Collective Efficacy as a Task Specific Process: Examining the Relationship Between Social Ties, Neighborhood Cohesion and the Capacity to Respond to Violence, Delinquency and Civic Problems

In the neighborhood effects literature, collective efficacy is viewed as the key explanatory process associated with the spatial distribution of a range of social problems. While many studies usefully focus on the consequences of collective efficacy, in this paper we examine the task specificity of collective efficacy and consider the individual and neighborhood factors that influence residents’ perceptions of neighborhood collective efficacy for specific tasks. Utilizing survey and administrative data from 4,093 residents nested in 148 communities in Australia, we distinguish collective efficacy for particular threats to social order and assess the relative importance of social cohesion and neighborhood social ties to the development of collective efficacy for violence, delinquency and civic/political issues. Our results indicate that a model separating collective efficacy for specific problems from social ties and the more generalized notions of social cohesion is necessary when understanding the regulation potential of neighborhoods.     

Piezoelectric and electromechanical coupling constants for GaxIn1-xSb semiconducting alloys

The compositional dependence of piezoelectric stress and strain constants and electromechanical coupling coefficient of Ga_xIn_1-xSb have been investigated. The calculations were performed using a pseudopotential approach combined with the Adachi model where different concepts of ionicity are considered. Our results are compared with the available data and found to be in good accord with each other. Our findings show that as the Ga content varies, the piezoelectric and related constants and transport properties of the alloy system of interest are significantly affected.     

How we have fallen: implicit trajectories in collective temporal thought

ABSTRACT

Memory may play a critical role in the ability to imagine events in the future. While most work on this relation has concerned episodic memory and simulated episodic events in the future, the current study examines how collective memories relate to imagination for the collective future. Two thousand American participants provided events for (1) America’s origins, (2) normative events that all Americans should remember, and (3) events in America’s future. Each event was rated for emotional valence. Whereas collective memories – particularly origin events – showed pronounced positivity biases, there was a negativity bias in collective future thought, indicating an implicit trajectory of decline in Americans’ representations of their nation across time. Imagination for the social future may not be simulated based on the template of collective memories, but may rather relate to the past in a way that is mediated by cultural narrative schemata.     

Archetypes and architecture: The coniunctio of Canary Wharf

In The Psychology of the Unconscious Jung foretold his hypothesis of the collective unconscious and the way it is represented in the stories and symbolism of myths and legends. Later, he uncovered this in the texts of the alchemists, especially the Rosarium Philosophorum , which he believed allegorized the archetype of relationship and new birth that they called the mysterium coniunctionis . He recognized the same symbolic meaning in the building of his home, ‘the tower’, at Bollingen, which represented his own individuation and new birth. Similarly, group process might evoke or be influenced by archetypes, which are then manifested in socio-cultural phenomena, one expression of which is architectural design.

This article argues that such archetypal expression can be discerned in the design and landscaping of Canary Wharf in London. It explores how the socio-economic aims of the development, coupled with the geographic characteristics of the area, might have evoked in the group of individuals concerned the archetype of the mysterium coniunctionis . Thus the design characteristics of Canary Wharf's architecture appear curiously similar to those of the woodcuts in the Rosarium Philosophorum , and some examples are presented. Both seem creative manifestations of the same archetype. In concluding, the author reflects on the meaning of his work, and, as Jung wrote, ‘the unexpected and the incredible belong to this world. Only then is life whole’.     

Cities as Collective Beings

This article introduces the concepts of System, Autonomous System, Intelligent System, Multiple System, and Collective Being. It deals with issues related to managing these different levels of systemic aggregation. The author then discusses applications related to Architecture and design with particular reference to cities.     

Me against we: In-group transgression,collective shame,and in-group-directed hostility

People can experience great distress when a group to which they belong (in-group) is perceived to have committed an immoral act. We hypothesised that people would direct hostility toward a transgressing in-group whose actions threaten their self-image and evoke collective shame. Consistent with this theorising, three studies found that reminders of in-group transgression provoked several expressions of in-group-directed hostility, including in-group-directed hostile emotion (Studies 1 and 2), in-group-directed derogation (Study 2), and in-group-directed punishment (Study 3). Across studies, collective shame—but not the related group-based emotion collective guilt—mediated the relationship between in-group transgression and in-group-directed hostility. Implications for group-based emotion, social identity, and group behaviour are discussed.     

“Everyone always did the same”: Constructing legacies of collective industrial pasts in ex-mining communities in the South Wales Valleys

Understanding post-industrial places requires an engagement with how these communities construct identities around a sense of a shared or common industrial past, particularly in areas that have struggled to adapt to the loss of community-defining industries (Beatty et al. 2007). This paper draws on ethnographic data, non-directive interviews, and auto-ethnographic reflections collected in an ex-coal mining town in a South Wales valley in the UK. The paper seeks to better consider post-industrial collective identities by attending to concepts of collective memory and imaginaries of industrial pasts. Conceptualising memory as rooted in the material and immaterial; affective, emotive and discursive; shared and imagined; this paper discusses how everyday relationships are inextricably linked to an assumed shared history within an ‘typical’ active mining community. By engaging the everyday lives, practices, and discourses of contemporaneous residents this paper outlines the ways in which the past is constructed as universal and homogenous. It also extends this discussion to consider how these imagined shared pasts, and the enduring values routed in these collective memories, are mobilised to construct senses of inclusion, difference, and othering; imagined industrial pasts have enduring impacts for the construction of contemporary communities.     

The interplay of community and family risk and protective factors on adjustment in young adult immigrants

We examined the direct and interactive effects of community violence and both family cohesion and conflict on collective efficacy and aggressive behaviours among immigrant young adults. Participants included 221 young adults (ages 18–26; mean age = 21.36; 45.7% female, 190 born outside the U.S.) who completed self-report measures of their exposure to neighbourhood violence, social cohesion, collective efficacy and prosocial behaviours toward friends and strangers. Results, in general, showed that community violence and family cohesion were positively associated with collective efficacy whereas community violence and family conflict were positively associated with aggressive behaviours. Family cohesion and conflict also moderated the links between community violence and aggressive behaviours. Discussion focuses on the interplay of community and family processes and the relations to adjustment of immigrant young adults.     

Collectives’ and individuals’ obligations: a parity argument

Individuals have various kinds of obligations: keep promises, don’t cause harm, return benefits received from injustices, be partial to loved ones, help the needy and so on. How does this work for group agents? There are two questions here. The first is whether groups can bear the same kinds of obligations as individuals. The second is whether groups’ pro tanto obligations plug into what they all-things-considered ought to do to the same degree that individuals’ pro tanto obligations plug into what they all-things-considered ought to do. We argue for parity on both counts.