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Interest in the structure and dynamics of sociology as a discipline has led to recurrent attempts to measure the prestige, productivity, and quality of education of the various sociology departments. While several previous papers have suggested the potential value of the Science Citation Index (SCI) as a measure of scientific standing, few attempts have been made to utilize a citation-based measure of scientific prestige. This paper considers the meaning of the citation in science and in stratification theory. Procedures are described whereby citations to individual sociologists and journal are employed to yield rankings of departments of sociology and journals. The differences between these rankings and other rankings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on a study, which examines the extent of non-employment among black males across 64 metropolitan areas in 1980, testing social scientist Albert Szymanski's thesis of functional substitutability of women and black workers in the post-World War II period. Evidence is presented to show that black male non-employment is partially the result of increased white female employment. The paper concludes with the suggestion that in the United States labor displacement in the post-World War II economy has worked cross-genderly when race is taken into account. The U.S. economy has changed, moving from the production of goods to the production of services. Many of the job losses associated with this shift have been in the manufacturing sector. However, the decline in manufacturing employment has not proceeded evenly. The shift in manufacturing has reduced employment opportunities for unskilled and semi-skilled white males and has led to a serious erosion of white working class male employment during the 1970's and 1980's. The results indicate that black males have competed with white females for employment during the postwar period, supporting Szymanski's finding of functional substitutability between the two groups, as well as racial variants of labor market que theory.

The justifications scientists use when starting new journals often rely on ‘indigenous theories’ which represent their particular cognitive communities. In an analysis of new journal editorials, this paper examines these indigenous theories, together with the images of scientific community they contain, and compares them with the images of science which exist in the sociological literature. As evidenced in the editorials, scientists share with sociologists a concern for the question of whether the manner in which science grows is prescriptive for, or creates obligations for, the community of researchers or instead, the community of researchers constitutes, or produces by conscious efforts, what comes to be accepted as authoritative in the particular scientific community. Douglas' grid/group model is used as an interpretive tool to map the two dimensions of concern in this question and suggests some differences between discipline groups and some changes over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many neighborhoods in U.S. cities that were once predominantly black and poor have become largely white and middle class. The process of gentrification has fundamentally changed neighborhoods—and metropolises—throughout the United States. Using in‐depth, in‐person interview data from black and white young adults in two Buffalo, New York, neighborhoods, we seek to more fully develop the economic, social, and cultural explanations that draw new residents to such neighborhoods. The racial and neighborhood comparisons also allow us to make sense of gentrifiers' residential and housing choices. Several themes are developed from the data including neighborhood popularity, cost, and diversity. The data also reveal two types of gentrifiers: mindful and perfunctory. Mindful gentrifiers include residents who think about their socioeconomic footprint and issues such as displacement; perfunctory gentrifiers are more generally concerned with the amenities of a neighborhood. As city planners, social scientists, and others seek to improve the outcomes associated with gentrification, debates will benefit from detailed insights about young adults' residential decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author introduces a series of articles that present highly divergent views on the present and future of sociology. The sciences command serious consideration for their rule-driven inquiries. Sociology, having failed to establish powerful rules, compels no such attention. Respect for science is respect for an enterprise transcending its participants. Unless they are themselves giants, individual physicists, chemists, or biologists, for example, must subordinate their analytic individuality to the collectively held paradigms that dominate their disciplines. Individual imagination is certainly useful, but it is not a necessary precondition to successful participation. Knowing the rules and being willing to work within them do, however, constitute such preconditions. In a literal sense, science constitutes an establishment and, like all establishments, it views the exercise of originality with discomforting suspicion. Sociology is in need of saving, but not from its perceived inadequacies. These can be tolerated so long as sociologists able to produce compelling alternatives do so. No, sociology needs to be saved from the silence of those most qualified to speak.

This article talks about John Ronald Seeley, a sociologist. No one who knows him at all well could doubt its accuracy, its sincerity, or its relevance to the vision Seeley has maintained throughout his career. Although Seeley is best known for his work as senior author of "Crestwood Heights," which, after twenty years, remains the most penetrating study ever made of the life and values and, especially, the education, of a suburban community. In TAMOTU, Seeley often expresses his trust in the untrustworthy in the course of a masterful piece of social analysis which fully demonstrates that he knows better. does not mince words. Seeley is no courtier, but rather the contrary, a perceptive psychotherapist, tactfully but firmly letting the patient know that though his ruses have been detected, the therapist's faith in his basic goodness and capacity for growth remains intact. The relationship between social institutions and those on whom they bear has entered a new and harsher phase in which the role of the social scientist as mediator is no longer accepted-for reasons explicit in Seeley's text.

