Search

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a call to action to use a new theoretical framework for disaster researchers that focuses on using a critical approach to understanding differential disaster impacts due to systemic racism. Design/methodology/approach: Using critical race theory (CRT) and Black Sociology, theoretical and disciplinary frameworks that center Black people and NBPOC as well as a focus in dismantling systemic racism and other oppressive systems, this article calls for a new approach – "disaster racism" – that builds on past discussions for a more nuanced theoretical approach to disaster studies. Findings: Alongside CRT and Black Sociology, this study identifies two examples of the oppressive systems that create disparate impacts to disaster including slavery and the legacy of slavery and mass incarceration. Originality/value: "Disaster racism" – a critically focused approach – should be used in the future rather than social vulnerability to further dismantle oppressive systems and institutions, which not only provides strong theoretical backing to research but also creates an actively anti-racist research agenda in the discipline of sociology of disaster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social Work / Praca Socjalna is the property of Akademia Pedagogiki Specjalnej im Marii Grzegorzewskiej and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Using qualitative interviews with trans men across the Southeastern United States, this article examines how regional constructions of masculinities and manhood shape how trans men understand and do gender in this region of the country. This analysis is situated at the intersections of three areas of study—southern studies, masculinities studies, and trans studies—and demonstrates how trans masculinities in the South broaden the conversations occurring in each. The key finding in this study is that trans men, despite not being assigned male-bodied at birth and despite not being socialized as boys/men through childhood, understand and do masculinities and manhood in similar ways to their southern cis counterparts. Through three primary mechanisms, southern trans men uphold southern gender ideology and performances of masculinities. These mechanisms include (a) understanding gender as binary and essential; (b) performing stereotypical versions of southern manhood; and, (c) maintaining mastery, honor, and independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rationale and objectives: Medical humanities are becoming increasingly recognized as positively impacting medical education and medical practice. However, the extent of medical humanities teaching in medical schools is largely unknown. We reviewed medical school curricula in Canada, the UK and the US. We also explored the relationship between medical school ranking and the inclusion of medical humanities in the curricula. Methods: We searched the curriculum websites of all accredited medical schools in Canada, the UK and the US to check which medical humanities topics were taught, and whether they were mandatory or optional. We then noted rankings both by Times Higher Education and U.S. News and World Report and calculated the average rank. We formally explored whether there was an association between average medical school ranking and medical humanities offerings using Spearman's correlation and inverse variance weighting meta‐analysis. Results: We identified 18 accredited medical school programmes in Canada, 41 in the UK, and 154 in the US. Of these, nine (56%) in Canada, 34 (73%) in the UK and 124 (80%) in the US offered at least one medical humanity that was not ethics. The most common medical humanities were medical humanities (unspecified), history, and literature (Canada); sociology and social medicine, medical humanities (unspecified), and art (UK); and medical humanities (unspecified), literature and history (US). Higher ranked medical schools appeared less likely to offer medical humanities. Conclusions: The extent and content of medical humanities offerings at accredited medical schools in Canada, the UK and the US varies, and there appears to be an inverse relationship between medical school quality and medical humanities offerings. Our analysis was limited by the data provided on the Universities' websites. Given the potential for medical humanities to improve medical education and medical practice, opportunities to reduce this variation should be exploited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous literature has applied system-focused structures to understand the success of First Nations Peoples' nutrition and exercise group programmes. Existing system-focused measures have included biomedical outcomes, access and service utilization. By broadening the focus of programme success beyond the system, we can evaluate programmes from a First Nations Peoples' lifeworld perspective. Critical hermeneutics and yarning using a lens of Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action to the literature has the potential to transform understandings of "success" in First Nations Peoples' nutrition and exercise group programmes. In this literature interpretation, we explored the critical success factors from a lifeworld perspective, giving scope to go beyond a system perspective to include a cultural, social or personal perspective. Our yarning led us to understand that there is a communicative relationship between explicit system structures and implicit lifeworld concepts that are