Soc. Sci., Volume 7, Issue 7 (July 2018) – 18 articles

To improve the socio-economic condition of low-income households, underlying organizations offer a variety of products and services such as access to working capital and training programs. This study examined the impact of access to working capital and training programs on household income and economic vulnerability among participants of AIM, TEKUN, and LKIM in Kelantan, Malaysia. Adopting a cross-sectional design, data were collected randomly from 450 micro-entrepreneurs living in seven districts in Kelantan. The finding revealed that the total amount of economic loan received, length of the programs participation, and number of hours spent on training programs had a positive effect on household income in order to decrease the level of economic vulnerability. The finding provided useful information for policies development that prioritizes poverty eradication among low-income households who were vulnerable to weak economic situation. Full article

Active listening is important for effective interpersonal communication, a prerequisite for successful teaching. The presented cross-sectional study examined personal and work factors associated to active listening in 3.995 Greek schools’ educators of all teaching levels and specialties. The study questionnaire posted on official and main teachers’ portals included personal and working data items, the Active Empathic Listening Scale (AELS), and the Active Listening Attitude Scale (ALAS). Multiple linear regression was used to identify independently associated factors with AELS and ALAS dimensions, and standardized regression coefficients were performed to measure the effect of independent variables. Regarding AELS, gender had the greatest effect on the Sensing subscale, followed by age and mental health promotion training. Years of teaching had the greatest effect on Processing subscale, followed by higher studies. Gender had the greatest effect on Responding subscale, followed by age, higher studies, and mental health promotion training. Concerning ALAS, mental health promotion training and support from colleagues had the greatest effect on Listening attitude subscale, gender and mental health promotion training had the greatest effect on Listening skill subscale, and gender, age, and years of teaching had the greatest effect on Conversation opportunity subscale. The identification of enhancing factors like training in mental health promotion could significantly contribute in designing training that can simultaneously benefit teachers’ skills and students’ psychosocial well-being. Full article

The Police play a key role in maintaining law and order and safeguarding the security of the nation and its citizens. To enable them to discharge their constitutional mandate, they are entrusted with powers such as the power to arrest, detain, search, and to use force. However, police officers have often abused these powers with serious consequences on the image and operations of the organisation. The media is often inundated with news on unlawful arrests, arbitrary search and seizure, unlawful methods of investigations, and the excessive use of force. It is without a doubt that these incidences of abuse of powers and functions by the police come at a price. This study, a survey conducted with 91 respondents (83 members of public and 8 police officers) in 2 policing districts in Zimbabwe reveals wanton violation of human rights, police brutality, and the abuse of power which have resulted in both social and economic costs to the Police service and government of Zimbabwe through Civil suits against the police. Among other issues, training and decisiveness in dealing with the implicated police officers were viewed as the most effective ways for dealing with police abuse of power. Full article

Prior research underscores the value of social identity in adolescent development. Guided by social identity theory and employing an online survey, this study examined mobile phone use among older adolescents (18–19 years; n = 362), with special emphasis on social identity: group belonging, race identity, and group markers: race and gender. The findings confirmed that social identity markers play a role in popular forms of social mobile use (e.g., texting, phone camera, and music), especially among females. Nonwhite participants were more likely to report using generic phone apps for social compensation, although whites reported higher incidence of use than nonwhites for generic phone apps, texting, and taking pictures. Full article

This article looks at how charity organizations running private residential child care institutions on the Kenyan coast make use of the personal data of children in their care, as a means of securing and maintaining the support of donors from the global North. The strategy involves the online showcasing of children’s profiles—individual children’s photos, accompanied by their names, birth dates, annual development, and their emotion-inducing personal and/or family histories are posted on the respective organizations’ websites, making them accessible to the global public. I analyze and problematize this practice, positing that while it explicitly serves fund-raising purposes and is motivated by the search for cost-effective fund-raising-oriented communication, at a more implicit level, it is equally a strategy used to discursively legitimize the organizations and their child ‘rescue’ activities, within the contemporary climate of deinstitutionalization. This strategy results in a violation of children’s rights; has ethical implications; and is not without consequences for the concerned children’s well-being. Full article

