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Religious discourse plays an important role in U.S. public debates on environmental policy. In this paper, we examine an aspect of this discourse, focusing on the discursive frame adopted by conservative evangelical elites as they promote religious interpretations of the environment distinct from more proenvironmental factions. Using qualitative document analysis of the Resisting the Green Dragon lectura series, sponsored by the Cornwall Alliance, we identify four key themes to this frame: (1) environmentalism is not science, (2) but a religion, (3) which threatens Christianity, and (4) personal and political freedom. These interrelated themes focus on denying or neutralizing scientific claims of environmental degradation, but also, and perhaps more importantly, counter moral claims advanced by more pro-environmental factions by linking a religious form of laissez-faire environmentalism to ethical considerations salient among evangelicals.

The assertion that material interests underlie ethnic identification is central to instrumentalist approaches to ethnicity. However, recent approaches—circumstantialism and constructivism—refine instrumentalism, addressing posited shortcomings, including an examination of the contexts and conditions in which interests and identities are expressed and constructed. Nevertheless, these later approaches explicitly or implicitly reproduce instrumentalism's basic material premise. Using survey data from the multiethnic country of Mauritius, I examine this premise by exploring the relationship between economic instrumentalism and ethnic identification within and across ethnic groups. I find limited support for an instrumentalist approach to ethnic identification as this approach explains only a modest amount of variance in ethnic identification and is insufficient for explaining the significant differences that emerge in the relationship between economic instrumentalism and ethnic identification across ethnic groups. Consequently, it is argued that current instrumentalist approaches provide a deficient account of ethnic identification and related group processes.

Instrumentalist approaches to ethnicity are criticized for giving undue priority to material motivations when examining ethnic processes. Using data from the multiethnic society of Mauritius, this article examines whether individuals do, in fact, identify more strongly with an ethnic group when they perceive economic advantages to group membership. Mauritius is an island with six ethnic groups & this study focuses upon Hindus & Creoles. The data is drawn from a survey on ethnic identification conducted between March & September, 2000. (N=805 interviewees, 273 self-identified as Hindu & 268 self-identified as Creole.) It is concluded that instrumentalist approaches provide only limited insights into why individuals identify with their ethnic groups. The influence of additional factors, such as social cognition, socialization, & state practices have to be addressed. In addition, greater attention has to be paid to structural & cultural differences between & within ethnic groups. 1 Table, 1 Figure, 80 References. R. Prince

Anthropogenic climate change presents an immediate threat, necessitating a rapid shift in climate change relevant behaviors and public policies. A robust literature has identified a number of individual-level determinants of climate change attitudes and behaviors. In particular, political orientations and self-transcendent values are amongst the most consistent and substantive predictors. But, political orientations and individual values do not operate in isolation of each other, and rather are deeply related constructs. Accordingly, this analysis focuses on identifying the direct and interactive effects of political orientations and human values on climate change attitudes and behaviors. Adopting cross-national data from 16 Western European states (2016 ESS), we find that when in alignment, the effect of human values on climate change concern and policy support is amplified by political orientations. The moderating effect of political orientations is most substantive for self-transcendence (positive) and conservation (negative) values. ; ISSN:0165-0009 ; ISSN:1573-1480

Religious discourse plays an important role in U.S. public debates on environmental policy. In this paper, we examine an aspect of this discourse, focusing on the discursive frame adopted by conservative evangelical elites as they promote religious interpretations of the environment distinct from more proenvironmental factions. Using qualitative document analysis of the Resisting the Green Dragon lectura series, sponsored by the Cornwall Alliance, we identify four key themes to this frame: (1) environmentalism is not science, (2) but a religion, (3) which threatens Christianity, and (4) personal and political freedom. These interrelated themes focus on denying or neutralizing scientific claims of environmental degradation, but also, and perhaps more importantly, counter moral claims advanced by more pro-environmental factions by linking a religious form of laissez-faire environmentalism to ethical considerations salient among evangelicals.

We investigate the relationship between exposure to Hurricanes Katrina and/or Rita and mental health resilience by vulnerability status, with particular focus on the mental health outcomes of single mothers versus the general public. We advance a measurable notion of mental health resilience to disaster events. We also calculate the economic costs of poor mental health days added by natural disaster exposure. Negative binomial analyses show that hurricane exposure increases the expected count of poor mental health days for all persons by 18.7% (95% confidence interval [CI], 7.44–31.14%), and by 71.88% (95% CI, 39.48–211.82%) for single females with children. Monthly time‐series show that single mothers have lower event resilience, experiencing higher added mental stress. Results also show that the count of poor mental health days is sensitive to hurricane intensity, increasing by a factor of 1.06 (95% CI, 1.02–1.10) for every billion (U.S.$) dollars of damage added for all exposed persons, and by a factor of 1.08 (95% CI, 1.03–1.14) for single mothers. We estimate that single mothers, as a group, suffered over $130 million in productivity loss from added postdisaster stress and disability. Results illustrate the measurability of mental health resilience as a two‐dimensional concept of resistance capacity and recovery time. Overall, we show that natural disasters regressively tax disadvantaged population strata.