US Context Research Articles

Creativity, Spirituality, and Awen

This study applies learning theory to explore bardic arts (creative practices) in the modern Druid revival movement, offering broad data from nine countries, with 266 surveys and follow-up interviews with fourteen Druids. Through this mixed-methods dataset, the research explores how different Druids take up the bardic arts as a spiritual practice, how they conceptualize “Awen” (divine or creative inspiration), and how bardic arts are central to spiritual life. The study also explores the concept of bardic community through Eisteddfodau, or bardic circles, within US contexts. These circles where bards celebrate with stories, songs, and music. A discussion of overcoming cultural challenges and talent-based mindsets, the role of community in the bardic arts, and a discussion about future possibilities for research is included.

From Potential “Nini” to “Drop Out”: Undocumented Young People’s Perceptions on the Transnational Continuity of Stigmatizing Scripts

Based on two years of ethnographic data gathered, including 81 h of life-history interviews and 70 h of participant observation with 10 youth who migrated to the United States from Central America, this paper argues that negative labels that often stereotypically depict immigrant youth experiences are often socially imposed on immigrant youth prior to migration. More specifically, this article examines youths’ understanding and perceptions of the ways in which family members employ socially available “stigmatizing scripts.” Stigmatizing scripts, as described by study participants, are often used by family members in an attempt to protect youth. Analysis of the data suggests that the youth experienced stigmatizing scripts as a way to describe their lives “at-risk” and in need of protection, while simultaneously criminalizing many of their experiences. Furthermore, the article details youth description of the transnational continuity of stigmatizing scripts by describing family members ‘usage of scripts but in the US context. The article expands on immigrant families’ scholarship, highlighting family dynamics and their impacts on youths’ wellbeing and families’ unintentional contribution in youths’ stigmatization and criminalization.

Reading Object Lessons in India today

This essay situates Object Lessons in the contemporary academic spaces of women’s studies in India. A decade ago, Object Lessons offered an extensive critique of identity knowledges in the US academy with a special focus on women’s studies. What might its relevance be in the contemporary Indian context? The institutionalisation of women’s studies in India has been shaped by the resources of the social sciences, with their empirical bent and especially their connection to state and development policy. This makes for specific differences with the US context while many concerns are shared. The essay also looks at how gender as a category has been deployed in specific contexts in contrast to that of “women”, in the light of Wiegman’s cautions over seeking resolutions to particular problems through a preferential treatment of categories. By way of concluding thoughts on the Indian situation, women’s studies in India is hypervisible compared to other identity knowledges. In spite of its marginal and precarious location in the academy, it carries a disproportionate political burden, one that a heterogeneous student body is shouldering in their struggles for a sustainable future.

Towards Universal Communion

Beginning with the observation of a polarized public both in America and China after the US Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, this essay charts my reflection on the present issue regarding abortion and reproductive health in the US context and its global manifestation. It demonstrates my understanding that the current situation presents an opportunity for the actualization of universal communion. By rendering visible the international presence existing in American Catholic colleges and universities, I argue that Catholic higher education, by virtue of its institution and mission, ought to embody an open society that is driven by universal love. I propose that reasoned reflection and civil dialogue on the topic of abortion and reproductive health, if it is to be truly realized, must be guided by an ever-maturing faith and an absolute openness to truth that embrace the totality of life that is the world.

South Korea: The Lasting Pitfalls of the ‘Imperial Presidency’

AbstractThe use of the term ‘imperial presidency’ in South Korea refers to the fact that the country's 1987 constitution grants the state's highest office holder de facto imperial powers with regard to domestic and foreign policy making. This version of the term therefore differs from Arthur M. Schlesinger's usage in the US context, which was critical of the discretionary powers exercised by US presidents in efforts to subvert the checks and balances of the US Constitution. Concentrating political power in the South Korean presidency severely curtails the work of the other political institutions, including its parliament (the National Assembly). Every time the presidency changes hands, the leadership structures of all other public institutions are subjected to major restructuring according to political loyalty, which interrupts their routine functioning. Overall, the presidency in its current form is dysfunctional and works as a barrier against democratic deepening. This article examines why lengthy debate over South Korea's imperial presidency has so far failed to result in comprehensive constitutional reform.

