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The recent flourishing of visual methods is not mirrored in studies of taste. This paper engages with photo elicitation (PE), which Bourdieu applied in Distinction, but never elaborated on. We conducted systematic photo-interviewing in arts, fiction and architecture. After reviewing the relevant literature, we highlight illustrative findings and discuss the potential of PE. In studies of taste, PE helps in bridging "social worlds", and can unveil class-based repertoires for understanding culture. It provides entry to tacit knowledge, and aids comparisons. Importantly, when two methods, PE and oral interviewing, are used in combination, this significantly helps substantiate our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central, element of modem professions is that they are organized around specialized bodies of knowledge over which they claim exclusive jurisdiction and control (Barber, 1963). Such specialized expertise is basic to the performance of the professional role, and the application of this specialized knowledge to client problems is the essence of professionalism for occupations such as medicine, dentistry, nursing, law, or engineering (Hughes, 1963; Gross, 1958:78-82). As Greenwood (1957) suggests, two other attributes of the professions— authority and autonomy—are based upon this expertise. The authority to advise, prescribe, direct, or limit client activity is grounded in professional access to superior knowledge of "causes" and "solutions" to the clients' problems. Likewise, freedom from lay control and evaluation of professional performance derives from the discrepancy between the expertise of the professional and the ignorance of the client. Only other qualified (i.e., knowledgeable in the same specialized area) personnel can evaluate the professional practitioner (Hall, 1969). In addition, professions also exhibit other characteristics which are not so intimately linked to expertise. These are such elements as codes of ethics, professional cultures or communities, and commitment (see Hall, 1969; Goode, 1957). The focus of this paper is, however, on the relevance of professional expertise. Expertise is inextricably involved with both the performance of the professional role, and the maintenance of professional status and legitimacy. Any increase in client access to the professional sphere of competence is therefore likely to result in skepticism, criticism, and may even threaten to reduce the professional to commercial status (Wilensky, 1964:150). The "mystification" of professional knowledge in the form of esoteric jargon, limitations on popularization of knowledge, and prohibitions against advertising may be seen as attempts to maintain the knowledge gap between professional and client. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper began with an attempt to formalize the Davis-Moore functional theory of social stratification. It was found that the theory could be represented by a static model consisting of two algebraic equations with appropriate constraints on the functions. Then the tools of path analysis were used to evaluate the empirical adequacy of the Davis-Moore and Parsonian functional theories of social stratification as representations of cultural beliefs about stratification. Because of the likely presence of measurement and sampling errors, it was impossible to reject definitely either of the models. However, the estimated path coefficients were more consistent with the Parsonian theory than the Davis-Moore theory. This led to an inquiry into the conditions under which one model would be a better representation than the other. It was argued that the Davis-Moore scheme would provide a more accurate representation of cultural beliefs under conditions of high organizational interdependence whereas the Parsonian framework would give a better representation under conditions of low interdependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A genuinely sociological theory of social change is lacking, but the literature of the social sciences abounds with the elements of such a theory. The present paper deals with one of these elements, namely the change from tribalism to urbanism as a major instance of social change. For this purpose the concepts of culture and civilization are examined, and a plea is made to restore the concept of civilization to its rightful place in the vocabulary of sociologists and anthropologists. In doing this, the intention is not to reduce social change to the process of urbanization, but rather to isolate the sociological element which makes for social change within the supersession of a familial by a territorial society, wherever it occurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How and why do advocates choose frames, and what are the effects of these choices? This study draws on two decades of data about the Center for the Child Care Workforce (CCW), an advocacy organization founded by feminist early childhood educators in 1977 to raise child care wages. It traces how contextual factors shape framing choices, and how framing choices shape advocacy goals and claims. Archival research and interview data reveal that discursive barriers led CCW to lobby for ensuring "quality" child care, a strategic choice that inadvertently prioritized professional educators' interests over those of other caregivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of work that has examined Chinese immigration to the US has coined the term "culture of remittances": money that is sent home not only provides economically but also elevates the "face" of the family. However, using qualitative data from a multiyear ethnographic study of three undocumented and mixed-status Chinese families in the US and their families in China, we find that garnering face for the family is less of a motivator than the fear of losing it. This dynamic plays a role at all stages of immigration and amplifies existing norms in a way that perpetuates disadvantage experienced by Chinese immigrants. As these undocumented Chinese immigrants craft an idealized narrative of their lives in the US, more members from their sending communities are motivated to immigrate, leading to precarious consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the "integrative hypothesis" as an aid to understanding the current emergence of new religious movements appealing mainly to young persons. Four ways in which these movements reintegrate young persons into the social system are identified: adjustive socialization, combination, compensation, and redirection. The limitations of each of these as an