<p> The role of grievances in drawing public concern and activist support is a surprisingly understudied topic in modern social movement literature. This research is the first to parse grievances into core components to understand whether some grievances are more successful than others in evoking mobilizing, affective and cognitive reactions that can ultimately benefit social movements. I find that not all grievances are created equal when it comes to concern, support and interest in activism, and that the content of grievances can be studied in systematic ways to identify the types of grievances likely to be more powerful injustice events. </p><p> This dissertation bridges social psychology and social movements by applying concepts from Affect Control Theory (such as evaluation ratings and deflection) to grievance evaluations. To understand the differential effects of grievances, I break grievances into three basic building blocks&mdash;a Perpetrator (Actor), the act itself (Behavior), and the victim (Object). I then use measures of cultural perceptions of the goodness or badness of behaviors and identities to investigate how people react to different configurations of good or bad perpetrators, behavior and victims in injustice events. I posit that two mechanisms&mdash;concern about the wellbeing of others and desire for consistency in meanings about the world&mdash;drive reactions to the goodness or badness of elements in a grievance. I test hypotheses using an experimental design, specifically a vignette study. </p><p> I find strong support, across outcomes, that bad behavior, particularly when directed toward good victims, constitutes a form of grievance that promotes strong mobilizing, affective and cognitive reactions. I also find that the perpetrator matters for many outcomes, but that the effect of perpetrator is weaker than the effect of behavior and its target, tends to be insignificant for measures specific to behavioral activism, and largely disappears in cases of bad behavior toward good victims. In general, bad perpetrators produce higher levels of concern and emotion than do good perpetrators. The results also show that while concerns about the wellbeing of others dominate grievance evaluations, expectations about how the world should be (and deflection from those expectations) are useful for understanding reactions to perpetrators and to injustice events involving good behavior. </p><p> The conclusions from this dissertation contribute to a number of social movement arenas, including participation, movement outcomes, framing and emotions. Further, it has the real world implications of suggesting how well particular social issues might fare in attracting public concern and activist attention. This provides insights into both the types of movements more likely to be successful as well as the types of social problems less likely to draw public attention, increasing the chances that such problems persist.</p>

<p> This project explores the historic, current and future services for individuals with developmental disabilities in New York State in a series of related studies presented in three chapters. The first chapter examines the history of how modern services for individuals with developmental disabilities were established. The second chapter examines the social, economic and political factors that are driving the first major changes in services for individuals with developmental disabilities since the early 1970's. The first two chapters will demonstrate similar trends that caused major changes in the 1970's and the major changes currently happening in service delivery. The final chapter examines the proposed services that will be offered to individuals in New York State, the implementation of the new services, potential barriers to implementation and both the intended and unintended consequences of the new services.</p>

Within the flourishing area of new economic geography, increased attention is currently being paid to a variety of 'alternative' sources of credit and finance. As one of these forms, British credit unions are currently particularly 'sexy'. One reason for this status relates to increasing interest (both within the academy and outside) in the role(s) credit unions can play in relieving the effects of financial exclusion and poverty throughout Britain. In the context of the growing concerns of 'New Labour' about these issues, credit unions are progressively being posited as one route to a more inclusive society, both in social and economic terms. However, through an analysis that positions credit unions as 'civil', embodied, institutions in the specific context of their development in Kingston upon Hull, this thesis proposes that the achievement of such a goal is not a straightforward issue. This work questions the extent to which British credit unions have historically contributed towards financial inclusion, finding that such evidence remains partial and somewhat underlain by a 'faith' in the merits of the credit union model. As a consequence, it emphasises that in taking the route to a more financially included society through increased usage of credit unions, a number of barriers to their development and growth will have to be surmounted. These barriers are highlighted within this work through an exploration of a prevailing credit union discourse, which draws attention to the linkages between the structural features of the British credit union environment, and the manifestations of these features within localities such as Hull. In so doing, it concludes by outlining a number of challenges and changes facing the British movement that are reflective of a growing awareness of these barriers and their effects. It is argued that these features will broadly affect (and effect) the contribution made by credit unions within a more (financially) inclusive society in the years to come.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, San Francisco, 2009. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-10, Section: A, page: 4058. Adviser: Charlene Harrington.

