Larry Lyon

Are Virtual Communities True Communities? Examining the Environments and Elements of Community

Critiques of modern societies often cite the loss of community as a result of weak connections with local places and changing modes of social interactions. We will argue that both the loss of community and attempts to regain community can be understood as a series of debates progressing from one environment to another. Specifically, community was seen as being lost from its original environment, the local place, typically a village or a residential neighborhood. Then came the claim that community could be regained in the environment of shared space, typically voluntary associations or work groups. The most recent candidate for regaining community is the digital environment of cyberspace. Using existing research, we seek to determine if virtual communities are indeed true communities. Can the virtual community provide two of the core elements—common ties and social interaction—without identification with place? We explore each of these environments as we search for community and the qualities necessary to establish community, finding that virtual communities are spatially liberated, socially ramified, topically fused, and psychologically detached, with a limited liability. In this sense, if we understand community to include the close, emotional, holistic ties of Gemeinschaft, then the virtual community is not true community. That does not necessarily imply, however, that Internet relationships are the antithesis of true community relationships. The Internet may either reduce community, reinforce community, or provide a weak replacement.

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND RELIGIOUS ACTIVITIES: EXAMINING THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGIOUS TRADITION AND PARTICIPATION

Typically the relationship between civic engagement and religion has been investigated using only basic measures of religious attendance or denomination. We utilize more detailed indicators of various types of religious participation and a more valid concept of religious traditions to examine the influence on civic engagement, finding that typical measures of religious attendance or denomination camouflage much of religions influence. We show that while several religious traditions are positively related to civic engagement, being an Evangelical Protestant or Black Protestant is negatively related. The results also indicate that religious attendance reduces overall civic engagement, while other types of religious participation increase civic engagement. At the specific levels of civic engagement such as belong, contribute, volunteer, and lead, we find similar variations in religious traditions and types of religious participation. Our findings suggest that scholars often overlooked the importance of religious participation beyond religious attendance and reached conclusions regarding civic engagement that do not accurately describe religions effects. Thus, we contend that attendance and religious tradition, while they may be important and should be included in analysis, should not be the sole, or even primary, focus.

Secularization and National Universities: The Effect of Religious Identity on Academic Reputation.

That most private national American universities began with a firmly rooted religious identity is well known. Today, these pace-setting universities boast sterling academic reputations, but they retain only vestiges of their religious identities. This shift in ideological allegiances at schools such as Harvard University suggests to some that todays religious colleges or universities are on the horns of a dilemma—maintain a distinctive religious identity or move toward a strong academic reputation. The purpose of this study, then, is to empirically assess the dilemma that national universities cannot attain a reputation for academicexcellence if they maintain their religious identity.

The quality of community and the quality of life

Most research relating objective indicators of the quality of environment to subjective indicators of the quality of life has failed to find a relationship between the two. This research, by using community data, establishes an association between the local environment and perceived life quality, and in doing so, provides empirical support for focusing on local as welt as national investigations of life quality.

Making sense of a religious university: Faculty adaptations and opinions at Brigham Young, Baylor, Notre Dame, and Boston College

Faculty surveys at Baylor, Boston College, Brigham Young, and Notre Dame illustrate how faculty adapt to being at a religious university. The surveys show that: 1) most faculty report supporting both religious and academic goals; 2) conflicts between the two goals were typically resolved on the side of academics at Baylor, Notre Dame, and Boston College; 3) an association exists between the organizational structure of a university and the faculty attitudes towards their schools religious traditions; 4) faculty responses varied around three significant variables-denominational overlap with the sponsoring church, receiving a degree from their current university, and the college or school in which they teach; and 5) new, more complex metaphors are needed to describe the current state of higher education.

Faculty attitudes on integrating faith and learning at religious colleges and universities : A research note

Reflecting the broader secularization debates, considerable research and disagreement exists over the degree to which religious higher education is distinct from its secular counterpart. One crucial and controversial way in which religious colleges and universities can differ from the secular academy is to integrate faith and learning by including faith-based perspectives in the core curriculum. Faculty surveys from six religious colleges and universities reveal a separatist camp and an integrationist camp. We use logistic regression to examine faculty positions on integrating faith and learning. Among the most powerful predictors of faculty attitudes are the type of institution (research university or liberal arts college) and the denomination of the faculty member (same as the denomination that sponsors the school or different).

Moral Education at Religious Research Universities: Exploring Faculty Attitudes

Abstract This article presents the results and an analysis of 1,728 survey responses from faculty at four top tier religious research universities regarding their support for moral and civic education. The results demonstrate that a majority of faculty members at these schools supported both the general goals of moral and civic education and specific suggestions for integrating moral and civic education into the curriculum. Nonetheless, three major concerns emerged about its actual implementation into the curriculum.

Social Mobility among Young Black and White Men: A Longitudinal Study of Occupational Prestige and Income

The National Longitudinal Surveys of young males provides the data for the construction of causal models of occupational mobility for both black and white workers. These NLS data allow several methodological variations from previous occupational mobility research, including longitudinal design, less reliance on retrospective techniques, and a more precise time frame. The annual models indicate that beyond years of education, very few variables available to most surveys have a statistically significant effect on variation in occupational prestige and income. Also, these longitudinal surveys show a growing racial gap in occupational rewards. Much of this increase in the black-white reward differences is found to be related to labor market racial discrimination in advancement rather than to different levels of family background and labor market entry. Policy implications are drawn based on the importance of education and the racial discrimination in occupational mobility.

Community Power and Policy Outputs The Routines of Local Politics

The concern with the effects of different types of community power structures has produced two prominent research and conceptualization strategies—the separability and community mobilization models. When both models are evaluated using the same methods and sample, their predictive validity is disappointing. Examination of the relationship of various policy outputs to different types of leadership arrangements suggests a more basic conceptualization, routine versus nonroutine outputs, may be more salient than previous classifications. Because the conceptualization was derived from permanent community sample (PCS) data, it is also evaluated using a different community data set. More empirical support is obtained from the routinization model than from the separability or mobilization models.