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The article presents a discussion of U.S. President Barack Obama from the standpoint of his impact on visual culture. It focuses on his multi-faceted public image, which has enabled him, in some measure, to represent different things to different people. The significance of Obama's status as the first African American president is noted. Topics related to the history of racial symbolism and race relations in America are mentioned in this context. Some of the ways in which Obama has been visually represented in American popular culture are analyzed. These include campaign paraphernalia such as t-shirts and coffee mugs.

The article presents a discussion of U.S. President Barack Obama from the standpoint of his impact on visual culture. The significance of Obama's status as the first African American president is noted, and the ways in which he can be seen as representing a multiracial culture, due to his white heritage on his mother's side, is emphasized. Topics related to the history of racial symbolism and race relations in America are mentioned in this context. Some of the ways in which Obama has been visually represented in American popular culture are analyzed, with an emphasis on images from various magazine covers.

This article locates Carver's stories in the context of discourses of masculinity predominant in American culture during the 1970s and 1980s. During these decades, traditional constructions of masculinity were increasingly questioned, creating spaces for alternative forms of masculinity. This essay also locates a transformation in representations of masculinity in Carver's oeuvre: representations of masculinity in crisis are transformed in later stories into alternate constructions of masculinity characterized by optimism and growth. This essay concludes that Carver's stories provide a window into the intense gender conflict of these decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A cohort perspective contrasting four historical generations of American men reveals sharp differences in the extent to which each generation served on active military duty, in the share of that service that occurred during wartime and in the battlefield ages from seventeen to twenty-four, in the resulting rates of combat-related deaths, and in certain features of selectivity with respect to military service—chiefly education. Service data from Defense Department sources combined with population data from computerized census files produce these military profiles of the Hard Timers, Good Warriors, Lucky Few, and Baby Boomers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines whether the presence of Latino police officers reduces the racial disparity in traffic stops in divisions in which they work. Specifically, the link between passive and active representation for ethnicity in the context of racial profiling is tested. This context allows one to examine this link within an organization that relies heavily on socialization. It is found that the presence of Latino police officers increases the racial disparity within the division in which they work. This finding seems to suggest that the pressure to "represent blue" weighs heavily on Latino officers and may affect their professional attitudes and behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some scholars see contemporary American politics as characterized by "strange bedfellows" on racial issues and by polarization driven by economic, not racial, views. The authors argue instead that on most issues with racial dimensions, political actors and institutions are aligned into two racial orders, one favoring "color-blind" policies and the other "race-conscious" measures. Coalitions on two issues—affirmative action in employment and majority-minority districting—are explored to support this "racial orders" thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the effects of peacetime cold war military service on the life course according to four potentially overlapping theories that state that military service (1) was a disruption, (2) was a positive turning point, (3) allowed veterans to accumulate advantage, and (4) was an agent of social reproduction. The article argues that the extent to which the effect of military service on veterans' lives corresponds with one or another of the preceding theories depends on historical shifts in three dimensions: conscription, conflict, and benefits. Military service during the peacetime draft era of the late 1950s had a neutral effect on the socioeconomic attainment of enlisted veterans. However, it had a positive effect on veterans who served as officers, which partly stemmed from status reproduction and selection. Yet net of pre-service and educational differences by rank, officers in this peacetime draft era were still able to accumulate advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thomas Dixon's play The Clansman (1905), based on two novels by the same author, has often been mentioned in scholarly writing, but never widely available for study. It was, at the turn of the twentieth century, a successful and highly contentious touring production, a model of melodramatic form and function, and an effective propagandistic tool. It is a representative work from one of that period's most resourceful racist writers, and a key source for some of the best and worst characteristics of the film Birth of a Nation. This edition of the play provides the full text for scholars researching and teaching in film and theatre history, in American history, American literature, in genre studies, adaptation studies, in studies of race relations, and in the depiction of race in the literary, visual and performing arts. The Introductory essay begins with a descriptive and critical overview of Dixon's life and work. Its primary focus, however, is on the life of the script in performance, using recent archival research to explore critical and audience reception by region, the ongoing process of adaptation (both between and within media), and the relationship between Dixon and his collaborators, including D. W. Griffith. It ends with case studies illustrating the use to which the script might be put by readers, comparing two episodes as they were presented on stage and screen, and in particular examining the (ab)uses of performance traditions - blackface minstrelsy and acting style - with this question in mind: to what extent were (and are) theatrical performance idioms suppressed, preserved, or intensified on stage and screen to intentional propagandistic purpose? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1920s and 1930s, the young men who worked in welfare and child protection were among the first to negotiate professional environments in which women wielded considerable authority. This article uses their descriptions of encounters with clients to examine the ways in which these men understood manliness in such a context, and the kinds of anxieties they dramatized in their case files. It argues that many defined and defended a form of masculinity that continued to depend upon the subordination of women—identified as "naggers"—and the rigorous rescue of boys from effeminacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of the temporal association between age structure and homicide rates between 1970 and 1999 is examined using U.S. county data. Specifically, the following questions are asked: (a) does the strong temporal association between the relative size of the young population and homicide rates demonstrated at the U.S. national level hold at a disaggregated level and (b) does the association between the proportion young and homicide rates differ by varying social and economic conditions. The results confirm that a positive temporal association between age composition and homicide rates exists within U.S. counties. However, the analysis reveals that other criminogenic forces, such as poor social conditions that produce higher crime rates, can alter the association between the relative size of the young population and homicide rates. The positive effect of the percentage aged 15 to 24 years on homicide rates is generally attenuated when criminogenic conditions exist while that of the percentage aged 25 to 34 years tends to be accentuated under such circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the end of the Second World War, white male union members in the United States confronted contradictory political impulses on the former Home Front. The war radically transformed the domestic workforce as women and non-white workers joined in unprecedented numbers, and significantly increased many unions' political power and legitimacy. The end of war production thus presented an opportunity to solidify the egalitarian ideology of productive citizenship that had helped mobilize the ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ during the war. However, organized labor also directed its efforts toward the reinscription of the ‘traditional’ social roles that had been disrupted by the Depression and war, particularly those assigned to home-making women and bread-winning men. This article considers the complex negotiations of these cultural politics through an historical ethnography of the wage struggles of Local 128 (Los Angeles, Long Beach California) of the Oil Workers International Union in the first two years of peace-time. The discussion emphasizes the ways in which the wage, far from simply reflecting ‘non-economic’ political relations, became a critical site within which the meanings of American working-class manhood were contested and produced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores whether social-economic factors explain racial, geographic and gender divides. Impact of the proliferation of computers and the Internet on the U.S. society; Access to information technology; Effort taken by the Commerce Department in October 1993 concerning telecommunication.