Scholars often credit China's bureaucracy with successfully manufacturing and tapping individual career inspirations and life chances for governance, giving rise to a robust organization and a resilient authoritarianism. My research challenges this view by examining how such authoritarianism has persisted in China since the third democratization wave starting in the late 1970s, with a case study of the career trajectories and behavioural decisions of bureaucratic elites in China who had achieved accelerated promotion, using deep interviews and multivariate statistics on an original and randomly sampled dataset of the cadre population whose career timeline corresponds to China's early market transition (1977-2006). Empirically, no prior research has focused on achieving accelerated promotion that measures the speed of mobility towards bureaucratic elite status (deputy-ministerial/provincial level) as the dependent variable to be explained: such mobility rate determines one's later chances to top politics. Findings show that cadres achieved accelerated promotions because they made counter-intuitive choices throughout their careers, against the prevailing social norms (social structural priority) of chasing immediate monetary rewards, but these decisions reflected their capacity to cater to their political structural priority reflected in the bureaucratic promotion logic. Thus, these unconventional yet conservative choices during China's market transition decades set statistically significant impact on their ways to a political promotion fast track. Theoretically, Giddens' structuration theory suggests agency action being shaped by structure also reproduces structure in democracies. My research develops his theory in an authoritarian context, by proving that multiple structures started to emerge in China's reform era, compared to the pre-1977 periods, and thus the significance of agency action does not rest soley on one's capacity to reshape structure but also on one's capacity to choose one structure (political career) over another (more profitable private sector career), within which to engineer his/her own mobility path.

<p> Military intervention forces use a variety of techniques to achieve success in counterinsurgency operations. One technique recently put into more widespread practice by military units in Iraq and Afghanistan is key leader engagement. <i>Key leader engagements</i> are meetings that members of intervention forces conduct with influential people within a host-nation population capable of swaying the support of broader constituencies. The intent of these engagements is to establish functional relationships with powerful local leaders to further mission objectives. </p><p> This project is the first attempt to empirically evaluate the impact of key leader engagements as part of counterinsurgency operations. Using data from the Department of Defense's Combined Information Data Network Exchange (CIDNE) database during the military "Surge" of forces in Baghdad, Iraq, the author evaluates the impact of key leader engagements on reducing attacks against elements of the coalition military intervention force in the city. While some of the findings support practitioners' assertions about key leader engagements, others go counter to some of the prevailing assessments of key leader engagement effectiveness. First, the author finds that key leader engagements only impact levels of violence when conducted in conjunction with other intervention force operations. Second, the author found that&mdash;contrary to some practitioners' assessments that more engagements led to more successful counterinsurgency operations&mdash;large numbers key leader engagements were not always associated with a reduction in attacks. It was only those forces that appeared to use key leader engagements discriminately that observed a reduction in attacks. Third, key leader engagements involving promises were associated with an increase in attacks against the intervention force. Finally, contrary to the expectation that more frequent contact with small numbers of key leaders would reduce prejudice and strengthen cooperative relationships, frequent contact with small numbers of key leaders was associated with an increased propensity for attacks. </p><p> Based on these findings, the author recommends that the U.S. military continue its efforts to identify "best practices" for key leader engagements, refine the methods of evaluating the effectiveness of these engagements, mandate the integration of lethal and non-lethal targeting boards, and incorporate a greater analytical capability into the evaluation of persuasive operations in war.</p>

Thesis (M.S.)--Auburn University, 2007. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographic references (ℓ. 90-95)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Sociology, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 12, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-12, Section: A, page: 4860. Adviser: Elizabeth A. Armstrong.