critical success factors for First Nations nutrition and exercise group programmes. We have developed a set of reflective questions to guide others in considering a lifeworld perspective. Our findings represent a shift away from success measured by the dominant power structure to respect the lifeworld culture, knowledges and values of First Nations Peoples towards shared understanding and mutual decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contribution: This article confirms the continued marginalization of undergraduate LGBTQ+ electrical and computer engineering (ECE) students and describes how they navigate their (non)visibility in engineering. Best practices to increase diversity and inclusion are discussed. Background: LGBTQ+ ECE undergraduate students experience a chilly, sometimes hostile climate in engineering. As a result, they experience lower sense of belonging, worse academic outcomes, and greater mental and emotional stress in their daily lives. Research Questions: How are LGBTQ+ ECE undergraduate students’ perceptions of ECE culture, sense of belonging, perceptions of discrimination, and (non)visibility affected by their identities? How do they navigate their (non)visibility in engineering contexts? How do LGBTQ+ ECE undergraduate students perceive and navigate engineering culture and their (non)visibility in engineering spaces, potentially integrating LGBTQ+, race, ethnicity, gender, and other identities into their perceptions? Methodology: A mixed-methods study with a survey and focus groups was conducted at a large southern public university in the United States. Survey participants included 854 undergraduate ECE students, of which 9% were strongly LGBTQ+. Focus group participants included 9 self-selected LGBTQ+ ECE students from the survey sample. Findings: LGBTQ+ ECE undergraduate students face noninclusive environments, marginalizing experiences, and cis-heteronormativity in engineering as a result of their multiple marginalized identities that intersect with their LGBTQ+ identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The authors sought to identify predictors of imminent suicide attempt (within 30 days) among U.S. Army soldiers following their first documented suicidal ideation.Methods: Using administrative data from the Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers, the authors identified 11,178 active-duty Regular Army enlisted soldiers (2006-2009) with medically documented suicidal ideation and no prior medically documented suicide attempts. The authors examined risk factors for suicide attempt within 30 days of first suicidal ideation using logistic regression analyses, including sociodemographic and service-related characteristics, psychiatric diagnoses, physical health care visits, injuries, and history of family violence or crime perpetration or victimization.Results: Among soldiers with first documented suicidal ideation, 830 (7.4%) attempted suicide, 46.3% of whom (N=387) attempted suicide within 30 days (rate, 35.4 per 1,000 soldiers). Following a series of multivariate analyses, the final model identified females (odds ratio=1.3, 95% CI=1.0, 1.8), combat medics (odds ratio=1.6, 95% CI=1.1, 2.2), individuals with an anxiety disorder diagnosis prior to suicidal ideation (odds ratio=1.3, 95% CI=1.0, 1.6), and those who received a sleep disorder diagnosis on the same day as the recorded suicidal ideation (odds ratio=2.3, 95% CI=1.1, 4.6) as being more likely to attempt suicide within 30 days. Black soldiers (odds ratio=0.6, 95% CI=0.4, 0.9) and those who received an anxiety disorder diagnosis on the same day as suicidal ideation (odds ratio=0.7, 95% CI=0.5, 0.9) were less likely.Conclusions: Suicide attempt risk is highest in the first 30 days following ideation diagnosis and is more likely among women, combat medics, and soldiers with an anxiety disorder diagnosis before suicidal ideation and a same-day sleep disorder diagnosis. Black soldiers and those with a same-day anxiety disorder diagnosis were at decreased risk. These factors may help identify soldiers at imminent risk of suicide attempt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of physician dominance are a foundational contribution of medical sociology to the study of health care, but must be revisited in the light of ongoing changes in medicine. As non‐physician specialists like nurse practitioners grow in number and acquire more autonomy, increasing medical profession differentiation presents a challenge for traditional physician dominance theories. After evaluating potential theoretical explanations for subordinate occupations' autonomy gains, we conduct a state‐level quantitative analysis of variation in nursing policies across U.S. states. We construct our dependent variable, nursing autonomy, using seven state‐level advanced practice nursing policies adopted from 2001–2017. Using an ordered scale, we code nurse practitioner, nurse anaesthetist, nurse midwife and clinical‐nurse‐specialist practice and prescription polices according to each policy's autonomy level. We then use time‐series regression to examine theory‐driven propositions regarding nursing autonomy change. Nursing autonomy has increased over time, signalling a general erosion of physician dominance. However, we find differential patterns of policy adoption, indicating that erosion is not uniform. Physicians have maintained dominance in relatively prestigious specialties (e.g. anaesthesiology) while dominance declined in others (e.g. obstetrician). Factors external