Residential concentration and participation in local politics: The case of immigrants of the FSU in Israel

Studies on immigrants’ residential concentration have reported mixed findings. Some have argued that immigrants’ residential concentration is a necessary step in the process of their social integration because there the newcomers find housing and employment opportunities as well as social support. As they learn the language and improve their socioeconomic status, they move to neighbourhoods where they share space with the native population. Others have argued that the ethnic neighbourhood delays the process of social integration in the new society because it nurtures informal ethnic social networks that provide incomplete information and retard the process of language acquisition. Less is known on the relationship between immigrants’ residential concentration and their participation in local politics. The study reported here investigated the effect of residential concentration on participation in the local election and on the likelihood of voting for an ethnic party. Data for the study were collected in 1999 through a survey of immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) who had settled in one northern city in Israel after 1989. The results show that a relatively high percentage of new immigrants (60%) had participated in the local elections. The likelihood of participating in the local elections is positively related to acculturation variables. The longer the residence of the immigrant in the country, and the more positive the immigrant attitudes to the country the more likely it is that they will participate in the local election. Regarding the vote for a Russian party the findings show that, as expected, the effect of spatial concentration is positively related to the likelihood of voting for a Russian party. The implications of the findings are discussed.     

Approaches to Reducing Poverty

In this essay, I present examples of programs to reduce or alleviate poverty and promote economic development. Examples are classified according to the program’s likely impact upon poverty. Examples include programs of the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Delta Regional Authority, the research program of the University of Georgia entitled, “It’s a Matter of Wealth,” suggestions made at a conference of the Georgia Rural Development Council, and interviews with professionals engaged in economic development. There are, (1), direct approaches to benefiting the poor with: (a), immediate impact; and (b), long term and sustaining impact; (2), indirect impact programs which include: (a), environmental improvements; (b), economic improvements; (c), social improvements; and (3), ethical considerations. The classification shows that many programs for economic development have only indirect effect upon poverty. A scheme of classification of poverty persons is needed. While the development of the infrastructure may impact the general well-being of a region, the increase in income of low-income persons remains the essential solution. Longitudinal studies of poverty families are suggested as means of evaluating approaches to reducing poverty. Programs affecting the poor should adhere to ethical canons, such as: nonmalfeasance, autonomy, beneficence, fidelity, and justice. Abbott L. Ferriss, Ph. D., is Professor of Sociology Emeritus, Emory University, e-mail: aferris@emory.edu. The study was conducted under an Emory University Heilbrun Distinguished Emeritus Research Fellowship.     

Enhancing Poverty-Abatement Programs: a Subjective Well-Being Contribution

This paper questions the assumption used in designing social policies that raising people’s income automatically translates into greater well-being. Based on a subjective well-being approach and a representative survey from Costa Rica the paper shows that there is substantial dissonance in the classification of persons as poor and as being in well-being deprivation. The existence of dissonances leads to the conceptualization of different trajectories out-of-poverty and into well-being. Public policies oriented towards the abatement of income poverty can have a greater impact on people’s well-being if they recognize the complexity of human beings and acknowledge that their programs affect satisfaction in all domains of life. The paper states that public policy should not only be concerned with getting people out of income poverty, but also with placing them in a life-satisfying situation. The paper also discusses strategies that could improve poverty-abatement programs.     

Canada’s Same-Sex Marriage Law: Exception to or Exemplar of Canada’s Family Policy?

Family policy in Canada is primarily concerned with assisting parents raise their children. This fairly singular approach to family policy is ironic given that Canada does not have a nationally-coordinated family policy. The development of a national family policy has been hampered by Canada’s decentralized governmental structure (i.e., federal and provincial, as well as territorial, governments) and other factors such as diverse geography and different traditions (e.g., a tradition of common law in English Canada, and civil law in Quebec). A recent addition to Canada’s family policy is Bill C-38, The Civil Marriage Act (2005), the law legalizing same-sex marriage. To put Canada’s same-sex marriage law into context, this article presents some preliminary statistics about same-sex marriage in Canada, and considers whether same-sex marriage legislation is a good example of Canadian family policy, or an exception to the rule that Canadian family policy focuses primarily on helping parents socialize their children.     

The Loss and Grief in Immigration: Pastoral Care for Immigrants

Immigration is common in this increasingly globalized world. Immigration is a psycho-social-geographical transition that involves a series of losses and changes, most of them obvious and expected, but some of them hidden and unexpected. Immigration also involves changes in one’s identity, as inner change tries to match outer change. The original story of immigration—by Abraham in the Bible—highlights some of the issues immigrants typically confront. A survey of Taiwanese immigrants in San Francisco and Vancouver, Canada illustrates some of the most troubling of these issues. Congregations, particularly bicultural congregations, are especially well-equipped to minister to the needs of the newly immigrated. Pastors need to be sensitive to the issues and needs of immigrants in a world where we are all foreigners in one sense or another.     

