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Despite being a central topic, current theories of motivation in sociology remain underdeveloped. This paper supplements existing sociological theories on motivation with insights from affective and cognitive neuroscience to address this issue. The resulting sociological affective model of motivation treats affect as an independent force that sometimes coordinates with cognition while taking charge at other times. Drawing on recent work in the neuroscience of motivation and reward, the paper shows how two affective mechanisms—wanting and liking—can shed light on various behavioral outcomes of interest while allowing for sharper theorizing of key distinctions that need clarification in the literature. By examining the distinctive contribution of each process, the paper reveals a proactive, desire‐driven agent often overlooked by prevailing sociological models emphasizing a reactive actor responding creatively and deliberately when internal meanings and external cues are incongruent. The paper concludes by outlining the broader implications of this synthetic affective model of motivation for sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in examining climate change adaptation has arisen in many disciplines in the past two decades; however to date, sociologists have given only sparse attention to the issue. This is both a missed opportunity for sociologists and a detriment to the study of adaptation. In this paper, we set out the following research agenda: bringing core concerns of sociology into the critically important conversation of how society will respond to climate change. We identify five broad themes in which sociologists can begin their work on adaptation: (1) structures and resource access, (2) social cohesion and future planning, (3) constraints of social stratifications, (4) power and agency in decision‐making, and (5) justice in process and outcomes. After summarizing existing sociological work on adaptation and detailing our research agenda, we draw examples from our own work in Bangladesh to illustrate how this agenda might be taken up. In doing so, we point to several places where sociological insights come into play in questions related to development, organizations, expertise, migration, gender, and labor. We believe a robust sociological analysis can produce a clarified, reparative, and just conceptualization of adaptation that will contribute to the growing global discourse on the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some literature on public sociology conceives of students as a public rather than potential or real practitioners of this type of sociology. There is a dearth of texts reflecting on graduate student training in public sociology and the trade‐offs they face. In this paper, I engage in a reflexive account of my experience doing public sociology, as I partnered with nonprofits to conceptualize, research, and write a report on the effects of stripped citizenship in Colombia after a mistaken administrative decision deprived 40,000 mostly binnational Venezuelan‐Colombians of their nationality in that country. This report has served as part of strategic litigation and to raise public awareness of the harmful policy. I argue that three things are key for graduate students to engage in public sociology and have been overlooked. First, training in public sociology, especially training with elements of apprenticeship, can develop the publicly engaged sociological imagination and toolkit, which is key to identifying opportunities for interventions in the midst of fieldwork, and models for interventions. Second, support from established professors. And third, local, contextual knowledge is indispensable. I also discuss ways to offset some of the trade‐offs that graduate students are likely to face when doing public sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether differentiating among types of intimate partner violence enhances the explanatory capacity of extant empirical models.The analysis uses national-level Canadian data to evaluate an alternative approach to operationalizing intimate partner violence, drawing upon Black's (1990) and Johnson's (1995) theoretical work. The main argument suggests that current efforts to explain intimate partner violence with victimization studies are inadequate because they typically do not measure key sociological variables. The failure to assess the contexts within which different types of violence occur further hinders explanatory efforts.The paper concludes with recommendations for innovative theoretical and methodological strategies to address these limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the impact of managerial social status on the normative evaluation of managerial acts in organizational contexts. We test several propositions on the relationship between social status and normative evaluation derived from Donald Black's theoretical framework on social control. The research design consists of a factorial survey of 200 managers. Each respondent evaluated the seriousness of a normatively questionable managerial act. In each vignette, the perpetrator's social status was systematically manipulated in either a high or a low condition. The results generally support the argument that the higher a manager's social status the less vulnerable that individual is to unfavorable normative evaluations, holding constant the act. The paper closes with discussion of our findings in light of social structural and rational choice perspectives on informal social control in organizations. Additionally, we discuss methodological issues related to experimental research on informal social control in organizations, the consistency of our findings with those from previous studies of social control across diverse settings, potential theoretical applications and extensions of Black's framework in organizational contexts, and practical implications for the implementation of corporate codes of conduct and corporate dispute resolution systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article responds to sociologist Andy Pickering's comments, partly because of the inherent intellectual stimulation of exchanging ideas with such a distinguished colleague, but partly also because of the need for much greater interchange between the two fields, the sociology of environment and technology, on the one hand and the sociology of science on the other. Pickering's comments raise three important points about the analysis of Iron Mountain, Michigan. First, he praises what he calls papers symmetry in noting the importance of physical⁄environmental as well as social factors in understanding social outcomes. Second, he argues that people have not taken this point far enough, in large part because, he believes, the social is not sufficiently at stake in papers. Third, he argues that a fruitful antidote would be to trace the evolution of actual practices, in detail, over time.

