite setbacks, social scientists must continue their engagement with national security organizations to further our understanding …

Secrecy Vs. Disclosure Of The Intelligence Community Budget: An Enduring Debate, Anne Daugherty Miles

Secrecy and Society

Little known U.S. congressional documents, dating from the 1970s, debate public disclosure of Intelligence Community (IC) budget. The documents offer a rich repository of the arguments on both sides of the debate and shine a light on the thoughtful, measured congressional oversight practiced in formative years of the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Troping The Enemy: Metaphor, Culture, And The Big Data Black Boxes Of National Security, Robert Albro

Secrecy and Society

This article considers how cultural understanding is being brought into the work of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), through an analysis of its Metaphor program. It examines the type of social science underwriting this program, unpacks implications of the agency’s conception of metaphor for understanding so-called cultures of interest, and compares IARPA’s to competing accounts of how metaphor works to create cultural meaning. The article highlights some risks posed by key deficits in the Intelligence Community's (IC) approach to culture, which relies on the cognitive linguistic theories of George Lakoff and colleagues. It also explores the problem of …

Secrets And Lies — Exposed And Combatted: Warrantless Surveillance Under And Around The Law 2001-2017, Patrice Mcdermott

Secrecy and Society

Before June 2013, civil society and much of Congress were largely in the dark about the extent of the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency and the circumlocutions of statute undertaken by the White House and the Department of Justice. After the releases by Edward Snowden to specific journalists, the mendacity of Intelligence Community lawyers and leaders, the evasions of the law and manipulation of the FISA Court by the White House working with the Justice Department, and the scope of the violations of the Fourth Amendment protections of U.S. Persons (USPs) became increasingly apparent.2 This article reviews the …

Secrecy And Intelligence: Introduction, Kathleen Vogel, Brian Balmer

Secrecy and Society

The catalyst for this special issue of Secrecy and Society stems from a workshop titled “Secrecy and Intelligence: Opening the Black Box” at North Carolina State University, April, 2016. This workshop brought together interested scholars, intelligence practitioners, and civil society members from the United States and Europe to discuss how different facets of secrecy and other practices shape the production of knowledge in intelligence work. This dialogue aimed to be reflective on how the closed social worlds of intelligence shape what intelligence actors and intelligence analysts, who include those within the intelligence establishment and those on the outside, know about …

How Teachers Grade Native And Non-Native Writing: Exposing Biases And Grading Discrepancies, Jenna Snyder, Dr. Grant Eckstein

Journal of Undergraduate Research

With Dr. Grant Eckstein leading our research team, we gathered TESOL writing teachers together to start our data collection. Using an eye-tracker, we monitored the different grading tendencies of 10 different writing teachers. Using this data, we made important observations and applications to writing teachers who teach mixed classrooms of both native English speakers and non-native English speakers.

Spartan Daily, September 13, 2018, San Jose State University, School Of Journalism And Mass Communications

Spartan Daily, 2018

Volume 151, Issue 11

Prospectus, September 13, 2018, Paul Benson, Emma Fleming, Savannah Weishaar, Ayla Mcdonald, Ashley House

Prospectus 2018

The Story of America, a Story of Progress; Pride Hits the Streets of Champaign; Congolese Deputy Lobbies at Parkland College; Rediscover You Sense of Humor with C-U Comedy

English As A Second Language Speakers’ Ability To Replicate Native Speaker Speech Forms When Engaged In Imitative Interaction, Ariana Avila, Dr. Mark Tanner

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of this study was to gather acoustic data aimed at empirically assessing the degree to which non-native English speakers can approximate the linguistic features of native speech when engaged in imitative interaction. The focus of my study was to investigate the degree to which ESL learners living in an English speaking environment can produce linguistic features (variation in intonation, appropriate word and sentence stress, and appropriate use of pausing to delineate meaning units in discourse) in their speech similar to those produced by native English speakers when the ESL learner is trying to imitate what a native speaker …

Apn Book Number Index Map For Monterey County

Maps, Plats, Sketches & Surveys

An index map of Monterey County showing the Assessor Parcel Book Number for rancho and non-rancho lands.