The article focuses on the incidence that changed the author's views regarding the value of diversity among disabled. For three years, the author had developed many programs aimed at promoting "the open exchange of views about the value of diversity"-programs that focused on racial and ethnic minorities and occasionally on women or religion, but never on the disabled. This was because he though, historically, people with disabilities either have been categorized by the type of disability and thus been thought to have nothing in common with people who have other disabilities or,worse yet, have not even been acknowledged as participating members of our society. Finally, he decides to make a video on disabled people and interviewed various disabled people regarding their views on diversity and their place in American society.

This article situates workplace empowerment within the broader principle of inclusion and offers a historical analysis of the discourse of difference in America since the 1930s with a view to developing a deeper understanding of the dynamics of empowerment in the American workplace. The article identifies two primary themes, namely, discrimination and diversity, as constituting the discourse of difference and investigates the differing historical contours of these two themes over the period of this study. The article argues that, during different years, these two themes came to attain different levels of salience that held important implications for inclusion and empowerment in the American workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses a study which examined the trends of organized and white-collar offenses in the United States. Overview of the nature of organized and white-collar crime; Response of the local enforcement on the growing number of organized and white-collar crimes; Analysis on the nature of regulatory conflict in the administration of criminal justice; Sources of regulatory conflict.

ABSTRACT: When it comes to the nation's pressing social problems, there is a depressing gap between both parties' aspirations and the federal resources now available. The nation has moved from an era of $200 billion deficits to equally outsized surpluses, but bipartisan ambitions have paradoxically shrunk. The author reviews problems where money would indisputably make a difference--such as the 44 million Americans with no health insurance, growing inequality in wages and wealth, and the myriad challenges facing urban education--and suggests promising directions for reform that are not being discussed in the presidential campaign. He also analyzes other issues not being debated, such as the size of the defense budget and the burden of payroll taxes, and urges the press to play a role in raising these issues when candidates will not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: Concentrated urban poverty in the United States is addressed from a dual perspective. The first viewpoint is derived from the social science literature. To advance the existing base of knowledge, reference is made to a specific research program, the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. This effort is currently in mid-course of a decade-long study of children from all major racial/ethnic, social class, and neighborhood groups in the city and is demonstrating the negative impacts on children's behavioral and social development of being raised in zones of concentrated poverty. The second perspective views urban poverty in the context of widening income disparity and through the lens of the economic and social rights accorded to citizens of a democracy. Political leadership is urgently needed to challenge this level of disparity and to acknowledge concentrated urban poverty as an insidious violation of human rights, particularly those of African American children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses how the way of life in the U.S. changed in the 20th century. Literature and cinema; Fashion; Global economy.

