Search

The article presents information on the annual meeting of the society of scientific study of religion at Vista International Hotel Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This year's theme of religious marginality encourages participants to go beyond core beliefs and practices of members of mainline churches to the expressions of interest or disinterest in religion that are less common religious experience, mixed intermarriage, unclear interpreting "don't know" responses to questions on belief, nonestablishment (religion among street people), or rejections of religion atheism and apostasy. List of topics related to this year's theme would include, denominational switching and conversion, sources of membership change in the mainline churches, apostates and returnees, new nones (apostates) vs. stable nones with no prior ties, inter-religious marriage and religion of children, divorce, religious socialization of children, religiosity and the life cycle, Inter-racial marriage and religion and the Black Church.

The article the "American Journal of Economics and Sociology" and the diverse range of topics that is presented in the current issue. The first article focuses on a study conducted by C. Wright Mills and Melville Ulmer who were commissioned by the United States Congress to review large corporations and their impact on society. Another paper focuses on the growth of special interest protectionism during the early 19th century. The last paper discusses and defends the position that economic writer Max Weber deserves the title "economic sociologist."

The article focuses on the annual meeting of the Rural Sociological society. This is not a new experience, but some of the changes that are taking place in rural sociology programs and in society indicate that the need for discussion is not yet satisfied. This is also one way of reaching the many members, subscribers, and readers who axe unable to attend the Society meetings, and of including them in the circle of discourse. Accordingly, few persons from various sections of the country and one to represent a view of rural sociology as it exists outside the U. S. to offer some of their views on important issues in the future of rural sociology were invited. They were asked to respond briefly and quickly enough for the papers to be presented in the June issue before the 1969 meeting.

This article presents the research papers published in this issue of the journal "Rural Sociology." The first paper by James H. Copp represents a stage in the maturation of research on farm practice acceptance. It is one of the first attempts to compare the results of studies conducted in different agricultural regions. Using data from Wilkening's study in Wisconsin and from his own study in Kansas, he developed comparable measures of certain personal, social, and economic variables. Another paper by Copp and colleagues deals with the informational aspect of the acceptance of new farm practices. They attempt essentially to specify the function of information sources in the adoption process. By asking a series of questions about the sources of information at various times, from the awareness of a new practice until its adoption, they find that institutionalized sources tend to perform a function separate from that of noninstitutionalized sources. The study by Charles R. Hoffer and Dale Stangland is a worthy attempt to take into account the farmer's value orientations as they affect his adoption of practices.

Over the past twenty years, the expansion and differentiation of education in the United States have been explained in many different ways, but most explanations give little or no importance to the role of government officials pursuing their own interests. And all ignore how business's and students' influence over educational policy is due less to their direct participation in policy-making than to their ideological influence and possession of resources that policy-makers covet. In this paper, I use the case of the massive expansion of occupational education in the community college to develop an alternative explanation of educational policy-making. This analysis draws on, but also critiques, recent work in political sociology on the roles and interests of the "state managers" who head major segments of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the relationship with data from a nation with a substantially different social context, Japan. American research on suicide has been based largely on American samples. Little is known about whether the results of this work, such as the link between divorce and suicide, will be replicated for nations with substantially different institutional and cultural structures. The present paper tests the marital integration theory of suicide with data from Japan. Briefly, the marital integration theory holds that as bonds to marriage weaken, suicide risk increases. Further, the kinship system in Japan is apparently more integrated than it is in the United States. For example, in Japan 37.3% of the elderly lived in three-generation households compared to only 0.5% of the elderly in the United States. Durkheim's theory of social integration and suicide emphasizes the subordination of the individual to group life as a prophylactic against suicide. Individualism in family life was emerging as the pattern for the future at the time of Durkheim's study. It is anticipated that a rising divorce rate should affect suicide risk for several groups: divorced persons; separated persons who are contemplating divorce; married persons with severe marital problems; and the children in such families.