Data Snapshot: Declines In Child Poverty Continue In 2017, Jess Carson, Andrew Schaefer, Marybeth Mattingly

Carsey Publications

The official poverty measure indicates that child poverty declined by 1.1 percentage points between 2016 and 2017, according to analyses of the latest American Community Survey data released today. By 2017, child poverty across the nation was still 0.4 percentage point higher than before the Great Recession. Child poverty remained higher in cities and rural places than in the suburbs. For the first time, rates in cities dipped below the pre-recession level, although poverty is still slightly higher in rural and suburban places than in 2007.

New Digital Collection Checklist, Jenna E. Nolt

Instructions, Forms, and Toolkits

Editable document for collection creation in Digital Kenyon. To be filled out in a consultation with the administrator of Digital Kenyon.

New Digital Collection Initial Planning Document, Jenna E. Nolt

Instructions, Forms, and Toolkits

Editable document to help faculty and librarians plan online collections.

Vortioxetine Differentially Modulates Mk-801-Induced Changes In Visual Signal Detection Task Performance And Locomotor Activity, Todd M. Hillhouse, Christina R. Merritt, Douglas A. Smith, Manuel Cajina, Connie Sanchez, Joseph H. Porter, Alan Pehrson

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Attention impairment is a common feature of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), and MDD-associated cognitive dysfunction may play an important role in determining functional status among this patient population. Vortioxetine is a multimodal antidepressant that may improve some aspects of cognitive function in MDD patients, and may indirectly increase glutamate neurotransmission in brain regions classically associated with attention function. Previous non-clinical research suggests that vortioxetine has limited effects on attention. This laboratory previously found that vortioxetine did not improve attention function in animals impaired by acute scopolamine administration, using the visual signal detection task (VSDT). However, vortioxetine has limited effects on …

Generating Strong Diversity Of Opinions: Agent Models Of Continuous Opinion Dynamics, Christopher W. Weimer

Theses and Dissertations

Opinion dynamics is the study of how opinions in a group of individuals change over time. A goal of opinion dynamics modelers has long been to find a social science-based model that generates strong diversity -- smooth, stable, possibly multi-modal distributions of opinions. This research lays the foundations for and develops such a model. First, a taxonomy is developed to precisely describe agent schedules in an opinion dynamics model. The importance of scheduling is shown with applications to generalized forms of two models. Next, the meta-contrast influence field (MIF) model is defined. It is rooted in self-categorization theory and improves …

The Cowl - V.83 - N.2 - Sep 13, 2018

The Cowl

The Cowl - student newspaper of Providence College. Vol 83 - No. 2 - September 13, 2018. 24 pages.

Transformations: Lessons On Moral Agency For Families, Katelyn Suneson, Dennis Packard

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The purpose of this project was to complete and publish an LDS family relations text, which is now in its second year of development. The text draws on some of the best resources developed in and outside of BYU in the last three decades¹²³ and applies them to some of the most serious family problems now facing members of the Church, including failure to marry, divorce, addictions, and pornography.

Neighborhood And Social Environmental Influences On Child Chronic Disease Prevalence, Ashley Wendell Kranjac, Justin T. Denney, Rachel T. Kimbro, Brady S. Moffett, Keila N. Lopez

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

We investigate how distinct residential environments uniquely influence chronic child disease. Aggregating over 200,000 pediatric geocoded medical records to the census tract of residence and linking them to neighborhood-level measures, we use multiple data analysis techniques to assess how heterogeneous exposures of social and environmental neighborhood conditions influence an index of child chronic disease (CCD) prevalence for the neighborhood. We find there is a graded relationship between degree of overall neighborhood disadvantage and children’s chronic disease such that the highest neighborhood CCD scores reside in communities with the highest concentrated disadvantage. Finally, results show that higher levels of neighborhood concentrated …