Jason David Rivera

Hallowed Ground, Place, and Culture: The Cemetery and the Creation of Place

Throughout most recorded history, human societies have used various types of cemeteries for burial purposes; this theme points to humanity’s need to construct a meaning behind death and reflect life into the places where the dead are interred. Whether the bodies of the deceased are placed in the ground, within elaborate tombs, or simply in the presence of ancient or contemporary monuments, their location holds symbolic meaning as well as practical historical meaning for the surrounding living community. This article explores cemetery culture and architecture and their contribution to the social construction of the cemetery landscape. After exploring the historical development of the modern cemetery, the cemeteries of New Orleans, Louisiana, are used as a case study to illustrate how the cemetery, as a place, is influenced by culture and has cultural significance.

Disaster Vulnerability Education: A New Focus on Disaster Education Across the Curriculum

Disaster risk in the global context is becoming more prevalent in political, economic, social, and academic discourses. With increasing media coverage over the past few years, natural disasters have been recognized as events containing a host of social, political, and psychological ramifications, which oftentimes highlight, at the local, regional, and national level, peoples ability to deal with natural disasters. According to the United Nations and other international educational and accredited bodies, there is an increasing need to educate both current and future generations on the significance of disaster risks. Due to significant risks posed to society by the increasing number of environmental disasters, this work is important because it encourages an understanding of the risks posed by disasters and crisis as a part of educational strategies to raise civic awareness by building instruction into lower-level undergraduate education within the general education curriculum at institutions of higher learning.

Disaster relief volunteerism: Evaluating cities’ planning for the usage and management of spontaneous volunteers

This exploratory study sought to observe the perceptions, usage, and planned management of spontaneous volunteers in disaster planning and response within various urban environments. The authors discuss the perceptions of spontaneous volunteerism in America, specifically the challenges of using spontaneous volunteers in disaster response activities. A content analysis of the 50 largest cities in the US Office of Emergency Management Web sites and a survey instrument administered to emergency managers in these 50 cities were used to explore various questions raised throughout the discussion of the literature. The authors found significant discrepancies between what is stated in the disaster plans of cities and what emergency managers claim is covered in their plans. Of the managers surveyed, only a handful mention spontaneous volunteers in their plans at all, and even fewer cities discuss them extensively. In addition, stated perceptions of the value of spontaneous volunteers may impact both how we plan for them and the value they provide.

The BP Oil Spill and the Adherence to Reductionist Principles: Moving Toward a Precautionary Tomorrow

The ability to successfully extract fossil fuels and mitigate the potential for social, economic, ecological and health-related impacts is of great importance. In April of 2010, the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill occurred in the Gulf of Mexico with 11 known fatalities. The disaster left the USA pressed to find a solution to solve the community health and safety issues associated with the offshore petroleum extraction industry in a policy and regulatory environment based on the reductionist perspective. However, in order to begin to address these issues, the regulatory environment must change their perspective to a precautionary one. This paper uses the BP oil spill as an example of what can happen when society continues to hold to reductionist principles, and advocates for a shift in thinking toward the precautionary perspective.

Reliance on Faith-Based Organizations for Tangible Assistance in Times of Disaster: Exploring the Influence of Bonding Social Capital

ABSTRACT Although there is a growing amount of research on the role that faith-based organizations play in disaster recovery, there is currently no research that has investigated the influence that social capital has on individual disaster victims’ proclivity to rely on these organizations for recovery assistance. This current exploratory research sought to observe the relationship between individuals’ bonding social capital, in addition to other individual characteristics, and their perceived reliance on faith-based organizations for tangible disaster aid in future events using a national survey administrated by the Associated Press–NORC for Public Affairs Research in 2013. As a by-product of the analysis performed, it is observed that bonding social capital is related to an individual’s perceived reliance on faith-based organizations, whereas other demographic variables such as race are not.

When attaining the best sample is out of reach: Nonprobability alternatives when engaging in public administration research

ABSTRACT Across all social science disciplines, but in particular public administration, there is a shared concern about the costs of using traditional random samples to generate data, and its impact on researchers’ ability to engage in “quality” research. As a result of these costs, more academics, practitioners, and students are turning to nonprobability sampling methods. However, beyond the notion that these sampling strategies reduce the external validity of findings, individuals engaging in these strategies are doing so in ill-conceived ways due to the lack of attention and examples within mainstream public administration literature that provide researchers with the knowledge on how to best utilize these strategies. As a result, this article seeks to provide public administration practitioners, Master of Public Administration students, and scholars an understanding of and guidance in deciding to utilize three nonprobabilistic methods, convenience sampling, purposive sampling, and sample matching. This article is intended to be used as a supplement to materials and texts already currently being used within methods courses.

Settling in or moving out? Exploring the effect of mobility intentions on public housing exits

Abstract This paper seeks to understand how public housing residents’ mobility intentions affect their actual exits. The results suggest that mobility intentions do have a significant effect on public housing exits. However, the rate of exit among those who intend to move out of public housing was similar to those who did not intend to leave. In addition, tenure had a significant effect on the odds of exiting alluding to issues of duration dependence. However, neighbourhood conditions did not fully explain public housing exits. Our proxy for policy reform had a large effect on the odds of exiting of public housing. This result suggests that changes in housing assistance programmes and urban housing policy could largely account for public housing exits. Overall, the results imply that while public housing residents may have positive and negative mobility intentions, their exits may primarily be due to shifts in housing policy and social welfare programmes versus individual characteristics and neighbourhood conditions.