Despite Disney’s presentation of Moana as a culturally accurate portrayal of Polynesian culture, the film suffers from Western ethnocentrism, specifically in its music. This assertion is at odds with marketing of Moana that emphasized respect for and consultation with Polynesians whose expertise was heralded to validate the film’s music as culturally authentic. While the composers do, in fact, use Polynesian musical traits, they frame the sounds that are unfamiliar within those that are familiar by wrapping them with Western musical characteristics. When the audience does hear Polynesian music throughout the film, the first and last sounds they hear are Western music, not Polynesian. As such, the audience hears Polynesian sounds meld into and then become the music that defines a typical American film. Thus, regardless of Disney’s employment of Polynesian musicians, the music of Moana remains in the rigid control of non-Polynesian American composers. Rather than break new ground, Moana illustrates a musical recapitulation of white men’s control and marketing of the representations of marginalized people. Moana’s music is subject to appropriation, an echo of how colonial resources were exploited in ways that prioritize benefits to cultural outsiders. Full article

Project Managers (PMs) are assets for every construction enterprise. The PM’s personality is essential as it defines the way that PMs cooperate with the project team and thus influence drastically the project performance. The current research focused on identifying the way gender influences the perception of required PMs’ attributes. In this context, a survey questionnaire was administered over a five-year period. Research survey successfully recorded 497 responses from Greek engineers. The survey identified profile data regarding the respondents and the scores assigned to the desired characteristics of the PMs. Firstly, a database was organized in SPSS and was followed by descriptive statistics analysis, independent sample t-test and correlation analysis that succeeded in identifying the way that gender influences the perception of PMs’ personality characteristics. It was found that in general, female engineers have a different perspective on the attributes required for competent PM that their male counterparts do. Independent sample t-test and correlation analysis led to the same conclusions. More specifically, it became evident that female engineers tend to assign the highest Likert scale based scores (five), whereas male respondents tend to assign lower scores to all considered attributes. It is also worth mentioning that a significant amount of correlation appeared in the sample, significantly greater in number than the previous research initiatives. The most highly ranked abilities include: “Capability of Risk Evaluation”, “Promptness on Solution Provision” and “Collaborative—Team Spirit”. These attributes are anticipated due to the effects of the financial crisis on the implementation of construction projects in Greece. Full article

Scientific, technical, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) occupations are strongholds of gender segregation in the contemporary United States. While many Americans regard this segregation as natural and inevitable, closer examination reveals a great deal of variability in the gendering of STEM fields across time, space, and demographic groups. This article assesses how different theoretical accounts accord with the available evidence on the gender composition of scientific and technical fields. We find most support for accounts that allow for a dynamic interplay between individual-level traits and the broader sociocultural environments in which they develop. The existing evidence suggests, in particular, that Western cultural stereotypes about the nature of STEM work and STEM workers and about the intrinsic qualities of men and women can be powerful drivers of individual aptitudes, aspirations, and affinities. We offer an illustrative catalog of stereotypes that support women’s STEM-avoidance and men’s STEM-affinity, and we conclude with some thoughts on policy implications. Full article

This paper examines modern democracy from the perspective of its capacity to generate social solidarity. To do so it considers the idea of asabiya, first used by Ibn Khaldûn and more recently applied by Peter Turchin. It postulates that this approach is quite similar to the analysis made by Roman historian Sallust. It considers the issue of the creation and decay of asabiya in the context of Benjamin Constant’s distinction between ancient and modern liberty. Ancient liberty seeks to generate asabiya and this has tended to make democracies a belligerent form of polity. Modern liberty and liberalism are happy to leave individuals to cultivate their own garden. This means that while modern democracy, which can be understood as the form of democracy founded on modern liberty, has some belligerent features it tends towards favoring peace. This raises a problem for modern liberal forms of democracy as they face difficulty in creating social solidarity and opponents who can create asabiya and the aggression that goes with it. Full article