This paper offers an analysis of the continuing crisis in sociology that is different from those that have appeared in the literature. In contrast to the ideological and technical readings, it suggests that the origins of the crisis are to be found in the hermeneutic challenge that has resulted from the linguistic and multicultural turns. Both of these developments have given rise to new discourses within the academy that are competing with subfields such as the sociology of the arts and race/ethnic relations. The nature and impact of this new competition is examined in greater detail through the case of the sociology of race. The analysis reveals that these competitive challenges are hermeneutic in nature and not primarily technical or ideological. The paper concludes with some suggestions for crisis resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes a characteristic syndrome of modern literature identified as "anxiety of influence" by literary critics and as "mania for originality" by art historians. Based on a sociological reformulation of the syndrome as it relates to the structure of acknowledged influence, the paper develops and tests several hypotheses. Data are based on a survey of West German writers and are analyzed by using clustering techniques and correspondence analysis. First, the analysis demonstrates the fragmented and non-hierarchical structure of acknowledged literaty influence. Second, the different types of influence (absence distinctiveness, and clusterability) correspond to different professional and literary characteristics of writers. Results highlight one of the contradictions between the cultural code and the professional structure of modem an: at the level of ideology, greatness and genius are equated with the absence of influence and artistic uniqueness. The analysis shows, however, that the denial/absence of acknowledged influence is found among writers who are excluded from the professional networks where reputations are made in the world of literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that Japan underwent a sequence of historical periods during which the level of technical development and the place of the individual in society paralleled that of similar periods in Europe. Particular attention is paid to 16th-century Japan, a period remarkably similar to the European Renaissance in its individualism and socioeconomic and cultural vitality. In both Japan and Western Europe, this renaissance followed the breakdown of an imperium and its replacement by a feudal system. The historical parallel continues with those parts of Europe in which absolutist governments were successfully imposed, since Japan underwent a similar phenomenon, accompanied by a similar decline in individualism and in technological development. Although no definitive conclusions can be reached, the paper explores the implications of these parallels for our understanding of both Japan and the general historical and psychological processes involved in the growth of individualism and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relation between positivistic and interpretive sociology, using the stress research literature as a case study. Analyzing the cultural history of the stress concept, it uncovers four central themes: anxiety, performance, adjustment, and mentalism, Examining the self-criticismc made by scientific students of stress, it focuses on the problems of temporal order, confounding, and interaction. Comparison of the cultural and scientific literatures shows that while some of the positivists' complaints derive from general methodological choices, others come from inescapable aspects of the culture's general idea of stress. Considering the past development of stress research, the paper argues that positivism and interpretation have not been Cartesian opposites but interpenetrating fractals. It then speculates about what this relation implies for future positivistic studies, both in the stress literature and more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between concentration and control, in terms of both markets and hierarchies in economics and their analogues of polities and parties in politics. It is argued that the relationship is not always a positive one. In some cases the relationship is negative and in other cases there is no relationship at all. Insight into the determinants of the nature of this relationship can be gained by explaining apparent inconsistencies which appear when contrasting the economic and political spheres. For example, why is it that a market which meets the criteria for perfect competition-many small producers-is considered socially optimal but not so a polity comprised of many small parties? The two-party system, considered desirable in our national politics, corresponds to the much maligned duopoly in the economic sphere. This paper posits that there are three major types of systems found in both the economic and political spheres, which apply to both levels of aggregation-firms and markets, and parties and polities, respectively-and which have different implications for the relationship between concentration and control. It is also argued that these two levels of aggregation, however useful or necessary for purposes of discussion, are not analytically distinct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper links the work of Sebastião Salgado, recipient of the 2010 American Sociological Association (ASA) Award for Excellence in the Reporting of Social Issues , with the discipline of sociology. I reflect on Salgado's biography, method, and concerns in order to demonstrate how his work contributes to the awareness and understanding of social issues. Toward this end, I summarize sociology's record of involvement with visual documentation. Prior to 1915, the American Journal of Sociology regularly included photographs that provided visual documentation of environments under study. However, as sociology moved away from social reform activities and toward scientific investigation, the regular publication of photographs ceased. During the 1930s and 