Regional Sociology Commons^™

Spring/Summer 2014

The Confluence (2009-2020)

No abstract provided.

“’Benevolent Plans Meritoriously Applied’: How Missouri Almost Became An Indian Nation, 1803–1811”, B. J. Mcmahon

The Confluence (2009-2020)

One aspect of western development—and of early Missouri territorial history—was figuring out how native peoples fit into visions of the West, as B. J. McMahon suggests.

“Supplying Fraternalism: Demoulin Bros. & Co. And Side Degree Paraphernalia”, Adam D. Stroud

The Confluence (2009-2020)

The expansion of fraternal and benevolent societies in the late nineteenth century also created a business opportunity to supply those lodges with the paraphernalia for rituals, including “side degree” products. DeMoulin Brothers in Greenville, Illinois, led the industry in fraternal products.

From The Editor, Jeffrey Smith

The Confluence (2009-2020)

No abstract provided.

“A Frontier City Through A Planner’S Eyes: Frederick Law Olmsted’S Visit To St. Louis”, Jeffrey Smith

The Confluence (2009-2020)

Just as he was becoming a noted planner and park designer, Frederick Law Olmsted spent more than two years as executive secretary of the United States Sanitary Commission to acquire supplies for Union troops and to raise money—which brought him into conflict with James Yeatman, head of the Western Sanitary Commission in St. Louis. In April 1863, Olmsted visited St. Louis; these were his impressions and observations.

Urban Foraging And The Relational Ecologies Of Belonging, Melissa R. Poe, Joyce Lecompte, Rebecca J. Mclain, Patrick T. Hurley

Environment and Sustainability Faculty Publications

Through a discussion of urban foraging in Seattle, Washington, USA, we examine how people's plant and mushroom harvesting practices in cities are linked to relationships with species, spaces, and ecologies. Bringing a relational approach to political ecology, we discuss the ways that these particular nature–society relationships are formed, legitimated, and mobilized in discursive and material ways in urban ecosystems. Engaging closely with and as foragers, we develop an ethnographically grounded ‘relational ecologies of belonging’ framework to conceptualize and examine three constituent themes: cultural belonging and identity, belonging and place, and belonging and more-than-human agency. Through this case study, we show …

A Case Study Analysis Of A Regional Food System: The Sustainable Agriculture Consortium For Historically Disadvantaged Farmers Program, Tasha M. Hargrove, Walter A. Hill, John Brown, Miles Robinson, Iris Cole-Crosby, Elizabeth Myles, Billy Lawton, Karla Martin

Professional Agricultural Workers Journal

The Sustainable Agriculture Consortium for Historically Disadvantaged Farmers Program (SACH) was designed to carry out an experiment by five 1890 Land-Grant Universities in partnership with five farmer based cooperatives in five states to assess marketing fruits and vegetables to Walmart from a regional perspective. Using the Consortium as a case study, this study assessed the Consortium within the framework of implementation evaluation; data were collected using semi-structured interviews and document analysis. The study answered questions such as, what did the Consortium do, and what were some of the accomplishments of the Consortium? The farmers were able to: negotiate price points; …

Jesus Lives, But Should He Live In My Front Yard?, Christin N. Taylor

English Faculty Publications

As I drove home from church, I eyed the bright foam sign my 6-year-old daughter held. “Jesus is Alive” it read in kid scrawl. “We’re supposed to put them in our yards!” Noelle beamed, eyeing her creation proudly through pink-rimmed glasses.

I imagined our wide, open yard in Pennsylvania, the green grass stretching without fences from one neighbor to the next. Our best friends in the neighborhood, secular humanists, would easily see it. I cringed. What would they think? [excerpt]

Narco-Trauma: The Phenomenology Of The Mexican Drug War Among Binational Students At The Border, Kathleen A. O'Connor

Nursing Faculty Publications

In this article, I present research conducted among 242 university students living in the binational metropolitan area encompassing El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, that has been affected by drug violence. The particular focus is on narratives of social suffering and lived experience in the context of drug violence.

