The article titled “Good Guys with Guns: Hegemonic Masculinity and Concealed Handguns” written by Angela Stroud is found in the Gender and Society journal. Stroud (2012) argues that relatively privileged men are most likely to have a license to carry a concealed handgun in public. Stroud (2012) found that men claim they are motivated to carry a concealed handgun by a desire to protect their family, compensate for lost strength as they age, and defend themselves against people and places they perceive as dangerous. These findings suggest that carrying a concealed firearm allows men to identify with masculinity through fantasies of violence and self-defense. The topic of the research is masculinity and its relationship to the reasons men carry concealed handguns. The proposed research questions are, “Why do predominantly males carry concealed handguns? “What do men in Texas state as reasons for carrying a concealed handgun?” and “How does a concealed carry weapon contribute to cultural constructions of masculinity?” The type of data needed to answer this research question are reports of acts, behaviors, events and deeply held opinions and attitudes. The data collection method for this research is in-depth interviews. Stroud (2012) conducted 20 in-depth interviews with men in Texas who currently have a concealed handgun license to understand the relationship between firearms, violence, and masculinity. To develop a sample, Stroud (2012) first contacted concealed handgun licensing instructors. Stroud (2012) utilized snowball sampling because those initial contacts referred her to others. Qualitative data analysis is implemented to discover common trends between the interviewees. Stroud (2012) uses the theory of hegemonic masculinity to guide her research and interview questions. I believe this research is successful because she identifies three common trends between the interviewees and ties it to the wider cultural gender expectation of exerting one’s manhood. However, I wish Stroud (2012) interviewed more than 20 people to ensure that all viewpoints are captured. An interesting aspect of this research is the choice to include an analysis of the NRA (National Rifle Association) to examine the ways in which the magazine relays stories of the avoidance of violent crime through a heroic private gun owner.

Stroud, A. (2012). Good Guys with Guns: Hegemonic Masculinity and Concealed  Handguns. Gender & Society, 26(2), 216-238.

By:

GREGORY DUNAWAY, FRANCIS T. CULLEN, VELMER S. BURTON JR., T. DAVID EVANS

In their article they realize that many empirical research questions conclude that crime is highest in the lower class.  They emphasize that empirical literature is “plagued” by limited measures of social class or of crime and that they fail to study the systematic effects of social class on crime in the general adult population. Their work was crafted in an attempt to correct much of the inadequacies of class-crime research. They collected reports of acts, behaviors, and events from a general population of adults that reside in a large Midwestern city and analyzed the data to assess the effects of a wide range of class measures on crime measures.  They sampled 555 adults who demonstrated that regardless of how class or crime was measured, social class always exerted little direct influence on adult criminality in the general population.  What they found was consistent with research findings from “non-self-report” studies that say social class is related to criminal involvement for nonwhites.  I appreciate their research as it is in effort to show that crime rates are not necessarily higher in lower classes but they covered more negatively in media.  Many people research to find out why the lower class is infested with crime instead of how does the middle to upper class avoid getting caught or publicized.

This study from October of 2014 looked at students from different economic standings and school districts within the Los Angeles county. The study uses the Early Care and Education (ECE) landscape in order to find the best possible solutions for kids in early education and early development. By using early education programs like ECE, the people of the study wanted to see if there was am increase in cognitive, physical, language and social development. Using past knowledge, it was determined that kids that participate in these after school education programs were able to gain an additional third of a school year of knowledge. This would range from all subject, including social studies and science. When the study was actually conducted, the people who ran the study saw an increase in the different type of developmental skills with those who had a low economic status and were of color. This group of students saw the biggest increase in learning and thus were able to vastly improve their developmental skills. The study also notes that the increase in developmental skills can see further increases due to their professional development system. This system teaches teachers how to effectively educate younger students, which could help further increase the data. This study further helps me understand the LA county area by looking at different educational improvement opportunities. By using the data given in this study, I can further improve my knowledge about the surrounding area. With the partnership with First 5 LA, the study makes sure not to exclude any districts, so this study is also good for equal representation.

Brownson, Kim Pattillo. “The Early Care and Education Landscape of Los Angeles County”. First Five La: Los Angeles. 2014.

“Engaging Diversity: Sex Education for All in California” an article included in the book The Sex Education Debates begins by discussing the sex education provided at Jefferson High a school located in California before the California Healthy Youth Act was passed; when the decision to provide comprehensive sex education was up to the district and was not mandated. Jefferson High is located in a racially, economically, ethnically, and liberally inclined district. This school was chosen to be studied as it aligned ideologically at the community, district, and state levels.

Sex education at Jefferson was provided during science by a non-profit, private sex education program. This school is similar to the two schools I am studying, the main difference being that the schools I am observing at are required now by the CHYA to provide medically accurate, comprehensive sex education and are not aligned at all levels. Using a private sex education program allowed the educator to increase the presence of discussion and debate in the classroom, as they were less constrained by social expectation than a teacher would be teaching sex ed curriculum. The program taught in both English and Spanish, which is not an option given to the schools I am observing at, although the program educators were not all fully fluent in Spanish and often struggled to provide bilingual curriculum. For students who did not speak English or Spanish, did not often participate in class. The teachers, ill prepared to instruct sex ed curriculum, did not participate in class room sessions.

