Search

The changing demographic landscape of the United States calls for a reassessment of the societal impacts and consequences of so called "natural" and technological disasters. An increasing trend towards greater demographic and socio-economic diversity (in part due to high rates of international immigration), combined with mounting disaster losses, have brought about a more serious focus among scholars on how changing population patterns shape the vulnerability and resiliency of social systems. Recent disasters, such as the Indian Ocean Tsunami (2004) and Hurricane Katrina (2005), point to the differential impacts of disasters on certain communities, particularly those that do not have the necessary resources to cope with and recover from such events. This paper interprets these impacts within the context of economic, cultural, and social capital, as well as broader human ecological forces. The paper also makes important contributions to the social science disaster research literature by examining population growth, composition, and distribution in the context of disaster risk and vulnerability. Population dynamics (e.g., population growth, migration, and urbanization) are perhaps one of the most important factors that have increased our exposure to disasters and have contributed to the devastating impacts of these events, as the case of Hurricane Katrina illustrates. Nevertheless, the scientific literature exploring these issues is quite limited. We argue that if we fail to acknowledge and act on the mounting evidence regarding population composition, migration, inequality, and disaster vulnerability, we will continue to experience disasters with greater regularity and intensity. (Contains 8 figures and 2 notes.)

The 1960s' dreams--of a color-blind society, of Black power, of reparations for oppression--had significant social impact but were unfulfilled. The latest report on Blacks in American society shows economic stagnation and even decline. There is no prospect for the radical economic reforms needed to reduce inequalities of class and race. Contains 25 references. (Author/SV)

Extant research on social movements has highlighted activists' discursive tactics to challenge the state, yet little analytical attention focuses on elite efforts to dominate the discourse arena through the deployment of oppositional frames. This paper analyzes elite oppositional framing surrounding the placement of a highway bypass in the Czech Republic. Our research examines how democratic states deploy oppositional frames and enlist elite countermovement support for their efforts to obstruct challenges. Using a range of data sources, we delineate the mechanisms used by these elite actors to vilify and stigmatize environmental activists, paving the way for more violent forms of public harassment. The concept we initiate, "discursive obstruction", adds the critical dimension of power relations to analyses of both framing processes and discursive opportunity structures. We conclude by discussing the implications of our results for social movement research.

We commend the measured tone and clearly stated arguments in Alba, Kasinitz and Waters' commentary on our article. It is particularly welcome because, in combination with our own conclusions, it lays out before the relevant audiences the substance of the debate in this field. Based on the commentary's opening statement, it would appear that there are many points of agreement and that the remaining differences are mostly a matter of emphasis, a case of the glass being half full or half empty. If this were the case, there would be little justification for our original article or for this reply. On the contrary, our results and those of other researchers cited in the article's conclusion indicate that the attempt to normalize the situation by celebrating the progress achieved by the second generation is an instance of misplaced optimism. Not all kids are doing "all right," and the substantial number at risk of social and economic stagnation or downward mobility looms as a significant social problem. It is true that right-wing commentators may pick on these findings for their own purposes, but this is certainly no reason to obscure the facts. Laying a rosy veil over them is a dangerous strategy.

From 1980 to 2000, child labor rates across the world fell by more than a quarter. Much of the explanation for this decrease resides in development processes broadly associated with the demographic transition. Net of these internal dynamics, however, globalization may also have played a role. Previous studies have examined the effect of trade and investment flows on child labor rates. However, the impact of cultural models spread by world polity institutions has yet to be examined. In this study, I argue that international organizations have confronted child labor practices, diffusing a "labor-to-schooling" model of child development. Analyzing an unbalanced dataset with 428 observations from 116 states across four waves during the 1980-2000 period, I assess the impact of economic and cultural globalization on a state's child labor rate using random effects tobit models. Net of a country's development experience, I find that foreign investment exerts a small, positive effect on child labor, while international organizations exert a larger negative effect. These results are robust to a number of specifications, including first-difference models that restrict attention to longitudinal variation. (Contains 5 tables and 2 notes.)

Arguments about the spread of gender egalitarian values through the population highlight several sources of change. First, structural arguments point to increases in the proportion of women with high education, jobs with good pay, commitment to careers outside the family, and direct interests in gender equality. Second, value shift arguments contend that gender norms change with social and economic development among women and men in diverse positions--traditional and non-traditional alike. Third, diffusion arguments suggest that structural change leads to adoption of new ideas and values supportive of gender equality by non-traditional and innovative groups in society, but that the new ideas later diffuse to other groups through cultural processes. Using the General Social Survey from 1977 to 2006 and comparing the determinants of gender egalitarianism across 86 cohorts born from roughly 1900 through 1985 time frame, multilevel models support the diffusion arguments. (Contains 1 figure, 2 tables and 7 notes.)