This study addresses the latent construct of attitudes toward environmental conservation based on study participant’s responses. We measured and evaluated the latent scale based on an 18-item scale instrument, over four experimental strata (N = 945) in the US Virgin Islands and the Caribbean. We estimated the latent scale reliability and validity. We further fitted multiple alternative two-parameter logistic (2PL) and graded response models (GRM) from Item-Response Theory. We finally constructed and fitted equivalent structural and generalized structural equation models (SEM/GSEM) for the attitudinal latent scale. All scale measures (composite, alpha-based, IRT-based, and SEM-based) were consistently and reliably valid measures of the study participants’ latent attitudes toward conservation. We found statistically significant differences among participant’s attributes relating to socio-demographic, physical, and core environmental characteristics of participants. We assert that the nature of relationship between cognitive attitudes and individual as well as social behavior related to environmental conservation. Full article

The tussle between freedom of expression and religious intolerance is intensely manifested in Indian society where the State, through censoring of books, movies and other forms of critical expression, victimizes writers, film directors, and academics in order to appease Hindu religious-nationalist and Muslim fundamentalist groups. Against this background, this study explores some of the perceptions of Hindu and Muslim graduate students on the conflict between freedom of expression and religious intolerance in India. Conceptually, the author approaches the tussle between freedom of expression and religion by applying a contextual approach of secular-multiculturalism. This study applies qualitative research methods; specifically in-depth interviews, desk research, and narrative analysis. The findings of this study help demonstrate how to manage conflict between freedom of expression and religion in Indian society, while exploring concepts of Western secularism and the need to contextualize the right to freedom of expression. Full article

This paper is the first to describe the structure and content of the English language social science literature on food safety in China. To do this research we systematically searched Web of Science and Scopus, the most comprehensive indexes, using the terms “Food Safety” AND “China” OR “Chinese”. To focus our search results, we used the index features available on Web of Science and Scopus, and limited results to the English language, peer-reviewed journal articles, social sciences, and published in the period of 2009 to 2015. This resulted in 272 selected journal articles, with a final data set of 185 articles for review. A food safety system model we developed was used to classify and present the findings derived from content analysis of abstracts, titles, and keywords. Our findings show that the research reviewed is unevenly distributed across the components of the food safety system model. The greatest proportions of the literature reviewed focused on consumers, primary and secondary producers and products, and government legislators and regulators, respectively. Smaller proportions focused on food wholesalers, retailers, researchers, educators, and the media. Few of the articles reviewed used a model of the food safety system. None identified an explicit knowledge transfer strategy. Full article

This study drew on important insights from a quarter-century history of forcefully evicted Muslims in Sri Lanka’s northern province by examining the nature of their displaced life and their permanent resettlement in their traditional villages, particularly in the post-civil war context. Reviewing the literature and primary sources, this paper argues that the forceful eviction of northern Muslims was unfortunate and the persistent sidetracking of their permanent resettlement violated their right to live in their traditional villages. Successive governments have failed to propose a sustainable mechanism to resettle these Muslims as part of the resettlement plans. Post-war resettlement initiatives hardly considered the permanent resettlement of these Muslims in their traditional villages. In addition, the issue of resettling northern Muslims became highly contested due to lack of proper policies and plans of the government authorities, as well as moral and institutional support from the Tamil community and their polity, opposition, and criticisms from the Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalist forces, and fragmentation within Muslim politics, together with the protracted nature of the displacement. This study suggested that the continued neglect of their resettlement would challenge the sustainability of post-war development and ethnic reconciliation in Sri Lanka. Full article

This article sets out to trouble the psychologised and pathologising approach that has come to dominate child protection practice in Aotearoa-New Zealand and comparable societies. Within a neoliberal ideological frame, Governments deny the need to adjust markets, except in ways that remove protections from workers or specific vulnerable groups. In this context, social work is concerned with adjusting people to the discipline of the market. Within a risk-focused child protection paradigm, circumstances and behaviours associated with material deprivation are construed as indicators of heightened danger and harm to children as opposed to a means of better understanding family life. It is argued here that appreciation of how social inequality plays out in the lives of children and their families is critical to the development of more effective child protection social work. Poverty exacerbates the everyday struggle of parenting—it shames and disempowers, reducing confidence and perceptions of competence. With reference to contemporary Aotearoa-New Zealand, this article critiques current developments in child protection social work and outlines a new direction for development. Full article

