Theodore A Powers
Biographic Data
| ID | 3455330 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Theodore A Powers |
| GIVEN NAMES | Theodore A |
| FAMILY NAME | Powers |
| SIGNATURE | POWERS T A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Massachusetts Dartmouth |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8501-0472 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 88 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Vacillating vaccines: Responses to Covid-19 in the United States and South Africa
This article examines the internal pathways of disease transfer within two settler colonies, the United States and South Africa, whilst also considering points of transnational connection in the social, political, epidemiological, religious and cultural responses to the Covid-19 pandemic in these societies. Of particular interest in these case studies are the ways in which alternative responses to the pandemic have unfolded alongside orthodox bio…
Evidence of the Associations between Individual and Partner Autonomy Support and Physiological Stress in the Context of Conversations about Weight among Couples Who are Overweight or Obese during a 6-…
The aim of the study was to examine the impact of supportive communication on acute physiological stress responses during weight-related conversations taking place throughout a couples’ weight loss program. Participants were 47 married or cohabitating couples where each partner had a BMI of 25–40 kg/m2. Couples were randomized as a dyad into a traditional weight loss program or a program that also included training in providing support to one’s p…
People, policy, history: Citizenship and black urban communities in South Africa
State-led efforts to limit the presence of black South Africans in urban areas during the colonial and apartheid eras led to recurrent attempts at self-governance within black urban areas, which produced varying types of non-state socio-political organisation. Based on a historical analysis of policy and politics, I propose that the material needs and citizenship claims of black urban communities have been historically expressed via these non-sta…
On power and policy in post-colonial Africa: An introduction
From accounts of indirect rule to African socialism and structural adjustment programs, the socio-economic effects of policies have loomed large in debates regarding colonisation, post-colonial development, and the historical trajectory of African societies. Engaging with the effects of particular policies has deepened our collective understanding of how historical and institutional continuities continue to reverberate in the present, influencing…
A Remarkable Alliance: Sibling Autonomy Support and Goal Progress in Emerging Adulthood
Objective The present study used a self‐determination theory framework to investigate whether sibling autonomy support enhanced goal progress, need satisfaction, and well‐being during emerging adulthood. Background Prior research has demonstrated that autonomy support from parents was significantly more beneficial for emerging adults than similar support from peers. However, little is known about sibling autonomy support on goal progress, need sa…
Autonomous motivation and support flourishes for individuals higher in collaborative personality factors: Agreeableness, assisted autonomy striving, and secure attachment
INTRODUCTION: Individuals who strive autonomously for their goals, and who perceive autonomy supportive environments are more successful during goal pursuit. What dispositional factors predict autonomy flourishing during goal pursuit? METHODS: = 1,544) completed surveys on motivation, support, and personality. Structural equation models were created using Mplus software to test whether collaborative personality factors were related to growth in a…
Navigating the ups and downs: Peer and family autonomy support during personal goals and crises on identity development
Forming an identity is a critical developmental task that is affected by important people in an individual’s social environment, such as friends and family members. This investigation compared whether autonomy support from different sources (family/peer) given in distinct contexts (personal goals/crises) was associated with identity exploration and commitment in university students over an 8-month academic year. The study used a five-wave prospec…
Echoes of austerity
South Africa's post-apartheid era has been marked by the continuation of racialized socioeconomic inequality, a social situation produced by earlier periods of settlement, colonization, and apartheid. While the ruling African National Congress has pursued a transformative political agenda, it has done so within the confines of neoliberal macroeconomic policy, including a period of fiscal austerity, which has had limited impact on poverty and ineq…
The anthropology of austerity
This introduction posits that austerity is an instantiation of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) and thus must be revisited in two ways, involving its historical and geographical rendering. First, anthropological accounts should think of austerity in the long term, providing encompassing genealogies of the concept rather than seeing it as breach to historical continuity. Second, the discipline should employ the comparative approach to bring t…
Policy as a Looking Glass
Project Teams (Talking about Eating, Activity, and Mutual Support): A randomized controlled trial of a theory-based weight loss program for couples
Clinicaltrials.gov ; NCT02570009
The Anthropology of Policy Emerges
Policy Matters
Pathways, intersections, and hotspots
