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Social scientists have expressed strong views on corporate influences over science, but most attention has been devoted to broad, Black/White arguments, rather than to actual mechanisms of influence. This paper summarizes an experience where involvement in a lawsuit led to the discovery of an unexpected mechanism: A large corporation facing a multibillion-dollar court judgment quietly provided generous funding to well-known scientists (including at least one Nobel prize winner) who would submit articles to “open,” peer-reviewed journals, so that their “unbiased science” could be cited in an appeal to the Supreme Court. On balance, the corporation’s most effective techniques of influence may have been provided not by overt pressure, but by encouraging scientists to continue thinking of themselves as independent and impartial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four essentially independent conceptions of the population problem are visible in current discussions. One is derived from macroeconomics, one from microeconomics, one from the health sciences, and one from ethical concerns about the just relation between man and nature. After describing these conceptions, this paper addresses the population problem principally using the economic definitions. It cites five reasons why discussions of the economic hazards posed by population growth have become markedly less alarmist in the past decade. Failures of highly quantified input-output models to account for human progress are emphasized. The paper presents examples of how technical demography has shed light on the dimensions of and solutions to the population problem and concludes with a brief discussion of contemporary population problems in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores changes in the meaning of privacy. Because individuals’ understandings and experiences of privacy vary by sociohistorical contexts, privacy is difficult to define and even more challenging to measure. Avoiding common obstacles to privacy research, I examine privacy from the standpoint of its invasion. I develop a typology of privacy invasions and use it to analyze discussions of invasions of privacy in U.S. newspapers. I show that the nature of invasions discussed in the news is increasingly covert and continuous and find empirical support for the often-made claim that the concept of privacy is evolving in meaningful ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identity choices of multiracial individuals with Black heritage have traditionally been limited in America by the one-drop rule, which automatically designated them as Black. This paper evaluates the rule’s contemporary influence and argues that, with increasing interracial marriage, options in racial identification are now available to this group. Using the 5% 1990 and 2000 Public Use Microdata Samples, I consider how children from Black intermarriages are racially identified by their families and, using 2000 data, evaluate theoretical hypotheses to explain identification processes. The results show that most families with Black intermarriages reject the one-drop rule, but that Black-White families create unique interracial options, the implications of which are considered. [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]

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]

The author do not see a conflict between roles of social scientist and social critic. On the contrary, the author has always felt obligated not just to undertake the most rigorous scientific research, but also to disseminate the results of that research to the widest possible audience. After all, some aspect of demography underlies nearly every political issue of import, and as a concerned citizen the author has a duty to speak out whenever demographic facts or analysis are relevant to an ongoing public debate. Most of author's research has been funded by American taxpayers, who likewise have a right to know how their taxes are spent. Moreover, the part not funded by taxpayers was paid for by private foundations, which also expect some return on their investment besides a few boring articles in journals that no one but a few graduate students and professors will ever read. Thus, the author believe, that demographers, especially those in federally funded population centers, owe it to the public to be accessible and forthcoming about their research and its implications. As a critical demographer, the author has found himself addressing the public in four different ways.

In sociology, work in formal theory is more extensive and intensive today than at any time in the past, but remains invisible to some, including S. Zhao [(1996) "The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning: The Theory Construction Movement Revisited," Sociological Forum, Vol 11, No. 2, pp. 305-318]. I trace the growth of formal theory in sociology focusing on theoretical research programs and show that, whereas formal theory came after the books on theory construction, it was not based on them. Elementary Theory's research program provides an example of that discontinuity. Some misunderstandings concerning formal theory can be traced to the Maryland Theory Conference of 1990 and a critique of selected ideas of that Conference is offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the twentieth year of the "Sociological Forum" periodical in the U.S. in 2005. Since the first issues under its founding editor Robin M. Williams Jr. in 1986, the periodical has tried to encourage critical analytical exchanges among sociologists. In its pages, implicit and explicit 'conversations' between scholars debate the ideas that rule our intellectual lives. Contested facts, alternative methodologies, opposing theories, competing perspectives and distinctive world views punctuate those conversations. The March 2005 issue of the "Sociological Forum" offers a group of articles that effectively represent a range of these conversations, each in its own way issuing a challenge to other scholars.

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]

In-depth interview data reveal that workplace context and the social characteristics of clients and coworkers play an important role in shaping how upwardly mobile individuals experience class at work. While respondents did discuss their working-class backgrounds as a liability, as might be expected, they also described ways in which they experience their backgrounds as an occupational asset. These findings challenge the notion of a linear relationship between class and culture, suggesting instead a complex, fluid relationship between class, culture, and occupation, where the “class” of a job does not necessarily determine the class culture needed for that job. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do agencies of social control construct understandings of their targets, and how do these constructions shape subsequent outcomes? In the case of the FBI's counterintelligence programs (COINTELPROs), agents in the field avoided organizational sanctions by using personal characteristics of targets to justify counterintelligence action, particularly in the absence of disruptive political activities by otherwise “worthy” targets. Specifically, agents drew upon predictable deviance narratives to validate official frames produced at the top of the FBI hierarchy, thereby structuring the allocation of counterintelligence action against purported security threats. Our findings point to the importance of considering such intra-organizational negotiations to understand the mechanisms through which interpretive schema connect to the outcomes of contentious political interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What decides the paths of social policy and movement activity after movements “succeed”? This study compares the policy trajectories in Sweden and the United States after the decriminalization victories regarding abortion in the 1970s, considering unintended and unwanted outcomes as well as movement goals. Divergent institutional, cultural, and political environments, predating the rise of abortion movements in the 1960s, steered future developments, including the organization of abortion services, public understandings, and sociopolitical conflict, in different directions. By linking insights from social movement and social policy approaches, we better understand how environmental opportunities and constraints shape such trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]