Men at risk The Physical, Mental and Social Health of Men in Massachusetts

In 2009, Clark University was accepted as the university to represent Massachusetts in the National Policy Institute for Family Impact Seminars at the University of Wisconsin – Madison (http://familyimpactseminars.org). Family Impact Seminars are a series of annual seminars, briefing reports, and discussion sessions that provide up-to-date, solution-oriented research on current issues for state legislators, their aides, and legislative support bureau personnel. The seminars provide objective, nonpartisan research on current issues and do not lobby for particular policies. Seminar participants discuss policy options and identify common ground where it exists.

Cultural capital and social inequality in health

Economic and social resources are known to contribute to the unequal distribution of health outcomes. Culture-related factors such as normative beliefs, knowledge and behaviours have also been shown to be associated with health status. The role and function of cultural resources in the unequal distribution of health is addressed. Drawing on the work of French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, the concept of cultural capital for its contribution to the current understanding of social inequalities in health is explored. It is suggested that class related cultural resources interact with economic and social capital in the social structuring of people's health chances and choices. It is concluded that cultural capital is a key element in the behavioural transformation of social inequality into health inequality. New directions for empirical research on the interplay between economic, social and cultural capital are outlined.

Governance of Digital Game Environments and Cultural Diversity : Transdisciplinary Enquiries

Digital game environments are of increasing economic, social and cultural value. As their influence on diverse facets of life grows, states have felt compelled to intervene and secure some public interests. Yet, the contours of a comprehensive governance model are far from recognisable and governments are grappling with the complexity and fluidity of online games and virtual worlds as private spaces and as experimentation fields for creativity and innovation. This book contributes to a more comprehensive and fine-grained understanding of digital game environments, which is a precondition for addressing any of the pressing governance questions posed. Particular attention is given to the concept and policy objective of cultural diversity, which also offers a unique entry point into the discussion of the appropriate legal regulation of digital games. Governance of Digital Game Environments and Cultural Diversity will be of interest to researchers of media law, internet law and governance, cultural studies, anthropology and sociology. As the book addresses a highly topical theme, it will attract the attention of policymakers at national, regional and international levels and will also serve as a great resource tool for scholars in new media and, in particular, digital games and virtual worlds.

Governance of Digital Game Environments and Cultural Diversity : Transdisciplinary Enquiries. Preface

Digital game environments are of increasing economic, social and cultural value. As their influence on diverse facets of life grows, states have felt compelled to intervene and secure some public interests. Yet, the contours of a comprehensive governance model are far from recognisable and governments are grappling with the complexity and fluidity of online games and virtual worlds as private spaces and as experimentation fields for creativity and innovation. This book contributes to a more comprehensive and fine-grained understanding of digital game environments, which is a precondition for addressing any of the pressing governance questions posed. Particular attention is given to the concept and policy objective of cultural diversity, which also offers a unique entry point into the discussion of the appropriate legal regulation of digital games. Governance of Digital Game Environments and Cultural Diversity will be of interest to researchers of media law, internet law and governance, cultural studies, anthropology and sociology. As the book addresses a highly topical theme, it will attract the attention of policymakers at national, regional and international levels and will also serve as a great resource tool for scholars in new media and, in particular, digital games and virtual worlds.

Sight distance studies on roads: influence of digital elevation models and roadside elements

Sight distance plays an important role in road traffic safety. Two types of Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) are utilized for the estimation of available sight distance in roads: Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) and Digital Surface Models (DSMs). DTMs, which represent the bare ground surface, are commonly used to determine available sight distance at the design stage. Additionally, the use of DSMs provides further information about elements by the roadsides such as trees, buildings, walls or even traffic signals which may reduce available sight distance. This document analyses the influence of three classes of DEMs in available sight distance estimation. For this purpose, diverse roads within the Region of Madrid (Spain) have been studied using software based on geographic information systems. The study evidences the influence of using each DEM in the outcome as well as the pros and cons of using each model.

The Impact of Shyness on Loneliness, Social Anxiety, and School Liking in Late Childhood