Female Genital Mutilation In Africa: A Socio-Legal Lens, Adiroopa Mukherjee

Undergraduate Research Symposium 2014

World Health Organization reports suggest that approximately 101 million girls under the age of ten have undergone Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Africa alone. FGM comes to the forefront as a direct violation of every woman’s basic human rights to a good, healthy, and painless existence, free form discrimination. Most studies focus on a medical approach to FGM. They show that the practice causes several serious diseases and fatal health risks through the use of unsterilized non-surgical instruments and environments, which lead to infertility, genital infections, psychological problems and, death. My research focuses on the less studied socio-legal aspects of …

Modern Portraits Of Childbirth In Exile In Mcleod Ganj, Dharamsala: A Melding Of Tradition And Innovation, Luna Adler

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The exiled Tibetans of McLeod Ganj, Dharamsala, India1 are caught between two worlds; forced to live outside of their native land, some cling to Tibetan tradition while others embrace their new environment and its protocol. Because their 1959 exile was relatively recent, the Tibetans I spoke with during my four weeks of research for this paper were nearly split: many of my interviewees were born in their homeland while a number of others were born into exile. This juxtaposition made for a wide range of perspectives and answers to my queries, as well as heightened insight into the ways that …

Late Night At Lds, Mary E. Maloney

SURGE

As I am giving my full attention to the Western omelet, home fries, and rye toast on my plate, I do not notice what is going on around me. I’m not drunk, but I’m not sober either. I’m with some friends I know well and some people I barely know, but they all seem nice enough to share a late night meal. I’m starving.

I start to realize that more and more non-college students enter LDs, presumably local Gettysburg residents. Some are being loud and boisterous, not unlike many of the people sitting at my very own table, and someone …

Examining Religious Commitment, Perfectionism, Scrupulosity, And Well-Being Among Lds Individuals, Kawika Allen, Kenneth T. Wang

Faculty Publications

This study examined the relationships and interactions between religious commitment, perfectionism, scrupulosity, and psychological well-being among Latter-Day Saints (LDS or Mormons). The results showed a positive association between religious commitment and satisfaction with life. Scrupulosity partially mediated the relationship between maladaptive perfectionism and depression, anxiety, and satisfaction with life. The sample majority was classified as adaptive perfectionists, reporting higher intra- and interpersonal religious commitment, self-esteem, and satisfaction with life, and lower levels of anxiety and depression than the maladaptive and nonperfectionists. Additional results are provided. Implications of these findings are outlined.

Studying Abroad, Toilet Paper, And Other Exercises In Missing The Point, Rashida Aluko-Roberts

SURGE

I have been in Ghana only for a few days, and I can already tell I am going to love the place­—the people, the food, the environment, all remind me of my home country, Sierra Leone.

However, I don’t think I can adjust to the constant uttering by some of my peers about how this experience “makes them appreciate how much they have.” In the past four days, I have heard that same phrase over and over again. [excerpt]

Talking About Public Health: An Analysis Of A Municipal Public Health Twitter Feed, Olivia E. Kozela

Sociology Major Research Papers

Social media has become an increasingly popular tool used by experts and laypeople alike to obtain, share, and create health information. Public health authorities have also begun to use web 2.0 platforms to share information and foster engagement with the public. Existing public health research about Twitter has explored its uses as a tool of health promotion, however communication on the Twitter platform has not yet been explored from a critical public health perspective. The purpose of this study is to analyze how talk about public health occurs online via Twitter. Using both content and discourse analysis of communication on …

The Geography Of Stuck: Exceptions To Brain Drain In West Virginia, Lindsay Heinemann

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Brain drain, also known as “human capital flight,” can be defined as “the mass emigration of technically skilled people from one country to another country” (Weeks, 2008, p. 250) or one state to another state. This theory surmises that highly skilled people or those with high education levels are more likely to migrate from places with little to no economic opportunities to places with better economic and job opportunities. West Virginia has largely been a state with few high paying or prestigious job opportunities. So why do highly educated people stay in West Virginia? Using census data and personal interviews, …

