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This article focuses on papers presented at the first Olympic Academy. Papers were grouped under the following headings: Ancient Perspectives; Contemporary Perspectives; Feminine Perspectives; International Olympic Academy and the U.S. Olympic Committee; and Ceremonies of the First Session.

It has been common for studies presented as about American sociology as a whole to rely on data compiled from leading journals ( American Sociological Review [ASR] and American Journal of Sociology [AJS]), or about presidents of the American Sociological Association [ASA], to represent it. Clearly those are important, but neither can be regarded as providing a representative sample of American sociology. Recently, Stephen Turner has suggested that dominance in the ASA rests with a 'cartel' initially formed in graduate school, and that it favors work in a style associated with the leading journals. The adequacy of these ideas is examined in the light of available data on the last 20 years, which show that very few of the presidents were in the same graduate schools at the same time. All presidents have had distinguished academic records, but it is shown that their publication strategies have varied considerably. Some have had no ASR publications except their presidential addresses, while books and large numbers of other journals not normally mentioned in this context have figured in their contributions, as well as being more prominent in citations. It seems clear that articles in the leading journals have not been as closely tied to prestigious careers as has sometimes been suggested, and that if there is a cartel it has not included all the presidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of the issue which gives emphasis on both the plenary and the presidential addresses presented at the 1985 annual meeting of the Mid-South Sociological Association held in Little Rock, Arkansas. The success of the meeting was made even more so by these two extremely timely and thought provoking papers from Bill Catton and Marsha McGee. Both not only reflect the introspective nature of sociology and sociologists at this time, but also provide direction for the discipline. Hence, it is hoped that the quality of both the 1985 plenary address and the 1985 presidential address serves as an encouragement to those who would like to attend the 1986 annual meeting in Jackson, Mississippi.

Abstract: This special issue offers papers that together reach toward sociological understanding of “meaning.” We contextualize that effort in intersecting intellectual trends—the emerging relational sociology of networks and meanings, which has progressed steadily since the 1990s, and the diverse enterprise of sociology of language, which is much less established in the U.S. Given space limitations, we acknowledge others’ work but concentrate on Harrison White''s turn to language and linguistics, which influenced all the papers herein. We highlight each paper''s contribution to a new relational sociology and new understanding of language as mechanism and methodology, which might change the study of agentic actions, social processes, politics, networks and institutions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article is taken from Chapter 6 of the publication A Lucky Journey: The Sociological Enterprise, 1931-1980, which reflects on the progress of the American Sociological Review (ASR) as a publication from 1958 to 1960. The local editorial staff of the publication began with a contingent of ten scholars. These ten scholars included representatives of various sub-fields in sociology and of related discipline as well as specialists on Soviet Russia, Africa, India and Japan. Most of the day-to-day labor on the Review was done by editorial secretary Betty Vogel, Michael Olmsted, and their nominal boss. Michael Olmsted was more than a first-rate book review editor, he evaluated papers in his special fields with sagacity and designed an attractive cover to replace what had long been the dismal front of the publication. Solicitation of papers by prominent sociologists helped to upgrade ASR as a scholarly journal. Another change was the introduction of a division of the Review on the Profession which included not merely the obituaries or communications pertaining to the sociological guild, but both solicited submitted articles on the occupation itself. This innovation, according to the author, was consistent with his own growing interest in the sociology of sociology.

In the paper, the institutionalization of sociology is understood as a process of establishing social facts like sociological book series, periodicals, institutes, chairs, and associations. This process introduced the discipline into mainstream academic life, distinguishing and securing the stability, boundaries and identity of sociology amongst other social sciences. Terry Clark's model of the process of institutionalization of academic disciplines is applied. The paper is organized into several sections. The first discusses the emergence of sociology in Europe, and focuses on the publishing of books with "sociology" in their lilies. The second section analyses the beginnings of sociology in the United States of America, examining the emergence of sociological books, periodicals (American Journal of Sociology) and the first departments of sociology before World War I. The third section discusses the foundation of sociological institutions in France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, outlining the emergence of periodicals, book series, national and international associations, university chairs. The fourth and fifth sections, based in the same time period, analyses the beginnings of sociological institutions in Germany, and in other selected European countries such as Italy, England and Austria. Sections six and seven discuss the institutionalization of sociology in Central and Eastern Europe during the inter-war period, and post-war developments in the same region. The last section examines sociology as a global discipline. [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]

