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In this paper, we advocate identifying the colonizing logics of race in criminological analysis, in recognition of their enduring postcolonial presence in societies like the United Kingdom. Our argument unfolds through the life stories narrated by three men entangled by colonial remnants of power(lessness), subservience, and criminalization. For Cairo (black) and Rafan (Asian), their subalternity is exposed through their vulnerability to racialized stereotypes which have a foundation in colonial histories. Both young minority ethnic men are also situated in a transnational, glocalized frame in which their racialized and gendered identities prescribed the nature of their belonging to a British nation-state irrevocably connected to the Empire. Our reflections on a third narrative interview of Barry reveal the dividends of whiteness, simultaneously occluded, disavowed, and yet wilfully upheld, but in a competitive and exclusive form of belonging. In the articulation and analysis of these stories of crime and order, we mine styles of reasoning from postcolonial theory, sociology, history, and philosophy to embolden a postcolonial criminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender equality indexes (GEIs) have become a popular tool for the quantification of unequal resource distribution between males and females. Creating such an index implies an understanding of what gender inequality is, though this question has remained the province of theoretical feminism with little explicit treatment in the methodologically focussed literature. This paper presents an empirically minded, theoretical account of gender inequality, which can be used broadly to inform the development of GEIs. The account proceeds in three steps. First, we argue for a broad understanding of the types of resources that structure gender inequality. Drawing on the work of Bourdieu, we highlight the importance of including symbolic capitals (and indeed viewing gender itself as a symbolic capital). By considering gender as a symbolic capital, we are drawn to the ways that normative maleness hides some types of gender inequality. Thus, caregiving norms and leisure time inequality are brought to the foreground. Finally, in recognizing that there is no single unifying female experience, we describe the ways that gender inequality intersect with other forms of disadvantage, motivating the incorporation of (particularly) race into the index. The result is a comprehensive—and theoretically defensible—set of indicators for the measurement of gender inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In India, where around 19,500 dialects are spoken, there is a great abundance of fiction quite rich in varied descriptions of old age and aging. While scholars like Pramod K. Nayar and Ira Raja have recently begun studying Indian literary texts written in English from the perspective of literary gerontology, those literary experiences of aging (which are originally in languages like Bengali, Tamil, Hindi, Oriya, etc.) are yet to be analyzed from a gerontological point of view. The present paper aims at studying the experiences of old age in 2 Indian short stories (one from Bengali Literature and another from Tamil Literature)—Bibhutibhusan Bandyopadhyay's "Drabomoyee Goes to Kashi" ("Drabomoyeer Kashibash" in Bengali) and T. Janakiraman's "The Puppet" ("Vilayattu Bommai" in Tamil). Regarding "Drabomoyee Goes to Kashi," the paper interrogates the problems in the emplacement of Hindu older widows to Kashi and explores the possibilities in Drabomoyee from ecofeminist and creatural perspectives. The discussions on "The Puppet" chiefly reflect on the social exclusion of the aging bodies of people living with dementia. Through the story of Venu, the paper shows that what the society or family generally expects from the older persons suffering from dementia may not do any good to them, and may instead lead to their institutionalization and other forms of exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interrogates the capacity for social control to act as a complement and alternative to the law in controlling corporate harm. Social control can manifest as demands that businesses obtain a social, not just a legal, licence to operate which can provide an avenue for communities to reject or shape company operations. Drawing on parallels with the ambiguities that hinder the criminalization of business conduct, this paper shows how the social licence can also be used to silence critical voices or justify harmful practices. This ambiguity hinges on struggles around what is or is not socially desirable, which can engender significant conflict. Whilst this conflict might be inevitable, even productive in reducing corporate harm, it can leave a debilitating social legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Apparently growing punitiveness in many countries toward the end of the twentieth century prompted considerable criminological activity which focused on attempting to understand trends and contrasts in systems and patterns of punishment. Although to date this literature has tended to treat policing and punishment as being largely separate spheres of activity this paper advances two reasons for paying greater attention to policing in this context. First, and briefly, to reflect the fact that the police are the 'gatekeepers' to the penal system, and therefore in some senses inseparable from other penal practices. Second, and more centrally, that in various forms policing both involves, and is often experienced as, punishment. Attempts to understand the nature of and differences between penal states will be enhanced by the inclusion of policing within its ambit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on 79 in-depth interviews with police chiefs in Arizona, California, and Michigan to advance sociological understandings of race, masculinity, and policing. While the bulk of scholarship on public law enforcement focuses on urban settings, this paper juxtaposes police's perceptions of urban, suburban, and rural gun violence. It details how police chiefs construct criminal gun violence according to two overarching tropes: (1) gang- and drug-related gun violence involving black and brown perpetrators and victims in urban spaces and (2) active shooting-related gun violence involving white perpetrators and victims in suburban and rural spaces. The analysis shows that police understand their own guns in part through reference to these tropes, embracing two racially distinct styles of police masculinity: the "warrior" and the "guardian." Whereas the "warrior" brand of police masculinity emphasizes aggressive enforcement against (black and brown) perpetrators, the "guardian" brand of police masculinity emphasizes assertive protection on behalf of (white) victims. Detailing masculinity as a bifurcated axis along which racialized policing is enacted and amplified, this study broadens scholarly understandings of public law enforcement as a race-making institution and suggests the limitations of police reforms