The Forgotten Class Factor?

In Latin America and the Caribbean, Bolivia has the third highest rate of mortality among children under five years of age (57 per 1 000), with 14.0% of under-five deaths attributable to diarrhea. Because a child's world is predominantly controlled by and experienced through his or her mother, this investigation aims to understand what maternal dimensions may determine child diarrhea. Variables were selected from the 2003 Bolivia Demographic and Health Survey to create indices of three maternal dimensions using principal components analysis: behavior and experience, access to care, and agency. The three indices were included in a logistic regression model while controlling for economic status, maternal education, and residence type. A total of 4 383 women who had children less than 5 years old were included in the final sample and 25.0% of mothers reported that their most recent born child had experienced an episode of diarrhea in the 2 weeks before the survey. Mothers with high levels of maternal agency or of high economic status were significantly less likely to report their child experienced an episode of diarrhea than women of low levels. Women with primary education were significantly more likely to report that their child experienced diarrhea than women with no education. High levels of agency have a significant protective effect even when controlling for other factors. Increasing maternal agency could have a positive impact on child health in Bolivia, and future work should aim to understand what accounts for different levels of agency and how it may be strengthened.

This article investigates the role of agency in the causation of transformative events by looking at the competition between rival strands within social movements. The creative activity involved in the elaboration and execution of rival strategies is used as a proxy for agency. We present a paired comparison of two very different transformative events in twentieth-century Ireland—the Easter Rising of 1916 and the Long March from Belfast to Derry in 1969—and the strategic interactions preceding them. The comparison shows how agency and structure can interact around transformative events. High levels of agency were instrumental in making the events, and in turn these events catalyzed powerful social forces. These forces were structural—that is, they reflected divisions, tensions, and power relations that were deeply engrained in the social structure over the long term. However, these structural forces could have remained dormant had it not been for the bursts of agency that brought about the transformative events in question. We also see in these cases that the balance between structure and agency is dynamic, sometimes shifting from one moment to another rather than remaining constant.

Why are women under-represented in the field of economics relative to men? We propose that stereotypes associated with economists contribute to women’s interest in the field. We test the predictions that economists are stereotypically associated with low levels of communion and high levels of agency and that this type of stereotype content is associated with women’s lower interest in the field. In Study 1 (N = 883), stereotypes associated with people in the field of economics were masculine, characterized with low levels of communion and high levels of agency. In Study 2 (N = 182), undergraduate women were less interested than men in majoring in fields that share the same pattern of stereotyping found for economists in Study 1. The results from this study have important implications for increasing young women’s interest and representation in the field of economics.

This volume addresses long-term effects of democratic transitions on social movements in Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Spain. From the theoretical point of view, the main focus of reflection is on the long-term impact of eventful moments on social movements, especially the causal mechanisms through which legacies and memories of transformative protest events are produced and reproduced over time, enhancing and constraining contemporary movements’ repertoires and frames. The paths of democratic transitions set norms and institutions that affect protests in the long term. Without taking a deterministic view, we examine the ways in which the past is revisited and read anew how stories are selected, what is resilient, and what is transformed. While research on social movements started in Europe with historical work on labor movements, the impact of historical legacies and memories on social movements has not been much theorized. More in general, while there is a growing interest in memory, there is little systematic theory or comparative research on ways in which important events have long-lasting institutional consequences and are remembered by future generations. With this volume, we address this gap by reflecting on the ways in which critical junctures, especially the ones produced through mobilization from below, affect the social movements that follow. In particular, we analyze transitions to democracy as points of departure and look at the ways in which their paths—and especially social movements’ participation in them—play a role in enhancing and constraining the movements that follow.

This article explores School Participatory Budgeting (SPB) as an important practice that provides students with opportunities to show their agency, or the ability to proactively influence social structures and institutions. The study explores the manifestations of agency among schoolchildren involved in SPB. The empirical base of the study includes the results of a survey of 670 students in grades 7-11, conducted from May to October 2023 in 32 regions of Russia. The survey contained questions about the specific practices in which schoolchildren participated. The level of agency was determined using a specially developed methodology that allows for the assessment of students’ agency in various fields, such as family, education process, school life, interaction with peers, and income. The results showed that schoolchildren’s level of agency is closely related to their involvement in SPB. The higher the level of agency, the higher the level of involvement in SPB. A high level of agency and the maximum degree of involvement are only typical for a small percentage of respondents. The main motives for schoolchildren’s participation in SPB are personal development, the acquisition of new skills and knowledge, and social mobility. Participants in SPB with the highest level of agency often seek changes in existing practices and regulations and the implementation of socially significant projects aimed at improving the life of the school community.

