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This article is a commentary to Benjamin Singer's essay on the criterial crisis in academe. It highlights several issues about which young academics and their elders routinely kitbitz at campus watering holes. Singer's lament is fundamentally an embroidery on lunchroom complaints and coffeehouse chatter dressed up with headings and a fine bibliography. Cynics may conclude that his article a good example of the "proliferation of journals and redundant and useless papers." And others may wonder, in the interests of reflexivity, whether Singer's paper was submitted to other journals before it was accepted by Sociological Inquiry and whether the paper as published was exempt from the vagaries and vicissitudes of peer review that Singer deplores. Since Singer suggests that few published papers are ever read, he will no doubt be surprised that his was discovered among the hundreds of sociological journals in our university library and that my reading of his work prompted the following observations about sociological publishing and tenure decisions.

The article presents authors personal thoughts on the pursuit of sociological problems. The author intends to retrace his steps along one path of his intellectual career--the path that links two books, titled, "Social Change in the Industrial Revolution," and "Theory of Collective Behavior," and a number of recent articles and papers on sociological theory and psychological theory. The main emphasis in the article was on the need for a determinate synthesis of the several classes of variables that are essential for the explanation of collective behavior such as cultural, social, psychological, ecological and other variables. In attempting to sort out the major influences on his choice of sociological problems, he resorts to a device that he find congenial and helpful: to arrange these influences in a series extending from very general, predisposing influences which have steered his intellectual interests to the very specific, immediate influences that have determined a particular strategy of analysis in working on a sociological problem.

