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The Nias sense of space is a curious one. Lest anyone suspect me of harbouring a complaint about the size of the rooms on the famous campus in Wassenaar, let me insist at once that I am thinking not of NIAS, the delightful research institute, but Nias, the island off Sumatra. There, space to build the splendid houses for which the islanders are justly celebrated is allocated, not according to notions of the proper relationship between authority or status and centrality or 'social distance', but on a system of priorities established by symbolic directions. 'Upriver' — a direction which only sometimes corresponds to the flow of a nearby waterway — is ennobling, whereas 'downstream' is demeaning. Beyond the confines of the village, 'downstream' designates the world of increasing remoteness. Its outer reach is the horizon, the abode of the monstrous and evil. In conjunction with the inveterate hostility the islanders have always exhibited towards intruders, this seems suggestive. The horizon, though contemplated with reverence in some cultures, is not always divine. Distance does not always lend enchantment – or if it does, the ensorcelment may be malign. Different cultures have contrasting attitudes to intrusions from far away and, therefore, different strategies for receiving the sojourner, entertaining the traveller, accommodating the migrant, and absorbing the invader.

Seeking to understand how individual voters can be influenced by their social environment, a microlevel model of the operation of contextual influences on political behavior was developed to specify the effects of both personal contact & individual perception of the partisan nature of the local environment. A test of the model based on interviews with working-, middle-, & mixed-class samples in the US & GB (total N = 1,500+) reveals little support for personal contact as a mechanism of contextual influence but shows that perception of partisan dominance markedly enhances the impact of partisan identification on vote choice. 3 Tables, 1 Figure, 38 References. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractRecognizing the dearth of research on flexible work schedules in nonprofit organizations, the author conducted a statewide survey of Illinois independent nonprofits as well as follow‐up personal interviews with top administrators in select user organizations. Survey results indicate that a substantial proportion of these nonprofit organizations used flexible work arrangements. Four arrangement types in particular—flextime, parttime, compressed work week, and telecommuting—were found to be used more frequently in Illinois nonprofits than other research findings suggest. Although follow‐up interviews revealed that the percentages of employees in the various types of arrangements were low, overall arrangement use improved staff retention and morale and maintained performance. More than half of the administrators interviewed expected the use of all arrangement types to increase in the future.