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Feminist classrooms employ a variety of teaching strategies that empower students and inspire equity and justice. In this paper, we argue that integrating student-made documentary filmmaking into the college classroom is a powerful and effective form of feminist teaching. Specifically, feminist pedagogy views students as knowledge creators and demands collaborative, non-hierarchical learning experiences. These outcomes suggest that documentary filmmaking is a compelling and effective way to engage students in our increasingly visual and video-based culture. Based on our experiences teaching sociology at a women's college in the U.S., we illustrate the impact that documentary filmmaking has for student learning, empowerment, and justice work. We also develop and strengthen students' technical, multi-media skills, arguing this outcome expands feminist pedagogy to meet contemporary culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents observations on the conference papers on cultural systems and organizational processes in the U.S. Basis for descriptive precision; Identification of the most basic empirical questions regarding culture; Distinct formalization of social systems.

Individuals are claiming greater scope for choice in their racial identities. But how they are seen and classified by others is not necessarily changing in a similar way. Racial appraisals are the way that people classify the race of others, both particular individuals and larger groups. In this paper, I make a case for the study of racial appraisals as a field of sociological inquiry. I map out the different analytical levels and methodological approaches for this field and discuss how these can be used to understand observed race, norms of racial classification, and societal norms of the racial order. I present an example of how societal norms and logics of racial classification can be analysed in real time through survey research, using 2015-16 data on 866 White Americans’ reactions to Rachel Doležal’s racial identity claims. I present an agenda for studying changes in racial boundaries and classification norms through the longitudinal tracking of racial appraisals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite both scholarly and popular claims that citizen journalism (CJ) represents a growing democratizing force in the journalistic field, recent scholarship in the area has noted the decline of the organizational population of CJ. In this paper, we investigate how individual characteristics of sites and the dynamics of larger organizational population affect a CJ site’s risk of experiencing a mortality. Drawing on the largest sample to date of US-based English-language CJ sites, this study examines the risk of site mortality through an event history framework. Findings indicate that the strongest predictor of a site’s mortality is the age of the site, consistent with organizational population theory’s ‘liability of newness.’ We also find that for-profit and community-based sites have lower rates of site mortality, indicating that adopting legitimate conventions of journalism may serve as a protective buffer to site death. The results offer mixed evidence on whether CJ has become more professionalized via attrition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present paper, I first discuss the lack of a truly global anthropology in the world today and consider why such a world anthropology does not exist. I then offer a more personal account, based on my experience as an editor of an international journal attempting, to some extent, to counter the hegemony of the American anthropological core. Finally, I look at the referee system and argue that, for all its benefits, it nonetheless serves to prevent the emergence of a global anthropology. The major questions raised in this paper are how, in an anthropological world riven by a huge gap between the core and periphery, as well as by different national schools of anthropology, can refereeing of journal articles take place in a fair and balanced way; and, if it cannot take place, what does this mean about the nature and future of anthropology as a discipline? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia we have become preoccupied with the potential adverse impact of our ageing population on our health and social systems. The projected cost of having increasing proportions of our population in the over 70s, retired, chronically ill category of the demographic profile is emerging as a major challenge for governments and private insurers: so much so in fact that the government is now urging older people to stay at work longer. In America, new approaches to the management and self-management of chronic diseases have been invoked to encourage and support older people to improve their quality of life and reduce their recourse to and dependence upon health care technologies, clinical interventions and health care management systems. Unless this is achieved, it is argued, the cost of looking after this emerging ‘bubble’ of elderly people will become increasingly unsustainable as fewer and fewer (proportionately) younger people work to pay the taxes that support ageing, retired, sick and dependent populations. This paper argues that we are at real risk of having our economic wealth and productivity impeded and truncated by the financial burden of looking after high demand and high cost dependants at the aged end of the social demographic. This paper offers an alternative view of our ageing population, as well as