that fail to address whiteness as shaping public law enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of precarious work in recent decades has motivated a large body of research on its implications for health. While considerable work has focused on whether precarious work undermines health, much less is known about why it matters. To fill this gap, this paper offers and tests a conceptual model whereby the effects of precarious work on health are mediated by social marginality, specifically reduced self-efficacy, weaker social integration, and lower social capital. All three mechanisms are understood as both social consequences of precarious work and important determinants of health. Empirically, we use data from the European Social Survey and investigate (1) conditional direct effects of precarious work on self-rated health and (2) extent of mediation via the three mechanisms. Furthermore, we assess the generalizability of the model across five welfare state regimes that prior work has deemed to be important moderators of the health–precarious work relationship. Results indicate precarious work has significant conditional direct effects and indirect effects through all three mediators that significantly reduce effect of precarious work on health. This is robust in the general sample and for four of five welfare state regimes. These findings highlight a previously unexplored vector connecting precarious work to health and indicate that the effects of precarious work on perceptions of self and social relations is a key link to poorer health. The study also expands conceptualization of the broad role of socioeconomic status for health inequalities and furthers understanding of the mechanisms at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies how social capital is divided across classes in Chile, one of the most unequal countries in the world. We analyse the extent to which upper-, middle-, and lower class individuals congregate in social networks with similar others, while following Bourdieu and expecting that in particular the networks of the higher social strata are segregated in terms of social capital. We test our argument with large-scale, representative survey data for the Chilean urban population aged 18–75 years (n  = 2,517) and build an integrated indicator of people's social class that combines measures of education, occupational class, and household income. Our regression analyses show that upper-class individuals have larger networks and access to more varied and prestigious social resources than their middle- and lower class counterparts. Interestingly, however, we found a U-shaped relationship between social class and class homogeneity, indicating that network segregation is high at the top as well as at the bottom of the class-based social strata. In contrast, the classes in the middle have more heterogeneous class networks, possibly forming an important bridge between the "edges" of the class structure. These findings demonstrate that whereas social and economic capital cumulates in higher classes, the lower classes are socially deprived next to their economic disadvantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article suggests that there exists an alternative form of international political behavior between countries who share a common traumatic past: diplomacy with memory. Diplomacy with memory manifests itself as an official, diplomatic team performance that aims at conveying a certain historic image for the purpose of achieving rational aims on the international stage. In a first step, a theoretical and empirical framework is developed that highlights diplomacy with memory as a strategic diplomatic action that does not conform with mainstream IR models of state behavior. In a second step, the new theoretical model is tested on two selected postconflict scenarios: The bilateral negotiations between West Germany and Israel, and between Austria and Israel about eventual reparation payments to the Jewish state in the early 1950s. Extracting the core elements of the diplomacy with memory from these historical examples, this paper suggests amending the toolkit of traditional diplomatic strategies with memory in order to better explain state behavior in other postconflict situations as they emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objectives Reverse mortgages are loans that allow older homeowners to borrow from their home equity with no repayment due until the borrower dies or moves out of the home. We currently know very little about how homeowners evaluate and experience reverse mortgages as solutions to their financial and housing needs in later life. Furthermore, despite an increasingly diverse population of reverse mortgage borrowers, we know little about how social inequalities may contribute to reverse mortgage decisions and their outcomes. In this paper, we examine reverse mortgage decision-making and experiences in a racially and economically diverse sample of older US homeowners. Research Design and Methods We conducted 44 in-depth interviews with older homeowners who were considering or who had obtained a reverse mortgage loan. We inductively and iteratively developed a thematic coding scheme that was applied to all interview transcripts. Results Our analysis produced a dichotomous schema of reverse mortgage decision making that was shaped by social and economic opportunities and constraints. For some participants, reverse mortgages represented strategic tools used to maximize home equity and its benefits. For others, it was an option of last resort to which participants turned when faced with the imminent loss of their home. Discussion and Implications Focusing on reverse mortgages, our analysis suggests way that social inequalities may be reproduced through financial decisions and the unequal landscapes of opportunity in which they are made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stratification and inequality are among the most central concepts in sociology, and although related, they are fundamentally distinct: inequality refers to the extent to which resources are distributed unevenly across individuals or between population subgroups, whereas stratification refers to the extent to which population subgroups occupy distinct hierarchical layers within an overall resource distribution. Despite the centrality of stratification in theories of class structure, prior empirical studies have focused exclusively on measures of inequality, which do not accurately capture the degree of class stratification and suffer from a variety of methodological limitations. In this paper, we employ a novel rank-based index of stratification to measure the degree to which occupational classes inhabit distinct, non-overlapping, and hierarchically arranged layers in the distribution of personal market income. The stratification index is nonparametric, both scale and translation invariant, and independent of the level of inequality. Based on this index, our results show that the US income distribution is highly stratified by occupational class and that the degree of class