Search

Background: Choice is a key part of the culture of the United States. Americans believe deeply in the personal and social usefulness of being able to make many choices. Hence, all sorts of efforts have been made to increase students' options, whether by creating many different kinds of schools and colleges, offering a great array of majors and degree programs, or allowing multiple modes of attending higher education. However, this proliferation of choices reproduces social inequality in two crucial ways. First, the provision of many options produces social inequality: people often make choices that do not serve their interests as well as they might wish, particularly if they are faced with many options and do not have adequate information. Second, the provision of many choices legitimates social inequality: the more one thinks in terms of choices in the context of a highly individualistic culture such as that of the United States, the easier it is for dominant groups to blame nondominants as creating their own troubles through feckless choices. Purpose: This paper focuses on one particularly important realm of choice—higher education—because it has come to play a central role in the transmission and legitimation of social inequality. Four higher education choices are of particular interest: whether to enter higher education, which college to attend, what major to choose, and what modality to attend college (for example, part time versus full time or in person versus online). Analyzing this choice-making process, the paper focuses on the impact of inequitable access to high-quality information. Beyond analyzing how choice proliferation and information inequity join to produce and legitimate educational inequality, the paper lays out detailed recommendations for what can be done to reduce this inegalitarian impact. Research Design: The paper draws on a wide variety of social science literatures including sociology of education, critical race theory, behavioral economics, and cognitive and social psychology. More particularly, the paper synthesizes sociology of education research inspired by Pierre Bourdieu and work drawing on critical race theory. Although there are major tensions between these two bodies of work, they can be fruitfully combined to both illuminate and overcome the ways information inequity produces and legitimates educational inequality. Recommendations: To reduce the role of information inequity in producing and legitimating educational inequality, the paper recommends four strands of change. One strand involves providing high-quality information more equitably through restructured and much more pervasive school counseling and other forms of information provision during middle school, high school, and higher education. A crucial component of this more equitable information provision is drawing on the community cultural wealth of nondominant communities. Second, it is important to design an "architecture of choice" that simplifies choice making and nudges students toward better choices by such means as simplifying the financial aid process, improving credit articulation for community college transfer students, and building guided pathways through college. A third strand involves reducing the harms of suboptimal choices by creating the means to monitor student progress and intervene when students might or actually do go off course. Finally, because suboptimal choices will still occur, it is important to enlighten student choosers and their observers about how choice making under conditions of information inequity produces and legitimates social inequality and to empower them to combat that stratified and stratifying process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the changing nature of congregations in the United States in a post-pandemic era, presenting a sociological analysis of crisis and opportunity. Drawing on insights from the expansive, five-year study – Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations (EPIC) – the author focuses on the relationship between technology, innovation, optimism, and congregational life. The study asks how congregations can adapt and advance in the rapidly changing (digital) world, with its embrace of new internet technologies that have profoundly disrupted the “normal” ways of doing religion. The framework for understanding change draws on Scott Galloway’s twin theses that the pandemic has (1) acted as an accelerant to existing trends, both positive and negative, and (2) that the more disruptive the crisis, the greater the potential opportunity. Implications from the research not only for religious communities, but also educators, administrators, and leaders from various industries are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the possible reasons for rejecting a manuscript to be published in the "Clinical Social Work Journal" in the U.S. According to the author, the common reason for the rejection is unsuitability and not following standard format of manuscripts. Some manuscripts submitted are more sociological than clinical, making them inappropriate to be published in the journal. He emphasizes the importance of the content of papers than of the English grammar because it is where the editors base their decision on whether it should be published or not. An overview of other reasons for rejection of papers to be published is offered.

Copyright of Journal of the American Institute for Conservation is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

President of the American Sociological Society Louis Wirth is planning for a Section on Contributed Papers for the next annual meeting that is to be held in New York from December 28 to 30, December, 1947. Although this Section is particularly de- signed for those younger members of the Society, including graduate students, who have not yet had an opportunity to appear on the pro- gram in other sections, contributions from other members of the Society will be welcome. Since this Committee is working closely with the Committee on Research, it is being urged that members who have completed research papers suitable for oral presentation and which do not fall within the scope of other Sections be offered for consideration in the Section on Contributed Papers.