Ten reasons why ANOVA theory and research fail to explain attribution processes: 1. Conceptual problems

Ten reasons are proposed to explain why Kelley’s attribution theory and related questionnaire research fail to account for the cognitive processes underlying ordinary explanations of behaviour. In this first paper, five salient conceptual problems of the ANOVA model are reviewed: the inadequate analysis of behaviours and their contexts, and the inferences to which they give rise; deployment of the vague and ambiguous internal-external distinction; the normative view of people as poor social scientists; the crude analogy between ordinary reasoning and statistical procedures; and, fundamentally, the naive conceptualization of cognitive processes. Schank’s computational theory of social inference is identified as a sophisticated process model which avoids the conceptual problems inherent in the ANOVA model.     

Biomedical research and mining of the poor: The need for their exclusion

Almost all ethical guidelines and legislative policies concerning biomedical research involving human subjects contain provisions about relevance of research for the participating populations, informed consent, adequate care for research induced injuries and several other safeguards but the poor continue to suffer. Globalization has further aggravated poor people’s vulnerability by exposing them to international markets. Since the developing countries are abode of higher population of the poor they have become the unholy mines of this human ore for researchers. In this paper I examine various dimensions of poverty and analyze the international ethical responses in the area of biomedical research involving human subjects in order to determine their adequacy to protect the poor against exploitation and misuse and conclude that in view of the poor’s inherent and extreme vulnerability and the failure of ethical pronouncements to protect them from misuse and exploitation, they should be excluded from being enrolled as research subjects This paper was presented at the 6th International Bioethics Conference on the subject of ‘The Responsible Conduct of Basic and Clinical Research’, held in Warsaw, Poland, 3–4 June 2005.     

Respect and Types of Injustice

Jonathan Wolff and Timothy Hinton have criticized a version of liberal egalitarianism, often associated with Ronald Dworkin, for promoting an account of social justice that fails to treat everyone with respect. This paper analyses Wolff’s and Hinton’s critiques, particularly with regard to how notions of self-respect and respect-standing are deployed. The paper argues that the analyses of both Wolff and Hinton display affinities with a dualist approach to social justice. A dualist approach theorizes respect as an aspect of both distributive, socioeconomic injustice and cultural injustice, rather than of the former only, which is typical of liberal egalitarianism. Nancy Fraser is widely associated with such a dualist framework, so her version is used to assess Wolff’s and Hinton’s work. The paper argues that both make use of ideals and commitments from the dualist approach to justice in their respect objection. However, despite their evident sympathy for the notion of cultural injustice, both continue to theorize respect primarily as an aspect of distributive justice. Thus, for cultural justice theorists, Wolff’s and Hinton’s critiques of Dworkinian justice may leave something to be desired. Thanks to Anne Phillips, Kathy King, Tamara Jugov, Neal Razzell and reviewers for Res Publica for comments on an earlier draft of the paper. Thanks to Itai Rabinowitz for insightful conversations about the issues touched on here. Thanks to the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for making this research possible.     

Reclaiming the Person: Intersectionality and Dynamic Social Categories Through a Psychological Lens

Psychology’s conventionally treatment of individuals’ engagement with and resistance to the societal processes in which they are embedded has come under scrutiny amid the rise of postmodernist and critical feminist perspectives (among many others) in the social sciences. A sample of social psychology’s responses to these critiques is presented in the recently published book, Social Categories in Everyday Experience edited by Shaun Wiley et al. (2011). In this essay, the challenges of seriously addressing the critiques of psychology’s conventional treatment of social categories, which implicate fundamental assumptions of the discipline, are discussed. Further, it is argued that in order to effectively construct psychological accounts of political activism and social change amid theories that are increasingly cognizant of the complexities and contingencies of social embeddiness, the person must be reclaimed and revisioned. Notions of agency that complement an intersectional and systemic vision of the social world are discussed.     

Mediators of Neighborhood Influences on Externalizing Behavior in Preadolescent Children

This study tested a mediation model of neighborhood influences on children’s externalizing behavior. In the proposed model, neighborhood disadvantage, ethnic heterogeneity, and low residential stability affect children’s behavior indirectly through their impact on neighborhood social processes, which in turn influence parenting and deviant peer affiliations. A community sample of 704 preadolescents (76% African American, 22% Caucasian) and their parents and teachers provided information for the study. Neighborhood concentrated poverty, derived from the 2000 U.S. Census, was positively associated with children’s externalizing behavior. This effect was fully mediated by neighborhood social processes and parenting quality, while deviant peer affiliations made independent contributions to problem behavior. The final mediation model explained children’s externalizing behavior equally well across gender and ethnicity, suggesting the presence of universal processes.     

