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Recent research on social movements considers collective action frames and collective identities to be resources or achievements of social movement activity because they symbolicly link individuals to a collective cause. This paper maintains that a collective action frame operates at a sociocultural level and can be redefined by groups external to a movement. Nuclear power proponents worked to suppress the first cycle of protest against nuclear plants by redefining the movements' collective identity, such that individuals were unable to recognize movement organizations as representative of their interests. Citizens within the Ten Mile Radius, a group opposed to the licensing of the Seabrook nuclear power plant, initiated a second cycle of protest by overcoming the collective action frame imposed on the movement This case suggests that the articulation and the representation of dissent is constrained due to the inability of social movement groups to retain control over their own collective identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent contributions of sociologists and others have brought a new awareness and new theoretical under standing of the extent to which human aging and life-course patterns are shaped by social conditions and influenced by social change. Yet the potential of many social processes to account for individual aging patterns remains untapped, because research and theory have focused heavily upon comparisons between cohorts rather than the internal differentiation of cohorts, This paper shows that focusing upon intracohort differentiation over the life course leads to a mobilization of sociological findings whose age-related implications have not been exploited. Using the phenomenon of "aged heterogeneity" as an illustrative case, it is suggested that intracohort differentiation- operating through macro-level, organizational, and micro-level processes-can explain significant phenomena of aging previously neglected by theory, or else assumed to be psychological in origin. These processes specify Men on's "Matthew effect." Implications for biological aging and for research are briefly discussed˙. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Alienation,” in the sense of disenchantment with core institutions of society, increased after the mid-1960s. Most accounts hold that the rise in alienation was uniform across all groups. This paper evaluates the hypothesis of uniform change using data from the Harris Polls. We find evidence of both short-term and long-term shifts in patterns of alienation. Blacks and low-income people are less alienated under Democratic than under Republican administrations. Over the long term, increases in alienation have been larger among women and people without a college degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though it lacks adequate empirical support, the hypothesis of declining social attachments as a source of American social problems persists. Both mass society theory in the mid-twentieth century and the theory of declining social capital in the late-twentieth century have had broad appeal. This paper demonstrates the continuities in argument and assumptions between these two theories as well as the modifications of the theory in the face of cultural change. It suggests that some of the weaknesses in the theory of decreasing social capital can be traced to the assumptions it shares with mass society theory—assumptions rooted in concerns about individualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increased juvenile delinquency can be seen as an indicator for a deteriorating social fabric under conditions of rapid social change. Criminological theories suggest, however, that such conditions do not per se produce delinquency: They force youth into prodelinquent leisure activities with peers, leading to an endorsement of delinquent behavior and offering the infrastructure for it. Resources acquired in family and public life, however, may prevent youth from drifting into such prodelinquent leisure activities and indirectly from delinquent behavior. Empirical tests of these hypotheses have to employ simultaneous analyses of societal-level and individual-level data. On the basis of an international youth study, the paper undertakes such an analysis: In the years 1992–95, data from 42 independent samples of seventh graders from East and West Germany, Poland, Russia, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Hungary, Czechia, and Greece were surveyed. Data on deviant school behavior, delinquent drift, nurturant parenting, and subjective feelings of justice in public were obtained from 7282 thirteen- to fourteen-year-olds. Processes of rapid social change were incorporated as data on changes in GNP in the years proceeding the surveys. Analyses show that delinquent drift is a valid predictor of deviant school behavior only on the individual level. The extent to which adolescents engage in prodelinquent peer activities depends more on the cultural context in which adolescents live than on their personal experience in the family and in public. Nurturant parenting does, however, covary negatively with deviant school behavior irrespective of level of analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population pressure and human adaptation to food security demands through technology have been a dominant concern of researchers and policymakers alike in international development. This paper examines neo-Malthusian anti technoecological determinants of food security in lesser-industrialized societies between 1970 and 1990 using an OLS regression of food security change. Findings reveal that population pressure and overurbanization concerns are indeed valid for food availability, having