The main purpose of this paper is to provide a biographical sketch of the late Hans L. Zetterberg and a historical background to a translation of an essay based on a lecture given by Zetterberg in Stockholm in 1995. In it, he recounts his time at the Department of Sociology at Columbia University in the years 1953–1964. This essay is full of insights into an inspiring and formative period for Zetterberg in the United States, particularly in the stimulating milieu that was Columbia, at this time the center of American sociology led by Robert K. Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld. In the introduction to this translated essay, I give a brief overview of the establishment of sociology as a discipline in Sweden, and the transfer of knowledge between the United States and Sweden (and Europe, more broadly), embodied in Hans Zetterberg. In the post-WWII years, American sociology, which had a strong positivistic imprint, played an important role in shaping the beginnings of Swedish sociology. However, the transfer of knowledge went both ways, with Zetterberg, a semi-central and often neglected figure, being both a significant contributor to sociology at Columbia in its period of greatest prominence, and in his native Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mark Fossett's new research, published here in the Journal of Mathematical Sociology, is arguably the most important advance in studies of residential segregation in the past decade. While this study of the role of preferences in creating the patterns of residential separation does not answer all the questions about how preferences create separation in the residential mosaic, it provides a major extension of Schelling's seminal work of three decades ago. The paper shows clearly that preferences do matter and that the set of simulations leave little doubt that residential preferences and their underlying social dynamics have the capacity to generate high levels of ethnic segregation. The agent-based modeling technique, on which the results are based, is a major advance on previouswork using agent-based modeling and will set the standard for further studies of the underlying processes that create residential separation in U.S. cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction to the Yearbook provides an overview of the global context of school choice policies and practices, trends in research and reform, and extant knowledge about research on school choice that draw upon the sociology of education. The article also highlights the contributions of the papers included in the Yearbook. The co-editors explain how the studies engage, complement, and extend existing streams of literature by bringing together a collection of contemporary sociological studies from the United States and other countries that illuminate understudied aspects of school choice reform policies, practices, and politics from across the globe. The Yearbook aims to raise the international profile of sociological research on school choice, and document how school choice policies and programs can be understood through a sociological lens, with a focus on how stakeholders perceive, experience, and respond to these reforms in local settings. This Yearbook also offers directions for future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the serial killer Ronald Dominique. Ronald killed at least 23 men in southeast Louisiana between 1997 and 2006. The author of this paper served as a mitigation investigator/expert on his case and has worked in over 300 criminal cases since 1988, most of which were capital murder, but also include second degree murder, manslaughter, armed robbery, rape, and habitual offender hearings. In his capacity as a mitigation investigator he interviewed Ronald multiple times and his friends and family on several occasions. This author examines Ronald's victims; the acts which killed them; Ronald's life; and how others saw him. The literature on serial killers is discussed and applied to Ronald crimes and his life. Ronald was gay and his victims were either gay or hustlers who were willing to have sex with gay men for money. Using several theories, the author discusses explanations for serial murder. Implications for police investigators are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on a citation-context analysis of journal articles from Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Examining publications from the sociology of health and medicine, the study draws a number of conclusions about the state of sociology, inter-country relationships between knowledge workers, and national systems of sociological knowledge production. It finds that core–periphery relations define significant features of sociological work, impacting on citation patterns, inter-country collaboration and the selection of reference materials. Core–periphery relations are also found to influence the sociological production of knowledge across the Australian university sector. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What are the ethical and political dilemmas faced in carrying out research on racism? This paper explores this question by drawing on our fieldwork experience in the course of doing research on the local politics of race in Birmingham. The initial premise is that it is impossible to see research in this field as simply an information-gathering process. Rather we argue that it is important to see how researcher and researched interact, the identities which are expressed and generated in these interactions, and how racism features within the research process. The second half of the paper focuses on the dilemmas of becoming involved in political debates through the research process itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Department of Sociology, The university of Rochester, October, 1966. The paper was written while the author was on leave of absence from the Department of Sociology, Syracuse University, as a visiting scholar at the Laboratory for Social Research, Stanford University. This investigation was supported in part by a Public Health Service fellowship MH 23,804-01 from the National Institute of Mental health. Much of the background for this paper was obtained while the author was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences, Stanford University (1964-1966) and the Laboratory for Social Research, Stanford University (1966-1967). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on the Fifth World Congress of Sociology organised by the International Sociological Association (ISA), at the Shoreham Hotel, Washington D.C., during 2-8 September, 1962, under the auspices of UNESCO and in collaboration with the American Sociological Association. The meetings brought together 1,030 participants from fifty one countries. Three main themes dealt with were, sociologists, policy-makers and the public, the sociology of development, the nature and problems of sociological theory. Many of the 240 invited contributions and the main papers presented to the plenary sessions are being published in the periodical "Transactions," volumes I and II of which have already appeared. Volumes III and IV will be published during the spring of 1963 and will contain reports on the discussions, a representative selection of the shorter papers and a list of the participants. Grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Science Foundation and the Social Science Research Council enabled the ISA to pay the travel expenses of most of the principal contributors and to offer free charter flight tickets to 80 young research workers from twenty countries.

