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This paper is an inquiry into how a new truth about sleepiness is being produced in a society increasingly organized around the primacy of expertise and its representation in print and visual media. Sleepiness originally described a benign, naturally occurring corporeal moment, a precursor to sleep. Increasingly, however, a new and disturbing meaning of somnolence is found in a juncture of medical and epidemiological research, social movements, and popular culture. Alongside the idea that sleepiness is a tranquil promise of repose is another, emerging truth. Sleepiness, we are told, is hazardous to self and others, and, importantly, it is each person's responsibility to resist this seductive call of the body. How, we ask, is a private, routinely occurring state of partial consciousness deprivatized, linked to public health vernaculars, and transformed into a reprobate condition? This alternative, disturbing truth about sleepiness is shown to be emerging from several disparate, seemingly unrelated caches of scientific studies, social movement literatures, magazines and newspapers, and web sites. The ideas of Michel Foucault, who pioneered the contemporary study of discourse, are shown to be particularly apropos to this inquiry, though not without some modification to make them more amenable to a contemporary society shaped increasingly by what Zygmunt Bauman calls “liquid modernity.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the stratification among African American women by skin color on indices such as education, income, and spousal status. How racial and colonial ideologies situate whiteness and blackness as symbolic representations in relation to one another and the subsequent systems of discrimination that develop from those ideologies is the crux of the theoretical argument in this paper. Infusing the concept of constructed notions of beauty into this racial paradigm further elaborates this process for African American women. I hypothesized that light-skinned women would have higher educational attainment, higher personal incomes and would be more likely to many high-status husbands than would darker-skinned women. Even when controlling for background variables, all three of the hypotheses are confirmed and the significance of skin color, particularly the privileging of lightness, is demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between psychological disciplines and inequality has been a subject of great scholarly interest in the last several decades. Most works on the subject analyze macro features of psychological disciplines (mainly their evaluative tools, theoretical assumptions, and disciplinary power) and criticize them as biased against minorities. This paper re-examines the relationship between psychology and inequality from a micro, face-to-face standpoint. Drawing on close observations of 33 placement committees in which professionals from various psychological fields (psychology, social work, school counseling, etc.) discuss children’s eligibility for special education services, it portrays the actual doing of psychology as an inconsistent and malleable endeavor. In contrast to the macro-oriented research on the relationship between psychology and inequality, it shows that in actual face-to-face interactions, professionals use different types of folk concerns that often exchange formal evaluative criteria, theoretical assumptions or professional authority in final placement decisions. By revealing the different folk considerations professionals use to sort and analyze working- versus middle-class parents, this project adds an essential layer to scholarly understanding of the relationship between psychological practice and inequality.

This paper discusses the findings from an ethnographic study of childcare. It examines employed mothers and their experiences with sending their young children to childcare centers, and childcare workers and their perspectives on their work. In this 2-year-long research project, I studied two large, urban childcare centers, one independent, non-profit and one part of a national, for-profit chain. Methods included participant observation, in-depth interviewing, and focus groups. I found that mothers' experiences with childcare are shaped by three factors: (1) cultural messages; (2) feelings of anxiety and guilt; and (3) the perceived quality of the childcare. I explore these three factors and discuss how the mothers are affected by the 'intensive mothering' ideology. For the childcare workers, their work is affected by: (1) the level of respect and economic rewards they receive, (2) their commitment to the children, and (3) their role as expert or authority and other issues of power. By examining the two groups of women together, it becomes clear that both groups of women face interwoven challenges in a culture that devalues children and childrearing, and that alliances to address these interwoven concerns are essential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the author arranges some of the major treatments of alienation within a coherent framework. He introduces a distinction between disassociation (certain specified objective conditions) and alienation (a specified experience) and articulates the relationship between these two by presenting a series of intervening psychological issues. A typology of human association is presented, and it is argued that especially two types of disassociation (i.e., marginality and subordination) and, to some extent, another (i.e., privilege) may be productive of alienation These conditions are considered at the cultural, social, and psychological levels of analysis. Variables connecting these conditions and alienation include the perception of the condition, evaluation, integration, blame, and response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A model of the role acquisition process is proposed based on data from 310 first-person written narratives of a single role entrance. Content analysis of data set II (N = 110) of narratives, which included forty-seven different roles, provides support for the model. The model conceptualizes role acquisition as involving a sequence of four stages. characterized as (1) ambivalence. (2) absorption, (3) commitment, and (4) confidence, in which each stage involves a qualitatively different interaction between the person and the role: a different affective orientation on the part of the