This article examines a three-stage collaboration in the design and implementation of a community outreach online course for an adult education program at a Canadian university. The collaboration used a participatory arts-based pedagogy approach that is designed to evoke thought rather than prescribe meanings. This manuscript has been structured to parallel a script format with Act I reporting how a group of university drama students employed the ‘playbuilding’ research/pedagogical methodology to devise a series of tableaus and video vignettes that examined concepts of community development that would be used in the design of an online community outreach and adult literacy elective course. Act II argues for and provides the devised script as evidence (data) of student learning. Act III discussed how an adult education instructor designed the new course, incorporating the vignettes as a central component and what was observed from delivering the online course over several iterations. Embedded in the discussion were: the processes involved in both instructional environments; and an examination of the impact of the dramatic pedagogical approach in the digital environment, particularly in relation to transformation, meaning making, and community outreach. The insights, however, are not coded in an etic analytical style. Rather, the authors used an emic approach with themes embedded within the narrative structure. Given its collaborative nature, the co-authors employ a polyvocal format through which their individual voices are made explicit. Full article

In contrast to the relatively limited attention given in the past to apprenticeships and apprenticeship-related issues in Greece, the crisis has triggered a definite interest in this area. This is largely due to the serious implications of the crisis, in conjunction with the idea that apprenticeships could be an alternative educational pathway for boosting labour market integration, an idea also promoted by EU institutions. Against this backdrop, the present article is, essentially, the first effort made to highlight, in a succinct and critical way, the crucial dimensions of an under-researched key aspect of the apprenticeships in Greece: company engagement. Drawing on the findings of a large-scale, mostly qualitative, research project (December 2015–March 2017) that reviewed apprenticeship programmes in this country, and during which, inter alia, 150 stakeholders were surveyed and an online survey was conducted with 828 employers, the article highlights the strengths characterizing company involvement in apprenticeships, but also severe shortcomings which overshadow the strengths. It is argued that there is an urgent need for restructuring. Otherwise, the potential of apprenticeships in Greece to be an alternative educational pathway to boost employment at a time of extremely high unemployment, especially for young people, will be undermined. Full article

President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement served as an impetus for the French President to enact “Make our Planet Great Again”, an initiative aimed at attracting international scientists to study climate change. In the current study, we evaluated the extent of interest and awareness towards this initiative. Our goal was to determine factors that impacted awareness and interest, with the hypothesis that political views and beliefs towards climate change would be strong influencers. We also predicted that there would be a greater number of scientists among the aware and interested participants. To test these hypotheses, we distributed anonymous online surveys during October–November 2017 to multiple academic departments within the University of Florida, a land grant institution with top ranking programs in environmental sciences, agriculture, biodiversity conservation, and horticulture. We recruited 185 participants. Approximately 45% of the participants were aware of French President Macron’s initiative; of those aware, 51.8% expressed interest. We found a moderate influence of political party on awareness and interest. Nearly all of the participants that were aware and interested in the initiative agreed that climate change was a real event. Slightly lower agreement was reported by the unaware and uninterested. Surprisingly, there were fewer scientists among the aware and interested participants compared to those that were unaware and uninterested participants. These findings highlight that both political party and belief towards climate change influenced interest and awareness in President Emmanuel Macron’s initiative. Thus, employing strategies that engage all political parties, as well as educating individuals on climate change, might result in more effective future global initiatives. Full article

Using data from the China Family Panel Studies, this study examines the socioeconomic characteristics of Internet users, as well as the relationships between the dynamics of different forms of online activities and the subjective well-being of urbanites and rural migrants in urban China. The study finds that online behavior may clearly reflect differences in individuals’ personal traits and socioeconomic positions. Patterns of the association between online activities and subjective well-being tend to differ among rural migrants and urbanites, especially in terms of depression. A difference-in-differences model is employed to estimate the impact of intensified engagement in online activities on depression and life satisfaction from 2010 to 2016. The results show that individuals who exhibited increased frequency of online entertainment appeared to be less depressed and more satisfied with their lives. Spending more time on online social networking has a similar impact on rural migrants, but not on urbanites. These findings suggest that the rapid development of urban China’s online community has important implications for residents’ subjective well-being. Full article