In this article I argue that evolutionary theorizing can help sociologists and feminists better understand gender inequality. Evolutionary theory explains why control of the sexuality of young women is a priority across most human societies both past and present. Evolutionary psychology has extended our understanding of male violence against women. Here I add to these theories and present a sexual selection argument to postulate possible evolved predispositions that promote young female deference to adult males in interaction and the converse, lack of male deference to young females. According to this argument, the pattern of greater female deference disappears when the women involved are past menopause. Put together, these ideas form an evolutionary account of gender inequality that complements and extends traditional sociological and feminist theories.

Focusing on post-Soviet Ukraine, this paper examines how social transformations changed family formation, leading to the world's lowest fertility rate. The findings show that before Ukraine gained independence, highly educated women had higher first birth rates after controlling for school enrollment and marriage. After independence, highly educated women began to delay childbearing. In contrast, second birth and marriage rates declined after independence, but the effect of education on these events did not change. Explanations for the changing effects of education on first births include the restructured educational system, shifting opportunity costs, reduction in childcare benefits, and exposure to new ideas and values. This study demonstrates how societal-level change not only alters the composition of individual-level characteristics in a population, but also affects the relationship between factors and behavior. (Contains 3 tables, 3 figures and 6 notes.)

The sociology of religion today faces new and remarkable opportunities to contribute interesting and important knowledge and understanding about the role of religion in social, political, economic and cultural life for scholarly and public audiences. But in order to meet and capitalize successfully upon those opportunities, the field at present needs to shake off some besetting habits of mind, expand its horizons, re-orient its debates, construct a new agenda for priority investigations, and rethink some of its larger theoretical assumptions, frameworks and paradigms. The author's purpose in this article is to help the field move forward toward a greater clarity of vision and purpose, to help solidify a firmer sense of the substantive and theoretical agendas that matter most in the field's endeavor to make its contribution to the larger discipline of sociology and to public understanding. First, he outlines a series of specific substantive and methodological concerns that deserve greater scholarly attention by sociologists in the coming years and sets the stage for the eight separate articles in this special section. Second, he considers a recent theoretical innovation concerning the model of modernity and social change--the hypothesis of "multiple modernities"--that in his view deserves much greater attention and development, particularly when it comes to the study of religion in modernity and post-modernity. Third, he advocates an alternative meta-theoretical basis on which to better pursue the sociology of religion--in fact, actually, all of sociology--in a way that he believes will be more fruitful than the two background approaches that currently govern most scholarship, namely, positivist empiricism and hermeneutical interpretivism. That alternative is the philosophy of (social) science known as critical realism.

One shortcoming in the literature on policy framing has been the absence of analytic models through which to explicate change. This paper advances research in this area in three related ways. First, it links policy frames to the actors who employ them. Second, based upon this linkage it proposes two complementary approaches for examining longitudinal change in policy framing: an actor representation approach and a frame adoption approach. Third, it assesses the relative contribution of each process using demographic decomposition analysis. This analytic framework is illustrated using the case of debates over welfare reform in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. The findings are consistent with expectations from the frame adoption approach, suggesting that ideational diffusion was largely responsible for changing discourse during this period. (Contains 4 tables, 2 figures, and 7 notes.)

This paper examines a cognitive bias whereby respondents in postcommunist Bulgaria systematically decrease their self estimates on material welfare in contrast to the well-established status-enhancement bias. The analysis shows that the main reason for the occurrence of status-devaluation is the experience of relative deprivation in postcommunism, reflected in unfulfilled expectations and the perception of status loss relative to socialism. The bias is reinforced by a process of network closure under conditions of high uncertainty and accelerated social change. More homogeneous personal networks provide reference points, which make high-status actors more likely to see themselves as low-status.

Recent institutional and cultural changes have allowed individuals to gradually (but persistently) follow more complex, less uniform, and less predictable work and family patterns than the patterns often assumed to be the norm in Western settings. However, we identify important gaps in this literature: (i) a persistent focus on high-income countries in Western Europe and North America, (ii) an emphasis on narrowed periods of adulthood, and (iii) a disregard for coresidential histories when analyzing the family domain. In this paper, we aim to address these shortcomings in two ways. First, we identify lifetime employment and coresidential trajectories of individuals living currently in Santiago, Chile, born between 1944 and 1954—a cohort that faced several political, economic, and cultural changes across their lives. Second, we explore how gender and socioeconomic disadvantages are associated with individuals' life trajectories. We conduct a multichannel sequence analysis of a comprehensive life history dataset and find that about a quarter of the sample (27.2%) follows a modal pattern of continuous formal full-time employment and coresidence with a partner and children. The remaining proportion of individuals follow more complex, unstable, and interrupted patterns, which vary in their levels of work attachment, work informality, solo parenthood, and intergenerational households. Our findings question the idea that socially advantaged individuals opt for more complex life courses and instead confirm the association between socially disadvantaged individuals, particularly women and those lower educated, and complex trajectories. Rather than deliberate individualistic choices, life course instability appears as an additional layer of social disadvantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compares the social structuring of birth and death and proposes a more general framework: transitions into and out of life. Discusses changes in these events fostered by modernization, exploring the role of dying and birthing individuals, the family's place, control of information, medical components, collective action, and the uses of ritual. (Author/GC)