1940s, photographic projects in disciplines and social movements beyond sociology developed a variety of methods that would prove useful to sociology. During the 1970s, sociologists once again began to use visual methods in their teaching, research, and publication, putting sociology in the position to both contribute to and benefit from insights and social commitments that have distinguished Sebastião Salgado as a globally significant photographer and social activist during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes gendered social identity in Japan and the United States, countries with comparable postindustrial economic systems but distinct cultural traditions. Using national surveys (1995), we find gender differences in value orientations to be neither systematic nor consistent. They often disappeared after controlling for demographic and human-capital variables, though not so often for Japan. Other variables proved more important predictors of values than gender, although in different ways in Japan and the United States. We conclude by reassessing the use of the term gender in social research and the cultural meaning of gender relations by addressing the feminist concerns with issues of gender location. [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]

This paper argues that a better articulated conception of stigma can enhance the analysis of popular culture. Beginning with the work on stigma by Erving Goffman and other scholars, the article contends that the stigma sometimes attached to the production and consumption of popular culture is distinct from the low status associated with certain forms of popular culture. Unlike low status, stigma discredits cultural forms and practitioners often rendering them problematic. This reassessment of stigma is applied and developed further through a study of comic books, showing the various ways stigma can operate in popular culture. The analysis suggests that stigma significantly impeded the evolution of the comic book as an art form, illustrating the potential negative effects of stigma in popular culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a historical analysis of the changing significance of the most influential statement ever made on inequality and development—Simon Kuznets’s “inverted U-curve hypothesis.” The shifting interpretations and appropriations of the hypothesis over time—from its status as a speculative supposition in 1955, to its rise and fall as a reified socioeconomic law, to its contested standing in the social sciences today—demonstrate how Kuznets’s arguments, originally advanced under more limited conditions, became transformed into overarching theoretical, empirical, and political constructions. This history suggests that even empirically grounded and testable social science models are contingent on the broader social and political contexts in which they are produced and negotiated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, there has been a rapid proliferation of scholarship on resistance but little consensus on its definition. In this paper, we review and synthesize the diverse literatures that invoke the concept of resistance. This review illuminates both core elements common to most uses of the concept and two central dimensions on which these uses vary: the questions of whether resistance must be recognized by others and whether it must be intentional. We use these two dimensions to develop a typology of resistance, thereby clarifying both the meaning and sociological utility of this concept [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how mainstream sociology has used race as an explanatory factor by examining papers in the American Sociological Review between 1937 and 1999. We find a dramatic increase in the likelihood that sociologists will take race into account, and we suggest that methodological innovations are largely responsible for creating an environment in which it is taken for granted that analysts in many fields will “control for race.” This pattern of usage may reinforce an implicit conception of racial differences that we call “broad but shallow,” in that race is expected to matter almost everywhere, but its effect can be neutralized by the addition of a control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The specialized field of disaster studies seems to be moving farther away from mainstream sociology, to the detriment of both. For sociologists working in this field, application of Max Weber's political sociology is proposed as one way to reconnect their research with longstanding concerns of the discipline. Weber's political sociology contains a conflict model focusing on structured inequalities of class, status, and power. Its relevance to both contemporary sociology and sociological disaster studies is illustrated through a reexamination of one of the early classic studies of disaster. The paper concludes with an overview of Weber's thoughts about the role of values in research and a brief comparison of Weber's political sociology with alternative theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of organizational dynamics examine the manner in which an organization's immediate environment defines the "rules and requirements to which individual organizations must conform in order to receive legitimacy and support" (Scott, 1992:132). In this paper we consider the question of how an organization can achieve legitimacy and support without necessarily compromising its organizational forms or practices to isomorphic pressures. We frame the question in terms of the boundaries between organizations and their environments. Where the population ecology studies show the survival value of adopting known organizational forms and practices, and neoinstitutionalism addresses the need to display compliance with accepted forms, our case study demonstrates the possibility of removing an organization or set of organizations from the familiar interaction by naming it as a subfield of the organizational field, sharing the environment, but "out of the way" of predefined norms and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we