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The article looks at the role of fire and arson in the final period and ending of slavery in the United States. It discusses the historical evidence for slaves setting many fires in the southern states as a form of rebellion against slavery, looking closely at fires in Charleston, South Carolina, and New Orleans, Louisiana, in the period 1830-1860. Fire as a weapon of war in the U.S. Civil War is also discussed.

Women's rights are a core part of a global consensus on human rights. However, we are currently experiencing an increasing popularity of anti-feminist and misogynist politics threatening to override feminist gains. In order to help explain this current revival and appeal, in this article I analyse how anti-feminist communities construct their collective identities at the intersection of local and global trends and affiliations. Through an in-depth analysis of representations in the collective identities of six popular online anti-feminist communities based in India, Russia and the United States, I shed light on how anti-feminists discursively construct their anti-feminist 'self' and the feminist 'other' between narratives of localized resistance to change and backlash against the results of broader societal developments associated with globalization. The results expose a complex set of global–local dynamics, which provide a nuanced understanding of the differences and commonalities of anti-feminist collective identity-building and mobilization processes across contexts. By explicitly focusing on the role of discursively produced locations for anti-feminist identity-building and providing new evidence on anti-feminist communities across three different continents, the article contributes to current discussions on transnational anti-feminist mobilizations in both social movement studies and feminist International Relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his campaign and first few years in office, Donald Trump consistently defied contemporary norms by using explicit, negative rhetoric targeting ethnic/racial minorities. Did this rhetoric lead White Americans to express more or less prejudiced views of African Americans or Hispanics, whether through changing norms around racial prejudice or other mechanisms? We assess that question using a thirteen-wave panel conducted with a population-based sample of Americans between 2008 and 2018. We find that via most measures, White Americans' expressed anti-Black and anti-Hispanic prejudice declined after Trump's political emergence, and we can rule out even small increases in the expression of prejudice. These results suggest the limits of racially charged rhetoric's capacity to heighten prejudice among White Americans overall. They also indicate that rather than being a fixed predisposition, prejudice can shift by reacting against changing presidential rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is a widespread belief that stable employment is important for social integration, stable employment careers have become less common in America's increasingly complex labor market. Job tenure has dropped, precarious work arrangements have gained prominence, long-term unemployment has spiked, and an increasing share of the jobless are not looking for work. Against this background, we investigate the linkages between labor market experiences and volunteer activities, as an indicator of people's involvement in civic life. We outline a theory on how transitions between labor market states—within, into, and out of the labor force—bring about changes in civic engagement and test our predictions using panel data from the Current Population Survey 2002–2015. Contrary to what much previous research suggests, we find that people who become unemployed are more likely to start volunteering and no more likely to stop. We additionally show that people who leave the labor force altogether (i.e. not having a job nor looking for one) are more likely to stop volunteering. Conversely, entering the labor force, either by securing or searching for a job, is associated with an increase in volunteer activities. We explore the role of motivation and time resources in accounting for these patterns, finding among other things that moving into or out of the most detached labor market state—outside the labor force without any intention to find work—is most consequential for civic engagement. We discuss the implications of our findings for civic democracy in light of ongoing labor market trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the strategy and rhetoric of the National Federation of Settlements' 1928 project on unemployment. During the Hoover years, settlement workers assembled an extensive catalog of case studies, which offer a glimpse into the home life of the jobless and their families at the beginning of the Great Depression. From their research, the NFS Committee on Unemployment published a series of books and articles that depicted the unemployed as the undeserving victims of economic change and called for policies to protect them. Throughout, settlement workers focused on the families of the unemployed, drawing on gendered notions of work and family and supporting policies that protected male-breadwinner households. Thus, settlement leaders recast unemployment as a social, rather than an economic, problem. In all, settlement research, writing, and reception presented a skeptical voting public with a palatable argument for social insurance that brought the experiences of the jobless to the voting public and policymakers, demonstrating a process of "policymaking from the middle." In so doing, they redeemed the newly unemployed and the insurance plans intended to protect them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals with disabilities experience lower education levels, lower employment rates, fewer household resources, and poorer health than people without disabilities. Yet, despite comprising more than one-eighth of the US population, people with disabilities are seldom integrated into sociological studies of inequality. This study uses time use as a lens through which to understand one type of inequality between working-aged people with and without disabilities: participation in daily activities. It also tests whether social disparities (as suggested by the social model of disability) or health disparities (as suggested by the medical model of disability) explain a larger percentage of participation differences. I first consider if disability predicts daily time in market work, nonmarket work, tertiary (health-related) activities, and leisure—net of health and sociodemographic characteristics. Next, I utilize Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to assess the relative contribution of these characteristics in explaining time differences. Results from the American Time Use Survey indicate that adults with disabilities spend less time than adults without disabilities in market work and more time in tertiary activities and leisure. There is no difference in nonmarket time. Health accounts for the largest percentage of the explained component of tertiary time differences, but depending on the choice of predictors, sociodemographic characteristics account for as much—or more—of the explained component of differences in market and leisure time. Results indicate the importance of disentangling disability from health in sociological studies of inequality. They also support a hybrid disability model in suggesting that both health and sociodemographic characteristics determine how disability shapes daily life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the emergence of Oklahoma's Office of Inter-agency Coordination (OIC)--an organization that one exposé dubbed the "Sooner CIA" (Central Intelligence Agency). The article sets the OIC within the context of a growing national culture of surveillance, driven in part by fears of race riots and widespread unrest during the Vietnam War Era. Examining the connection between the OIC, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) and the Army spy scandal illustrates that Oklahoma's surveillance activities and civil disorder planning were part of a larger nationwide erosion of civil liberties [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A response is offered to several articles in the issue on the topic of the poetics of U.S. national securitization, or the increase of national security, during the 21st century. Topics, including African American bodies, the politics of catastrophe, liberal concepts of private property rights, neoliberalism and mass surveillance in the U.S., are discussed.