negative implications, while adaptive measures such as the application of fertilizer technologies, land-use intensification, infrastructural development, and the internationalization of food markets help balance these negative effects. Interestingly, such technological improvements operate net of increased food availability and economic growth. Thus, Green Revolution technologies and the internationalization of global food systems have confronted population pressure in the developing world. However, findings are less conclusive for food access, indicating that improvement in availability does not necessarily translate into meeting distribution needs, thus challenging the ability of these two theories to comprehensively explain tile complexities of food security. Questions therefore remain with regard to future food security concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explain differential participation in social movements. It does so by attempting to bridge structural-level and individual-level explanations. We test a number of hypotheses drawn from the social networks and the rationalist perspectives on individual engagement by means of survey data on members of a major organization of the Swiss solidarity movement. Both perspectives find empirical support: the intensity of participation depends both on the embeddedness in social networks and on the individual perceptions of participation, that is, the evaluation of a number of cognitive parameters related to engagement. In particular, to be recruited by an activist and the perceived effectiveness of one's own potential contribution are the best predictors of differential participation. We specify the role of networks for social movements by looking at the nature and content of networks and by distinguishing between three basic functions of networks: structurally connecting prospective participants to an opportunity to participate, socializing them to a protest issute, and shaping their decision to become involved. The latter Junction implies that the embeddedness in social networks significantly affects the individual perceptions of participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains the manipulation of small-holding peasants by middle-class groups in their conjoint struggles against Anglo-Irish landlords during a precapitalist conjuncture of external pressures on the institutional practice of class rule in Ireland (see Fernand Braudel [1980J On History, Chicago: University of Chicago; Theda Skocpol [1979] States and Social Revolutions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Small-holding peasants and middle-class groups sought to reform the feudal practice of jurisdictional privileges by the greater gentry of Anglo-Irish landlords. A middle-class group of Irish nationalists exercised their "hegemony" over small-holding peasants during a social movement for Catholic Emancipation in the 1820s (see Antonio Gramsci [1975] Selections from the Prisons Notebooks, New York: International Publishers). The outcomes of this social movement included the political empowerment of Catholic "whigs" to reform the frudal practices of corporations in Irish towns and the frustration of peasant interests to reform the feudal practices of Anglo-Irish landlordism in the countryside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the response of residents in one inner-city, racially, and economically diverse neighborhood to a sudden increase in crime, drugs and disorder Rather than withdrawing residents in this neighborhood responded by organizing a major collective effort to develop a stabilization plan for the neighborhood. Factors useful in understanding this atypical response include a citywide structure that encourages citizen participation, the city government's commitment to the neighborhood a history of neighborhood activism, and residents' commitment to the neighborhood. A social movement perspective that examines the nature of successful social movement organizations, the political context of movement activities, and micromovement processes is useful in analyzing cases of neighborhood activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an examination of the nature of increasing female entry into the profession of pharmacy. Using data from a survey of Ontario pharmacists, it compares the work experiences and career paths of 668 men and women in the profession. In terms of hours worked, where they work and the nature of the work that they do, the researchers found considerable differences between males and females that are becoming increasingly pronounced as more women enter the profession. These findings are then discussed in terms of available theories of gender, professions and social change. While pharmacy has undoubtedly provided individual women with opportunities for a professional career, the data explored in this paper would suggest that overall the work arrangements and experiences of its practitioners reproduce, rather than challenge, existing gender hierarchies in the labor market. In this regard, professional work does not appear to be very different from other kinds of work.