This article reports on a study of interaction between Americans who self-identify as Black and White that reveals underlying expectations with regard to conversation that differ between the two groups. These differences seem not to have much to do with class or gender, but rather vary largely according to self-identification by "race." The argument of this paper will be that the social phenomena of "race" are constructed at the level of interaction whenever Americans self-identified as Black and White speak to one another. This is because the Interaction Order expectations with regard to both self and community vary between the two groups. Because the "language games" and conversational "preferences" practiced by the two groups are responsive to different Interaction Orders, the "working consensus "is substantially different, and as a consequence, conversational "moves" are not recognizably the same. It will be argued that a great deal of institutional discrimination against African Americans can be traced to this source. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: This article argues that transformations in the state and the interstate system, particularly those brought on by globalization, have produced new constraints and opportunities in the handling of immigration. This becomes evident through a critical examination of three key features of current immigration policy in the United States and, to variable degrees, also in other highly developed countries. These three features are the handling of immigration as (1) a process autonomous from other processes and policy domains; (2) a unilateral, sovereign matter; and (3) operating in a context where the state is a given, untouched by the massive domestic and international transformations that are increasingly reconfiguring states and the interstate system. The author argues that immigration policymaking needs to recognize interaction effects, develop multilateral approaches, and factor in the changed character of unilateral sovereign authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents examples of concomitant factors affecting changes in the United States culture and focuses on the diverse ethnicity and the changing needs of students in classrooms. United States multicultural education; Statistics of legal and illegal immigrants; Demographic shift; Power shift; Equal access to information; Conclusions.

Presents information on a study which examined models of informal support received by elders in the United States and Sweden. Demographic differences between the two countries and their association with formal and informal help; Research methods; Findings; Discussion.

Interviews historian Charles M. Haar regarding cities, towns and society in the United States. His role on the society; How urban race relations developed; Political and social views of Haar.

Edward Shils was a widely recognized but misunderstood thinker. The original contexts of his thought are not well understood and greatly distorted by associating him with the concerns of Parsons. Shils provides a fully comparable alternative to the thought of Habermas and Foucault, with essentially similar roots: practice theory, the dissolution of Marxism in the twenties, and Carl Schmitt. Though Shils was indebted to the American sociological tradition, with respect to these issues his sources were outside it: in Hendrik de Man, T. S. Eliot, and Michael Polanyi. It is shown how Shils responded to Schmitt's argument about the inherent conflict between democracy and liberalism in terms o fan account of civility and tradition, and how this argument results in a critique of Foucault, Habermas, and collectivistic liberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary social and political theorists have addressed the problem of trust in a manner not satisfactory to the development of administrative theory. This article critiques the rational choice theories of trust as well as those theories that depict trust as dependent on widely shared values. It presents instead a version of "political trust" and argues that trust in the political realm derives from confidence in the institutions and processes of government as well as public officials as individuals. Institutional design and its success in balancing discretion and accountability is identified as the problem of trust in the administrative state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chronicles the history of the United States' urban policies and problems. Economic and social conditions in central cities in the 1960s; Passage of several legislation and programs that address social problems such as poverty, housing and unemployment; Civil disorder; Public policy debates.

Many observers have attributed recent increases in violent crime rates to the arrival of crack cocaine on the urban scene. However, little hard evidence exists to support this contention. This study examines the relationship between arrestee cocaine use and homicide, robbery, and burglary rates for the 24 cities participating in the Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) Program. To isolate the effects of rates of cocaine use among arrestees on crime rates, the analysis incorporates controls for additional city-level characteristics, including population composition and selected indicators of economic deprivation and social disorganization. Multivariate analyses reveal that arrestee cocaine use has a positive and significant effect on city robbery rates, net of other predictors. The effect of arrestee cocaine use on homicide is more modest, and no effect was found for burglary. Although these results must be interpreted cautiously, they do suggest that cocaine use elevates city violent crime rates beyond levels expected on the basis of known sociodemographic determinants. Serious consideration should be given to community-level indicators of drug use in formulating theories to explain inner-city violence and policies to reduce it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses several additional explanations for continuities in American culture with the hope that by laying out in an orderly way several causal models that might account for the kinds of continuities Lipset's work explored, methods to test, challenge and recast some of his arguments could be found. Identity/selection in a world system; Institutions and individual experience; Capacities for collective action; American ideals; More.

