Desire For Contact Research Articles

Urban open space in the 21st century

This paper asks what should be demanded from urban open space in the 21st century. It explores the social and spatial implications of new lifestyles, values, attitudes to nature and sustainability, and the models for future city life and the patterns of urban open space that might accommodate these. One vital role that urban parks play is providing space for the expression of diversity, both personal and cultural; this raises issues of democratic provision for and access to public open space. It suggests, inter alia, that the role of the urban street as public space may need to be re-thought. The social and cultural values of open space include attitudes towards nature and the desire for contact with it; contemporary understandings of ecology offer new insights into ways to serve both human needs and the broader ecological framework of urban open space structures. It has been suggested that the urbanity of public open space is threatened by the increase in ‘virtual’ transactions, obviating the need for real, social interaction, but there is also evidence that use of new communications technology can increase and enhance use of public open space; this may include engagement in the productive aspect of our landscape. A more flexible approach to open space definition and usage is proposed, recognising ‘loose-fit’ landscapes which allow opportunities for the socially marginalised and the ecologically shifting within a dynamic framework of urban structures and networks.

Verdier i endring i sykepleie

The purpose of this article is to describe, attempt to explain and discuss the change in values the post-modern society has undergone during the last 20 years. The question is: How has the original philosophy for choosing a self-effacing calling altered? In the late part of the 19th century the church still played a dominant role in the society. Values such as charity and humility were deeply rooted in the population and compassion was the motive for choosing a calling such as nursing. The deaconesses who dominated the nursing profession at that time, thought it important that the correct disposition in nursing should be prompted by a need to help, to assist the sick and the suffering. A little more than 100 years later society has become pluralistic. Technology solves many problems, it attempts to eliminate disease and suffering is shunned. Students who choose nursing education are characterized by a diversity of views of life, ambivalence and heterogenity. Their objectives/motives for choosing nursing are general and vague, in that they state their wish to become nurses is motivated by a desire for contact with human beings/to help others, to do something useful for society. There is reason to ask whether the desire for human contact/to help has another meaning for the young students of today than it had for the women who chose nursing in earlier periods.

Arab Students' Attitudes Toward and Amount of Social Contact With Americans: A Causal Process Analysis of Cross-Sectional Data

The relationship between attitudes toward Americans and social contact with Americans was studied in a sample of Saudi Arabian students attending an American university. A causal process analysis and path analysis showed that a desire for contact significantly mediated the relationship between attitude and contact, consistent with an attitude-to-contact causal direction and social-psychological approaches that focus on the impact of attitudes on behavior. Social contact, however, was not significantly mediated by understanding of the host country. The contact hypothesis that social contact causes attitude change was not supported.

