Sense Of Attachment Research Articles

“Does Community Make Any Sense?” A Semantic Analysis of the Term “Community” Among Albanian Immigrants and Italian Majority Residents

Bridging Community Psychology and the Theory of Social Representations, the study was aimed at exploring how the concept of community and sense of belonging to various communities vary across diverse ethno-cultural groups (namely, immigrant and native-born groups) and how the meanings and the experience of community affect or are affected by the relationships that each group establishes with the other group. Participants were 30 native-born Italians and 30 immigrants from Albania lived in an area located in the south-east of Italy. They participated in an open-ended semi-structured interview, which was analysed using T-Lab software. Results indicated that the concept of community and sense of belonging to multiple communities do vary across diverse ethno-cultural groups and that each group is cross-cut by multiple axes of differentiation, one of which is linked to the experience of inter-cultural relations. Furthermore, the findings indicated that the functions served by the diverse communities affect the representations shared by the distinct sub-groups and that the simultaneous orientation of individuals toward multiple communities stimulate the development of a compound and even conflicting sense of attachment towards them. Implications for acculturation processes are discussed.

Psychological ownership in small family firms: Family and non-family employees’ work attitudes and behaviours

Family and non-family employees’ sense of attachment towards the firm and their job can have a number of positive pro-organisational attitudinal and behavioural outcomes, which are essential for family firms’ success. While research interest in psychological ownership (PO) in family firms has increased, further research is still needed in understanding its impact on family firms. To address this gap, we investigate whether organisational-based and job-based psychological ownership (PO) has an impact on extra-role behaviours and employees’ level of work engagement in family businesses. Moreover we look at whether the status of the employees (family or non-family) moderates these relationships. Based on a sample of 101 employees from small Malaysian Chinese family firms, we find significant effects of organisation-based and job-based PO on extra-role behaviours and work engagement. Moreover we find that the effects of job-based PO on vigour and absorption to be moderated by family status. Our findings offer valuable insights into the family business and overseas Chinese family business literatures.

Examining the Social Porosity of Environmental Features on Neighborhood Sociability and Attachment

The local neighborhood forms an integral part of our lives. It provides the context through which social networks are nurtured and the foundation from which a sense of attachment and cohesion with fellow residents can be established. Whereas much of the previous research has examined the role of social and demographic characteristic in relation to the level of neighboring and cohesion, this paper explores whether particular environmental features in the neighborhood affect social porosity. We define social porosity as the degree to which social ties flow over the surface of a neighborhood. The focus of our paper is to examine the extent to which a neighborhood's environmental features impede the level of social porosity present among residents. To do this, we integrate data from the census, topographic databases and a 2010 survey of 4,351 residents from 146 neighborhoods in Australia. The study introduces the concepts of wedges and social holes. The presence of two sources of wedges is measured: rivers and highways. The presence of two sources of social holes is measured: parks and industrial areas. Borrowing from the geography literature, several measures are constructed to capture how these features collectively carve up the physical environment of neighborhoods. We then consider how this influences residents' neighboring behavior, their level of attachment to the neighborhood and their sense of neighborhood cohesion. We find that the distance of a neighborhood to one form of social hole–industrial areas–has a particularly strong negative effect on all three dependent variables. The presence of the other form of social hole–parks–has a weaker negative effect. Neighborhood wedges also impact social interaction. Both the length of a river and the number of highway fragments in a neighborhood has a consistent negative effect on neighboring, attachment and cohesion.

Separation of judiciary in Bangladesh

Independent judiciary is a condition sine qua non of a democratic government. In a democratic state, state power rests on three separate organs, namely the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. The Constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh vests executive power in the executive and legislative power in the parliament. Judicial power is vested in the judiciary both by tradition as well as by various provisions of the Constitution. The judiciary comprises all courts and tribunals, which performs the delicate task of ensuring rule of law in society. A social structure remains logical and solid with the aid of a sound judicial system. The judiciary redresses grievances of the people and resolves disputes. The dysfunction of judiciary impacts more severely than that of any other institution as it removes from the mind of people the sense of attachment to society. Although the judiciary was independent for sometimes at the colonial period, the colonial administration did not want to separate the judiciary permanently for their colonial interest.

