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In contemporary art, the curator plays an important role in the production of artistic meaning through exhibition-making. Although sociology has tended to see this work as the exercise of tacit or embodied knowledge, curatorial knowledge and plans may be elaborated and altered by the situated actions of exhibition installation. While curators know a successful installation 'when they see it,' this depends on the indexical particularities of artworks and environments which cannot be predicted in advance. In demonstrating the practical ways in which culture is mobilized in situations of object (inter)action, this paper emphasizes the 'making' in artistic meaning-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores inherent tensions between two democratic ideals: citizen representation and accountability of the state. Specifically, I argue that the method by which state officials make themselves accountable-through their creation of the appearance of transparency-results in the exclusion of alternative, non-scientific ways of knowing, including those that are gendered, local and indigenous, because these ways of knowing often employ non-standardized methods which are not 'transparent' in the same way as science and therefore easily dismissed by state officials as indefensible to citizens' questioning. I explore this tension by drawing on examples from ethnographic work I completed with two groups of knowledge practitioners, Kwakwaka'wakw First Nations (Native American) traditional marine harvesters and government biologists, both of whom work with clams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers Charles Tilly as an important but underappreciated theorist of nationalism. Tilly's theory of nationalism emerged from the 'bellicist' strand of his earlier work on state-formation and later incorporated a concern with performance, stories, and cultural modeling. Yet despite the turn to culture in Tilly's later work, his theory of nationalism remained state-centered, materialist, and instrumentalist-a source of both its power and its limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creative endeavors often resemble one another. This paper explores similarities between sociology and art based on the use of conventions and creativity. More specifically, by comparing the construction of musical mix tapes, the author draws parallels between creating sociology and mix tapes. Looking at the process of how a mix tape is created using other artists' songs and music for a specified purpose illuminates sociology and our roles as sociologists in a new light that leaves open new possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reassessment of Gibrat’s Law in the context of country size is carried out in this paper. In addition, how similarly population is distributed in cities and countries is analyzed from a temporal perspective. Although evidence of Gibrat’s Law is found, it is weaker than that previously established in Rose (J Money Credit Bank 38(8):2225–2246, ). This is due to the methodology applied and is especially appreciable in very small countries. Nonetheless, we observe that the population growth process in countries is similar to that of cities. As a result, the similarities between how the population is distributed in these two geographical categories have increased over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the authors more than 10 years of involvement in the action research experience of the Milan Community Network. It discusses the roles that community networks play in the Information Society: starting from a neat characterization of “online community”, community networks are presented as ICT learning communities, as local online communities and as complementary to Digital Cities. Finally, critical insights into institutional aspects of community networks are considered from the perspective of their sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fallibilists about looks deny that the relation of looking the same as is non-transitive. Regarding familiar examples of coloured patches suggesting that such a relation is non-transitive, they argue that, in fact, indiscriminable adjacent patches may well look different, despite their perceptual indiscriminability: it’s just that we cannot notice the relevant differences in the chromatic appearances of such patches. In this paper, I present an argument that fallibilism about looks requires commitment to an empirically false consequence. To succeed in deflecting putative cases of non-transitivity, fallibilists would have to claim that there can’t be any perceptual limitations of any kind on human chromatic discrimination. But there are good reasons to think such limitations exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I address that flexibility and vagueness of mimic word, especially Gitai-go, can provide the communication with tension leading us to the continuous process of meaning construction, focused on the history of Japanese characters as the core of mimic words. I present that Hiragana, as the character for Gitai-go, was started to use by people viewed as of no public authority such as women at that time while Kanji had a position as an official characters. As unofficial character, Hiragana was received and transformed by common people as the character which is more flexible and vague suited to express persons' experience than Kanji. Most of Gitai-go is written in Hiragana, and people can also create original and personalized one based on their experience. We can be driven by necessity to search the meanings of Gitai-go when we meet unknown one, through its vagueness. This undifferentiated nature and indefinite feature of Gitai-go provide us with tension of communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focus groups became popular in social research in the 1980s. Robert Merton has pointed to the continuities and discontinuities between focus groups and the wartime use of ‘focused interviewing’ he and his colleagues developed at the Bureau of Applied Social Research. Using a variety of sources, the paper attempts to chart the ways in which focused interviewing came to be taken up, diffused and modified in marketing research before re-emerging into sociology as the focus group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My first semester as a tenure-track faculty member at a mid-size university began ignominiously and suggested that my academic career might be short-lived. It began with a blistering memo that was stridently critical of the academic dean’s policy which led to being taken to the proverbial woodshed. Other less serious episodes followed which put me at odds with the “administration.” Yet I have spent more than a third of my career in administrative positions, including a stint in the provost’s office (as an assistant vice chancellor), and only recently returned to faculty status. Over the course of my academic career I have noticed that a large number of academic sociologists have taken administrative positions in academia beyond that of the department chair. This paper will explore this phenomenon and discuss the reasons members of the ‘debunking’ discipline assume administrative roles. I will address this issue within the context of my personal odyssey in administration and how the sociological perspective and imagination has contributed to working in the ‘dark side’ of academia. Finally, I will discuss lessons learned and recommendations for the aspirant administrators among the ranks of academic sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper comprises a set of theoretical suppositions concerning three major subjects: the fundamentals of psychology (psycho-logics), the fundamentals of sociology (socio-logics) and the relationship between psycho-logics and socio-logics. First, it is argued that intentionality is the founding unit of psychology. On the basis of this supposition, three phylogenetic steps: sense, mind, and consciousness are identified and modelled. Subsequently it is argued that sociology builds upon five and only five fundamental types of relations: competition, transference, coordination, dependence and control. It is stated that any sociological network is composed by sets of these relations. Finally it is argued that psychology and sociology form a complex micro macro system in which psychological processes give rise to sociological networks that in turn constrain psychological processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rule of law has been studied by political philosophy, law, political science, sociology and economics. The representatives of these social sciences have used various approaches (including various mixtures of conceptual and empirical analyses), for the study of this important problem. This also applies to research on post-socialist transformation which provided a unique and powerful natural experiment for students of institutions. In this paper I attempt to place the rule of law within a broader context, that of institutional change after socialism. This is why I start with a stylized description of this system and of what has happened to it after the collapse of socialism in the former Soviet bloc (second section). Then I try to link institutional change after socialism to the rule of law (third section). This requires a minimal clarification of this concept. In the fourth section, I discuss the rule of law after socialism in the light of empirical studies, mainly by economists. The final section sums up the main findings: changes in the legal framework take less time than institutional changes, including the transformation of the enforcement apparatus. As a result, widespread implementation gaps have emerged even in the most reformed transition countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decades of the twentieth century there was an unprecedented surge of anxieties and alarm over erotic experiences involving minors and adults, which has continued as a social and scientific discourse in which these relationships invariably are seen as abusive, harmful, and criminal. In this paper, the fundamental characteristics of this discourse, whose basis and pertinence are questioned, are analyzed for their possible iatrogenic effects; i.e., those induced by professional intervention, in four key areas of social reality: the erotic dimension of human beings, individual responsibility, the use of penal law as a mechanism of social control, and fostering better relations between the sexes and generations. Critical reflection on the social and professional handling of the problem includes the undesirable effects which such treatment may be producing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is a recognised need to adapt to changing climatic conditions, there is an emerging discourse of limits to such adaptation. Limits are traditionally analysed as a set of immutable thresholds in biological, economic or technological parameters. This paper contends that limits to adaptation are endogenous to society and hence contingent on ethics, knowledge, attitudes to risk and culture. We review insights from history, sociology and psychology of risk, economics and political science to develop four propositions concerning limits to adaptation. First, any limits to adaptation depend on the ultimate goals of adaptation underpinned by diverse values. Second, adaptation need not be limited by uncertainty around future foresight of risk. Third, social and individual factors limit adaptation action. Fourth, systematic undervaluation of loss of places and culture disguises real, experienced but subjective limits to adaptation. We conclude that these issues of values and ethics, risk, knowledge and culture construct societal limits to adaptation, but that these limits are mutable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses a series of emergency calls related to the same event: an accident in a factory. The aim of the analysis is to show how a lack of information