This article presents the thesis that social workers are effectively promoting social reorganization. Social workers, of course, like professors and members of other professions, have their limitations from the standpoint of promoting social change and there are conservative influences operative in social work, but these will be presented in another paper. It is the assignment of this paper to present the influence of social workers toward social reorganization. Only a few aspects of the subject, however, can be here presented. The fields of public health, housing, leisure time, and child welfare will necessarily be neglected and the major attention given to social workers in the family welfare and relief field as these have related themselves to the matter of social reorganization. Unfortunately relief is still the principal resource in this country for meeting the needs of the unemployed. Although the majority of social workers are still engaged in such relief work, they recognize it as a symptom of social maladjustment and this paper will indicate that they are generally interested in such social reorganization as will make relief unnecessary.

This paper considers some sociological aspects of aging within contemporary society and is concerned most specifically with the process by which the aging male assumes and maintains appropriate statuses and roles in his social world. This study is based on two assumptions. First, a person, as a member of society, must progress during his life through a series of more or less sequentially compatible and harmonious social statuses. The second assumption which must be stated is that in a rapidly changing society, the role requirements of the status series are not static. This has been an attempt to approach the phenomenon of aging in contemporary society through theories of socialization, decision making, prestige age groups, and social roles. This research paper applies the concept of socialization to later life stages, and the exploration of the significance of self-other role-reversal of socializing agent and object (parent and child) in terms of necessary revisions in the oldster's self-definitions, concepts, and evaluations of his status.

Diffusion studies of the "adoption of innovation" can potentially provide a basis for a quantitative, empirically-based theory of social change. However, before significant advances can be made in this direction, rigorous attention must be directed toward clarifying the meaning of the principal concepts of diffusion studies and toward increasing consistency in the use of standardized terms from one writer to another. Also, theoretical concepts from diffusion research need to be linked to more general sociological theory, insofar as this is available. The present paper suggests possible ways in which these tasks can be undertaken. It makes use of mass communication data on the diffusion of the major media through the American society to illustrate the advantages of the conceptual framework which it proposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the primary functions of sociological research is to provide understanding of the process of culture change. In the past, sociologists have been interested in several aspects of the problem, e.g., the invention process, the effects of innovation, and the description of change over extended periods of history. The factor of compatibility was examined as it operated in the acceptance and rejection of several innovations by families in New Haven, Connecticut. The innovations considered were those which survived a culling of several score of possibilities according to criteria imposed by methodological considerations. The innovations meeting these requirements included two types of medical insurance plans, supermarkets, canasta, and television. This paper reports on the investigation of television. An analysis of television revealed that the cultural equipment required for its use included an average education, a minimum income, and a penchant for passive recreation of the spectator kind. Very briefly, the comparison of the accepting and rejecting groups showed that the culture patterns of the accepters coincided with that behavior required for use of television, while the patterns of rejecters diverged.