Perception of Adoption as Social Stigma: Motivation for Search and Reunion

Adoption occurs in all societies. Yet the form of the adoption process differs according to a society's structural constraints and the expressed needs of that society's members. For example, traditional societies usually arrange informal adoptions in which children are placed with other kin (Benet, 1976; McDade, 1991). In such cases, regular interaction between kin members ensures adopted children's knowledge of their birth parents' identity and continued birth family contact. In contrast, most Western societies use formal legal procedures to arrange the adoption of third-party, non-kin family members (Griffith, 1991). The first adoption laws implemented in North America included a secrecy clause sealing adopted children's original birth records and restricting the release of their biological background information (Benet, 1976; Garber, 1985). These secrecy clauses are now being challenged (Griffith, 1991). For example, many racial and ethnic groups in North America use the informal adoption practices of their traditional cultures, thereby avoiding the legal demands of Western adoption agents (Das Gupta, 1995, p. 161). In addition, the recent increase in private adoptions has led to more open communication and, often, face-to-face contact between adoptive and birth parents (Berry, 1991). More and more open adoptions, where the adoptive parents have information about the birth parent and vice versa, are also being arranged (Caplan, 1990). The relative success of these alternate practices brings into question the validity of an adoptive process that denies adoptees access to their biological heritage (Sachdev, 1989). The strongest challenge against secrecy comes from the actions of adult adoptees who have searched for, and established contact with, unknown birth parents (Gonyo & Watson, 1988; March, 1995; Pacheco & Eme, 1993; Sachdev, 1992). Before reunion with the birth parent, these adoptees claim a sense of incompletion from their inability to fully integrate their biological background information into their identity structure (Anderson, 1989; Haimes & Timms, 1985; Simpson, Timm, & McCubbin, 1981; Sobol & Cardiff, 1983; Triseliotis, 1973). After reunion, they experience a sense of personal coherence and serenity from the background knowledge gained through meeting the birth parent (Pacheco & Eme, 1993; Sachdev, 1992). These findings have produced a strong debate over the continued need for secrecy in adoption (Garber, 1985; Griffith, 1991; Sachdev, 1989). An interesting element in this debate is the lack of similarity among searching adoptees. To date, no specific sociological category or personality type has been found to help determine which adoptees are most likely to search or which are most likely to engage in contact with birth mothers (Haimes & Timms, 1985, p. 51; Sachdev, 1992, p. 58). Searchers represent all age cohorts, socioeconomic status positions, educational levels, and degrees of satisfaction with the adoption outcome (Pacheco & Eme, 1993; Simpson et al., 1981; Sobol & Cardiff, 1983). In addition, adoptees who possess a considerable amount of background material about their birth parent may be just as likely to search as adoptees who possess little or no knowledge (Anderson, 1989; Haimes & Timms, 1985; Sorosky, Baran, & Pannor, 1974, 1975, 1978). Adoption appears to be the only factor to consolidate these individuals into any distinct, unified group (Pacheco & Eme, 1993, p. 58). The identification of adoption as the only common link among searchers suggests a greater focus on the social position of adoptee than the research literature currently exhibits. With this focus in mind, this article examines an adopted population's view of the impact of secrecy on their adoptive experience. That view emerges through a study of (a) the way in which 60 reunited adult adoptees perceived others' acceptance of them as adoptive family members, (b) how that perception affected their desire for contact with their birth mother, and (c) how reunion affected their sense of social acceptability. …

Social benefits of trees in urban environments†

People have a behavioral need for contact with trees in cities. One cause for the increase in wilderness recreation use and popularity of indoor and outdoor gardening is a basic desire for contact with vegetation. Trees can lend cities a dimension of sensory diversity, visual order and aesthetic pleasure that is lacking. There is a relationship between levels of park use, vandalism or property values in urban areas and their landscape character. These relationships have implications for the planting and preservation of trees in urban environments.

THE SEPIK HILL LANGUAGES: A PRELIMINARY REPORT

Most of the languages dealt with here are spoken by people who have traditionally lived in hilltop villages and hamlets. Hence we have called them the Sepik Hill languages. In the last generation, the desire for contact and the encouragement of the Administration have led many of these people to leave the hills for new sites on the rivers, a process which is still under way. Because most recent cultural influences have moved up the Sepik and its tributaries, the acculturative gradient runs both east to west and north to south. At the northeastern extreme, the Kapriman and Kaningra area has had extensive Administration and Mission contact ; at the southwestern extreme, many of the people of the April-Leonard Schultze headwaters are now being contacted by Administration patrols for the first time. Another example of the east-west gradient is the change from stone adzes to steel axes, which occurred perhaps thirty years ago for the Sumariup speakers, the most remote of the eastern groups, while to the west in parts of the Sanio and Seriali area the change is occurring only now. Most of the Sepik Hill peoples subsist on sago, supplemented with game, fish and wild greens. Gardening is minimal among the sago groups and domestic pigs are few. Only in the southernmost groups, Setiali to Hewa, is horticulture important. In the west, people still live in one-house hamlets, though in some groups they also have intermittently-occupied villages housing fifty or more people. Traditional houses are rectangular with many small supporting poles, sago-leaf thatch roofs, bark walls, and palm bark floors from three to thirty feet off the ground, the height depending partly on the need for defence. A few families, each with its own fireplace, share such a house. The Sepik Hill peoples are noted for their carved designs on arrows and shields. Net bags are manufactured, but not pots or baskets. The Sepik Hill cultures have a certain unity and contrast markedly with the river cultures and mountain cultures on their borders, although the eastern groups have borrowed from the cultures of the Sepik, as discussed by Haberland (1966 : 37).