A vast literature demonstrates how personal networks mirror and reproduce broader patterns of social inequality. The availability of key resources through informal mechanisms is an important way that high-status Americans retain a host of social advantages. Largely absent from this account of social capital inequality, however, is an explicit temporal dimension. The current article addresses that gap by targeting the dynamic nature of personal networks. Specifically, we consider whether race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) are associated with how US adults' resource-providing ties persist or vanish between two time points. Using panel data from the Portraits of American Life Study, we find that non-Whites and lower-SES Americans tend to receive useful advice and practical help from fewer close ties than do White and higher-SES adults, while Black Americans are especially likely to receive financial assistance from their network members. Models fail to indicate that non-Whites lose these resourceful ties at a disproportionate rate over time. On the other hand, we find that income has a robust association with the ability to retain ties initially providing advice and help. We interpret the latter findings as a temporal manifestation of network-based inequality. The maintenance gap between higher- and lower-SES Americans, we argue, can reinforce other social capital disparities by shaping dependable access to important resources and by altering their ability to effectively mobilize resources. Network maintenance is a concept that could be useful to researchers studying how social capital matters for a variety of instrumental and expressive outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neighborhood effects scholarship suggests that neighborhoods may impart different effects across the early life-course because children's interactions with neighborhood actors and institutions evolve across the stages of child development. This paper expands our understanding of neighborhood effects on cognitive and non-cognitive development across childhood and early adolescence by capitalizing on thirteen waves of restricted and never-before-used longitudinal data from the NLSY Child and Young Adult (1986-2010) sample. The findings from within-child fixed-effects interaction models suggest that while younger children are immune to neighborhood effects on their cognitive development, older children consistently suffer a steep penalty for growing up in disadvantaged neighborhoods. This neighborhood disadvantage penalty persists among older children despite alternative age constructs. Further, the results are robust to various adjustments for observed and unobserved sources of bias, model specifications, and also manifest as cumulative and lagged effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Latin Americanization thesis posits that the racial hierarchy in the United States is now composed of Whites, Honorary Whites, and Collective Blacks, with skin tone being the primary determinant of one's placement within this tripartite system of social status. Extant research mostly examines this approach at the macro level; relatively little is known about the thesis at the micro level. By examining goal-oriented task groups, our experiment tests whether Whites exhibit transitive levels of influence, a behavioral indicator of social status, in a manner consistent with this three-tier system. Furthermore, with applications of graph-theoretic models from status characteristics and status cue theories, we assess the social psychological mechanisms buttressing the proposed racial hierarchy by comparing propositions from four theories put forth by scholars of race/ethnicity (we translate their propositions into graphs and mathematical calculations). In so doing, we pose the question: In our experimental setting, which matters more, skin tone or ethnic background, or do both have equal effects on behavior? Our results support the purported racial hierarchy of the Latin Americanization thesis. On average, Whites were influenced the most by White confederates; Whites were influenced less by their light-skinned Latino/a confederates, and even less by dark-skinned Latino/a confederates. Model fit statistics for the propositions translated into graphs and values demonstrate that ethnic distinctions and skin tone are independent stratifiers in the form of status characteristics. This finding supports the notion that skin tone and ethnic background have the equivalent capacity to invoke processes to create the tripartite system of racial/ethnic inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research suggests that participation in organized extracurricular activities by children and adolescents can have educational and occupational payoffs. This research also establishes that participation is strongly associated with social class. However, debate has ensued--primarily among qualitative researchers--over whether the association between class and activities stems exclusively from inequalities in objective resources and constraints or whether differing cultural orientations have a role. We address this debate using a nationally representative sample of children's time diaries, merged with extensive information on their families, to model participation in, and expenditures on, organized activities. While we cannot directly observe cultural orientations, we account for a substantially wider array of resources and constraints than previous studies. We find that, above and beyond these factors, maternal education has a consistently large effect on the outcomes we study. We discuss the plausibility of a cultural interpretation of this result, as well as alternative interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High rates of Hispanic fertility raise an important question: Do Hispanic newborn babies start life's race behind the starting line, poor and disadvantaged? To address this question, we link the newborn infants identified with the new fertility question in the 2006-2010 American Community Survey (ACS) to the poverty status of mothers. Our results document the disproportionately large share (40 percent) of Hispanic babies who are born into poverty. The prospect of poverty is especially high in new Hispanic destinations, especially those in rural areas. For Hispanic newborn babies, poverty cannot be reduced to supply-side explanations that emphasize maladaptive behavioral decisionmaking of