Expanding the reflexive space: resilient young adults, institutional cultures, and cognitive schemas

For many U.S. young adults, being resilient to stressful events hinges on making meaning of such events and thereby minimizing their negative emotional impact. Yet why are some better able to do this than others? In this study, which uses an innovative outlier sampling strategy and linked survey and interview data, we argue that one important factor is connection to institutional cultures associated with higher education, religion/spirituality, and the military. Such cultures provide material for the development of cognitive schemas that can be adopted and applied to their stressful experiences, which include narratives of social progress, divine providence, and self‐discipline. Using a metaphor adapted from the pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, we argue the resulting schemas have the effect of “expanding the space” of reflexive thought, providing new cognitive material for interpreting stress and supporting resilience. Finally, we argue this framing improves in several ways on the concept of meaning making often used in stress process research.Accepted manuscrip

Overview of the American City

American cities can be looked at in many ways, but one thing everyone should be able to agree on is that they are in big trouble. They are dilapidated, congested, trash-strewn, unsafe, rebellionprone, poverty-stricken, polluted, frightened, demoralized and generally on the run. They give every indication of being beyond hope, and little leadership or new ideas are in evidence suggesting otherwise. Actually all cities throughout the industrial world are in trouble, but U. S. cities seem to be especially bad. In contrast, Toronto and Montreal, which Americans visit in great numbers, have a completely different tone. Not only do they look better, they feel a whole lot better, with an optimism and verve that is noticeably absent from Chicago, Cleveland, New York or Los Angeles. This is a striking paradox, that the richest and most powerful nation in the world is losing its ability to maintain healthy communities, that somehow material growth has created problems that are bigger than the people, not just in the environment but in social and psychological life as well. This article will be an attempt to take a cold look at this situation. The approach will be sociological, with an eye toward social relations and problems of organization. It will be diagnostic, with an emphasis on what is wrong and how it might be righted. This analysis will also be from the heart, for I have lived in American cities all my forty years and my six children will probably be doing the same. These are my cities and their sadness is my sadness. I will begin by discussing some of the broaderpublished or submitted for publicatio

Znaniecki’s Key Insight: The Merger of Pragmatism and Neo-Kantianism

Znaniecki is difficult to classify theoretically, which may be why his ideas and writings have been neglected. He is a central and perhaps the central figure in American sociological theory. This is because he clarified the sense in which the social is symbolic. In addition his pioneering analysis of ethnic prejudice and racism makes him a central figure in the American reform tradition. The key to understanding his theoretical power is in his having fused or merged neo-Kantianism and pragmatism. This paper explains how Znaniecki achieved this highly creative feat and what consequences it led to

PRAGMATISM AND THE DIALOGICAL SELF

ABSTRACT. This paper argues that American pragmatism, usually viewed as an action-based or practical theory of meaning, should also be regarded as a theory of inner speech or the dialogical self. James invented background concepts in the I-me duality of the self and the stream of consciousness. Peirce introduced inner speech itself, showing how this process is central to the human moral and deliberative capacities. Mead showed how we solve everyday problems with inner speech. And Dewey pointed out how we run mental experiments with the inner conversation. Taken jointly these thinkers constructed a complex and far reaching theory of the dialogical self. A second issue I consider is pragmatism’s theory of meaning and how it relates to the dialogical self. I argue that the theory of meaning is best understood as including a socio-cultural component. And further this public theory of meaning should be distinguished from a second kind, the personal or private variety. I conclude by showing the advantages of orienting pragmatism toward both meaning and inner speech. The classical American pragmatists, Peirce, James, Mead and Dewey, are known for their theory of meaning. The idea that the meaning of a statement is in its practical or activist consequences is considered their common denominator. But these thinkers als

Redox-Triggered Infection by Disulfide-Shackled Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Pseudovirions

We previously described a human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) envelope mutant that introduces a disulfide bridge between the gp120 surface proteins and gp41 transmembrane proteins (J. M. Binley, R. W. Sanders, B. Clas, N. Schuelke, A. Master, Y. Guo, F. Kajumo, D. J. Anselma, P. J. Maddon, W. C. Olson, and J. P. Moore, J. Virol. 74:627-643, 2000). Here we produced pseudovirions bearing the mutant envelope and a reporter gene to examine the mutant’s infectious properties. These pseudovirions attach to cells expressing CD4 and coreceptor but infect only when triggered with reducing agent, implying that gp120-gp41 dissociation is necessary for infection. Further studies suggested that virus entry was arrested after CD4 and coreceptor engagement. By measuring the activities of various entry inhibitors against the arrested intermediate, we found that gp120-targeting inhibitors typically act prior to virus attachment, whereas gp41 inhibitors are able to act postattachment. Unexpectedly, a significant fraction of antibodies in HIV-1-positive sera neutralized virus postattachment, suggesting that downstream fusion events and structures figure prominently in the host immune response. Overall, this disulfide-shackled virus is a unique tool with potential utility in vaccine design, drug discovery, and elucidation of the HIV-1 entry process