Since the late apartheid era, the South African HIV/AIDS movement has mobilized infected and affected communities and cultivated alliances to establish and expand a national HIV/AIDS response that is based on human rights. In doing so, HIV/AIDS activists have actively engaged with political dynamics across the institutional domains of the state. Participant observation research with South African HIV/AIDS activists and analyses of the South Afric…
Knowledge practices, waves and verticality: Tracing HIV/Aids activism from late apartheid to the present in South Africa
As the South African HIV/AIDS epidemic enters its fourth decade, universal access to treatment has begun to extend the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS. While the South Africa's ruling party - the African National Congress - has seized on improved health to bolster their political profile, the key agitators in producing this outcome were South African HIV/AIDS activists. Narrative accounts of the extended initiative have focused on the organi…
HIV/Aids Policy, Transnational Donor Capital, and Localized Political Formations in South Africa
The process through which antiretroviral therapy became accessible in the South African public health sector was fraught with political conflict. A key aspect of securing access to treatment was the ability of the South African HIV/AIDS movement to influence the development of HIV/AIDS policy. In the narrative that follows, a series of HIV/AIDS policy consultations are analyzed. These meetings concerned the development of provincial guidelines fo…
Goal Internalization and Persistence as a Function of Autonomous and Directive Forms of Goal Support: Autonomous and Directive Goal Support
Two prospective studies examined the relations of autonomy support and directive support to goal internalization and goal persistence over a year. Study 1 examined the role of support and internalization in semester-long goals set by college students and whether the goals were reset in the following semester. Study 2 examined semester-long goals and long-term developmental goals. Study 1 showed that autonomy support was not only significantly ass…
Consequences of interpersonal spin on couple-relevant goal progress and relationship satisfaction in romantic relationships
Large fluctuations in a person's interpersonal behavior across situations and over time are thought to be associated with poor personal and interpersonal outcomes. This study examined 2 outcomes, relationship satisfaction and goal progress, that could be associated with individual differences in dispersion of interpersonal behavior (interpersonal spin) in romantic relationships. Need satisfaction and perceived autonomy support for goal pursuit fr…
Institutions, power and para-state alliances: A critical reassessment of HIV/Aids politics in South Africa, 1999-2008
From 1999 to 2008, delays in the adoption of a comprehensive treatment and prevention programme shortened the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa. While the slow implementation of antiretroviral therapy has been attributed to a lack of institutional capacity, dissident views on HIV/AIDS and the effects of fiscal austerity, it was also an expression of power. This article analyses how the South African HIV/AIDS movement overcame t…
Institutions and social change: A case study of the South African National Aids Council
Institutions play an important role in the success or failure of social models, as they promote or limit particular political and economic activities. Central to this point is the understanding that institutions and traditions are in a constant state of flux. Taken in this light, state and non-state institutions are continually being ‘re-invented’ to reflect a particular society's changing economic, political and cultural division of power. Imman…
The Human Economy Project: First Steps
The Human Economy Project is interdisciplinary in scope, but relies extensively on anthropological research methods. These methods are an appropriate counter to the methods adopted in mainstream economics, which has been criticised for its isolation from ‘the ordinary business of life’. Four essays in this collection illustrate the use of the ethnographic research method in posing questions about the way in which people in different parts of the …
Institutionalising Dissent: HIV/Aids, the Post-Apartheid State and the Limits of Transnational Governance in South Africa
Contemporary analyses of globalisation and transnational governance have depicted the state as an institution that is decreasing in significance due to the rising influence of external political and economic forces. However, a close examination of AIDS politics in South Africa reveals that the ANC-led government developed institutional arrangements and alliances with non-governmental organisations to limit the effect of transnational political in…
Autonomous Motivation, Controlled Motivation, and Goal Progress
Although the self‐concordance of goals has been repeatedly shown to predict better goal progress, recent research suggests potential problems with aggregating autonomous and controlled motivations to form a summary index of self‐concordance ( Judge, Bono, Erez, & Locke, 2005 ). The purpose of the present investigation was to further examine the relations among autonomous motivation, controlled motivation, and goal progress to determine the relati…
Attaining personal goals: Self-concordance plus implementation intentions equals success