explanation for the integrative consequences of youth culture religious movements are discussed. A distinction is made between adaptive movements which actually appear to reassimilate social "dropouts" into conventional instrumental routines, and marginal movements which appear to take converts out of conventional roles and routines, but which also perform latent tension management functions for the social system. The correlated properties of adaptive ami marginal movements and the tendency for marginal movements to evolve into adaptive movements are discussed. Finally, the problem of "reductionism" in analyzing religious movements in terms of their latent integrative "functions" is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Similar in scope and significance to the industrial and agrarian revolutions, the modem scientific revolution has been slowly developing for the past century bringing changes which are both obvious and obscure. In general, scholars have analyzed this revolution in terms of two major conceptions which have emphasized either the effect of science technology or the effect of science on the social institutions and social organization of society. More recently interest has focused upon the growth of power of science and its alienating effects. But one aspect of this revolution, perhaps the most important aspect, has been almost totally ignored. This paper is devoted to an examination of this aspect the effect of science on culture. From its early beginnings, when it was at war with theology, to the postindustrial period of widespread acceptance, science has made its mark upon culture first in the production of new information and thus a "new world view" and later in the rise of "scientism" where the uncritical adoration of science has produced a new value in society-that of science itself. Because of their historical development and confinement to certain types of analytical models, sociology and the sociology of science have been unsuccessful in dealing with this type of social change. In addition to sociology's neglect of the effect of science on culture, sociologists are producing fragmented information about science and the revolution which leads to the belief that science, because of its internal value structure and utilitarian relationship to other social institutions, can not develop unchecked to a position of overwhelming power. Without any manifest intentions, sociologists have produced a conservative evaluation of science and the revolution.ceptions of the revolution; (2) the reasons for the neglect of sociological analysis of the effect of science on culture; (3) a brief overview of the replacement, destruction, and accommodation theories of the effect of science on culture; and (4) the change from atomistic accommodation during the preindustrial period, when science was at war with theology, to the holistic accommodation of science in the rise of scientism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general theory of symbolic interaction, specifically self theory, is focused upon the importance of language as an instrument of definition and communication. People are seen as responding not directly to a resistant outer reality but to meanings of objects which are defined within a cultural system and social organization. G. H. Mead, in his discussion of the way persons develop self concepts and the accompanying ability to take roles effectively, speaks of the degree to which persons develop a "general other." This general other is an organized structure of attitudes believed to be common to all and is defined in terms of a universe of discourse growing out of the symbolic interaction of a community of individuals. Replies to the Twenty Statements Test, described by Kuhn and McPartland, display this quality. Self-identifying statements which people make fall along a rough spectrum of reference which can be broken up in various ways. The distinction which Kuhn and McPartland have reported is between what they call consensual and nonconsensual statements. Consensual statements are defined as those statements which would be generally understood by persons in the larger society without explanation. Nonconsensual statements are defined as those requiring interpretation before their social relevance can be assessed. The consensual statement is language behavior directed to the general other, while the nonconsensual statement is language directed to a more limited audience. H. S. Sullivan's contribution in developing the notion of the "significant other" consists in accounting for the fact that persons often do not seem to internalize standards and norms from the whole society but from segments of it on some selective basis. In this paper, the number of consensual statements made in response to the Twenty Statements Test will be called the locus score. Respondents are assigned to "high" and "low" locus categories as they make more or less than the median number of consensual statements. Expanding upon this frame of reference, it seems reasonable to propose that the locus quality found in self-conceptions of a given person is also characteristic of his conceptions of other objects. This hypothesis is based on the assumption that the self is the core of a set of interrelated attitudes, and that the level of reference employed by the respondent in his attitudes toward the self would therefore be applicable to other attitudes as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the concepts of tolerance and contraculture as applied to delinquency. Usually laws are specific only in relation to serious adult offenses such as murder, assault, robbery, burglary, and so forth. Children are delinquent if they are found guilty in court of breaking any of the federal, state, or local laws designed to control adult behavior. Delinquency statistics, however, indicate that these serious offenses account for only a small proportion of the delinquencies of children. Most of the behavior that jets a child into trouble with the police and courts comes under a much less definite part of the law on juvenile delinquency. The Illinois law defines as delinquent a child who is incorrigible or who is `growing up in idleness, one who wanders about the streets in the nighttime without being on any lawful business, or one who is guilty of the decent or lascivious conduct. This paper has attempted to state a hypothesis whereby behavior may be placed in a continuum running from an underconforming contraculture through various degrees of disapproved behavior to normal conformity and then through, stages of overconforming behavior to an overconforming contraculture.