Increases in women's labor-force participation and the time families spend at work have reduced the time families have available to care for one another. Recent evidence suggests that responses to these challenges vary for different types of care. While time spent on housework has declined, time devoted to care of children has increased. This paper examines cohort changes in another form of unpaid work, care for ill or disabled friends or family members, and assesses the influence of employment, attitudes, and need for care on age and cohort trends in carework. Using data from the National Longitudinal Surveys, we estimate age and cohort differences in carework among women born between 1922 and 1952. We find a decline in overall levels of carework among more recent birth cohorts of women. However, we do not find cohort changes in the probability that women will provide more intense levels of care, defined as nine or more hours of care per week. The amount of illness and disability among family members partially reduces differences between cohorts, but women's employment and attitudes about work and family do little to clarify changing patterns of care. Overall, our findings suggest that, even after the large-scale social changes of the twentieth century, women will continue to provide carework when necessary. Thus, the real concern for families is not whether ill or disabled members will have care, but rather, whether their careworkers receive the institutional support required to successfully balance paid and unpaid work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the societal impact of economic growth. I argue that, from a certain stage of development on, economic growth leads to the proliferation of consumption as a mode of social and cultural action. As a consequence, traditional forms of social and cultural practice, such as religious service attendance, become incrementally marginalized. I empirically test this hypothesis using data from official statistics and survey data from the ISSP and the ESS. Results first show that expenditures on leisure consumption significantly increase as GDP waxes. Second, I find that engagement in religious practices as well as leisure consumption activities positively affect involvement in informal social relations. Third, the results indicate that engagement in leisure consumption activities is negatively associated with participation of individuals in religious services. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Focusing on post-Soviet Ukraine, this paper examines how social transformations changed family formation, leading to the world's lowest fertility rate. The findings show that before Ukraine gained independence, highly educated women had higher first birth rates after controlling for school enrollment and marriage. After independence, highly educated women began to delay childbearing. In contrast, second birth and marriage rates declined after independence, but the effect of education on these events did not change. Explanations for the changing effects of education on first births include the restructured educational system, shifting opportunity costs, reduction in childcare benefits, and exposure to new ideas and values. This study demonstrates how societal-level change not only alters the composition of individual-level characteristics in a population, but also affects the relationship between factors and behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the reasons behind a historic shift in the language couching the wage demands of two North American labor movements during the last twenty years of the 19th century -- the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor. We trace how the once dominant imagery of "wage slavery" lost its connection to producerist labor ideology and eventually was replaced by the more progmatic symbolism of "wage work." This linguistic shift is of particular scholarly importance because it occurred during a time when producerist labor politics, with its emphasis on a radical reorganization of work and private property, lost significant ground to a more consumerist/economistic version of labor politics. We show that this pivotal rhetorical shift was linked to changes in tire cultural opportunity structure. These were, in turn, shaped through movement sector dynamics and through changes in the empirical referents which add meaning and resonance to social movement claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a theoretical framework to analyze global dimensions of contemporary social movements and attempts to answer the empirical question: why did the social movement for former comfort women emerge in the late 1980s after more than 40 years of silence? The theoretical framework integrates the world polity approach into social movement theory to argue that global political and cultural transformations in recent years have expanded political opportunities at the global level and intensified international flows of mobilizational resources and discursive frames, increasing the potential for social movements on globally legitimated issues such as human rights. The empirical analysis on the rise and development of the comfort women movement shows that these global factors have been crucial in the emergence and success of the movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of recent articles in the journals indicate a growing interest in the sociologist who functions as teacher. True, these are too often of a very general nature, ending in such lofty exhortations as "The goal of the study of sociology... is to give the life of the student new meaning, to help him acquire liberal attitudes, to provide him with a scaffold of meaningful ideas which can illuminate for him the kind of world he is living in and the role he might play." The purpose of this paper is not to raise further theoretical points and approaches. It will report, instead, of a project carried out during the last month of the spring semester, 1948-49, among 110 students in the introductory course, consisting of four sections. Call it an exercise in international sociology or in social change, it may serve as primary material from which the roles of teacher, sociologist, and student may be more fruitfully considered in specific terms. It will open with a statement of the problem, next, a detailed program of the organization and procedures, third, student conclusions, last, some commentary on the effectiveness of the project.

The history of rural society in America can be described as the change from relatively homogeneous, self-sufficient communities to communities with differentiated societies and economic systems dependent upon the urban market. A transitional society is one which has experienced modifications in its folk-sacred structure as a result of direct influence from an urban-secular society, or through sui generis internal differentiation, or both. The society from which the data in this paper has been drawn seems to display what might be called an equilibrium between urban-secular. The society analyzed in this paper is located in a broad bottomland area along the Ohio River and extending along two counties. The general culture of early settlement period will not be discussed in detail. In brief, it conformed to the typical self-sufficient early nineteenth century American rural community, small subsistence farms, closely-knit extended family structure, well-developed patterns of mutual aid, communal gatherings such as picnics, barn-raisings, and the like, personal status differences but only vague socioeconomic class distinctions.

In the two previous sections of this paper the author examined the persistence of primitive social norms in present-day education. This cultural retardation was exposed under four rubrics: daily school procedure, curriculum, choice and social regulation of personnel and finally in the matter of the political organization of public education. In the present mention will be made of the more positive, critical trends in education, which may, in time, become a part of mores and folkways, that is to say, become the social standards of education. The author shall also point out, however, some of the limitations, which one must face in looking to a modernized education kept abreast of social realities. In closing, an effort will be made to state briefly the mechanism of social and individual change in attitude, which will make improvement possible and likely. While this ideal is one which may with good faith be held necessary to a sane democracy, it nevertheless remains true that certain socio-economic conditions, on the one hand, and certain more or less innate qualities of human beings on the other, must be considered before one can fully accept the implied thesis that such a critical attitude, such an objectivity in thinking and acting, will be ever universally possible or probable.

