An exploratory study on the attitudes of elderly Finns towards Russian-speaking minorities

Research has shown Russian speakers in Finland are often victims of prejudice and discrimination. Utilizing integrated threat theory, this study investigated the extent to which threats are significant predictors of prejudice towards Russian speakers in Finland among a highly neglected research population – the elderly. This study also aimed at finding out which threat (realistic threat, symbolic threat, and negative stereotyping) was the most significant predictor of attitudes towards members of the Russian-speaking minority, and the extent to which men and women differed. In a sample of 90 participants, aged 65 and above, results indicated realistic threat and symbolic threat were not significant predictors of prejudicial attitudes towards members of the Russian-speaking community. Negative stereotyping however had a negative effect on prejudice. Moreover, contrary to previous research on prejudice, there were no significant differences between men and women on threat.     

Immigrant perpetrators in the news: A terror management approach to resultant hostility,perceived vulnerability,and immigration issue judgment

This study found that mortality salience in TV news activated more hostile attitude toward the perpetrators and negative judgment on the immigration issue. Social group difference influenced news viewers’ immigration issue judgment, but did not affect their resultant hostility and perceived vulnerability. More negative attitudes emerged toward the immigration issue when immigrant perpetrators were portrayed negatively in the news. News viewers with exposure to mortality salience in TV news reported more negative toward immigrants. Exposure to mortality-related elements in TV news could lead to social conflicts that were viewed as a severe threat by U.S. government and policymakers.     

The Relationship Between Self-Construals,Perceived Face Threats,and Facework During the Pursuit of Influence Goals

Abstract

The purpose of our study was to understand how self-construals affect the intensity of perceived face threats and the subsequent deployment of coping strategies within compliance-seeking situations involving three different influence goals (giving advice, asking favors, or enforcing unfulfilled obligations). Five-hundred and seventy-six students from four different ethnic backgrounds (African American, Asian American, Latino, and European American) at six universities in the U.S.A. indicated their levels of independence and interdependence. Then they wrote what they would say to a same-sex friend in a hypothetical advice, favor, or obligation scenario, and whether they would persist in the face of initial resistance from their friend. They also evaluated the degree to which seeking compliance would threaten the target's negative face, the target's positive face, their own negative face, and their own positive face. Written messages were coded for how many reasons participants provided for seeking compliance. As levels of interdependence increased and independence decreased, participants perceived a larger total threat to both the target's face as well as one's own face when pursuing influence goals. Furthermore, people provided more reasons for compliance as well as persisted more after initial refusal as the level of independence increased. Implications for future research on culture, influence goals, and face are discussed.     

National Science Foundation Patronage of Social Science, 1970s and 1980s: Congressional Scrutiny, Advocacy Network, and the Prestige of Economics

Research in the social sciences received generous patronage in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Research was widely perceived as providing solutions to emerging social problems. That generosity came under increased contest in the late 1970s. Although these trends held true for all of the social sciences, this essay explores the various ways by which economists in particular reacted to and resisted the patronage cuts that were proposed in the first budgets of the Reagan administration. Economists?? response was three fold: to engage in joint lobbying with other social scientists, to tap into their authority as a respected policy player, and to influence the types of research financed by the patron. With interviews of the former lobbyist for the social scientists, the former director of the Economics program for the National Science Foundation, and a review of the archival records of economists and their scholarly society, we discuss how economists have claimed entitlement to patronage in the closing decades of the twentieth century. We observe a dynamic and productive relationship between politicians and researchers mediated by the National Science Foundation, where civil servants, lobbyist and public minded scientists, and self-serving grantees trade roles.     

Diet-specific social support,dietary acculturation,and self-efficacy among Chinese living in the United States

This study conceptualizes diet-specific social support from family members and friends as a part of the functional content of social relationships and examines differences in its levels and predictiveness among immigrants with varying degrees of dietary acculturation. Using an online sample of 505 Chinese immigrants living in the United States, the results show a decline in the amount of support received by acculturated immigrants in both computer-mediated and face-to-face contexts. However, acculturated immigrants need less social support to produce the same level of self-efficacy than do immigrants who retain their Chinese identity. The findings suggest that the decline in the amount of received support may signal a cultural shift in the ways social support operates to achieve its health-protective function. Implications for diet-specific social support, dietary acculturation, and immigrant health are discussed.     