This article focuses on the social construction of documentary reality. A documentary reality is fundamental to the practices of governing, managing and administration of this form of society. The primary mode of action and decision in the superstructures of business, government, the professions, and other like agencies, is in symbols, whether words, mathematical symbols or some other. It is a mode of action which depends upon a reality constituted in documentary form. The social scientist's ordinary knowledge of her society originates in and depends upon these documentary forms. This is more, much more, than merely her use of statistical and other information produced by census bureau, departments of health welfare agencies, internal revenue departments and the like. The organization which actuality acquires in the accomplishment of a fact is not simply an explication of an order which is already perceived, though it may sometimes be just that. But it is important to recognize that facts are constructed in a context of telling. The organization that is created aims at this telling and aims therefore at the purposes for which it will be told. The selection of categories and conceptual procedures expresses that structure of relevance.

The article focuses on the developments related to the periodical "Sociological Inquiry." The author would like to congratulate his predecessor, professor Harry Johnson, for the excellent job he did in editing the journal "Sociological Inquiry" and for the high quality of the manuscripts published during his tenure. The author would also like to thank him for the aid he has given him during the transition period. This issue as well as Volumes 52, Number 2 and 52, Number 3 contain manuscripts which were accepted and processed during the time Professor Johnson was editor. Alpha Kappa Delta (AKD) is the International Sociology Honor Society. Its purpose is to promote an interest in sociology, sociological research, and other social and intellectual activities concerned with the human condition. "Sociological Inquiry" is the official journal of Alpha Kappa Delta. It is designed to implement the scientific aims of AKD by communicating and reviewing developments of sociological interest in the service of faculty, investigators, and students alike. Since the journal has a broad constituency, to meet its objectives it must maintain a perspective general enough to cater to the interests and needs of sociologists and other social scientists with differing theoretical and methodological backgrounds engaged in a wide variety of activities in and out of academia. Thus it supports no particular theoretical, methodological or substantive area interest, but in a larger sense is concerned with them all.

This issue of "Sociological Inquiry" presents a new and rather exciting feature which I believe will be of great interest to the readers of this journal. They are, for the first time, publishing the winning paper of the Alpha Kappa Delta (AKD) undergraduate paper competition. The editorial advisory board strongly recommended publishing the winning paper as "Sociological Inquiry" is, after all, the official journal of AKD, the international sociology honorary society. They also know that many of their subscribers are students. The editor hope that they enjoy this rather unique look at an aspect of human society that has been virtually untouched by sociologists. As they read this article, he hope also that they come away with a sense of satisfaction with knowing that the next generation of sociologists is being well trained in their discipline. Recognizing that much of this behavior has little to do with intended suicide, and cannot necessarily be linked to other pathologies, Sarah Hodgson interviews individuals who engage in this type of self mutilation through online chat rooms. Her analysis reveals several layers of learning that take place, as well as numerous mechanisms that are employed to maintain their credibility in a society that otherwise stigmatizes such behavior.

This article focuses on the need for sociologists to understand governmental process relevant to the conduct of researches in social science. The author of this paper opposes the premise that sociologists have a history of ethical violations. However, the author still encourages sociologists to comprehend the functions of the government for the reason that researchers can wreak harm in their handling of data. It is also a must for sociologists to have an ethical foundation in their conduct of fieldwork for social research.

Macrostructural analyses have long dominated the field of social theories of modernity, with the work of Habermas, Giddens, and Beck providing influential cases in point. Empirical studies, however, have raised questions about the applicability and empirical soundness of macrostructural approaches to risks, technology, and nature, and U.S.-based sociologists have offered alternative theories that have been identified in some studies as providing better predictions and explanations than the macrostructural analyses. Informed by all of the above theories, this article examines the “Atoms for Peace” program, which established the civilian uses of nuclear energy, providing one of the central scientific and technological achievements of modernity. Given the mixed results of nuclear technology development, the mid-range, structurally informed perspectives of Short and other U.S.-based sociologists do appear to provide the best interpretations, both for the “Atoms for Peace” program and for the broader legacy of the technological and environmental risks of modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the question of students' approach to understanding the social world. To explore this question the authors created and administered the Luck and Superstition Questionnaire to 426 students taking Introduction to Sociology. It was found that nearly 70 percent of students indicate some level of test-related superstitious practice. However, it was also found that superstitious practice was largely unrelated to religious belief and practice, gender and race, educational performance and grade expectations, and end-of-semester pressures. Sociology is guided by the rational orientation and empirical methods that are hallmarks of modem Western societies. This rational orientation takes the external world as something to be understood and mastered through the tools of empiricism-systematic observation, description, hypothesis testing, and experimentation. Sociologists are committed to a rational approach which is often evident in the way they test their students. They believe that students should master the concepts, theories, and relevant applications in the field of sociology.