to the profession, such as consumer power, continue to influence within‐profession dynamics. Examining ongoing professional differentiation in medicine illustrates how physician dominance depends on shifting social and professional contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine how immigrant Punjabi-Sikhs make sense of themselves as yellow cabbies in New York with two complementary frameworks—Hill Collins' "matrix of domination" and insights from the literature exploring the interplay between race and ethnicity. The cabbies discussed their immigrant status, non-whiteness, and social class as influential, emphasizing the effects of all three forms of marginalization as occurring simultaneously. They deployed "money" to frame this subordination and to negotiate dimensions of social location and identity. The transnational space they occupied emerges noteworthy too in their identity making. This analysis, based on interviews with 56 cabbies, advances scholarship on race and immigration/transnationalism, Asian and South Asian American identities, specifically research on immigrant Sikhs of lower socioeconomic status, attention on whom is scant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rates of crime for Blacks in the United States in the post-slavery era have always been high relative to Whites. But explaining, or minimizing, this fact faces a major problem: individual excuses for bad acts point to deficiencies, in the agent, which are perhaps forgivable, such as mental deficiency or a deprived childhood, but at the price of treating the agent as less than a full member of the moral community. Collectivizing excuses risks implying group inferiority. The history of attempts to provide an explanation of crime that mitigates blame without undermining full participation to the moral community is long and convoluted, leading to the presently widespread claim that crime is itself a product of victimization through pervasive racism. Three basic strategies – rejection of comparison, attribution to racially invariant causes and explanation by reference to uniquely Black conditions, such as subculture or extreme stigmatization – are identified and their ethical implications distinguished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The succession of extraordinary traumatic events, such as the poles defrosting, the fires in Australia and Amazon, the COVID-19 pandemic, the financial global crises revival, the Black Lives Matter movement, seems to call for science (to solve problems) and schooling (to make time to the unemployed) for help. Science and schooling are some of the big successes of post-modern culture and states. Given these successes, questions remain. Why do they not deliver hope? We are left to ponder (a) why these extreme events takes us by surprise; (b) why those who have been afforded the best education ever are so anxious, so frozen; (c) why is it that our best policies, science, and minds continue to fail us when it comes to solving the problems associated with the environment, this pandemic, capitalism, and racism; and (d) given the promise of science, why are we so in need of solutions? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relatively few studies have examined the construct of self-esteem among Mexican immigrant adolescents in the United States, and most studies have focused on the independent influence of variables as opposed to adopting an ecological perspective. The present study examined individual, familial, and societal predictors associated with the self-esteem of Mexican immigrant youth. This study also examined the moderator effects of bilingualism, family cohesion, and parent-adolescent conflict on the relationship between perceived societal discrimination and Mexican immigrant adolescents' self-esteem. Hierarchical linear regression analyses were conducted drawing data from Wave 2 of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS). The sample consisted of 575 Mexican immigrant adolescents. The results indicated that academic achievement, bilingualism, and family cohesion were positively associated with self-esteem, while parent-adolescent conflict and societal discrimination were negatively associated with self-esteem. Additionally, both bilingualism and parent-adolescent conflict moderated the relationship between perceived societal discrimination and self-esteem. The findings of this study suggest that in order to protect the self-esteem of Mexican immigrant adolescents, social work practitioners need to target individual, familial, and societal context factors associated with self-esteem. Specifically, family cohesion appears to be most salient to the self-esteem of Latino adolescents. Bilingualism also protects Mexican immigrant youth from the harmful effects of societal discrimination. It is also crucial to identify sources of parent-adolescent conflict among Mexican immigrant families and work to resolve them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the New Voices Initiative for the history of sociology in the U.S. that was formulated during the 2019 American Sociological Association (ASA) Annual Meeting in New York. Topics include the relevance of the history of sociology discipline to academic sociology, the views of early career scholars about the history of sociology as a risky proposition for significant intellectual investment, and an overview of the conception of the New Voices Initiative. Also discussed are the opportunities and needs surrounding sociology's history.