The Dangerous Individual('s) Dog: Race,Criminality and the ‘Pit Bull’

Abstract

Though it is generally acknowledged that there is a relationship between racist discourse and the figure of the non-human animal, this relationship is almost always assumed to be analogical: oppressed groups are compared with or treated as non-human animals. But the recent dogfighting case against NFL Quarterback Michael Vick and the attendant suspicion of ‘pit bulls’ suggests that racism today has a more complex relationship with (certain types of) animals than the analogy would capture. An analysis of this discourse both calls for and revises Foucault's notion of ‘the dangerous individual’ as an explanatory concept for contemporary racism. The concomitant revulsion toward both dogfighting and ‘pit bulls’ suggests an expression of fear of a perceived threat to normative whiteness, insofar as these ‘dangerous’ dogs are figured as carriers of the contagion of racial abnormality.     

The Immigrant Experience: Differences in Acculturation,Intercultural Sensitivity,and Cognitive Flexibility Between the First and Second Generation of Latino Immigrants

This study tested the assertion that intercultural communication competence develops as a result of intercultural adaptation. Surveys were collected from a sample of 216 first- and second-generation Latino immigrants in the US. It was predicted that first-generation immigrants would score higher on cognitive flexibility, intercultural sensitivity, and biculturalism than second-generation immigrants because of their direct exposure to two cultures. These hypotheses were not supported, as second-generation immigrants scored higher on all three measures. As predicted, bicultural orientation was correlated with both cognitive flexibility and intercultural sensitivity. The findings are discussed with attention to immigrants' acculturation strategies.     

Weaving Webs of Faith: Examining Internet Use and Religious Communication Among Chinese Protestant Transmigrants

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between new media use and international communication that addresses religiosity and affirms users’ standpoints occupied by transmigrants that are marginalized in dominant societal structures. Drawing from focus group interviews among recent Chinese Protestant immigrants in Toronto, we argue that new media “use” is broadened by users’ cultural appropriation in situational contexts to include proxy internet access as accommodative communication given the political and legal constraints in their home country. Chinese transmigrants not only reinterpret and alter semantic associations that spiritualize the internet, they also engage in innovative strategies that involve the intertwining of offline and online communicative modes. These include deploying complementary media forms or communicating in codes that are mutually understood among participating members to facilitate intragroup networking among Chinese religious communities. Implications are discussed with regard to the importance of cultural norms and situational context in shaping mediated international communication.     

A Longitudinal Test of the Effects of Facebook on Cultural Adaptation

The present study is a longitudinal examination of the role of Facebook on the cultural adaptation of Muslim immigrants to the United States (n = 379). Immigrants’ use of Facebook affects interactions with the dominant culture and with the ingroup. Respondents were asked about their use of Facebook, motivation to culturally adapt, and perceptions of the US at two different points in a 6-year period. Analysis revealed that Muslim immigrants to the US from 2006 to 2012 who used Facebook more for social interaction with the ingroup were less likely to be motivated to culturally adapt to the US dominant culture, and these same immigrants were more likely to have a negative perception of the US dominant culture as their Facebook use increased.     

Gaps and Plugs: TNO, and the Problems of Getting Knowledge out of Laboratories

This article aims to clarify and improve thinking on normative government laboratories: partly publically funded laboratories that work to improve the functioning of society, particularly through boosting innovation. This article focuses on a case study of TNO, a large Dutch laboratory, and an exemplary case of this type of laboratory. This article argues that TNO is perceived as a plug to fill a gap between knowledge production and use, in a belief that there is a direct and causal link between laboratory knowledge production and use. As a plug to fill a gap, however, TNO, and laboratories like it, can never perform satisfactorily, making an enduring cycle of negative performance evaluations and major reorganizations inevitable. This article suggests that a network model of innovation might provide a way out of the impasse.     