Toward an Ethical Polity: Service and the Tragic Community in Timon of Athens

Toward an Ethical Polity: Service and the Tragic Community in <i>Timon of Athens</i>

General Jackson's Passports: Natural Rights and Sovereign Citizens in the Political Thought of Andrew Jackson, 1780s–1820s

This essay examines the development of Andrew Jackson's ideas about nationalism, citizenship, and sovereignty within the southern borderlands of the post-Revolutionary United States. It argues that he was in many respects a conventional borderlands leader—that is, someone with little sense of attachment to any particular polity, who speculated in Indian lands while pursuing commercial ventures through American, Spanish, and Native jurisdictions. But an especially devastating war between the settlers of Middle Tennessee and some Cherokee warriors during the 1790s forced Jackson and others to articulate their attachment to the United States in new ways. Bitterly rejecting a Federalist model of citizenship that assumed clear territorial limits, they invented a new “protection covenant,” whereby the people themselves, imagined within a brutal state of nature, retained full sovereignty to deploy violence. In addition to a fresh look at Jackson, the article demonstrates the importance of international as well as Constitutional law in the formation of early American nationalism.

‘It is where blokes can be blokes’: making places in a New Zealand rugby club

Using the case study of a New Zealand rugby club, in this article, we highlight the role of gender and performance in place attachment. We discuss various performances that contribute to achieving a sense of attachment of club members to the (imagined) community of the rugby club and the different physical spaces of its home ground. Even though performances are played out and read against the backdrop of a popular discourse of New Zealand rugby masculinity, we did not observe characteristics of stereotypical ‘rugby masculinity’ in all rugby places, nor were performances the same throughout one day. Instead, variations were found depending on whether performance was ‘front stage’ or ‘backstage’.

Boatmen and Status of Dal Lake and Its Environs: A Tale of Srinagar

The paper explores how rapid urbanization in Srinagar (India) has led to the decay of the environment of Dal Lake – one of the most tourist frequented locations in India, and the impact it has had on the local aboriginal community of Hanjis who are dependent on the Lake for their livelihoods. Rapid urbanization has led to shrinking in the area of the Lake and deterioration in water quality, coupled with increasing exploitation of natural resource available. Ironically, most of the over-exploitation of resources and pollution of the lake is attributable to the Hanjis themselves as they are unable to perceive the harm their community is likely to face in the long-run of these actions as economic sustenance and livelihoods of this community is completely dependent on the well-being of the Lake. There is a need for taking immediate action both from the Hanjis community, as well as from the government, and a need for them to work collectively. Participatory development efforts in planning need to be taken up as the focus of managing the challenge rather than strict restrictions and enforcement alone by the government, and complete ignorant attitude of the local community. Most Hanjis feel they have been alienated from development plan preparation for conservation of the Dal Lake, which has in turn led them to over-exploit the lake’s resources as the sense of attachment and reliance is not there. [Formula: see text]

Body of Art and Love

Body of Art and Love

Controversies and Generational Differences: Young People’s Identities in Some European States

This article explores how young people (aged 12–18) in the four Visegrad states of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic are constructing their identities, particularly their sense of attachment to their country and to Europe. This generation is of particular significance, in that they are the first generation for many years to have been born and socialised in wholly independent states that are in a relatively peaceful and stable state. Data was collected through 41 focus groups, conducted in 11 different locations in the different states, and were analysed in terms of the degree of enthusiasm expressed for civic institutions and cultural practices related to the country and to Europe. Two particular areas were identified: the sense of generational difference and the ways in which different groups created “other” communities, within and without their country’s borders. These parameters allow us to distinguish the significant communities that these young people are creating in order to make sense of their social and political worlds.

Spectator Motives and Points of Attachment: an Investigation on Professional Basketball

Spectator attendance to professional basketball in Turkey is significantly less than desired. Keeping in mind how important spectators are for team sports, understanding factors that affect game attendance will offer essential clues in terms of increasing spectator attendance. The main purpose of this study was to determine the relationships between basketball spectators’ motives and points of attachment. With consideration to this purpose, the present study has tested the validity and reliability of the Motivation Scale for Sport Consumption and the Points of Attachment Index for Turkish basketball spectators. 197 basketball spectators participated in the study. Confirmatory factor analysis results demonstrated that the original models of the measurement tools employed for the study showed an acceptable degree of fit with the data. The internal consistency coefficients of the scales were found to be between 0.59 and 0.80 for the Motivation Scale for Sport Consumption and between 0.53 and 0.88 for the Points of Attachment Index. The canonical correlation analysis only returned a single significant function. The motives aesthetics and escape stood out in terms of the significant function, while the sport type (basketball in this study) stood out in the sense of attachment. Relationships identified between basketball spectators’ motives and points of attachment could help sports managers and marketing experts to develop strategies focusing on increasing spectator attendance to their teams’ games.