Author: Charity M. Walker Title: THE IMPACT OF SHYNESS ON LONELINESS, SOCIAL ANXIETY, AND SCHOOL LIKING IN LATE CHILDHOOD Advisor: Maria T. Riva, Ph.D. Degree Date: August 2011 ABSTRACT Shyness is associated with several emotional, social, and academic problems. While there are multiple difficulties that often accompany shyness, there appear to be some factors that can moderate negative effects of shyness. Research has demonstrated that certain parenting factors affect the adjustment of shy children in early childhood, but there is minimal research illuminating the effect of parenting factors in older age groups. The first purpose of this study was to examine relationships between shyness and loneliness, social anxiety, and school liking. The second purpose was to investigate whether the quality of the relationship between a parent and a 10- to 15-year-olds child influences the amount of loneliness or social anxiety a shy child experiences or how the child feels about school. Parent-child dyads served as participants and were recruited from public and private middle schools and church youth groups in Colorado and Indiana. Child participants completed several self-report surveys regarding their relationship with a parent, shyness, loneliness, social anxiety, and their attitude toward school. Parents completed a survey about their relationship with their child and responded to questions related to their perceptions of their child's shyness. Data was analyzed with a series of correlation and regression analyses. Greater degrees of self-reported shyness were found to be associated with higher levels of loneliness and social anxiety and less positive feelings about school. Due to a problem with multicollinearity during data analysis, this study was not able to explore the effect of the parent-child relationship quality on the associations between shyness and adjustment factors. Overall, these findings imply that shyness remains an important issue as children approach adolescence. Further research is needed to continue learning about the potential importance of parent-child interactions in reducing maladjustment for shy children during late childhood.

A Quantitative Exploration of Social Networks: Verifying the Legitimacy and Equitability of Social Networks in Recruiting

In this digital age organizations must focus on connecting with candidates and aspire for innovation in recruiting practices to remain competitive. This author investigated social networking to determine whether or not it provides reliable candidate information when recruiting for hire. Online media such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, have become an integrated part of social and professional lives. Analysis of social networking revealed use for recruiting but posed challenges and advantages for organizations. A quantitative cross-sectional survey of social network members (N=136) indicated discrepancy in generational use of social networks and concerns regarding the validity and reliability of candidate information. Social networking promotes innovation in recruiting, however, by itself might not endorse equitability, validity and reliability.

Digital Fabrication and Free Culture. One More Minor Becoming?

Diferentes autores se refieren a la fabricación digital como la Tercera Revolución Digital, después de las revoluciones de la computación y la comunicación. Como ocurriera con las dos revoluciones precedentes, se generaron grandes expectativas en torno a las virtualidades políticas de estas nuevas tecnologías para dar lugar a relaciones de producción más libres e individuos más autónomos. Sin embargo, como también ocurriera con la computación y la comunicación, lo que realmente está ocurriendo demuestra que las supuestas virtualidades no llegarán a hacerse actuales sin una intensa implicación, organización y trabajo por parte de sectores activistas técnicos y sociales. Se discute el caso de la compra corporativa de la empresa pionera de hardware libre Makerbot, como ejemplo de la situación y punto de inflexión en las expectativas de los nuevos tecno-visionarios. Para concluir se propone una serie de posibles estrategias que podrían promover el desarrollo efectivo de un ecosistema libre y open source de fabricación digital.

The Hargreaves Review : digital opportunity:a review of intellectual property and growth

In December 2010 the Hargreaves Review was asked to “develop proposals on how the UK's intellectual property framework can further promote entrepreneurialism, economic growth and social and commercial innovation”. It reported in May 2011. The Government published its response in August 2011. This is an overview of both the Review and the Government Response.

Social change in Central and Eastern Europe: General trends and national patterns

The paper addresses five issue areas. First it describes the plurality of trajectories in central and eastern European transformations, offering a broad typology. Then it addresses the drift between acceptance of democracy and the market, owing to growing inequalities. Third, problems of poverty and exclusion are addressed. Fourth, it is addressed if any known model of redistribution emerged in the post-transition economies. Fifth, consequences of the populist turn in European policies are being analyzed. Influences of the EU practices will be dealt with and some preliminary conclusions drawn. These suggest a strong intertwining between social and economic performance that limit theoretically conceivable – neoliberal, social democratic, postmodern or conservative - policy choices.

Politics and prayer in West Perrine, Florida: Civic social capital and the black church

This thesis traces the mechanisms and sources responsible for the generation of civic social capital (a set of shared norms and values that promote cooperation between groups, enabling them to participate in the political process) by black churches in West Perrine, Florida. Data for this thesis includes over fifty interviews and participant observations, archival records, newspaper articles, and scholarly journals. ^ Despite the institutional racism of the first half of the twentieth century, many blacks and whites in Perrine developed levels of trust significant enough to form an integrated local governing body, evidence of high levels of csc. At mid-century, when black and white interactions ceased, Perrine's csc decreased, leading to the deterioration of Perrine's social and physical conditions. Perrine's csc increased in the 1980s by way of broad-based coalitions as Perrine's churches invested their csc in an effort to eradicate crime, clean up its neighborhood, and win back its youth. ^