Theories to account for the social behavior of human beings have deluged people ever since sociology received recognition as a subject worthy of study. That this has been comparatively recent, as the history of science goes, perhaps may account for the fact that such a vast amount of sociological literature may perhaps better be placed in the realm of philosophy and metaphysics than in that of science. It is the reaction to this fact, felt surreptitiously by so many working in the field of sociology, that is responsible for the number of papers which have been read and published as to whether sociology may be termed a science, and, if so, just what its place might be. The stimulation to the newer viewpoint, to which those who disagree with the older theories hold, came, in the main, from those students of society who are occupied with societies other than one's own, the anthropologists.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the techniques used to secure the stability of race domination and to assess the probable consequences. If not, will the whites subordinate industrial development in the interests of apartheid or modify apartheid in the interests of economic expansion and thus set in motion unpredictable changes in race relations. Or will the whites persist in the policy of apartheid and economic expansion and in this way perhaps provoke a revolutionary challenge to the whole structure of race domination. Governments generally seek to control social change in such a way as to render their own power more secure. The techniques for control vary with the conditions in the society and the political philosophies of the rulers. Governments, in an attempt to further their own interests, may guide and initiate change, or they may emphasize the sanctity of tradition and resist all forms of social change. Either technique may fail in its objectives and set in motion unanticipated changes in the structure of power.

Abstract This paper compares political activists from four community protest organizations, formed in response to the March 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. Using survey data, newsletters, and fieldwork, we document the existence of two separate paths to protest involvement. In two communities, recruitment was less likely to occur along the lines of established social networks. Instead, utilitarian alliances grounded on shared grievances were constructed. A second distinct path accounted for activism in two larger communities where many of the activists reported previous protest experience. In these communities, existing friendship networks were utilized. Two years after the accident, significant network and ideological differences between the groups persisted. We suggest that analysts work to specify the conditions for different paths to activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a macro-level explanation of the way in which Roman Catholicism, as an organization or social system, has changed during the twentieth century. Rejecting a primary focus on secularization, rationalization, and delegitimation theses, the term, "contested accommodation" is introduced. Catholicism has accommodated to its surrounding milieu, largely by incorporating contemporary structures and principles and by building on the advances of science. But the accommodation has not been complete, automatic, or peaceful Instead, it has been partial and conflict-laden, arising in conflict, progressing through power struggles, and continuing in conflict. "Contested accommodation" implies a set of processes whereby the changes occurred These include evolutions ary updating, religious reconstruction, and power contention. Yet given all these factors, I suggest that such radical change as that undergone by Catholicism will only occur if accident, luck, or the force of key personailities tips the balance in favor of change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Negro class structure and the technicways. One of the promising developments in modern sociology is the conceptualization of analytically distinctive behavior patterns in the "technicways." These have been characterized as socially disruptive patterns which are important in understanding and detailing the process of social change. However, the generalized mechanisms of social change are not yet comprehended by sociological theory and consequently the relation between social change and the technicways remains disturbingly vague and accountably tenuous. It seems expedient, therefore, to select one critical aspect of social change - class structuring in this case - in an attempt to test the validity of this relationship and, if possible, to clarify the processes through which it is manifested. Before presenting the hypotheses which form the bases of this paper and an illustrative application to Negro class structure in the United States, the conceptual elements to be employed in their exposition has been defined. The technicways refer to the behavior patterns, usages, and associated patterns of thought which arise as transitional adjustments to developments in science and technology.

The article focuses on the present status of race relations in the South of the U.S. There is fairly widespread agreement that race relations in the South have deteriorated in character since the beginning of the war. This, of course, is popular agreement based upon the assumption that quiescence and absence of racial tensions are a major, if not exclusive, index to the most wholesome race relations. The thesis of this paper is that the emotional disturbances of the present period, involving racial issues, are symptoms of accelerated social changes, and that these changes are wholesome, even if their temporary racial effects are bad. Other examples of recent racial clashes in the South have followed fairly familiar patterns. Of importance to underlying racial sentiment and tensions, although not directly always responsible for overt conflict, is the widespread experience of white middle-class households with their Afro-American domestic servants.