hinders operator’s diagnostic work. The paper shows the effects of communication problems on operator’s decision making, that is, how the operator’s diagnostic work is actively resisted by callers, and therefore, how disaligment in relation to the activity at hand influences operator’s decision making and the actual organisation of the rescue activities. I argue that CSCW technologies need to enable negotiation of potentially conflicting social practices and organizational protocols around diagnostic work and should not just support remote collaboration between professionals, but also with the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A substantial intellectual movement has been growing in the social sciences around the adoption of mechanism- and process-based explanations as complements to variable-based explanations, or even as substitutes for them. But once we have recognized the validity and dignity of studying mechanisms and processes, what is the next step? Recently, both political scientists’ and sociologists’ discussions have begun to turn away from correlation to mechanism-based approaches to causation. But there is still a widespread assumption that mechanisms are unobservable. We maintain that ways can be developed to observe the presence or absence of mechanisms either directly or indirectly. In this paper, by way of example, we put forward four methods—two direct and two indirect—for measuring mechanisms of contention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present paper is to show that Hegel’s concept of personal respect is of great interest to contemporary Critical Theory. The author first analyzes this notion as it appears in the Philosophy of Right and then offers a new interpretation of the conceptual relation between personal respect and the institutions of (private) property and (capitalist) markets. In doing so, he shows why Hegel’s concept of personal respect allows us to understand markets as possible institutionalizations of this kind of recognition, and why it is compatible with a critique of neoliberal capitalism. He argues that due to these features Hegel’s notion of personal respect is of great interest to theoreticians within the tradition of critical theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the development of my theoretical and methodological approach to political sociology by referring to important intellectual influences and recounting the considerations that led me to choose particular research subjects. The term “intruder” emphasizes my discomfort with the separation of sociology and political science into distinct professions, as I ended up choosing political science as my academic profession but have always felt intellectually more at home in sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In some respects, sociologists might seem to be the least obvious candidates for a deanship. They question authority and debunk bureaucracy. Yet they can be found in dean’s offices serving successfully. This paper discusses the seeming contradiction between the discipline of sociology and the position of academic dean. It is argued that the discipline of sociology can prepare one to succeed at deaning in numerous ways, including transitioning into the role, resolving unavoidable role conflict, and adopting an administrator’s perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that sociological theory provides a sound basis for analyzing the social organization and reorganization of the college or university and for guiding the activities of the college dean. Frame analysis theory, developed in the study of social movements, and the attendant concepts of frame shifts and frame disputes, are drawn on to facilitate understanding of the organizational change being experienced by many comprehensive universities today. Various university constituencies proffer sometimes competing frames that can be characterized as “old school” vs. “new school” or “theoretical” vs. “practical,” yet collective and at least moderately harmonious action is required to attend to the tasks at hand. More specifically, the processes of frame alignment detailing the way that the frames held by various individuals and groups link to larger frames, offer a valuable theoretical tool for a dean. The dean’s task is one of adjudicating frame disputes within the college, navigating frame shifts in the university and reframing the concerns of the college to both internal and external audiences. The author concludes that the use of frame analysis demonstrates that sociological theory can be a vital contributor to the leadership of colleges and universities and to leaders’ understanding of the changes occurring therein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a sociologist who has served in deanships and other university administrative positions in the past 15 years, the author has been particularly concerned with race/class/gender issues in academia. This paper identified some of the issues and discussed the relevance of sociological training in addressing them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the end of his life György Lukács described his intellectual career as ‘my way to Marx’ [mein Weg zu Marx]. By this he meant that his professional life can be interpreted as an attempt to get to the real Marx. In this paper I use this expression in a narrower and more direct meaning: I attempt to present the road at the end of which the young Lukács arrived at a Marxist standpoint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African American faculty constitute a small number of faculty members who teach at predominantly White colleges and universities. Although their presence within these institutions is beneficial for a number of reasons, they often face many challenges on various levels. In this paper the authors address the physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual, social and legal concerns faced by African American faculty who teach at majority institutions. Recommendations for thriving