Integrating Human and Natural Systems in Community Psychology: An Ecological Model of Stewardship Behavior

Community psychology (CP) research on the natural environment lacks a theoretical framework for analyzing the complex relationship between human systems and the natural world. We introduce other academic fields concerned with the interactions between humans and the natural environment, including environmental sociology and coupled human and natural systems. To demonstrate how the natural environment can be included within CP’s ecological framework, we propose an ecological model of urban forest stewardship action. Although ecological models of behavior in CP have previously modeled health behaviors, we argue that these frameworks are also applicable to actions that positively influence the natural environment. We chose the environmental action of urban forest stewardship because cities across the United States are planting millions of trees and increased citizen participation in urban tree planting and stewardship will be needed to sustain the benefits provided by urban trees. We used the framework of an ecological model of behavior to illustrate multiple levels of factors that may promote or hinder involvement in urban forest stewardship actions. The implications of our model for the development of multi-level ecological interventions to foster stewardship actions are discussed, as well as directions for future research to further test and refine the model.     

Residential Mobility and Prosocial Development Within a Single City

Neighborhood social dynamics have been shown to impact behavioral development in residents, including levels of prosociality (i.e. positive social behavior). This study explores whether residential moves to neighborhoods with different social dynamics can influence further prosocial development. Prosociality, five domains of social support, and residential location were tracked between 2006 and 2009 in 397 adolescents across a small city in upstate New York. Analysis compared the role of the different forms of social support in prosocial development for movers versus non-movers. The effects of one's neighborhood of residence at Time 2 were also compared between movers and non-movers. Prosocial development in these two groups responded similarly to all forms of social support, including from neighbors. Movers experienced a greater increase in prosociality the more residentially stable the adolescent population of their new neighborhood of residence. Such neighborhood characteristics were not influential in the prosocial development of non-movers.     

Peer and school problems in the lives of urban adolescents: Frequency, difficulty, and relation to adjustment

This study examined the occurrence of problem situations in the peer and school domains and their relation to adjustment among urban adolescents. Students from three urban middle schools (N = 176) serving a predominantly African American population rated 61 problem situations identified in a previous qualitative study and completed measures of adjustment. Ratings of frequency and difficulty confirmed the relevance of these situations for this population. Confirmatory factor analyses suggested that covariation in the frequency and difficulty of problem situations could be represented by separate factors representing peer situations involving friends, other peer situations, and school situations. The number of different problem situations experienced was significantly correlated with physical and relational aggression, delinquency, depression, anxiety, and self-worth. Several of these relations were strongest for peer situations that did not involve friends. There were few gender differences in the strength of these relations.     

城市贫困人口心理和社会稳定

由于社会转型,产业结构的调整以及个人等方面原因产生了下岗职工、农村进城务工人员和贫困大学生等大量的城市贫困人口。笔者从城市贫困者的个人社会等级评定、对贫富分化现状的态度以及分化程度的容忍度上分析城市贫困者心理差异对社会稳定的影响。     

The urban environment and child pedestrian and bicycle injuries: Interaction of ecological and personality characteristics

It is argued that the study of injuries to child pedestrians and cyclists in urban contexts must involve the study of complex elements interacting within a total environment. This complexity, and the need for further research, is illustrated from a study of 400 child victims in an urban, ecological study, and of 67 individually studied child victims and controls. It is argued that the individual vulnerability of some children puts them at high risk when they live in certain types of urban neighbourhoods.     

The Tablighi Jama‘at in Southwestern Ontario: making Muslim identities and networks in Canadian urban spaces

This ethnographic paper builds on previous research on the Tablighi Jama‘at by delving deeper into the ways in which the movement creates identity and community among Muslims living in modern/post-modern urban spaces. The paper is grounded in the theoretical framework provided by Robert Orsi in his introduction to Gods of the City (1999). In his lengthy introduction, Orsi describes contemporary urban cultural theory. This theory posits metropolitan regions as comprising “complex networks of “pathways” that city people travel in” (51). Along these “pathways” city dwellers create networks of association that in turn become ways of life and communities. Orsi notes that, “urban religious idioms have responded to the spatial dilemmas created by the circumstances of diaspora and dislocation” (51). These urban religious idioms often involve intra-communal outreach that seeks to inculcate community members with a cognitive “map” of the surrounding urban spaces, marking off both desirable and forbidden places. I argue that this is precisely what the Tablighi Jama‘at seeks to engender in urban spaces such as Southwestern Ontario, and this study is undertaken to better understand this process of identity construction and community creation.

The Net in the Park

Ubiquitous Computing, Pervasive Computing, Physical Computing, Everyware, Tangible User Interface, and the Internet of Things all share the same viewpoint—a viewpoint that sees computers, phones, and game consoles as no longer being the only devices in our environment deemed worthy to embody computation and be connected. Each of these approaches focuses on slightly different aspects of the features and potentialities of the enabling technologies (i.e., Physical Computing focuses on the growing power of microcontrollers; IOT on the increasing influence of tagging systems; Everyware on the pervasiveness of the web through wired and wireless connections, etc.) We understand and place more emphasis on the similarities then the differences among these approaches, and at the same time, we try to address specific human activity issues by exploiting these new enabling technologies and visions. In the paper, we present a project, Wi-roni, that addresses two issues: in-person communication and the added value of being in a given location when accessing a given content. To this end, we considered in some detail the possibilities of three of these enabling technologies: ultrasound sensors, MEMS, and mash-up of Internet application. These technologies were chosen based on the nature of the human activity, and not vice versa. In Wi-roni, an Urban Architecture project located in the La Gora public park in Monteroni d'Arbia, a small village in the province of Siena (Italy), we developed two interconnect solutions: Wi-wave, a column for accessing web audio content in public spaces, and Wi-swing, a children’s swing that tells stories while swinging. These devices represent both the concrete grounds from which to begin to address the abovementioned human activity issues and the playground in which to explore the new, emerging interaction modalities that the enabling technologies could allow.     

Self-Reported Anger Among Traumatized Children and Adolescents

This investigation sought to establish if anger is associated with PTSD among children and adolescents or with trauma exposure in the absence of PTSD. The State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI) was administered to youth with PTSD (n=24), traumatized youth without PTSD (n=58), and a non-traumatized control group (n=38). In the absence of potentially confounding major comorbid disorders, the PTSD group had significantly higher scores on the STAXI State, Trait, and Angry Temperament scales. Trauma exposure in the absence of PTSD was not associated with higher anger scores.     

Religion and social action in a city of posts

This article explores the ramifications of religious engagement in social action initiatives in ethnically and religiously plural urban environments in the UK. In particular, it explores this engagement through a series of inter-related analytical frames, which explain the trajectory and political significance of religiously inflected social action in different ways, before examining specific initiatives in localised context. Behind this approach is the recognition of the need to situate religion in complex contexts, resisting its cross-cultural and trans-historical claims, and of the ways in which religion is deployed as a specific mode of both domination and resistance. The author argues that the pluralism of the contemporary city has critical implications for understanding contemporary religion and social action, both in terms of the range of organisations involved and in terms of the negotiation of difference which is an everyday facet of multicultural urban living. The spaces of engagement opened up by these contemporary contexts allow for the development of new ways of conceptualising religion and new potentialities for the role of religion in the developing politics of living in the city.