Monetary payments fall into three categories: gift, entitlement, and compensation. Each one corresponds to a significantly different set of social relations and systems of meanings. People making payments use a number of earmarking techniques to distinguish those categories of social relations and meanings from each other; impose substantial controls over the proper uses of money received within each category, and attach great importance to the distinctions involved, thus creating partly separate currencies even when the medium involved is legal tender in the United States, bureaucratization, commercialization, and monetization significantly altered the scope, form, and content of monetary gifts, entitlements, and compensation, but did not reduce the importance of such earmarking and control investigation of (1) bonuses in commercial firms and (2) sexual payments illustrate the significance of these principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between traditions of social action and patterns of organizational development, using data on the formation of national African American protest, advocacy, and service organizations between 1955 and 1985. Following research in organizational ecology, Poisson regression is used to examine the association between organizational density and organizational formation across strategic farms. The results provide some support for the idea that interorganizational influences are important in shaping the contours of the African American social movement industry. Outside funding, internal organizational capacities and protest levels also play a significant role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Revolutionary changes in Eastern Europe air fundamentally intertwined with the thawing of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Paradoxically, the arms race between the superpowers continues. This paper examines the paradox by flat considering the conventional explanations for improved relations and demonstrating their inadequacies, then turning to the structural factors that appear to help explain the changed relations, and finally examining some of the social forces that cause the arms race to continue despite the thawing of the Cold War. Structural factors cited here as having contributed to the improved relations include: changes in the global economy, the development of a civil society in the Eastern bloc, domestic and international peace initiatives, and cultural changes. Despite these changes, the arms race continues due to the stability of strategic policy and the way it is made, military-industrial institutional operations, political and economic interests, and government operations. In each of these areas, much sociological research is needed to help guide the policy-making process away from continuing the arms race. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the social construction of conflict over environmental health and safety issues (i.e., environmental risk). Four explanations for such conflict are commonly offered in the environmental policy literature. We examine the interests served by each. We hypothesize that environmental policy professionals hold definitions of conflict consistent with the values and interests of the organizations for which they work and the professions of which they are members. These definitions enhance the legitimacy of the resources those groups possess in relative abundance. Data from a survey of risk professionals are generally consistent with these hypotheses. We conclude by generalizing beyond environmental conflict to identify ways in which disputes about the nature of a social problem or conflict are often at the same time struggles to determine the value of the resources available to social movements and their opponents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the widespread, irreversible, and catastrophic potentials associated with some contemporary genres of grievances make derivative social movements novel in respects different from those emphasized by French, Italian, and German analysts using the concept "new social movements." This European concept distinguishes between "new" and "old" protests to emphasize significant changes in the nature of the contemporary state or the value systems of its citizens, a distinction that has not been accentuated in the United States. The argument here is that only certain contemporary "technology movements" are really novel- and for reasons other than those alleged by advocates of the "new social movements." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the influence of social and economic change on family structure and relationships: How do such economic and social transformations as industrialization, urbanization, demographic change, the expansion of education, and the long-term growth of income influence the family? We take a comparative and historical approach, reviewing the experiences of three major sociocultural regions: the West, China, and South Asia. Many of the changes that have occurred in family life have been remarkably similar in the three settings-the separation of the workplace from the home, increased training of children in nonfamilial institutions, the development of living arrangements outside the family house-hold, increased access of children to financial and other productive resources, and increased participation by children in the selection of a mate. While the similarities of family change in diverse cultural settings are striking, specific aspects of change have varied across settings because of significant pre-existing differences in family structure, residential patterns of marriage, autonomy of children, and the role of marriage within kinship systems? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guerrilla governments arise where landlord or central government authority has decayed. In such situations, the guerrillas often establish a new "implicit social contract" with the peasantry, replacing the previous social contract, the abrogation of which has reduced the traditional authorities from legitimate to predatory powers in their relationships with peasants. Guerrillas build up their authority by carrying out three "contractual obligations" of authority: (1) defense of the people from external enemies; (2) maintenance of internal peace and order; and (3) contributions to the material security of the populace, the last by increasing peasant incomes and by providing health services, literacy training, and sometimes land to rural cultivators. As a result of such activities, peasants often come to perceive guerrillas as the new legitimate authorities in the region. Such authority has decayed, however, where the guerrillas in turn fail to fulfill the obligations of the social contract. Loss of authority can appear when guerrillas fail to defend the peasantry against military attackers, or when guerrillas themselves come to employ terror against the rural populace, thus violating the social contract uniting legitimate authorities and their subjects. This paper concludes with a discussion of the relevance of the study of guerrillas to social movement theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I reflect on the ways elements of Robin M. Williams Jr.’s research agenda might be carried forth in a meaningful way to sociological studies of twenty-first-century phenomena—in particular identifying the ways in which the facts of human interaction, of human expectation, and of human influence shapes outcomes of significance for our present, our future, and, therefore, our past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A response to Otero's criticism of the thesis of the nonrevolutionary character of biotechnology is developed within a larger consideration of the relatively small amount of attention high technologies have received within the sociology of science. It is argued that the "new sociology of science" of the past decade has been a major advance on midcentury functionalist perspectives that took an essentialist, defrrential view toward science. The new socioiogy of science, based on the demystification of science through a relativist view of scientific knowledge production, is nonetheless limited in several respects in its applicability to contemporary issues relating to high technologies. Otero's criticisms are considered in the light of the continuing need for uniting the sociology of science and sociology of technology, and for developing a perspective on science and technology that avoids both uncritical deference and excessive relativization of these forces for social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the distribution of collective memories in national populations has often been conducted in relatively stable societies, where most individuals have experienced a limited range of event types. We examine collective memories in Lithuania, a society that has seen substantial change, using three surveys conducted during the two decades since Lithuanian protests against Soviet rule began in the late 1980s. We identify two types of events that individuals may recall, drawing on Sewell's () distinction between structure-transforming events and other events that are significant but less momentous, and we find that the two types of events exhibit different patterns of change over time: in particular, transformative events may absorb other events through assimiliation and are likely to be the focus of commemoration. Recall of transformative events also shows a distinctive relation to birth cohort. Our results support the need to take into account the nature of events in order to understand which events are remembered as important and by whom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Armstrong and Bernstein (2008) critique the emphasis movement scholars place upon activism within the formal political sphere, proposing, instead, a multi-institutional approach which argues that protest can occur within any social institution and that the desired outcomes of activism can include cultural outcomes. The goal of this article is to expand the range of social movement targets studied through an examination of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender ( LGBT) activism within the institution of religion. In the United States, religion, particularly Christianity, is used as the primary justification for defining same-sex sexuality as undesirable and denying LGBT individuals full citizenship. The LGBT community challenges these traditional Christian definitions of same-sex sexuality in numerous ways, including through the creation of LGBT-affirming congregations. I examine the development and spread of congregations affiliated with the United Federation of Metropolitan Community Churches ( UFMCC), an LGBT-affirmative denomination, across all 50 states from 1974 to 2000. Drawing upon organizational ecology, resource mobilization, political opportunity, and theories of religious switching, I find that the distribution of UFMCC congregations challenges the usefulness of traditional explanations for activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional sociological accounts of the rise and fall of academic fields have been challenged by accounts based on the idea of market-responsive change. In this article, we focus on the period 1980-2000, the period during which, according to its proponents, the market model of change became dominant in academe. We find changes in the student market to be strongly associated with increased institutionalization of academic fields. We also find the preferences of donors to be associated with increased institutionalization of academic fields. By contrast, we find relatively little support for labor market signals or changes in federal funding priorities as important influences on the institutionalization of academic fields. We find that higher-status institutions are more market responsive than lower-status institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology’s enduring concern with explaining the links between individual and social change has never been more relevant. We are poised at a moment when changing lives are colliding with resistant institutions. These tensions have created social conflicts and