in these environments are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sports cards may seem to be of little interest to social scientists, but sports cards and card collecting can be a rich and unique source of data for examining the social world. They reveal information not only about those who collect them, but about the society and social conditions under which they are produced. This paper examines a very unique numbering system developed by the Topps Chewing Gum Company (Topps) to differentiate status among the players appearing on the cards in its annual football sets. The system Topps developed assigned a number to each card that designated a player’s placement in a set, while simultaneously creating a hierarchical ordering among the players, purportedly based on their performance. Was the ranking of players in the numbering system truly based on performance or on other criteria, such as race? The findings of this study suggest that player position, and to a lesser degree his on-the-field performance, not race, was the main determinant of where he was located in the card set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a New York City man risked his own life to save a stranger on the subway tracks, the New York Times interpreted his behavior not in terms of virtue but as a product of certain ‘hard-wiring’ he happened to possess. In denying virtue, the Times followed a school of thought that is pervasive in social science (referred to in this paper as the ‘individualists’) who, for example, explain charitable donations by pointing out tax deductions, explain volunteer work by revealing the opportunities contained therein to meet other singles, and so on. Actually, the assumptions and arguments which ground this widespread ‘denial of virtue’ are both empirically and normatively flawed, and the theory itself is belied by data about people doing good for moral reasons. Evidence drawn from personal introspection, from empirical studies of human behavior, from analysis of voting as a civil act, from interpreting peoples’ reaction to Alzheimer’s disease, from critical inspection of the logic of ‘individualist’ social explanations, and from a normative criticism of the products of the ‘individualist’ approach all support a rejection of the ‘individualist’ approach. The deniers of virtue should heed the evidence and pay mind to the amoralizing consequences of their erroneous theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews research on the role of anger in conflict. We distinguish between intrapersonal and interpersonal effects of anger, the former referring to the impact of parties’ feelings of anger on their own behavior and the latter referring to the impact of one parties’ anger on the other’s behavior. We further compare the effects of anger across a variety of conflict settings, including negotiation, ultimatum bargaining, prisoner’s dilemma, resource dilemma, and coalition formation. At the intrapersonal level, anger is associated with competition in all conflict settings. In contrast, the interpersonal effects of anger differ across situations, with anger sometimes eliciting cooperation, sometimes eliciting competition, and sometimes having no effect. Based on the research reviewed, we conclude that the interpersonal effects of anger in conflict are determined by the level of interdependence of the parties, their information processing tendencies, and the justifiability of the anger expressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Meso history is that branch of the history of sociology that focuses on social relations, that is, patterns of connection among groups, group members, and group meanings, as explanatory factors in the shaping of sociology. The methodology of meso history consists of strategies for discovering, documenting and patterning connections. This paper explores those strategies in terms of three moments generic to the research process in social science– moments of movement from intellectual curiosity to conceptualization, from research question to data collection and from data to presentation of findings–focusing on the distinctive permutations on this research process that occur in the practice of meso history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces Edward Shils’ transition, during World War II, from enthusiasm to harsh criticism of Karl Mannheim, the Hungarian-born sociologist of knowledge. While serving in London, Shils drew upon a direct and explicit intellectual assault on Mannheim by fellow emigrés to England. Even while Shils maintained regular contact with Mannheim, Shils was exposed to an often vituperative dismissal of Mannheim’s work by Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek, in the pages of the London School of Economics (LSE) journal Economica. After the war, when both Popper and Shils joined the LSE faculty—Hayek’s affiliation dated to 1931—Shils’ encounter with their critiques was deepened. And in these early postwar years, Shils became close friends with yet another emigré Mannheim critic, Michael Polanyi. Combined, these sustained and sophisticated criticisms helped wrest Shils from his interwar, Mannheim-friendly intellectual coordinates. The implications for Shils’ later propagation of the “mass society theory” label are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the in-depth analysis of the features of Huabei rural industrialization, the unique factory regime in Baigou, Hebei, and the resulting special workers, this paper reveals two dilemmas the migrant workers in Baigou and larger Hubei area face: Because of the interpersonal network of labor market, personalized trade, familial labor process, and patrimonial management, the workers are unable to become either industrial working class or citizens. Facing this special group of workers, we still believe in their power of self-liberation. Drawing on Touraine’s action sociology and sociological intervention, and Burawoy’s public sociology and praxis-oriented research, we modify “sociological