Despite the ubiquity of "social capital" in sociological research, this measure has broadly been conceptualized as both an individual and collective level measure. We explore the link between these two levels within the United States using recently constructed scales of state- and county-level social capital linked to the geocoded 2000–2018 General Social Survey. Collective social capital is associated with greater individual-level trust and voting. However, heterogeneity analysis reveals substantial differences by race/ethnicity, education, sex, and marital status. Moreover, there is heterogeneity for individual-level confidence in institutions and social interaction frequency, despite no overall relationship between those outcomes and collective social capital. Only some of our results align with existing dimensions of stratification, showing the importance of being clear about the operationalization and level of social capital being studied and highlighting how the "advantages" of collective social capital may not extend broadly to all the members of the collective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of American architecture includes many examples of activists and reformers who sought to make the profession more inclusive, just, and socially engaged. This article provides a review of the academic literature discussing the efforts of such architects in order to identify historic trends in the study of activist architects in the United States—this paper's focus. After an initial period of growth and consolidation in the profession, contemporary forms of social engagement emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Subsequent decades have seen many of these efforts continue, or be revived, alongside increased academic interest in these same efforts. The article then reviews three areas of sociological research pertinent to the scholarship on socially engaged design. These focus on institutional change within the profession, the "logics" that guide architectural work, and the relationship between the profession and the academy. This article explores these institutional perspectives for their potential to complement frameworks for analyzing dissent in design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civic science (involving citizens as researchers) expands opportunities for learning among citizens, scientists, and managers. Citizens have knowledge that often is inaccessible using traditional research methods. How we think about places - be they communities, forests, or a forest site - frames and often limits what we can discover. This is especially true when we are interested in learning about the relations between people and places that are important to them. Limiting ourselves to traditional research methods results in incomplete knowledge and limited understanding. This paper reports on a study that used nontraditional research methods to actively involve citizens in a community assessment process. The paper (1) demonstrates that researchers can gain a more complete understanding of social systems using nontraditional methods; (2) illustrates how people can reconnect with their community and gain a new understanding of themselves and others through engagement in a self assessment process; and (3) describes one example of civic science used in community assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion on migration rate in the U.S. with reference to the paper by James D. Traver and William R. Gurley which is based on use of multiple regression model in demographic and sociological research. It suggests that if net migration rates is to be explained or sources influencing migration are to be found, the joint influence of two or more variables should be measured as median family income, median years of schooling, percent adults who have completed four or more years of high school, county net migration rates. It views that two highly intercorrelated measures of education are used in the paper which results in measuring the same things again. It is also suggested that a variable representing natural increase should be introduced to calculate the migration rate because areas with high natural increase rates are more likely to lose population by migration whereas areas with low natural increase rates are more likely to gain population by migration. It is viewed that despite of these problems also, the paper is able to handle some very complex and difficult problems.

The article discusses the creation of an intellectual biography of the U.S. sociologist Talcott Parsons. The researcher discusses Parsons' doctoral dissertation dealing with capitalism that was analyzed by sociologist Max Weber, and how Parsons' work delivered sociology from social Darwinism at the turn of the twentieth century. The author supports Parsons' work on the basis that he was a thinker and academician who did not use inconsistent analysis. The author utilized Parsons' archives at Harvard University, such as Parsons' paper "The Problem of Controlled Institutional Change."