personal dilemmas for women and men alike. To explain the interplay between lives and institutions and to develop effective strategies for transcending the impasse between public demands and private needs, we need a deeper understanding of how these structural and cultural conflicts play out in the lives of young women and men. This article proposes a framework for such an inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article hypothesizes that individuals’ environmental attitudes depend not only on their knowledge, interests, emotions, and values but also on the social context in which they live. We test this hypothesis by analyzing the 2000/01 ISSP-II Survey on Environmental Attitudes; the data include respondents from 23 countries. Our findings show that individual characteristics influence both “pessimistic environmental orientations” and “the willingness to act in favor of the environment.” As for social context, the level of development and affluence, the degree of political centralization, the presence of green movements and parties, and the degree of objective pollution in a country are all important. However, their influences on fatalism and willingness vary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fifty years ago, Robin M. Williams Jr. described eight notable changes in U.S. sociology, one of which was the “widespread diffusion of a relatively clear and sophisticated conception of the place of values in sociological study, as an object of research, as a factor in behavior, and as an element to be controlled in the prosecution of research” (Williams, 1958:621). In this essay, I ask what has become of that rising interest in the sociological study of values? I follow three distinct trajectories of sociological research on values, briefly describing the contributions of each, and identifying several lines of inquiry that strike me as particularly important and promising for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movement scholars have suggested that opportunity structures are not objective features of the world but must be constructed by social forces, including social movements. Here, we attempt to analyze how Palestinians living in the occupied territories constructed political opportunity during the run-up to the 1987 first Intifada. We analyze how the changing Israeli political opportunity structure affected Palestinians' framing of the structural conditions they faced. In particular, we examine (1) how the consolidating Palestinian movement within the occupied territories built the capacity for a shared, collective framing of events, and (2) how the movement adapted a strategy based on its understanding of the opportunity presented by divisions in Israeli society concerning the occupation. Based on the analysis, we offer several insights into the Intifada's dynamics and trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few researchers have examined how organizational environments and framing processes simultaneously influence the diffusion of organizational practices. This article combines insight from major perspectives on the diffusion of organizational innovations and from social movement studies, and shows that the adoption of a program to address global climate change by U.S. municipalities is shaped by social contagion and organizational linkages, as well as by the actions of change-promoting agents. The findings emphasize the potential as well as the limitation of the strategic efforts on the part of innovation promoters to frame adoption in a way that will appeal to potential adopters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article combines institutionalisms to explain fundamental change in American property insurance. During the 1950s, the industry shifted from associations to price-competitive markets and vertically integrated firms. I advance two new arguments to explain this shift: First, institutions endogenously generate conditions for change. Second, fundamental change or institutional replacement depends on a dynamic convergence of conditions-market failures, legitimacy crises, new models of order-and the culmination of this dynamic in politics and policies that admit alternatives into fields. Together, these arguments reduce indeterminacies in existing theories of change and shed new light on punctuated equilibria and the politics of transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movements transform participants' identities. Why they do so is an unresolved puzzle. I argue that for participants, social movements are liminal phenomena characterized by varying degrees of freedom, egalitarianism, communion, and creativity. As such, the transformative power of social movements depends on their degree of liminality. Those that approximate most to the pure type of the liminal offer to the participants high degrees of freedom, egalitarianism, communion, and creativity. They transform identities most powerfully. In the 1960s, China's Red Guards experienced a profoundly liminal movement. As a result, an age-cohort that was coming of age began to recreate itself. The personal transformations of the Red Guards would persistently bear on Chinese politics and society up to the 1989 Chinese student movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social network accounts offer important insights into an explanation of individual participation in social movements. However, one thinks that a structural perspective has some weaknesses and that, in order to explain sustained participation, it has to be supplemented by the cultural and symbolic dimensions of commitment. In particular, the social networks perspective has three major weaknesses that have to do with the origins of embeddedness in social networks, the objective versus subjective aspect of mobilization and the problem of agency. Thus, as with any kind of activity, political participation takes on a specific meaning in the activists' life. Such meaning is structured around what the author proposes to call life-spheres. The life of everyone is composed of life-spheres, which can be defined as distinct though interrelated regions in the life of an individual, each one with its own borders, logic, and dynamic. A life-sphere has both an objective and a subjective side. The concept of social networks, as it has been used in the social movement literature, captures much of this aspect of life-spheres.