parents, that is, nonmarital or teen childbearing, low educational attainment, acquisition of English language skills, or other dimensions of human capital. Hispanics in new destinations often start well behind the starting line--in poverty and with limited opportunities for upward mobility and an inadequate welfare safety net. The recent concentration of Hispanic poverty in new immigrant destinations portends continuing intergenerational inequality as today's newborn infants make their way to productive adult roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the types of neighborhoods that black and white homebuyers have secured loans in during the recent housing boom and subsequent bust. We expand upon and refine previous research on locational attainment using loan-level data from the 1992-2010 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) combined with tract- and metropolitan-level data from the 1990, 2000, and 2010 Census and the American Community Survey. Multilevel models show that black homebuyers are moving into considerably more racially segregated neighborhoods than their white counterparts and that their access to "whiter" neighborhoods did not expand during the housing boom, even after controlling for the racial composition of the metropolitan area and other key ecological factors. Conversely, new white homebuyers have been moving into neighborhoods with greater percent black residents, which may be a contributing factor in observed declines in segregation during the past few decades. Additionally, black homebuyers in metropolitan areas with greater suburban growth were on average accessing homes in more integrated neighborhoods. Finally, the models explained considerably more of the variation in the neighborhood racial composition of whites compared to blacks. These findings are suggestive of a dual housing market, one in which the experiences of blacks are still systematically different than those of whites, despite expanded access to homeownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study conducts a nationwide, locally comparative analysis of the extent to which natural hazards contribute to residential mobility in the United States and how this influence varies for racial and ethnic minorities. Analyses combine census data on households with data from thousands of recorded natural hazards during the late 1990s. Findings affirm that natural hazards are common throughout the country; that associated property damage correlates positively with increases in residential mobility for all groups; that these increases are particularly noticeable among racial and ethnic minorities because of preexisting inequalities in mobility; and that areas with more costly damage tend to pull as well as push migrants, especially Latinos and Asians. Implications for existing theory, methods, and policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social class confers a bundle of capabilities, practices, and beliefs that are conventionally assumed to be hierarchical, rigid, and self-perpetuating. However, this framework often belies the fact that these qualities needn't be necessarily or exhaustively advantageous. In particular, social change may render obsolete class-linked characteristics that were advantageous in previous periods. Drawing on interviews with homeowners at risk of foreclosure and a yearlong ethnography of a housing counseling organization, I find that although the housing crisis of the “Great Recession” affected both working- and middle-class homeowners alike, the practices of working-class borrowers better positioned them to exploit a number of informational advantages in the rapidly changing mortgage modification setting. My findings are a departure from existing research that treats middle-class capabilities and practices as intrinsically advantageous. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We extend existing research on police use of coercive mechanisms of social control against racial/ethnic minority populations by testing three structural hypotheses regarding excessive force. The minority threat hypothesis maintains that the greater the proportion of minority residents in a city, the greater the use of coercive crime control mechanisms. The place hypothesis argues that spatially segregated minority populations are the primary targets of coercive control. The community accountability hypothesis maintains that organizational characteristics of police departments promote the use of excessive force against minorities. Combining data from several sources for cities with populations of 100,000 or more, we include the key variables of these theoretical models in analyses of sustained excessive force complaints. Findings provide support for the minority threat hypothesis but indicate that place effects are contingent on the existence of a very high degree of racial/ethnic segregation. They offer little support for the community accountability hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article extends United States–European Union (EU) comparative research to the area of grants-in-aid by comparing the evolution of federally funded “city welfare” in the two political systems in light of an original institutionalist theory. I show that while the United States and the EU adopted similar early programs—Model Cities and URBAN—these schemes’ instability and their different politico-constitutional setting led to divergence shortly after their inception. In the United States, where the Department of Housing and Urban Development safeguarded city welfare, Model Cities was replaced with the durable Community Development Block Grant. In the EU, where no such institutional anchor existed, URBAN’s demise ended urban policy altogether. The article contributes to the broader scholarship on federalism by highlighting the relevance of institutions and time for understanding grants-in-aid. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the connection between American voters' subjective class identity and their objective class position, focusing on presidential elections from 1972 to 2004. The authors highlight a tendency for most Americans to identify themselves as belonging to the middle class, and special attention is paid to the voting behavior of Americans with inflated and deflated perceptions of their class position. The effects of sociodemographic factors such as race, education, and religion on subjective class identity and voting behavior are addressed.