use longitudinal data to test the strength of individual preferences and structural variables as explanations for married women's labor force participation. Data drawn from a subset of the Career Development Study are used to compare gendered preferences measured toward the end of adolescence vs. work and family structural variables as predictors of the actual number of hours married women work for pay. Family structures that push women out of the labor force and pull them into family work prove to be the strongest predictor of married women's employment hours, with work structures (e.g., aspects of "good" jobs) and the subjective definition of paid work as a career also being substantively important for explaining hours in the labor force. Our findings also indicate that attitudes formed before and during early adolescence do have a weak but statistically significant effect on married women's labor force participation, at least for baby boom women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individual moral value attitudes are typically explained by reference to social experiences as indicated by social group variables. Contrary to this view, the emergent “culture wars” perspective claims that two worldviews that transcend social groups are ultimately and fundamentally responsible for moral value attitudes. Although this relationship has been claimed for the general population, it has not been investigated with national representative data. This paper contrasts the worldview and social group explanations by examining the relative importance of the worldviews implicated in the culture wars literature and the social groups found to be important in previous research. I find social groups to be more important than worldviews, but that worldviews also have explanatory power. I conclude with a discussion about possible clarifications of the “culture wars” thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short article pleads for research rather than rumor regarding Parsons' alleged role regarding the admittance to United States of an ex-Soviet citizen in 1948 or 1949. Some evidence on background issues that could be found among the Parsons papers at Harvard University Archives is being presented verbatim. I argue that the point is to refrain from fabrications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emile Durkheim has long been viewed as one of the founders of the so-called variables-oriented approach to sociological investigation. This view ignores his considerable achievements using the methodology of "case-based" historical analysis, most prominent among them, his lectures on the history of French education (The Evolution of Educational Thought). In this paper I first outline the intimate relationship that Durkheim envisioned between historical and sociological investigation. I then turn to his work on French education for substantive illustrations of his approach. Finally, I explore certain points of intersection between Durkheim's approach to history and present-day concerns, especially in regard to the role of culture in history and the opposition between prospective and retrospective ("teleological") strategies of historical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Avoiding macrostructural or individualistic explanations as to why homeless individuals cannot get off the streets, this paper examines the social structure of Street life as it impinges on a sample of homeless persons' chances of obtaining nonshelter housing. Specifically, by interviewing 42 homeless individuals about a housing grant offered by New York State and the possibility of obtaining shared housing arrangements with such a grant, this study documents possible ways in which the social relations homeless people have with institutions and each other may dash potential efforts to obtain nonshelter housing. The research finds that distrust of the homeless among landlords and a high level of contingency with respect to welfare cases interact with distrustful personal relations among the sample of homeless themselves to reduce the likelihood of successful utilization of the housing grant. Due to sample limitations, findings from this study cannot be generalized to all homeless; nonetheless they offer insight into a dynamic which may be similar to those at work among other homeless sub-populations as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates neighborhood-level connections between ecological structure, responses to disorder and local attachment and social involvement We develop predictions integrating the systemic model of community attachment, neighborhood use value, and the social disorganization perspective. The systemic model predicts neighborhood stability will deepen attachment and local involvement; the social disorganization perspective anticipates effects of stability on responses to disorder; and neighborhood use value suggests' effects of status; racial composition and problems such as crime and deterioration on attachment We further propose, building on earlier work, that attachment may influence responses to disorder; or vice versa. Data include resident surveys, census information, on-site assessments, and crime rates from 66 randomly selected Baltimore, Maryland, neighborhoods. In support, respectively, of the systemic and neighborhood use value models, we find strong impacts of stability and class on neighborhood attachment/involvement. Neighborhood fear and perceived informal social control depend upon emotional investment and social integration. We see no overall impacts of deterioration on responses to disorder calling into question some key aspects of the incivilities thesis. Earlier investigations of deterioration and responses to disorder that excluded person-place transactions may have been misspecified. Results underscore the strong relationship between person-environment transactions and responses to disorder Asking how to encourage citizens to resist disorder is questioning in part, how to increase the bonds residents have with the locale and with