Explores the nature and the extent of the impact of humanistic psychology on psychology and United States culture by means of a review of history of psychology textbooks. Contents of psychology textbooks on its history; Relevance of philosophy for modern psychology; Criticism of dominant approaches to psychology.

This special issue on the journal, European family is devoted to informing American readers of recent developments in Europe so that they can better address the nature of contemporary family change in the West. It is not the authors' aim to present a comprehensive account of the forces behind contemporary family change, nor have they asked their contributors to do so. The reports presented in this issue need to be followed by finer-grained comparative studies that can clarify how events such as out-of-wedlock births or union dissolutions are experienced and interpreted in different cultural and political settings. Such studies may help explain how and why family patterns changed so swiftly and radically after the baby boom. The one persistent development amid the ups and downs of postwar demographic patterns is the steady march of married women into the labor force. On a cultural level: the parallel trend has been the growth of an ideology stressing independence and self-fulfillment.

Examines the issues of small-manufacturing and nonmetropolitan socioeconomic well-being in the United States nonmetropolitan countries. Sociological investigations of industrial capitalism since World War II which focuses on large-scale enterprises; Rationale for a nonmetropolitan analysis; Presentation of results of small manufacturing and median family income.

Discusses rural poverty and the welfare state in Great Britain and the United States. Geography of rural deprivation; Welfare, poverty and the state; Dependency and delinquency; Poverty and welfare in rural areas; Representations of rural life.

Assess the role of the Presidency in the American system of government. Capable of responding to the social and political crisis facing the country; Outcome of Presidential policy-making; Concerns of political scientists away from the formal and legal boundaries of power and focused attention on the informal aspects.

Presents evidence supporting alternative explanations of the geographically imbalanced childhood sex ratios other than the neglect of female children in nineteenth-century America. Features of the neglect hypothesis; Criticisms of the hypothesis; Sex ratios for children born into 131 New England families for which there is no female underenumeration from 1651 to 1850.

Discusses guidelines in the incorporation of contemporary issues in the special education programs of children with learning disabilities aimed at enhancing knowledge and skills for positive life choices. Vulnerability of children; Content sharing of materials with parents and professionals prior to classroom introduction; Allocation of time to teaching about contemporary issues.

Focuses on prevalent beliefs and attitudes about rape. Definition of rape myths; Critique on the literature on rape myth acceptance; Functions of rape myths; Variables related to rape myth acceptance; Recommendation for conceptual clarity and definitional consistency among researches dealing with rape myths; Need for psychometric adequacy of the measures for rape myth.

The article focuses on the social aspects of politics in the United States. The author points at the rise of right-wing extremism in the U.S. This trend has been relentlessly attacking women, children, and people of color. The talk is rational, about balanced budgets and deficit reduction, but the subtext is dearly about undoing social progress and reaffirming righteous values about the family, schools, and the American culture. There is an apparent resentment among the white men who have lost their jobs. The criticism of the National Rifle Association in the wake of the bombing in Oklahoma City has brought to light the presence of militiamen whose number has been increasing for decades. These men are supermacho angry white men who speak unabashedly in racist and sexist tongues. But these types of occurrences are not new; all have been festering beneath the surface of the U.S. society for decades. The equanimity with which people can verbalize their hatred in the name of free speech and the proud disregard of democratic and Judeo-Christian ideals seem to be the most frightening things of all. Feminist issues are not white or middle class; they are about the human condition, about creating community, about fighting back the tide that threatens to overwhelm the society.

Discusses four books on the urban underclass in the United States. Debates regarding the 1994 welfare reform proposed by President Clinton; Lack of understanding of the structural roots of modern poverty; Patterns of inequality configuring modern poverty; Historical factors which affect modern urban poverty.

Deals with the flux in American culture. Implications of the development of the United States as multicultural society on culture and the intellect; Causes espoused by the champions of identity politics; Inculcation of virtue; Burden of standards; Triumph of commercial culture.