highlighting some of the assets we have in our elderly populations, and providing suggestions as to an alternative view of the phenomenon of ageing that incorporates elements such as flexible working arrangements and the application of new, enabling technologies. This approach to our ageing population dilemma is predicated on a concept of lifelong learning and social participation along with better preventive and early intervention systems of health care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the organization and representation of time in certain kinds of undergraduate programs, here represented by a sociology program in a US university. Written requirements for the major are analyzed as constituting a 'chart' that defines academic time in terms of units of before-after relationships. The paper shows how students 'reuse' these temporal units when charting paths through the university and reckoning their academic work to specific futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines disability terminology to explore how the news media frame cultural representations of the disability community. More specifically, the paper examines the impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act on journalist's language choices about disability topics. A content analysis of news stories using disability terms in The Washington Post and The New York Times during the past decade was conducted. The paper illustrates that disability community identity continues to be formed, transformed and maintained through news media presentations of disability terminology. The paper argues that the US Disability Rights Movement had some success during the 1990s in putting forth language that advances its aims, though the study also suggests that some journalists continue to use terms that perpetuate limiting, narrow stereotypes about people with disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

As well as a site of politics and public health action, the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa has been a focus of media representations. This paper examines print media narratives around border control in relation to Ebola in the UK, the USA and Australia from the start of the epidemic to May 2015. It shows that Ebola became mobilised as a frame through which domestic politics could be discussed. The disease was transformed from a problem for West Africa to a problem for the West. The context of West Africa and affected populations was homogenised and hidden. The focus of reporting centred upon domestic political actions and more local sources of threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon insights from the social movement literature as well as leadership experience in a successful social movement organization, this paper suggests aspects of a framework for integrating traditional and contemporary approaches. The case history of JUST (Johnstowners United to Stop another Tragedy) is used to illustrate the interaction of grievances and structures in the career of a social movement organization. In addition to helping fill a lacuna in the literature on the internal dynamics of such organizations, this analysis also demonstrates the importance of the nature of the grievance as well as the target group's structural entrenchment. The paper focuses upon a relatively anomalous case for U.S. social movement organizations: an SMO which was successful despite displacement goals. The final section of the paper includes a summary diagram of the factors involved in JUSTs successful protest effort as well as broader generalizations suggesting the conditions under which grievances or infrastructures are more salient in explaining social movement phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociology of the South, as a substantive area research interest, emerged during the 1800s as a means to rationalize and preserve the cultural norms of slavery era whites who would soon experience seismic social shocks including the Civil War and emancipation of enslaved blacks. The person singularly cited as the architect of this area of study is Howard W. Odum. Although Odum is identified as the person most responsible for the development of this field, archival data indicate that W. E. B. Du Bois and the men and women of the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory were its first practitioners. In this paper evidence is offered to show that Du Bois's Atlanta University efforts predated Odum's North Carolina research program. Additionally, an explanation for Du Bois's marginalization in the existing sociology of the South literature is offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Harry Alpert (1912-1977), the US sociologist, is best-known for his directorship of the National Science Foundation's social science programme in the 1950s. This study extends our understanding of Alpert in two main ways: first, by examining the earlier development of his views and career. Beginning with his 1939 biography of Emile Durkheim, we explore the early development of Alpert's views about foundational questions concerning the scientific status of sociology and social science more generally, proper social science methodology, the practical value of social science, the academic institutionalisation of sociology, and the unity-of-science viewpoint. Second, this paper illuminates Alpert's complex involvement with certain tensions in mid-century US social science that were themselves linked to major transformations in national science policy, public patronage, and unequal relations between