This study found that the effect of socioeconomic status (SES) on mortality decreased steadily during the twentieth century. It examined trends in age-specific adult mortality rates for employed men and infants in a number of social classes based on occupation in England and Wales and for black, white, and immigrant nationality groups of men, women, and infants in the United States. Both countries experienced continuing decreases in mortality rates and narrowing of SES differences in mortality rates from 1920 to the end of the century. Most of the decrease and narrowing in England and Wales occurred before the establishment of the National Health Service and the unprecedented improvements in clinical and preventive medicine after midcentury. Current cancer mortality rates in both countries show no consistent relationship with SES. The very low mortality rates of some low SES immigrant nationality groups in the United States throughout the century demonstrate that other social factors can have a greater effect on health than SES. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In January 1907, Louis Tewanima, from the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona, enrolled at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. While at Carlisle, Tewanima joined the school's cross-country team. He won numerous races and earned the opportunity to compete in the 1908 and 1912 Summer Olympic Games. Tewanima's story represents his ability to redefine Hopi running in the twentieth century and shows how he maneuvered within American and European perceptions of Natives and sports. His participation in running events recalls a time when white Americans situated indigenous people on the fringes of U.S. society but embraced them when they brought honors to the country by representing the nation in athletic competitions at home and abroad. Furthermore, Tewanima's involvement in marathons and Olympic races demonstrates the ways Americans used his success to advance the ideals of U.S. nationalism, as he simultaneously continued the long tradition of running among his people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the ways in which increased U.S. government and societal dedication to the humanities would help promote the U.S. national interest, with the books "The Humanities and the Dream of America," by Geoffrey Galt Harpham, and "The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University," by Louis Menand, providing a background to the discussion. The increased importance of humanities to research universities following World War II is examined along with government policy on the subject and a subsequent lack of dedication to the subject in the late 20th century. The author argues that knowledge of the humanities strengthens U.S. civic life.