stratification increased substantially from 1980 to 2016. Moreover, we find that this trend is almost entirely due to growing stratification among aggregate occupational classes rather than among the disaggregate occupations nested within them. Finally, a set of counterfactual analyses indicate that the rise of occupational class stratification is driven by increases in the income returns to education, deunionization, and deindustrialization, although the relative importance of these factors varies by gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While important and timely, the recent effort to 'relaunch' migration systems as emergent entities is premised on a mischaracterization and subsequent dismissal of decades of research showing that systems are ultimately expressed in geographic structures in the form of migration networks comprised of a set of places that are connected to one another by migration flows. In this paper, we reconcile this relaunch with past research on migration systems by considering whether and how changes in some of the actors and dynamics that create and sustain migration systems are expressed in corresponding changes in the geographic structure of migration flows. By elucidating these linkages, our work helps to strengthen the aforementioned relaunch of migration systems by ensuring greater continuity with prior research and, going forward, the continued utility of a migration systems perspective for diverse audiences and issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, Cluster-Based Secure Communication and Certificate Revocation Scheme for VANET is proposed. Initially, the nodes (vehicles) are gathered into various clusters and cluster head (CH) should be selected based on the trusty nodes. The certificate authority (CA) known as the trusted third party is taken into account, however, CA is in charge of revoking and distributing the certificates that belong to the vehicles. The information of the certificate revocation list is provided to the CA. Any cluster member can obtain the details from CH if it identifies valid certificate of the secure transmission of messages that takes place by the application of symmetric cryptography approach, where the encryption and the decryption of certificates may occur. From the simulation result, it is verified that the proposed method shows better performance when compared with the existing works in terms of the delivery ratio, throughput, and latency, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public health is about policy, power, and the public and as such might be thought necessarily political. That does not mean, however, that the place of political analysis and engagement in public health is uncontroversial, and there have been longstanding arguments that to discuss politics sullies the scientific nature of public health. This article, introducing a special issue on political science in public health, argues that rigorous use of middle-range theory can inform our analysis of public health problems and avoid the risks of politicization, excessive abstraction or excessive concreteness. It summarizes key political science concepts discussed in the papers: epistemic communities, interest groups, advocacy coalitions, political parties, institutions, legalism, discourse and the political economy of labour. We hope that the series will provide the public health community with some tools and methods for how to integrate public health knowledge into the sphere of decision making in an appropriate way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflecting the theme of the 2015 Gerontological Society of America (GSA) Annual Scientific Meeting, "Aging as a Lifelong Process," this paper examines intersections between aging processes and their environmental context, develops theory regarding constructive developmental processes and their environmental context, and considers potential implications for conceptualizing and creating aging-friendly communities. The first section examines the primary goals of aging-friendly communities, that is, promoting elder well-being. The second section explores the role of environmental pathways in fostering well-being throughout the lifecourse. The third section presents a new Process Model of Constructive Aging that identifies key developmental processes at the intersection of individual and environmental pathways. The final section considers potential implications for creating aging-friendly communities, including ways in which cities and towns can promote the ability of community members to live fully throughout their lives, and identifies some key conceptual and empirical challenges affecting the future of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the processes that lead to change in institutions and meanings is a central concern of sociology. This paper examines the tactics used by "plural-marriage" activists to cast members of such marriages as an oppressed minority and portray polygamy as empowering to women. In-depth interviews with Mormon fundamentalist polygamist women (N=30) and men (N=4) involved in the plural-marriage-rights movement suggest that, to achieve these goals, our respondents distance themselves from Mormon fundamentalist groups known to force underage girls into marriage while rhetorically likening themselves to a population with whom they have moral objections: gays and lesbians. Movement leaders reinforce the analogy with gay men and lesbians by strategically and self-consciously employing a language of "coming out of the closet" to talk about revealing and affirming their polygamist status. We argue that they are drawn to this particular language not merely because it is culturally ubiquitous but also because of how same-sex marriage and polygamy have been connected via what we call discursive networks. As feminist scholars, we consider our respondents' claims that polygyny offers women advantages over monogamy, while also examining how post-feminist discourse about choice can reinforce patriarchal structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers whether philosophy of mathematics could benefit by the introduction of some sociology. It begins by considering Lakatos's arguments that philosophy of science should be kept free of any sociology. An attempt is made to criticize these arguments, and then a positive argument is given for introducing a sociological dimension into the philosophy of mathematics. This argument is illustrated by considering Brouwer's account of numbers as mental constructions. The paper concludes with a critical discussion of Azzouni's view that mathematics differs fundamentally from other social practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Transhumanists advance a “posthuman” condition in which technological and genetic enhancements will transform humankind. They are joined in this goal by bioethicists arguing for genetic selection as a means of “enhancing evolution,” improving if not also the species then at least the potential lives of future individuals. The argument of both, this paper argues, is a new riff on the old eugenics tune. As ever, it is done in the name of science and its presumed knowledge base. As ever, the result is destructive rather than instructive, bad faith promoted as high ideal. The paper concludes with the argument that species advancement is possible but in a manner thoroughly distinct from that advanced by either of these groups. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this paper is to show that the appropriation of ICTs is determined by a field's specific cultural identity. Knowledge is not a homogeneous whole, but a patchwork of heterogeneous fields. These fields are most visible as embodied in academic disciplines, which have distinct cultural identities shaped by intellectual and social considerations. Scholarly communication systems evolve over time within the context of these cultural identities. The paper discusses the cultural shaping of ICTs by drawing on an ongoing ethnographic study within corpus-based linguistics. The findings suggest that cultural elements such as 'task-uncertainty', 'mutual-dependency', heterogeneity, and institutional configurations will influence the appropriateness of a specific ICT infrastructure for a particular intellectual community. For example, fields that have a highly politicized and tightly controlled research culture will develop a coherent field-based strategy for the uptake and use of ICTs, whereas domains that are pluralistic and have a loosely organized research culture will appropriate ICTs in an ad-hoc localized manner. These findings demonstrate that overlooking cultural diversity in the development and implementation of ICT infrastructures and policies could prove detrimental for fields that do not map onto 'big science' conceptualizations of knowledge production. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates that effective understanding similarity and difference in patterns of scholarly communication needs to take the fine-grain of specialist fields as the unit of analysis, rather than the course-grain of the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper criticizes the deskilling hypothesis for temporal change in occupations. Case studies of occupations alleged to support the deskilling hypothesis have typically been insensitive to the internal heterogeneity found within occupations, and to the fact that the boundary between adjacent occupations located on the same functional hierarchy can shift over time. When these factors are explicitly taken into account, it is found that apparently compelling evidence for the thesis of clerical downgrading better supports an alternative explanation, which might be called the process of status redefinition, an aspect of the process of professionalization. The case of clerical workers in the federal government is examined in some detail, Available evidence supports the argument that status redefinition occurred. Status redefinition and des killing are not mutually exclusive explanations for change, though they do conflict in important respects. This paper suggests that case studies of occupations should focus on functional hierarchies, rather than specific occupations, in order to avoid the comparability problems which arise when occupational boundaries change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suburban exploitation of the central city was once a hotly contested issue, but the exodus of people and jobs from the city and the involvement of the federal government in urban service provision have moved it from the forefront of scholarly attention. Those same developments, however argue for more rather than less attention to exploitation, and the purpose of this paper is to offer some of that. Using data collected for 188 relatively comparable American SMS As for 1960, 1970, and 1980, the paper begins with a replication of an earlier study by Kasarda of suburban demands for city service spending. It then extends that research to 1980 and expands it to asses suburban participation in city retail sales generation as well. The results indicate a substantive narrowing over time of suburban demands for city services, but a sizeable and growing gap nonetheless between expenditures demanded and retail revenues provided. The paper than turns to an analysis that attempts to test empirically th relative merits of ecological and politicoeconomic explanation for these changes. The results of that test are more supportive of the former then the latter; hence, the paper concludes with an interpretation of them that links to underlying ecological processes the changing social psychological perspective on the city and its role in social life held by surrounding suburban dwellers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past half century, northern Europe has seen a striking decline of belief in God and the supernatural. Yet the churches there have not died, and in some cases they remain strong and active. Whence does the vitality of these churches derive, if belief has eroded? This paper examines one such church, an independent Lutheran congregation in northwestern Denmark. It suggests that the church's importance stems from its "span of ambiguity," the broad range of meanings which it expresses in its local context. Its ability to integrate meanings from a variety of social arenas gives it a powerful role in a rapidly changing society. The paper argues that religious systems generally have an unusual capacity for such expression and integration, It is the extent to which they can maintain their spans of ambiguity, rather than the extent to which they can maintain belief, which accounts for their persistence or decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most recent internationally widespread disease outbreak occurred during the flu season of 2009 and 2010. On April 2009, the first cases of influenza A (H1N1) (Popularly called, Swine Flu) were confirmed in the USA and UK following a novel virus that was first identified in Mexico. As the virus spread rapidly, the risk of morbidity and mortality increased in several countries. In this paper, we rely on the social cognitive theory of risk to assess the willingness of the US public to comply with vaccination and reduce the risk of sickness and death from the flu. We conduct a secondary data analysis of the Pew Research for the People and Press October 2009 and investigate the factors associated with willingness to take the swine flu vaccine (n = 1000). The findings indicate that the decision to take the swine flu vaccination was highly polarized across partisan lines. Controlling for education, income and demographic factors, the likelihood of taking the vaccine was associated with party identification. Individuals that identified themselves as Democrats were more likely to be willing to take the swine vaccine than individuals that identify themselves as Republicans and Independents. Confidence in the ability of the government to deal with the swine flu crisis seems to explain party identification differences in the willingness to take the vaccine. The implications of the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we