Pragmatism, especially the works of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead, is in the midst of a revival in American sociology. American sociologists have drawn on these authors in their addressment of contemporary debates in the wider disciplinary field. Placing these contemporary applications of pragmatist thought alongside the broader intellectual tradition of pragmatic philosophy, however, demonstrates tensions associated with this revival. This paper draws on the work of John Dewey as a particularly stark case of the conflict between the philosophy of social science espoused by the original pragmatist philosophers and the use of their ideas in American sociology today. This treatment affords the opportunity to recover a vision for social science which has been overlooked in the contemporary pragmatist revival with deep implications for the practice of social science today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of caste played a prominent role in the early American sociology of race and race relations. The concept was developed largely through case studies of racially segregated communities in the American Deep South during the 1930s. While the concept of caste was largely abandoned by the middle of the 1950s, elements of a caste theory remain useful for both understanding contemporary work on race relations and the development of the sociology of race. This paper proposes a revised and expanded conception of caste grounded in the Black-White dynamic of American race relations. This approach builds on the performance circuit framework of economic sociology, arguing that "caste" refers to the roles, rules, and etiquette that govern economic interaction and give them meaning. The expanded approach develops three premises that highlight the consequences of caste. First, the entanglement of occupational and social roles is a key component of a racialized caste system. Second, deeply rooted racial animus prevents the social cohesion necessary to transition out of an economy defined by caste. Finally, the precarity of nominal class advancement within the dominated caste inhibits organizing that might challenge the overall system. This reevaluation of the caste concept resolves many of the limitations of the original caste school and bridges the divide between cultural and economic-based analyses of race relations in the early days of the American social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

C. Wright Mills' The Sociological Imagination (1959) represents one of the most influential texts of postwar American sociology. The title has become a catchphrase that stands for a style of thought that transcends both theoretical dogma and the constraints of mere methodological rule following. This article sets out to show that Mills' vision of the sociological imagination had more in common with the then dominant lines of scholarship than his broadside against Parsonian grand theory and Lazarsfeldian abstracted empiricism in the main part of the book would suggest. Among the tools that Mills introduced as fostering the sociological imagination were 2 × 2 tables. The article traces the use of such tables over time and across scholarly communities and shows that, contrary to Mills' own estimate, these tables describe a common nexus between his own work and that of Parsons and Lazarsfeld. All three scholars made ample use of this formal tool to construct sociological arguments at central places of their oeuvre. Given its shared use across otherwise divergent schools, the 2 × 2 table is a prime example for what historians of science have called paper tools, i.e. statistical formulas, algorithms, tables, diagrams, graphs, etc., that structure scientific research across different schools of thought and theoretical approaches. Drawing on the notion of paper tools, the article advances a post-Kuhnian perspective on the history of sociology that shifts the research focus from substantive ideas to formal tools and demonstrates elements of commensurability among presumably incommensurable schools of thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Erving Goffman's written legacy bears on sociology as a whole, or so he argued in his Presidential Address to the American Sociological Association (Goffman, 1983). However, while being celebrated as important to the discipline, his work is also interpreted in inconsistent ways, often downplayed or marginalized, and even neglected. This paper claims that Goffman's "well known aversion to self-disclosure" (Shalin, 2013) does not justify overlooking his trajectory, from the unknown "margins" of a Canadian small town to the elusive "center" of American sociology—and much less does it justify still circulating assessments of his personality, crafted while overlooking his life experiences—and, especially, his writings. Anecdotal evidence of his "enigmatic" personality (Lemert, 2003), or "bad-boy outrageousness" (Berger, 1986), works as a derailing tactic, leading to unwarranted appraisals of Goffman's personality—and, more importantly, to the neglect of crucial aspects of his work. From a theoretical standpoint, Simmel's treatment of "the stranger" as a social relationship, and Merton's concept of "moral alchemy", are used here to try to make some sense of the mixture of celebration and neglect still surrounding "Goffman". Historical data was gathered in part from the "Erving Goffman Archives'' (Shalin, 2013). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information about the anthropology and education. It mentions the importance of focusing on learners as active agents who differ in their selective and partial cultural learning, a corrective to the tendency in studies of "cultural transmission" to overlook variety and change in cultural communities. It discusses the narratives of social criticism had developed in the "new sociology of education" in Great Britain and in revisionist history of education in the U.S.