The present article includes separate meta-analyses showing that self-concordance and implementation intentions are significantly positively associated with goal progress. Study 1 confirmed the positive relations of both self-concordance and implementation intentions to weekend goal progress. Study 2 confirmed the positive relation of self-concordance with monthly progress on New Year's resolutions but failed to find a direct benefit for implemen…
The Neighbourhood Youth Inventory: Development and validation
This paper describes the development and validation of an inventory to uncover youths' experiences in their neighbourhoods. The Neighbourhood Youth Inventory (NYI) was developed from conversations with youths in Grades 7, 9 and 11. This paper reports the psychometric analyses of the NYI. Responses from 934 youths (511 urban, 423 rural) to the NYI resulted in a four-factor solution. This solution was stable across responses from youths in Grades 7…
Attaining personal goals: Self-concordance plus implementation intentions equals success
The present article includes separate meta-analyses showing that self-concordance and implementation intentions are significantly positively associated with goal progress. Study 1 confirmed the positive relations of both self-concordance and implementation intentions to weekend goal progress. Study 2 confirmed the positive relation of self-concordance with monthly progress on New Year's resolutions but failed to find a direct benefit for implemen…
The anthropology of austerity
This introduction posits that austerity is an instantiation of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) and thus must be revisited in two ways, involving its historical and geographical rendering. First, anthropological accounts should think of austerity in the long term, providing encompassing genealogies of the concept rather than seeing it as breach to historical continuity. Second, the discipline should employ the comparative approach to bring t…
Interpersonal consequences of overt self-criticism: A comparison with neutral and self-enhancing presentations of self
Construct validation of the dependency and self-criticism scales of the depressive experiences questionnaire
Consequences of interpersonal spin on couple-relevant goal progress and relationship satisfaction in romantic relationships
Large fluctuations in a person's interpersonal behavior across situations and over time are thought to be associated with poor personal and interpersonal outcomes. This study examined 2 outcomes, relationship satisfaction and goal progress, that could be associated with individual differences in dispersion of interpersonal behavior (interpersonal spin) in romantic relationships. Need satisfaction and perceived autonomy support for goal pursuit fr…
Institutions, power and para-state alliances: A critical reassessment of HIV/Aids politics in South Africa, 1999-2008
From 1999 to 2008, delays in the adoption of a comprehensive treatment and prevention programme shortened the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa. While the slow implementation of antiretroviral therapy has been attributed to a lack of institutional capacity, dissident views on HIV/AIDS and the effects of fiscal austerity, it was also an expression of power. This article analyses how the South African HIV/AIDS movement overcame t…
Echoes of austerity
South Africa's post-apartheid era has been marked by the continuation of racialized socioeconomic inequality, a social situation produced by earlier periods of settlement, colonization, and apartheid. While the ruling African National Congress has pursued a transformative political agenda, it has done so within the confines of neoliberal macroeconomic policy, including a period of fiscal austerity, which has had limited impact on poverty and ineq…
Institutions and social change: A case study of the South African National Aids Council
Institutions play an important role in the success or failure of social models, as they promote or limit particular political and economic activities. Central to this point is the understanding that institutions and traditions are in a constant state of flux. Taken in this light, state and non-state institutions are continually being ‘re-invented’ to reflect a particular society's changing economic, political and cultural division of power. Imman…
The Human Economy Project: First Steps
The Human Economy Project is interdisciplinary in scope, but relies extensively on anthropological research methods. These methods are an appropriate counter to the methods adopted in mainstream economics, which has been criticised for its isolation from ‘the ordinary business of life’. Four essays in this collection illustrate the use of the ethnographic research method in posing questions about the way in which people in different parts of the …
Institutionalising Dissent: HIV/Aids, the Post-Apartheid State and the Limits of Transnational Governance in South Africa
Contemporary analyses of globalisation and transnational governance have depicted the state as an institution that is decreasing in significance due to the rising influence of external political and economic forces. However, a close examination of AIDS politics in South Africa reveals that the ANC-led government developed institutional arrangements and alliances with non-governmental organisations to limit the effect of transnational political in…
Vacillating vaccines: Responses to Covid-19 in the United States and South Africa
This article examines the internal pathways of disease transfer within two settler colonies, the United States and South Africa, whilst also considering points of transnational connection in the social, political, epidemiological, religious and cultural responses to the Covid-19 pandemic in these societies. Of particular interest in these case studies are the ways in which alternative responses to the pandemic have unfolded alongside orthodox bio…
