Epistemological transformation for a sustainable and transdisciplinary university: The experience at the university of veracruz

This article presents a brief history of the development of the Western university and the individuation of disciplines. It discusses the phenomenal specialization that has occurred since the 19th century, and the lack of correlative synthesis of the disparate fields of knowledge, which increasingly has come under critique. We explore the transdisciplinary experience that has been developing over the last few years in the University of Veracruz, in particular with regards to the Program for Transdisciplinarity, Dialogue of Knowing Styles and Sustainability, a co-construction of a set of actions that foster a transformation of university academics by means of deep dialogue and a transdisciplinary re-learning process.     

Interwoven stories: our path of creativity and poetry named the ecodialogue center

The history of organizations and collectives is something alive. It is a network of memories, actions, collaborations, dreams, encounters, and disconnections that live within each of its members. The EcoDialogue Center is an academic space of the University of Veracruz for promoting dialogue between disciplines. In this article we are presenting the stories, both personal and collective, and the values and ideals that create our Center. We are using this opportunity to reflect on the cultural, geographical, emotional, intellectual, and societal conditions that have allowed this innovative process within the rules and customs of a university.     

CROSSING THE DIVIDE: LESSONS FROM DEVELOPING WIND ENERGY IN POST‐FACT AMERICA

The income and careers that come with building wind turbines have become a lifeline for many factory towns and farming communities. Generating electricity from the wind puts increasingly cheap power on the grid, saving consumers billions a year. And it is one of the biggest, fastest, cheapest ways to reduce carbon pollution, reducing the threat of climate change. Yet as wind farms have rapidly spread to forty‐one states, their developers must make their case anew with each community that hosts them. Facts matter, but so do empathy, honoring deep connections to neighbors and landscape, and developing mutual respect. Successful wind farm developers listen first for shared values and speak with inclusive language, to communicate with potential opponents across divides of misunderstanding and motivate local residents to adapt to and benefit from change.     

Superheroes for change: Physical safety promotes socially (but not economically) progressive attitudes among conservatives

Across two studies, we find evidence for our prediction that experimentally increasing feelings of physical safety increases conservatives' socially progressive attitudes. Specifically, Republican and conservative participants who imagined being endowed with a superpower that made them invulnerable to physical harm (vs. the ability to fly) were more socially (but not economically) liberal (Study 1) and less resistant to social change (Study 2). Results suggest that socially (but not economically) conservative attitudes are driven, at least in part, by needs for safety and security.     

Wealth inequality and activism: Perceiving injustice galvanizes social change but perceptions depend on political ideologies

What motivates people to engage in activism against wealth inequality? The simple answer is perceiving injustice. However, the current work demonstrates that these perceptions depend on political ideologies. More specifically, for political liberals who frequently question the fairness of the economic system, messages simply describing the extent of the inequality (distributive injustice) are enough to motivate activism (Study 1). For political conservatives, who are inclined to believe that inequality results from fair procedures, messages must also detail how the system of economic forces is unjust (procedural injustice; Studies 2 and 3). Together, these studies suggest perceiving injustice can galvanize social change, but for conservatives, this means more than simply outlining the extent of the inequality.     

Shared Communities: A Multinational Qualitative Study of Immigrant and Receiving Community Members

Community psychology is central to understanding how immigrants and more established residents of their new settings join together to develop a shared sense of community and membership. In our present study, we explored how newer (i.e., first‐ and second‐generation immigrants) and more established community members form multiple positive psychological sense of community (PSOC) with one another. We conducted a multinational, qualitative study of PSOC through interviews with 201 first‐ and second‐generation immigrants and third generation or more “receiving community members” in three contexts (Baltimore‐Washington corridor of the U.S.; Torino, Italy; Lecce, Italy). Results indicated numerous similarities among the ways in which participants constructed PSOC in shared and nonshared communities, regardless of immigration/citizenship status, length of community residence, city, country, age, or gender. Small, proximal, and salient communities were often particularly important to building positive PSOC, which was formed around diverse membership boundaries. As intersectional beings, members converged and diverged on many characteristics, providing multiple opportunities for members to bring diversity to their communities while sharing other characteristics deemed essential to membership. Nonetheless, findings point to significant, structural challenges rooted in power and privilege that must be confronted to bridge the community‐diversity dialectic and build strong, shared sense of community.     

Detecting Clusters/Communities in Social Networks

Cohen's κ, a similarity measure for categorical data, has since been applied to problems in the data mining field such as cluster analysis and network link prediction. In this paper, a new application is examined: community detection in networks. A new algorithm is proposed that uses Cohen's κ as a similarity measure for each pair of nodes; subsequently, the κ values are then clustered to detect the communities. This paper defines and tests this method on a variety of simulated and real networks. The results are compared with those from eight other community detection algorithms. Results show this new algorithm is consistently among the top performers in classifying data points both on simulated and real networks. Additionally, this is one of the broadest comparative simulations for comparing community detection algorithms to date.     

The Youth Public Arts Program: Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Outcomes for At-Risk Youth

This article provides the findings of a program evaluation of the Youth Public Arts Program, a long-standing community-based art program that serves at-risk youth in eastern North Carolina. The program evaluation was undertaken to examine the art skills, social and interpersonal skills, and community involvement of the participants. The study included four focus groups and telephone surveys with a total of 38 stakeholders (program participants, parents of participants, program staff, and referral sources). Results indicated that the at-risk youth had gains in both interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, including family relationships, peer relationships, community interaction, increased art skills, confidence, and self-regulation. This article adds to the very limited literature on community-based art programs for youth.     

Public concerns about violent video games are moral concerns—How moral threat can make pacifists susceptible to scientific and political claims against violent video games

Public discussions about the harmfulness of violent media are often held in the aftermath of violent felony. At the same time, we know little about whether and how experiencing real‐life violence impacts the way laypersons perceive and evaluate debates about virtual violence. In Study 1, we provided data indicating that both real‐life violence and violent video games are perceived as morally threatening by people who regard nonviolence to be an important moral value (i.e., pacifists). In Study 2, we hypothesized and found that when pacifists perceive threat from the presence of real‐life violence, they are especially susceptible to scientific and political claims indicating that violent video games are harmful. Our findings are in line with the value protection model and research on the psychological consequences of threat. Implications of the present findings are discussed with regard to a better understanding of the violent video games debate in the general public.     

Predicting Political Biases Against the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party Movements

Accusations of hypocrisy have flown against both supporters and opponents of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and Tea Party movements. Integrating the ideologically objectionable premise model (IOPM), a newly devised model of political judgment, with political tolerance research, we find that how the political activities of OWS and Tea Party demonstrators are described determines whether or not biases against these groups emerge among people low and high in right‐wing authoritarianism (RWA). Specifically, people low in RWA were more biased against the Tea Party than OWS regardless of whether the groups engaged in normatively threatening or reassuring political behavior, whereas people high in RWA were more biased against OWS than the Tea Party when the groups engaged in normatively threatening (and therefore objectionable), but not normatively reassuring (and therefore acceptable) behavior. These findings further support the IOPM's contention that premise objectionableness, not right‐wing orientation, determines biases in political judgment.