A mixed methods analysis of the relationship between attachment, post-traumatic stress, and post-traumatic growth among United States service members

The impact of secure military relationships on US service members’ response to trauma during military service was examined in this mixed methods study. Veterans with and without combat exposure evidence a high rate of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the military has tried to institute resilience-based programs in anticipation of the psychological challenges experienced by soldiers. At the same time, research has shown that some service members report positive outcomes associated with military service including the phenomena of post-traumatic growth (PTG). The constructs from attachment theory (safe haven and exploration) have begun to be the focus of research with service members and have been linked to PTG. In the current study, the statistical relationships and qualitative dimensions among attachment, PTSD, and PTG were examined. The quantitative portion of this study found that the more safe and secure service members rated their relationships with fellow service members, their unit, and their leaders, the fewer PTSD symptoms they reported and the more likely they were to experience post-traumatic growth, independent of demographics (age, education level, rank), and combat exposure. The qualitative portion of this study reported the broad and varied lived experiences of service members’ relationships – providing many answers to the question of how relationships matter. Implications of these findings for military programs and policies and future research directions are discussed

Play Among Books

How does coding change the way we think about architecture? Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books

"Datum for its own annihilation" : feedback, control, and computing, 1916-1945

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology, and Society, 1996.Includes bibliographical references.by David A. Mindell.Ph.D

Fantasies of Gender and the Witch in Feminist Theory and Literature

In Fantasies of Gender and the Witch in Feminist Theory and Literature, Justyna Sempruch analyzes contemporary representations of the “witch” as a locus for the cultural negotiation of genders. Sempruch revisits some of the most prominent traits in past and current perceptions in feminist scholarship of exclusion and difference. She examines a selection of twentieth-century US American, Canadian, and European narratives to reveal the continued political relevance of metaphors sustained in the archetype of the “witch” widely thought to belong to pop-cultural or folkloristic formulations of the past. Through a critical rereading of the feminist texts engaging with these metaphors, Sempruch develops a new concept of the witch, one that challenges traditional gender-biased theories linking it either to a malevolent “hag” on the margins of culture or to unrestrained “feminine” sexual desire. Sempruch turns, instead, to the causes for radical feminist critique of “feminine” sexuality as a fabrication of logocentric thinking and shows that the problematic conversion of the “hag” into a “superwoman” can be interpreted today as a therapeutic performance translating fixed identity into a site of continuous negotiation of the subject in process. Tracing the development of feminist constructs of the witch from 1970s radical texts to the present, Sempruch explores the early psychoanalytical writings of Cixous, Kristeva, and Irigaray, and feminist reformulations of identity by Butler and Braidotti, with fictional texts from different political and cultural contexts.https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/ccs/1004/thumbnail.jp

Dictators and Autocrats

In order to truly understand the emergence, endurance, and legacy of autocracy, this volume of engaging essays explores how autocratic power is acquired, exercised, and transferred or abruptly ended through the careers and politics of influential figures in more than 20 countries and six regions. The book looks at both traditional "hard" dictators, such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, and more modern "soft" or populist autocrats, who are in the process of transforming once fully democratic countries into autocratic states, including Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Narendra Modi in India, and Viktor Orbán in Hungary. The authors touch on a wide range of autocratic and dictatorial figures in the past and present, including present-day autocrats, such as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, military leaders, and democratic leaders with authoritarian aspirations. They analyze the transition of selected autocrats from democratic or benign semi-democratic systems to harsher forms of autocracy, with either quite disastrous or more successful outcomes. An ideal reader for students and scholars, as well as the general public, interested in international affairs, leadership studies, contemporary history and politics, global studies, security studies, economics, psychology, and behavioral studies

Stabilising liberal societies in a world of radical innovation: committed actors, adaptive rules, and the origins of social order