“The instructors made use of a variety of pedagogical ap-proaches in the classrooms I observed: mini-lectures, small and large group discussions, and individual work; an anonymous question box; distribution of information pamphlets; and quizzes on local reproductive-health and human-sexuality resources. Many of these pedagogical tools were standard-ized across the classes and designed to provide students with opportunities to ask questions, talk with each other, and participate in student-led classroom activities. All four classes jointly attended a teen-mothers’ panel”

The curriculum is accurate and science based and meant to empower the students to seek out additional resources by providing them with options to research. The students are presented with unbiased and factual information, although sex positivity is not presented. Teen sex is viewed not as a bad thing, but as something that has bad outcomes. Students are pushed to accept this belief.  Students were instructed about, “decision making in relationships; the effects of pregnancy on future plans; the “plain facts” about STIs; basic knowledge about a range of contraceptive devices and their ef-fectiveness in preventing pregnancy and /or STIs; information about post-pregnancy options (keeping the baby, adoption, abortion); and general in-formation about sexual identity.Come On In! and Emily made assumptions about what constituted these issues, their importance in teens’ lives, and teens’ common misconceptions about them. The assumptions were shaped by mainstream scientifi c stud-ies and their conceptualizations of the problems and solutions these studies identified.”

There  were marked differences in the educators approach and the lessons taught in the higher education track classes and the lower education tracks which often included English Language Learners.

Kendall, Nancy. The Sex Education Debates. University of Chicago Press, 2012. EBSCOhost.

In the 2013 article, “The Integrative Role of Sport in Multicultural Societies”, the authors examine the role sport plays in bringing people together from different cultural backgrounds and the bonds of friendship that are created. Sports are more than just about winning and losing. Winning is always nice, it does feel good to see hard work payed off with a victory. However, when we step back and look at it from the outside sport is the vehicle that brings people together. In some cases, it can be catalyst for conversation that sparks progressive change.  They create a community of people from different upbringings and “help protect against social exclusion and facilitating inclusion” (192) and in my opinion is the purpose of them. They help give “individuals a sense of belonging” (192) and allows people to feel a part of community that normally wouldn’t have a group of people around them that supports them. Teams in some cases can become one’s family and their teammates become their brothers and sisters. And those who do participate on a team sport “experience greater interaction and may develop socially adaptive attitudes” (197) and become more open minded of other cultural backgrounds. It’s also important to note that one most important studies the authors looked at was looking at whether or not international students at US colleges, participating in sports “was used as a vehicle for adapting to a multicultural environment” (195). And it was found that “sport participation was more important for adapting to a multicultural environment rather than retaining cultural identity” (195) which tells me sports can be a vehicle that allows people to 1) have a better understanding of what’s around them and 2) can help breaks down stereotypes of people from different backgrounds.

Hatzigeorgidis, Antonis; Morela, Eleftheria Morela; Elbe, Anne-Marie; Kouli, Olga; Sanchez, Xavier. October 9, 2013. “The Integrative Role of Sport in Multicultural Societies”. Hogrefe Publishing (Germany). 18(3): 191-202. Accessed March 26, 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/a000155

Gender differences in environmental behaviors in China
Authors: Chenyang Xiao and Dayong Hong
Source: Population and Environment, Vol. 32, No. 1 (September 2010), pp. 88-104 Published by: Springer

Xiao, C., & Hong, D. (2010). Gender differences in environmental behaviors in China. Population and Environment, 32(1), 88-104.

This research example was conducted by Xiao and Hong in 2010, and delves into the topic of gender differences in environmental behaviors in China. The research question they proposed asked what the gender differences were in environmental behaviors in public and private settings in China. There were multiple types of data types needed to answer the proposed research question. The data consisted of reports of acts behavior and events to test environmentally conscious behaviors in and out of household, demographic data such as employment, age, gender, income, presence of kids in a family, residence and education level, and finally deeply held opinions and attitudes to test general environmental attitudes and beliefs in the New Environmental Paradigm scale. The methods used to gather data in this experiment were surveys and questionnaires, followed by in-depth interviews. Xiao and Hong used data from the 2003 Chinese General Social Survey, and then used a topic environmental module of their own to test environmental measures with more specificity. The data was analyzed by path analyses and eventually regression analyses to determine correlations between variables of environmental consciousness. Conclusions from this test revealed that Chinese women exhibit higher participation in environmentally oriented behaviors inside the home, consistent with studies in other settings. Yet, such a gender gap in environmental behaviors is not resultant of gendered difference in environmental concern, since women express lower levels of concern when compared to Chinese men.