This article argues that the epistemic and ethical implications of surrendering sociological privilege underlying the debate among qualitative sociologists over the "crisis of representation," is much about values as much as epistemology. Nowhere are the links between epistemological, political, and ethical issues more visible than in the recent highly polarized debate among qualitative sociological researchers over the "crisis of representation." The crisis of representation involves a profound questioning of ethnography's claims to scientific objectivity and, in turn, the authority of the ethnographer's account. In sociology, a group of self-consciously postmodern researchers see themselves as a "loosely defined interpretive community," which is, nevertheless, carrying out a "quiet revolution" against conventional, realist ways of doing qualitative research. While these postmodern ethnographers are relatively few in number, their critique is important because it raises serious questions about qualitative sociology's reason for being and its method of doing.

Sociologists have paid much attention to the phenomenon of ideology. In particular, there have been numerous efforts to develop theories of ideology formation from a Marxist perspective. However, one finds that such efforts almost without exception deal with shared beliefs which are characteristic of western, industrial societies. Ideologies of so-called primitive societies, such as Native American tribes, remain largely neglected by Marxist analysis. This can be explained in large measure by the fact that Marxist analysis, with its emphasis on relations of production, is ill-equipped to deal with Native American beliefs. Relations of production art an appropriate focal point for explaining the ideology of the European, industrial tradition. They are not useful in accounting for Native American ideology, which must be viewed as land-based rather than production-based. Awareness of this difference leads to an appreciation of the influence of land and nature upon Native American thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data collected from sixty-five nonacademic employers, who either advertised in the ASA Employment Bulletin between January 1979 and January 1981 or who registered with the employment service at the ASA annual meetings in 1979 or 1980, we examine what nonacademic employers are looking for when they recruit sociologists, how they recruit such employees, what tasks employers assign sociologists, and what they perceive to be the major shortcomings of sociologists they have hired Guiding the inquiry is our belief that programs and policies for expanding nonacademic job opportunities and the arguments for increasing the emphasis placed on applied sociology in graduate training have been more concerned with molding individuals to fit certain perceived occupational rules outside of academia than with training sociologists. We suggest that an uncritical acceptance of the nature of demand in the current labor market may ultimately lead to a deskilling of the sociological profession and the homogenization of the nonacademic labor markets open to social scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the emergence of two different traditions in the sociology of science in the U.S. and Great Britain, the differences resulting from the different backgrounds and professional functions of the sociologists of science in the two countries. In Great Britain, sociology of science is much younger and has had a history very different from that in the United States. British sociologists of science have been much more concerned with critical evaluation of existing research and with attempts at creating a sociology of scientific knowledge. On the whole, they have been critical of structural functional analysis, and their view of science has tended to be much more realistic than in the United States. American tradition preceded the British one, and part of the difference between them is probably due to the fact that the British tradition emerged at a time when the American tradition was in a state of transition and when structural functionalism was also being strongly criticized in the United States.

This article focuses on the sociology of science. The sociology of science is well established as a specialty in research and in teaching. When something is widely defined as a social problem in modern Western society, it becomes a proper object for study. And science is now considered by many to be, if not a social problem itself, the cause of significant social problems. Concern about science from a sociological perspective has produced the development of a specialty that, characteristically, has followed paths similar to the development of scientific specialties generally. At the beginning, the primary theoretical perspective involved what has come to be called Mertonian sociology of science. Mertonian sociology of science is based on the idea that the social institution of science can be studied as any other social institution. As an institutionalized activity, science has goals and proceeds, through the various social processes, to realize its goals. This conception naturally leads to a variety of questions familiar to all sociologists.

This article focuses on a general framework for studying hegemonic processes and draw on a number of recent studies that bear on one or another aspect of the phenomenon. The approach attempts to take balanced account of all of these aspects of social reality, rejecting simple claims of primacy while drawing selectively on both structuralist and phenomenological insights regarding hegemony. The essence of social reality is the ensemble of relationships that people have established and continually either reproduce or modify with each other and with their non-human environment Social scientists' effort to construct theoretical frameworks encompassing social reality have generally become preoccupied with particular aspects of the relations between subject and object and/or relations involving materialist and ideational factors. The relations of production include both peoples relations to the objects and means of production and peoples' relations with each other through production processes.

This article discusses the five sets of pseudo-technocracy. It notes that many social scientists are likely to contribute to the development of a pseudo-technocracy. The present situation seems ripe for the emergence of pseudo-technocratic sectors, particularly around the economy. Pseudo-technocracy is propelled by five sets of themes. One, the great dismay with politics and politicians is not leading to the making of new heroes; Two, the waning of the cold war cuts integrative bonds in U.S. society; Three, economic difficulties will continue. Inflation and recession, more severe than those of the Sixties; Fourth, important groups in big business are determined to reduce the public sector, especially the federal, and lower taxes on corporations and high-income people; Fifth, the push of the discriminated-women and blacks mainly-in a time of economic distress will lead increasingly to the offering of the defense of the need for and existence of a meritocracy.