This paper uses data from campus newspapers at two large Midwestern universities to examine local claimsmaking about the problem of sweatshops and anti-sweatshop activism on each campus. Although student activists at both schools sought to solve the same problem (i.e., the manufacture of university-licensed apparel by sweatshop labor) with the same solution (i.e., convincing their university administrations to join the Workers’ Rights Consortium, a sweatshop monitoring organization), what was ostensibly the same issue was constructed in very different ways in the claims found in the two newspapers. Drawing on the concept of“local culture,” our analysis illustrates how claimsmakers at each campus used locally and situationally embedded interpretive resources both to establish the problem of sweatshops and to present solutions to this problem. We use these findings to draw implications for both social problems theory and the study of social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the literature providing reasons for why battered women“stay” in abusive relationships and examines the emergence of images of battered women as“survivors” in early and contemporary activists’ discourses, drawing on ideas from social constructionist approaches to social problems, identity, and deviance to explore this phenomenon. Most of the early representations of battered women I analyze emphasize their emotionality and their victimization, while the more recent constructions of this collective identity discussed here emphasize their rationality and their agency. Both“victim” and“survivor” typifications provide accounts for why battered women stay in violent relationships, thus providing a vocabulary of motive for this oft-imputed“deviance.” Constructing battered women as survivors, however, may also remediate some of the stigma that can attach to victimization more generally. After situating victim and survivor discourses and considering how the image of a survivor may meet normative expectations that a victim image perhaps violates, I briefly discuss some implications of these alternate collective identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perhaps one of the most obvious yet difficult questions confronting sociologists concerned with large-scale environmental problems is an epistemological one: How do we know what we know about the state of the environment? This paper explores the realist and constructionist approaches to environmental-social problems and finds both inadequate as currently formulated. A case is made for a phenomenological constructionism that moves beyond relativism and simple definitional constructionism by exploring how we actually experience the world. This approach recognizes the existence of a natural world independent of our constructions, yet suggests that our knowledge of it is always mediated, indirect, and pragmatically motivated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the theoretical framework developed by Spector and Kitsuse (1973; 1977), this paper describes the development of the issue of abducted children as a social problem. Analysis of this particular case suggests theoretical refinements for the social constructionist perspective. It is argued that the concept of a ‘valence issue’ could be used to differentiate between the natural histories of substantively different kinds of social problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the results of a study designed to examine the possibility that Mexican-Americans charged with felonies receive biased treatment in California courts. Using data from superior courts in Fresno, California, it is shown that, when charged with similar crimes, Chicanos and Anglos in this district are given quite similar treatment—there is no observable judicial bias. In addition, this study shows a much stronger relationship between seriousness of charge and length of sentence (if guilty) than other earlier studies have. This is attributed to California's determinate sentencing law, which, it appears, forces the courts to give heavy and relatively uniform weight to legally relevant variables in sentencing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the structural determinants of the achievement behavior of over 1,300 American women whose lives collectively span three centuries of American history, 1607–1950. Of particular importance is the investigation of the relative effects of historical birth cohort, religion, sibling placement, social class background, and region of birth upon the career patterns of women involved in the professions, the arts, and social reform. A major conclusion of this study is that denomination and importance of religion are major factors accounting for social reform careers, while the absence of religion combined with being the first child is related most importantly to career choices in the professions and the arts. Historical birth cohort was found to be of some importance along with social class. However, region of birth proved to be the least important influence affecting achievement patterns. The data for this study are a quantitative archive established by the author on the basis of a detailed coding of all the biographies included in the three-volume reference set, Notable American Women (James, James, and Boyer, 1971). Information concerning 302 variables relevant to a study of achievement behavior was coded on a standardized form, keypunched, and transferred to magnetic tape suitable for computer and statistical analysis. The techniques used in this research are discriminant analysis and cross tabular analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years numerous discussion of urban communities have given great weight to themes of disorganization and disorder. This paper critically examines several important conceptual, procedural, and substantive issues inherent in most treatments of community disorganization. To illustrate such fundamental problems as ‘overgeneralization’ and dominant group bias five specific topics—migration, disasters, slums, ghettos, and collective violence—were selected for intensive analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of ‘generalized symbolic media of social interaction’ was introduced by Parsons five years ago in his two articles on the concepts of power and influence. I believe that it represents a theoretical development of the first importance, which has received much less attention—particularly in my own field of social anthropology—than it deserves. The purpose of the present paper is to review and criticize the concept itself and to point out its relevance to certain problems in social anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents some directions for research in sociolinguistics. The term sociolinguistics is frequently confused with the activity of anthropologists engaged in traditional ethnographic work; with the new linguistics of transformational grammars; or with work in psycholinguistics. However, sociolinguistic study attends to those reflections of social structure which are revealed in language, particularly in speech usages and is concerned neither with motivation nor with conscious behavior. Sociolinguistic can help in solving sociological problems, but there are obvious problems in adapting linguistic techniques to sociological problems. Sociologists have much to gain and nothing to lose by attempting resolution of these problems. Thus far sociologists simply have not exploited the great potential of a substantively rich, methodologically rigorous, and theoretically suggestive body of work. At the very least, the trained linguist can facilitate research by giving new dimensions to those of more traditional variety. There are many ways in which the technical apparatuses of linguistics can be brought to bear on sociological problems, just as there are areas of research design and data handling in which sociologists may have something to offer linguists.

The article discusses the social sources of criminology. The author states that as a synthetic discipline utilizing the knowledge of separate branches of study, the content of criminology has been shaped to a large degree by the nature of relationships between those disciplines that provide food for criminological thought. Some of those relationships and their effects are the subject of the first part of this article. As a practical discipline oriented to applied results, the content of criminology has also changed with changes in the broader society and its mode of response to criminals, as mediated by occupational groups whose members are charged with the prevention, processing and control of crime. Relationships between the society and its agents on the one hand and social scientists on the other, can be seen in changes that have occurred in specific areas of crime studies. Some of those changes are reviewed in the second part of the article. The author points out in the U.S. the study of crime has been intimately linked with the growth of sociology. As the field was conceived in its early years in this country, sociology was to be in large part a science of social problems, devoted to the study of all those forces bringing misery to industrial man. Study of such problems occupied the center of sociological concerns.