compare the reception of Spanish sociology by domestic and international audiences using citation counts as an indicator of audience interest. We compare papers highly cited in a national language database with those highly cited in the Web of Science. We find differences that might prove worrying within a national research evaluation system that emphasizes publishing in high impact factor, Web of Science indexed journals. We suggest that in the social sciences, such an emphasis may induce not simply more research excellence, but also narrower research agendas with long-term consequences for the Spanish sociology community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recently developed hierarchical age-period-cohort (HAPC) models, inferential questions arise: How can one assess or judge the significance of estimates of individual cohort and period effects in such models? And how does one assess the overall statistical significance of the cohort and/or the period effects? Beyond statistical significance is the question of substantive significance. This paper addresses these questions. In the context of empirical applications of linear and generalized linear mixed-model specifications of HAPC models using data on verbal test scores and voter turnout in U.S. presidential elections, respectively, we describe a two-step approach and a set of guidelines for assessing statistical significance. The guidelines include assessments of patterns of effects and statistical tests both for the effects of individual cohorts and time periods as well as for entire sets of cohorts and periods. The empirical applications show strong evidence that trends in verbal test scores are primarily cohort driven, while voter turnout is primarily a period phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The articles included in the December 2004 issue of the journal "Sociology of Religion" are all based on papers given at the 2003 meeting of the Association for the Sociology of Religion in Atlanta, Georgia. Each of the article explores the increasing emphasis on culture in sociology as a whole and more specially in the sociology of religion. Also, the papers also deal with new ideas and approaches. In this issue, the different trajectories within the sociology of religion is demonstrated. These are not random differences, but can be mapped in relation to institutional, philosophical and linguistic constraints within the same profession.

Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a leading cause of mortality. Numerous investigations have linked occupational factors and CVD. Occupational factors such as overtime work have an enormous effect on the CVD risk of industrial workers. However, risk factors for CVD are not systematically reviewed in the workplace. The purpose of the paper is to review work-related risk factors for CVD. Methods: A systematic review of work-related CVD risk factors was performed, yielding 180 articles. All articles were assessed in relation to inclusion and exclusion criteria, resulting in 44 articles being reviewed. The sole inclusion criteria was work-related environmental factors and intra/inter-personal factors (psychosocial factors), which is based on the socioecological perspective. The articles were also assessed regarding the quality of each study using the scoring methods developed by Cesario et al. and Brown et al. Conclusion: The literature review demonstrated that work environment factors such as shift work, overtime work, and noise and chemical exposures; and psychosocial factors such as job stress, social support, and socioeconomic status cannot be explained or intervened by one single risk factor. Furthermore, certain occupational factors were shown to aggravate or attenuate other risk factors. The implication of these findings is to incorporate work-related environmental and psychosocial factors into assessment of the patient's CVD risks and intervention plan. Future research should also incorporate a well-defined conceptual framework to address the effects of work-related environmental and psychosocial factors on CVD among CVD patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper illustrates case studies of four developing countries and compares them as to relative advancement in tobacco control as prescribed by the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Tobacco-control efforts first seem to involve assessment of tobacco use prevalence and passage of tobacco-control legislation (e.g., warning labels). Tanzania, Nepal, and China serve as examples. Eventually, an integrated tobacco-control stance that demonstrates several cycles of tobacco-control activities occurs, as is shown in Thailand. Through these case studies, one can achieve a sense of the direction of progress in tobacco control in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years questions about the coherence of Religious Studies have been raised, responses to which have important implications within both the politics of institutions and broader cultural politics. As specializations deepen, some fragmentation in the field of Religious Studies is inevitable and a welcome antidote to earlier universalising claims. But we need to overcome the inadequate choice of using either problematic general categories or a relativistic reversion to purely area-specific study which relegates the study of ‘religions’ to departments of anthropology, sociology, or other splintered fields, and excludes theologies of traditions from the secular academy. This paper argues for Religious Studies not only as the social scientific study of religion but as an arena that gives hospitality to traditions' self-inquiry within a framework of rational discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1960s, one of the great strengths of social history has been its willingness to respond to contemporary concerns. However, as environmental issues have pushed their way to the top of the global political agenda, social historians have been slow to meet this new challenge. This paper examines reasons for this reluctance and, more importantly, explores the opportunities for integrating social and environmental history. It is divided into three main parts. The first section deals with the failure of social history to strike up a dialogue with environmental history. Section two aims to show that social and environmental history are basically compatible and complementary fields, and argues for increased collaboration by making human-environment relations a key theme for future research. Drawing on studies—both rural and urban—that have begun to establish common ground between the two fields, section three outlines new areas for investigation, including: the interconnections between social inequality and environmental degradation; environments and identities; and consumption and the environment. By focusing attention on how ordinary people interacted with their environments in the past, social historians could make a significant contribution to current discussions about a sustainable future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the