#BlackLivesMatter, Individual Evolution, and Institutionalized Racism (A Tribute to Sandra Bland) “Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.” -Assata Shakur. While I am certainly not qualified to compose a proper tribute to Sandra Bland, I am qualified as a social psychologist to analyze some elements of #BlackLivesMatter in… Read More
An Aspect of Statistical Methods Employed in The Gendering of Language: A Comparison of Gender Equality in Countries with Gendered, Natural Gender, and Genderless Languages (A first attempt at technical writing. It’s not perfect but it’s not terrible either. With more practice, this will improve as well.) As a metaphor, social psychology is much like the epic novel of a country’s history laid bare from all perspectives including political majority and minorities viewed through the inner workings of their movements… Read More
Unintentional Sexism: The influence of language upon media propaganda, individuals and small groups Abstract While propaganda in the form of unintentional influence and the language of sexism has been independently researched, a review of literature reveals no such studies that link these two topics. In this paper, I link these two subjects to study the hypothesis that the language of sexism, embedded within media, unintentionally influences individuals and… Read More
Reflections On Transformational leadership Chapters 9 and 10, Lykes, Blanche, and Hamber’s Narrating survival and change in Guatemala and South Africa, and Hershbert and Lykes’ Redefining family-Transnational girls narrate experiences of parental migration, detention, and deportation Hacker and Roberts open with what for me is a very prescient idea, the idea of victim-blaming in an organization, and indeed in most Western modern societies, rather than looking for solutions and rising to challenges that can teach one to be stronger. Their John Stewart Mill quote speaks to current events in government that… Read More
Reflections On Johnson, Murungi, and Pugh’s Naming our reality, Fine and Torre’s Re-membering exclusions, Kidd and Kral’s Practicing participatory action research, and Lykes,, Mcdonald, and Box’ The post-deportation human rights project (This is it folks. I may have found the research method of choice to write thesis and dissertation in social psychology and media studies respectively. It’s Participatory Action Research. Everyone teaches and everyone learns, including the study participants. Stay tuned.) Participatory action and the research that it entails give me hope for the future. … Read More
Summary of The Cultural Context of Cognition: What the Implicit Association Test Tells Us About How Culture Works by Hana Shepherd N.B. This summary is a “follow up” on my reaction to the Implicit Associations Test that I wrote of earlier. I wanted to summarize a journal article that presented a different perspective than mine even though I am still in disagreement with the intention and what I feel is a bias in the tests that… Read More
Reflections On Hacker & Roberts’ Transformational leadership Chapters 7 and 8, Participatory Feminism, and Selected Writings on Feminism and Liberation Psychology I know there are” ideal” companies to work for, not because I have worked for them (because I haven’t), but because very few friends have mentioned their work environments and their ideal supervisors and because I have read about them occasionally in the news pages. But now that I have read Hacker and Robert’s analysis… Read More
Reflections on I Need Feminism Because… Becoming A Woman 2: Puberty and Adolescence Growing up, I had enough struggles to keep out of the way, to understand what was going on around me, and to navigate my own way through puberty in junior high and high school. As it was for everyone else, it wasn’t easy for me. I had no conversation with my parents about any of… Read More
Reflections On Development of the Community Healthy Living Index and A Meta-Analytic Review of Obesity Prevention Programs for Children and Adolescents If one conquers obesity and disease, one conquers bad eating and living habits. This is a “comprehensive tool for communities to assess opportunities for active living and healthy eating and to mobilize all sectors of society to conquer obesity and chronic disease.” (Kim: 1). While I agree that obesity is an epidemic that I see… Read More
Reflections On Prillitensky’s Power, Wellness, Oppression, Liberation, Transformational Leadership 1 and 2, and APA Multicultural Guidelines The intersection of power, leadership, and multicultural inclusion into such a flexible dynamic is intriguing, not because it is generally overlooked by those in power who prefer to label multiculturalism as Minority, but because it may be the first time I have seen it considered seriously on such a scale. This puts some power into… Read More
Reflections on Northwest Colorado Community Food Assessment and Guidelines for Conducting a Focus Group With this specific food assessment, I appreciate what all of us will be doing even more. Essentially, this assessment will teach us life-long skills that each of us can take with us, and more immediately, it will serve to improve the lives of the residents of three Georgia counties. That is my intent and my… Read More
Reflections On Bronfenbrenner’s “Toward An Experimental Ecology Of Human Development” Nelson and Prillitensky’s Ecology, Prevention, and Promotion In this article as I interpret it, Bronfenbrenner argues that the sciences that relate to human development in theory, method, and substance, are generally caught and placed in a box to verify stringent ideas of what it means to evolve and develop as a human. Bronfenbrenner is correct in pointing out the limited significance of… Read More
Reflections on the Community Food Security Assessment Toolkit This reflection may be filled with more questions than analysis, though it will certainly include that. However, I see this as an incomplete assessment only. According to the abstract, it contains a toolkit for “assessing various aspects of community food security.” Nowhere do I see steps to improve the food security and access food security… Read More
Reflections on I Need Feminism Because… 1 Beginning this I had thought that it should be, “I am a feminist because…” primarily because feminism has been on my mind for the last several years probably without placing the label on it, and quite possibly due to the roles that my grandmother and my aunt have played in my life. My life is… Read More
Reflections on Van Wormer and Besthorn’s Community and Community Development (Ch 6) “What does wellness, security, and happiness mean to you?” Thus, my first Community Psychology class ended with a question and an introduction to the first reading. My first reaction was, this is Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. On page 198 of the reading, Maslow’s third tier of needs is introduced as community and… Read More
What Is Institutional Ethnography? What is institutional ethnography? At a basic level, institutional ethnography is the study of the social organization of everyday life. What it does not do is objectify the subjects or people into objectifications of the everyday world that one is studying. The social ontology of institutional ethnography, its underlying fundamental, essential principle, is that the… Read More
Propaganda And Goffman’s Face-To-Face Interactions While Erving Goffman expanded the scope and study of sociology to face-to-face interactions between individuals and small group gatherings, little has been said of the application of those ideas to propaganda on a personal level. I will argue that Goffman’s study of frame analysis and impression management apply to propaganda of various types that he… Read More
Inequality Viewed Through The Rromani Experience While general study can encompass a wide subject area, it does not cover every nuance of our population. The subject of inequality touches upon almost everyone in our society and others, barring the standard bearer of privilege, the wealthy white Anglo-Saxon Protestant male, but we can only discuss general aspects of that inequality within a… Read More
The History Of Rromani Inequality: An Abbreviated Literature Review At some point in the future, I may probably teach a class on this subject since it is something I feel very strongly about. For now, this is an assignment for a class, an annotated bibliography for a class I would like to teach. The following will be a bibliography devoted to the inequality and… Read More