Government funding of religious organizations to provide public social services is becoming increasingly legitimate in American social welfare. A possible unintended consequence of government funding is the erosion of religiousness in these organizations. However, lack of clarity about the nature of religious characteristics limits accurate assessment of the threat of government funding to organizational religiousness. This paper uses findings from a comparative case study of two government-funded faith-related social service organizations in the Midwest as an initial test of the utility of Sider and Unruh's (2004) recently proposed typology of religious characteristics of social service and educational organizations The two studied organizations maintained high commitments to their religious convictions even while securing the majority of their revenues from government sources. Based on this finding, this study posits a two-dimensional conceptualization of organizational religiousness that helps to explain how faith-based organizations with substantial government funding can successfully resist secularization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the status of women and feminism in the Association for Humanist Sociology (AHS) in the U.S. from 1976 to 2002. The author's perspective is that of a feminist sociologist trained in the 1960s and 1970s, rooted in a radical feminism and embracing a transformational, international feminism. Women had constituted a minority in terms of numbers as well as intellectual recognition within the AHS. The author claims that according to his experience and that of other feminist involved in AHS, although the association had been from the beginning much more welcoming of women and their contributions than other sociological organizations, the relationship between feminism and humanist sociology has not always been an easy one. However, humanist sociology, as its is practiced in the AHS, has changed over time and has become increasingly accepting of feminism. The author attributes this to grassroots efforts among feminist members of the association to better integrate women and feminism, and the increasing numbers of women in the AHS, as well as a growing awareness among both humanist sociologists and feminists of the great human variety of positionalities, identities, and experiences.

This article comments on the history and accomplishments of the American Sociological Association. The most astonishing activity of the ASA is an annual production, the extravaganza called the national meetings. In the 1940s and 1950s the national convention was sometimes criticized for being a market fair at which young academics were forced to kowtow to the mighty for jobs, rather than being able to take delight in truly intellectual discourse. Over the decades, the business meetings of the ASA have remained unchanged in one important way. They always have been poorly attended, except for a few times in the late 1960s. This intense apathy is characteristic of a well run learned society. First it shows the good sense of sociologists, for there is little worth capturing at the business meeting. Second, most of the time the Council and the national staff have succeeded in attaining harmony with the vibrations of their constituents, and thus, they often have made entirely independent decisions that pleased the others anyway. Even in the high drama of business meetings in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it should be noted, established sociology was the main target. In response to the sociologist's usual preference for egalitarian policy, the 1960's charges of elitism, and the sheer growth of research money, the number of papers or presentations has grown, certainly faster than the membership.

This paper summarizes briefly the formal relationship between the American Sociological Association (ASA) and the seven regional sociological societies, suggests that little has resulted from the affiliation, and recommends (1) the ASA Committee on Regional Affairs be terminated, and (2) four other ways of linking the national and regional societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on the progress of the American Sociological Association (ASA) from 1905 to 1980. The author relates that when she took office elate in 1949, there were approximately 2,700 members on the Society's roles. Ten years later there were 7,000. With the Reorganization Committee of 1950 anticipating the potential, certain goals for the Association were set early in the decade. There were eight goals that the society was determined to accomplish. It is a matter of record that considerable progress was made during the decade of the 1950s in moving toward these goals especially the first six Constitutional changes were affected. membership participation was broadened. An executive office was organized. Several new publications were started. Membership services generally were expanded. All the annual meeting, over 300 papers were presented in 1960 in contrast to 77 in 1950. In two important respects, however, the mid-century ASA was somewhat less effective in performing its supportive role in expanding the uses of sociology and in aiding the development of the discipline. For example, responding to indications that sociologists were needed in a variety of practicing professions, ASA together with Russell Sage Foundation, undertook a series of bulletins on the fields of sociological application.

This article presents a commentary on a paper by Paul Kay in a previous issue of The American Sociologist which analyzed the growth of a mythical enthusiasm for nonacademic employment in anthropology and other disciplines in the U.S. Kay proposes three tests for labeling this as an ideology, that it is demonstrably false and it serves to maintain the status quo. According to the commenter, he has seen very little evidence that the field of sociology is suffused with a growing enthusiasm about prospects for jobs outside academia. The American Sociological Association's (ASA) Expanding Employment Opportunities Committee's attempts to define the problem and to suggest useful steps to be taken to deal with it have hardly struck fire either at the grays roots or at the ASA Council level. Skepticism has been expressed as to whether the problem of a declining academic job market is not simply temporary, and thus not deserving of curriculum revision, recruiting cutbacks or some other organized response. Kay defends his second point, that the belief is false, mainly by referring to the competitive disadvantage of anthropologists in seeking to supplant others now holding nonacademic jobs or when offering their services at the same time as others displaced by the same market forces.