Presidential addresses to the Rural Sociological Society fall into two basic types. Some persons have chosen to deliver a paper which continues the kind of substantive interests at the core of their particular careers. In this way the article is not too different than any other of the person's efforts. Perhaps the more characteristic mode is to step outside "the usual" and appraise where new challenges may be arising for rural sociology, where old problems remain and, in general, to focus on issues pertinent largely to the profession as such. This is so for the simple reason that the central concern of the author long has been with metatheory or metasociology. The nature of the beast, brings "professional" matters under scrutiny. Through the rubric of metatheory his goal is to examine and hopefully clarify some of the assumptions which underlines substantive propositions. The assumptions that are perhaps most inviting for inquiry are those involving methodology. This is because of rural sociology in the United States has a methodological centrality.

The Census of Agriculture is an important source of data for persons interested in studying the structure of agriculture. The census has been used to study agriculture and quality of life in Kansas recently and aggregated state level data was used to describe the relationship between farm size, agriculture and energy consumption. As sociological interest in agriculture, grows, it is likely that the Census of Agriculture will become the source of many more studies. Unfortunately, the units of analysis reported in the Census of Agriculture like-aggregate national, state and county statistics-create problems for those who use them for sociological purposes. This short article will illustrate some of the problems inherent in the use of census materials by reexamining some of the data used on recent papers on energy and agriculture. A serious difficulty posed by the use of census material for sociological research stems from the fact that census data are aggregated on the bases of political units like states and counties.

This article discusses the distribution of power in nationalized industries in the U.S. in 1951. The appointment of the National Coal Board was announced in the summer of 1946. In the following three years ownership of the fuel and power and transport industries was vested in a number of public corporations, two of which controlled, in terms of total undertakings and labour force, industrial organizations larger than any previously known in this country, or in the U.S. Nationalization offers a wide range of subjects of great interest to the sociologist. This paper, it is hoped, will indicate the degree of change which has taken place by considering the shifts in centres of power which transfer of ownership has produced. It describes the present distribution of power in nationalized industry as it is revealed by an examination, first, of the relation of Parliament, the Government and the trade unions to the controlling Boards; second, of the institutional forms, or patterns of organization adopted for each industry; and third, of the different groups to whom power has been apportioned within each industry. The aim of the paper is thus to define the effective power exercised by the Boards, to ascertain how power has been distributed within the various levels of organization, and to indicate some of the groups in the power structure and the conflicts between them. It is based on data collected in over two years' research into the working of the nationalized industries on behalf of the Acton Society Trust.

This paper analyzes gendered social identity in Japan and the United States, countries with comparable postindustrial economic systems but distinct cultural traditions. Using national surveys (1995), we find gender differences in value orientations to be neither systematic nor consistent. They often disappeared after controlling for demographic and human-capital variables, though not so often for Japan. Other variables proved more important predictors of values than gender, although in different ways in Japan and the United States. We conclude by reassessing the use of the term gender in social research and the cultural meaning of gender relations by addressing the feminist concerns with issues of gender location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes the legitimacy and adoption of a scientific biological program in the U.S. Emphasis on the improvement of organizational sociology and environmental policy; Role of social institutions on the development of science of biological control; Enhancement of the pesticide development.