Full Issue

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Editorial Statement

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Contributors

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Contents

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Challenges And Success Stories From The Danish Health Care System, Lars Engberg

The Bridge

There are some substantial differences between the Danish health care system and the health care system in the United States. Most importantly, Danish health care is free. As a Dane you do not pay when you visit a doctor or a hospital, knowing, of course, that as a taxpayer (and taxes are high in Denmark), a fairly large proportion of your taxes goes to keeping visits to hospitals and doctors free of charge. But some services in the health care system do cost you out-of-pocket when you use them. In Europe, in general, the co-payment rate, besides what you pay …

Full Issue

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Contents

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Nebraska Risk And Protective Factor Student Survey Results For 2014. Profile Report: State Of Nebraska, Bureau Of Sociological Research

Nebraska Student Health and Risk Prevention Surveillance System (SHARP)

This report summarizes the findings from the 2014 Nebraska Risk and Protective Factor Student Survey (NRPFSS). The 2014 survey represents the sixth implementation of the NRPFSS and the third implementation of the survey under the Nebraska Student Health and Risk Prevention (SHARP) Surveillance System.

The NRPFSS targets Nebraska students in grades 8, 10, and 12 with a goal of providing schools and communities with local-level data. As a result, the NRPFSS is implemented as a census survey, meaning that every public and non-public school with an eligible grade can choose to participate. Therefore data presented in this report are not …

Front Cover

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

Peter Ludwig Panum And The Danish School Of Epidemiology, Craig A. Melgaard, Amanda L. Golbeck

The Bridge

One of the major historical questions of public health has been, "What causes epidemic outbreaks of disease?" Epidemiology, the basic science of public health, has only relatively recently emerged from a period during which epidemic outbreaks were attributed to miasmas. Miasma theory, a common folk theory of disease ascribed to by many ancient writers, was codified by Lancisi in 1717 in De Noxiis Paludum Effiuviis. This text held that bad air quality, supposedly caused by decaying organic matter, made those who inhaled it ill. "Miasma" was believed to pass from cases to susceptibles in those diseases considered to be contagious …

My Observations Of Danish Innovation In Doing Science, Learning New Things, And Living An Interesting Life, Eugene S. Takle

The Bridge

I have had the very good fortune to interact with a number of Danish scientists and scholars over my career, and much of the scientific success I have enjoyed is directly related to these interactions. My career has taken me to Denmark several times for a variety of personal as well as professional reasons. Although my contacts have been, in some cases, somewhat episodic and mostly professionally driven, it has been my experience that once strong connections with Danish people are made they persist and do not diminish in spite of the lack of continuous tending.

Back Matter

The Bridge

No abstract provided.

The Changes In Mainland Chinese Families During The Social Transition: A Critical Analysis, Anqi Xu, Yan Ruth Xia

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Modernization theory offers possible explanations for family changes related to advances in science and technology, and socio-economic development in industrial societies. Modernization impacts family structure, relationship, values and beliefs. Families become nuclear while people become mobile and the society becomes urban. Economic development provides employment opportunities outside the birthplace. Away from kinship network, a nuclear family is less influenced and controlled by elder members in the extended family in fulfilling its traditional roles and obligations (Parsons, 1943). The changes occur in all societies although they may vary in pace across societies (Goode, 1982). Modernization theory is criticized for valuing Western …

The Cultural Contexts Of Children’S Prosocial Behaviors, Maria Rosario De Guzman, Kieu-Anh Do, Car Mun Kok

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

In 1976 Beatrice Whiting famously urged researchers to “unpackage” the concept of culture and related constructs. She highlighted the need in social and behavioral research to tease out the complex and often interwoven factors that might underlie superficial culture group differences in child outcomes and suggested looking more closely at the child’s learning environment, the details within which could provide important insight regarding children’s behaviors that could better explain how culture might be manifested in the developmental landscape (Whiting, 1976). Almost 40 years later, the importance of culture in children’s development is widely recognized, nonetheless researchers continue to wrestle with …