I discuss some of the biographical and historical roots of my lifelong interest in contexts of human behavior and development. These include experiences with youth problems related to broken families and jeopardized environments, as well as abrupt social change due to political turmoil (e.g., socialist system breakdown in Europe) and large-scale migration (e.g., to Germany and Israel). The culmination of many studies in various countries was the Jena Model of Social Change and Human Development. It brought together macro-level system change with individual adaptation of developmental tasks, and effects on well-being and other outcomes. The model placed perceived new demands in the middle (between macro change and developmental tasks), and conceptualized modes of developmental regulation (engagement versus disengagement). The results of such research underscored the relevance of multilayers of contexts for development and provided opportunities for scientific advice regarding public policy. They also informed interventions aimed at minimizing maladaptive development.

I have always been interested in research that was relevant to real life and the real world. I was never interested in phenomena that were confined to behavior in a laboratory. My research ended up connecting not just with other people’s lives, but with my own life. That is, my research influenced my life; and my life influenced my research. The latter was evident in my research on the development of language and communication in children, chimpanzees, and bonobos. The former was evident in my COVID research where I drew upon my longitudinal study of a Maya community to realize during the pandemic – and empirically demonstrate – that parenting, child behavior, adult activities, and values in a rural subsistence ecology are quickly revived in modern human beings when such responses are needed to adapt to survival threat and a contraction of the social world. Those findings, in turn, have reinforced my focus on the dynamic interaction of social change, cultural evolution, and human development.

Chapter Nine explores Rogers’ humor, which was the common denominator in his wide-ranging endeavors as a public figure . It argues that he was the heir of a homespun, cracker-box tradition of comic commentary dating back to Benjamin Franklin and continuing through Artemus Ward, Petroleum V. Nasby, Mr. Dooley, and Mark Twain. Rogers presented a comic persona composed of common sense, a puncturing of pretense and pomposity, and a head-shaking, chuckling exposure of the absurdities of modern values and traditional prejudices alike. He did not tell jokes but offered witty reflections on the conundrums of modern life, appearing as a rustic sage cracking wise at the local general store. Moreover, while Rogers took pains to present his humor as spontaneous, it was actually meticulously prepared. Ultimately, by joking about the tensions, incongruities, and dislocations of a rapidly modernizing society, he helped Americans come to terms with enormous changes affecting their lives. Their rapturous reception made Rogers the leading American humorist of early twentieth-century America.

Dominant representations of youth in postapartheid South Africa have tended to portray a politically apathetic cohort, especially in comparison to prior generations. Yet, how did a cohort that is “disengaged” and “not committed to democracy” end up organizing a powerful national movement that led to a swift policy change? In this chapter, we address this gap by examining the ways in which youth have, and continue to be, active political agents within South African communities. Through examining two noteworthy cases of contemporary youth organizing – Equal Education and the Fallists movements – this chapter demonstrates the ways in which youth continue to exercise collective agency and enact social change. Given that evidence from electoral returns and survey evidence have suggested political disengagement among youth, we argue that understanding shifts in community power that arise from empowerment processes linked to youth organizing holds promise for more productive theorization of young people’s political action and illuminates creative ways of advancing participatory democracy. We conclude by considering the implications for youth movements and scholarship about youth activism.

Action civics is a model for civic education that offers youth opportunities to participate in authentic democratic activities. In this chapter, we trace the origins of action civics and explore the field’s defining features, strengths, and challenges. We frame our analysis through two case descriptions of action civics intermediary organizations: Generation Citizen and Design Your Neighborhood. We discuss action civics education as a psychologically empowering process, and we illustrate tensions that arise as youth develop psychological empowerment. Through these examples, we reveal features of the action civics process model that support community power in the situational, institutional, and systemic domains. We explore empowering characteristics of empowering settings that are present in Design Your Neighborhood and Generation Citizen. These include common belief systems, a relational environment that supports intergenerational partnerships, opportunity role structures, opportunities to develop local leadership, and external linkages to community stakeholders. Our chapter concludes with recommendations for practitioners, researchers, and other stakeholders to consider as the field of action civics expands.

The Cooperative Extension System plays a critical role in the tripartite mission of the land-grant university system – serving as a means of disseminating research findings generated in universities and research centers for the direct benefit of people of the community in which it is embedded. Rooted in agricultural education and initially focused on supporting well-being among residents of rural communities, Extension has evolved to address the needs among the country’s changing demographic. In this chapter, we will provide an overview of demographic changes that have had important implications for Extension programming; describe examples of federal, state, and regional initiatives that address new challenges and meet the needs of a rapidly diversifying audience base; as well as highlight current gaps and areas that need further attention. We end the chapter by proposing future directions in Extension programming to better address the needs of diverse populations.

Pandemics and epidemics have affected human populations throughout recorded history. Larger human communities make it possible for epidemics to occur, and also promote maintaining infections in endemic form. Regardless of the organisms involved and the nature of the illness caused, certain themes are common to all in terms of the impacts and outcomes of the outbreaks in health, social, and political terms, and the measures used in attempts to control these events. In some instances, these measures have exerted some beneficial effects by changing the rate of spread of outbreaks, although not necessarily the numbers affected. it is only recently, with the advent of vaccination, that it has it become possible to effectively reduce the impacts of pandemics. Given the frequency with which people are exposed to novel infections and the speed with which some organisms can mutate, the need for readiness to combat pandemics on a worldwide basis is paramount.

Ressler introduces a sociological theory of transformative symbolic reality to illuminate a specific, but often overlooked, impact of the nonprofit sector that is directly tied to improving the quality of life for individuals and groups within society. Grounded in the sociology of communities and nonprofit theory, transformative symbolic reality states that society reproduces itself or changes through social reality, and that social reality can be purposefully manipulated to challenge the forces of inequity. Specifically, individuals or organizations can create both the physical and metaphysical spaces in which people manifest and manipulate social norms, expectations, and behaviors in an inter-relational way that generates transformative social capital. Through the lens of transformative symbolic reality, the chapter conceptualizes the nonprofit sector as a wellspring of this overlooked public good and argues that it is this transformative aspect of the nonprofit sector that undergirds connections between nonprofit organizations and any long-term social impact.

This chapter critically considers the historic and contemporary entanglements of the nonprofit sector with the state and the market, and the implications of such entanglements on nonprofits, marginalized communities, and the possibility of social change. Interrogating what happens to the structural institutional form of the nonprofit when intertwined with the state and the economy in what some call the nonprofit industrial complex, Rojas assesses the fallout that leads to exacerbated policing and incarceration of women and communities of color, among other deleterious impacts. The work of naming these concerns and critiques is necessary for nonprofits to potentially become avenues for social transformation. The chapter concludes with practical interventions toward building organizations capable of creating more just futures.