Within last few decades recreation and play have been accepted as integral parts of social system. Two main factors have been closely associated with this significant social change: the increased amount of leisure as a result of technological advances, and the changing attitude of the church toward play. This paper emphasizes the latter and will include a presentation of the modification of the attitude of the church, as a social institution, toward recreation. Social structure is constantly changing. Social institutions have been in a constant state of flux in their relative control over man. A hundred years ago the family and the church were nearly all-powerful. Today the state and industry have gained in hegemony an potency. The church of the last century stressed the spiritual life. The church of the modern era advocates social as well as spiritual values. Since play and recreation are so much a part of present social behavior, it seems advisable for more research and study to be done in this field. The sociologist is becoming deeply interested because he recognizes that most recreational pursuits are group affairs.

The article discusses social change in U.S. villages. What is happening to the small town in an era of super-highways, high-powered automobiles, trucks, radios, chain stores, and mechanized farming? Obviously no blanket answer can be given that would apply to all sections of the United States, but a study of a limited territory will serve to throw some light upon the problem as a whole. This paper will trace some of the changes that have occurred in population distribution in the Inland Empire of the Pacific Northwest between the period of the first settlements in 1811 and the time of the last Federal Census in 1930, and suggest some of the factors responsible for these changes. The Inland Empire may be defined roughly as the natural intermountain region lying between the Rocky Mountain range on the east and the Cascade Mountains on the west and extending from the British Columbia-United States international boundary to the Blue Mountains in Oregon, an area of approximately 71,000 square miles.

Howard Odum at his death in 1954 was working on the technicways, a concept comparable to Sumner's folkways-addressed to the relation of technology to social change and social consensus. To Odum the essence of technicways is to be sought in terms of the transition required to give scientific techniques the sanctions of a system of norms. Technicways are the folkways of an age of science. The current neglect of this concept may be due to its embodiment in Odum's theory of folk sociology and in its closeness to Ogburn's social change which Odum apparently accepted. It is a paradox that today in a literate age of social change we have no records of the contemporary origin and development of folkways. This is explained when changing standards are related to scientific and engineering techniques. Another paradox demanding explanation is the incorporation of these techniques within the system of norms. Failure to understand the nature of the technicways leads to two popular fallacies: namely, (1) there exists a total breakdown of standards; (2) technology is in control of the social order. It is the contention of this paper that Howard Odum in the development of the concept technicways, has offered here a lead that takes up where Sumner's folkways left the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interviews with 118 randomly selected jazz musicians and four months of participant observation yield evidence strongly suggesting changes in the occupation ideology of jazz musicians. Age controls on the findings suggest that jazz musicians are becoming less hostile toward audiences and the larger society, that in-group norms promoting cohesiveness are weakening, and that jazz musicians are becoming less inclined to interact only with their own kind. These major attitudinal shifts are attributed to an increased positive valuation of jazz music by the general public. Implications drawn from the study include a criticism of a priori assumptions of homogeneity in the study of occupational or deviant groups and some further comments suggesting the value of a focus on occupational ideologies in the study of occupational change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists have not paid much attention to short-run variations in marriage and divorce rates, though they can be revealing of changes in both of these phenomena, as well as of changes in the larger social system. An analysis of these variations reveal an increasing degree of interdependence for both marriage and divorce decisions in the last century. It is suggested that this increased interdependence can be attributed to increased short-term variations in the socioeconomic conditions of the country; to an increasing interdependence of the different parts of the country; to an increasing sensitivity of these decisions to macro-socioeconomic conditions. The analysis revealed that only the last two factors could be retained. They are themselves tentatively interpreted as the result of the process of urbanization and industralization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A content analysis of 445 items from the two intra-caste journals of a minority Hindu caste, the Sadhu, revealed that (1) this group is engaged in a complex and contradictory process of social change; (2) the older sub-group shows a "negative chauvinism" by rejecting the older Sadhu identifications and adopting the new Brahminic names and symbols; (3) the newer sub-group within this caste shows a positive force towards the traditional mode of identification, but is otherwise more achievement-oriented than the older group; (4) under the influence of recent socio-political changes on the national level, this marginal caste is motivated to change its lower status. Despite the consistent status conflicts and other changes over the period of 30 years, the group, in general, still functions as a traditionally endogamous and intra-dining caste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Myrdal's thesis with regard to race relations in American society is examined conceptually to bring out its underlying normative assumptions concerning the nature of social integration and of social change. An alternate interpretation of race relations in American society is offered, based upon assumptions that are more structural and less normative in character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article recognizes group structure and interpersonal creativity as factors which reduce errors in the prediction of marital adjustment. The need to deal systematically with the problem of interpersonal inventiveness or creativity arose in this field as a consequence of the empirical attempts to account for family survival during major social changes such as wars and depressions. From a theoretical point of view it was argued that relational measures of interpersonal abilities which explicitly take into account the structure of the family were better than those which ignored group structure. More broadly, the foregoing analysis suggests that in order to assess the effects of interpersonal abilities in the marriage situation, the measure should reflect the structure of the group. It is only in a special type of structure (additive structure) or in situations where structure is unimportant that the investigator can safely use individual measures or the average of several individual scores to index the interpersonal ability.