Copyright of Aposta is the property of Aposta and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The last 100 years have witnessed a fervent debate in the USA about quantitative and qualitative research paradigms. Unfortunately, this has led to a great divide between quantitative and qualitative researchers, who often view themselves as in competition with each other. Clearly, this polarization has promoted purists, namely, researchers who restrict themselves exclusively either to quantitative or to qualitative research methods. Mono‐method research is the biggest threat to the advancement of the social sciences. Indeed, as long as we stay polarized in research, how can we expect stakeholders who rely on our research findings to take our work seriously? Thus, the purpose of this paper is to explore how the debate between quantitative and qualitative is divisive and, hence, counterproductive for advancing the social and behavioural science field. This paper advocates that all graduate students learn to utilize and to appreciate both quantitative and qualitative research. In so doing, students will develop into what we term as pragmatic researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reform of the United States welfare system in 1996 drastically changed welfare receipt for low-income lone mothers. This paper explores the effects of these changes on lone mothers by summarizing empirical work on caseload reduction, labor force participation, income, poverty, material hardship, and family formation. While it appears that the economic status of many lone mothers improved during the economic expansion in the late 1990s, many lone mothers continued to experience poverty and material hardship. Building on the work of feminist scholars from both the US and other countries, this paper goes on to critique mainstream research on welfare reform. It identifies a particularly feminist approach to welfare reform research, stresses its advantages over mainstream research, and speculates about why there is comparatively less feminist research to date. The paper concludes by calling for more structural analyses of poverty and of lone motherhood itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the place and contributions of women at the Institute for Research in Social Science from 1925 to 1945. Founded by Howard Odum at the Unviersity of North Carolina in 1924, the Institute provided an environment in which women could pursue social scientific work free from the gender discrimination found at most universities during the period. Research and publications by the women made important contributions to sociology and related fields while fulfilling the Institute's primary mission of promoting regional understanding and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews sociological research on antiracism and suggests new directions for the field. Current research indicates although White antiracism constitutes attempts to negotiate privilege, it fails to divest from the systems of power that maintain the current balance of privilege in favor of White supremacy. In contrast, the antiracism of people of color provides some insight into attempts to secure liberation, a complete break from White supremacist power structures. I argue DuBois, Black Feminist Thought, and postcolonial sociology inform a sociology of antiracism that centers people of color rather than Whiteness. To illustrate the nuance of antiracism by people of color, I centered my study on Black antiracism. From this perspective, antiracism emerges as the set of practices that Blacks enact in everyday life to mitigate and confront hegemonic racialization. I suggest that one construct of hegemonic whiteness meant to uphold dominant racial ideology that produces emphasized blackness that facilitates symbolic and physical violence toward Blacks. Although emphasized blackness produces and reinforces constraints on Black antiracism, oppositional blackness exemplifies an ultimate form of antiracism in which Black bodies act as agents of social change through liberatory projects such as marronage and counterhegemonic knowledge production. I conclude this article with a case study of the Windward Maroons of Jamaica to illustrate oppositional blackness as the dynamics of resistance and empowerment that emerge to confront hegemonic whiteness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present findings from a study of pornographic bookstores and sex paraphernalia shops. Our focus was on the Salon and Tack Room, two work settings located in a major U.S. city and catering to the sexual interests of the gay community. The most important finding was that the settings manifested an expressive orientation to work with the convergence of work and individual identity clearly evident. This was not the case with the majority of other stores we examined. The paper includes transcription of rich and colorful interview material and a discussion of the implications of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on transactions of the fifth world congress of sociology held during September 2-8, 1962, in Washington D.C. Volume one contains main contributions to the plenary sessions on "The Sociologists, the Policy-Makers and the Public" and "The Nature and Problems of Sociological Theory." The first theme is treated from the point of view of communication between sociologists and policy-makers, and between sociologists and the general public. Papers dealing with the second theme attempt to define the character of sociological explication, to make a historical survey of sociological theories, and estimate their value. The contributors to this volume are, A. Sauvy, D. Chosh, R. Treves, A. Vratusa, R. Weitz, E.C. Hughes, T. Agersnap, F. Fernandes, S. Groenman, J. Hochfeld, R. KOnig, E. Geilner, H. Lefebvre, A.K. Saran and P.A. Sorokin. Volume two, entitled "The Sociology of Development," deals firstly with early stages of growth and contains papers on following topics; new groups, entrepreneurship, the development of a labour market, economic requirements of modem industrialization, urbanization and the traditional work ethos.

The article presents a detailed description of the American Sociological Society along with information on its annual meeting to be held in September 1951 in the U.S. Article II of the society's constitution states that the objective of the society is to stimulate and improve research and encourage cooperative relations among people associated with the scientific study of the society. Article III states that any person interested in the society's objective is eligible for membership. According to Article VIII, the society can solicit and receive funds and endowments. Several papers will be presented at the society's annual meeting. Some of them include a paper on "Demography and Human Ecology," another on "Sociology of Religion," and another on "Sampling and Social Structure."