The article discusses race, segregation and concentrated poverty in the U.S. through an examination of the country's geography, including cities, suburbs and rural small towns. The impact that the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009 had on the socioeconomic conditions of ethnic and racial minority neighborhoods is discussed. An overview of the relationship between spatial inequality, which is also referred to as the "geography of inequality," socioeconomic mobility and access to labor markets, is discussed.

Research links sex ratios with the likelihood of marriage and divorce. However, whether sex ratios similarly influence precursors to marriage (transitions in and out of dating or cohabiting relationships) is unknown. Utilizing data from the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study and the 2000 U.S. Census, this study assesses whether sex ratios influence the formation and stability of emerging adults' romantic relationships. Findings show that relationship formation is unaffected by partner availability, yet the presence of partners increases women's odds of cohabiting, decreases men's odds of cohabiting, and increases number of dating partners and cheating among men. It appears that sex ratios influence not only transitions in and out of marriage, but also the process through which individuals search for and evaluate partners prior to marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An essay is presented on the subject of the emigration of elderly Austrian Jews from Vienna, Austria, to the U.S. between 1938 to 1941 following Nazi Germany's annexation of Austria, known as the Anschluss. The article discusses the Jewish Holocaust, how older Austrian-Jewish émigrés were perceived in the U.S., and how they regarded the concept of emigration. The article also discusses the influence of the Austrian Jewish community known as the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien (IKG).

The article discusses masculinity, masculine codes, and facial hair, particularly mustaches, in the U.S. during the early 20th century. It discusses the social role of mustaches in U.S. politics and the entertainment industry, the decline of popularity of facial hair at the beginning of the 20th century, and the significance of the advertising of shaving products. The article also discusses the importance that U.S. employers placed on clean-shaven men, the idealization of youth and the appearance of youth, and the mustache as a symbol of manliness in popular culture. It discusses the public perception of the facial hair of U.S. actor Clark Gable and U.S. politician Thomas E. Dewey, particularly the social aspects of Dewey's campaign for the U.S. presidency in 1948.

The article discusses the cultural significance of deliberate car crash exhibitions and demolition derbies for entertainment in the U.S. from 1922 to 1965. It attempts to explain the logic behind the purposeful destruction of automobiles despite the high esteem in which Americans held automobiles. It also attempts to examine the capitalistic concept of product obsolescence and regeneration characterized by the automobile industry, the privatization of traffic accident problems during the early-to-mid-20th century in the U.S., and safety concerns and issues surrounding destruction derbies.

The article discusses the effect of violent crime on residential mobility among racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S., and the impact of crime rates on the racial and ethnic composition of neighborhoods. The author asserts that racial and ethnic transformation of a neighborhood is caused by the mobility of whites leaving high-crime neighborhoods, as well as whites being less likely to move into housing units located in neighborhoods with increasing rates of violent crime. The author also suggests that African Americans and Hispanic Americans are more likely to enter neighborhoods with more violent crime.

The article discusses the history of dieting in the U.S. by focusing on how British attitudes towards weight and social class were embraced by American men during the post-bellum period of the nineteenth century and were eventually adopted by women in an effort to garner social power and status in the 1890s. Some other subjects considered include social mobility, nationalistic attitudes regarding American empire, social attitudes towards overweight people of the lower classes, and the historiography of dieting.