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento CientÃfico e TecnolÃgico / O presente estudo tem como objeto o NÃcleo de Estudos da ViolÃncia (NEV) da Universidade de SÃo Paulo (USP) privilegiando o seu papel na constituiÃÃo de um campo de reflexÃo e atuaÃÃo profissional sobre ViolÃncia Direitos Humanos e SeguranÃa PÃblica. Nesta perspectiva procurei compor um panorama das redes de relaÃÃes e filiaÃÃes teÃricas e polÃticas entre os cientistas sociais que fazem ou fizeram parte do NÃcleo com o objetivo de analisar a histÃria de confrontaÃÃes que moldaram um particular estilo de pensamento e atuaÃÃo de impacto acadÃmico e polÃtico Analisando a trajetÃria do NEV buscarei apreender aspectos fundamentais das tendÃncias e tensÃes que acompanham a constituiÃÃo do campo em foco em particular o modo como se apresentam os dilemas da compatibilizaÃÃo entre um discurso analÃtico e um discurso de intervenÃÃo e entre direitos humanos e seguranÃa pÃblica O objetivo central deste estudo portanto à analisar a construÃÃo polÃtico-intelectual da organizaÃÃo institucional do saber no campo da Sociologia da ViolÃncia e a sua influÃncia no desenvolvimento da temas posicionamentos teÃrico-metodolÃgicos e polÃticos Desse modo esta pesquisa pode ser relevante para a compreensÃo do desenvolvimento da Sociologia no Brasil e das mudanÃas no sistema institucional de pesquisa cientÃfica nas Ãltimas dÃcadas a partir das relaÃÃes criadas entre a ciÃncia o Estado e a sociedade Assim sendo permitirà problematizar a Sociologia da ViolÃncia como fator de produÃÃo no setor da seguranÃa pÃblica e o papel dos cientistas sociais como atores polÃticos / The present study takes as an object the Violence Studies Nucleus (NEV) of the University of Sao Paulo (USP)privileging its role in the constitution of a field of reflection and professional acting on Violence Human Rights and Public Security. In this perspective I tried to compose a view of the networks of relations and theoretical and political affiliations between the social scientists that are or were part of the Nucleus with the aim of analyzing the history of confrontations that molded a particular style of thought and acting, of academic and political impact Analyzing the trajectory of the NEV I will try to apprehend basic aspects of the tendencies and tensions that follow the constitution of the field in focus, in particular the way the dilemmas of matching an analytical speech and a speech of intervention and human rights and public security The central objective of this study therefore is to analyze the intellectual-political construction of the institutional organization of knowledge in the field of the Sociology of Violence and its influence in the development of the subjects and the theoretical â methodological and political positioning In this way this inquiry can be relevant for the understanding of the development of Sociology in Brazil and the changes in the institutional system of scientific inquiry in the last decades from the relations created between science the State and the society Thus it will allow the questioning of the Sociology of Violence as a factor of production in the public security sector and the role of social scientists as political actors

Pourquoi publier un article d'actualité sur son mur Facebook ? Que signifie ce geste par rapport à d'autres formes d'interaction? Et qu'est-ce qu'apporte cette pratique aux multiples prises de la réception des médias? Cette recherche s'intéresse à l'activité de partage d'information en ligne, c'est-à-dire aux interactions numériques qui recourent à une information. Si les artefacts du web semblent généraliser le partage comme expression, force est de constater que les médias ne peuvent observer qu'une faible activité autour de leurs contenus. Le partage d'information n'est que la partie émergée de l'iceberg des sociabilités et des pratiques médiatiques. Un focus est réalisé sur les pratiques juvéniles. Les adolescents rappellent la prédominance du cadre interactionnel sur Facebook et expliquent que le dispositif permet de nombreuses stratégies. Dans ce contexte, les actualités ne trouvent une place qu'à condition d'avoir un sens social. Partager une information revient à dire sa réception du contenu, c'est du moins comme cela que le geste est lu. Enfin, cette recherche utilise les traces Facebook d'un large échantillon d'enquêtés grâce à l'application Algopol. Les médias forment une référence limitée mais stable parmi les liens publiés par les internautes. Les individus partagent de préférence certaines sources de médias, reproduisant en ligne des références a priori acquises hors ligne. Les enquêtés qui citent le même type de contenus ont de plus des similitudes sociodémographiques. Le partage d'information en ligne se développe à partir des pratiques médiatiques dans l'interstice des relations, entre exploration personnelle et réception des informations. / Why do people post news on Facebook? What does a post mean compared to other forms ofexpression? And how does this activity contribute to media appropriation? This research focuses on sharing news, meaning an online interaction which uses information. This activity seems to be the social solution to supporting a person's online exploration. “Who shares what with whom?” is the question asked in this research through multiple approaches, both qualitative and quantitative. The first part is an exploration of online artefacts, counts of what media was shared online, and a few interviews. These diverse points of view show that sharing news enhances public expression of information, but only for some users. Sharing news is a limited part of online media consumption and online interaction. The second part of the research looks in detail at teenagers’ practices on Facebook. For young people on Facebook, all expression has to be social and online artefacts are a way to tell somebody one's position on an issue or on a relationship. News may be there to open interactions. The last part of the research deals with a large dataset of individual Facebook data, available thanks to Algopol Application. Analysis of the diversity of publications shows that the news people share online takes into account their offline media preferences and social activities. Sharing news is an online way of expression based on informations’ reception.