Parental Influence on Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: I. Relationships Between Parent Behaviors and Child Peer Status

We examined associations between children’s peer relationships and (a) their parents’ social competence as well as (b) their parents’ behaviors during the children’s peer interactions. Participants were families of 124 children ages 6–10 (68% male), 62 with ADHD and 62 age- and sex-matched comparison youth. Children’s peer relationships were assessed via parent and teacher report, and sociometric nominations in a lab-based playgroup. Parental characteristics were assessed via parent self-report and observations of behavior during their child’s playgroup. After statistical control of relevant covariates, parents of children with ADHD reported poorer social skills of their own, arranged fewer playdates for their children, and displayed more criticism during their child’s peer interaction than did parents of comparison youth. Parents’ socialization with other parents and facilitation of the child’s peer interactions predicted their children having good peer relationships as reported by teachers and peers, whereas parental corrective feedback to the child and praise predicted poor peer relationships. Parents’ ratings of their child’s social skills were positively associated with ratings of their own social skills, but negatively associated with criticism and facilitation of the child’s peer interactions. Relationships between parental behaviors and peer relationships were stronger for youth with ADHD than for comparison youth. The relevance of findings to interventions is discussed.     

Poverty in developing nations: a cross‐cultural attributional analysis

A survey of anti‐poverty activists and non‐activists in Canada and the Philippines was conducted to assess their beliefs about the causes of poverty in developing nations. Principal components analysis revealed that the respondents' poverty attributions could be distinguished along five main dimensions: exploitation, characterological weaknesses of the poor, natural causes, conflict, and poor government. Group breakdowns revealed several significant differences related to respondents' countries of residence and social ideologies. A path analysis suggested that attributions fully mediated the relationship between social ideology and participation in anti‐poverty activism. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ludwig Feuerbach’s conception of the religious alienation of man and Mikhail Bakunin’s philosophy of negation

In this paper we attempt to prove that it was Ludwig Feuerbach’s anthropology that influenced Bakunin’s philosophical path. Following his example Bakunin turned against religion which manipulates, as Hegelianism does, the only priority human being has—another human being. Although Feuerbach’s philosophy did not involve social problems present at Bakunin’s works, we would like to show that it was Feuerbach himself who laid foundation for them and that Bakunin’s criticism of the state was the natural consequence of Feuerbach’s struggle for the individual. Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin proved that Feuerbach’s attempts to rise anthropology to the rank of theology are not sufficient to free the individual from the power of abstractions as in his opinion it is not only God (religion) that should be overthrown but also the state.     

The Deportation of German Nationals from Canada, 1919 to 1939

This article examines the repatriation of German nationals from Canada between the two World Wars. After World War I, Germans living in Canada were suspicious; this sentiment lingered into the 1930s. During the 1920s, deportations from Canada allowed the government to rid themselves of unwanted residents. During the Great Depression, poor, unemployed immigrants became redundant which encouraged the deportation process. Unfortunately, deportations punished the unlucky and needy; many had experienced hardships in Canada, a country that was unwilling to aid immigrants.     

Hannah Arendt & Jean Baudrillard: Pedagogy in the Consumer Society

This paper considers the place of education within our “consumers’ society”, beginning with Hannah Arendt’s account of the rise of consumerism to a position of political dominance and the resulting eclipse of public life. Connections are then made between Arendt’s account of this rise and Jean Baudrillard’s account of the postmodern proliferation of signs and the transformation of the sign into a commodity. This radical “semiurgy” accelerates into a self-referential series of signs which entails the loss of reality – it contributes to the disappearance of the human subjectivity behind the creation of images. I argue that Baudrillard does not respond adequately to the dynamic that he describes so well. By contrast, Arendt’s concept of natality, I suggest, prepares the ground for a response to the forces of commodification that colonize the educational environment and threaten its critical possibilities. As youth and schools receive more and more attention from advertisers, students are sold by educational institutions to commercial interests who seek unfettered access to this “captive audience”. Yet education is profoundly compromised when youths are viewed as consumers and not as a social investment, when education is viewed merely as an opportunity to secure a new market.     