We use the National Violence against Women (and Men) Survey to examine the effects of region and race on the tendency to carry weapons for protection. We find that Southern and Western whites are much more likely than Northern whites to carry guns for self-protection, controlling for their risk of victimization. The difference between Southern and Northern whites is particularly strong for women. We do not find much evidence for regional/race differences in carrying knives or mace. These findings provide support for the idea that regional differences in weapon carrying reflect a gun culture rather than an honor culture. We see more evidence of an honor culture among blacks: they are more likely than whites to carry knives as well as guns, controlling for their risk of victimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion of the religious and psychological treatment of scruples throughout the 20th century in Great Britain and the United States. Details are given highlighting the prevalence of over-attentive religiosity driven by anxiety in both societies, particularly within Roman Catholic piety. Discussion is offered outlining how addressing the issue moved from the domain of the ecclesiastical to the psychological. The development of theological psychopathology and Roman Catholic psychiatry in response to this trend are also mentioned.

Moral panics are conventionally associated with the interpretations of youthful action imposed by powerful state or media forces. However, the concept is also useful in understanding more generally how social problems are constructed and presented. In this paper, we consider how a vague term such as 'organized crime' has emerged as a vehicle for exclusionary rhetorics in both the United States and Britain. While the origins of the organized crime moral panic in the United States can be located amongst moral entrepreneurs, the British version is marked by the outpourings of a right-wing media, and the influence of American foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the popularity and controversy involving Baby Shows in the 19th-century, particularly the first show in Ohio in 1854. Details are given highlighting various responses to the practice, noting its popularity across the nation and its distinct connections to American culture, but also citing controversy against it. Questions are raised regarding whether judging babies on display was an act of cherishing or degradation. Broader implications are drawn concerning the display of the human body in general. Additional mention is given relating how the prominence of the baby show fit within the golden age of the dime museum and country fair culture of the 19th-century.

This article examines America's history of mob violence and gambling. The author contends societies' reaction to gambling was a manifestation of the socioeconomic fears generated by capitalism. Throughout the antebellum period mob violence plagued many parts of the United States and was often initiated by the upper classes who considered themselves moral guardians of the community. One incident in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1835 is described and analyzed as both unique and representative of the general social unease of the era.

In what way do movements move? What do we mean by the movement of movements? While still a rather unconventional stance, I advance the argument that social movements are, at root, culture production agents. Regardless of whatever else they may accomplish, movements produce new cultural forms in the course of struggle; they often change and augment cultural stock in the process, and sometimes live on for generations in collective memory. My answer to the query follows a movement-centered production and circulation of culture template organized around several major moments of culture moves: moving across space, moving emotions, moving social-cultural conditions and moving through memory. I illustrate culture moves in these four moments using sociological and historical studies of the long civil rights movement, suggesting a variety of research agendas along the way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the intellectual history of progressivism, eugenics, and social work in the late 19th-century, specifically focusing on the work of settlement houses in the U.S. Details are given mapping the integral role which evolutionary thought played in the ideology of social reform workers of the era, highlighting goals of social preservation through guarding against social or genetic degeneracy. The application of neo-Lamarkian social scientific theory to urban charities is particularly explored.

The article explores gender and justice in three lynchings in Maryland that occurred between 1886 and 1896, a period which encompassed the peak year of lynching nationally. It discusses whether intraracial lynchings have received less attention because such events occurred less frequently, or perhaps also because white-on-white violence challenged the assumption that race provided the most significant motivation for the killings. Other major factors which emerged in shaping community response to violent crime such as gender and community honor are addressed through the lynchings of Joseph Cocking, Marshall Price and David Johnson.

The article presents an exploration into the history of electrolysis hair removal in U.S. medical care and presents extensions into the intersections of technology and social history, the commodification of medicine in U.S. society, and social constructions of beauty. The emergence and rise of electrolysis as a cosmetic medical practice from the late 19th century is described, highlighting the level of complexity involved in the early treatments. Further discussion is given noting the social impact of electricity in U.S. society in general.

This article examines how the growth of northern urban centers in the U.S. coincided with the first major fuel crisis in American history. The author explores how firewood shortages impacted individuals living in the cities of Boston, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and New York City. Poor individuals living in these cities were impacted more severely by sudden increases in the price of firewood due to supply shortages. The author examines the efforts of several organizations that attempted to combat fuel shortages by urging U.S. citizens to adopt coal as a heating source. The author discusses how the fuel market provided information on the consumption patterns of Americans and also exposed class differences in the country.