I think this study was well done all together, however the only issue I have with the results section is that the sample taken for the survey population only represents half of the total Chinese population. One thing I found quite interesting is the finding that higher levels of knowledge regarding environmental issues did, indeed, translate into pro-environmental behaviors.

This research focuses on the relationship between biomass smoke, coal smoke, and health in China. The purpose of this research is based on several key factors. First, unlike many other countries, there has not been any substantial research in China linking indoor pollution and its threats to health. Secondly, much of China’s rural population is still relying on biomass/coal as the primary method of heating. Thus this research has the well being of China’s non-urban population in mind. Thirdly, with China having some of the most polluted urban areas in the world, this research highlights the overlooked and underestimated health effects from indoor-pollution. Products of incomplete combustion (or PICs) are the chief culprits exacerbating domestic health issues. Specifically they are the extremely small but dangerous particulates that are not destroyed in a fireplace. They are mixed and come in many forms, such as CO2, NO2, and other carcinogenic materials. These are often products of biomass; however, coals have completely different yet equally toxic PICs such as mercury, lead, and arsenic. The article claims to find strong evidence linking these PICs to unhealthy domestic conditions. To collect this data, the research pulled from a World Bank study that analyzed poor regions in China that relied on biomass/coal to heat homes. They collected the data from actual households over a 457-day period. This research was clear with what questions it intended to answer, why this information is important, and how it was collected.

Zhang, Junfeng, and Kirk R. Smith. “Household Air Pollution from Coal and Biomass Fuels in China: Measurements, Health Impacts, and Interventions.” Environmental Health Perspectives 115, no. 6 (2007): 848-55. Accessed March 26, 2017. doi:10.1289/ehp.9479.

Author: Edward Orozco Flores and Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo

Title: Chicano Gang Members in Recovery: The Public Talk of Negotiating Chicano

MasculinitiesThis article is about former gang members. In this journal, there are two recovery programs that gang members could join, Homeboy Industries and Victory Outreach. The authors were looking at these two programs and how they engage Chicano gang masculinity. A lot of the time when these gang members leave the gang live they feel like they’re not masculine. These programs help them realize what it means to be a man. Things like getting a job and providing for ones on family. The research question for this study is “How do ex-gang members deal with the idea of masculinity after they leave the gang?”. The type of data needed for this study was acts, behaviors, or events. This is the type of data we need because this type of data will tell us what these ex-gang members were doing at these programs. The data gathering method that was used was an Ethnography. One of the authors Edward Orozco spent 18 months 245 hours spent on Homeboy Industries and 195 hours in Victory Outreach. He observed the men’s interactions in these spaces. When the author was doing this some of the themes he found were addiction and recovery. He coded for hegemonic masculine constructions. At Victory Outreach, he heard a lot of them say “man of god” and for Homeboy Industries it was “family man. The type of data analysis used for this study is qualitative data. There was a lot of speech in the ethnography. This research was great the authors did a great job of explaining what their goal was and they executed it properly as well.  

The article Emotional Learning Selectively and Retroactively Strengthens Memories for Related Events written by J. E. Dunsmoor, V. P. Murty, L. Davachi, and E. A. Phelps is about research on long-term memory and the way humans are able to connect irrelevant details from the past, to significant moments in the future. Their goal was to provide evidence of a generalized retroactive memory enhancement in humans that is selective to information conceptually related to a future emotional event. To do this, researchers conducted experiments in three different phases. Phase 1 subjects had to classify 60 basic-level animals and tools. In Phase 2, electric shock electrodes were attached with 30 images from one category with another 30 from an unpaired category. In the final phase, the subjects had to classify another 30 images without the electric shock electrodes. Data was gathered right after the experiment, 6 hours after, and 24 hours after. ANOVA’s and t-tests were used to find any correlations. Results showed that weak memories from the pre-conditioning session were strengthened when related information acquired emotional relevance. It was also shown that fear-conditioning memory enhancement emerged by hour 6, therefore concluding that it was not dependent on sleep consolidation. Lastly, results showed that data that was gathered later (hours 6 and24) had significantly greater memory for conditioned stimulus during pre-conditioning compared to that of data gathered immediately after.

For this research, the topic was long-term memory with emotional attachments and the research question was to ask if emotional learning selectively and retroactively strengthened memories for related events. To answer this question, the researchers needed acts, behaviors, and events to determine whether or not the different stages had any effect on their ability to recall certain things from their memory. To gather this data, researchers used detached observation, and to analyze it, the conducted ANOVA’s and t-tests to find any significance between emotional related events and weak/strong memories.

Overall, I thought this research was well carried out and interesting to read about. For further research, I think it would be intriguing to see if different types of emotions, such as negative or positive ones, could recall different types of weak memories from the past.

Dunsmoor, Joseph E., Vishnu P. Murty, Lila Davachi, and Elizabeth A. Phelps. “Emotional learning selectively and retroactively strengthens memories for related events.” Nature 520.7547 (2015): 345-48. Web. 26 Mar. 2017.