Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: We conduct a multi-level analysis of employed workers with the late 1990’s wave of World Values surveys in 39 less developed countries (LDCs). Controlling for sex, age, education and a class schema at the individual-level, we analyze country-level indicators of institutions, industrialization and globalization. We show that class has a significant influence on union membership across LDCs. Moreover, we demonstrate that several country-level variables affect the level of unionization, though many of the likely sources are not significant. Being an ex-communist country has a very significant, large positive effect. Signing a new IMF agreement in the survey year has a significant negative effect. Inflation has a significant positive effect and debt service has a significant negative effect. Decomposing the sample between those with and without a communist legacy, we find that class is influential in both contexts. Signing an IMF agreement is only significant in ex-communist countries, while inflation and debt service are only influent in countries without a communist legacy. Our study suggests that class remains a tremendously powerful mobilizing force across LDCs, while macro-level conditions contribute to unionization as well.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This study proposes that estimates of third person effects (TPE) are not solely dependent on ego-defensive mechanisms. Rather, people use intuitive notions of media dependency when they estimate the influence of media on different groups of others. Using data from a survey of two samples regarding perceptions of influence of media coverage of development towns in Israel, it is demonstrated that the distance of a group from development towns (rather than distance form the self) predicts the magnitude of the expected effects on that group.

Publication Type: Session Presentation
Abstract: Situated between a polemic and a cry for help, this session will address a sense of crisis from the perspective of a mid-sized state university (University of Wisconsin Oshkosh) and call attention to important issues we feel that our profession, particularly the pedagogy industry, is not properly addressing.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: A common response to the failure of human rights to adequately protect against genocide and ethnic cleansing is the adoption of a minimalist approach. Minimalist approaches (as advocated by thinkers such as Michael Ignatieff) start with the idea that if we can identify the most fundamental rights, the rights upon which all others depend, then we should advocate interventions only in cases where this smaller group of rights is violated on a large scale. This would be more likely to gain wide support because contributing states would then be less likely to worry that there would be increasing demands put on their militaries and potential offenders would be less likely to worry that their sovereignty will be violated on a regular basis.

This paper will argue that the minimalist position is fundamentally flawed. It is an understandable, yet ultimately self-defeating move on the part of human rights advocates that shifts the battle to affirm human rights to the precise spot on which it is bound to fail. It will argue that human rights converge with emergency politics when the former are conceived according to a minimalist conception. This is because intervention is only recommended in extreme situations, when principled action is most likely to be overrun by pragmatic concerns. The result is that we affirm our most basic principles, those that are least conducive to compromise, in precisely those situations when they are most likely to be disregarded.

Publication Type: PAPER
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Narcissism, reflected in the “culture of me”, is on the rise in the United States. Ironically, there is also a growing interest in Buddhism and positive psychology that inherently embrace a “culture of we”. These themes are explored through presentation, discussion and meditation.