key issues that need to be addressed in seeking to enhance the appeal of social history to undergraduates. Consideration is given to content selection; enhancing cognitive skills; learning and teaching approaches; and assessment techniques. Additionally, in relation to each of these matters, the notion of progression is examined, which in this context is concerned with how the study of social history can be made more challenging for students as they proceed through their programmes of study. The argument is made that, for social history to prosper at undergraduate level, careful account will have to be taken of students' needs, especially in terms of their employability, and meaningful ways found of reflecting these needs both in the way the curriculum is designed and in the learning and teaching approaches that are adopted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I trace the development of statistical significance testing standards in sociology by analyzing data from articles published in two prestigious sociology journals between 1935 and 2000. I focus on the role of two key elements in the diffusion literature, contagion and rationality, as well as the role of institutional factors. I find that statistical significance testing flourished in the 20th century. Contagion processes and the suitability of significance testing given a study's data characteristics encourage the diffusion of significance testing, whereas institutional factors such as department prestige and particular editorships help explain growing popularity of the .05 alpha level and use of the "three-star system" of symbolic codes (i.e., *p < = .05, **p < = .01, ***p < = .001). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is there a difference between the social capital developed in faith-based and secular poverty-to-work programs? Comparative field research investigating five faith-based and secular poverty-to-work programs in southeastern America finds that values expressed by a secular non-profit organization and two faith-based programs correspond with more activities that develop social capital than the programs run by a for-profit organization and a reinvented government agency. In all the programs this social capital is both 'bridging,' by crossing barriers of race, gender, and class, and 'bonding' by tying participants and staff into at least a temporary supportive community. The programs see that this social capital is effective in supporting low-income persons through the transition to full-time employment. In addition, the faith-based programs seek to extend the social capital by developing long-term ties between clients and local religious congregations. This paper also specifies how social capital is developed in these programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In some forms of sociology, "culture" has come to replace "society" as the central object of study. This has encouraged an epistemological relativism that overrides a proper engagement with human ontology, while it has also allowed for the development of forms of reductionism where culture turns out to be determined by something deemed more fundamental, such as technology. Some influential contemporary accounts of the "information age" exhibit both these characteristics. The argument of this paper is that these do not offer a productive route forward for sociology in general, or for sociologists of religion in particular. It is argued that Durkheim's social realism not only helps to illuminate the inadequacy of those theories that ignore the human and religious dimensions of contemporary life in their intoxication with machine-mediated flows of information, but can also point towards a more productive way forward for the analysis of contemporary social and cultural realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The dehumanizing aspects of conflict and war are increasingly recognized as serious health and human rights concerns. This paper examines the impact on civilians of the 29 March 2002 Israeli Army invasion and subsequent curfews lasting up to 45 consecutive days, of five West Bank towns. Methods: Using focus groups, a 10-item scale was devised to measure the effects of the invasion's impact on the social and health-related quality of life. The scale is an aggregate of three constructs measuring housing, financial, and health-related issues. A survey composed of demographic questions and the 10-item social/health scale was administered to a stratified random sample of inhabitants of the five towns. Results: the invasion caused extensive destruction, food and cash shortages, internal displacement of civilians, psychological distress, and serious interruptions of basic services, including crucial health services. Overall, Jenin experienced the most deleterious effects. Using the subscales, Jenin experienced the highest overall housing damage, Bethlehem the most financial difficulties, and Ramallah the most health-related hardships. Conclusions: civilians inevitably suffer during conflict and war from destruction of the community infrastructure and from personal stress due to disruption of services and the non-fulfilment of basic human needs. In contradistinction to standard damage assessments that focus on collective physical damage, this scale provides richer information on the needs of civilians in conflict-torn areas, and can assist aid workers in the efficient deployment of resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the Enlightenment, the concept of‘critique’ broadened and acquired a political denotation, in which the expression of opinion alone could itself be already considered critique. This meaning of‘critique’ expresses acknowledgement of men as equal, free and rational. This broad concept of critique, however, also tends to negate certain more technical and specific forms. This paper goes back to conceptions of critique introduced by Kant and developed in an educational perspective by the neo-Kantian Paul Natorp. Kant's concept of critique concentrated on the conditions of possibility of judgemental powers, resulting in a transcendental critique of Reason. Natorp applied this conception of transcendental critique to education. Though Natorp relates education to society as a whole, his concept of critique does not uncover the social determinants of educational views but holds on to a transcendental critical idea of critical judgement that is not completely socially determined. Consequently, in the transcendental critical approach, the critical function of Reason is given priority over any political vision. This results in a conception of critique that primarily questions validity claims, stressing rational testing as opposed to other sources of validity, such as traditional or religious authority. The transcendental critical programme, further developed in twentieth-century Germany, still endorses the implied denial of the possibility of deriving the validity of propositions from experience. It can be distinguished from Karl-Otto Apel's brand of transcendental critique by its refusal to assume any primary criterion