This paper analyzes religious socialization as it relates to schooling success. propose and test a multilevel model of involvement in church activities as providing integration and motivation toward schooling success among metropolitan U.S. public high school sophomores. Results indicate that respondents' participation in church activities is related to heightened educational expectations, and that these more intensely religious students score higher on standardized math/reading tests; even while controlling for variables that often show religious effects to be spurious. The hypothesis that church involvement's effect varies by ecological context - it being a better predictor for students in poorer neighborhoods than average or wealthy neighborhoods - was not supported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the interpretive dynamics of official inquiries. Beginning with an ideal-typical sketch of congressional investigations, the discussion traces a portrayal of public problems by a committee of the House of Representatives. This leads to the analysis of a hearing in which committee factions struggled to define an Air Force administrator as a "whistleblower" or a "renegade." The hearing is understood as a "certification ceremony" that rhetorically transformed staff, discoveries into allegedly definitive evidence, it is concluded that the paper's conceptual approach can be applied to diverse inquiries that combine documentary research with interrogation of witnesses to generate authoritative findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refugees are individuals forced to flee from their homelands because of categorical persecution or because they are bystanders caught in the crossfire of war or civil strife. Such involuntary exile often leads to alienation in the most literal sense of the term. Whether expellees, escapees, or displaced persons, refugees share a common fate and, often, a common destiny: those who are dispossessed are dependent on others to provide care, succor, protection, and assistance. Yet responses to their plight are almost invariably highly selective, the quality of mercy being strained by considerations other than pure altruism. This paper, a commentary on the sociology of exile, attempts to convey the sense and significance of estrangement and responses to it in both historical and con temporary contexts. Early sections deal with concepts and concerns; later ones examine United States refugee policies and practices relating to exile, ethnicity, and the politics of rescue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has several objectives. First, it demonstrates the utility of employing an array of metatheoretical tools (paradigm, paradigm bridging micro -- macro, integrated paradigm, theoretical syntheses) to analyze the recent history of mainstream American sociological theory. Second, it shows that we have moved through three rather well defined epochs in sociological theory over the last three decades and are entering a fourth. Third, it demonstrates that the trend in recent years has been away from theoretical separatism and exclusivity, and toward theoretical synthesis and integration. Finally, and relatedly, the integrated sociological paradigm that I sketched a decade ago, or at least something very much like it, it shown to be now much closer to being a reality, perhaps even a defining reality, in sociological theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate over the "community question" has generated several perspectives on the sources of ties to the territorial community in modern society. This paper attempts to empirically assess the utility of each model for predicting the number of ties to the local community and extra-local area, using data on voluntary association memberships in Seattle. Results indicate that the "community of limited liability" perspective is most accurate in predicting the importance of social, economic, and temporal investments for local memberships, and social position for extra-local memberships.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noting that sociology, like other disciplines, usually discusses itself as if its content-its body of knowledge-were created by a wholly intellectual process, I am adopting in this paper the approach of the sociology of knowledge by emphasizing the "existential factors" that influence knowledge. I employ the poorly developed concept of occupation, and argue that in the United States academic disciplines like sociology are best analyzed as professions, which are organized occupations. American professions sustain their present position by the functional differentiation of members into separate administrative, research or scholarship, and practice roles. Practice roles serving lay clients or patrons provide the basic economic support of the profession as a whole. The characteristic practice role of most academic arts and science disciplines is teaching. Using sociology and its special position in the under-graduate curriculum as an example, I suggest that the contingencies of teaching influence what knowledge is used, underlie at least part of the public image of the discipline, and determine some of what becomes part of the published corpus of the discipline's knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of controlled access highways on nonmetropolitan population growth between 1940 and 1970 in the state of Pennsylvannia. Minor civil divisions corrected for boundary changes were used as areal units in the research. With a longitudinal analysis, the authors observed the demographic growth of nonmetropolitan places before and after controlled access highways were opened as well as variations in the impact of the said highways from decade to decade.

This article presents updates on meetings and events related to family living and marriage at universities and associations in the U.S. as of May 1946. At the two sessions of the American Sociological Society, papers presented were devoted to the topic of family. The first, on the Family and the War, chairman, Ray E. Baber, discussed papers by Mildred Fairchild on Compilation of Data Regarding American Women at Work and at Home in World War II, by Leonard Bloom on Familial Adjustments of Japanese-Americans to Relocation, and by John F. Cuber on A Study of the Adjustmental Problems of Returning Service Men and Their Spouses. The Association for Childhood Education, on the other hand, held a restricted 1946 Annual Meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio, on April 1946, limited to approximately eight hundred people. In addition, the Child Study Association of America held its Annual Conference on March 4, 1946.