Knowledge practices, waves and verticality: Tracing HIV/Aids activism from late apartheid to the present in South Africa
As the South African HIV/AIDS epidemic enters its fourth decade, universal access to treatment has begun to extend the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS. While the South Africa's ruling party - the African National Congress - has seized on improved health to bolster their political profile, the key agitators in producing this outcome were South African HIV/AIDS activists. Narrative accounts of the extended initiative have focused on the organi…
Construct validation of the dependency and self-criticism scales of the depressive experiences questionnaire
Children and affect: Strategies for self-regulation and sex differences in sadness
Thirty-two children, aged 6 to 11, were interviewed concerning their responses to distressing situations. Results indicate that the children possessed expectancies for coping with both sadness and anger. Coping strategies were predominantly behavioral, verbalized, and self-oriented; the most common was to engage in a distracting activity. Strategies employed with parents differed from those used with peers, and girls reported higher proportions o…
Interpersonal consequences of overt self-criticism: A comparison with neutral and self-enhancing presentations of self
A Measure of Overt Self-Criticism: Validation and Correlates
A measure of overt self-criticism was constructed and validated for 38 high and low scorers out of 300 undergraduates, using reports by knowledgeable others
The Neighbourhood Youth Inventory: Development and validation
This paper describes the development and validation of an inventory to uncover youths' experiences in their neighbourhoods. The Neighbourhood Youth Inventory (NYI) was developed from conversations with youths in Grades 7, 9 and 11. This paper reports the psychometric analyses of the NYI. Responses from 934 youths (511 urban, 423 rural) to the NYI resulted in a four-factor solution. This solution was stable across responses from youths in Grades 7…
Attaining personal goals: Self-concordance plus implementation intentions equals success
The present article includes separate meta-analyses showing that self-concordance and implementation intentions are significantly positively associated with goal progress. Study 1 confirmed the positive relations of both self-concordance and implementation intentions to weekend goal progress. Study 2 confirmed the positive relation of self-concordance with monthly progress on New Year's resolutions but failed to find a direct benefit for implemen…
Autonomous Motivation, Controlled Motivation, and Goal Progress
Although the self‐concordance of goals has been repeatedly shown to predict better goal progress, recent research suggests potential problems with aggregating autonomous and controlled motivations to form a summary index of self‐concordance ( Judge, Bono, Erez, & Locke, 2005 ). The purpose of the present investigation was to further examine the relations among autonomous motivation, controlled motivation, and goal progress to determine the relati…
Institutionalising Dissent: HIV/Aids, the Post-Apartheid State and the Limits of Transnational Governance in South Africa
Contemporary analyses of globalisation and transnational governance have depicted the state as an institution that is decreasing in significance due to the rising influence of external political and economic forces. However, a close examination of AIDS politics in South Africa reveals that the ANC-led government developed institutional arrangements and alliances with non-governmental organisations to limit the effect of transnational political in…
Institutions, power and para-state alliances: A critical reassessment of HIV/Aids politics in South Africa, 1999-2008
From 1999 to 2008, delays in the adoption of a comprehensive treatment and prevention programme shortened the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS in South Africa. While the slow implementation of antiretroviral therapy has been attributed to a lack of institutional capacity, dissident views on HIV/AIDS and the effects of fiscal austerity, it was also an expression of power. This article analyses how the South African HIV/AIDS movement overcame t…
Institutions and social change: A case study of the South African National Aids Council
Institutions play an important role in the success or failure of social models, as they promote or limit particular political and economic activities. Central to this point is the understanding that institutions and traditions are in a constant state of flux. Taken in this light, state and non-state institutions are continually being ‘re-invented’ to reflect a particular society's changing economic, political and cultural division of power. Imman…
The Human Economy Project: First Steps
The Human Economy Project is interdisciplinary in scope, but relies extensively on anthropological research methods. These methods are an appropriate counter to the methods adopted in mainstream economics, which has been criticised for its isolation from ‘the ordinary business of life’. Four essays in this collection illustrate the use of the ethnographic research method in posing questions about the way in which people in different parts of the …
Goal Internalization and Persistence as a Function of Autonomous and Directive Forms of Goal Support: Autonomous and Directive Goal Support