Neofunctionalism and neoinstitutionalism suffer from a macro bias that impairs recognition of human agency and interest in institutional change. A Preliminary micro corrective organized around the concepts of institutional entrepreneurs and institutional projects is proposed. These concepts are elaborated to address three related problems: the content of institutional change; power, coalitions, and conflict in institutional change; and entrepreneurs use of accounts to legitimate their projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three explanations have been advanced to account for the generalized action potential of contemporary protest movements: the rise of the new class, a set of general social trends that cumulatively lead to liberalized social values and loosened social restraints against protest, and the mobilization of excluded groups. Analyzing three dimensions of generalized action potential-protest potential, political action repertoires, and protest movement support-we find support for all three explanations. Educated salaried professionals, especially sociocultural and public sector professionals, display greater protest potential, especially for civil disobedience, and are supportive of emerging "middle class" movements. A set of general social trends centering on increased education, life-cycle and generational change, secularism, and increased women's autonomy also create greater action potential. Reflecting mobilization against political exclusion, African Americans display a consistently strong generalized action potential. These protests reflect the rise of new political repertoires, particularly "protest activism," which combines protest with high levels of conventional participation and is centered among the more educated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the effects of dimensions of the social structure on professional autonomy. Little support exists for arguments suggesting professional dominance or professional-bureaucratic confrontation. The study supports a theory of social change that places physicians in their historical, political and economic context There are four important findings. First, the degree of autonomy varies across physician specializations, and the social structure affects the autonomy of family practitioners and oncologists in different ways. Second, the Federal Drug Administration constrains the responsibility autonomy of both oncologists and family practitioners, and the innovative autonomy of family practitioners. Third, bureaucracy either has no effect or enhances physicians' autonomy. The fourth, and most consistent, finding demonstrates that profit-seeking corporations external to the work setting constrain physicians' autonomy. Findings suggest that researchers should give more attention to shifts in the loci of power and the effects of organizations external to the work setting, especially corporations, on professions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research focuses on the impact of literacy on major crimes of violence, homicide, and suicide in France, between 1852 and 1914. A time-series analysis shows that declining rates of serious crimes of violence and passion-inspired homicide were associated with increasing literacy. On the other side, literacy and rates of cold-blooded murder were unrelated, and literacy was a positive predictor of suicide. In view of this, and the fact that the negative relationship between homicide and suicide depends on it, literacy, or broader cultural change, such as urbanity, or the education system itself may have been the causal agent in transforming expressions of passion from an explosion of violence against others to an implosion of violence against the self. Overall literacy cannot be seen to have repressed violence per se. In fact between 1852 and 1914, the increase in rates of suicide in France was almost eight times greater than the decline in homicide, suggesting that literacy transformed rather than depressed death by violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary multicultural and secular university in the United States is experiencing an array of value transitions as well as ideological contradictions. The present dilemmas and challenges confronting the academy appear to emanate from the preoccupation with new schools of explanation and interpretation and from arbitrarily defined appropriate speech. In the social sciences and in the humanities, value neutrality and traditional constructs are viewed as strategies for concealing and promoting anachronistic standards of conduct. Faculty interviewed express concern and skepticism about the direction and future of the American university in a postindustrial and a postmodernistic era. Many perceive the university as not assuming a leading role in constructive social change. This results from its absorption with political symbols and selectively perceived meanings of varied cultural interests. Some faculty sense a major transformation in the way the university and its culture are produced and arranged. The social sciences and humanities have the potential for coping with the current paradoxes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to