Mechanisms of Empowerment: Psychological Processes for Members of Power-based Community Organizations

The paper reports a study of participatory experiences among members of power-based community organizations. A path model of psychological empowerment was tested. Perceived relational characteristics of the community organization were hypothesized as exogenous to participation, perceived organizational power and psychological empowerment. An alternative model was reproduced with the strongest relationships between perceived organizational intimacy and psychological empowerment and an inverse relationship between perceived organizational regulation and perceptions of organizational power.     

Lack of effects of environmental changes on agonistic behaviour patterns in a stabilizing group of stumptailed macaques (Macaca arctoides)

To evaluate how constant the form of agonistic interactions in the event of environmental changes is, a group of 11 stumptailed macaques, formed shortly before the start of the study, was observed under the following spatial conditions: in 10 and 18 m² cages, and in a 50,000 m² woodland. Results showed that the frequency of agonistic interactions was little affected by spatial density; however, the number of participants involved in aggressive interactions increased in the cage. Formal biting, which presumably acts as a regulator of social tension, was less frequent in the park. Patterning of agonistic interactions was little affected by spatial density. Such “robustness” makes the form of aggression liable to be used as a potentially useful parameter in interspecific comparisons.     

Aggressive Children and Effective Communication

Testing a component of a theoretical model which postulates that low levels of communication effectiveness accompany the social and affective problems presented by aggressive children, the study compared the communication skills of a group of aggressive (n = 49) and nonaggressive (n = 49) elementary school children (selected on the basis of teacher ratings) in a structured and cooperative communication task. Based on direct observational measures of communication effectiveness and aggression, and on teacher, peer, and self-rating measures of peer rejection and depressive symptoms, results showed that (a) aggressive children exhibited less effective communication skills and more disruptive communication skills than nonaggressive peers; (b) aggressive children experienced higher levels of peer rejection and depressive symptoms than nonaggressive peers; and (c) group differences in communication effectiveness could not be accounted for by differences in observed aggression and remained significant, even after controlling for differences in peer status and affective functioning. These findings highlight the role that ineffective communication may play in the development and maintenance of aggression and have important theoretical and applied implications, which are briefly discussed. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

The Liberating Awareness

The purpose of this article is to reflect on the search for racial justice as a call from God, using biblical readings and documents produced by the World Council of Churches (WCC). It is anchored in the increasingly intense challenges that emerge in this respect in Brazil, a country whose Indigenous peoples were annihilated in its colonization process, and which up until the 19th century received the largest flow of enslaved Africans in the world. The article combines the Latin American methodology “See, Judge, Act” with the theological methodology of the WCC's Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace and its three steps: “Celebrating Gifts,” “Visiting the Wounds,” and “Transforming Injustice.” The first part of the paper reflects the “See” and exposes the expressions of everyday racism in Brazil. The second part presents the “Judge,” seeking references to the challenge of racial justice in the Bible and in ecumenical reflection. The third and final section, “Act,” reflects on the possibility for transforming racial injustices, sharing experiences from Brazil as well as one of the Pilgrim Team Visits organized by the WCC in 2019.     

Remembrance–Toward Righteousness and Reparations

This article explores “remembrance” as the first part of a planned three-part paper titled “Remembrance, Righteousness and Reparations,” intended as a conceptual framework and spirit guide of accompaniment for the World Council of Churches’ pilgrimage of healing, justice, and peace. This first part focuses on remembrance to counter the dis-membering, trauma, and woundedness inflicted by systems of acts of White supremacy, racism, patriarchy, and male privilege. Parts two and three of this paper offer righteousness and reparations as additional conceptual frameworks and spirit guides: righteousness to recentre and deepen our understanding of justice in a world fraught with human suffering, violence, and evil; and reparations to covenant and bind a process of truth-telling, reckoning, and reconciliation in the face of the consequences and legacies of the transatlantic slave trade system upon people of African descent.     

Reaching the Champions of Social Justice

Since the formation of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1948, the ecumenical voice against social injustice in the church and society has been strengthening. As one expression of unity among the fellowship, the WCC embarked in 2013 on a Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace to work, pray, and walk together for life-affirming economies, climate change, nonviolent peace building, and reconciliation and human dignity. Champions of these issues exist within the ecumenical movement. Yet one also finds that champions of one theme are pushing back on another theme. Sometimes it is due to diversity of contexts and biblical and theological interpretations. At other times it is due to unconscious bias about the holistic nature of God's mission of justice for all God's people and creation. This paper grapples with this question: Why are people who are so alive to economic and ecological injustice sometimes blind to racial and gender injustice? To answer this, I explore the existence of conscious and unconscious bias despite the many powerful ecumenical statements that have been issued on racial justice.     

Crafting Mosaics: Person-Centered Religious Influence and Selection in Adolescent Friendships

This research addresses the intersection of two key domains of adolescents’ lives: religion and peer networks. Religion scholars argue that religion is multi-faceted and better understood by focusing on combinations of indicators (i.e., mosaics), versus a variable-centered approach. We adopt this framework and investigate the interplay between religion and peer networks, both in how religious mosaics are shaped by friends and how religious profiles affect friend selection dynamics. With data from two schools in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we estimate religious mosaics using latent class analysis (LCA) to identify profiles consisting of combinations of commonly available survey-based measures of religious attitudes, behaviors, and identities. Finding evidence of theoretically expected profiles, we then use stochastic actor–based models (SABMs) to investigate network dynamics for these LCA-based religious profiles. We demonstrate how the profile data can be integrated within the SABM framework to evaluate processes of friend selection and influence. Results show evidence of adolescents influencing one another's religious mosaics, but not selecting friends on that basis.