This paper contains an exposition of the types of family statistics derived and published annually from the Current Population Survey of the Bureau of the Census. The authors discuss the Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS) in terms of its relevancy and value to sociologists interested in the field of family studies. Recent improvements in data collection and processing techniques, as well as a discussion of the wide range of social and economic variables relating to family studies and obtainable from the CPS for the national population are presented. it is pointed out that the CPS is, and can be, an important source of recurring family data for supplementing independent research in many related fields. The Census Bureau's household and family projections program is discussed and a brief demographic sketch of the family in America in 1970 is offered as an illustration of the nature of the data currently available in the CPS programs and the "Current Population Reports" publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information about various developments related to sociology. Plans for the 1968 meeting of the Rural Sociological Society at the Somerset Hotel in Boston during August 23-26, 1968 are well under way. This year the Program Committee has divided the contributed papers section into six major areas. These are: Social Structure, which includes Small Groups, Community Structure and Development, Power Structure, Rural Organizations, and Stratification. The Social Processes area includes: Innovation and Social Change, Cooperation and Conflict, and Communication. The Population and Ecology are includes: Fertility, Mortality, Demographic Characteristics, and Locality. Authors of papers for possible inclusion in the Medical Care Section Program of the next annual meeting of the American Public Health Association to be held during November 10-15, 1968 at Detroit, Michigan, may obtain standard abstract forms from Donald C. Riedel, Associate Professor of Public Health, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut.

Between 1900 and 1950, the population of the United States doubled, but during this same period the proportion of persons over 64 years of age quadrupled. In all states, aging has created problems which are becoming increasingly pressing. The Social Security program is designed to cope with certain income, health, and welfare issues; but the problem of personal adjustment in retirement is largely an individual matter. Agricultural census data indicate that many older people have retired on the land. Currently, more than 400,000 persons reach retirement age annually. Presumably many of these people plan for rural retirement. This paper examines the question of whether adjustment of retired persons is achieved in agriculture, especially under conditions as found in Florida. It is concluded that agriculture provides economic and cultural advantages for retirees, but that factors associated with constant aging tend to weaken these values, at least as related to open-country retirement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is principally a description of the role of commercial farming in the structure of American agriculture. The newly altered classification of commercial farms now enables a better description of the total agricultural picture of the United States, and information available under the new classification should serve as a valuable framework for certain phases of social and economic research. Commercial farms made up 68.9 per cent of all farms in the United States in 1950. Although their numbers were decreasing, they comprised 88.1 per cent of the total acreage devoted to farming and accounted for 97.5 per cent of the value of farm products sold in the United States in 1949. As compared with other farmers, smaller proportions of operators of commercial farms performed off-farm work. Their length of residence on the same farm was longer. Commercial farms had considerably higher proportions of tenancy. The commercial farmer was slightly younger than the operator of other farms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the statistics on the rural population from the 1950 census are based on a new definition of urban-rural residence which differs in several respects from the old definition used in previous censuses. This paper indicates the nature of these changes in definition and their effects on the size of the rural population in the United States as a whole and in the individual states. It also examines the characteristic pattern of urban-rural growth in metropolitan areas as an explanation of urban-rural differences (in terms of the old definition) among the states in the rate of growth in the decade 1940-1950. This examination suggests that, for states, rural rates of increase which exceed the corresponding urban rates reflect the rapid growth of population in suburban areas rather than an increase in the open-country or rural-farm population. Finally, it indicates that the new urban definition represents a step in the direction of a more realistic classification of the population into its urban and rural parts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the paper on the research on sociological aspects of health. The report will describe these experiments and, in addition, will present in some detail the major steps of the study that are important to an understanding of the methodological aspects. The methodology of the current statewide health survey is actually a part of an extensive and varied research effort which is now being made in the sociology of health and health care throughout the U.S. The major purpose of the survey was to ascertain the extent of unmet need for medical attention by use of the symptoms approach among a representative sample of the population in Michigan. Other purposes were to obtain information about the availability and use of medical services, methods of paying for health care, attitudes regarding physicians and medical care, and the attributes and characteristics of people which might be related to all three of these areas.

The article presents a reply of the author regarding views expressed on his religious thoughts. He says the journal article is not a useful format for pursuing disputes involving both major issues of the logic of social explanation and technical considerations of data preparation and analysis. The author says that social considerations often seem more germane than the rational choices of autonomous individuals. Diversity of the new world may be more apparent than real is that some of it is due to racial and ethnic duplication. His essay questioned the stereotypes of old world as religious hegemony and new world as competitive pluralism. It identified considerable diversity within British religion and raised the point that the religious diversity of the United States as a whole may not be reflected at the local levels where choices are made. He also pointed that in a general critique of rational choice models of human behavior, he has suggested that they represent an economics rather than a sociology view of human behavior.