draft a framework for the comparison of movement participation. The standards of comparison I developed at the movement level were the magnitude of mobilization potentials, the composition of multi-organizational fields, organizational characteristics, and action orientation. Utilizing this framework I compared mobilization campaigns for three different types of activities conducted by three different movements: a campaign conducted by a labor union for, possibly, a strike, a campaign of the Dutch peace movement in a local community for a national demonstration, and campaigns by women's groups in a community for a variety of activities. I explain differences in motivational dynamics and levels of participation in terms of differing movement characteristics. Finally, I discuss the advantages of comparative work on social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the determinants of social movement success, the characteristics and responses of nonstate organizations under attack by protestors have been overlooked. We examine three campaigns by animal rights groups against experimentation, in 1976-1977, 1987-1988, and 1988-1989. The first two Campaigns stopped the research, while the third did not One influential set of factors was the preexisting vulnerabilities e.g., unpopular practices, internal factions -- on the part of targeted organizations. Another was the strategic responses of these organizations, especially the avoidance of "blunders." A growing countermovement, thirdly, affected the organizations' ability to respond effectively and avoid blunders. As a social movement expands and strengthens, it encourages counter organizing and a hardening of resistance, so that many Social movements may actually be less successful as they become larger and fore visible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have challenged a long-prevailing notion that free women held unusually high economic status in colonial America. The present study tests a corresponding idea that the 19th century afforded American women fewer occupational opportunities, with a resulting loss in freedom and status. Drawing from a large and broad sample of newspapers, we examine the distribution of occupational pursuits and changes in this distribution over time, and then compare these findings with observations from an earlier study for the 18th century. The theoretical implications of the findings are discussed in terms of the ideology of "separate spheres," increasing divorce patterns, and the growth of the midwestern frontier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What struck the author while reading the new "Handbook of Sociology," edited by Neil Smelser, is the unevenness with which different currents have been integrated into contemporary sociological debate. In contrast to 25 years ago, there now appears widespread recognition of contributions made by Marxist theory and class analysis. There has been a reemergence of attention to political economy and a convergence on the centrality of the political for understanding both social organization and social change. Yet despite the explosion of research on gender, sexuality, the sociologies of culture and emotions, all of which have established themselves as sections of the American Sociological Association, these subjects have not been well integrated into mainstream sociological debates. The author has elaborated on this observation and suggested some reasons why she thinks this integration has been illusive. She has argued for its inclusion in the future.

This study used observations from the 1985 Massachusetts malpractice insurance rate hearings, semistructured interviews conducted in 1985-1986, a survey of Massachusetts physicians in February 1988, and newspaper reports from the Boston Globe. Physicians and the Massachusetts Medical Society have promoted the medical malpractice "crisis" as an economic one. The after-expense income of most physicians, however, has remained relatively constant. The more serious threat to physicians appears to be the reduction of their autonomy. It is concluded that the medical malpractice "crisis" has been socially constructed in economic rather than autonomy terms because, traditionally, economics has been a more acceptable basis for labor unrest in the United States. Constructing malpractice as an economic crisis presents a more viable argument for stemming social change adverse to the medical profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A brief review of the evolutionism of Comte, Marx, Spencer, and Durkheim, representatives of the Masters, reveals an excessive concern with the integration of differentiation. This represents their most common feature, but neither it nor anything else adds up to a definite evolutionary theory. An antithetical convergence, with Comte excluded, refers to a varying utilization of the Darwinian "mechanism," natural selection. It is not clear, however, that the masters fully grasped the meaning of natural selection, or indeed that this could be understood unequivocally. As a result they failed to convey unambiguously a fundamental interest in evolution to subsequent generations of social scientists. A period of estrangement from evolutionary theory ensued in which the focus seemed to shift from social evolution to social change. By the 1950s, sociology and anthropology experienced a revival of evolutionary interest largely in the form of a reiteration of old conceptions and problems. A critical glance at evolutionary biology reveals, next, an ambiguity in the concept of natural selection when understood as ultimate cause and mechanism of evolution. The basic significance of the evolutionistic alliance known as sociobiology lies in the latter's partial redressing of the ambiguity