This article focuses on role conflict, role redefinition, and social change in a clinical research organization. In the research setting which one has been studying--a research hospital--one of these social-psychological problems looms large--this is the problem of reconciling the competing demands of research and of medical treatment. Conflicts between research and treatment in a clinical research program are not ubiquitous. In fact, quite often procedures used in the course of research--used only with research goals in mind--may have unintended, perhaps even unrecognized therapeutic effects. Such research may have the unintended if not unexpected result of clarifying matters in the ongoing therapeutic relationship; and that clarification can lead directly to improved therapeutic operations with the patient whose interviews are being studied. In this article the author examines what happens when the clinical researcher anticipates or experiences such situations in his relationship with his research patients.

The concepts of social status or social position and social role are among the most widely used ideas in social science. Although the classical definitions of these concepts and the uses to which they have been put imply a theory of social structure, that theory has never been adequately stated in all of its ramifications. Perhaps the most highly developed use of these terms has been in the description of a social structure in terms of a spatial analogy. Certainly the least developed use of them has been in the analysis of structural change and dynamics. In either case certain limitations apply to the concepts under discussion. The concept of social position or social status as usually defined does not allow adequate description and analysis of the internal structure of a position. The present concept of social position is ill suited to the description and analysis of internal changes which take place in a position. The concept of social position depends on an imperfect spatial analogy since it allows a given individual to occupy two positions in the same social space at the same time.

This study examines the macro-level determinants of work values in urban China. Drawing on Inglehart's theory of postmaterialism and the institutional theory in sociology, I argue that economic development and market transition, two of the most prominent themes of China's social change in the post-socialist era, exert opposite effects on work values. On the one hand, rapid economic growth has created unprecedented material affluence and a high level of existential security in some parts of China. According to Inglehart's theory, this should lead individuals to focus less on material rewards and to prioritize postmaterialist goals in the work domain. On the other hand, China's institutional change from socialist redistribution to markets has abolished lifetime employment and replaced it with a precarious labor market. This change, I argue, promotes a materialist orientation among Chinese workers and discourages them from embracing postmaterialist work values. Using data from a 2012 national labor force survey, multilevel regression analysis shows that, all else being equal, workers in China's more developed provinces indeed place less importance on how well work meets their survival needs, whereas workers in more marketized provinces exhibit the opposite tendency. However, neither economic development nor marketization at the province level is a significant predictor of postmaterialist work values. These findings have direct implications for work value research and for understanding social change in post-socialist China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research demonstrates that diaspora movements play a powerful role in contentious politics and social change in their homelands under a range of conditions. However, few have systematically explained the conditions that facilitate diaspora movements' "voice" after "exit" across cases or over time. The article addresses this shortcoming by explaining how and to what extent diaspora movements became auxiliary forces for anti-regime rebellions during the Arab Spring. Using data that include 239 original interviews on Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni mobilization from the US and Great Britain, the analysis finds that only some diaspora groups played a sustained, full-spectrum role in their home-country's rebellion by broadcasting their allies' claims, remitting resources homeward, representing the rebellion to external audiences, brokering between parties, and volunteering on the front lines. The article then demonstrates how differences in (1) the rebellion's needs, (2) geopolitical support, (3) activist resources, and (4) access to the front lines produced variation in auxiliary activism by national group, host-country, and over time. In so doing, the article contributes to theories of transnationalism, social movements, diaspora politics, and cross-border contentious politics more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study connects two lines of research—trend studies on social change in housework time and life-course studies on individual- and couple-level change in housework time. This novel approach allowed us to link the macro-level trend of gender convergence in housework time to the micro-level mechanisms underlying it. Using long-running panel data (SOEP), we implemented a cohort-sequence design that followed two birth cohorts (1960 and 1975) of West German men and women from age 25 until age 40. Regression and decomposition methods yielded four central findings. First, the gender gap in housework time narrowed by 40 percent from the 1960 cohort to the 1975 cohort. Second, women's cohort declines in housework time unfolded with age, as the steep life-course increase found in the 1960 cohort leveled off in the 1975 cohort. Men's increases in housework time were constant across the age range studied. Third, an extensive set of time-varying indicators for absolute and relative resources, union formation, fertility, and household conditions accounted for 77 percent of cohort changes in women's housework time but only for 12 percent of changes in men's housework time. In total, the covariates considered in our models explained 55 percent of gender convergence from the 1960 cohort to the 1975 cohort. Fourth, individual age trajectories underlying this trend remained mostly unexplained, notably women's shift from a steep rise to a flat line. We conclude that life-course factors driving change in housework time may still hold potential for further gender convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although marital status and marital events, as such, have received a good deal of attention in recent years, little effort has been made toward combining the two concepts to arrive at a comprehensive picture of the components of change in marital status over a period of time. The present paper presents such an analysis for a single Standard Metropolitan Area, that of Honolulu, Hawaii, for the 1940-1950 intercensal decade. Similar studies are possible for other areas or periods wherever data are available. Such an analysis of marital dynamics can be likened to the "flow charts" and "input-output" studies commonly used in related fields. These tools have been used by economists, traffic engineers, demographers, and other professional workers for a number of years, both in graphic and tabular form. In the present instance, the effects of six kinds of marital events on four classes of marital status are described. The marital events include (1) reaching marriageable age, (2) being married, (3) being divorced, (4) migrating, (5) being widowed, and (6) dying.