intervention” according to the reality of Chinese society and propose the methodology of “strong sociological intervention” whose vehicle is “Baigou Migrant Worker Night School.” The night school provided workers with courses of labor law, English, and computer based on their actual needs. Labor law is the core to evoke the self-consciousness of the workers. Through communications in the night school and workers’ real living circumstances, we collected their true information and treated it as the source of sociological knowledge. After three sessions of night school training, workers showed changes in skills, social, and psychological aspects, laying a foundation for the growth of self-consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Burawoy’s manifesto connects to a long series of debates on the role of science in society as well as on the myth of pure science. This paper argues that the gap between professional sociology and public sociology is far from being unbridgeable and that public sociology is not suppressed to the extent portrayed by Burawoy. In late modern societies a number of schools, including various scientific, public and intellectual movements have questioned the possibility, value position and social relevance of a functionally differentiated pure science by applying the sine qua non of modernity, i.e. critical reflection, to science. According to the argument developed here, also illustrated by a personal example, Burawoy could possibly prevent the gate-keepers of the empire of pure science from closing the otherwise open gates in front of his program and in front of critical reflection if only he used less harsh war-cries and were more careful in detecting the changes he himself urges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We can only welcome the discourse that has been initiated in our professional community with the concept of public sociology in the focus. Undoubtedly, Michael Burawoy has indisputable merits in fuelling this international dialogue. I find, however, that his position and conceptual framework is debatable at several points, therefore my review is on the side of those who criticize his ideas. My paper is divided into three parts: in keeping with the idea that the drop mirrors the ocean, I will start with the detailed critique of a single paragraph—the one which makes comments on his table entitled Types of sociological knowledge. It will be argued that by switching his viewpoints and using vaguely defined notions without empirical evidences he often tackles his subject inconsistently. Secondly, I intend to offer an alternative, three-dimensional conceptual model in which the social scientist’s prestige, influence and position on the action chain is taken into account as the main analytical aspects of the relationship between her/him and the public. Finally, based on this model, I propose to identify some strategies in order to find a better balance between the public and professional activity of social scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary objective of this paper is to examine more closely the complex nature of the natural environment dimension of community attachment using the narratives of local community members. This work seeks to build and elaborate on previous quantitative analyses that demonstrated two distinct dimensions of community attachment––social and natural environment. The findings reveal several distinct facets of the natural environment dimension of community attachment and demonstrate both a discreet perception of the natural environment in terms of community attachment as well as one that is more embedded within the social context of a particular lifestyle. The findings further demonstrate the need to include consideration of the natural environment in the broader assessment of community attachment and bolster previous quantitative research findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses household level data from National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) of India, the 55th round (1999–2000), to show that for urban male children there exists significant wage incentive for schooling, though school dropout rate and child labour incidence are not so small. The parents’ level of education plays an important role in reducing this tendency; thus establishing the linkage between social and human capital outcomes in the family. We also look at the incidence of harmful and manual occupations among the child labour. Mother’s education now appears as a very important factor in curbing these incidences; supporting earlier findings that women’s empowerment (one important indicator of which would be female educational level) is indeed instrumental in increasing parental awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education is in crisis, especially in the public sector. Over the past few years, tuition at state universities across the country has increased dramatically, their budgets have been slashed and federal funding for need-based financial aid has been reduced. The results are increased class sizes, fewer course offerings, more adjunct faculty and fewer working-class students at public colleges and universities. In Massachusetts, where we teach, these trends are particularly pronounced. In this paper, we describe “Crisis in Higher Education,” a critical experiential course we offered to raise student awareness about the crisis and to encourage them to work for change on our campus. This course is an example of critical experiential education because it integrates classroom learning with political activism. This article describes the context and rationale for teaching the course, reports on students’ responses to its form and content, and discusses what we learned from this experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I comment on a recent “letter” by Burleigh Wilkins addressed to nascent egalitarian democracies which offers advice on the achievement of religious toleration. I argue that while Wilkins’ advice is sound as