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The rise of arts and culture is transforming citizen politics. Though new to many social scientists, this is a commonplace for many policy makers. We seek to overcome this divide by joining culture and the arts with classic concepts of political analysis. We offer an analytical framework incorporating the politics of cultural policy alongside the typical political and economic concerns. Our framework synthesizes several research streams that combine in global factors driving the articulation of culture into political/economic processes. The contexts of Toronto and Chicago are explored as both enhanced the arts dramatically, but Toronto engaged artists qua citizens, while Chicago did not.

Chester Whitney Wright (1879–1966) received his A.B. in 1901, A.M. in 1902 and Ph.D. in 1906, all from Harvard University. After teaching at Cornell University during 1906–1907, he taught at the University of Chicago from 1907 to 1944. Wright was the author of Economic History of the United States (1941, 1949); editor of Economic Problems of War and Its Aftermath (1942), to which he contributed a chapter on economic lessons from previous wars, and other chapters were authored by John U. Nef (war and the early industrial revolution) and by Frank H. Knight (the war and the crisis of individualism); and co-editor of Materials for the Study of Elementary Economics (1913). Wright’s Wool-Growing and the Tariff received the David Ames Wells Prize for 1907–1908, and was volume 5 in the Harvard Economic Studies. I am indebted to Holly Flynn for assistance in preparing Wright’s biography and in tracking down incomplete references; to Marianne Johnson in preparing many tables and charts; and to F. Taylor Ostrander, as usual, for help in transcribing and proofreading.

This article intervenes in the debate, among US disability rights advocates, about physician-assisted suicide (PAS). Through an ethnographic study, I situate this debate in the context of the dominant form of end-of-life care in the US hospice. Based on this analysis, I argue that PAS should be an issue of secondary concern to disability rights advocates, and that their primary concern, at the end-of-life, should be the improvement of US hospice care. By thus “putting the ‘right to die’ in its place,” they can achieve consensus among themselves and leverage this consensus to achieve the most substantial advancement of disability rights.

Using a national data set from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Birth Cohort, we examined factors associated with approximately 700 young African American boys’ pre-academic skills. The factors examined included (a) family characteristics, behaviors, and beliefs; (b) nonparental care literacy activities; and (c) child health, aggression, and approaches to learning (e.g., curiosity, independence, and persistence). High achieving boys are contrasted with other boys, along the following dimensions: familial, early childhood program, child characteristics and practices and their pre-academic skills, and whether the association was moderated by achievement status. Regression analyses indicated that some aspects of family, preschool, and child characteristics were associated with African American boys’ early outcomes, especially parental caretaking (e.g., bathing and brushing teeth) and approaches to learning (e.g., persistence and attention). Recommendations for educational practices and policies were offered.

This chapter aims to delineate the indigenous pattern of parental involvement in Taiwan by investigating the effects of specific practices in schools and in the family, such as school selection, school involvement, preparing a study place at home, and providing nutritious food.

We use two waves of data from the Taiwan Youth Project (2000, 2003) to examine how parental involvement varies between dual- and single-earner families, and we further demonstrate how sons and daughters have different access in terms of recognizing their parents’ effort, and how children’s subjective appraisals promote their academic performance with respect to test scores.

We find that dual-earner families have higher incomes, higher educational levels, and have fewer children than single-earner ones. Our multivariate analyses show that parental involvement does increase youngsters’ Basic Competence Test (BCT) score. However, we are unable to find any direct or indirect effects from parental employment status on BCT scores. Further analysis indicates that the relationship between parental school involvement and BCT score is only significant among dual-earner families, but not for the single-earner ones. In addition, our multiple group analysis reveals that sons’ BCT scores are affected more by parents’ school involvement, whereas daughters’ are affected more by special home provision. Our findings from adolescents’ subjective responses imply that sons may be more responsive to a non-familial context in contrast with daughters, who react more positively to familial provision.

Climate change is a global threat to social, economic, and environmental sustainability. In an increasingly urbanized world, homeowners play an important role in climate adaptation and environmental sustainability through decisions to landscape and manage their residential properties.

In this chapter, we review the potential impacts of climate change on environmental sustainability in urban ecosystems and highlight the role of urban and suburban residents in conserving biodiversity. We focus extensively on the interactions of homeowners and residential landscapes in urban coastal and desert environments.

Understanding how human-environment interactions are linked with a changing climate is especially relevant for coastal and desert cities in the United States, which are already experiencing visible impacts of climate change. In fact, many homeowners are already making decisions in response to environmental change, and these decisions will ultimately shape the future structure, function and sustainability of these critically important ecosystems.

Considering the close relationship between biodiversity and the health and well-being of human societies, understanding how climate change and other social motivations affect the landscaping decisions of urban residents will be critical for predicting and enhancing sustainability in these social-ecological systems.