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“Beyond the Nature/Society Divide: Learning to Think about a Mountain” was published in 1995 (Freudenburg, Frickel, & Gramling, 1995) just as environmental sociology was entering into its first internal philosophical debate, waged between materialists and social constructionists. Today the debate has moved beyond the article’s relatively modest arguments, but the work continues to be cited and earn critical attention for its contributions to that earlier conversation. This remembrance essay recalls the article’s publication history, begun in 1992, leading to its eventual publication in Sociological Forum and offers philosophical, sociological, and personal reflections on that process.

Attention to the role of institutions in the construction of racial inequality suggests that the status of racial groups in society results not necessarily from the mobilization of racist ideology but from the normal workings of social and political arrangements. (Lieberman, 1998)In the Post-Civil Rights context, all politics are racial. (Omi & Winant, 1994)

This chapter addresses a lack of theory building in electronic-HRM (e-HRM) research and attempts to contribute with a (re-)conceptualisation of e-HRM as a nexus of practices and their material arrangements.

The work draws on theories from information systems research, science and technology studies, and sociology and organisation studies.

The (re-)conceptualisation indicates that future research should make further enquiries into the role of human agency and political processes in e-HRM.

As a methodological pathway a combination of ethnography and philosophical hermeneutics is proposed, enabling the achievement of a required pertinent sensibility in the study of social practices and human intentionality. Action research is also considered to be relevant for an engaged e-HRM scholarship.

The social implication of this research is the advancement of theories that emphasise the importance of human agency, morality and materiality in organisational processes.

The conceptualisation may thus facilitate research that reveal insights about involvement, reciprocity and power in e-HRM projects – knowledge that can direct the development of e-HRM project teams and thus facilitate strategic HRM.

This chapter assesses the doctrine of reasonable interchangeability through the lens of the US Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) successful effort to enjoin the megamerger of two of the largest national insurance companies, Aetna and Humana. The DOJ focused its challenge on the companies’ Medicare Advantage business, arguing that it is a separate product market from original Medicare and the merger would substantially reduce competition in the market for Medicare Advantage in many geographic markets across the country. The case turned on whether there was reasonable interchangeability between original Medicare and Medicare Advantage in the eyes of consumers. The judge relied on both practical indicia of interchangeability, including evidence of how likely Medicare beneficiaries were to switch between Medicare Advantage and Original Medicare, along with econometric evidence. The decision provides a useful roadmap of how a knowledgeable judge reviewing a merger will consider both Brown Shoe factors and econometric evidence in assessing reasonable interchangeability.

Research has established a connection between industrially-produced food and negative health outcomes. Scholars have also shown a significant link between poor food environments and health. This paper explores the experiences of university extension program agents in order to initiate greater dialogue about the role of extension in lessening the deleterious health impacts of unequal access to high quality and sufficient quantity foods. Specifically, we consider the role of food self-provisioning instruction (e.g., food gardening, preservation).

The paper draws on semi-structured interviews with 20 university extension program officers in the state of Washington.

Although our participants report that demand for education in food production skills is on the rise across Washington, there are barriers to the equitable distribution of self-provisioning skills.

There is considerable promise for extension programs to have positive implications for health and nutrition for communities struggling to access quality foods. To meet this progress, extension must be more aware of serving the entire public either through hiring agents mirror their constituencies or funding a more diverse array of programming.

Little existing research examines or evaluates using university extension programs as a vehicle for teaching food self-production, though these topics have been taught since the founding of extension.

This chapter enquires into the contribution of two British writers, Herbert Somerton Foxwell and Henry Riverdale Grenfell, who elaborated upon the hints provided by Jevons towards a description of long waves in the oscillations of prices. Writing two decades after Jevons, they witnessed the era of high prices turning into the great depression of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the causes of which they saw in the end of bimetallism. Not only did they take up Jevons’s specific explanation of the long fluctuations, but they also based their discussion upon graphical representation of data and incorporated in their treatment a specific trait (the superposition principle) of the ‘waves’ metaphor emphasized by the Manchester statisticians in the 1850s and 1860s. Their contribution is also interesting for their understanding of crises versus depressions at the time of the emergence of the interpretation of oscillations as a cycle, which they have only partially grasped – as distinct from the approach of later long wave theorists.

Historically, a major contributor in the fracture between mainstream individuals and subgroups has been the educational system. For American Indian and Alaska Natives (AI/AN), this is substantiated by low graduation rates. AI/AN leaders are in a unique situation due to the distinctive conditions in which they operate that include community challenges as well as federal and tribal legislation. This, combined with limited research regarding AI/AN leadership best practices, provides doctoral programs an inimitable opportunity to partner with AI/AN and tribal communities. Therefore, due to the need to more effectively serve AI/AN peoples, the intent of this chapter is to propose methods to successfully create an AI/AN leadership emphasis within its existing doctoral program. This essay will include a description of the following: (a) the societal call for these types of programs; (b) AI/AN self-identified needs regarding graduate education, including the cultural aspects needed for success; (c) program design, philosophy, and curriculum specific to AI/ANs; and (d) further recommendations. By implementing an AI/AN emphasis, graduate programs can better address the needs of this underserved portion of the population, as well as provide a less ethnocentric perspective in the classroom.