Armed Groups and Violence in Paraguay

Armed violence in Paraguay is not a recent phenomenon. During the second half of the XX Century, Paraguay saw the rise of a larger number of underground, revolutionary movements that sought the overthrow of the Alfredo Stroessner’s (1954-1989) government. From among those movements emerged the Partido Patria Libre (or, Free Fatherland, also known for its acronym PPL), made up of a two branches: one legal and the other one, operational. The latter was based on people’s power, as represented by “Ejército del Pueblo Paraguayo” (or, the Paraguayan People’s Army, with acronym EPP). After EPP broke with PPL in March 2008, this Marxist-oriented revolutionary project, which was apparently oriented to put an end to the social, political and economic inequalities in Paraguay, began to carry out markedly criminal activities, which included bank robberies, kidnappings, assassinations, terrorist attacks and armed confrontations. Its strategies and modus operandi utilized by the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC). Paraguay features a farm sector in a state of crisis, in which cattle-ranchers, peasants and agro-exporting companies live in a constant strife. The Paraguayan Departments that are the most affected by this situation are Concepciόn, San Pedro, Canindeyú y Caazapá, which also suffer from a weak government presence. This deficiency has made these departments ripe for drug-trafficking activity by Brazilian groups such as Primer Comando Capital (i.e., First Capital command), also PCC and Comando Vermelho, (i.e., The Red Command). That is why many peasants, now recruited by EPP, have joined the drug-trafficking business and that, not only as marihuana growers but as “campanas” (i.e., early warning sentinels) for the organization. This helps shape their attitudes for their future involvement in all areas of drug-trafficking. Paraguayan society is the result of social inequity and inequality, such as those resulting from a lack of opportunity. Although Paraguay has successfully recovered from the last world economic crisis, economic growth, by itself, does not ensure an improvement in the quality of life. As long as such economic and social gaps persist and the government fails to enact the policies that would result in a more just society and toward EPP neutralization or containment, the latter is bound to grow stronger. In this context, the situation in Paraguay calls for more research into the EPP phenomenon. It would also seem necessary for Paraguay to promote an open national debate that includes all sectors of society in order to raise consciousness and to induce society to take actual steps to eliminate the EPP, as well as any other group that might arise in the immediate future. EPP has strong connections with the Frente Patriόtico Manuel Rodríguez in Chile and other armed groups and peasant movements in other countries of this region. Although most governments in the region are aware that the armed struggle is not a solution to current problems, it might be worth it to hold a regional debate about armed or insurgent groups in Latin American to seek common strategies and cooperation on dealing with them since the expansion of these armed groups is a problem for all.

Social Capital and International Migration from Latin America

We combine data from the Latin American Migration Project and the Mexican Migration Project to estimate models predicting the likelihood of taking of first and later trips to the United States from five nations: Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Peru. The models test specific hypotheses about the effects of social capital on international migration and how these effects vary with respect to contextual factors. Our findings confirm the ubiquity of migrant networks and the universality of social capital effects throughout Latin America. They also reveal how the sizes of these effects are not uniform across settings. Social capital operates more powerfully on first as opposed to later trips and interacts with the cost of migration. In addition, effects are somewhat different when considering individual social capital (measuring strong ties) and community social capital (measuring weak ties). On first trips, the effect of strong ties in promoting migration increases with distance whereas the effect of weak ties decreases with distance. On later trips, the direction of effects for both individual and community social capital is negative for long distances but positive for short distances.

"New" Social Movements: Alternative Modernities, (Trans)local Nationalisms, and Solidarity Economies

My dissertation is the first project on the Haitian Platform for Advocacy for an Alternative Development- PAPDA, a nation-building coalition founded by activists from varying sectors to coordinate one comprehensive nationalist movement against what they are calling an Occupation. My work not only provides information on this under-theorized popular movement but also situates it within the broader literature on the postcolonial nation-state as well as Latin American and Caribbean social movements. The dissertation analyzes the contentious relationship between local and global discourses and practices of citizenship. Furthermore, the research draws on transnational feminist theory to underline the scattered hegemonies that intersect to produce varied spaces and practices of sovereignty within the Haitian postcolonial nation-state. The dissertation highlights how race and class, gender and sexuality, education and language, and religion have been imagined and co-constituted by Haitian social movements in constructing ‘new’ collective identities that collapse the private and the public, the rural and the urban, the traditional and the modern. My project complements the scholarship on social movements and the postcolonial nation-state and pushes it forward by emphasizing its spatial dimensions. Moreover, the dissertation de-centers the state to underline the movement of capital, goods, resources, and populations that shape the postcolonial experience. I re-define the postcolonial nation-state as a network of local, regional, international, and transnational arrangements between different political agents, including social movement actors. To conduct this interdisciplinary research project, I employed ethnographic methods, discourse and textual analysis, as well as basic mapping and statistical descriptions in order to present a historically-rooted interpretation of individual and organizational negotiations for community-based autonomy and regional development.