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A moderate but consistent positive correlation was found between the number of citations in a paper and the number of times it is cited. This result refers to a collection of papers published in the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology in 1972 and 1973. The following variables were controlled: journal, year of publications, subject category of paper, number of authors, and seniority of author. Several explanations of this finding are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personal history may determine the individual's style of expressing political beliefs as much as or more than it influences the beliefs themselves. Connections between private life history and public political style have most often been studied in U.S. presidents. However, studies of prominent foreign-policy advisers can be just as useful for an understanding of how individual life history shapes the expression of political beliefs. This paper examines areas of apparent linkage between private life and public style in four of the most prominent Amen can foreign policy advisers of the 20th century: I-louse, Dulles, Kissinger, and Haig. Three styles of dealing with foreign policy issues-Machiavellianism, ego-idealism, and authoritarianism-are considered in relation to the public and private behavior of each man. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

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

Professional sociology in the U.S. began as a field area within economics, but gradually emerged as a separate discipline. Using new data on joint meetings and the separation of departments, I track interdisciplinary relations through three phases: sponsorship (1890–1905), collaboration (1905–1940), and disengagement (post-1940). In the early years, sociology was mostly a branch of economics departments. With the formation of the American Sociological Society, relations with economics began to be more characterized by professionally autonomous collaboration. The 1920s saw a large wave of sociology departments separating from economics. Still, joint annual meetings (including joint presidential addresses) remained the norm until 1940. Paradigmatic conflict between institutional and neoclassical economists was the major force that sustained the economics–sociology collaboration. As institutionalism faded from the scene in the late 1930s, so went interdisciplinary contact. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

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

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

The background and history of the three major studies that have been made of Middletown (Muncie, Indiana) are traced. The findings of these studies are summarized, their contributions evaluated, and their receptions described. The problems inherent in trying to replicate results over a lengthy span of years in community research are analyzed, concluding with some thoughts on the future of community studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

In his popular introductory sociology text, Stark identifies W. E. B. Du Bois and Albion Small as important cornerstones of the U.S. sociological tradition. While the work of the “Chicago School” is well known in sociological circles, Du Bois’ sociological legacy is not. The Philadelphia Negro ([1899] 1996) is a classic empirical sociological study that is rarely included in discussions of the development of scientific sociology. Likewise, The Negro Church ([1903b] 2003) represents one of the first empirically based sociological studies of a religious institution. Sociologists of religion routinely discuss the contributions of Durkheim, Weber, and Simmel while virtually ignoring Du Bois. This is ironic because Du Bois’ work on religion was based on ethnographic data, field interviews, surveys, and census data. This article provides an overview of Du Bois’ sociological study of the Black Church in the United States by identifying some of the main themes developed in The Philadelphia Negro ([1899] 1996), The Souls of Black Folk ([1903a] 1994), and The Negro Church ([1903b] 2003). These studies reveal that Du Bois was a pioneer in the areas of evaluation research, public sociology, service learning, and congregational studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article points out that Michael Burawoy's call for a renewal of commitment to a public sociology has had a massive impact. Writing in the tradition of C. Wright Mills's clarion call, Burawoy seeks to defend the critical and reflexive role of the sociologist through his or her autonomous engagement in the public sphere of political decision. His argument has had a mixed reception in the United States. For the most part his views have been welcomed as re-emphasizing an important dimension of sociological activity that has, perhaps, been lost or submerged in the current political and financial climate of conservatism and retrenchment. Within the universities, many have found it easier to keep their heads down and get on with purely academic work, lest political involvement bring unwanted attention. Burawoy has been seen as re-asserting the political legitimacy of public participation. In some quarters, however, his views have met with a more negative reaction and have been seen as a scarcely concealed attempt to abandon impartiality and to advocate a leftist radicalism. This mixed reception was, perhaps, inevitable, given the political context in which Burawoy has intervened. He is, necessarily, critical of sociologists, other social scientists, the universities and the other institutions for which sociologists work, and also the wider structures of power in which these are enmeshed.

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

This article looks at three measuring instruments—the Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale, the Social Dominance Orientation Scale, and the Attitudes About Reality Scale—used to examine covert ideology and its relationship to social and political beliefs and behaviors. These scales share similar ideological components involving abdication of moral responsibility to an outside agent, belief that one’s own ideology represents the only form of truth, and negative beliefs about individuals who are not members of one’s own group. Evidence is provided to suggest that radical fundamentalists and some groups within U.S. society share ideological beliefs that differ in degree rather than kind. These beliefs make it easy for them to divide the world into “us” and “them” and exacerbate the present conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is necessary to reevaluate the role of the Department of Sociology at Columbia University in the years 1929–1950. The impact of Robert M. MacIver, who played a significant role in the exchange between European and American thinkers, is examined, as well as his marginalization. It is argued that in the 1930s it was characteristic that the sociologists in the centers in Chicago and Columbia exchanged their disciplinary functions. It was MacIver's Columbia that took on the role of advocate of humanistic sociology and Mead's and Cooley's heritage. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on several issues concerning sociology and social sciences in the U.S. Key issues of interest; Analysis of pertinent topics and relevant issues; Implications on the social sciences.

"American Journal of Economics and Sociology," has now completed 40 years of service to the social science sector of the country's scientific community and to the American people whose work that community benefits. It is hard to believe that 40 years ago, in the midst of a war that was soon to engulf the world and at the close of a catastrophic depression that was ended only by production for war, this scholarly enterprise was launched. This Journal is a product of the Georgist movement; the 21 directors of the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, who sponsor and finance it, the editor in-chief, the business manager, their close associates, a majority of the editorial council and many of the members of the editorial board are followers of Henry George, the 19th century American economist and social philosopher. As per the author, during the 40 years, they have always afforded their authors the widest freedom of expression. The builders of this enterprise had been influenced by the work of Henry George, they never exalted George above other ethical writers and democratic thinkers.