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This paper offers elaborations on current knowledge about social-movement framing processes and cognitive liberation, especially regarding technical controversies and not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) protest. The social-constructionist lens of the framing perspective also allows refinements in conventional explanations of NIMBY conflicts. Attention is given to the dynamics of emergence, continuity, and change in framing strategies over time in controversy regarding the U.S. Army's chemical-weapons disposal program. I focus specifically on dynamics involved in the development of cognitive liberation, particularly the framing difficulties that occur in the context of cognitive ambiguities produced by an "information haze." These ambiguities create problems for developing and linking the diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational elements of collective-action frames. I also attend to frame transformation, explaining how transformation may be both animated and constrained by a movement's opponent. I conclude that NIMBY is only one possible framing and can be transformed as the context of the dispute shifts. Moreover, framing activities in technical disputes may be particularly difficult due to the role of scientific rhetoric and experts in interpreting risks and shaping understandings of the situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how authority can be maintained by structuring reality through continuous violent conflict. Using Lewis Coser's reformulation of Simmers propositions on fostering continuous conflict as a raison d'ètre in sect-like struggle groups as a general frame of analysis, the Stalinist case is then examined in order to evaluate systematically these propositions in a societal context and to specify the morphology of violence as a method of conflict. By examining a societal context, it is noted that instability in the social structure not only can be a condition for the legitimacy of a problematic political leadership and system, but also simultaneously be a consequence of a form of preventive punitive sanctioning, whereby potential threats, both persons and alternative courses of action, are eliminated before they become present dangers. In turn, an official definition of reality, justifying leadership and system, is constructed through the public documentation of a conspiracy, which employs invented categories to demonstrate ideological continuity and fabricates pseudo events to demonstrate indispensability in fulfilling necessary functions. This public documentation of a conspiracy is then used as a facade for a larger plan of social prophylaxis that implicates the public as well as the police in ferreting out tangible and visible enemies to fill the invented categories in the pseudo events. As public complicity conjoins with the official definition of reality, commitment to the leadership and system is acquired. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists have frequently cited the importance of the local institutional base for bolstering social organization and control, and ultimately reducing crime rates. Local noneconomic institutions may be particularly relevant to controlling urban Black crime rates, because in the face of limited access to the legitimate labor force, access to institutions such as churches and civic organizations helps to extend social networks, increase civic engagement, transmit mainstream norms, and provide a forum from which to address community problems. This analysis examines the links between measures of access to such noneconomic institutions and Black homicide rates for a sample of large urban areas circa 1990. The results indicate that after controlling for socioeconomic disadvantage, racial inequality and various other relevant measures, institutional access is negatively associated with Black homicide rates. However, this violence constraining impact appears to be most dramatic in urban areas where Blacks are most highly segregated from Whites. Implications of these results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the question of connection between leaders' morality and the output performance of organizations; whether their morality can explain, through trust, continuity, and change of organizational cultures or not. An anthropological study of kibbutzim, whose innovative and adaptive cultures declined recently, found that past success was dependent on high-moral servant leaders who backed democracy and promoted high-trust cultures that engendered innovation by creative officers in some kibbutzim, which others imitated. However, conservatism of continuous leaders as heads of low-trust kibbutz federative organizations, which were ignored by customary kibbutz research, engendered oligarchization which rotation enhanced rather than prevented. While some authors grasp market, hierarchy, and trust as three types of social control that create plural forms, others see trust as an alternative to market and hierarchy. Capitalist firms tend to be hierarchic, low-trust, and coercive, while Israeli kibbutzim have preferred high trust and democracy.

The article connects William Julius Wilson's conceptualization of the economic and social consequences of economic restructuring with a macrolevel social control framework to help explain the increase in juvenile homicide rates observed between 1970 and 1990. Recent research in urban sociology posits that the proliferation of female-headed families in American cities is a result of declining economic prospects due to profound changes in the structure of the urban economy. Meanwhile, macro-level theory and research in criminology suggest that an association exists between family structure and rates of lethal violence among juveniles. Among these problems are increasing rates of female-headed families and juvenile homicide. One prominent theoretical account for the rise of female-headed families posits that a general increase in public assistance benefits created an enticement for out-of-wedlock childbearing and a disincentive for marriage. Alternatively, Wilson suggests that declining economic prospects caused by the transformation from a goods-based to a service-based economy rather than liberal welfare policies are responsible for the proliferation of female-headed families. In particular, Wilson posits that declining economic prospects have depressed local marriage markets and increased the reluctance of Black males to take on family responsibilities, which has resulted in increased rates of children born out of wedlock.

The article examines the social dimensions of interpersonal dispute resolution. Although the concept of social control is a primary concern of sociologists, it is rarely considered as a dependent variable. Instead, researchers and theorists alike generally attempt to describe the functions and relative merits of the various forms of social control in terms of such constructs as efficiency or effectiveness. By framing the research question in these terms, variation in the construct of interest, social control, is not explained. There are several problems with the existing dominant approach. First, most studies evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of various forms of formal and informal social control. A large body of literature addresses the issue of deterrence. General deterrence studies usually evaluate whether the presence of police, a high arrest rate, or a high crime clearance rate drives down the subsequent rate of crime. A second problem with the existing paradigm is that its focus is often on explaining rates of crime or victimization at the aggregate level. The most serious problem with this is that definitions of crime vary both across time and across social space.

Media constructions of social problems usually rework the claims of activists and other primary claimsmakers. However, the news media acted as primary claimsmakers in discovering and reporting the 1987 Los Angeles freeway violence problem. The press drew upon cultural resources in constructing this problem, applying a conventional template for social problems stories and using familiar imagery to depict freeway shootings. The social organization of claimsmaking, as well as contingencies in the histories of individual campaigns, affect the choice of cultural resources used to construct social problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines Smelser's value-added theory of collective behavior. According to Smelser, six determinants are necessary for the development of a social movement: structural conduciveness, structural strain, generalized beliefs, precipitating factors, mobilization of participants, and social control. As a test of this analytic framework, two Melanesian cargo cult movements and the general history of these movements are investigated. On the basis of a historical and comparative analysis that relies upon both primary and secondary sources, the six factors outlined in the theory are shown to be present. The relevance of these findings for the explanation of social movements is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on repression and criminal justice in the U.S. The mechanisms through which society establishes broadly shared values and through which the individual members agree upon goals consistent with these values and strategies sufficient to these goals has and continues to be, a central concern in the study of social control. The concept of "social control" has been a central theme throughout the history of academic sociology. Historically and fundamentally the concept of "social control" has focused upon the "capacity of society to regulate itself according to desired principles and values. Social control and the mutual subordination of individual members to the community have their origins in conflict, assume definite organized forms in the process of accommodations, and are consolidated and fixed in assimilation. The existence of mutually agreed upon values, goals and strategies is seen from a classical social control perspective to benefit equally all groups agreeing upon them; and tautologically, the existence of agreement is often taken as an indicator of equal benefit, with the interests of no group being subordinated to those of another.