The multidimensionality and complexity of the child agency` phenomenon determines the presence of different approaches and grounds for its study, which are in diametrically opposite positions. The aim of the study is to analyze agency and its indicators in the structure of subjective well-being of senior schoolchildren. The empirical base was made up of data obtained from a survey of 3,282 students in grades 7-11 of the Tyumen region. The questionnaire of the international survey of children's subjective well-being - Children's World is taken as a basis. The questionnaire was supplemented with indicators showing the level of agency, as well as the impact on the subjective well-being of security, health and romantic relationships. Factor analysis in the space of 47 SWB indicators allowed us to identify 8 factors reflecting the contribution to the SWB of family, school, health, agency, status, social loyalty, security and romantic relationships. In addition, students were asked to evaluate the SWB indicators from two angles: how important this or that SWB indicator is for them (the desired level) and how much they assess the presence of this indicator in relation to their lives (the real level). At the actual and real levels, the greatest contribution to subjective well-being is made by such factors as: family satisfaction, agency, security and safety (psychological, physical). There are direct significant moderate correlations between the relevance of factors and their real level. Agency is a significant factor in the subjective well-being of schoolchildren and ranks second in importance after safety. The relevance of agency increases with age. The gap between the desired and real levels of agency is most pronounced in older students with disabilities. A comparison of the SWB structure in groups with different levels of agency showed that high school students with an average level of agency demonstrate a higher level of SWB, and students with a high level of agency have the lowest level of SWB. The results obtained are discussed in the critical field of research.

Introduction. Education plays a key role in shaping the younger generation’s agency, i.e. their proactive attitude and ability to constructively transform social reality. In this context, it is important to understand how involving schoolchildren in decision-making processes, such as school participatory budgeting, can contribute to the development of their personal responsibility and initiative. However, these practices have not been practically investigated in the context of students’ agency, and there is a lack of empirical evidence on how these initiatives can solve real problems and improve the school community. The aim of the study is to investigate the agency of schoolchildren involved in school participatory budgeting, with an emphasis on identifying the motives and effects of this activity. Materials and Methods. The empirical base includes the results of a survey of 670 schoolchildren in grades 7–11 enrolled in schools with significant experience in participatory budgeting, which was conducted from May to October 2023 in 32 regions of the Russian Federation. The questionnaire contained questions about specific practices of students’ participation in the development of the educational organization’s infrastructure, in holding events, competitions, the degree of involvement in school participatory budgeting, motives and results of this activity. The level of agency was determined using a specially developed methodology to assess its manifestations in various spheres: family, learning process, school life, interaction with peers, finances.Results. The main motives for taking part in school participatory budgeting are personal development, acquisition of new competencies, knowledge and social mobility. The higher the level of agency, the higher the degree of involvement in budgeting. However, a high level of agency and the maximum degree of involvement are typical only for a small percentage of respondents. Participants in school participatory budgeting with the highest level of agency often seek changes to existing practices and regulations, as well as the implementation of socially significant projects aimed at improving the life of the school community. Discussion and Conclusion. The level of schoolchildren’s agency is closely related to their involvement in participatory budgeting. With the most frequent mentioning by respondents of individually significant motives and results, participants of participatory budgeting with the highest level of agency are characterized by a combination of individualistic and altruistic motives and effects of this activity. This study provides educators engaged in school participatory budgeting with target benchmarks for analyzing educational outcomes, helps school leaders to more accurately define the school development strategy and determine directions for changing the corporate culture of interaction between children and adults in the educational environment. It also opens prospects for future research on the relationship between agency, participation in initiatives, and civic identity formation, which will be of interest to sociologists and psychologists analyzing youth behavior and social activity.

Drawing on Bickhard's interactivism along with philosophical hermeneutics, we outline a plausible ontology of human action and development that might serve as a metatheory for positive psychology. Our nondualistic metatheory rests on a distributed notion of agency. The kinds of morally imbued social practices that are identified by hermeneutic theorists constitute one level of agency. At the first level of agency, persons are already committed, at least by implication, to folk psychologies that cover positive emotion, positive traits, and positive institutions. Higher levels of agency and knowing emerge through the process of development. The higher knowing levels incorporate the capacity for conscious self-reflexive awareness, which permits the person to consciously deliberate and form theories of the good person and the good life. These more consciously formed positive folk psychologies are always in a dialectical relationship with the more implicit and embodied understandings of the good life as manifested in social practices, emotional experiences, and habitual thoughts. We suggest that this framework helps to account for the `diversity of goods' that underlie our lives and to clarify the relationship that the professional positive psychologist will have with his or her native folk psychology.

The current study aimed to examine the moderating effects of girls’ agency and communion in the links between both fathers’ and mothers’ corporal punishment and girls’ self-esteem in China. Chinese girls (n = 302) enrolled in grades 4–8 were instructed to independently complete the Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scale (CTSPC), the Children’s Sex Role Inventory (CSRI), the Global Self-Worth subscale of Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPPC), and demographic items. Results indicated that both fathers’ and mothers’ corporal punishment were not directly associated with girls’ self-esteem, whereas both agency and communion were positively associated with girls’ self-esteem. In addition, both fathers’ and mothers’ corporal punishment were significantly and negatively associated with self-esteem for girls with lower levels of agency but not for the girls with higher levels of agency. The current results extend the growing evidence against using corporal punishment as a child-rearing practice and highlight that intervention programs need to focus on eliminating, or at least decreasing, both mothers’ and fathers’ corporal punishment. Additionally, parents and educators need to move from the traditional gender-related attributes to encourage the development of both agency and communion in girls.