far as it goes, it is nevertheless underdeveloped insofar as his letter fails to distinguish two competing conceptions of toleration – liberal-pluralist and republican-secularist – both of which are consistent with the advice he offers, but each of which yields very different policy recommendations (as can be seen by consideration of The United States v. Lee in America and, I’affaire du foulard in France). I argue that a democratic society of equals must be committed to liberal-pluralist rather than republican-secularist toleration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an Igbo saying that the world is a marketplace (uwa bu ahia). This simple worldview can be explained literally to mean that the Igbo think so because trading is a prominent occupation among the Igbo (it could also mean that a marketplace is the epicenter of community social and business interaction). That might be why the Igbo weekdays are named after their markets – Eke, Orie, Afo, Nkwo. Children born on any of these market days often assume the default name as in Okeke or Mgbeke, Okorie or Mgborie, Okafo or Mgbafo, Okonkwo or Mgbonkwo for male or female children, respectively, born on the corresponding market days. We are yet to come across another culture for which the market holds such a fascinating centrality in their worldview even while they see themselves as ruggedly egalitarian. The meaning of the thesis statement that the world is a marketplace is deeper than the literal interpretation. The deeper meaning is the suggestion that all the problems we encounter in this world are open to negotiation, haggling and bargaining. Some people come into the market place with greater resources than others and therefore are able to buy more goods and services just as some people are born or raised with greater resources, increasing their bargaining power in the global marketplace. When the Igbo say that the world is a market, they usually complete the sentence by observing that when one buys to one’s content, one goes home. The home referred to here is the land of the ancestors to which the Igbo believe the spirits of the dead return to bargain for a better life in their next incarnation. If one’s creator dealt one a raw deal in this life, one can still bargain with his/her personal God (or Chi) and haggle for a better break in the next life. In other words, the Igbo intend the paradox that the world is a market as a description of the global world and not simply just the Igbo world. This paper will focus on how the Igbo organize the training of children in commercial and consumerist activities given their mercantilist worldview. Are there lessons that other cultures could learn from the Igbo and are there lessons that the Igbo could learn from the social structure of modernist business schools? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the modern face of filial piety enactment among Chinese families living away from their homeland. It empirically assesses filial piety practices among a random sample of diasporic Chinese Canadians, by studying the role of sons, daughters and spouses in providing assistance with basic activities of daily living, instrumental activities of daily living and perceptions of support; the relative contribution of the traditional Chinese caring unit (son plus daughter-in-law) with assistance provided; whether source of assistance changes when amount of care is taken into account, when the gendered nature of tasks is taken into account and when controlling for other factors in multivariate analyses. N = 2,272 Chinese seniors (age 55+) living in seven cities across Canada. The findings reveal that, among these diasporic Chinese, patterns found in other Chinese societies are evident in their tendency to live with children, even when the spouse is still living, and the involvement of sons and the son/daughter-in-law unit in providing care. However, similar to recent findings for China, daughters and spouses are involved in all 3 areas of support examined and importantly, their involvement increases as more assistance is provided while that from sons decreases, notably in terms of IADL. The participation of daughters-in-law tends to be lower than that of either sons or daughters. The involvement of spouses increases for perceived or emotional support. The findings suggest a blending of Chinese and Canadian patterns of care and are discussed in terms of the changing but still gendered nature of care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores whether the field of sociology harbors a dismissive attitude towards religion. Specifically it examines whether introductory sociology textbooks present the classic secularization theory over the more recent religious economies explanation of religious change. The classical secularization thesis suggests that religion is declining in importance in modern societies and may disappear completely. The religious economies perspective proposes that religion has actually become more influential and dynamic over time. While both theories are well represented in the sociology of religion literature, we explore whether generalist sociology textbooks reflect this reality. This article provides a content analysis of 31 introductory sociology textbooks published between 2003 and 2006. We assess the presence and promotion of the above theories in these textbooks. Our analysis reveals that 20 (65%) of the 31 textbooks in our study present only secularization theory, while seven (23%) of the textbooks cover both secularization theory and religious economies theory. We assess the ramifications of such a lopsided arrangement and conclude by encouraging a more open dialogue on this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider a population represented by a continuum of individuals uniformly distributed over the unit interval that faces a problem of location and financing of public facilities under the equal share rule. We examine three notions of stability of emerging jurisdiction structures (stability under unanimous