People's Readiness Research Articles

On the Critical Uses of Difference

The year 2000 marked the twenty-fifth year anniversary of the publication of Roy Wagner's book The Invention of Culture. One of the earliest and still most profoundly challenging considerations of anthropology from a quar ter-century that went on to see its share of critical engagements with the discipline, the book's recent anniversary provides an opportunity to look back at Wagner's argument and consider what it has taught us and what parts of its message may still remain to be assimilated. In what follows, I take up these issues by examining the book's reception, laying out its core argument, considering its contribution to critical anthropology and, finally, showing how its primary analytic strategy can be applied to the study of contemporary religious movements. Let me start by noting that The Invention of Culture has had an odd reception history. It has, on the one hand, found a core audience of dedi cated and very good readers. On the other, it has also attracted a very wide following among those who know it primarily by reputation or quick perusal and whose engagement is most intense with its title. It is not nec essarily a bad thing to have these second kind of 'readers.' In fact, a soci ologist who recently had occasion to muse on the way contemporary classics are made pointed out that no book can claim to be 'influential' today until large numbers of people who have not read it (or have not read beyond its introduction) have strong opinions about it (Goodwin 1996: 293). But compared to, say, Imagined Communities, Europe and. the Peo ple Without History, or The Invention of Tradition, three other influential books that sport titles to conjure with, The Invention of Culture has been largely ill-served by people's readiness to cite a book by its cover.

Prevalence of stages of change for physical activity in rural, suburban and inner-city communities.

This study documented the differing prevalence rates for stages of change for physical activity across rural, suburban and inner city communities using survey methods and controlling for education, gender and disease status. Respondents (n = 4768) were participants in the baseline survey for the evaluation of the Québec Heart Health Demonstration Project, a health promotion program implemented in various communities throughout the province of Québec. A total of 2639 female and 2087 male parents answered a questionnaire they received from their grade 4 to grade 6 children. The questionnaire dealt with demographic information, health-related behaviors, and intentions for these behaviors. The response rates were 90%, 77% and 70% in the rural, suburban and inner city communities respectively. Results showed that prevalence rates differed significantly between communities with rural communities having the highest rates of readiness for physical activity in comparison to suburban and inner city communities. These findings suggest that above and beyond individual difference variables, structural components such as type of community are related to people's readiness for physical activity involvement.

Using Natural Language Conventions in the User Interface Design of Automatic Speech Recognition Systems

Four experiments were performed to examine how natural language conventions might be used to improve the user interface for systems using automatic speech recognition (ASR). Two new technological developments offered us this opportunity: word spotting permits recognition of key words embedded in extraneous speech; barge in permits the user to speak to the system while it plays instructional prompts. Our goal was to take advantage of natural language conventions to design an optimal prompting arrangement that would accommodate both novice and expert users. The conversational conventions we focused on included people's readiness to speak in response to a direct question and during an appropriately timed conversational pause. We studied these conventions in the context of an automated operator service. Our results indicated that a prompt-arranged as a leading question, followed by a brief pause and then a list of key words-met our goals for both the initial prompt and, if ASR failed. a subsequent reprompt. This approach resulted in fast, accurate responding, a user interface that received high user acceptance ratings, and an interface that was usable by both novice and expert users.

THE SAVINGS ACCOUNT AS A SOURCE FOR FINANCING LARGE EXPENDITURES*

THE RAPID GROWTH of consumer balances in savings accounts' during the 1960's raises important questions about people's readiness to make consumption expenditures out of these funds. Under what circumstances are savings balances utilized to finance large outlays which the family cannot pay for out of current income? How likely is it that the accumulation of large savings balances may finance a major consumer spending spree? How do withdrawals for consumption purposes affect the accumulation of savings in the longer run? To answer these questions it is not sufficient to study attitudes toward the use of the savings account and recent decisions to make withdrawals. One must also determine how promptly and how fully funds in the account are replaced. It is with these questions that this paper is concerned. Survey Research Center studies have shown repeatedly that savings are accumulated as protection against emergencies and for important long-run purpose, particularly retirement, the education of children, and the purchase of a house. We shall see, however, that as long as the money is there, savings account owners often do use their savings accounts as a source for financing large expenditures. For many families drawing on the savings account is a major alternative to the use of installment credit, although resort to a combination of both sources of funds is not infrequent. Families which are willing to make withdrawals from their savings accounts are for the most part those which are in a strong financial position and have savings habits and motivations which have enabled them in the past to build up their savings balances. These families treat their savings account as a revolving fund out of which major consumption outlays can be financed. They intend to replace withdrawals promptly out of current income. The new survey data show that as a rule these good intentions are indeed carried out. Thus willingness to withdraw from the savings account for large consumption outlays does not imply willingness to dissipate savings for consumption purposes. The data for this investigation were collected by means of a survey conducted in October-November 1965 by the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan. The 1965 survey built on and continued a study undertaken in May 1964.2 One purpose of the November 1965 survey was to

Athens in the Late Bronze Age

The Athenians of the classical era were deeply conscious of the fact that the history of their city was different from that of the rest of Greece. They were the autochthonous settlers of the land, and their orators and writers kept forever reminding them that Athens and Attica were not subdued when the Dorian invaders gained possession of most of the Peloponnesus at the end of the Bronze Age. Was this an empty boast, the kind of historical error that Thucydides (1, 20) attributes to a people's readiness to accept uncritically the old traditions about their own country or those of others? The historian (1, 2) makes it clear that he himself believed in the tradition that Attica was the original home of the Athenians of his day, and he found an explanation for this phenomenon in the poverty of the soil which made the conquerors pass by Attica for richer sections of the country. Archaeological research has confirmed Thucydides' conclusions.