Costs and cost-effectiveness of a collaborative data-to-care intervention for HIV treatment and care in the United States.

Data-to-care programmes utilize surveillance data to identify persons who are out of HIV care, re-engage them in care and improve HIV care outcomes. We assess the costs and cost-effectiveness of re-engagement in an HIV care intervention in the United States. The Cooperative Re-engagement Control Trial (CoRECT) employed a data-to-care collaborative model between health departments and HIV care providers, August 2016-July 2018. The health departments in Connecticut (CT), Massachusetts (MA) and Philadelphia (PHL) collaborated with HIV clinics to identify newly out-of-care patients and randomize them to receive usual linkage and engagement in care services (standard-of-care control arm) or health department-initiated active re-engagement services (intervention arm). We used a microcosting approach to identify the activities and resources involved in the CoRECT intervention, separate from the standard-of-care, and quantified the costs. The cost data were collected at the start-up and recurrent phases of the trial to incorporate potential variation in the intervention costs. The costs were estimated from the healthcare provider perspective. The CoRECT trial in CT, MA and PHL randomly assigned on average 327, 316 and 305 participants per year either to the intervention arm (n = 166, 159 and 155) or the standard-of-care arm (n = 161, 157 and 150), respectively. Of those randomized, the number of participants re-engaged in care within 90 days in the intervention and standard-of-care arms was 85 and 70 in CT, 84 and 70 in MA, and 98 and 67 in PHL. The additional number of participants re-engaged in care in the intervention arm compared with those in the standard-of-care arm was 15 (CT), 14 (MA) and 31 (PHL). We estimated the annual total cost of the CoRECT intervention at $490,040 in CT, $473,297 in MA and $439,237 in PHL. The average cost per participant enrolled was $2952, $2977 and $2834 and the average cost per participant re-engaged in care was $5765, $5634 and $4482. We estimated an incremental cost per participant re-engaged in care at $32,669 (CT), $33,807 (MA) and $14,169 (PHL). The costs of the CoRECT intervention that identified newly out-of-care patients and re-engaged them in HIV care are comparable with other similar interventions, suggesting a potential for its cost-effectiveness in the US context.

Re/Negotiating Race and Racialization for International Students of Color in the US

:Race in the US is shaped by a history rooted in settler colonialism, colorism, and nativism. Yet, international students are typically excluded from most conversations about race and racialization. Using Fries-Britt, George Mwangi, and Peralta's (2014) emergent framework on learning race in US contexts, we examined international students of Color's racialized experiences at a predominantly White institution, including how their racialized experiences were often shaped simultaneously by issues of race and racism in the US, as well as preconceived notions of what their US collegiate experiences would be. Findings indicated that most students did not expect to experience racism in the US; however, after a critical incident on campus, many participants had to navigate how they conceptualized race and racialization as international students of Color in the US.

Unsettling teacher preparation: cultivating liminality and remaking space

In the USA, university-situated teacher education programmes are hierarchical, with tiers of students and faculty progressing through ranks that structurally confer power. Teacher education programmes purporting to engender democratic ideals must remake teaching and learning spaces to encourage the teachers that they prepare to do the same in their pre-school through to twelfth-grade classrooms and schools. In this article, we explore social pedagogy in a US context, describing the work of a tenured teacher educator, two graduate students and more than 40 undergraduate students as they experimented with practices of democratic education in a midwestern US land-grant university elementary literacy methods course. We centre our analysis on three questions: How do efforts to democratise a teacher education literacy course influence teaching and learning? What is the nature of those efforts? How do different social actors in the course make and remake space? We then present three findings that speak to the work of unlearning institutionalised norms that sustain hierarchical teaching and learning relationships and that demonstrate the nature of a maieutic disposition in bringing to life more democratic conceptions of teaching and learning. We illustrate throughout the overlaps between democratic education and social pedagogy.