Ethnic performance,language proficiency,and ethnic media use among Indian American immigrants

This study focuses on how and why Indian American immigrants engage with movies from their home country in a transnational global context. Existing literature has focused on lack of host language proficiency as the primary reason for ethnic media consumption. We suggest that for Indian Americans, the motivation for consuming Indian films is driven by ethnic performance rather than language proficiency. A survey was conducted with Indian Americans to explore the relationships among Indian movie consumption, acculturation indices, language proficiency, and ethnic performance. Results show that ethnic performance is a stronger predictor of Indian movie consumption than language proficiency and acculturation indices.     

The Emotional Side of Forgiveness: A Cross-Cultural Investigation of the Role of Anger and Compassion and Face Threat in Interpersonal Forgiveness and Reconciliation

This study examined the dynamic interplays between emotions (i.e., anger and compassion), face threat, forgiveness, and reconciliation in relational transgressions in U.S. and Chinese cultures. Results indicated that Chinese participants reported more relationship-oriented forgiveness than U.S. participants, but no distinction was uncovered in self-oriented forgiveness. Results also showed that, relative to preforgiveness, there was less postforgiveness anger but more postforgiveness compassion in both cultures. Anger had a negative association, but compassion had a positive association, with forgiveness and reconciliation in both cultures. Perceived face threat first evoked initial emotions, which influenced forgiveness and counterinfluenced reactive emotions, which then affected reconciliation.     

Communicating across difference: Co-cultural theory,capital and multicultural families in Korea*

Utilizing Orbe’s co-cultural theory and Bourdieu’s theories of capital, this study examines the lived experiences and the communicative interactions employed by members of seven multicultural families in South Korea. Findings show the intertwined roles of economic capital, social capital, cultural capital and symbolic capital with co-cultural communication orientations, when interacting with members of the majority group. Particularly, findings reveal differences between Korean husbands and immigrant wives. For Korean husbands, economic and social capital are the most critical influential factors in their choices of communication orientations, while for immigrant wives, cultural and symbolic capital are most significant. Additionally, contrary to previous research, Confucianism and patriarchy played key roles in the marginalization of Korean men in multicultural families and influenced their co-cultural communication orientations.     

Racial incorporation through alignment with whiteness

This study examines alignment with whiteness as a form of racial incorporation among Asian Indian immigrants. Alignment—lining up—explains the process of racial incorporation as a creative construction of similarities in social position, values, interests, and culture. Thirty Asian Indian immigrants were interviewed. We found that they were positioned to interact with white Americans by their material resources, terms of immigration, and prearrival imagination of the U.S. as white. They incorporated themselves by constructing terms of equivalence with whiteness and adopting the discourse of racelessness. We demonstrate how identity capital and affect enable and secure racial alignment.     

On the Symbolic Production of Digital Markets for Cultural Goods

This paper proposes and mobilizes a cultural economic framework to study the dynamic formation of digital markets for cultural goods. Adapting Hayek's theory of price to recent developments in the field of cultural sociology, it proposes the idea that an effective price system condenses information dispersed in society, and then enters into a performative process of symbolic communication that is perceived as ‘authentic’ by the consumers. After analyzing ‘artificial’ and ‘authentic’ current strategies aimed at producing digital markets for cultural goods, which are especially sensitive to the symbolic dimension of price, the article suggests the hypothesis that the digital market has been constructed as a zero- or quasi-zero-price economic space, and that it is the offline and material market of cultural products the one that collects the higher revenues derived from the ‘authentic’ generation of value taking place in the digital marketplace.     

Cross-Field Effects of Science Policy on the Biosciences: Using Bourdieu’s Relational Methodology to Understand Change