The current article explores the relationship between institutional imbalance (Institutional Anomie Theory) and the Stream Analogy of Lethal Violence (SALV). The stream analogy proposes that both homicide and suicide are generated by the same force of production while different structural and cultural factors serve as the force of direction. Using various cross-national sources, we hypothesize that institutional imbalance is a force of direction, with stronger institutional imbalance leading to more individuals committing homicide than suicide. In addition, for exploratory purpose, we examine whether the institutional imbalance is related to the force of production. Our findings support neither of these hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how actors within an organization draw meaning from their local setting in ways that ultimately hinder institutional efforts toward standardization. Using a case study of a public sector organization that is inundated with standards--a police department--this analysis develops a standards-as-culture lens to show how local conditions inform the cultural resources police officers deploy. It is argued that individuals connect features of their community with repertoires of uniqueness--what they call "the Blueville Way"--to perform, justify, and sustain a sense of nonconformity with political measures meant to standardize the provision of policing services. Data for this study include 100 interviews and field notes gathered over an 18 month period spent with a police department in headquarters, patrol cars, and the streets. This article contributes an account of the significance of "cultural match" in law enforcement: perceptions and practices are driven by the socioeconomic context in which an organization is embedded, thereby impeding full compliance with industry standards that are deemed locally incompatible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary applications of behavioral and social science to the understanding of how cinematic narratives influence viewers tend to be bifurcated. Cognitive film/media theorists and psychologists emphasize microlevel processes at the expense of the macrolevel. Sociological approaches emphasize macrolevel analysis at the expense of the microlevel. Bridging these two levels is the mesolevel concept of identification elaborated to apply to stereotypic role relationships; that is, schemas or associative networks linking thoughts, memories, emotions, and behaviors. Here assumptions of Social Cognitive Theory and Transactional Analysis are employed to contextualize a discussion of how cinematic narrative can operate to construct an ideologically hegemonic narrative reinforcing the legitimation of gendered domination at the sociocultural (macro)level of analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the relationship between identity and activism and discusses implications for social movement persistence. We explain how individuals negotiate opportunities as parents to align and extend an activist identity with a movement's collective expectations. Specifically, we focus on how participants in the U.S. white power movement use parenting as a key role to express commitment to the movement, develop correspondence among competing and potentially conflicting identities, and ultimately sustain their activism. We suggest that parenting may provide unique opportunities for activists in many movements to align personal, social, and collective movement identities and simultaneously affirm their identities as parents and persist as social movement activists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural perspectives on suicidality have been largely marked by work explaining variability in suicide acceptability in the United States using structural variables including marital status and demographics, and limited symbolic or values orientations such as feminism, political liberalism, and civil liberties. The present article applies recent developments in comparative cultural sociology to the problem of suicidality. The central hypothesis is that cultural approval of suicide is related to a general cultural axis of nations (self-expressionism) encompassing several values orientations such as tolerance and post-materialism. Data are from Wave 4 of the World Values Surveys and refer to 53,275 individuals nested in 56 nations. Controls are incorporated from previous studies and include structural and demographic constructs. A hierarchical linear regression model determined that the degree of individual-level adherence to the values of self-expressionism predicted suicide acceptability (SA), independent of controls including ones interpretable from Durkheimian perspectives. Furthermore, persons high in individual-level self-expressionism nested in like-minded nations were relatively high in SA. The analysis of the subject is expanded to 56 nations representing all major culture zones and varied levels of economic/political development. It determined that SA is shaped by a new, broad cultural construct, self-expressionism whose impact is independent of Durkheimian familial and religious integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article serves as a reply to comments made on the author's article, wherein the commentator suggested that a congruence exists between the authors' description of the mystique in anthropology and the idea of cultural primitivism unobjectionable. The authors of the article in question claim that nowhere have they identified the mystique as a theory and deny that they proposed a reversal of the direction of valuation of the dichotomic theory in anthropological thought. Anthropology, according to the authors, is the study of culture, and culture not in any restricted range of manifestation.

Using a wide variety of measures of psychological well-being obtained from a representative sample of married men and women in Bangkok, Thailand, we examine gender differences in psychological well-being. We find that, in Bangkok, as in the United States, married men generally enjoy a higher level of psychological well-being than do married women. We find no support for role strain theory, but we do find support for role enhancement theory. We find that social support has little effect on psychological well-being, but that social strain not only has a significant effect on well- being but also largely accounts for gender differences in well-being. The mixed findings suggest the importance of testing theories in different societal contexts, for they may or may not be easily portable from one culture to another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The postmodem challenge to sociological notions of individual agency assails its experiential substantiality, conveying agency instead in philosophically abstract terms and fleeting media images. In opposition to this, we argue that everyday interpretive practice reflexively constructs agency, utilizing resources drawn from the ordinary contours of experience. Narrative and ethnographic material collected in diverse settings, both formal and informal, illustrate how enduring features of the ordinary—locally shared meanings, biographical particulars, and material objects—are used for the production of manifold selves with recognizable substantiality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wolfgang and Ferracuti's Subculture of Violence thesis and Matza's theory of "drift" may be regarded as competing subcultural explanations of violence. Comments are offered on studies examining propositions derived from both subcultural theses, and another body of evidence is analyzed. Ball-Rokeach's recent rejection of Wolfgang and Ferracuti's thesis is contradicted by a reinterpretation of her data and by the new data; for as both theses contend, violence is more likely among adolescent members of deviant subcultures and among adolescents with machismo or adult values than among other adolescents. Contrary to both theories, adolescent violence may result more from amorality than from a contracultural morality (Wolfgang and Ferracuti) or neutralization of conventional beliefs (Matza). Still violence is more likely among boys holding unconventional beliefs than among other boys. Also, poor relationships with parents or teachers are more important than class in insulating against conventional values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]