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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 uses data from an intensive study of Boston's antebellum black community to demonstrate how sustained social activism is embedded in the formal and informal institutions of the community. The social networks of cooperative institutions were primary factors in this community's ability to mobilize and sustain protest actions and to call attention to social injustice. This examination of antebellum black Boston indicates that the issue of slavery was crucial to social activism. This suggests that the presence of a salient issue which links the everyday lives of participants with a public issue may be an important factor in building a social movement based in a poor, relatively powerless community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most curious aspects of the 2004 presidential election was the strength and resilience of the belief among many Americans that Saddam Hussein was linked to the terrorist attacks of September 11. Scholars have suggested that this belief was the result of a campaign of false information and innuendo from the Bush administration. We call this the information environment explanation. Using a technique of “challenge interviews” on a sample of voters who reported believing in a link between Saddam and 9/11, we propose instead a social psychological explanation for the belief in this link. We identify a number of social psychological mechanisms voters use to maintain false beliefs in the face of disconfirming information, and we show that for a subset of voters the main reason to believe in the link was that it made sense of the administration's decision to go to war against Iraq. We call this inferred justification: for these voters, the fact of the war led to a search for a justification for it, which led them to infer the existence of ties between Iraq and 9/11. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the global changes in industrial structure and demographic composition, families across the globe are facing increasing economic constraints reconciling their responsibility for the welfare of their children with the needs of older family members. Utilizing data from the Generations Survey, this article documents, and examines the sociodemographic determinants of and attitudes toward familial obligation in the United States and in Japan. The data show that Americans strongly believe in parental obligation for the provision of education for children. Although age differences in attitudes are more visible in Japan, the data from both countries indicate a strong familial cross-generational obligation between the young and the old. However, in both the United States and Japan, the “middle generation” is less likely to express attitudes supporting intergenerational transfers of private property. Multivariate analysis reveals that demographic and socioeconomic attributes explain only part of the age differentials in attitudes. Furthermore, in both countries, the receipt of an inheritance and the expectation of receiving an inheritance in the future have positive effects on attitudes toward familial responsibility. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for current and future patterns of family support systems and the transmission of economic advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between feminism and motherhood as it plays out in the construction of feminist identities. Central to this study is the conception of motherhood as a historically constructed ideology that provides a gendered model of behavior for women. In the organizations studied, the author finds that motherhood is interpreted two ways: as a social status with political ramifications and as the act of caring and taking responsibility for relationships. Early in the second wave of United States feminism, activists identified motherhood as a target for transformation and reevaluation. Some feminists framed motherhood as an essentially positive experience, damaged by patriarchal constraints that devalued women's work. Other feminists criticized motherhood as the basis of women's oppression. In this study this author examines the relationship between motherhood and feminism in a social movement context. Motherhood as a historically constructed ideology provides a gendered model of behavior for all women, even those who have not given birth or raised children.

The article aims to elaborate the process of cognitive liberation by employing "frame analysis." Moreover, it seeks to explain the diffusion of this social-psychological state cross-nationally through an examination of the U.S.- Central America peace movement. This was a movement of U.S. citizens who, during the 1980s, aimed to stand in solidarity with the poor in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala, and to constrain U.S. military influence and foreign policy toward the region. By 1987, the movement had expanded to include more than 1,500 local and regional Central America solidarity organizations within the U.S. This study, gives particular attention to the role of the church as a common cultural link that facilitated the emergence of the Central America peace movement by providing an organizational structure and mobilizing agents who transmitted "injustice frames" from Latin America to the United States. To reveal the processual nature of consciousness transformation among Central American activists, this study follows the three stages of cognitive liberation proposed by Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward.

Frame analysis has been severely criticized for its reliance on fictive and newspaper domains and its static portrayal of social behavior. Published and refereed studies, many of the participant observer vintage, are examined to investigate these charges. Conclusions include: (1) transformations are significant occurrences in Americans' daily lives, (2) societal definitions cannot be validly depicted apart from the emergent aspects of personal and interpersonal histories, (3) a new form of keying, negative keying, a not-reality, is conceptualized, (4) the relationship between Goffma's transformations and Glaser's and Strauss' awareness contexts is delineated. Recommendations for the future study of layered definitions are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparison of the basic traits of American character in the 1950s and the 1970s suggests that the narcissism of the 1970s is continuous with the other-direction of the 1950s, except that the narcissist makes a virtue out of what the other-directed person saw as problematic. The narcissist accommodates himself more fully to a social structure that demands great personal flexibility. He thus adopts a fluid identity and personal role definitions. Suggestive evidence of such identity change is found in the self-help literature of 1940 to 1979. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the attitudinal clusters associated with interpersonal violence, intergroup violence within a society, and international violence. Some personality theorists believe in the myth of a violent personality. This ideal-type of person would resort to, or approve of violence to core with others in all kinds of situations. Assertion is made that violence is learned as people come to accept violence as a justifiable solution to some problems and not others. The article reviews data on students of University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, gathered just after the withdrawal of the U.S. from Vietnam and the beginning of the Watergate scandal. Questionnaires were administered to all students taking the required introductory courses in sociology. The findings indicate that those who score highest on parental restrictions, trust in political leaders, physical or emotional instability, and are action-oriented were likeliest to score highest on international violence. The variable of foreign aid, which has a negative correlation, plays an important part in the explained variance of international violence.