by way of the "maximization principle." Equally important, indeed complementary, is the sociobiological appeal to the social sciences for help to discover the environmental parameters that impinge on the principle- and thus for a contribution to the development of a biocultural model. A few examples of biocultural theorizing follow that show varying degrees of systemic dependence between the biological and the cultural. The basic nomothetic thrust of the emerging biocultural model is to emphasize the adaptive paths along which cultural phenomena are likely to evolve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After long neglect, evolutionary thinking is receiving new emphasis in the social sciences. Although evolutionary theories in biology are complex, changing, and often controversial, the basic concepts of variation, selection, and transmission potentially have powerful applications in sociology. In such uses, a crucial distinction must be made between developmental processes and evolutionary processes. Two main approaches characterize current evolutionary thinking in sociology: sociobiological explanations, and coevolutionary accounts of the interaction of genes and culture. Evolution through natural selection can occur with genes, cultural elements, and any other self-replicating codes. Although social learning is the cultural analogue of genetic transmission, cultural evolution does not necessarily maximize genetic fitness. Newly emerging sociological theories of evolution hold promise of integrating micro- and macroprocesses, providing explanations of complexity and diversity in social change, reconciling ideas of agency and structure, and linking sociology to biology without misleading reductionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent transformations of global economic structures have been accompanied by divergent national, regional, and local patterns of development, including severe socioeconomic crises for many Third World countries. At the same time, established conceptualizations of development processes have been called into question by divergent models of social change, such as those of world systems and postmodernist theorists. These phenomena present major analytical challenges for sociologists specializing in the study of development. New technologies and production processes, changing forms of international dependency, and the appearance of new social actors are among the most important topics for study. We argue that political economy, based on midrange propositions and comparative historical methods, constitutes the most fruitful approach to this task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grass-roots protest activities against economic' growth have often been viewed as particularistic, random, self-interested actions that have little significant impact on the larger political economy or movements for social change. This article, however, provides an alternative framework for understanding these community conflicts by examining the structural contradictions of political life that frame such conflicts and by showing, through a case study of a toxic waste protest, the ways in which these structural contradictions are subjectively experienced in the process of political protest. This integrated analysis thus shows how ordinary citizens may develop a more active, participatory concept of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political conflict poses questions about social cohesion, power, and change that culturalist and materialist theories answer very differently. Comparative sociology requires a method for the integrated and weighted use of their answers. The following case study of environmental politics in Japan develops and illustrates the use of such a method. The types of sanctions used to build influence relations, analyzed through graphs and network matrices, indicate the relative validity of different theories. In this case, a class structure determines the main direction of environmental politics, but cultural legitimations sometimes divert it to other tracks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historic preservation has, to date, received relatively little attention from sociologists, usually meriting only brief mention under topics of urban gentrification or community organization. But within the context of its history and its significance in modern society, preservation emerges as a multilevel response to industrialization and related processes of social change: what gets preserved and how it is symbolically interpreted depends upon the class structure of society and the related social mapping of time and place. The folio wing comparative analysis of preservation in Great Britain and the United States demonstrates the importance of these factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary perspectives on social movements focus primarily upon challenging groups and political authorities, frequently ignoring the importance of vulnerahilities of the target of protest in shaping the outcomes of protracted struggles. The target's own human and technological weaknesses which emerge in the course of the conflict, however, are sometimes critical, as shown in this analysis of citizens' six-year endeavor to prevent the restart of Three Mile Island's Unit 1 reactor after the Unit 2 accident. If. as has been suggested (Perrow. 1984), modern industrial nations can expect an increase in such "system accidents," they are likely to precipitate a new genre of social movements pitting local residents against high technology industries. Emergent target nilnerabilities are likely to figure prominently in some of these processes. and social movement analysts' explanatory models should allow for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]