MULTILAYERED SOCIOCULTURAL PHENOMENA: ASSOCIATIONS BETWEEN SUBJECTIVE WELL‐BEING AND ECONOMIC STATUS

In this article, incoherent results of the associations between subjective well‐being and economic status at multiple social levels are shown. Although individual‐level positive associations are shown within developed countries, national‐level associations disappear among developed countries. Group/area‐level associations, meanwhile, do exist within Japanese societies. From these inconsistent phenomena, a sociocultural unit is proposed, within which well‐being of people is collectively shared based on mutual reciprocity. The simple addition of social scientific results themselves cannot reconstruct the whole range of phenomena. Humanities could be considered as the glue, which adds sociocultural meanings to the generalized scientific results.     

School administrators’ use of collaborative autobiography as a vehicle for reflection on accountability pressures

This research studied accountability pressures faced by five school administrators, and explored collaborative autobiography as a way for administrators to reflect on and address those pressures. The administrators cycled back and forth between reflective writing and group dialogue as they contemplated accountability pressures, their life histories in relationship to the pressures, and their preferred future. The participants reported that the process helped them to better understand accountability pressures and develop strategies for negotiating those pressures.     

成员关系对协作提取成绩的影响

当人们与搭档组成社会群体一起协作讨论某些已经发生的事件或经验时, 该社会群体中的成员关系对协作提取成绩的影响仍不明确。本研究通过两项实验, 分别使用语词词单和情景故事作为实验材料, 考察成员关系(包括关系类型和关系时长)对协作提取成绩的影响。研究结果表明, 当记忆的材料为语词词单时, 青年陌生组出现了协作抑制; 而当记忆的材料为情景故事时, 青年夫妻和老年夫妻组均出现了协作促进。此外, 老年夫妻在协作提取情景故事的过程中使用的有效交流策略更多, 且这些有效交流策略的使用与更高的协作提取成绩有关。该结果支持了具有长时亲密关系的老年夫妻之间的“交互记忆系统”对协作促进的关键作用, 为理解成员关系对协作提取成绩的影响提供了全面的证据。     

Antecedents of consumer loyalty in ride-hailing

The rise of the sharing economy has remarkedly shifted consumers’ traffic behaviour, which gave rise to successful start-up businesses, such as Uber and Grab, that offer innovative transport alternatives through car and ride sharing. This study investigates consumers’ traffic attitudes and behavioural responses to on-demand ride-hailing. Using structural equation modelling, our survey findings showed that price consciousness, perceived usefulness, ease of use, safety risk and customer value exert significant influences on word-of-mouth (WOM), a manifestation of attitudinal loyalty towards ride-hailing. Contrary to findings in previous studies, our study found insignificant effects of personal innovativeness, subjective norm and perceived privacy security on WOM. In addition, although environmental consciousness is a predictor of WOM, its significant effect on WOM is negative. WOM is found to significantly impact purchase intention which is an indicator of behavioural loyalty. By identifying the antecedents of consumer loyalty in ride-hailing, this study provides recommendations for the ride-hailing ecosystem to generate more sustainable urban transport solutions.     

共享经济背景下顾客公民行为和不当行为：基于社会困境理论的视角

共享经济(个体供方对个体顾客的共享模式如小猪短租平台)中顾客公民行为的促进和不当行为的治理, 成为保证共享经济可持续发展的重要议题。然而, 现有顾客行为相关研究更多是在传统经济背景下进行的探讨, 而涉及到共享经济背景下的研究难以体现共享经济的特色, 导致其未能很好地解决实践困境。上述顾客行为是在个人和集体利益发生冲突时的抉择, 即社会困境。社会困境理论可以帮助企业全面认识顾客公民行为和不当行为并有效解决困境问题。本研究拟基于社会困境理论, 探讨以下三个方面的问题: (1) 深入剖析共享经济中顾客公民行为和不当行为的概念、维度及其测量; (2) 揭示平台、供方和政府通过规则制定或社会影响策略来有效优化顾客行为的路径; (3) 阐明顾客公民和不当行为的差异性影响机制, 以及顾客社会价值导向和供方监督对顾客行为的调节作用。本研究有助于拓展现有顾客公民和不当行为的研究, 为平台、供方和政府管理提供重要参考。     

The Academic Productivist Regime: Affective Dynamics in the Moral-Political Economy of Publishing