This essay responds to article 'How Has Bourdieu Been Good to Think With? The Case of the United States,' which appears in this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I reflect on the ways elements of Robin M. Williams Jr.’s research agenda might be carried forth in a meaningful way to sociological studies of twenty-first-century phenomena—in particular identifying the ways in which the facts of human interaction, of human expectation, and of human influence shapes outcomes of significance for our present, our future, and, therefore, our past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a note from the new editor of the journal "Sociological Forum," for the first issue processed in the Albany office in New York. The issue is similar to the issues from offices in Ithaca and Stony Brook. Two reasons for this continuity are that the papers in editorial process at Stony Brook were sent to Albany in the editorial office transition and that editors are at the mercy of the authors who submit manuscripts. The plea made to authors by editor Stephen Cole was that if one had a manuscript ready for submission, one should first think of the "Sociological Forum."

In sociology, work in formal theory is more extensive and intensive today than at any time in the past, but remains invisible to some, including S. Zhao [(1996) "The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning: The Theory Construction Movement Revisited," Sociological Forum, Vol 11, No. 2, pp. 305-318]. I trace the growth of formal theory in sociology focusing on theoretical research programs and show that, whereas formal theory came after the books on theory construction, it was not based on them. Elementary Theory's research program provides an example of that discontinuity. Some misunderstandings concerning formal theory can be traced to the Maryland Theory Conference of 1990 and a critique of selected ideas of that Conference is offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our objective is to examine how several aspects of the class structure influence the prevalence of artistic institutions. The analysis is based on quantitative comparisons of the 125 largest metropolitan areas in the United States. Most of the literature on the history of art concludes that artistic developments depend on the patronage of an elite-as noble patrons, as rich donors, or even as affluent bourgeois donors and audiences. Whereas these conclusions imply that class inequalities further the growth of the arts, our empirical findings indicate the opposite. Both lesser inequality and reductions of inequality in a metropolis increase a variety of artistic institutions, and these influences persist when other influences on these institutions are controlled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the sexual equality in the U.S. It is stated that liberal theorists generally accepted that women should be viewed as free and equal beings who is capable of self-determination and a sense of justice and free to enter the public domain of economy and government. Moreover, liberal democracies have increasingly adopted antidiscrimination statutes destined to ensure that women have equal access to education, employment and political office. However, sex equality has been ineffective in the U.S. in which full-working women earn only 71 percent of what working men earn. Furthermore, the paper also discusses Susan Moller's argument of dominant conception of sexual equality on her excellent book "Justice, Gender and the Family."

The article presents information related to college sociology teachers in the U.S. John V. D. Saunders, assistant professor of sociology at the Louisiana State University, will join T. Lynn Smith, graduate research professor at the University of Florida, in the preparation of the manuscript for future sociology sections of the Handbook of Latin American Studies. The Handbook, a publication prepared in the Hispanic Foundation of the Library of Congress with the assistance of approximately sixty specialists from universities and colleges principally in the United States, is the standard United States guide to the current publications and scholarly activities within the social sciences and humanities as they relate to Latin America. Edward Koenig recently returned from Nigeria, West Africa, where he was with the International Development Services Inc. He was a member of a team studying agricultural co-operatives and credit problems in Western Nigeria for the International Co-operation Administration. He left the Baron Dc Hirsch Fund after ten years as its agent in New York State.

This article discusses the attitudes toward dating among foreign students in America. The present paper constitutes part of a major project conducted by the writer and dealing with comparative family sociology, dating being the main subject. More specifically, the investigation concentrated on the dating attitudes and patterns of students coming from twenty different countries and territories and studying at Purdue University. The collection of data concerning the various family systems was based mainly on library research and only partly on participant observation. The foreign students themselves were interviewed by the writer. The interviews were standardized by means of three long schedules including questions on background information, dating attitudes and patterns, adjustment while in the United States, and the like. consideration. The quantitative approach consisted of translating several responses into numerical values. A section of one of the schedules, for instance, dealt with dating liberalism, that is, approval of different dating practices.

Presents news notes involving the Rural Sociological Society in the U.S. Announcements by sociological institutions; Programs and projects involving universities and colleges; Meetings and workshops.