This article presents a commentary on a paper by Robert A. Stebbins in a previous issue of The American Sociologist which provided an account of professional and amateur sociology in the U.S. The British organization, Mass Observation existed in a relatively nonintrusive society with (as compared to the U.S.) greater concern for one's own and other people's privacy. Canada and Great Britain may in this respect have more built-in defenses against the risks of some kinds of amateur sociology that the U.S. would have. However, according to the commenter, Stebbins already anticipates this objection by requiring amateurs to be supervised and to start with a certain amount of instruction and proper cautionary comments. By engaging primarily in the use of unobtrusive measures and observations, the amateur will avoid the risks of harm to which Stebbins is already sensitive. The commenter relates that one of the public areas in which he has encouraged such unobtrusive observations is in churches, where the observer in outward appearance is similar to the congregation and hence not seen as an intruder. According to him, he has had a fair amount of experience with undergraduate amateurs of the sort described.

Organizations within challenger movements often exhibit differences in what they do, with whom they interact, and how they understand or present themselves. This article attempts to understand what underlies such heterogeneity in challenger movements. Adopting a mixed method approach, we explore the heterogeneous nature of the work undertaken by institutional challengers in the US environmental movement. Drawing on the tools of social network analysis, we develop a method to identify a set of distinct social positions. Next, drawing upon qualitative data on identity and work from websites and interviews with senior managers in environmental non-governmental organizations, we identify configurations of social position, identity, and work that result in a distinct set of challenger roles. Our analysis reveals how identity and social position can both enable and constrain individual organizations within a challenger movement in terms of their ability to undertake different types of institutional work. We also identify a form of work thus far not explicitly identified in prior studies of institutional work–indirect work, which we theorize may be an important potential moderator to the effectiveness of direct forms of institutional work. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents a commentary on a paper by Robert A. Stebbins in a previous issue of The American Sociologist which provided an account of professional and amateur sociology in the U.S. According to the commenter, there are many attractive features to what Stebbins proposes. The Mass Observation (MO) movement is an interesting case in point . The main objective of the movement was to support the British war effort in World War II by providing the Home Office with information about wartime concerns and worries of the British population. To participate as an observer in MO, listening to conversations in bars, in workplaces, on public transport, and so on, was to participate in the war effort. And then there is the anecdote problem what is to prevent amateur sociologists from being collectors of odd facts, interesting and startling experiences, miscellaneous overheard conversations and the like? All the anecdotal evidence that plagues sociologists at cocktail parties may be gathered and displayed by the amateurs at their meetings. Stebbins recognizes this problem and would establish the principle that anecdotal evidence would not be allowed in amateur sociological societies.

The idea of standardizing concepts in sociology is not new, but we have made little progress, despite the early hopes of such theorists as Durkheim and Weber. This article refutes the arguments of some who contend that we do not need standard concepts, we cannot make standard concepts, social phenomena are too complex and changeful sociologists are too individualistic and sociological concepts are too context-dependent. The author proposes that the American Sociological Association appoint a Committee on Basic Sociological Concepts to investigate and recommend the official adoption of a basic conceptual language in American sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents opinions on the issue concerning the inclusion of religion in the American decennial census. One author argues, that within the context of the American Jewish population, the issue is assumed to historically instilled wariness of both governmental authority and socio-economic saliency. The other author presented his idea about the lobbying of the Association for the Sociological Study of Jewry on the issue, in which he argues that asking a question on religion in the U.S. census seems an appropriate stimulus for sociological-demographic research and would provide a series of data that cannot be obtained from other sources that would clarify some issues associated with the social-demographic situation and dynamics of the American Jewish population.

The recent cultural turn in American sociology has inspired a number of more scientifically oriented scholars to study the meanings that are embedded within institutions, practices, and cultural artifacts. I focus here on research that (a) emphasizes institutional (rather than individual) meanings, (b) uses a structural approach to interpretation, and (c) employs formal algorithms or quantitative procedures for reducing the complexity of meanings to simpler structural principles. I discuss two core methodological issues-the assessment of similarities and differences between items in a cultural system and the process by which structure-preserving simplifications are found in the data. I also highlight the importance of two-mode analytic procedures and review some of the perceived benefits and criticisms of this style of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]