A pedagogy of place: Outdoor education for a changing world

The subtitle of this book suggests that Wattchow and Brown are concerned with how outdoor education can respond to the changing world. In this book they explore what a pedagogy of place might offer, both in terms of outdoor education practices, and in terms of giving people some tools and resources to help them to engage with this changing world. While many critical questions have been asked about outdoor education practice, in this book the authors endeavour to build on some of these critiques to explore some different ways to do outdoor education. They have aimed to make this book accessible to a wide audience, including teachers, practitioners, tertiary students and academics. The central theme of the book is what outdoor education might look like and what it might do if place were taken seriously as a pedagogical tool. They open the book with a short explanation of place to set the tone for their explorations. Place is about how people develop and experience a sense of attachment to particular locations and has both imaginative and physical realities. In keeping with their argument that place should be central to our pedagogic practices, the first chapter contains the authors' respective narratives of their attachment to places, what this means for them and some of the things that have moved them both toward a realisation that place is important in outdoor education. This approach also illustrates the importance narrative has in developing understandings and attachment to places and is a tool used in all of the case studies. The next three chapters lay out the theoretical basis for the case studies they introduce later in the book. Chapter two summarises some of the myths, dubious claims, and denial of place in outdoor education theory. Wattchow and Brown explore how romantic notions of nature, adventure and risk, and the ways in which the experiential learning cycle work to "collectively silence or work against a placeresponsive responsive approach" (p. 50) in outdoor education. This chapter is a very useful summary of some of the recent critiques of outdoor education. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Chapter three is the most theoretically densechapter in the book and it is here that Wattchow and Brown canvass some of the key ideas around place. One thing that becomes clear through this chapter is that place is a dynamic concept. In making a case for place they posit that modern life, and the mobility that is part of that life, create a sense of place lessness. As they note the question of place has arisen because how we live today is raising serious concerns about the sustainability of places and the "unavoidable reciprocity between people and places" (p. 54), means this has serious implications for us as well as for those places. In this chapter, Wattchow and Brown return in various ways to place being open and constantly changing, rather than being a fixed entity, but at the same time our identities are "bound up with the places we claim as ours" (p. 66). They describe some of the theories they draw on later in the book to understand how relationships with place might evolve. They introduce Edward Relph's concept of the insider or outsider, where the outsider is a person who experiences place as little more than background. The insider, on the other hand, depicts a deeper level of attachment to place that is gained through spending long periods in a specific place. One of the highlights of this book for me is that Wattchow and Brown locate the body as central to learning. As they point out, the body is not only ignored, but often erased in much of the outdoor education literature. There is usually little scope to explore how bodies and movement are integral to understanding and identity in outdoor education. They highlight that the sensing body is an important way into knowing, and living and moving in a place is central to knowing and understanding a place. In chapter four, Wattchow and Brown anchor the theoretical and often abstract discussion in chapter three into outdoor education. …

Examining students’ affective commitment toward country: a case study of a Singapore primary school

The purpose of this study was to examine students’ affective commitment toward Singapore. Affective commitment refers to the sense of attachment to the nation state. The sample was taken from 286 students in a primary school. In the first section of the paper, we described the design of a Likert-type Affective Commitment to Country questionnaire. Factor analyses (principal component analysis and confirmatory factor analysis) showed evidence of construct validity for the 10-item scale, and an overall Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of 0.91. In the second section, we reported the statistics related to the students’ affective commitment scores. Overall, a positive affective commitment toward the country was found. Results of our t-test analyses revealed that no statistically significant difference was found between boys and girls for each of the questionnaire items. However, students who had higher academic achievement reported significantly higher scores than their lower ability counterparts with regard to six items of the questionnaire. Suggestions for future research are discussed.

Family supportive culture, work-life segmentation and employee’s organizational attachment: The case of high-tech industry in Taiwan

This study examines the relationship among family supportive culture, organizational attachment, and work-life segmentation in high-tech service industry in Taiwan, China. Using survey data from 369 professionals, this study shows that family supportive culture has significant influence on organizational attachment, namely, affective commitment. Results indicate that individuals’ work-life segmentation has a significant negative effect on organizational attachment. Meanwhile, our results further apply employees’ segmentation between work and life as a moderator to investigating the impact of individual’s perceptions of family supportive culture and values on a sense of attachment toward organizations. The result illustrates that work-life segmentation does not moderate the relationship between supportive family culture and employees’ organizational attachment. Findings from this research provide insights into the influence of organizational family supportive culture and how it may further encourage employees’ organizational attachment in high-tech industry in Taiwan.