one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What do we mean by progress and cumulation in the social and human sciences? Recent thinking in the philosophy and history of science has led to an abandonment of some versions of logical positivism and of verificationism that had a strong deductive and theory testing orientation. What is to replace them is less clear. This paper argues that progress and cumulation can be seen as a process of evaluation and retention within an epistemic community. Scholarly disciplines differ in their social structure and in their epistemic and normative commitments. Since sociology is a fragmented discipline, progress and cumulation differ within its multiple subdisciplines, which to varying extents represent epistemic communities. Brief sketches of progress (advance) and cumulation in several subdisciplines are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the essay "Durkheim's Division of Labor in Society," published in the March 1, 1994 issue of the journal "Sociological Forum." The author of the article feels that it has several dimensions. It begins by touching several dimensions like the quality of the translations, meta-theoretical aspects and contexts of the pioneering book and its meta-theoretical assumptions and one major research technique, empirical indicators. The paper opens with a rebuke to the translator. It takes no notice of the basic theoretical contributions of the work. It had a dismal quality of the translation. The graduate student evidently resonated to writer Emile Durkheim's early recognition of the importance of identifying indicators and devices indices of conceptualized social realities as a basic procedure in theory-based empirical enquiry. Two kinds of reductionist theories were rejected as both were categorized as undermined by facts.

This paper explores two themes that had a significant place in Durkheim's Division of Labor: the idea that people's needs and wants vary across epoches and cultures, and the conception of societies as systems. The first leads to a rejection of efficiency as the primary driving force behind advances in the division of labor. Considering power in addition to efficiency, but also the complex conditions of trust and meaning, leads into questions of interdependence and systems analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refugees are individuals forced to flee from their homelands because of categorical persecution or because they are bystanders caught in the crossfire of war or civil strife. Such involuntary exile often leads to alienation in the most literal sense of the term. Whether expellees, escapees, or displaced persons, refugees share a common fate and, often, a common destiny: those who are dispossessed are dependent on others to provide care, succor, protection, and assistance. Yet responses to their plight are almost invariably highly selective, the quality of mercy being strained by considerations other than pure altruism. This paper, a commentary on the sociology of exile, attempts to convey the sense and significance of estrangement and responses to it in both historical and con temporary contexts. Early sections deal with concepts and concerns; later ones examine United States refugee policies and practices relating to exile, ethnicity, and the politics of rescue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accomplished sciences are distinguished by an active orientation to data. Rather than explaining passive observations or even laboratory results, these sciences put a premium on creating effects or objects never before observed. Theories provide a basic for denying the data, in showing how nature can be better organized to produce some new effect or object. In this paper, a method for constructing these theories is developed A sociological application is carried out to the point where an accomplishment is claimed. A very peculiar object is discovered - a relationship. Though it does not resemble anything we may have ever observed it offers to groping actors a guide to something that works and hence could become something that is commonly observed. Likely scruples are addressed that might block the pursuit of such accomplishments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has several objectives. First, it demonstrates the utility of employing an array of metatheoretical tools (paradigm, paradigm bridging micro -- macro, integrated paradigm, theoretical syntheses) to analyze the recent history of mainstream American sociological theory. Second, it shows that we have moved through three rather well defined epochs in sociological theory over the last three decades and are entering a fourth. Third, it demonstrates that the trend in recent years has been away from theoretical separatism and exclusivity, and toward theoretical synthesis and integration. Finally, and relatedly, the integrated sociological paradigm that I sketched a decade ago, or at least something very much like it, it shown to be now much closer to being a reality, perhaps even a defining reality, in sociological theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have typically understood access to elite positions in the social structure either in terms of a structural-functional focus on ability or a class-reproduction focus on inheritance. This paper argues, and empirically demonstrates with a study of access to Harvard College, that a political- organizational perspective incorporates and goes beyond the insights of each of these perspectives. Using concepts such as cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1977a) and organizational field (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983), hypotheses regarding who gets into Harvard College are generated and tested. Political mobilization as well as historic ties among elites are both key factors in determining admissions outcomes. Though academic merit is a prime determinant of admission to Harvard College, there was evidence that affirmative action for legacy applicants, minorities (but not Asians), athletes, and working-class males was also in effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the 1910 and 1930 Censuses of Population, this paper examines how patterns of industrial change in America's five largest cities conditioned occupational opportunities for men and women. Theoretically, cities are conceptualized as independent dimensions of the nation's stratification system. Men and women in the early part of this century, then, confronted widely varying sets of occupational possibilities depending upon where they were located with respect to the spatial division of labor in the country. Results from a shift-share analysis show that the sexual division of labor in the United States was a function of among other things, the territorial division of labor in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists tend to publish either in the form of articles in scholarly journals or in the form of hooks. This paper attempts to show that not only do specific university departments have scholarly cultures emphasizing one or the other, but that structural and demographic factors-such as location, public or private status, and size-are correlated with each. Book departments tend to be found at exclusive private universities in or near big cities on both coasts, while article-producing departments tend to be in land grant universities in the South and Midwest. Recognizing that such publication decisions are not purely scientific in nature but are also partially socially constructed ought to allow us to have more diversity in how departments structure their scholarly cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theoretical concern of this paper is with the relationship of gender, personal life, and emotion to tile social construction of scientific knowledge. I examine this question through biographical research into the life and work of William Fielding Oghurn (1886-1959), a major figure in the history of American sociology. Oghurn believed that emotion was inimical to science and that statistics could help control what he considered to he its distorting effects. My analysis suggests that there was a personal component, reflecting Ogburn's search for masculinity, to the development of his ideas about how scientific sociology should be defined and practiced. I also suggest that Ogburn's ideas were favorably received by his mostly male audience because they spoke to broad cultural and historical currents. My analysis shows the need for a view of scientific knowledge that takes into account the effects of gender relations and emotion on intellectual activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper illustrates how religiosity influences behavior in everyday life by investigating the link between religious change and alcohol consumption. Reference group and socialization theory provide theoretical grounds for understanding this relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper defends metasociology against the attacks of a particular brand of metasociological critique done in the name of scientific progress. The proponents of scientific progress often argue that metasociology does not contribute anything of substantial value to the progress of sociology as a science. In contrast, we argue that this view of metasociology is not terribly well informed. We suggest that metasociology should be thought of as a dialogue with other nearby disciplines and with contemporary political and moral conversations about the social world. One job of metasociology is to expose the assumptions of sociologists so as to make them more aware of where they stand in relation to other contemporary dialogues. We also argue that for metasociology to be taken seriously as dialogue, we must give up certain pretensions. The social grounds for meta sociology as dialogue rest , on epistemic relativism and, more importantly, on judgmental relativism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes and makes the case for sociological metatheorizing, or the systematic study of sociological theory. Three types of metatheorizing are delineated on the basis of their end products: the attainment of a deeper understanding of theory, the creation of new theory, and the creation of an overarching theoretical perspective (a metatheory). The basic problems in metatheorizing are reviewed and it is concluded that the most basic difficulty has been the lack of a clear definition of the subfield. Some thoughts on the future of metatheorizing in sociology are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to demonstrate the value of participatory action research (PAR) for advancing scientific knowledge as well as for solving practical problems. The article supports the argument through brief summaries of three PAR cases in industry: Norwegian shipping, Xerox Corporation, and the FAGOR group of the Mondragón cooperatives. While noting the practical gains achieved through PARJ the author concentrates particularly on the advances in substantive knowledge and theory that would have been unlikely to emerge out of more orthodox sociological research. The author suggests finally that wider use of participatory action research can have a stimulating effect upon the future development of sociology. [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]