The aim of this paper was to check whether there exists a relationship between volunteering involvement and the level of communion, agency and degree of support for ethical codes. The questions concerned whether persons involved in volunteering (compared to those not involved) are characterized, on the one hand, by a higher intensity of agency and communion, on the other, a higher level of declared support for ethical codes (ethics of autonomy, universal good, dignity and collectivism). In order to find the answer, a study was carried out in which participated 37 people involved in hospice volunteering (including 19 women) and 34 non-volunteers (including 18 women).The results of the study show the existence of an assumed relationship in the case of agency and communion. As for ethical codes, the results did not provide evidence of the relationship between the level of their support and volunteering. The results of the presented study lead to the conclusion that selfless action for the benefit of the other people is associated with a high level of agency and communion, and not only with a high ethical level. Hence the postulate for pedagogical practice to shape and develop a sense of agency and communion in children and youth.

Frustrated Freedom: The Effects of Agency and Wealth on Wellbeing in Rural Mozambique

By comparing junior versus senior professionals, this study explored the degree of agency, responsibility, and the ability to consciously report motivations in critical decisionmaking situations. Additionally, the relationship between these factors, decision-making styles and personality traits was investigated. Faced with organizational decisionmaking critical scenarios, participants were asked to choose among four alternatives with increasing levels of agency and responsibility and, secondly, to report the motivations behind the choice. The type of decision, the number of motivations reported, and the reaction times (RTs – both for selecting the decision and writing the motivations) were considered. Self-report scales were also administered to investigate professionals’ profiles. Findings showed that decisions with a high level of agency and responsibility, as well as ability to report motivations, are influenced by seniority. In junior professionals, responsibility in decision-making was linked to the ability to motivate the choice and to RTs in deciding. Behavioral data for each professionals’ group were also linked to distinct decision-making and personality profiles.

This paper attempts to describe the main semiotic ideologies (interpretation systems) of the Tarot card reading, to identify what determines the choice of an interpretation system by a practioner. Based on the results of semi-structured interviews and participant observation, the author was able to distinguish two modes of the Tarot card reading: divination based on meanings and divination in the state of Flow. The Tarot card reading in the state of the Flow involves the synthesis of intuition and meanings based on intuition, building a narrative and immersion in a trance state. On the basis of ethnographic material, three main semiotic ideologies of the Tarot card reading were also identified and described: occult (spiritual), esoteric, and psychotherapeutic. They differ on the basis of two criteria: reflection on the nature of the practice (the definition of the Tarot card reading as a magical, religious or psychotherapeutic practice) and reflection on transcendental sources of information (what is perceived as a source of information in the process of divination: deities/spirits, the unconscious, Tarot egregor, information field). The initial hypothesis that the difference between the semiotic ideologies of the Tarot card reading lies in the different level of agency attributed by tarot readers to themselves has not been confirmed. An analysis of the interviews and the results of the experiment showed that most practioners attribute to themselves a high level of agency, that is, they perceive themselves as responsible for the results of their predictions. The choice of a semiotic ideology may depend on the situation of divination: when divining oneself, one is most often guided by psychotherapeutic semiotic ideology, while divining by others – spiritual or esoteric.

We assessed the factors that legitimized the police in the United States at an important moment of history, just after the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. We also evaluated one way of incorporating perceptions of systemic racism into procedural justice theory. We tested two primary hypotheses. The first hypothesis was that perceptions of police procedural justice, distributive justice, and bounded authority were important to the legitimization of the police. The second hypothesis was that perceptions of the under- and overpolicing of Black communities also mattered to the delegitimization of the institution, especially for people who identified with the Black Lives Matter movement. A cross-sectional quota sample survey of 1,500 U.S. residents was conducted in June 2020. Data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, and latent moderated structural equation modeling. People who viewed the police as legitimate also tended to believe that police treated people with respect and dignity, made decisions in unbiased ways, fairly allocated their finite resources across groups in society, and respected the limits of their rightful authority. Moreover, people who believed that Black communities were underpoliced and overpoliced also tended to question the legitimacy of the police, especially if they identified with the Black Lives Matter movement. These results held among Black and White study participants alike. At the time of the study, systemic racism in policing may have delegitimized the institution in a way that transcended the factors that procedural justice theory focuses on, such as procedural justice. This was especially so for individuals who identified with a social movement, Black Lives Matter, that had an extremely high profile in 2020. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Procedural justice and the mental health court judge's role in reducing recidivism