Employees’ skills and Organisational Commitment

Based on the survey Organisation, Learning and Competencies, the paper explores the relationship between skills development and organisational commitment. The findings, in general, suggest a low correlation between skills and more involvement in the organisations. Particularly, professionals show more attachment to their jobs than to their organisations, confirming that job commitment does not always imply organisational commitment. This work seeks to broaden our understanding of the distribution of technical ability and know-how of Italian employees among occupations and economic sectors in a period of important economic transformation. In particular, the aims are to present a comprehensive description of work skills in the Italian labour market and whether or not there exists a positive correlation between skills development, greater task discretion and more evolvement in the organisation. The data are from a new national representative survey of Italian employees working in the private sector. The survey, named OLC (Organization, Learning and Competencies) has been designed by ISFOL and conducted in the years 2004-2006. The term more appropriately found in the sociological literature to define the sense of attachment to an organisation is 'organisational commitment', which is considered strategic in periods of turbulence for the management of human resources. Organisational commitment, according some authors, 'implies identification with an organisation and acceptance of its goals and value as one's own' (Lincoln and Kalleberg, 1990, p. 22), or simply, the willingness of the individual to give higher commitment to work. In business management studies, the concept of commitment is also defined as the intensity relative to the psychological identification and employee involvement in the organisation. According to this definition, the consequences of commitment are, for example, the willingness to stay with the organisation, acceptance of the aims of the firm or, generally, the identification of employees with the values of the enterprise. However, 'organisational commitment' does not necessarily mean job or work commitment or attachment of individuals to their work (Gallie et al., 1998; Lincoln and Kalleberg, 1990). Research on the labour market tells us that the skills development of individuals is not always accompanied by an increase in the sense of attachment to an organisation. At times organisational commitment and work commitment can coincide, especially in the case of the taylorist method of management. Most organisational experimentation has tried to look at both aspects of the question: to improve interest in the work as well as to establish an effective cooperative system. Important from this point of view are the pioneering works of the Tavistock Institute summarised by Davis and Taylor (1972), and Federico Butera's 1972 and 1977 essays for Italy. However, we need to remember that whoever feels committed to work looks to the growth of his/her profession independently of the organisation's results while we can also have organisational commitment and strong identity with low-skilled jobs and tight supervisory control. In this case, commitment and identity can depend on other factors such as job security - as used to be the case in private industry in Japan for formal and informal lifelong employment - or a friendly work environment. In many industries the internal climate is considered as one of most important factors for enterprise management. A worker with a strong degree of personal identification with his/her organisation would not consider a close-knit organisation restrictive, while the same cannot be said for a worker who is inclined to self-realisation and individual creativity. However, skills development of individuals and commitment are often identified, especially in case studies, as an integral part of the human resources development process. In fact, according to Walton (1985) there exists a virtuous cycle between development of new technological and organisational systems, high quality processes and products, and quality of work and commitment. We find a similar virtuous cycle in the job re-design theory, where the growth

El lugar de la memoria: Where Memory Lies

La memoria, la pertenencia y la continuidad a partir de que la historia, los sucesos impensables y tal vez innombrables se queden en algún lado, se recuenten, una y otra vez. Dejando que el cuentista continúe tejiendo y recuperando momentos. La memoria nos contextualiza y nos ubica en un espacio histórico y geográfico con referencias al pasado y a la vez nos planta en un presente partícipe, activo de absoluta pertenencia. Le da relevancia a mis acciones presentes. Tal vez por eso los inmigrantes volvemos a repetir nuestras milenarias costumbres con más apego, lo cotidiano se transforma en una historia que hay que contar. &#x0D; &#x0D; Memory, belonging and continuity beginning with history, unthinkable events somehow unnamed that will remain somewhere, that will get retold, once and once again. Letting the storyteller continue unravelling and recuperating moments. Memory giving us context and place, a geographic and historical site with references to the past and, at the same time, placing us in an active present time, making my actions relevant to this here, and now, in a space of absolute belonging. Perhaps this is why we, migrants repeating our millenary customs with some sense of attachment, continue to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary and so then a story must be told. This article explores the distinctive roles that memory play in the context of migration. Memory dynamic is constructed in dialogue with others, and resides in artistic expression, or what Paul Willis calls cultural penetrations. Memory contextualizes our actions and functions as emotional sustenance. For those living outside their culture of origin, by choice or forced, there is a constant tension in our daily negotiations with the surrogate country: a tension between conflicting desires and responsibilities that memory helps to alleviate. Memory and the reinvention of one's histories mediate between current geographic locations and imaginary homes by providing a sense of place and belonging. Looking at the role that memory plays for Latin American migrants in Australia, I reflect on my own experiences utilizing a bilingual mode of expression that includes personal accounts, excerpts from artists’ testimonials, and photographic documentation.