Two prospective studies examined the relations of autonomy support and directive support to goal internalization and goal persistence over a year. Study 1 examined the role of support and internalization in semester-long goals set by college students and whether the goals were reset in the following semester. Study 2 examined semester-long goals and long-term developmental goals. Study 1 showed that autonomy support was not only significantly ass…
Consequences of interpersonal spin on couple-relevant goal progress and relationship satisfaction in romantic relationships
Large fluctuations in a person's interpersonal behavior across situations and over time are thought to be associated with poor personal and interpersonal outcomes. This study examined 2 outcomes, relationship satisfaction and goal progress, that could be associated with individual differences in dispersion of interpersonal behavior (interpersonal spin) in romantic relationships. Need satisfaction and perceived autonomy support for goal pursuit fr…
HIV/Aids Policy, Transnational Donor Capital, and Localized Political Formations in South Africa
The process through which antiretroviral therapy became accessible in the South African public health sector was fraught with political conflict. A key aspect of securing access to treatment was the ability of the South African HIV/AIDS movement to influence the development of HIV/AIDS policy. In the narrative that follows, a series of HIV/AIDS policy consultations are analyzed. These meetings concerned the development of provincial guidelines fo…
Project Teams (Talking about Eating, Activity, and Mutual Support): A randomized controlled trial of a theory-based weight loss program for couples
Clinicaltrials.gov ; NCT02570009
The Anthropology of Policy Emerges
Policy Matters
Pathways, intersections, and hotspots
Since the late apartheid era, the South African HIV/AIDS movement has mobilized infected and affected communities and cultivated alliances to establish and expand a national HIV/AIDS response that is based on human rights. In doing so, HIV/AIDS activists have actively engaged with political dynamics across the institutional domains of the state. Participant observation research with South African HIV/AIDS activists and analyses of the South Afric…
Knowledge practices, waves and verticality: Tracing HIV/Aids activism from late apartheid to the present in South Africa
As the South African HIV/AIDS epidemic enters its fourth decade, universal access to treatment has begun to extend the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS. While the South Africa's ruling party - the African National Congress - has seized on improved health to bolster their political profile, the key agitators in producing this outcome were South African HIV/AIDS activists. Narrative accounts of the extended initiative have focused on the organi…
Policy as a Looking Glass
Echoes of austerity
South Africa's post-apartheid era has been marked by the continuation of racialized socioeconomic inequality, a social situation produced by earlier periods of settlement, colonization, and apartheid. While the ruling African National Congress has pursued a transformative political agenda, it has done so within the confines of neoliberal macroeconomic policy, including a period of fiscal austerity, which has had limited impact on poverty and ineq…
The anthropology of austerity
This introduction posits that austerity is an instantiation of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) and thus must be revisited in two ways, involving its historical and geographical rendering. First, anthropological accounts should think of austerity in the long term, providing encompassing genealogies of the concept rather than seeing it as breach to historical continuity. Second, the discipline should employ the comparative approach to bring t…
A Remarkable Alliance: Sibling Autonomy Support and Goal Progress in Emerging Adulthood
Objective The present study used a self‐determination theory framework to investigate whether sibling autonomy support enhanced goal progress, need satisfaction, and well‐being during emerging adulthood. Background Prior research has demonstrated that autonomy support from parents was significantly more beneficial for emerging adults than similar support from peers. However, little is known about sibling autonomy support on goal progress, need sa…
Autonomous motivation and support flourishes for individuals higher in collaborative personality factors: Agreeableness, assisted autonomy striving, and secure attachment
INTRODUCTION: Individuals who strive autonomously for their goals, and who perceive autonomy supportive environments are more successful during goal pursuit. What dispositional factors predict autonomy flourishing during goal pursuit? METHODS: = 1,544) completed surveys on motivation, support, and personality. Structural equation models were created using Mplus software to test whether collaborative personality factors were related to growth in a…
Navigating the ups and downs: Peer and family autonomy support during personal goals and crises on identity development
Forming an identity is a critical developmental task that is affected by important people in an individual’s social environment, such as friends and family members. This investigation compared whether autonomy support from different sources (family/peer) given in distinct contexts (personal goals/crises) was associated with identity exploration and commitment in university students over an 8-month academic year. The study used a five-wave prospec…
Political science (16 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Developmental psychology (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Medicine (10 works) · Politics (9 works) · Autonomy (8 works) · Economic growth (7 works)