Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study elicited step-by-step descriptions from 242 respondents about situations in which they were helped by someone else or when they helped someone else. The objective was to develop a model of collaborative cognitive behavior that could be employed in the design of collaborative communication technology like the World Wide Web. The interviews were conducted with a modified TimeLine method (Dervin, 1983; Nilan, 1992) in March, 2004 and the data was content analyzed employing standard content analytic procedures. The final model developed from the data was an eight-step model of the steps perceived and expected by respondents regardless of whether they were describing a helping situation or a being helped situation. The implications of the empirical model for the design of collaborative communication technology is discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: See paper for abstract

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Policy debate over paternalism centers on the implications of empirical data showing individuals’ tendency to make flawed decisions, especially in the financial, health, and safety contexts. Discussion focuses on whether, and how, third parties (e.g., the government) should intervene in individual citizens’ decisions and behavior in order to “protect” individuals from the negative consequences of those flawed decisions. In this paper I introduce and sketch the current paternalism debate in the legal academy, and review empirical research on the debiasing of both cognitive and emotional “biases.” Based on this research, I identify circumstances under which paternalism might be appropriate.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper addresses the questions of why people help others and how expectations for a personal return factor into decisions to help. Attempts to explain helping phenomenon are often construed as some type of altruism where the actor expects no return for her good will or as some type of reciprocal relationship where the actor receives back directly from the other or from someone along a “chain” of generalized exchanges. Using data I collected from a Haitian immigrant community, I analyze how actors’ helping exchange networks are formed through cognitive processes of connecting what may otherwise appear to be unrelated instances of help given and help received. This is best captured in the oft-heard phrase “what goes around comes around.” While other kinds of exchanges are certainly evident in this community, I focus my attention on how people make such cognitive connections between acts of goodwill and benefits received, and thus how people socially construct their own personal helping exchange networks. While this paper provides details unique to immigrants, and to Haitians in particular, I attempt to bring out elements that are generalizable to other populations as well.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: As activist scholars, we have a responsibility to provide our students with concrete skills they can use in their everyday lives. Our students will find themselves needing to navigate the waters of disparate power. They need coping skills to resist in situations where they find themselves with little or no power and with no way out of the situation due to material realities. To teach rhetorical resistance tactics, we need to conceptualize the pedagogy of such resistance tactics. In this article, I centralize four possible rhetorical resistance tactics extant in scholarly literature: appropriation, irony, distraction, and indirection. These concepts are a guide we can use to begin thinking about teaching symbolic resistance tactics. By equipping ourselves with these concepts, we can help our students learn to cope in a complex world.