This paper outlines the emergence of rural sociology as a science, sketching briefly its backgrounds and pointing out some of the obstacles which confronted it along with other sciences. The discussion relates rural sociology to the early developments in the philosophies and methodological conceptions of science. From this point, the account turns to the work of Charles Josiah Galpin at the University of Wisconsin. The narrative includes a sketch of the development of three major schools of rural sociology -the "Wisconsin School," "the Cornell School," and the "Minnesota- Harvard School." Then there is a discussion of some of the problems of modern rural sociological research, emphasizing areas of neglected and new subject matter for future study. The paper closes with a renewed appeal for objectivity to the end of achieving a more rationalistic logico-experimental science for the future than has existed in the past, while maintaining objectivity as the servant of human understanding rather than allowing it to become the master of human reason. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the nature of the health research in progress at Ohio State University. The concern of the paper is with mental health. It discusses the reasons for undertaking health research, the objectives of such research, and the methods used. Studies completed and in process are likewise reported.

This paper reports on the nature of the health research in progress at Michigan State University. The concern of the paper is with physical health. It discusses the reasons for undertaking health research, the objectives of such research, and the methods used. Studies completed and in process are likewise reported.

This paper reports on the nature of the health research in progress at the University of Missouri. The concern of the paper is with physical health. It discusses the reasons for undertaking health research, the objectives of such research, and the methods used. Studies completed and in process are likewise reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the author proposes a social psychology research, which may increase understanding of inter-personal relations in the U.S. The methods which seek to take account of the individual as a dynamic process are the clinical ones. These approaches will be best used when coordinated with other techniques already developed in the field of social psychology. An example of such coordination in the investigation of social psychological problems is to be found in the University of California Public Opinion Study. For the study of anti-democratic trends, projective techniques have been found valuable. Whereas in the area of internal economic tensions, an assessment center is needed to incorporate principles such as: basing of research upon a fundamental theory of personality; assessment of persons as wholes and as members of natural groups; use of multiform clinical procedures with the techniques of attitude and opinion measurements.

The article presents a paper on the three levels of value-judgment in sociology. The three levels are--value-judgments as objects of sociological research, value-judgments as postulates of sociology, and metasociological value-judgments. It is evident that the sociologist cannot avoid making metasociological value-judgments. Whoever carries on a sociological investigation makes the metasociological value-judgment that the problem he studies is worth studying. Whoever constructs a sociological system makes the metasociological value-judgment that this particular approach is worth while and significant. A little reflection will show that these value-judgments belong in an entirely different category from those which have been discussed. Those discussed previously ascribed some value to the phenomena which sociology studies to the present condition of race relations in the U.S., for example while metasociological value-judgments ascribe some value to sociology itself, to sociology in general or to some particular approach or application of sociology.

The American Dream is among the United States' most recognizable and revered symbols of our national heritage. Celebrated in popular culture, this statement of national purpose has been analyzed by commentators across the broad range of humanistic and scholarly disciplines, including American sociology. While sociology has developed a lengthy history of studies dedicated to 'the American way of life' and - to a lesser degree - the role of the American Dream in society, the work of sociologists from earlier eras arguably over-shadows many of the efforts undertaken since the millennium. The present paper argues that sociology is especially well suited to investigations and analyses of the role and impact of the American Dream and urges a re-dedication of sociological efforts to chart its meaning and influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the American presence in two journals of the Bucharest School of Sociology, as well as the information provided in these journals with regard to the American sociological models and their evolution. The data reviewed demonstrate not only a strong academic connection, but also an active cooperation and consistent exchange of academic knowledge between the two countries. The paper builds on a quantitative study of the full archives of the two journals - Arhiva pentru Ştiinţa şi Reforma Socială (Archive for Science and Social Reform) and Sociologie Romanească (Romanian Sociology); its final part is dedicated to the Romanian monographic activity of the U.S. sociologist Ph. Mosely. The conclusion is that the development of the Romanian school of sociology was in line not only with what was happening in the greatest schools of sociology in Europe, but also with the theoretical developments of the American sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racial threat theory was developed as a way to explain how population composition influences discriminatory social control practices and has become one of the most acknowledged frameworks for explaining racial disparity in criminal justice outcomes. This paper provides a thorough review of racial threat theory and empirical assessments of the theory and demonstrates that while scholars often cite inconsistent support for the theory, empirical discrepancies may be due to insufficient attention to the conceptual complexity of racial threat. I organize and present the following review around 4 forms of state-sanctioned control