Ethnoracial Origins, Social Capital, and Earnings

The purpose of this article is to analyse ethnoracial differences in income attainment, as well as differences in earnings that can be attributed to social capital. The data set is the Ethnic Diversity Survey, a large survey of Canadians conducted by Statistics Canada in 2002. Bivariate and multivariate analyses show that ethnoracial minorities are disadvantaged when compared with the British or whites in general. This disparity remains even after controlling for a host of theoretically relevant variables. The brunt of this disadvantage is experienced by male visible-minority immigrants. Although social capital is shown to exert an independent effect on earnings, its benefit varies by social origins, types of social capital, birth, and gender. Trust is important for females’ earnings but not for males’. Family contact and religious participation benefits British males’ earnings more than those of visible-minority males. Religious participation also benefits those born in Canada more than those who immigrated to Canada. In contrast, female immigrants benefit from their associational participation more than females born in Canada.     

Remaining a Pole or Becoming a Canadian: National Self-Identity among Polish Immigrants to Canada1

The construct of national self-identity has been theoretically elaborated, following Tajfel's (1981) distinction between criterial and correlated (dimensional) attributes. A third identity component, affects for country, was included with these two aspects. The research program built on these distinctions was designed to compare the national self-identities of Polish immigrants to Canada. Men and women who were new (recent), old (WWII veterans) or second generation immigrants participated in the study. Polish criterial identity (knowledge and personal relevance of national symbols) exhibited a gradual decline from new to second generation immigrants, and a similar but sharper rise in Canadian criterial identity occurred. Correlated aspect of identity was measured as the similarity between self and Canadian/Polish prototypes. Unlike in the criterial sense, Self/Polish was stronger than Self/Canadian correlated identity. Self/Polish identity showed stability across gender and generation. Self/Canadian showed an increase, but only in women. Rating the prototypes high in materialism and low in the family/social concern factor resulted in a low Self/Canadian identity. Four factors were found in the affects for country test: healthy, neurotic, psychotic, and involvement. The first was predominantly a Canadian factor, and the second was a Polish factor. With a succession of new, old, and second generation groups, results showed a shift from less to more positive, from less to more concerned, and from more to less psychotic affects toward Canada. Affects toward Poland were fixed across the categories of subjects. Finally, a syndrome of positive identity with Canada was found, consisting of its criterial, correlated, and healthy affect components.     

The Button to Make Poverty History &; How to Double Your Donation

Even if together we could make poverty history, we would not all do our part. The paper presents a device that makes it more likely for everybody to do his part. This is achieved by making everybody’s contribution dependent on the other people’s commitment to contribute given that certain conditions are fulfilled. Furthermore, a device is introduced which, based on the same general idea, doubles everybody’s donation. Finally, possibilities, assumptions and limitations of such devices are addressed.     

Struggles for order and control of school behaviour: a sketch for a social psychology

Behaviour management is acknowledged as a leading psychological method to reduce classroom conflict by applying ‘rational choice’ techniques. But it falls short in schools where poor academic results are reproduced, as is illustrated in an analysis of misbehaviour in an Australian rural school. It is argued that explanations of behaviour management are over psychologised. That is, rather than being of assistance, the approach can generate out-of-reach and unworkable strategies, and place the staff in indecisive positions not open to rational choice explanations. Rather, in considering misbehaviour, it is argued that three factors need to be considered: how classroom interaction is ordered, the institutional effects of disengagement from learning, and a resulting struggle between a school’s official order and the student expressive order. This paper illustrates how relations between these orders determine the social form a school operates from, and towards which changes should be directed. A social psychology is sketched around these points and considered according to Durkheim’s criteria for social facts.     

Associations of Mother’s and Father’s Parenting Practices with Children’s Observed Social Reticence in a Competitive Situation: A Monozygotic Twin Difference Study

This study used the monozygotic (MZ) twin difference method to examine whether the unique environmental effects of maternal and paternal overprotection and hostility at the age of 30 months predict twins’ observed social reticence in a competitive situation in kindergarten, while controlling for the effect of family-wide influences, including genetic and shared environmental factors, family socio-economical status and twin’s birth weight. It was also examined whether these associations are moderated by parental depressive symptoms. Participants were 137 MZ twin pairs who were part of an ongoing longitudinal study. Hierarchical linear regressions revealed that differences in maternal and paternal overprotection predicted differences in twins’ social reticence, albeit only in boys. Differences in paternal hostile parenting predicted differences in girls’ reticent behavior, but only when fathers showed high levels of depressive symptoms. Hence, overprotected boys, as well as girls confronted with father’s hostility and depressive symptoms, may tend to withdraw rather than face the challenge when experiencing difficult social situations such as competition. The results from the present study suggest that targeting maladaptive maternal as well as paternal child-rearing practices and psychopathology early on may be useful for reducing later internalizing behavior in the offspring.