consent, free mobility and core) and provide a characterization of stable structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural equation modeling (SEM) has been widely used in psychology and sociology for testing validity of measurement instruments. However, this statistical technique has so far played minor role in quality-of-life research. The main objective of this paper is to demonstrate the potential of SEM for constructing and testing the validity of a Subjective Well-being under Neuroleptics (SWN) index for patients with schizophrenia. For these purposes, data from the GEO study (Gesundheitsökonomische Evaluation von Olanzapin in Deutschland; Health economics study of olanzapine in the treatment of schizophrenia in Germany) were used. The GEO is a prospective, comparative, noninterventional, observational study. A total of 646 participants treated with either olanzapine (n = 416) or haloperidol (n = 230) were enrolled in the study; 360 patients were available for factor analyses. The short (20-item) form of the SWN scale was administered to assess patients' perspectives on their quality of life. The structural equation models (SEMs) were then applied to construct 5- and 10-item indexes based on SWN. The data indicate that the 5-item index is the most time-saving approach for evaluating perceptions of well-being (and thus, quality of life) among patients with schizophrenia. The application of SEM showed no appreciable loss of validity of this index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of social capital has acquired some currency amongst policy analysts to refer to the social norms, networks and trust that facilitate co-operation and provision of mutual support within or between groups. As yet there is no agreed definition of the concept; however influential Australian policy bodies are developing measures to track changes in social capital and relate these to policy changes. Most research is concerned with exploration of the concept in locality-based communities and its application to developing societies. This paper reviews research undertaken in Australia and overseas to determine the elements of social capital that may have importance in relation to policy development in response to an ageing population. It concludes that the concept could be of considerable value in understanding the determinants of policy success or failure, but that further research is required to understand the nature of social capital as it relates to older people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on American sociology. The present paper aims to offer an explanation for how sociology came to its present state and what can be done to integrate the discipline. A discipline becomes integrated when there is relatively centralized control over the material, organizational and symbolic resources necessary for intellectual work. Material resources are necessary to conduct intellectual activities. Organizational resources are administrative control over the allocation of material and symbolic resources that enable a discipline develop coherence. Symbolic resources are cultural and include members of a discipline perceiving that they are part of a common intellectual community.

This collection of papers materialized in response to the American Sociological Association's call for centennial plenary sessions in 2004 as it prepared for the 2005 annual meeting in Philadelphia. Three of the nearly two-dozen centennial plenary sessions selected for the conference proceedings focused on the subject of sociological knowledge. One of these plenary sessions was organized by me; the other two, originally intended to be one session but divided in order to accommodate the large number of proposed presenters, was organized by Barbara Schneider. Shortly after the sessions were confirmed, I contacted Barbara to determine her interest in publishing some of the presentations as a collection that offered multiple perspectives on the nature of sociological knowledge. Based on the initial interest expressed by both Barbara and the presenters, I contacted Larry Nichols to determine if he might have an interest in publishing a special issue of The American Sociologist on this topic. Upon his consent, work proceeded forward on this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to trace the history of the social indicators or quality-of-life (QOL) research movement up to today, forecast future developments, and pave the way for future growth. Broadly speaking, we tried to review historical antecedents from the point of view of different disciplines, with specialists in each discipline preparing the basic text and co-authors helping to polish the material into a finished product. Briefly, we begin with an overview of the conceptual and philosophical foundations of our field of research. That is followed by a historical overview of the sociological roots of our field. In the third section, the main contributions from the discipline of economics are reviewed. Following that, the fourth section covers a historical overview of the literature on health-related quality of life is provided. Next, the history of QOL research from a marketing perspective is reviewed followed by a history from the perspectives of industrial/organizational psychology and management. Finally, we offer some forecasts for future QOL studies that are intended not only to predict what might happen, but to encourage, stimulate and motivate researchers to undertake new initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientists often lament the fact that philosophically trained ethicists pay limited attention to the insights they generate. This paper presents an overview of tendencies in sociological and anthropological studies of morality, ethics and bioethics, and suggests that a lack in philosophical interest might be related to a tendency among social scientists to employ either a deficit model (social science perspectives accommodate the sense of context that philosophical ethics lacks), a