mechanisms: police expenditures, arrests, sentencing, and capital punishment. Arguing that the pervasiveness of racialization in state controls warrants continued inquiry, I provide suggestions for future scholarship that will help us develop enhanced understanding of how racial threat may be operating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the close resemblances evident in their major works, their critical stance and their politics, C. Wright Mills and Alvin Gouldner have received strikingly different responses from their sociological peers, and they now occupy very different places in the collective memory of the discipline. This intriguing discrepancy provides the basis here for a comparative case study that examines both ongoing commemorative practices and historical evidence. This paper shows how the sociological community has frequently and approvingly commemorated Mills through introductory textbooks, as well as reading lists for doctoral comprehensive examinations, awards in Mills' honor and biographies of Mills, while doing much less to preserve and promote the memory of Gouldner and his contributions to the field. In an effort to attain a better understanding of such differences, I compare the prescriptions that each advocated for the discipline, especially as these are expressed in Mills' Sociological Imagination and Gouldner's Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. The analysis emphasizes how Mills explicitly sought to move beyond sociology, in a narrow academic sense, and called for well-honed empirical endeavors with relevance for a variety of publics, whereas Gouldner proceeded largely as an academic theorist who demanded sociological-theoretical reform. Unlike Mills, he did not breach the gap between academia and the general public. These findings illustrate an apparent paradox, namely, that American sociology in the twenty-first century may reserve its most esteemed positions for internal critics who advocate movement beyond its contemporary confines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior to his 1922 emigration to Europe and thence to the United States, Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin had an exceptional intellectual and political career in Russia and the Soviet Union (Sorokin , ; Johnston ; Krotov ). Indeed, he was among the early founders of the science of sociology in his native land, where, according to a relatively recent bibliography (Sorokin ), he produced 162 Russian-language publications between the ages of 21 and 33. This listing includes not only book reviews and journal articles, but also substantial monographs and a two-volume theoretical treatise. While still a relatively young man, Sorokin had thus gained widespread recognition as a scholar of the first rank. He was also the initial chairperson (from 1919 to 1922) of a fledgling department of sociology at the University of Petrograd (St. Petersburg), an elected member of the national Constituent Assembly and an appointed staff member of the 1917 Provisional Government, the first democratic regime in Russia. This much would have sufficed for an entry in a sociological encyclopedia, and Sorokin's political career has few parallels in the history of the field, other than the involvement of Emile Durkheim in French educational policy and the participation of Max Weber in creating the Weimar Republic in Germany. Nevertheless sociologists in the United States and most western historians of the field have not yet appreciated the full influence of the formative period, especially from 1905 to 1922. Lacking familiarity with Russian culture of that era and knowing little about the larger Russian socio-historical milieu, its intellectual discourse and collective memory, they have not been able to comprehend Sorokin's outlook, behavior and professional output in the United States in relation to these earlier contextual factors. This is arguably a fundamental reason why many U.S. sociologists have tended to see Sorokin, especially since 1937, as a marginal figure and to regard his works largely as deviations from accepted social scientific practice. This paper will argue that a more adequate appreciation of Sorokin's background and early adult life illumines both stylistic features of his works in America and also places into proper perspective several of his substantive foci that did not accord with contemporary 'normal science' (Kuhn ). In short, despite his overall assimilation into American society and higher education, including his appointment at Harvard University and his election as president of the American Sociological Association, Sorokin should be understood in large measure as a life-long Russian intellectual. His was a Russian-born sensibility and consciousness-indeed a 'Russian soul'-so deeply ingrained that it stamped his entire professional career in the United States, including his published researches, his popular sociology and his university teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Documentary investigation has particular strengths to offer the study of the historical emergence of sociological research. Here two documents relating to a Muintir na Tire initiative of the late 1950s to secure US scholarship funding for Irish students of sociology are introduced and reproduced. The reasons why the scheme did not get off the ground, even though financial support appeared to be on offer, are discussed. Here a combination of Muintir na Tire's limited support within the Catholic Church and a modest, but significant, expansion of Irish social science educational capacity brought about by the use of Archbishop McQuaid's power within University College Dublin are emphasised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is now nearly thirty years since Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative administration introduced the Assisted Places Scheme (their first education policy) and over ten years since New Labour abolished it. The Scheme, which was designed to provide a ladder of opportunity for academically able students from poor backgrounds to attend private schools, is of more than historical interest. It can be used to illuminate enduring sociological concerns about the relationship between home and school. This paper draws on retrospective interview data to reveal how the Scheme was experienced by its more disadvantaged beneficiaries. Revisiting classic sociological analyses from the 1960s and 1970s, it unravels the complex interactions between