A variety of animals occupy the bad side of the Arluke‐Sanders (1996) socio‐zoological scale, including "invasives." We contribute to the literature on animals and social problems by examining the societal reaction toward invasive Burmese pythons, focusing on the claims‐making process that culminated in the construction of a moral panic about these snakes. We seek to enhance sociological and public knowledge about social problems involving invasive species—a category of non‐human animals, plants, and organisms that attract significant scientific, political, and public attention. We draw from the work of, among others, Arluke and Sanders (1996), Nagy and Johnson (2013) and Jerolmack (2008) and argue that problematizing some animals, especially invasive species, involves the use of claims about ecological and physical harms. However, these claims do not come from the same sources or arouse similar responses. For strategic purposes, claims‐makers may rely on assertions that an animal is physically threatening, rather than ecologically threatening. They may emphasize the dangerousness or lethality of the animal to create fear and generate momentum toward a desired policy response, typically involving control or eradication of the animal. The goal is to restore the boundary between humans and nature which the animal's presence has disrupted. [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]

In this study, we used an interpretive approach to examine print media (newspaper) representations of the relationship between appearance and the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado. Our work was guided by the social constructionist definition of a social problem. Grounded theory analyses revealed that both primary and secondary claims-makers staged claims and/or counterclaims contributing to the construction of Columbine as an appearance-linked social problem. The content and form of these claims varied according to the stage in the construction of the problem. Further, although both primary and secondary claims were made with respect to the conceptualization of the problem, an explanation for it, and solutions to it, the roles of primary and secondary claims-makers in constructing the problem varied. Implications of claims made within the media and related to the role of appearance in the shootings are considered, and a call is made for future work in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 essay represents an attempt to combine personal experience and general sociological knowledge in formulating (1) an analytic model of disease and (2) a definition of chronic disease that would help us better understand the trials and tribulations of chronically diseased persons as they cope with their environments. These objectives are achieved but their heuristic value as analytic tools or their utility for pragmatic intervention requires amplification and demonstration. The ideas and themes discussed are viewed as important considerations for applied sociological pursuits, particularly in medical sociology, but also have broader implications for sociology in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to conventional social problems models that depict environmental problems as arising from either ‘sin’ or ‘error,’ such problems are rooted in the modern treadmill of production. Following the classification of Theodore Lowi, recent environmental movement organizations appear to have emphasized a social redistributive rhetoric (sin), but have engaged in practices of distributive politics (error). As a result, even with the advent of the ‘radical’ appropriate technology movement in the mid 1970s, the central issues relate to the forces of production, with far less attention given to the social relations of modern production. The explanation for this disparity lies partly in the substantial decline of a participatory base for social movement organizations in the 1970s. Hence the advent of appropriate technology movement organizations has raised competition for limited membership pools, inducing older organizations to become more diffuse in their ideologies in order to maintain and/or attract constituents. Second, the social context makes successful redistributive policies less likely, encouraging movement organizations to find successes in more decentralized distributive negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One current theoretical explanation for southern dominance in homicide rates is that the South constitutes a ‘regional culture of violence.’ Although this perspective has generated, several critical responses, the debate has not stimulated much theoretical development. The present study distinguishes lethal from nonlethal violence and contends that medical intervention is a critical intervening factor in the production of homicide rates. Consequently, it is suggested that states with relatively less adequate medical resources experience higher homicide rates, not because of their ‘southernness,’ but because of limited access to proper medical care. The analyses provide some support for the idea that the differential distribution of medical resources is partially responsible for some of the variation in regional homicide rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parsons's analysis of Marx and its conclusion that Marx was a utilitarian are criticized. I endeavor to demonstrate that Marx succeeded in avoiding the pitfalls of both idealism and positivism and that he must be viewed as the founder of the voluntaristic theory of social action. In addition, I contend that this categorization makes a difference; if we incorporate Marx into action theory, build action theory on a Marxian foundation, certain problems within Parsons's work can be resolved. I illustrate this contention in a discussion of the relationship between structural and Junctional theory. "An earnest warning is given against … premature claims to finality. The author has been more or less intensively concerned with the major works of the men treated in this study over periods ranging from six to ten years. After considerable periods of occupation in other fields, he has come back to intensive reconsideration of their works. Every time this reconsideration brought to light fundamentally important things about them which had been missed before. The most important points, for the purposes of this study, were not understood at the first reading, but generally only alter repeated consideration." (Parsons, 1948:40) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between political economy and social problems advanced by S. M. Miller in his presidential address to the Society for the Study of Social Problems is analyzed. Political economy is judged to qualify as ritual drama as much as science or as ideology because (1) political economy reduces Maclver's distributive and conjunctural phenomena to collective phenomena, (2) it fails to grapple directly with political and economic obstacles to its proposed policies, and (3) it does invest these obstacles with symbolism. The function of ritual drama is suggested and the concept is applied to the work of other sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the role of law in different moral complexes. It discusses the nature of law as categories or index, phenomenon and as an element. It mentions the views of sociologist Wilhelm Dilthey on law as a universal form of human efforts along with religion, science, art, economy and philosophy. It explains the universal nature of the law and mentions that the modes of law for achieving social order and managing social actions are present everywhere. It also discusses Dilthey's illustration of functional problems and social structures as the essential concepts of the law. Also analyzed is the interaction between different levels of the social structure.