person toward the role, and a qualitatively different relationship between the person and role partners. Common features and heterogeneous effects of role type, social context, cognitive processes, and other factors at each stage are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines membership and participation in neighborhood improvement associations. Individual-level and contextual-level structural variables associated with the community of limited liability model are important for the decision to join associations but not to participate in them. Also, social ties in the community are more important than psychological attachment for both membership and participation. However, neither social ties nor attachment serve as intervening variables in the relationship between structural variables and membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on culture identity and dress. The sociology of dress is a vibrant field, exploring intriguing theoretical, methodological, and empirical domains. During the mid-twentieth century, clothing scholars began investigating the sociological and psychological implications of dress and appearance. In 1989, a group met to discuss the direction of the analysis of dress. The published papers from that meeting considered a wide range of topics, including identity, social psychology, cultural anthropology and sociology, semiotics, affect and cognition, social construction of gender, literary analysis, as well as qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Recent textbooks in the area continue to thaw from sociology and other fields to refine theories of dress and human behavior. Related to the misperception that dress only applies to the psychology of the self is the notion that dress is trivial both substantively and theoretically. Perhaps sociologists' neglect of dress might also be linked to a misperception that it is nonrational behavior similar to other actions that do not lend themselves to systematic analysis. Again these articles provide a contrasting view. In organizational and institutional settings, such as greedy organizations, total institutions, and mass media, dress and all it symbolizes are debated and discussed in ways that can be studied scientifically. Further, all of the articles have identified patterns in how dress is used in identity embracing and distancing that can be incorporated into broader theoretical frameworks.

While prior research has explored how gender frames emotion management processes, little work has specifically examined the links between men's emotion management in a caring profession and theory on masculine emotionality. Stereotyped as less sensitive to their own and others' emotions, male nurses confront unique challenges in navigating the profession's emotional demands. Drawing on men's diaries and interviews, I examine emergent emotion-based processes that characterize men's emotional labor-the strategies men use to manage their own and patient emotions on the job. In managing their own emotion, men's narratives reveal three distinct strategies: reframing the nurse role, distancing, and relinquishing situational control. In managing patient emotions, they frame control over their own emotions as a means for managing others and emphasize knowledge/education as a strategy for managing patient stress and anxiety. While both male and female nurses may engage these strategies, men's emotion management implicates the simultaneous reproduction and disruption of hegemonic masculinity and the reason/emotion dualisms that undergird the current gender system. Implications for masculinity and emotion management theory, as well as recruiting, training, and retaining male nurses are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a cultural analysis of the practice of 'acting white' in a society where the distinction between black and white is vague and primarily symbolic and where the hegemonic discourse denies the existence of ethnic inequality and encourages ethnic integration. In the Israeli context, acting white or passing (in Hebrew, hishtaknezut or ' Ashkenazification') refers to mimicking the habitus of the dominant ( European) ethnic group. Based on qualitative research, we argue that hishtaknezut is the cultural script offered by Israeli society in response to both the national discourse of the 'ingathering of the exiles' and the neoliberal demand for identities devoid of ethnic markers as a precondition for economic mobility. However, the concept of hishtaknezut functions as a shaming interpellation highlighting both the act of mimicry and its inherent failure. Passing as 'white' in Israel entails a twofold sense of shame, over both one's ethnic origin and the concealment of that origin by mimicking another group. This practice carries with it an individual, apolitical stigma that reaffirms the neoliberal, non-ethnic perception of Israeli society. The prevalence of Ashkenazification, along with its signification of imperfection, attests to the perpetuation of the ethnic order in Israel, which relies on an Orientalist discourse that distinguishes between 'worthy' social positions and 'unworthy' ones from which one must escape to achieve social privileges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differences in health between racial groups in the United States are significant and persistent. Many studies have documented these differences as a result of a variety of different social factors. An emerging emphasis is the impact of racism in its various forms on physical and mental health. Social stress theory conceptualizes racism as a social stresssor which can produce negative health consequences for racial minorities. This study uses binary logit and negative binomial regression models of four items from the 2004 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) to test social stress theory and examine the relationship between stress symptoms from perceived racism and overall health ( N = 32,585). The effect of race on the experience of emotional and physical stress symptoms from racism is substantial. Furthermore, experiencing both emotional and physical stress from perceived racist treatment is an important factor in predicting the number of poor mental and physical health days, indicating that the experience of stress from perceived racism is related to overall poorer health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how a group of women recently released from prison as