Stories of Songs, Choral Activism and LGBTQ+ Rights in Europe

This paper attends to choral activism and LGBTQ+ rights in Europe. Drawing on models in a post-Stonewall US context, LGBTQ+ choirs have appeared since 1982 in urban centres throughout Europe, employing a range of repertoire, adopting innovative performance practices, and enacting public interventions. These choirs can affirm positive LGBTQ+ identities, create safer spaces, build local LGBTQ+ communities, offer sites of healing and sharing about different LGBTQ+ experiences, and increase visibility in the aid of LGBTQ+ rights (Balén 2017; De Quadros 2019; MacLachlan 2020). While LGBTQ+ rights may have become “a powerful symbol of Europe” (Ayoub and Paternotte 2014: 3) in the popular imagination and in the EU public discourse, in the last decade, new nationalist formations, increased violence toward LGBTQ+ people, and divisions within an apparent LGBTQ+ community have rendered queer Europeans at a critical juncture just as the project of Europe itself begins to crumble. As an activist within, and researcher of a European LGBTQ+ choral music scene, I will share with this paper stories of songs, choirs, festivals and choral networks inspired by Rita Felski’s notion of “hooked” (2020). Drawing on several years of ethnographic research in the UK, Italy and Poland, I ask: How have LGBTQ+ choirs shaped and been shaped by the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights locally, nationally and transnationally? What stories do these choirs tell us about the power of songs to bring about wider social transformation? How might LGBTQ+ choirs offer models of care, community and advocacy in a continent in crisis? Discussing an array of issues and cases – the Various Voices festival, the London Gay Men’s Chorus and the Cromatica network – and the potentials of applied methods, I invite us to listen to LGBTQ+ choral singing as a form of activism that continues to transform European 21st century politics and society.

Black Ecologies (Humanity, Animality, Property)

Black Ecologies (Humanity, Animality, Property)

It’s All Relative: Perceptions of (Comparative) Candidate Incivility and Candidate Sympathy in Three Multiparty Elections

While growing attention has been devoted to candidates’ use of incivility in campaigns, its role in informing voters’ feelings toward candidates is still debated. This study embraces a constructionist perspective on incivility and focuses on the relationship between perceptions of candidate incivility and candidate sympathy. Its contribution is twofold. First, it extends incivility research generalizability by testing the association between voters’ perceptions of candidate incivility and candidate sympathy during three election campaigns beyond the US context. Second, it builds upon the notion of incivility as a norm violation and tests the hypothesis that perceptions of a candidate’s uncivil behavior are negatively associated with candidate sympathy when this behavior is inappropriate (i.e., it violates injunctive civility norms) and especially when it is uncommon (i.e., it violates descriptive civility norms). These interests are pursued through post‐electoral survey data collected in the Netherlands, Germany, and France. Findings show that incivility perceptions can, but not always, correspond to more negative feelings toward candidates. Furthermore, it is the incivility of candidates relative to that of their competitors that really counts for candidate sympathy.

Analyzing decision-maker’s justifications of care orders for newborn children: equal and individualized treatment

ABSTRACT Seeking insights into how decision-makers uphold obligations to equal and individualized treatment in decisions about state intervention, this study examines justifications by decision-makers in care orders for newborn children. Eighty-five care order judgments from eight European countries concerning children of mothers who misuse substances are analyzed to determine how decision-makers justify removing a newborn child from their mother’s care. I find that the results display similarities in what risk factors they find relevant to these cases, but it differs which are deemed decisive. Protective factors are rarely important. Implications for the US context are commented on.

