You Is The Church : Identity and Identification in Church Leadership

Churches provide a structured medium for human spiritual experiences (Ammerman, 2005) and as such are structured around a set of organizationally unique purposes and beliefs. This research project focuses on the leadership teams of a start-up church organization founded in Denver, CO. Guided by Structuration Theory (Giddens, 1984), Communicative Constitution of Organization through the Four Flows (McPhee & Zaug, 2000), and Organizational Identification (Scott, Corman, & Cheney, 1998), the bi-directional relationship between leaders and the organization was qualitatively examined and analyzed. Specifically, membership negotiation is seen through the constructs of formal structure and identity. The negotiation process was evident in the team through the process of communicating and enacting a DNA metaphor. Membership negotiation is found to encompass the negotiation of individual and organizational identity, as well as organizational identification. The church leadership team, as it currently functions, demonstrates the complexity of identity construction and maintenance within a highly participative and belief driven organization. Through this research there are implications for concertive control and organizational identification negating some of the role tensions for organizational leaders. Overall, structure and agency within the Pearl Church organization is the result of communicative negotiation of importance, belonging, and purpose

Comparisons in the cranial form of the Blackfeet Indians: A reassessment of Boas\u27 Native American data

Franz Boas proposed almost one hundred yeas ago that cranial plasticity explained the differences in cranial form between European-born immigrants and their American-born children. Plasticity refers to the idea that the body responds to environmental forces during growth and development. If the environment does affect cranial growth and development, than differences should be seen in populations living under different ecological conditions. In this study anthropometric measurements will be used to test for differences in head and face measurements of members of the Blackfeet Nation using multivariate statistics. The tests are designed to detect differences between the three tribes of the Blackfeet Nation (the Piegan, the Blood, and the Blackfeet). Blackfeet children sent to the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, PA are compared to the children that remained on the reservations. Lastly, this study examines the overall changes in the Blackfeet peoples throughout the nineteenth century as they were forced to change from nomadic hunter-gatherers to sedentary farmers living under Anglo-American policy on restricted lands

The Influence of Athletics on Aggressive Behavior in Division III Collegiate Athletes

The reason for this study is to determine if there is a relationship between playing a sport and overall aggressive behavior. The main question is if athletics influence aggression in division III collegiate athletes. This study could help determine and predict if aggression is an underlying behavior for domestic violence later on in life. It was hypothesized that there will be no significant difference between collegiate athletes and non-athletes. The Buss & Perry Survey was sent through Ohio Northern email to all ONU students. The type of sampling is volunteer sampling because the survey is being sent to all Ohio Northern students and they will voluntarily choose if they wish to complete it or not. After collecting the data, it was determined that there is a difference between the average aggression score of athlete and non-athlete, where the pattern of the difference also depends on the participant\u27s gender. When it comes to gender, the results show that male athletes have a higher aggression score than any other group

Public spaces, social relations and well-being in East London

Nessun Abstrac

Keep Smiling At Trouble (Trouble\u27s a Bubble) / music by Lewis Gesler; words by Al Jolnson and B.G. De Sylva

photo of Al Jolson; Publisher: Harms Incorporated (New York)https://egrove.olemiss.edu/sharris_f/1017/thumbnail.jp

Spaces for smoking in a psychiatric hospital: social capital, resistance to control, and significance for 'therapeutic landscapes'