home background, friendship networks and school cultures and shows how these contributed to contrasting experiences of commitment, detachment, estrangement and alienation. These differing modes of engagement with schooling appear to have had lasting effects on our respondents and influenced their subsequent careers and orientations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social practice research can be seen to illuminate the practices of marginalised learners in 'borderlands', areas outside of formal educational frameworks. This paper examines the issues and challenges of social practice researchers as they explore borderlands logic set against a critique of the prevailing skills-based educational philosophies that dominate in the knowledge-based economies of the US and England. Social practice research highlights meaning-making through a wide-angled view of the learning contexts of marginalised groups. This paper introduces the themes and sets the scene in a series of papers in this volume from leading social practice researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses dictator experiments to examine gender differences in altruistic behavior in the United States when decisions are made individually and jointly. In anonymous individual giving to charity, women give substantially more than men, and in paired settings, mixed-sex groups give the most while all male pairs give the least. Evidence supports social information and negotiation effects as participants change giving toward that of their partners. Social image effects are found only in mixed-sex groups, indicating a gender-based component to the value of the social signal sent. Although men and women appear to have similar influence, the positive social image effect pushes giving in mixed-sex pairs above the sum of the members' individual gifts because the less altruistic partners (usually men) adjust their giving upward more than the more altruistic partners (usually women) reduce giving. Therefore, increasing women's participation in traditionally male spheres of decision making may result in more altruistic economic behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While sociologists and the public at large are increasingly interested in the life conditions of animals, conceptual and empirical development of the topic is limited. This paper seeks to further develop the sociological research on attitudes toward animal well-being. We build on insights from contemporary stratification theory to explain the nature of animal attitudes and their determinants. We also extend past work by examining a broader range of factors related to attitudes about animal well being, focusing on place, other social structural factors, and individuals' unique animal-related experiences. Data are from a survey of over 4,000 Ohio residents conducted in 2002. We find that childhood experience has the greatest place-based effect on attitudes. Other findings highlight the importance of social structural factors, suggesting support for the "underdog hypothesis." Women, people experiencing economic hardship, those with less education, younger and middle aged people, and blacks tend to be more concerned with animal well-being. Individualized, experiential variables are also important. Our results reflect the complexity of attitudes about animals and point to the need for greater sociological attention to factors left largely unexplored in previous studies, including childhood place-based factors, economic hardship, and individuals' unique animal-related experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we reanalyze Robert D. Mare's highly influential work on educational transitions among American men born in the first half of the 20th century. Contrary to previous belief, Mare found that the effects of socioeconomic background variables decline regularly across educational transitions in conditional logistic regression analyses. We have reconfirmed Mare's findings and tested them by introducing a modified logistic response model that constrains selected social background effects to vary proportionally across educational transitions. We refer to our preferred model as the logistic response model with partial proportionality constraints (LRPPC). The model can easily be estimated in Stata or using other standard statistical software. Partial proportionality constraints may also prove useful in interpopulation comparisons based on other linear models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a short paper written in the early 19MM, 'The representation of death in the American cinema', Roger Caillois theorized the representation of the afterlife in America through the Hollywood cinema of the late 1930s and 1940s. Caillois maintained that the American afterlife is fundamentally bureaucratic and represents a prolongation of the world of the living. This prolongation is understood as a negation of the separation of the sacred and the profane domains in favour of a desacralized, profane pan-bureaucracy. Caillois's essay is read in the context of a sociology of the sacred in the tradition of the College de sociologie, with special attention given to his descriptions of how the sacred tends to wane in ordinary life and to his hybrid methodological strategies. The films Caillois used as evidence are critically reviewed and the Hollywood invasion of French film markets in the 1940s and 1950s is developed as a critical historical context for grounding Caillois's claims about American 'originality'; the negation of the sacred dimension of the afterlife, the power of cinema to replace oral tradition in collective life, and the consequences of a powerful, 'exported' mythology that negates the sacred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks an account of why young teens initiate consensual sexual activity. It does so by constructing statistical models aimed at distinguishing those who report having initiated sexual activity from those who have not in four samples of eighth graders from an Upstate New York county. Theoretical selection of the model variables is guidel by insights from "problem syndrome," control and differential association theories. From our findings we conclude the following: (1) Risk behaviors foreseen by the "problem sysdrome" approach, including having used marijuana and having been drunk, are significant, powerful predictors of early-teen sexual activity: (2) The social setting of consensual sexual activity differs by sex at the