Studies of religious and other cultural groups tend to be particularistic or focus on one or more axes of variation. In this article we develop a more comprehensive approach to studying cultural diversity that emulates the study of biological diversity. We compare our cultural ecosystem approach with the axis approach, using the distinction between “tight” and “loose” cultures as an example. We...

The study of human variation is central to both social and biomedical sciences, but social and biomedical scientists diverge in how variation is theorized and operationalized. Race is especially problematic because it is a cultural concept that contains implicit and explicit understandings of how collective bodies differ. In this article, we propose an operationalization of race that addresses ...

AFRICAN DESCENT WOMEN’S CONCEPTUALIZATION OF ETHNIC/RACIAL AND GENDER IDENTITIES by Wendi S. Williams, MA This qualitative study explored racial/ethnic and gender identities of African descent women. Specifically, 13 African descent women were interviewed about influences on their racial/ethnic and gender identities, the process by such identities developed in order to assess the applicability ...

Moving beyond approaches that emphasise the influence of national ideologies and transnational frameworks on the governance of religious diversity in Western Europe, recent scholarship has underlined the importance of analysing the impact of concrete institutional settings such as hospitals, schools and prisons on the public incorporation of religious minorities. Building on this approach, the ...

Most selective universities in the United States, and the entire higher education establishment at One Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C., have asserted that universities must have, and do have, the right to use racial preferences in their admissions policies. The assertion of this right is based on the diversity rationale that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell articulated in his opinio...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE The diversifying US population of children necessitates assessing the diversity of the pediatric academic workforce and its level of cultural competency training. Such data are essential for workforce and educational policies. METHODS An 8-question survey was sent to 131 US pediatric chairs to assess plans for diversity, targeted groups, departmental diversity, divers...

This article extends the findings from the Resources for Enhancing Alzheimer's Caregiver Health (REACH II) program, a multisite randomized clinical trial of a multicomponent psychosocial intervention, to improve the well-being of informal caregivers (CGs) of persons with dementia. We used residual change scores and stepwise hierarchical regression analyses to explore separately in 3 racial ethn...

In the last few years, much attention has been given to racial and ethnic differences in health measures. Not surprisingly, much of the work in this area is being done in the United States. Not only does our unique racial and ethnic diversity offer opportunities for study, but the social and political issues related to this diversity have driven a need to understand the disparities in health re...