replacement model (social scientists have finally found the “right way” of doing ethics), or a dismissal model (ethics should be abandoned all together as a misconstrued veil of power). Increased awareness of differences in styles of reasoning and objects of research interest might help to overcome the hostility, and an anthropological project is presented as an invitation to a dialogue informed by awareness of such differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews empirical evidence showing that the structures of the social networks of mentally ill clients influence both their well-being and their use of mental health services. Network interventions that might help clients better address network-related problems, and might help their families improve relationships and prevent caretaker’s burn-out are presented. A case illustration will demonstrate how practitioners can assess a client’s social network, involve the client’s family in treatment, evaluate that treatment, and select tailored interventions. This case will emphasize both how practitioners can help a client restructure her network, and the complementary roles of formal and informal networks. The author shows practitioners how to match clients’ initial network structures to interventions and desired outcomes. Practitioners can thus help clients modify their social networks, increase the use of preventive services, and improve their well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent reflections on the state of publications in sociology (Becker, 2003) suggest that article titles are getting longer. I test this hypothesis with data from ASR since inception and a wider sample of papers from Sociological Abstracts between 1963 and 1999. My results indicate a rapid and widespread increase in title length. Further analyses suggest that title length does not predict citation, suggesting that long titles are not an avenue for getting more readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultural sociology has recently developed new tools with which to understand and analyze meaning in terms of cultural discourse. Specifically, this paper further develops the Alexanderian form of discourse analysis through application on the micro-level. Utilizing extensive ethnographic data, the mythopoetic men's movement is examined in terms of how its participants construct political meaning that motivates and guides their action. In empirical detail, these actors can be seen as creating a cultural discourse that constitutes the social movement at a fundamental level while at the same time the discourse is continually negotiated, contested, and reconfigured. Exposed is the “discourse of liberational masculinity” which is used by movement participants to challenge and confront hegemonic masculinity in American society. Examining the mythopoetic men's movement from this perspective demonstrates the analytic utility of this approach through revealing in unique ways the dynamics of morality, political belief, and perceived hegemony within this popular contemporary social movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on children and the law has recently renewed its focus on the development of children's ties to law and legal actors. We identify the developmental process through which these relations develop as legal socialization, a process that unfolds during childhood and adolescence as part of a vector of developmental capital that promotes compliance with the law and cooperation with legal actors. In this paper, we show that ties to the law and perceptions of law and legal actors among children and adolescents change over time and age. We show that neighborhood contexts and experiences with legal actors shape the outcomes of legal socialization. Children report lower ratings of legitimacy of the law and greater legal cynicism when they view interactions with legal actors as unfair and harsh. We show that perceived legitimacy of law and legal authorities shapes compliance with the law, and that these effects covary with social contexts including neighborhood. We identify neighborhood differences in this relationship that reflect differential experiences of children with criminal justice authorities and other social control agents. The results suggest that legal actors may play a role in socialization processes that lead to compliance with or rejection of legal and social norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public sociology is an attempt to redress the issues of public engagement and disciplinary identity that have beset the discipline over the past several decades. While public sociology seeks to rectify the public invisibility of sociology, this paper investigates the limitations of it program. Several points of critique are offered. First, public sociology's affiliations with Marxism serve to potentially entrench existing divisions within the discipline. Second, public sociology's advancement of an agenda geared toward a "sociology for publics" instead of a "sociology of publics" imposes limitations on the development of a public interface. Third, the lack of a methodological agenda for public sociology raises concerns of how sociology can compete within a contested climate of public opinion. Fourth, issues of disciplinary coherence are not necessarily resolved by public sociology, and are potentially exacerbated by the invocation of public sociology as a new disciplinary identity. Fifth, the incoherence of professional sociology is obviated, and a misleading affiliation is made between scientific knowledge and the hegemonic structure of the profession. Finally, the idealism of public sociology's putative defense of civil society is explored as a utopian gesture akin to that of Habermas' attempt to revive the public sphere. The development of a strong program in professional sociology is briefly offered as a means to repair the disciplinary problems that are illustrated by emergence of the project of public sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]