Cultural Adaptation of Interventions and the a Priori Assessment of Intervention Fit: Exploring Measurement Invariance for American and Swedish Youth Leaving Care

ABSTRACT Purpose There is a growing literature on the importance of cultural adaptation of research-supported social work interventions. Few studies have however offered systematic methods for the a priori assessment of intervention fit in a new context. The current study explores the use of measurement invariance analyses to help identify whether key theoretical constructs in an intervention’s theory of change may fit differently in a new context. Methods We draw on data on 13 measures of key constructs in an intervention for youth leaving out-of-home care designed and trialed in the US context (N = 295; 53.1% girls, mean age 17.3) compared to Swedish adolescents (N = 104; 41% girls, mean age 17.5). Results In general, the results found all the measures to be invariant between US and Swedish samples. Discussion The original intervention (US) is likely to have a good fit in the new (Swedish) context in terms of the measurement and functionality of its key constructs. There are, however, some indications that certain aspects of the original key constructs may function differently in the Swedish context, highlighting a need to review either measurement or intervention design. A broader conclusion is that measurement invariance can provide a useful tool for research-supported social work practice, namely the systematic a priori assessment of the transferability of an intervention’s theory of change. Some limitations and methodological issues are discussed.

A scoping review on the use of natural language processing in research on political polarization: trends and research prospects

As part of the “text-as-data” movement, Natural Language Processing (NLP) provides a computational way to examine political polarization. We conducted a methodological scoping review of studies published since 2010 (n = 154) to clarify how NLP research has conceptualized and measured political polarization, and to characterize the degree of integration of the two different research paradigms that meet in this research area. We identified biases toward US context (59%), Twitter data (43%) and machine learning approach (33%). Research covers different layers of the political public sphere (politicians, experts, media, or the lay public), however, very few studies involved more than one layer. Results indicate that only a few studies made use of domain knowledge and a high proportion of the studies were not interdisciplinary. Those studies that made efforts to interpret the results demonstrated that the characteristics of political texts depend not only on the political position of their authors, but also on other often-overlooked factors. Ignoring these factors may lead to overly optimistic performance measures. Also, spurious results may be obtained when causal relations are inferred from textual data. Our paper provides arguments for the integration of explanatory and predictive modeling paradigms, and for a more interdisciplinary approach to polarization research.

Between Liberation and Shock: Italian Parents’ Experiences of Their Children Coming Out

Children’s coming out has a significant impact at the family level, and parents’ reactions can affect their children’s well-being. Research investigating parents’ perspectives is still limited outside the USA and primarily includes parents involved in LGB associations. Our study investigates coming out within families in Italy, a context characterized by heteronormativity and high stigma toward sexual minorities, with parents not involved in LGB associations. The aim was to explore the meanings parents attributed to their child’s coming out and look at how it reshaped their relationships with their offspring in light of the theoretical model elaborated by Chrisler (2017) on studies conducted in the US context. Thirteen participants were interviewed (10 mothers, aged 43–63): ten with a gay son, two with a lesbian daughter and one with a bisexual daughter. The thematic analysis identified four themes that can be framed in Chrisler’s theoretical model and then extended its field of application to a new socio-cultural context. The discussion highlights some features transversal to the themes that can be better understood if related to specific traits of the Italian family and relational culture, emphasizing the importance of educational and cultural interventions directed at parents who are not yet involved in associative networks.