This article discusses several developments related to academic activities and appointments in field of sociology, from various universities and colleges in the U.S. Howard W. Been, the University of Kentucky's head of the Departments of Sociology and Rural Sociology, is in New Delhi, India, serving as a community development adviser to the Indian government. He is employed by the Ford Foundation. He is expected to return in July, 1959. John H. Mabry has been appointed associate medical sociologist in the University Medical Center and associate professor of sociology. He was formerly on the staff of the Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, New York. In Mississippi State University, at the invitation of the Department of Sociology and Rural Life, a review panel visited in October to discuss and make recommendations about the research program. In Ohio State University, Robert M. Dimit, associate professor, has been promoted to the position of extension leader in research. He replaces Harold R. Capener, who is in India for two years as part of the Ohio State-India team. Dimit has recently completed a study of membership relations in the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation.

The article presents information on various developments related to rural sociology. On September 15th and 16th a meeting of the Rural Sociological Society was held at the Statler Hotel, St. Louis. The Farm Economic Association met at the same time and place. Section meetings were held on the following topics, Sociological Aspects of Rural Health, Extension Work in Rural Sociology, The Neighborhood as a Unit of Organization for the Promotion of State and Federal Programs, Rural Sociological Research in Wartime, and Rural Social Change in Wartime. In accordance with the results of the poll conducted last winter, the ballots collected in the fall of 1942 were opened and the officers elected at that time were installed. In another development,an institute on the post-war problems of youth migration was held in Washington, on May 26 and 27, at the National Education Association headquarters. More than fifty federal and local agencies were represented. While Karl Brandt, economist and professor of agricultural economics in the Food Research Institute, Stanford University, was elected president of the Western Farm Economics Association for the year 1943-4 at their annual meeting.

The article comments on the twentieth year of the "Sociological Forum" periodical in the U.S. in 2005. Since the first issues under its founding editor Robin M. Williams Jr. in 1986, the periodical has tried to encourage critical analytical exchanges among sociologists. In its pages, implicit and explicit 'conversations' between scholars debate the ideas that rule our intellectual lives. Contested facts, alternative methodologies, opposing theories, competing perspectives and distinctive world views punctuate those conversations. The March 2005 issue of the "Sociological Forum" offers a group of articles that effectively represent a range of these conversations, each in its own way issuing a challenge to other scholars.

This article focuses on James McKeen Cattell, who helped in launching the "American Journal of Economics and Sociology." But Cattell should be of interest to everyone concerned with the history of science in America. Cattell was involved in the founding, by Thomas A. Edison, of the journal "Science" in 1880. The paper was later supported by Alexander Graham Bell. But it struggled with financial difficulties until it was acquired by Cattell in 1894. He ran and edited it until his death in 1944, making it the most important and profitable scientific journal in the U.S.

The article presents information on the content of the papers published in the 1943 issue of the "American Journal of Economics & Sociology." The authors represented in the volume turned out studies many of which added bricks or courses to the temple of learning, and some of which realized, however imperfectly. The journal's goal of co-operation among the various social sciences and related disciplines in the interest of a rational social and economic organization. The journal is more than a 576 pages of progress reports on scientific studies. These reports are made by men and women whose labors, out of personal interest and social responsibility, produced them in spite of the war's added teaching and administrative burdens or despite their contributions toward democratic victory in other roles. The news reports which give indications that some few of these studies already have had influence on informed opinion and public policy in the U.S. are an augury of the possibilities open to the scholar who grapples intelligently with the problems.

Fifty years ago, Robin M. Williams Jr. described eight notable changes in U.S. sociology, one of which was the “widespread diffusion of a relatively clear and sophisticated conception of the place of values in sociological study, as an object of research, as a factor in behavior, and as an element to be controlled in the prosecution of research” (Williams, 1958:621). In this essay, I ask what has become of that rising interest in the sociological study of values? I follow three distinct trajectories of sociological research on values, briefly describing the contributions of each, and identifying several lines of inquiry that strike me as particularly important and promising for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I point to contradictions in American individualism not unlike those suggested by Robin M. Williams Jr. I go on to suggest how twenty-first-century sociologists might better understand this aspect of American exceptionalism: not as an egoistic, asocial individualism, but as a covenantal, social voluntarism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the implications of ethnography to the human-subjects research through the network of local institutional review boards in the U.S. It focuses on informal fieldwork at home that exaggerates the qualities that make ethnographic research in anthropology and sociology in the institutional review board context or the human-subjects committees.