parolees attempt to sustain their exit from deviant careers by constructing replacement selves. To examine this process, I analyze semi-structured interviews with female ex-offenders and show how they draw on work as a hook for change (Giordano et al. 2002) in their unfolding identity work. Contrary to traditional gendered scripts, these women view themselves as active participants in the world of work. Upon release not only do they desire to work to meet financial needs, but they also use employment as an avenue through which they begin to construct pro-social replacement selves. Drawing on longitudinal qualitative data, I point out that as time on the outside passed, many of the women continued to use work as a way to fashion new conventional selves despite their experiences with low-quality working conditions. I also provide evidence, however, that when women experience significant employment instability, they are unable to sustain their hopeful identity project and, instead, reengage their past deviant selves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Welfare reformers sought to reduce “dependency,” or reliance on state-supported cash benefits and deployed a discourse of “self-sufficiency” to promote the legitimacy of efforts to remove welfare recipients from publicly funded cash assistance through either wage labor or marriage. We use longitudinal, qualitative interview data collected from 38 initially welfare-reliant women to examine what self-sufficiency means to them and their perspectives on how work and marriage affect their ability to be self-sufficient. Grounded theory analysis revealed that for these women, self-sufficiency means formal independence from both the state (i.e., Temporary Assistance to Needy Families [TANF]) and men (i.e., marriage). Although they value marriage as an institution and would ideally marry, they do not consider marriage to be a likely route to self-sufficiency given the pool of men available to them. Rather, they embrace their own market-based wage labor as the means by which they can attain some measure of independence. Taking our lead from the women in this study, we challenge the emphasis on marriage in current welfare policy. We argue that employment training that results in better jobs for women and men and work supports that make low-wage work pay are clearly the appropriate direction for policy aimed at the welfare-reliant and working poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tamotsu Shibutani is a contemporary proponent of the Chicago School of pragmatic sociology who has devoted his academic efforts to using the Chicago School of pragmatism to analyze problems of contemporary social life and to refine the theoretical tools available to the discipline of sociology. He has evaluated such topics as the Japanese relocation centers, the racial construction of rumor, demoralization in Army life, the dynamics of ethnic stratification, and the resolution of ethnic tension. Shibutani's books on social psychology and general sociology synthesize micro and macro variables, with careful attention to both agency and social control. His work is free of metaphysical puzzles and is true to the scientific method, clearly reflecting the essence of the Chicago School of pragmatic sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legitimation of federal funding of social, economic, and behavioral science research faced a major challenge with the budget reductions of the Reagan Administration in 1981-1982. This article reviews the history of support and opposition to the social sciences in NSF and the collective response of the social science research community to the budget cutbacks. The consequences for research directions as a result of retrenchment and for the future of social science support in NSF are elaborated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past several centuries, our culture has been permeated by the idea that growth and progress are the hallmarks by which to judge the world. Today this ideology appears to be declining in proximate proportion to the rise of an environmental ideology (environmental paradigms in academic literature). It is shown that in the process of becoming ideological, these paradigms (the antithesis of the progress ideology) have become more convincing to those both reside and outside academia by adding an understanding to our past, present, and future It is proposed that major ideologies are, unlike the progress ideology, structurally similar, and that academic environmental paradigms duplicate this dominant ideological pattern. This dominant pattern theme is demonstrated by first contrasting the concepts paradigm and ideology, illustrating how they merge conceptually, and verifying the similarity of two historically major ideologies, Marxism and Christianity, with environmental paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an attempt to describe and then discuss how and why and with what consequence, the psychoanalytic viewpoint, albeit trimmed, truncated, vulgarized and sweetened, came so much, so deeply and so soon to perfuse American thought. The essay is now fifteen to twenty years old, and the questions are as to what has ensued since that time what defects, describable then and merely deficiencies of analysis, or describable only in the light of subsequent unfolding events are now identifiable and definable. In contrast, with those who live by the liberative art of psychoanalysis, for those who view the problem of human healing or whole-making with its strangely unhuman view of what it is to be human as a science. Since psychoanalysis lends itself less, indeed somewhat unreadily to such uses, it becomes at least for the moment, spinster in this sphere of powerful social marriages, and thus to a degree "irrelevant" to the struggle mounting toward crisis for the next revolutionary phase in the life of humanity or for its indefinite delay, crippling.

While religious organizations are not concerned with cognitive dissonance, per se, their concerns with acquiring new members, maintaining member beliefs, obtaining member commitments and deterring members from leaving, are all affected by their abilities to manage (avoid, tolerate and exploit) dissonance experienced by those persons. Conceptualizing dissonance as a socially negotiable phenomenon, a sociological version of dissonance is examined in the context of religious recruitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]