Review: The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging, by Rebecca Wanzo

Review: <i>The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging</i>, by Rebecca Wanzo

Pragmatic, Persistent, and Precarious: The Pathways of Three Minority Ethnic Women in STEM Higher Education

Minority ethnic women are underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) higher education. Whilst existing studies, mostly in the US context, have provided valuable insights into racial and gender inequalities, there appears to be limited research in the UK. Through the lens of science identity, this article draws on qualitative data which was collected over three years, to appreciate how minority ethnic women develop their identity and belonging in STEM higher education, from the start to the end of their degrees. We present three case studies: (1) Nancy, a British East Asian Computer Science student, who appears pragmatic as she understands the extrinsic value of her degree, despite negative feelings and experiences; (2) Carol, a Black British Biomedical student, who can be seen as persistent, as supported by her intrinsic commitment to work in healthcare; and (3) Mawiya, a British Middle Eastern Mathematics student, whose experiences are somewhat precarious, because she must continuously negotiate her mathematics identity, which is often in question by herself and others. We discuss and compare the similarities and differences in the higher education pathways of these students. We also highlight the nuances of identity development and identity management, and consider multiple social inequalities for minority ethnic women. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the findings for policy and practice.

Findings from a Roundtable Discussion with US Stakeholders on Valuation of the EQ-5D-Y-3L.

The International Valuation Protocol for the valuation of the EQ-5D-Y-3L provides baseline guidance, but country-specific context is also important. This study aimed to obtain US stakeholders' input on key considerations for youth valuation in the US. A total of 14 stakeholders representing various backgrounds were identified via the investigators' networks. A 2-h online meeting was held to discuss (1) the need for a US value set for the EQ-5D-Y-3L; (2) willingness to pay more for quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) gains for children versus adults; (3) sampling strategies; (4) framing perspectives; and (5) other challenges. The session was recorded, transcribed, and summarized. Several stakeholders supported paying more for QALY gains for children in recognition of their potential future contributions to society, as well as to avoid potential undervaluation and promote access to innovative treatments. Concerns regarding possible double counting, lack of data to showcase long-term benefits, and dangers of paying more for certain subgroups were also expressed. Most of the stakeholders felt that adolescents could relate to a 10-year-old's perspective better than adults and were capable of self-completing valuation tasks, and thus should be directly included in the valuation study. There were concerns that adults would be inconsistent in their views about a 10-year-old, partly depending on their status as a parent. US stakeholders provided insights relevant to youth valuation in a US context and were open to continued dialogue with investigators. This study could be useful to investigators who are conducting youth valuation studies in different countries and seeking stakeholder input.

The Effect of Media on Tourists’ Perceptions of a Country-Target of Animosity in the China–US Context

ABSTRACT This study examines the impact of media on animosity and the effect that animosity has on destination image and visitation intent. The context is the China–US relations where the US is a country-destination which is the target of animosity in China, as the bilateral relations have been suffering from long-lasting and more current conflicts. We found that media coverage of the newly emerged points of contention related to COVID-19 mainly affects situational animosity but has little influence on general animosity. While visitors and non-visitors to the US had the same exposure to media coverage of the conflict, visitors had more favorable attitudes toward the US. It was also found that in a situation of intense conflict, animosity toward the US not only decreases intent to travel to the US but positively impacts intent to travel domestically and to the in-group countries that were supportive of China during the pandemic.

Meet our baby: celebrities’ children and childhood between comfort, refuge, and futurity

ABSTRACT This paper aims to investigate representations of celebrities’ children and childhood in the context of the US during the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores how discourses around the famous offspring serve social and cultural functions within the celebrity context and beyond. The increased exposure of children in celebrities’ homes has created kinship ties through a strengthening of parasocial relationships through the performance and illusion of intimacy. Furthermore, this paper aims at understanding the larger implications of discourses around celebrities’ children in the US context. By employing Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of retrotopia, it will be argued that representations of celebrities’ children can be seen as idealised versions of the present which harken back to an imagined, romanticised past. This will be read in light of a current moment that is marked by precarious living conditions and national crises, the COVID-19 pandemic only being the most current one. Moreover, Lauren Berlant’s idea of national sentimentality will be used to show that these representations can also be seen as visions of futurity. It will be demonstrated how narratively and visually embedded illusions of intimacy create a glorified image of childhood and construct childhood and family as a place of comfort, refuge, and thereby futurity.