Impact of Social Capital on Employment and Marriage among Low Income Single Mothers

The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA, P. L. 104-93) called primarily on women to achieve two goals: work and/or marriage. For low income single mothers with limited access to capital, the PRWORA presents a quagmire in that the public safety nets previously guaranteed by the policies of the New Deal were abruptly supplanted by policies with obligations that require various forms of capital. Using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing dataset, we examine the impact of social capital on the chances of marriage and employment among single, unemployed mothers. We find that social capital increases a woman\u27s chances of both marriage and stable employment, but the social capital must be expansive in order to challenge significant social disadvantage. We conclude with a discussion of the importance of social capital as a precursor to upward social mobility for low income mothers as opposed to simply getting \u27off of welfare.\u2

A Vision Among Challenges: Lessons About Online Teaching From The First Online Master’s Degree in Digital Sociology

According to data from an American Sociological Association survey, just half of all degree-granting sociology departments in the academic year 2012-2013 offered at least one “distance learning course in sociology” (Spalter-Roth, Van Vooren & Kisielewski, 2013). Two years after this report was released, Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Sociology (VCU SOCY) launched the first online master’s of science degree in digital sociology in a climate where distance learning could not yet be considered hegemonic in U.S. sociology programs. In launching the program, VCU SOCY attended to several documented trends in online learning at sociology departments. First, the degree program exists in the same “market model” (Brint, Proctor, Murphy, Hanneman, 2012) mentioned in the ASA report. This a macro context that is shaping all manner of educational expansion and stratification. This market model attaches various forms of status (Tuchman, 2009) and economic resources to creating revenue-generating degree programs. Second, the degree program is part of a trend in model diversification that aims to serve the new “traditional” college student, i.e. not a straight-from-high-school undergraduate student. By 2014, the majority of all college students were what we would have once called “non-traditional”, making schedule flexibility the new norm for colleges that want to grow enrollment, prestige or market share. Third, this new master’s of science program was responding to growing disciplinary interest in digitally-mediated societies and social processes. In this paper we explore how these three trends impacted the design and implementation of online teaching in an online graduate sociology program. We find that market models incentivize departments and faculty to develop online courses but resource uptake is uneven. We also find uneven success with online educational materials and tools when the focus is on graduate students as opposed to undergraduate students. And, we find that new online teaching models might be best suited for bleeding edge disciplinary innovations because the union of new models of teaching and new models of thinking have natural synergies

The impact of parenthood on environmental attitudes and behaviour: a longitudinal investigation of the legacy hypothesis

Willingness to engage in sustainable actions may be limited by the psychological distance of climate change. In this study, we test the legacy hypothesis, which holds that having children leads parents to consider the legacy left to offspring in respect of environmental quality. Using the Understanding Society dataset, a longitudinal survey representative of the UK population (n = 18,176), we assess how having children may change people’s individual environmental attitudes and behaviour. Results indicate that having a new child is associated with a small decrease in the frequency of a few environmental behaviours. Only parents with already high environmental concern show a small increase in the desire to act more sustainably after the birth of their first child. Overall, the results do not provide evidence in support of the legacy hypothesis in terms of individual-level environmental attitudes and behaviours. We argue that the transition to parenthood is a time where concern is prioritised on the immediate wellbeing of the child and not on the future environmental threats

Doing the plastic fantastic: ‘artificial’ adventure and older adult climbers

The aim of this article is to determine the perceptions and experiences of climbing at artificial climbing walls (ACWs) as undertaken by a cohort of ‘young-old’ people (approximately 65–75 years). The engagement of older people in outdoor activities and adventure is an evolving topic; however, as part of this development, little has been written on the use of ACWs. Methodologically, the research employed in-depth semi-structured focus groups and interviews with a purposive convenience sample of six recreational climbers, subsequently expanded to ten through snowball technique. Both sexes were equally represented. Manual thematic analysis identified two key motifs: ACWs and the notion of adventure, and ACWs and the potential for learning. The findings point at what constitutes ‘real’ adventure for this group of older adults; the shifting nature of ‘old age’; the significance of self-awareness; and the role of reflexivity and physical activity in the construction of a ‘successful’ old age

Lex Maritima in a changing world: development and prospect of rules governing carriage of goods by sea

This chapter examines the attempts to unifying law governing carriage of goods by sea and the background to these attempts over the past hundred years or so. It finds that a repetition of the current mode of negotiating static conventions will not unify these rules. Moreover, from historic and legal perspectives, the attempts to unify the international carriage of goods by sea regimes in the past century have remained transitional. The active players have shifted from private entrepreneurs to government delegates. This research probes into the new trade practice for the shipping industry in the twenty-first century and argues that new ‘landscape’ calls for innovative modifications of the conventional approach to unifying carriage of goods by sea rules. This research also forecasts the prospects of the Rotterdam Rules and discusses several countries’ current attitudes, including the UK, the Netherlands, Scandinavian countries and, particularly, the USA

Design of a central station for electric lighting

TypescriptThesis (B.M.E.)--Purdue University, 1895B.M.E