The article discusses about the works and ideas of James Saunders Redding, focusing on those works that concerns with Negro new liberalism and other issues that has relevance to social sciences. According to the article, Redding, a literary critic and English professor wanted to publish a second book that shall redeem and become a highlight of his career. The book was printed under the publishing house Harpers. It was said that Redding also had resented his place as an African American who rose during the time when racial and class politics were dominant.

The article discusses about the philosophies of Immanuel Kant that is relevant to the what is happening in the United States especially during the time of economic depression which was said to have affected a lot of people most especially African Americans. According to the article, the cosmopolitan defense of modernity presented by Kant provides a reliable mechanism for negotiating clashing value claims and a method of creating a cultural pluralism coherent with a structured obedience to truth and justice which was lacking in previous literary studies.

The article discusses about the different musical accompaniments and instruments during the era of 1888. The article explores the social conditions in the United States during the early times and provides a description of the different apparatuses that provides sound to the people. According to the article, for a subscription charge, live telharmonic concerts would be broadcasted in public places such as parks, hospitals and restaurants and subsequently, these are also played in private homes in certain areas.

This article presents an exploration into the views of the church historian Philip Schaff and the transatlantic comparative influences of religion in cultural conflict. Schaff's pioneering influence in the field of transatlantic comparative religious history is outlined. The religious and cultural differences between European and American identity are reviewed. The effect of puritanism and a primarily protestant ideal in American society's formation is also analyzed.

The article examines the works of Thomas King, a Native and Canadian writer, whose fictional accounts of the experiences of the aboriginal peoples emphasize the complex role of Canada in the U.S. in upholding the borders of the identity and belonging of Native Americans. King's novels show that there are other nations, races, ethnicities and cultures that are dispersed across the traditional borders of the nation-state.

The article proposes a model for including U.S. African-American life and thought in the hemispherist American studies found in the U.S. African-American literary texts themselves. The model rejects the assumed conflicts between real African-American studies and the new transnational approach while showing the limits of hemispherist approaches based on canonical concepts.

The article focuses on the assessment of the historical perspectives regarding the role of the westward expansion to the social history of the U.S. The author pointed out that the return the West to the world begins with the acknowledgment of the contested origins in what Americans call the colonial era. The expansionist schemes to the west were a complex conflicts between European rivals as well as between the Indians and the Americans. The Indians were the victims of European colonialism and American expansionism. The Indian population has decline due to various circumstances brought about by the increasing American population and emigration. Significantly, the history of the West has influenced popular culture.

The article focuses on the historical background of the first national lesbian organization Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) founded by prominent lesbian activists Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin in the U.S. The author points out that the story of DOB provides a unique example of women's activism during a time in contemporary U.S. history often portrayed by historians as socially and politically quiescent. He discusses the dynamics and politics inside the DOB organization as well as the issues and problems tackled by the group. He cites the significant achievements made by DOB in the promotion lesbian rights. The publication "Ladder" was the voice of lesbians and feminists in the country, however, problems within the leadership contributed to its demise. Despite the dominant culture of conformity, the group has managed to organize and educate lesbians.

The article comments on an article by late U.S. historian Eric Monkkonen contending that the lenient treatment by the legal system of homicide is the underlying reason for the exceptional status of the U.S. as having a high rates of homicide compared to all industrialized countries. It discusses the reliability of the empirical data gathered by Monkkonen. It contends that Monkkonen failed to account several sociological and cultural factors that are at play in the rate of criminality in a particular country.

The article explains the reason for the high rate of homicide in the U.S., making the country exceptional among industrialized countries. Homicide rates in Western Europe have consistently declined since the early modern era and continued into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The present homicide rate in the U.S. is at the level of homicide rate in developing countries. The decline of homicide rate contradicts conventional wisdom which predicts the rise of crime alongside industrialization and urbanization. The experience of the U.S. poses a challenge to historians and social scientists. The underlying cause of this exceptional status of the U.S. must be known.