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This article presents views of Professor Linda J. Waite, on the benefits of marriage, on the basis of her paper at the Population Association of America's annual conference, "Does Marriage Matter?" As she has discovered, marriage is good for a person. Married people have more money, more sex, more satisfaction and, longer lives than those who are unmarried. Certainly there is no need for sociology to tell that two people pooling their resources and facing life together can reap benefits closed to those who are single or who live together but keep their resources separate. This would probably be true in any society, but is particularly the case in the U.S., where for millions of people, marriage is the only social-welfare system.

Editorial. Focuses on social problems in towns and cities of California. Water, agriculture and educational problem of the town Ripley in Riverside County; Problem of eleven farm-labor families, mostly Mexican American, functioning in an agricultural cooperative near Salinas; Efforts of the state to solve social problems.

The article discusses the book "Culture As History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century," by Warren I. Susman. If analytical models and quantitative techniques borrowed from the social sciences have challenged easy assumptions and cleaned up sloppy thinking they have also been a mixed blessing for the writing of history. While most historians huddle in these bunkers, defending ever smaller patches of real estate, there is and has always been a more fruitful way to conceive of the writing of history.

The article presents information on two books "Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity," by Francis Fukuyama and "Jihad vs. McWorld," by Benjamin R. Barber. "Trust," is 200 pages too long and repeats every point many times. But everyone in a certain milieu will talk about it, because as a crash course in comparative political economy and sociology it enables them to think they know what they're talking about when they chit-chat about lifetime employment in Japan or the high cost of the German welfare state. Barber's book is also one of convergence, but with a difference. He understands that culture is not an abstraction but an economy and, like all economies, comes wrapped in the arms of force and money.

The article discusses why the 1999 protests that halted the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Seattle, Washington, was a transformational event for American citizens opposed to globalization. Also discussed is the economic impact on U.S. citizens as a consequence of the WTO’s globalization scheme, such as job loss from increased offshoring, the pressure on U.S president Barack Obama to maintain WTO’s status quo, and the need for Obama’s commitment to trade reform.

The article presents incidents related to the world politics. Boris Kagarlitsky, a Russian opposite leader has been given an apology by "Komsomolskaya Pravda", which published an enormous attack on him by Gubenko and Piskarev. Komsomolskaya Pravda announced in its edition of August 26 that Boris does have the benefits of higher education, has been a longtime student of sociology and is a member of the Soviet Sociological Association. The newspaper says it will not again be requiring the services of comrades Gubenko and Piskarev. One of the topics mercifully untouched during the U.S. vice president George Bush and Michael Dukakis debate was Israel and the treatment of Palestinians.

The article presents information on the book "From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter," by David Dellinger. The "endless demonstrations" against the war contributed to creating a society in which "the guardrails" of "community and family rules of conduct" were removed. The result ever since has been "the splattering of one ungodly tragedy after another across the evening news." Never mind the question of whether the protests in August 1968, which involved fewer than 10,000 participants, were truly representative of a decade of anti-Vietnam War protest.

The article presents information on the book "Embattled Paradise. The American Family in an Age of Uncertainty," by Arlene Skolnick. Skolnick's book, a wide-ranging and in the postwar years, is a useful antidote to the bleak rhetoric of loss and decline. Skolnick, a family scholar, attempts to move the family history debate away from jeremiads and moralistic denunciations. In a climate of Cultural dislocation, it has been easy enough for many critics to fasten on certain aspects of the changing family as symptoms of decay. But Skolnick argues, such moralizing is and misleading.

When the spirit fades, the form appears." This is a fair description of the current state of professional sociology. These days the discipline of sociology falters, a victim of its misguided quest for a professionalism wrapped in the protective armor of "science." Quantitative sociologists tend to make a fetish of "hard numbers" rather than trying to understand how social groups interpret and act on the circumstances those numbers describe. But those scholars also constitute an important bulwark against the recent tendencies of others in the field who seem to privilege inspired insight over validation.

The article gives an insight into the social conditions and status of minorities in the U.S. through author's account of his personal experiences. Author is lolling at the rear of the Washington Hilton Grand Ballroom at the midpoint of the Christian Coalition "Road to Victory" conference, and waiting for Charles Colson to mount the podium and tell once more of his collision with a personal savior in a post-Watergate golf-club correctional facility. It's an after-breakfast weekend session, which means that author's outfit is filthy jeans and yesterday's shirt, set off by jowl bristles and a lung-igniting cigarette. An absolutely mountainous fellow levers himself against the wall next to author.