This paper reports on research framed by theories of therapeutic landscapes and the ways that the social, physical and symbolic dimensions of landscapes relate to wellbeing and healing. We focus especially on the question of how attributes of therapeutic landscapes are constructed in different ways according to the variable perspectives of individuals and groups. Through an ethnographic case study in a psychiatric hospital in the North of England we explore the perceived significance for wellbeing of ‘smoking spaces’ (where tobacco smoking is practiced in ways that may, or may not be officially sanctioned). We interpret our findings in light of literature on how smoking spaces are linked to the socio-geographical power relations that determine how smoking is organised within the hospital and how this is understood by different groups using the hospital building. We draw on qualitative research findings from discussion groups, observations, and interviews with patients, carers and staff. These focused on their views about the building design and setting of the new psychiatric hospital in relation to their wellbeing, and issues relating to smoking spaces emerged as important for many participants. Creating and managing smoking spaces as a public health measure in psychiatric hospitals is shown to be a controversial issue involving conflicting aims for health and wellbeing of patients and staff. Our findings indicate that although from a physical health perspective, smoking is detrimental, the spaces in which patients and staff smoke have social and psychological significance, providing a forum for the creation of social capital and resistance to institutional control. While the findings relate to one case study setting, the paper illustrates issues of wider relevance and contributes to an international literature concerning the tensions between perceived psychological and psychosocial benefits of smoking vs. physical harm that smoking is likely to cause. We consider the implications for hospital design and the model of care

Compassionate containment? Balancing technical safety and therapy in the design of psychiatric wards

This paper contributes to the international literature examining design of inpatient settings for mental health care. Theoretically, it elaborates the connections between conceptual frameworks from different strands of literature relating to therapeutic landscapes, social control and the social construction of risk. It does so through a discussion of the substantive example of research to evaluate the design of a purpose built inpatient psychiatric health care facility, opened in 2010 as part of the National Health Service (NHS) in England. Findings are reported from interviews or discussion groups with staff, patients and their family and friends. This paper demonstrates a strong, and often critical awareness among members of staff and other participants about how responsibilities for risk governance of ‘persons’ are exercised through ‘technical safety’ measures and the implications for therapeutic settings. Our participants often emphasised how responsibility for technical safety was being invested in the physical infrastructure of certain ‘places’ within the hospital where risks are seen to be ‘located’. This illuminates how the spatial dimensions of social constructions of risk are incorporated into understandings about therapeutic landscapes. There were also more subtle implications, partly relating to ‘Panopticist’ theories about how the institution uses technical safety to supervise its own mechanisms, through the observation of staff behaviour as well as patients and visitors. Furthermore, staff seemed to feel that in relying on technical safety measures they were, to a degree, divesting themselves of human responsibility for risks they are required to manage. However, their critical assessment showed their concerns about how this might conflict with a more therapeutic approach and they contemplated ways that they might be able to engage more effectively with patients without the imposition of technical safety measures. These findings advance our thinking about the construction of therapeutic landscapes in theory and in practice

A suite of methods for representing activity space in a healthcare accessibility study

BACKGROUND: "Activity space" has been used to examine how people's habitual movements interact with their environment, and can be used to examine accessibility to healthcare opportunities. Traditionally, the standard deviational ellipse (SDE), a Euclidean measure, has been used to represent activity space. We describe the construction and application of the SDE at one and two standard deviations, and three additional network-based measures of activity space using common tools in GIS: the road network buffer (RNB), the 30-minute standard travel time polygon (STT), and the relative travel time polygon (RTT). We compare the theoretical and methodological assumptions of each measure, and evaluate the measures by examining access to primary care services, using data from western North Carolina. RESULTS: Individual accessibility is defined as the availability of healthcare opportunities within that individual's activity space. Access is influenced by the shape and area of an individual's activity space, the spatial distribution of opportunities, and by the spatial structures that constrain and direct movement through space; the shape and area of the activity space is partly a product of how it is conceptualized and measured. Network-derived measures improve upon the SDE by incorporating the spatial structures (roads) that channel movement. The area of the STT is primarily influenced by the location of a respondent's residence within the road network hierarchy, with residents living near primary roads having the largest activity spaces. The RNB was most descriptive of actual opportunities and can be used to examine bypassing. The area of the RTT had the strongest correlation with a healthcare destination being located inside the activity space. CONCLUSION: The availability of geospatial technologies and data create multiple options for representing and operationalizing the construct of activity space. Each approach has its strengths and limitations, and presents a different view of accessibility. While the choice of method ultimately lies in the research question, interpretation of results must consider the interrelated issues of method, representation, and application. Triangulation aids this interpretation and provides a more complete and nuanced understanding of accessibility