With proliferating neoliberal modes of science governance, publishing has become more important. Recent studies point to researchers’ feeling of exhaustion and anxiety as responses to academic performance regimes. Yet how affects underpin publishing in scientific cultures and communities, and what this implies for STS scholarship has remained underexplored. Drawing on insights from ethnographic fieldwork and the cultural studies of affect, this article traces the role of emotions, including hope, contempt, and excitement for understanding the new academic productivist regime at a Czech research institution. While junior researchers’ orientations are fostered through rendering publications objects of hope, a moral-political economy intersects with geopolitical history and values of research organization to shape the publication practices of many senior scientists. An affective labor of combat and equanimity is necessary for managing these orientations that are corporeally energized by a dynamic of thrill. This four-pronged approach makes palpable how emotions render scientists’ bodies hopeful, combative and excited while intersecting with ideals of meritocratic research organization and assessment. Frustration and failure are never entirely absent but serve as an immanent driving force for a publishing culture that thrives on adrenaline, combativeness, and hope. This makes it difficult to leverage failures towards criticism of the academic productivist regime—both for the scientists differently affected within the institution and STS researchers. Different engagements with this regime require a more capacious accounting for the pleasure and thrill generated by the uncertainty of publication outcome as well as by unacknowledged practices of care.     

Modeling Lifelong Learning: Collaborative Teaching across Disciplinary Lines

Most courses in colleges and universities are taught by only one instructor. This is often necessitated by the financial exigencies of educational institutions, but is also due to an academic tradition in which the ideal is a single expert teaching in a single discipline. The rapidly changing realities of both the higher education and job markets, however, have called the traditional ideal into question. Interdisciplinary collaborative teaching is one way to adapt to the needs of twenty‐first‐century students, by modeling lifelong learning for students and inviting instructors to be more deliberately reflective about disciplinary assumptions, learning styles, and pedagogies.     

Endless Qualifications,Restless Consumption: The Governance of Novel Foods in Europe

Functional foods and foods derived from genetically modified organisms represent two forms of intervention in the design of foodstuffs that have given rise to distinct political and regulatory dynamics. In Europe, regulatory agencies have tried, unsuccessfully, to affix a definitive legal meaning to these categories of food artificiality. This incomplete process of legal disambiguation has gone hand in hand with the delegation of the responsibility for overseeing new products to consumers, who are asked to continuously consider and assess the qualities of foods when making their choices in the marketplace. In the case of genetically modified foods, we have witnessed strategies of avoidance premised on the consideration of genetic modification as a blemish on the conventional character of foodstuffs. Functional foods, on the other hand, are increasingly mobilized in practices of naturalistic enhancement. What both examples have in common is the open-ended character of their respective regulatory regimes, and the continuous prodding of consumers to involve themselves more intensely in the weighing of their food choices. The result is a particular mode of market activism that we describe as restless consumption.     

Using Medical Family Therapy with Parents of an Adult Child with Traumatic Brain Injury

Abstract

Acquired traumatic brain injury (ATBI) is a public health concern causing approximately 2.5 million emergency room visits in the United States annually. Medical family therapy (MedFT) displays how biological issues impact each area of a client’s life. This paper highlights how MedFT can be utilized with parents of an adult child with ATBI; the case is presented as treatment occurred with benefits of the inclusion of MedFT. Researchers propose a call to the field of marriage and family therapy to increase access of MedFT to afford more opportunities to help families who experience medical conditions.     

The Future Models of Arab Political Economy

Three distinct models of political economy are articulated in this article to chart out the possible politico-economic futures of the Arab World. Of these, the present predicaments of the revolutionizing Arab populace are argued to have been caused by the continuance of the wrong social choices. It depended for a long time now on the alienating model of differentiation and alienation of the Arab nations by their rulers, and by their uncritical immersing in the equally debilitating globalization agenda. Two models of the alienating and unfeasible types are formulated as the prevailing ones today. The arguments and empirical study of limited socioeconomic data with the examples of Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen, which are considered as exemplary of the revolutionary Arab World, point out that social factors based on the demand for participation and representation, self-reliant social change, and opportunities are the overwhelming factors of politico-economic change. These factors, as opposed to the purely economic factors, must be embedded in a synergistic way with the rest in a distinctive future model of Arab political economy. Three formal models of possible political economy of the future Arab World with their evolutionary futures are formalized. Necessary social and policy implications are drawn in reference to these three evolutionary Arab futures in political economy.