for critical judgement, in the manner of Apel's‘ideal communicative community’. Consequently, this programme cannot result in any positive conception of education. Its main contribution consists in exposing those presuppositions of educational views and practices that function as a priori ideas as conditions of the possibility of their justification. Though not denying the value and relevance of positive educational conceptions, this transcendental critical approach primarily aims at preventing metaphysical foundational questions from being forgotten or dogmatically fossilised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious life has long been global. Contemporary migrants extend these ties by transnationalizing everyday religious life. While much has been written about transnational economic and political practices, transnational religious life is not well understood. This paper examines the institutional characteristics of transnational religiosity and has three broad goals. First, it reviews this emerging body of literature and proposes an approach to the study of transnational migrants' religious practices. Second, it proposes three types of extended, negotiated, and recreated transnational religious organizations. Finally, it begins to untangle the relationship between transnational religion and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do those who can participate in more inclusive congregations instead choose to turn to those that draw strong ethnic boundaries? This article addresses this question through a little studied but growing phenomenon — Asian American college students' participation in separate ethnic evangelical organizations. Using data gathered from field research in a variety of ethnically diverse campus ministries, this paper examines why second-generation Korean Americans who can participate in pan-ethnic, multiracial, or predominately white campus ministries instead participate in separate ethnic campus ministries. In so doing, it contributes to the emerging literature on the religious participation of the children of today's post-1965 immigrants; it addresses the largely unformed debate regarding the prevalence of racialization versus ethnicization explanations for ethnic religious group formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dramatic religious growth has occurred throughout the former Soviet Union in the past 30 years with approximately 100 million people joining religious groups for the first time. These religious revivals correspond to lessening restrictions on religious activity — a dear prediction of the ’religious-economies’ or ’supply-side’ approach to the study of religion. Nevertheless, a comparative analysis of past-communist countries reveals that levels of religious pluralism are not commensurate to levels 4 religious growth, a finding which seemingly contradicts a central proposition in the supply-side approach. This paper argues that a religious-economies explanation of post-communist religious growth remains untarnished when one considers the impact of Soviet atheism on religious markets and the role of religious regulation in the post-communist era. These two factors have created an instance where religious monopolies are able to grow at unprecedented rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study deals with the independent religious communities that began their activity with the liberal reforms and antireligious policy of Nikita Khrushchev. The paper confines itself to the near- Orthodox independent religious communities that existed in Leningrad from the 1960s to the 1970s. A specific characteristic of those communities was their doseness to various lands of Russian nationalistic groups and to the dissent movement. Through an analysis of interviews with former participants in the religious communities, auto-biographical texts and various documents, an attempt is made to reconstruct the significance of individual religious searches by the young intellectuals of Leningrad who took part in the religious communities, and their values and ideology during the 1960s and '70s. Criticism and disillusionment with communism preceded conversion of these soviet intellectuals to Orthodoxy. The specific context of atheistic government resulted not only in a particular combination of the elements of restored religious tradition, but also in special techniques of validation of their religious faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last two decades there has been a growing volume of discourse-based research in a wide range of professional settings. These studies differ considerably in terms of their choice of analytic frameworks and data sites, but also with regard to the professed/implied inter-relationship of the researchers with the potential consumers of such research. One particular issue which concerns us in this paper has to do with how discourse-based findings are fed back to practitioner professionals and the extent to which the feedback received from the latter can set the agenda for further discourse analytic work. For the purposes of illustration, we draw upon our earlier consultancy work with the Royal College of General Practitioners. One of the main findings we have reported in the context of these medical gatekeeping encounters concerns the co-existence of different modes of talk. Borrowing from sociological literature on occupational and organizational communication, we have been able to offer an analytic distinction between three modes of talk--professional, institutional, and personal experience--which are interactionally grounded, while allowing for slippages across these modes. sOur focus of analysis here is to see how this analytic distinction is taken up by the practitioner professionals and the extent to which they (do not) use our discourse analytic finding as a heuristic for dealing with practical and policy issues. Based on our interactions with the practitioners (and the subjects of our study) and working within a model of collaborative 'action-oriented' research paradigm, we return to the discourse data in order to further refine the analytic distinctions suggested earlier, bearing in mind issues of generalizability and transparency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paul Lazarsfeld contributed to unemployment research, public opinion and market research, mass media and communications research, political sociology, the sociology of sociology, the history of empirical social research, and applied sociology. His methodological innovations—reason analysis, program analyzer, panel analysis, survey analysis, elaboration formula, latent structure analysis, mathematical sociology (especially the algebra of dichotomous systems), contextual analysis—are of special importance. This study responds to the critiques of Lazarsfeld's ‘administrative research’ by Theodor W. Adorno, of ‘abstract empiricism’ by Charles W. Mills, and of the ‘Columbia Sociology Machine’ by Terry N. Clark. The paper discusses the merits of the team-oriented style of work presented in Lazarsfeld's ‘workshop,’ his teaching by