This paper is based on a study that explored the responses of bioscientists to changes in national science policy and research funding in Canada. In the late 1990s, a range of new science policies and funding initiatives were implemented, linking research funding to Canada’s competitiveness in the ‘global knowledge economy’. Bourdieu’s theory of practice is used to explore the multi-scalar, cross-field effects of global economic policy and national science policy on scientific practice. While most science and educational policy studies use Bourdieu’s concepts ontologically, as “thinking tools” to theorize power, this study adopted Bourdieu’s relational epistemology, empirically linking objective positions of power (capital) with position-takings (rooted in habitus) towards market-oriented science. A relational epistemology made it possible to explore what forms and weight of capital scientists brought to bear on symbolic struggles over the legitimacy of a market and scientific logic. By empirically investigating how power shaped bioscientists’ responses to market-oriented science policy, this study was able to identify key mechanisms of change within the scientific field and between science, politics and the market. First, it identified the rise of a new form of entrepreneurial capital and a market-oriented logic that coexists alongside a traditional scientific logic within the scientific field in a bipolar system of stratification. Second, it illustrated changes in scientific practice, which contribute to change in the structure of the distribution of capital within the scientific field. This study challenges Bourdieu’s emphasis on a single dominant logic or symbolic order and challenges science and technology scholars to both use and extend his theoretical contributions.     

Bridging mechanisms in multiethnic communities: Place-based communication,neighborhood belonging,and intergroup relations

Using communication infrastructure theory (CIT), this study examines how place-based communication, including neighborhood interpersonal discussion, geo-ethnic media, and local organizations, may have the potential to promote multiethnic intergroup relations through forging a sense of neighborhood belonging. Based on survey data consisting of 405 diverse community members, this study employs structural equation modeling to test the relationships among residents’ connection to place-based communication, their level of neighborhood belonging, out-group contact frequency, and perceived interaction quality across six interethnic dyads. Findings suggest that place-based communication does impact multiethnic intergroup interaction, but the direction and magnitude of such effects diverge along ethnic lines.     

Space for Ambitions: The Dutch Space Program in Changing European and Transatlantic Contexts

Why would a small country like the Netherlands become active in space? The field was monopolized by large countries with large military establishments, especially in the early years of spaceflight. Nevertheless, the Netherlands established a space program in the late 1960s. In this paper I will analyze the backgrounds of Dutch space policy in international post-war politics, national industrial policy, and science. After the Second World War, European space activities were shaped by the interplay between transatlantic and European cooperation and competition, limited by American Cold War diplomacy. At the national level, the Dutch space program was shaped firstly by two powerful companies, Philips electronics and Fokker Aircraft. As I will demonstrate, these two firms sought to gain crucial management skills as well as technological ones. Meanwhile, the nation’s astronomers were able to capitalize on an advantageous confluence of political, economic and scientific ambitions to forward their own agenda. They succeeded in obtaining two of the most expensive scientific instruments ever built in the Netherlands: the Astronomical Netherlands Satellite (ANS, launched 1974) and the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS, 1983). Both were joint Dutch-American missions, but the nature of the cooperation on each was very different, reflecting the changing relationship between America and Western Europe from the 1950s until the 1980s.     

A Multimodal Approach to Identity: Theorizing the Self through Embodiment,Spatiality, and Temporality

Abstract

This article problematizes the theoretical assumption of communication-as-symbolic that delimits the way identity is theorized. I argue that deconstructing identity requires moving beyond the symbolic construction of social categories, and instead focusing on how a perceptual and embodied subject is constituted through communication. Informed by Merleau-Ponty's phenomenologically driven approach to critical inquiry, I present a multimodal approach that reveals how perceptual subjectivity and the reflexive body are constituted within, and constitutive of, the symbolic mechanisms of social construction. Utilizing various examples pertinent to intercultural communication, I theorize cultural identity through the perspective of communication-as-embodied.     

The Careers of Modern Artists

Using transactions from fine art auctionsfor 42 leading American contemporary artists Iestimate the relationship between the value of apainting and the artist's age at the date of itsexecution. The econometric estimates show that artistsborn before 1920 were likely to have produced theirmost valuable work late in their careers, whereasartists born in the 1920s and '30s were more likely tohave done their most valuable work at an early age.Comparison of these results to evidence drawn from arthistory textbooks and retrospective exhibitionsfurthermore indicates that these artists' mostvaluable work has also been that most highly regardedby scholars. I argue that the shift across generationsin the shape of these artists' age-price profiles wasa result of the evolution of modern painting and agrowth in the demand for contemporary American artduring the 1950s and '60s.