What Does “White” Mean? Interpreting the Choice of “Race” by Mixed Race Young People in Britain

Despite the often cited idea that racial identities are socially constructed, and potentially fluid, much public policy is still based on surveys that elicit only one measure of racial identity. A number of U.S. studies have employed “best single race” questions on racial identification, in which multiracial respondents are asked to choose only one race to describe themselves. We extend some American studies by examining responses to a “best single race” survey question posed to a small sample of multiracial young people in Britain. In-depth interviews with British multiracial respondents are employed to investigate the extent to which a “best single race” (BSR) question captures someone's sense of attachment and belonging to a particular ethnic or racial group. In particular, we focus on how we should interpret East Asian/white respondents' choice of “white” as their BSR.

Conversion Intentions of Fashion Marketing Interns: The Impact of Work-related Attitudes and Behaviors**

Abstract Fashion marketing/retailing is a major employment sector and driver of economic activity on a global level. Michael Porter’s (1985) popular value chain perspective demonstrates the importance of marketing and retail sales among a set of primary value creating activities for firms of all types. The value chain perspective also illuminates the importance of human resources as a support activity necessary to create value and assure the success of the firm. This research addresses the potential value for fashion marketing/retailing firms that may be achieved through employee development practices such as offering pre-professional internships. We focus on college students’ perceptions of fashion marketing/retail-related internships d the factors that cause interns to accept a job offer upon internship completion. This study specifically examines relationships between internship experiential components of psychological contracts, supervisory support, affective organizational commitment and job satisfac...

An Exploration of Tinto's Integration Framework for Community College Students

Tinto's integration framework is often assumed to be inapplicable to the study of student persistence at community colleges because one of the linchpins of the framework—social integration—is considered unlikely to occur for students at these institutions. Community college students are thought to lack the time to participate in activities, such as clubs, that would facilitate social integration. Using in-depth interviews with students at two urban community colleges in the Northeast, we examine the ways that first-year community college students engage with their institutions. We find that the majority of them do develop attachments to their institutions. Moreover, this sense of attachment is related to their persistence in the second year of college. We also find that this integration is both academic and social. Contrary to findings from other studies that apply Tinto's framework, we find that these two forms of integration develop in concert for community college students. The same activities lead to both academic and social relatedness. This is particularly true for information networks that students develop in the classroom.

Undergraduate Students’ Satisfaction with Hostel and Sense of Attachment to Place: Case Study of University Sains Malaysia

Problem statement: Unlike numerous studies have explored residents’ satisfaction and sense of attachment to housing, little discussion exists on this area addressing the relationship between sense of attachment to place and student housing satisfaction. To fill such a gap, this article was an attempt to investigate undergraduate students’ level of satisfaction and sense of attachment to place drawn from three ethnics (Malay, Chinese and Indian) living in the hostels of University Sains Malaysia to see if there is a significant relationship between the level of satisfaction and sense of attachment to hostel and whether Chinese, Indians and Malay students differ from one another significantly in their satisfaction with hostel and sense of attachment to place. Approach: A 33 item questionnaire measuring satisfaction of students with (hostel fees, sharing the room, hostel distance from facilities provided on University campus and hostel distance from school’, hostel design and layout, hostel population, hostel rules and regulations, hostel safety and hostel security and so forth) and sense of attachment to place was used in this research. A sample of 267 (168 Malay, 76 Chinese and 23 Indians) students were randomly selected from seven hostels of University Sains Malaysia. Results: The findings of the study showed a significant positive correlation between level of satisfaction and sense of attachment to place (r = 0.529; p<0.01, n = 267). An insignificant difference was found between three ethnics (Malay, Chinese and Indian) on the level of satisfaction with hostel and sense of attachment to place. Conclusion: It was concluded that (1) higher sense of attachment is associated with an increase in level of satisfaction. (2) Satisfaction and attachment to hostel are not affected by the student’s ethnicity.