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.

Discussions of the link between sentence and legally irrelevant background factors have typically been carried on either without referring to research findings or with reference to only one or two of the legally irrelevant factors, such as race or occupation. The present research incorporates additional factors and places the findings in the context of competing explanatory models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to explore ethical strategies in the struggle for world development. Development is a two-edged sword. As symbolic catchword, it promises a better life and greater opportunities for all. In practice, however, it usually benefits the fortunate few and strengthens the privilege of those who keep the masses in their misery. Nowhere is the duality of development more evident than in the tension it creates between justice and peace. Although development is at once a good thing and a dangerous thing, a hopeful sign and cause for despair, human beings cannot abdicate their historic task: to build a world of authentic development for all in order to succeed. Development dramatizes a universal value crisis facing all nations, rich and poor alike. Genuine ethics is a kind of praxis or critical reflection on the value content and meaning of one's social action. Unless decision makers assess the ethical import of their criteria of choice, from inside the very technicity of those criteria, they will fall into the determinisms of pure technique.

For over 300 years the members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) have been making group decisions without voting. Their method is to find a ‘sense of the meeting’ which represents a consensus of those involved. Ideally this consensus is not simply ‘unanimity,’ or an opinion on which all members happen to agree, but a ‘unity’: a higher truth which grows from the consideration of divergent opinions and unites them all. Friends can ‘unite’ in support of action which shows due consideration to the individuality of each member and to their corporate concerns. As an illustration of this method, we will analyze in some detail the group process of a Quaker committee as it worked with a difficult social problem over a period of one year. Before beginning the analysis, we will summarize some of the main points in the process of reaching the ‘sense of the meeting’ as it has been described by Friends and others. Also we will review the functional theory of social interaction which will provide the basis for theoretical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the meaning of structure and coordination in social planning. In any type of planning, whether industrial, economic or social in nature, an optimum solution to a problem is generally chosen without reference to the optimum solution of other problems and without any expectation of meeting the ideal conditions. The meaning of the concept of "coordination in planning" refers to any "conscious attempt" to approximate an ideal set of solutions--where the sense of the word "ideal" is that briefly mentioned in the preceding paragraph--whether or not the ideal outcome was actually obtained. In terms of the definition of an ideal set of solutions it would, no doubt, also be possible to devise an operational measure of the "degree of coordination" achieved by a set of solutions which was less than ideal. The present article is an attempt to recognize that planning generally proceeds in the face of such complexity and to "analyze the structure" of planning in relation to the desirability of "coordination" in planning methodology.

This article presents information on those people who contributed a lot in the publication of the current issue of the journal Sociological Inquiry. Some of the contributors are: Jennifer L. Dunn, assistant professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, where she teaches courses in social problems, social psychology, deviance, and victims of crime; Jason A. Ford, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Central Florida. His research interests include substance use, life course criminology, and deviant behavior; Joyce Tang, associate professor and deputy chair of the sociology department at Queens College of the City University of New York. Her research interests include stratification and mobility, and science and technology.