Discusses the irresistible tendency towards Americanization of those who migrated to America. Process of segmentation; American parochial concerns and self-definitions as shared by everyone; American predominance; Willed American culture; Logic of the marketplace; Critics of the system.

The article focuses on the Townsend movement, institutionalism and the political opportunity in the U.S. The largest and most ambiguous American social movement of the Great Depression was led not by a menacing demagogue, but by a befuddled gray-haired doctor, Francis E. Townsend. The Townsend movement seems to fit conflicting views on social movements and thus presents a puzzle for social theorists. It has been concluded that grievances due to crises can augment challenger theories and require more consideration. These grievances are not constant and may influence the development of insurgencies consistent with the challenger perspective in at least two ways. Crises can breed uncertainty in people that may change their perceived long-term interests and the parameters of the free-rider problem. The analysis shows that political opportunities play a positive role in promoting movements, as suggested by the polity model. The standard polity model emphasizes aid from social movements and polity members, and we found that where the labor movement was strong, the Townsend movement also flourished.

The article presents information on the book "Social Indicators 1976," by Dennis F. Johnston Tobin Bressler and Marian A. Altman. For sociologists interested in the U.S. society and social change, the book brings together in graph and table a wide variety of statistical series and provides a useful key to the richness of U. S. social statistics. Statistical trends that display distinct turning points such as the change in the fertility rate or the decline in the rate of poverty challenge social theory and knowledge of recent history to find explanations for the change. A major addition is the presentation of public perceptions of each major topic, drawing from recent surveys to show public opinion on aspects of trends displayed by the more substantive statistics. Another major, laudable attempt of this volume is the inclusion of international comparisons that give a perspective on U.S. trends by comparison with relatively similar indices from other countries, primarily western Europe. An analytical dimension is added in the book by introducing cohort sequences, particularly beneficial in the interpretation of fertility and employment status. This more extensive use of cohorts for detecting trends will be applauded by sociologists and demographers who have advocated their use.

An unexamined problem in the history of American sociology is how to understand cross-societal transference of theoretical structures. The case study considered here is that of the cultural migration of refugee scholars from Nazi Germany to the United States. This paper treats this event as a problem in the sociology of theory structures. Habermas' work on the social character of scientific knowledge aids in conceptualizing our frame- work. A major substantive contribution concerns the use for the first time of data sources previously unknown or ignored in the existent literature on refugee scholars. The analysis focuses particularly on the comparative depletions of theoretical structures from German universities. Sociology emerges as one of the early disciplines to feel the impact of the Third Reich in terms of depletion rates and losses of senior faculty. It also ranks very high in the percentage of refugee scholars already in the United States by 1937. Two other aspects of this problem are considered in less detail: the character of sociology remaining in the Third Reich and the examination of a `deviant' case in the cross-societal transference of theory structure in sociology from Germany to the United States. The paper ends with additional reflections on the study of theory structures and general issues in the history of sociology in the context of examining theory structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compares New Conservatism with U.S. traditions. Propositions crucial to New Conservatism; Characteristic spokesmen of the New Conservatism; Relevance of New Conservatism in the U.S. society.

Provides information about the linkage of providing medical care with the social and economic conditions of specific groups of people in the U.S. Effort of the World Health Organization in presenting ideal program for provision of maternal and child health service; Objective of the Child Development Act 1971.

States that the different historical experiences of African Americans and other immigrants have engendered different approaches to the social and economic discrimination they encountered. Those who hold that ghetto poverty is economic and social; Assertion that the welfare of blacks and the welfare of other citizens are united.

Discusses recent trends in fertility, marriage, and divorce in the period since 1965 in the United States. Cohabitation; Continuing postponement of marriage; Rise in birth rates to women in their thirties; Fertility focus for the future on upbringing and education of children.

Presents a study which examined the social control activity of the police in the United States. Description of the organizational structure and functions of the police department; Authority structure of the police department; Elements of law enforcement operations.

Analyzes the sources and dynamics of urban disorder in the U.S. Concepts and propositions about the psychological factors that influence violence; Effects of social conditions on the outcome of discontent; Measures of deprivation and civil strife.

Focuses on a study which examined the opinions of Afro-Americans in Houston, Texas, Los Angeles and Oakland, California on issues related to social science. Comparison among the cities in the U.S.; Problems facing Afro-Americans; Quality of housing in the states; Relationship of occupation, education, age, sex and religiosity to a person's social opinion.