the social and natural sciences. We show that Alpert's views about the intellectual foundations, practical relevance, and institutional standing of the social sciences were, in some important respects, at odds with his NSF policy work. Although remembered as a quantitative evangelist and advocate for the unity-of-science viewpoint, Alpert was in fact an urbane critic of natural-science envy, social scientific certainty, and what he saw as excessive devotion to quantitative methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No one would disagree that scientific research has been unethical—even criminal—at times. Institutional review boards (IRBs) play a fundamental role in protecting people from unethical criminological research. At the same time, IRBs, as social entities, are subject to a wide range of influences that may affect their decisions regarding the ethicality of research. This research note draws on the paradigm of pure sociology and the logic underpinning Black's theory of law to propose a preliminary theory of IRBs' (dis)approval of research. Specifically, it suggests that IRBs apply less social control to criminological research involving higher status researchers and lower status research participants and, therefore, those persons are more often involved in research. The paper concludes with theoretically situated, practical advice for how (1) IRBs can reduce their discrimination, and (2) criminological researchers can reduce IRBs' disapproval of their projects and thereby increase their research output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on church-sect theory, this paper asserts that midwifery is much like an established sect in relation to its church equivalent: Western medicine. We find that midwifery can endure in this form - as both protest movement and established institution - because of its ability to maintain its central oppositional values while being accepted as a legitimate, if marginalized, profession. Using interview data from 25 Florida midwives, we draw an analogy between the liminal status of midwifery and three of the most important characteristics of the established sect: limited institutionalization, acceptance and opposition, and a unique value set. This comparison sheds light on both church-sect theory and midwifery, which also leads us to suggest that similar analogies be used for analysis across other sub-fields in sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the extent to which US citizenship status affects the probability of a person's having a usual source of care and the predictors associated with access to health care among non-citizens. The research is founded on the analysis of data from the 2005 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) (n = 33,187 adults, ages 18–64). Guided by a modified Andersen model of access to health care, the researchers conducted a series of logistic regression analyses using the survey data to compare native-born citizens with non-citizens who were 1.6 times less likely to access a usual source of care. Among non-citizens, insurance status, shorter duration of residence in the United States, and lower levels of English proficiency were related to a lower probability of having a usual source of care. Based on this research it is argued that affordable health care and health insurance options and access to culturally and linguistically sensitive services are needed to increase access to health care among these identified subgroups of non-citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a large contemporary United States data set, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Supplement (NLSY-CS), this paper examines the relationship between parental work schedules and adolescent depression at age 13 or 14, paying particular attention to the mechanisms that may explain this relationship. Analysis based on structural equation modelling showed that increased work at night by mothers was significantly associated with a lower quality of home environment and fewer meals together, and this mediator was significantly linked to increased risks for adolescent depression. In addition, evening work by fathers was significantly associated with lower paternal closeness and this mediator was significantly associated with increases in adolescent depression. In contrast, irregular shifts by both mothers and fathers increased the likelihood of mothers knowing where the child was and this relationship in turn reduced adolescent depression. Implications and avenues for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By comparing the US environmental justice movement with recent European developments, this paper suggests an environmental justice framework which is based on the idea of environmental justice as a heterogeneous process rather than an analytical or normative category. Using major debates on environmental justice particularly in the UK and Germany as a touchstone, eight dimensions of environmental justice are carved out and integrated into a processual model. It is discussed how environmental justice as a process may become robust enough to integrate and react to changing natural and social conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines changes in the representation of criminology, as an area of specialization, in the discipline of sociology between 1992 and 2002. Utilizing the ASA Guide to Graduate Programs in Sociology, we note faculty areas of specialization. We expect that criminology will appear more often as a specialty area in 1992 than 2002. All full‐time faculty in