Activists seek attention for their causes and want to win sympathy from the broader public. Why do some citizens but not others approve when activists use protest tactics? This is a crucial but poorly understood aspect of social movements. While most prior research has focused on the personal determinants of attitudes toward movements, we argue that proximity to protest may cultivate positive views about a movement. Individuals living near centers of movement activity may become more favorable to protest because they become more sympathetic to the demands of activists. We investigate public support about protest tactics among white Southerners during the early stages of the civil rights movement. To do so, we employ a representative survey conducted in 1961 with nearly 700 white adults living in the South. These survey data are combined with contextual data measuring local protest, political behavior, and civic organizations. Most scholars have focused on the ways that civil rights activity propelled white counter-mobilization, but protest also won sympathy from a small subset of white Southerners, thereby fracturing the dominant consensus in support of Jim Crow segregation. We also find that local racial political context matters: individuals living in counties with weaker support for segregationist politics, where white moderates were active, and outside the Deep South were generally more favorable. At the individual level, our strongest findings indicate that sit-in support was more likely from those with greater educational attainment, less frequent church attendance, and exposure to discussions about race relations from the pulpit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary social movement researchers claim that legitimizing elements of social movements can counteract collective action problems and increase the likelihood that self-interested individuals take collective rather than individual action. Their work is insightful and informative, but it rarely uses general theory to describe the processes through which movement elements acquire legitimacy. Nor does it apply general theory to describe the mechanisms or processes through which legitimized elements influence collective action. The laboratory experiments reported in this article test hypotheses derived from a general theory—the multiple-sources, multiple-objects theory of legitimacy. The experiments examine the effects that legitimacy (measured as peer endorsement) and network size have on coalition formation, a form of collective action, and the countervailing of power. The research finds support for the legitimacy arguments. Low-power actors form coalitions more often in networks that highly endorse coalition formation and in smaller networks. Coalitions countervail power, and coalitions in the smallest networks reverse power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the concept of a social contract in relation to sociological research and scholarship on social change. The author reflects on the philosophical origins of government and consent of the governed. It is suggested that the modernization of society has led to an increasing rationalization of social life dependent on the idea of a social contract. Emphasis is given to social change in the context of social institutions such as labor markets, temporal rent extraction, technological innovations, and generational differences. Other aspects of the conceptualization of the social contract are tied to marriage, education, and parenting.

How do social movements influence corporations? Recent work suggests that movements can inflict material damage on their targets and shape categories of evaluation in organizational fields. Extending these ideas, we examine the effects of anti-sweatshop campaigns on sales, stock performance, reputation and specialized ratings of U.S. firms, using fixed-effects regression models and event study methods. The analysis demonstrates that social movements can in some circumstances shape both the markets and fields that firms inhabit. Specifically, anti-sweatshop campaigns (1. had negative effects on sales (though only among certain types of firms), (2. influenced stock prices, and (3. shaped specialized ratings of corporate responsibility. They also diminished previously positive corporate reputations (to a modest degree) but did not radically alter reputational hierarchies in the business community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Why do some social movement leaders work harder than others? And, how does gender affect the patterns we uncover? Utilizing historical case study evidence of local chapters in the emerging movement opposing drinking and driving we are able to develop and test theoretical expectations about predictors of weekly effort among MADD and RID leaders. Taken together, our model explains 45 percent of the variation in leadership effort. We find bureaucratic complexity and victim support activities are more powerful predictors of effort than are individual leader characteristics, although all are important. Further analysis reveals that gender almost wholly conditions the strong effect of bureaucratic complexity on leadership effort so that increasingly complex chapter structures are associated with substantial increases in work hours for women but not men. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]