In-depth interview data reveal that workplace context and the social characteristics of clients and coworkers play an important role in shaping how upwardly mobile individuals experience class at work. While respondents did discuss their working-class backgrounds as a liability, as might be expected, they also described ways in which they experience their backgrounds as an occupational asset. These findings challenge the notion of a linear relationship between class and culture, suggesting instead a complex, fluid relationship between class, culture, and occupation, where the “class” of a job does not necessarily determine the class culture needed for that job. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics are combined with local census data to examine single mothers' patterns and determinants of residential mobility between poor and nonpoor neighborhoods in the United States. Moving from a poor to a nonpoor neighborhood is facilitated by marrying and by obtaining employment and is impeded by age and home ownership. Even net of numerous controls, African American single mothers are substantially less likely to escape poor neighborhoods and significantly more likely to move into them than their non-Black counterparts. Neither receipt of Aid to Families with Dependent Children nor adult coresidence significantly reduces the likelihood that single mothers will move from a poor to a nonpoor neighborhood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is based on sociologist Robin M. Williams lecture presented at an annual meeting of Eastern Sociological Society at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1995. In his important book "American Society" published in 1960, Williams stated that the increased public attention and recognition of the social sciences demand careful self-criticism and continuous revision based on penetrating research and theoretical reflections. The goal of the lecture is to show how diagnosis of social problems and prescriptions for their solution are related, in part, to the analytical concepts one uses. A study that Williams conducted with sociologist Margaret Ryan about community experiences in school desegregation included facts and theories that could have assisted the Supreme Court. A good society achieves its effectiveness by way of both contributive and distributive justice. The gift of poor White families to the society at large is a working model of contributive justice and the gift of poor Black families to the society at large is a working model of distributive justice.

This essay examines some of the trends in educational, sociological, and social psychological research on inequality of educational opportunity for African Americans in the United States. A review of theoretical approaches and methodological developments is followed by an overview of research and theory in selected substantive areas; social allocation processes in schools (ability grouping tracking etc.), the relationship of poverty to academic achievement, and educational attainment The article concludes with recommendations for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African American sociologists are beginning to confront the use of "African American/Black" as a homogeneous sociological category. In doing so they are laying the ground for improvements in social scientific research in general One aspect of that improvement involves the use of people of African descent as subjects for theoretical statements about humanity at large rather than merely about other African descendent populations. Another aspect involves confronting the extensive segregation within the discipline around the research done by African American scholars. This introduction discusses the implications of these issues for African American scholars and for the discipline as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although other nations have participated extensively in international peacekeeping operations, the use of American soldiers as peacekeepers is a recent change in their military role, and is not well understood by American society, the U.S. Army, the soldiers, or their wives. We use a social constructionist perspective, which has rarely been applied to the study of the American military, to analyze the definition of peacekeeping missions and of the nature of the military, by soldiers assigned to peacekeeping duly, their families, and other social institutions such as communications media and churches. We suggest that, because peacekeeping is an inherently ambiguous process, this theoretical perspective may prove useful in understanding the social definition of the emerging military role of peacekeeper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the populist turn on sociology and social history of the U.S. in the year 1960. Scholars began an unprecedented effort to speak for the powerless or to help them speak for themselves. Voice itself validates insurgency, they seemed to claim. Both fields had long since undertaken studies of poor, powerless people; witness the Pittsburgh Survey of 1903 and R. H. Tawney's early writings on the 16th century. Inspired by civil rights activism as well as by subsequent demands for empowerment of women, homosexuals, Chicanos, Native Americans and many others, scholars tried to counter the condescension, denigration, and dehumanization they detected in earlier analyses of popular collective action. They insisted that routine social arrangements harmed ordinary people, and that only force held ordinary people back from overt resistance. In short, compliance does not consist of conscious rule following or straightforward exchange, but of pursuing personal agendas by maneuvering among obstacles, obstacles put in place by other people and past experience.