U.S. graduate programs in sociology are included in the analyses. We found no significant change in listing criminal justice as a specialty between 1992 and 2002. Our findings suggest that faculty with terminal degrees from less prestigious institutions and those who teach in less prestigious institutions are more likely to list criminology as a specialty area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses an issue of public policy regarding the Internet. It is motivated by the belief that the Internet is in danger of being controlled by a few megacorporations. We seek to understand the nature of such control by performing a textual analysis of the 'Internet Policy Statement' released by AOLTimeWarner in 2001. Our analysis reveals hidden assumptions, ideology and metaphor; highlights how rhetoric influences social expectations; and generally helps us make sense of the words of a mega-corporate managerial elite and how this elite views the Internet. We reveal a self-serving and persuasive public policy statement made by a corporate Juggernaut. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an empirical examination of the process of 'super-gentrification' in the Brooklyn Heights neighbourhood of New York City. This intensified regentrification is happening in a few select areas of global cities like London and New York that have become the focus of intense investment and conspicuous consumption by a new generation of super-rich 'financifiers' fed by fortunes from the global finance and corporate service industries. This latest resurgence of gentrification can be distinguished from previous rounds of revitalisation and poses important questions about the historical continuity of current manifestations of gentrification with previous generations of neighbourhood change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has shown growing shares of employment in the social economy (or non-profit sector) both in the European Union and in the United States. In the EU, there seems to be growing hopes that the social economy will be capable of contributing to local progress on the unemployment issue in crisis regions. This paper analyses employment in certain entrepreneurial forms, usually considered belonging to the social economy, in Sweden during the 1990s. The results show considerable regional differences of employment in the social economy, but also that its share of the labor market is very limited. The effect of social-economic organizations on employment, therefore, is probably mainly indirect in as much as they function as platforms for cooperation between firms or else as embryos for enterprises by strengthening local entrepreneurship and helping to nurture a deposit of social capital which has visible effects on private business and jobs. However, these effects need more detailed examinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparative analysis of text and images in Japanese and English software manuals, recipes and other procedures. The Japanese procedures are found to be more elaborate in the extent to which they engage the reader/viewer, in the degree of detail with which they represent the portrayed action, and in the explicitness of marking the procedures' stages. An attempt is made to account for these differences by reference to differences in the socio-cultural context between the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews continuity theory as it applies to the field of ageing and reports the findings of a qualitative study aimed at understanding the personal meanings of ageing and well-being from the perspective of oldest-old women. Transcribed ethnographic interviews of 23 Caucasian and African-American community-dwelling women over the age of 85, who live in the midwestern United States, were analysed through the combined theoretical perspective of symbolic interactionism [1] and continuity theory [2, 3]. The women's communication about ageing and well-being leads the researchers to conclude that personal competence in the "feminine sphere" is key to understanding older women's health beliefs and behaviours in late life. Findings also point to the importance of occupational competence as a predictor of well-being in late life. This study underscores the importance of public communication of self and the role of occupational therapists in facilitating alternative visions of a meaningful occupational self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the history of the American public asylum from the 1840s through the late 19th century. The focus is on social factors that contributed to the establishment of public institutions at the urging of reformers, the attempts to model them on the architecture and "moral treatment" offered by the best private institutions, the crowding of the asylums, the growing criticism aimed at the asylums and their superintendents, and the effects of calls for other approaches and for scientific management. Knowledge of the asylum's history may be useful today, as we stand at the crossroads in the treatment of the mentally ill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on papers written by the sociologists Michael Aiken, Kenneth Land and James McCartney which are bound by a common thread of being philosophical and practical reflections on the basic objective of sociology. All three writers make broad judgments about whether the evolution of the discipline and profession has resulted in more clearly defined boundaries and whether the expansion of the domains of sociology will strengthen the discipline and profession.

