Search results

Using Lundy's model (2007), this chapter adopts a child-centred approach to discuss decision-making in relation to designing a study which aimed to amplify childhood voices of parental separation (Kay-Flowers, 2019). It examines the role of young people in designing and co-producing the research tools, specifically designed to give voice to childhood experiences of parental separation and divorce. It explains how the research findings were shared with different audiences and reflects on the effectiveness of the approaches taken.

The chapter starts by outlining the four elements of ‘space’, ‘voice’, ‘audience’ and ‘influence’ in Lundy's model (2007) before going on to identify the gap in existing research on children's experience of parental separation and divorce, explaining why their voices need to be heard.

A focus group of young people were involved in designing the study. Finding current methods unsuitable for addressing the research question, they co-produced new research tools specifically designed for the study, alongside the researcher, in a process known as bricolage. The chapter explains the processes involved in creating the bricolage and describes the newly created research tools which were an online questionnaire and Prompt Simulation Video (PSV).

The last part of the chapter explains how ‘audience’ and ‘influence’ informed decision-making about how the study's findings could be presented to amplify childhood voices of parental separation and divorce, to ensure they were heard by different audiences of academics, practitioners, parents, public and children. It concludes with consideration of the effectiveness of this approach.

Does having things make people happy; does buying, consuming, or giving bring happiness? In an increasingly materialistic era, it seems that people might believe so. Despite our consumption culture, research tells us that the desire for material possessions relates more to unhappiness than to happiness (Belk, 1985; Burroughs & Rindfleisch, 2002; Csikszentmihalyi, 2000; La Barbera & Gürhan, 1997; Mick, 1996; Richins, 1987; Sirgy et al., 1998). Economists find that subjective well-being increases, then levels off as national levels of discretionary income increase (Csikszentmihalyi, 1999; Diener, 2000; Meyers, 2000). Furthermore, many economists cite correspondence between happiness and relative income (Blanchflower & Oswald, 2004; Solnick & Hemenway, 1998; Stutzer, 2003) to explain the stagnation of average happiness despite rises in national incomes. Increasing one person's income relative to others decreases the others’ happiness so that pursuing money to achieve happiness becomes a zero-sum affair; average national happiness does not change (Lee, 2006).

What can a behavioral approach contribute to the understanding of strategizing? Assuming that “strategizing” is a deliberative process typically engaged in by small groups in the leadership of a large organization, the most promising targets for behavioral studies may not be that process itself. Attention could well go instead to the organizational sensors that detect strategic issues and provide the information input for considering them, and the constraints that limit implementation. In contrast to the content of deliberation, these sensors and related structures are often slow-moving organizational traits and may be readily observable from external vantage points – such as the position of an observer seeking to predict the strategic choices of the organization.

This paper compares the agrarian development of two indigenous communities in the highlands of Ecuador who specialize in nontraditional agricultural exports (NTAE). It brings together the peasant theory with literature on the environmental impact of globalization.

Through a comparative ethnography, based on six months of participant observation and interviewers, I illustrate the differences in production processes and explain the divergent trajectories of agrarian modernization.

I found that NTAE impacted the two communities differently: one became more ecologically sustainable and the other became more environmentally exploitative. However, neither case fits squarely within the framework of modern/traditional or peasant/capitalist. Instead of traditional environmentalism and individualistic exploitation, we see the reverse: individualistic environmentalism and traditional exploitation. That is, ecological methods are paired with individualistic competition, and environmental exploitation takes place within a system of communal solidarity.

With buyer-driven organic certification standards, global integration does not always lead to ecological degradation. For quinoa growers, traditional production practices persist not as resistance to global capitalism but as a strategy to access high-value export markets. Broccoli farmers, although exploitative of local natural resources and their own health, do so within communal institutions that buffer against individualistic risk-taking.

This comparative case presents an alternative depiction of modernization as complex and nonlinear.

This chapter will focus on Warde's (2009) use of phenomenological and qualitative analyses employed in “The Road to Tenure: Narratives of African American Male Tenured Professors” and focus on five African Americans at various stages of the professoriate with significant tracts of those tenures at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) which encountered significant executive turnover (i.e. more than two executive resignations/terminations in a 6.5 year period, equaling twice the national average according to the American Council on Education's 2017 study “The American College President”). The interviews brought light to ways that presidential turnover and constant flux in leadership at fragile institutions lead to predictable outcomes with regard to retention and tenure-track advancement, as well as provide a snapshot on the myriad ways African Americans must often adjust their career paths in order to pursue professorial employment at institutions often thought of as the most likely to support their efforts to earn tenure.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted every community across the globe, but the global COVID-19 data show that the United States remains the most affected country where well over 666,000 people died, and approximately 40 million citizens became ill due to the virus' spread by mid-2021 (CDC, 2021). It is also noteworthy that extreme racial disparities in rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths are high in the United States, specifically among African American population. This situation is particularly evident among African American population in Alabama's Black Belt. Subsequently, COVID-19, racial disparities, and health inequalities have become central to the national and regional conversation. This chapter examines the associations between COVID-19, social determinants of health, and the systematic health disparity in African American population in Alabama's Black Belt region using Geographic Information Systems and the concept of uneven spatial development. Understanding the relationship between COVID-19 and these disparities within a spatial context vital to developing pathways to overcome the pandemic's effects and combat the systemic discrimination in this region. The derived policy recommendation could apply to other regions experiencing social inequality and health disparity.