Search

Social problems claims use rhetoric and other tools of symbolic communication to persuade audiences that some troubling condition is important and needs to be addressed. This paper considers how common measures of social time are employed as rhetorical elements in social problems claims. It is argued that time units operate as temporal frames that contribute to the structure of claims, articulate core meanings, and facilitate spread into relevant public arenas. A typology of three general ways that social problems claims incorporate temporal frames is offered; these include metered time units, attention maintenance mechanisms, and epochal markers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The genesis and course of a social problem results from the interplay of political and historical forces. This paper formulates a cyclical model of social problem development in which the history of drug abuse as a social problem is a function of the political processes which shape its course. The developmental cycle comprises five stages, with the fifth stage initiating a new cycle through the stages. Political struggles at each stage over the choice of definition and remedy are analyzed to explicate how the outcomes of earlier struggles become historical contingencies for subsequent stages. Institutionalized remedial approaches become entrenched and may not be superseded by subsequent approaches, leading to an accretion of institutional forms. Current drug abuse policy and programs, a patchwork accumulation of conflicting approaches instituted during different historical eras, exemplify this phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a large number of empirical studies showing blacks to have higher levels of self-esteem than whites, no adequate explanation for this difference has been developed. This paper proposes a theory dealing with differences in self-process and, in a related manner, self-esteem between blacks and whites, utilizing the concept of selective credulity (i.e., having relatively more faith in others' opinions of us who are relatively positive). Specifically, it is hypothesized that because blacks (as compared to whites) are more likely to focus on interpersonal relations and less likely to focus on internalized standards of comparison for purposes of self-enhancement, (a) blacks maximize the rewards of their interpersonal relations more so than whites (reflected by differences in selective credulity), and (b) levels of self-esteem between blacks and whites are no different when controlling the differential impact of selective credulity on self-esteem. Utilizing data from 1,560 high school students, evidence is presented which provides some initial support for the proposed theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effect of various "family variables" on the etiology of juvenile delinquency. These self-report data are unique in that they are from reports by parents of their child's behavior, the nature of the child's life at home, and parental perceptions of their relationship with the child. How the family and delinquency literature fit into control theory's conceptualization of the importance of a child's attachment to the family as a determinant of delinquency is evaluated. Variables measuring (1) family structure, (2) poor parental characteristics, (3) household characteristics, and (4) parent-child relationships are examined. The attachment variable was found to be the strongest predictor of delinquency and helps to "interpret" the effects of other variables that are significantly related to delinquency. The variables that predict male delinquency were found to be different from those that predict female delinquency. Characteristics of the parents' marriage play an important role for boys, while misbehavior of girls is more strongly predicted by variables measuring parent-child interaction and parental control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we propose a macro level model for analyzing the creation of deviance rules. We begin by placing the phenomenon within the context of the social factist and social definitionist sociological traditions, identifying the insights and difficulties the social problems literature presents for explaining deviance rule creation. We suggest that the theoretical difficulties can be resolved by placing the process within a sociology of knowledge framework. The consequent dialectical model of deviance designation is based on the assumption that society is composed of a number of general interests in varying degrees of conflict with prevailing definitions of deviance representing outcomes of previous contests. This balance or accommodation becomes vulnerable with the introduction or increase in strain which is a potential resource for interest groups desiring a new definition. The outcome of the ensuing conflict is seen as dependent on the ability of the combatants to employ resources in the battle. We conclude by identifying the advantages the model has for studying the deviance rule creation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large volume of criminological research uses either the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) or the National Crime Surveys (NCS) as a source for data on crime rates. The validity of both these measures, however, has been criticized. In this paper we assess the validity of these two indicators of the crime rate for six different types of crimes by examining their "convergent" and "nomological" validity. We find a moderate to high degree of convergent validity for motor vehicle theft, robbery and burglary. When we compare the UCR and NCS rates in terms of their "nomological" validity, we find that the NCS measure appears to be more valid, if all six crimes are considered as a single group. This finding, however, is based primarily on the crimes of personal larceny and rape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important contributions of recent social problems theory is the insight that social problems are inherently political phenomena. Existing scholarship on this characteristic has not dealt systematically with (1) the degree of overt politicality of social issues, or (2) the dynamic element of this politicality. This paper first reviews recent literature in the "medicalization of deviant behavior," and suggests that this literature illustrates how the political element of social problem phenomena can be suppressed and replaced with a seemingly apolitical and technical perspective. Then it is proposed that interpretive social problems theory might deal more adequately with this pattern by incorporating a continuum ranging from "open" to "closed" social problems and analyzing the dynamics of social problem "enclosure," and that certain sorts of claims—cognitive as opposed to normative—are especially conducive to the depoliticization and enclosure of social problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of organizational action tend to isolate actors, structures, and goals as if they were not concretely interdigitated in organizational conduct. In many cases, actors are omitted as relevant units of analysis; goals are stated as abstracted entities unrelated to complex collective processes of defining, clarifying and evaluating goal-attainment, and often rules are not studied as continuously negotiated through and by interaction. Unless a close analysis of how broadly defined rules emerge as narrowly defined procedures sanctioned as reasonable and proper conduct is undertaken, the assumptive nature of the concept "bureaucracy" is left unexamined, operates invisibly, and thus impedes sociological analysis. This paper, based on fieldwork and interviews in three police organizations, identifies the processes by which an abstract organizational goal is defined, deferred to and becomes actionable. The organizational contexts of the two narcotics enforcement units (from which most of the data presented here are derived) embed the rules said to guide the pursuit of major violators of narcotics laws and systematically make certain aspects of the work either visible or obscure. Thus, some members are exposed to negative sanctioning while others experience positive sanctioning. This suggests that since the context of rules, not the rules themselves, nor the rules about the rules (so characteristic of formal organizations), determine the consequential (i.e., actionable) meanings of acts, situated interactions, accounts and shared understandings should be examined in the sociological analysis of organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a simultaneous examination of three noteworthy causes of migration. The influences of the nuclear family life cycle, orientation toward the extended family, and economic aspirations upon the propensity to migrate were analyzed for husbands and wives with relatives in the same community. Multivariate analysis of variance and stepwise regressions of the survey data were utilized in testing several hypotheses. There was support for the ideas that (1) propensity to migrate declines during successive stages of the nuclear family life cycle, (2) propensity to migrate is inversely related to extended family orientations for husbands and wives with relatives in the same community, and (3) propensity to migrate is directly related to economic aspirations. It is suggested that future theory and research on the causes of migration need to focus on decision making in which the implications of the nuclear family life cycle can be further specified at the personal-psychological level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to bridge the present gap between ideas and the testing of them, rather than offering original explanations of delinquency or suggesting more sophisticated techniques for handling data. The material presented here empirically testing some causal propositions about the etiology of delinquency is a different approach from the traditional correlational study with its cautions about deducing causation. Because of their utility in guiding policy decisions and in constructing and advancing theory, causal models should be attempted even though many weaknesses exist when conventional data are used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to describe the model for a poverty intervention program that purports to work largely inside the system as an organization funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity, yet intends to bring together presently disparate intrasystem and extrasystem components of the community into a single program for social change. This social action approach, conceptualized here as the Overlap model, will be outlined and then for further clarification compared with Saul Alinsky's approach as summarized by Riessman. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]