eighth grade level. For example, having a boyfriend is a more consistent, powerful predictor variable for girls than is having a girlfriend for boys and there is evidence to support the hypothesis that boys initiate sexual activity in the context of status-seeking while girls are more likely to do so as a way of attaining approval. (3) Our findings do not give clear primacy to parents or peers as an influence on early-teen consensual sexual activity. Both control theory, usually associated with "parental-influence" variables. And differential association theory, usually associated with " Per-influence" variables, receive support. (4) The results of the research spanning a 2-year period of intensive community antiteen-pregnancy efforts by a Zero Adolescent Pregnancy (ZAP) campaign are consistent with the conclusion that such a multifaceted approach might help lower early-teen initiation of sexual activity [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article extends the argument of Loïc Wacquant, which he discussed in his paper "Three Pernicious Premises in the Study of the American Ghetto." With respect to the third premise, Wacquant's first deadly sin or pernicious premise in ghetto analysis is what he terms the dilution and deracialization of the phenomenon. However, in addition to those whom he cites as guilty of this obfuscation, there is another, less expected group, the Marxists. The threat of the African-American ghetto has been invoked regularly by politicians, journalists and academics to disturb the European public about the consequences of ethnic minority immigration. Europe's experience of ethnic minority concentrations seems to be much closer to that of Europeans in American cities than to that of African-Americans. Analysis of the concentration of ethnic minorities in London in 1991 makes the Caribbean population appear like the Irish in Philpott's table of Chicago in 1930, while the more concentrated Indians and Bangladeshis have their analogue in Philpott's Italians and Poles.

This paper discusses what a researcher can expect when doing qualitative research in an American Indian community. Despite an attempt to adequately prepare for fieldwork the author found that the research process differed in important respects from the qualitative methods literature. The paper chronicles key differences concerning gatekeepers and the research bargain, establishing rapport and gaining acceptance, the roles assigned to the researcher, the role of key informants and brokers, and several uniquely Indian processes the author experienced. The paper concludes with a summary of salient characteristics of research among American Indians and argues that such research takes longer, the research bargain is a matter of constant negotiation, gatekeepers are ubiquitous within the community, and the researcher needs to be prepared to make some accommodations to his or her hosts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnographers and other students of interaction have documented the impact of status factors on students' success in school. Yet survey research data consistently show the absence of family background measure effects on high school grades. It is argued that conventional measures of family background fail to capture those cultural elements of status that make a difference in school interactions. Drawing on Weber's work on status groups and status cultures, and on Bourdieu's work on cultural capital, this paper reports the findings of an effort to assess the impact of one component of status culture participation-cultural capital-on one aspect of life chances-students' high school grades. A composite measure of cultural capital has a significant impact on grades, controlling for family background and measured ability. The pattern of relationships, however) differs strikingly by gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares subpopulations using aptitude scores obtained from a test battery administered to the 1980 high school seniors in the base year survey. The procedures and methods used to select the sample were designed to yield a data base that can be statistically projected to represent the national population of approximately 3,040,000 1980 high school seniors. Subpopulation comparisons were performed to reveal the differences in aptitude scores by age, sex, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and census region. The mean scores of males and females were comparable, although males scored, on the average, somewhat higher than females on the mathematics component. Asians/Pacific Islanders scored higher than other racial/ethnic groups on all subtests except Vocabulary and Reading, where whites scored somewhat higher. The mean scores of whites were higher than those of either blacks or Hispanics on all measures used. There were notable differences in the mean test scores of various Hispanic subgroups, with the mean scores of Cubans exceeding Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, or other Hispanics by a considerable margin. A positive correlation was encountered between test scores and the socioeconomic status or level of education attained by the examinee's mother. Geographically, students in New England had the highest average scores, followed, in order, by those in the Middle Atlantic, West North Central, East North Central, Pacific, Mountain, South Atlantic, East South Central, and West South Central regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the state of sociology in Canada. A review of the history of the discipline of sociology in this country leads to the almost inescapable conclusion that what has developed here is not a Canadian sociology but a sociology that is American. Not only have Canadian universities recruited their sociology staffs largely from the United States, but most of the Canadians we have had teaching sociology in this country have acquired their training across the border. If one attempted to trace the early development of sociological teaching and research in Canada there might be reason to argue that in its origins the discipline had something of a Canadian or, at least, a non-American character. They were not Americans in those days before the First World War or immediately after teaching sociology or attempting to apply its teachings to the affairs of the community. There is much that could be said about the accomplishments of Canadian sociology, particularly as it is coming to be developed by younger scholars in the field.