Long-standing questions about social order, and about liberal democratic capitalist orders in particular, remain unsettled. They are of renewed importance in our age of crisis and democratic backsliding. Adam Smith addressed two such questions at the founding of political economy: First, what are the forces that sustain all societies, and liberal societies in particular? Second, what combination of market and state makes such societies prosperous and powerful? A third question, addressed by Hayek, Polanyi, and Keynes in their own period of crisis and backsliding, pertains to interactions between the two: how does the combination of market and state affect the stability of liberal democracy? If we are to answer these questions, I argue we need a realistic theory of innovation. Real-world innovation is Schumpeterian: it is uncertain and often radical, so the future may unexpectedly break with the past. Real-world innovation is Baumolian: it is socially ambiguous, and may be productive or extractive. Consequently, the innovations of political and economic entrepreneurs bring the rise, but also the fall, of societies. Given the last two decades, we may be more open to the idea that Fukuyama’s “End of History” never arrives. Our task is to stabilise and optimise cooperation in both politics and the market. “Cooperation” is defined as the alignment of private returns with social returns; it is exemplified by Smith’s “invisible hand”, and is the precondition for growth. The usual formal methods for identifying cooperative equilibria fail in a world of Schumpeterian and Baumolian innovation. Beyond the short-run, there are no lasting Nash equilibria. Game forms are destroyed and remade. The institutional forces that we hope will restore cooperative equilibria are themselves subject to innovative attack. How, in this unstable world, is it possible to sustain cooperation over long periods of time? And how can we model and predict cooperation? This thesis adopts an analytic strategy that makes this problem tractable. I borrow concepts and formal models from evolutionary sociobiology, a field that deals with cooperation under radical and ambiguous innovation. As in Acemoglu and Robinson’s Narrow Corridor, the core concept is the adversarial innovation race (the “Red Queen’s race”). Most important in this thesis is the race between 4 innovating cooperators and defectors. Social order becomes the probabilistic outcome of a dynamic process—of whether cooperator or defector innovations are superior in a given period. Under the right circumstances, outcomes are predictable. All complex social orders, anthropic and biological, combine “commitment” and “rules” (which, in the definitions of this thesis, includes institutions) into a self-sustaining system. Commitments are essential. They are motives that are exogenous to the innovation race; while all else changes, they continue to draw the system towards a cooperative equilibrium. They come in two forms: one is an intrinsic interest in others’ payoffs, and one is an extrinsic dependence on others’ payoffs. However, commitments are impotent, and indeed are destroyed, if there are no rules or institutions that can control defectors—or if committed actors fail to invest sufficiently in adapting rules so that they keep up in the race against defectors. In short, social order depends on (A) commitments (i.e. motives to run the race that are innovation-proof) that (B) are channelled into the adaptation of rules, to run the race against defectors. Accordingly, the outcomes of innovation races are predictable under two circumstances: when (A) there is no source of commitment to group payoffs, or (B) when committed actors perversely disinvest from running the race, so play the “sleeping Hare” of Aesop’s fable. In either case, loss of the race and collapse of cooperation is guaranteed. On the first question raised by Smith, I present an impossibility theorem for any society built from rules—from institutions, incentives, and so on—alone. Both liberal and authoritarian orders rest on commitment. Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments is supported: the “very existence” of liberal orders rests on other-regarding preferences (which, I show, is a product of trust). It is the only innovation-proof force available to them. Authoritarian orders can be explained via the ruler’s extrinsic commitments alone, though other-regarding preferences sometimes play an important role. On the second question, every regime of economic regulation is within the innovation race and vulnerable to unanticipated counter-innovations. I show that every regulatory regime can be described as a particular “division of regulatory labour” between institutional actors and market actors. Institutional actors and market actors are essential complements, with distinct comparative advantages. A 5 principal task for the institutional regulator is to structurally simplify complex markets; otherwise, those defectors that have advantages in the innovation race (of which there are many) will predictably exploit both regulator and market actor. Central planners and Hayekian liberals (and libertarians) endorse extreme divisions of labour between regulator and market actor. They are mirror images and fail in predictable ways. Central planners refuse to use market actors, so allocate hyper-complex (and impossible) regulatory tasks to the state. This produces broad inefficiencies and blocks productive innovation. Hayekian liberals refuse to adapt institutions, so allocate hyper-complex (and impossible) tasks to market actors. This produces crises specifically in complex markets—finance, healthcare, insurance, education, and so on—and soaring rents. Its end point is anarchy. Hayekian liberals suppose advance knowledge of the consequences of basic market institutions. But the unforeseeability of innovation, and distributed nature of knowledge, are double-edged swords: markets produce both productive and extractive innovations that the theorist cannot foresee. To block institutional adaptation is to play the sleeping Hare, and guarantees loss of the innovation race. On the third question, central planning and Hayek’s classical liberalism ultimately lead to authoritarianism. In the case of central planning, Hayek’s argument is supported: to attempt the impossible tasks allocated to it, the state must concentrate power, and voters cannot win the political innovation race to control such a state. In the case of Hayekian liberalism, the state cannot run the market innovation race. Market anarchy and crisis erode the commitments on which liberal orders depend, fuelling distrust and parochiality. As Smith observes, “faction” and “fanaticism” are the greatest threats to the liberal order. To use Hayek’s terms, central planning and his own classical liberalism are “fatal conceits”: they suppose access to distributed and future knowledge that no one possesses. They are both “roads to serfdom”: one via excessive control, the other via anarchy. I describe the “middle of the road”, where commitments are channelled into the adaptive, mixed economic strategy advocated by Keynes. As after the Great Depression, this in turn can create economic outcomes that sustain other-regarding commitments. There, the liberal order can make its home