This paper explores the correlates of religiosity among blacks and whites, asking two questions: (1) Is the relationship between SES and religious attendance the same for both races? (2) What factors best predict church attendance among both races? The findings show that (1) SES is positively related to religious participation among whites; (2) the best non-religious predictors of attendance across all denominations and churches studied are SES and age; (3) including a measure of religious belief greatly increases the explanatory power of a predictive model; but (4) the relationship between SES and attendance varies by denomination and church among blacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies of subjective anomie assume that all individuals have the same goals, and they explain anomie in terms of differences in the means to achieve goals. This paper examines the effect of variations in the goal of success on anomie. Data are from a Harris survey of 3,001 adults in the continental United States. A multiple regression of anomie on success orientation, plus six social status variables, revealed that success orientation has a significant positive effect on anomie and that, next to education, it is the best predictor of anomie. This finding helps explain both intraclass variations in anomie and the increase in anomie from the 1950s to 1971 found by Fischer(1974). The social status variables did not explain much of the variation in success orientation, and the effect of success orientation on anomie was not mediated by education and income. The relevance of these findings to Durkheim's theory of anomie is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the influence of ethnic background on organizational status attainment. The data are taken from a national sample of 2,755 Roman Catholic diocesan priests and bishops. The sample is divided into seven ethnic categories: Irish, German, French, Italian, Anglo-Saxon, Polish, and other. Controlling for the overall distribution of status positions within the diocese and the individual's age/seniority, a "non-preferential" model of status attainment is constructed. Average expected status on the basis of this non-preferential model for these ethnic groups in seven different regions of the country is compared to average actual status. Although we found three isolated cases of particular ethnic groups in specific regions doing significantly poorer in status attainment than predicted by the non-preferential model, the only consistent effect of ethnicity found across the entire sample is a slight advantage enjoyed by Irish clergy. No significant effect was associated with belonging to the largest ethnic group in a diocese. The very small advantage enjoyed by the Irish suggests that Irish domination of the Catholic hierarchy in the United States is maintained less by selective promotion within the ranks of the clergy and more by a disproportionate recruitment of Irish priests at the entrance levels of the organization. Disproportionate recruitment and preferential promotion are discussed as alternative mechanisms of domination within organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the importance of identifying the environmental context in which organizations function. The relationship between an organization and those other groups and individuals constituting its environment is specified in terms of linkages. Two key dimensions of linkage are identified: strength and breadth. The former refers to how intimately the organization is connected with any other group while the latter refers to how extensive is the support. These linkages' dimensions are viewed from a "resource mobilization" perspective, i.e., as the means by which resources are brought into an organization. A study of linkages sustained by the NAACP during 1961-69 illustrates how the dimensions of linkage strength and breadth can be operationalized and applied. New avenues of research then are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effectiveness of the use of constraints (e.g., direct action tactics and violence) by protest groups. It is suggested that the development of theoretical understanding of protest movements requires that scholars turn their attention away from the question, "How effective is the use of constraints by protesters?" and instead address the more refined question, "Under what conditions is the use of constraints by protesters both most effective and least effective?" In pursuit of answers to this latter question, hypotheses are developed suggesting that the effectiveness of constraint utilization depends on the degree and direction of public (third party) involvement in the protest incident. An examination of 212 protests targeted at elected officials and public administrators in American cities during the period between 1960 and 1971 provides support for the following propositions. Constraint utilization will be most effective when third parties are either uninvolved in the protest or when they are involved and unsupportive of protester demands. Under these conditions, constraints may be effective resources enabling protesters to coerce targets into being responsive to their demands. Constraint utilization will be least effective when third parties are involved and supportive of protester demands or are attentive but initially neutral or divided in their support of the protesters. Under these conditions, the use of constraints may alienate those third parties who might otherwise be influential allies of the protesters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper first reviews the descriptions and structural explanations for variations, in urban population densities in the United States over several decades. The research reviewed focuses on shifts in the technology and economics of travel as being the major influences on urban density distributions. These variables appear to be somewhat less adequate as explanations of the process in recent decades. After reviewing these findings and suggesting several research questions, we attempt to assess the evidence relating variations in population density to several other aspects of human behavior. A review of the research relating high population densities to various "social pathologies" indicates that little of the variance in rates of these pathologies can be attributed to density independently of other social structural variables. Some important consequences of population density have been reported, however, and possible research directions are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This note outlines the type of papers which the U.S. periodical "The Sociological Quarterly" wishes to publish. The periodical is a general sociological journal, and as such does not place any quotas on the number of papers it shall publish in any specific area. It nearly always considers scholarly sociological research and writing done by sociologists as being within the journal's acceptable limits. The note airs a special call for articles on the teaching of sociology as well.