Over the past twenty years, the expansion and differentiation of education in the United States have been explained in many different ways, but most explanations give little or no importance to the role of government officials pursuing their own interests. And all ignore how business's and students' influence over educational policy is due less to their direct participation in policy-making than to their ideological influence and possession of resources that policy-makers covet. In this paper, I use the case of the massive expansion of occupational education in the community college to develop an alternative explanation of educational policy-making. This analysis draws on, but also critiques, recent work in political sociology on the roles and interests of the "state managers" who head major segments of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an elaboration of Stinchcombe's model of the structure of functional explanations, this paper attempts to integrate the notions of equilibrium structures, structural contradictions, and social conflicts. It proposes that two variables of an unquestionably empirical nature can account for the distinctions among the three structural forms: (1) the emergence of a double loop in the basic structure of functional systems and (2) the embodiment of systemic, mechanical forces in the intentions and actions of persons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a two-fold addition to the growing body of literature associated with the analysis of stigma. First, we expand the role of exchange theory in the analysis, which allows closer attention to the motivation of actors, a more careful examination of the negotiated value of stigma, and an increased awareness of the ways in which stigmas affect all parties in the interaction (both marked and unmarked individuals) by altering outcomes. Second, we explore the use of stigma exploitation in the exchange process. Seven strategies are identified and discussed: eliciting special consideration, evoking selected aspects of a stereotype, avoiding a more serious stigma, avoiding interaction, using submissive manipulation, avoiding membership, and gaining membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate over the "community question" has generated several perspectives on the sources of ties to the territorial community in modern society. This paper attempts to empirically assess the utility of each model for predicting the number of ties to the local community and extra-local area, using data on voluntary association memberships in Seattle. Results indicate that the "community of limited liability" perspective is most accurate in predicting the importance of social, economic, and temporal investments for local memberships, and social position for extra-local memberships.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noting that sociology, like other disciplines, usually discusses itself as if its content-its body of knowledge-were created by a wholly intellectual process, I am adopting in this paper the approach of the sociology of knowledge by emphasizing the "existential factors" that influence knowledge. I employ the poorly developed concept of occupation, and argue that in the United States academic disciplines like sociology are best analyzed as professions, which are organized occupations. American professions sustain their present position by the functional differentiation of members into separate administrative, research or scholarship, and practice roles. Practice roles serving lay clients or patrons provide the basic economic support of the profession as a whole. The characteristic practice role of most academic arts and science disciplines is teaching. Using sociology and its special position in the under-graduate curriculum as an example, I suggest that the contingencies of teaching influence what knowledge is used, underlie at least part of the public image of the discipline, and determine some of what becomes part of the published corpus of the discipline's knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventional interpretation of the "race problem" in Peninsular Malaysia (Malaya) is founded upon the supposedly inevitable frictions between ethnic communities with sharply divergent cultural traditions. In this view, assimilation between the indigenous Malay population and the descendants of immigrants from China and India was always a remote possibility. In this paper I argue that modern "race relations" in Peninsular Malaysia, in the sense of impenetrable group boundaries, were a byproduct of British colonialism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Prior to 1850, inter-ethnic relations among Asian populations were marked by cultural stereotypes and occasional hostility, hut there were also possibilities for inter-ethnic alliances and acculturation. Direct colonial rule brought European racial theory and constructed a social and economic order structured by "race." A review of the writing of observers of colonial society provides a crude test of this hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores several conceptual problems in social deniographic studies of the status of women, including failure to recognize the multidimensionalit of women's status and its variation across social "locations," the confounding of gender and class stratification systems, and the confounding of access to resources with their control. Also discussed are some generic problems in the measurement of female status, such as the sensitivity of particular indicators to social context, and the need to select consistent comparisons when judging the extent of gender inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most theory and research on organizations assumes that the great diversity of organizational attributes reflects variation in implementation of a relatively small number of forms. Modern conceptions of organizational form concentrate on discontinuities in distributions of either attributes or relationships with other organizations. We argue that this approach be supplemented with an explicitly dynamic one that focuses on processes that create and erode boundaries in the organizational world. This paper discusses some of the advantages of this approach and specifics a number of processes that create and erode boundaries around organizational populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a note from the new editor of the journal "Sociological Forum," for the first issue processed in the Albany office in New York. The issue is similar to the issues from offices in Ithaca and Stony Brook. Two reasons for this continuity are that the papers in editorial process at Stony Brook were sent to Albany in the editorial office transition and that editors are at the mercy of the authors who submit manuscripts. The plea made to authors by editor Stephen Cole was that if one had a manuscript ready for submission, one should first think of the "Sociological Forum."