engaging in professional activities in social research and methodology, and his consecutive foundation of four research institutes, Vienna's Wirtschaftspsychologische Forschungsstelle, the Newark University Research Center, the Princeton Office of Radio Research, and the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University in New York. By his manyfold activities, Paul Lazarsfeld decisively promoted the institutionalization of empirical social research. All these merits make him the founder of modern empirical sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has two main objectives. One is to consider the central place of human rights in today's global order and the other is to articulate a theoretical framework that will make sociological sense out of current human rights discourse and practice. Human rights emerged from, but need to be distinguished from, societal rights, and they are to be viewed as social claims upon social power arrangements. In advancing our perspective, special attention is given to the place of organizations in human rights theorizing; at the same time, we delineate some of the highly contested aspects of the endeavor to institutionalize a set of human rights principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines how Anthony Giddens's theory of structuration has been utilized within criminological studies. It suggests that rather than resolving many traditional dilemmas within sociology, structuration theory effaces them by compacting together structure and agency. Adverting to the critical literature on structuration theory, it points out the consequences of binding structure and agency together so tightly. The distinctive properties of each are collapsed into social practices which entail that structure is defined virtually—in terms of rules and resources—so that it does not have an objective existence. This confers a spurious malleability upon social structures, yet structuration theory is unable to specify when transformation will occur, and also fails to explain why there should be change since agents are overwhelmingly concerned with the preservation of security through the adherence to routines. These and other deleterious consequences are drawn out through an examination of three studies that incorporate structuration theory and they are traced to an unwillingness to conceive of social reality as being multidimensional, with each level possessing its own distinctive properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the hypothesized inverse relationship between socioeconomic status and conservatism on a wide range of so-called social issues. This relationship is important in itself as well as in some theories that link political dealignment to features of postindustrial society. We examine this relationship by looking at the net effects of education, occupation, income, and class (owner, supervisor, or worker) on nine issues. Our results suggest that the hypothesized relationship is absent for most dimensions of socioeconomic status and most social issues. The most consistent exception to this is that liberalism on social issues tends to increase with education, but even here the relationship varies considerably from issue to issue. The lack of a consistent relationship reflects both the diversity of the social issues and the fuzziness of the social/economic distinction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper joins central concerns in the sociology of work and the sociology of aging. Age differences in work commitment and work values are examined, as well as their work and nonwork determinants, using data from 4,567 American and 3,735 Japanese employees. Our results show that older men are more committed to work than younger men in both Japan and the United States. This pattern also holds for American women, but there are no age differences in work commitment among Japanese women. Moreover, there are greater age differences among the Japanese in the importance placed on good pay. This is consistent with the view that there has been greater cultural change in recent years in Japan than in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper compares political activists from four community protest organizations, formed in response to the March 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. Using survey data, newsletters, and fieldwork, we document the existence of two separate paths to protest involvement. In two communities, recruitment was less likely to occur along the lines of established social networks. Instead, utilitarian alliances grounded on shared grievances were constructed. A second distinct path accounted for activism in two larger communities where many of the activists reported previous protest experience. In these communities, existing friendship networks were utilized. Two years after the accident, significant network and ideological differences between the groups persisted. We suggest that analysts work to specify the conditions for different paths to activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In view of (1) escalating national attention, and political and judicial activity centering on capital punishment during the past decade and a half, and (2) concomitant changes in homicides this paper investigates the impact of the death penalty on state homicide rates for the post-Furman period, 1973 -84 The research also addresses the debate over the relative merits of the contiguous state matching strategy versus multiple regression as a means of controlling for the influence of possible confounding factors in examining the capital punishment/homicide relationship. The two approaches yield quite similar results. Consistent with a long line of deterrence research, the analysis produces no indication that our national return to capital punishment since Furman has had a systematic downward impact on homicide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the determinants of domestic well-being in less-developed countries. In particular, we examine the impact of both penetration of foreign investment and levels of domestic political protest on economic growth and the provision of basic needs. Our work is an attempt to explore the effects of both: international economic processes and international political processes on development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than 10 years ago the author proposed a contextual-interactional explanation of the fact that research done on the West Coast fails to find a relationship between religious commitment and delinquency, while studies done elsewhere invariably find a strong negative correlation. Unfortunately, because of various deficiencies, subsequent studies that claimed to test the contextual explanation have not done so -- leaving the literature more confused than ever. In an effort to clarify matters, this paper carefully restates the contextual theory and then tests it on data from a very large survey of high school seniors. The results demonstrate the existence of a very potent contextual effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]