This article documents how job readiness programs—as anchors of the devolved organizational landscape of neoliberal poverty governance in the United States—endeavor to instill within the poor not simply the virtue of work, but the virtue of thrift, and thus orient them to "both sides of the paycheck." Using a comparative ethnographic study of two community-based, government-funded nonprofit job readiness programs, we show that this pedagogic focus on budgeting is central to the overall goal of conditioning clients to embrace and endure a degraded labor market. Recognizing that most participants will remain poor with or without low-wage employment, these programs suggest that it is as crafty consumers that participants may retake control of their lives. Despite the programs' differing target populations and racialized and gendered logics, both attempt to accommodate participants to the dictates of the neoliberal economic order: jobs are hard to find and, even if you get one, wages will not be enough. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists largely failed to comprehend the emergence of multiracial identities in the United States during the late 1980s and early 1990s. This was due, in part, to hypodescent and the monoracial imperative. These social devices, respectively, categorize offspring of interracial unions between Whites and people of color based exclusively on the background of color, and necessitate single-racial identification. This has prohibited the articulation and recognition of multiracial identities. Hypodescent and the monoracial imperative are so normative that they have been taken for granted by sociologists across the monoracial spectrum, much as the larger society. Sociology's espoused objectivity blinded sociologists to the standpoint of their own monoracial subjectivity. They provided little critical examination of hypodescent and the monoracial imperative in terms of their impact on multiracial identity formations. Some sociologists challenged theories of marginality, which stressed the psychological dysfunction of multiracials. Yet multiracial identities were considered symptomatic of mainly isolated psychological concerns with personal identity. Sociologists were absent from analyses of collective identity and agency speaking to mixed-race concerns. Consequently, they remained on the periphery of social scientific theorizing of multiracial identities in terms of their wider-ranging implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutional change is typically studied at the organizational field level; we leverage political culture to examine how the context in which these fields are embedded influence processes of institutional change within such fields. Specifically, we look at the effect of conservative political culture on legitimation and adoption of crowdfunding in the United States. We find that crowdfunding is less popular and more slowly legitimated in conservative regions. However, we also find that crowdfunding's legitimacy is more important in these regions and that once a legitimacy threshold is reached, the adoption of crowdfunding in conservative regions surpasses that in liberal regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To identify sociodemographic and clinical factors associated with withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment (WWLST) for extremely low gestational age neonates.Design: Observational study of prospectively collected registry data from 19 National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Neonatal Research Network centres on neonates born at 22-28 weeks gestation who died >12 hours through 120 days of age during 2011-2016. Sociodemographic and clinical factors were compared between infants who died following WWLST and without WWLST.Results: Of 1168 deaths, 67.1% occurred following WWLST. Withdrawal of assisted ventilation (97.4%) was the primary modality. WWLST rates were inversely proportional to gestational age. Life-sustaining treatment was withheld or withdrawn more often for non-Hispanic white infants than for non-Hispanic black infants (72.7% vs 60.4%; 95% CI 1.00 to 1.92) or Hispanic infants (72.7% vs 67.2%; 95% CI 1.32 to 3.72). WWLST rates varied across centres (38.6-92.6%; p<0.001). The centre with the highest rate had adjusted odds 4.89 times greater than the average (95% CI 1.18 to 20.18). The adjusted odds of WWLST were higher for infants with necrotiing enterocolitis (OR 1.77, 95% CI 1.21 to 2.59) and severe brain injury (OR 1.98, 95% CI 1.44 to 2.74).Conclusions: Among infants who died, WWLST rates varied widely across centres and were associated with gestational age, race, ethnicity, necrotiing enterocolitis, and severe brain injury. Further exploration is needed into how race, centre, and approaches to care of infants with necrotiing enterocolitis and severe brain injury influence WWLST. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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

This study sought to shed light on the complexity of male cross-orientation friendships by using Sexual Script Theory to critically evaluate how existing masculine sexual scripts may be influencing men's willingness to enter such friendships. While it is known that men enter friendships with other men across sexual orientation, little to no research exists around their beliefs and attitudes toward these relationships. This qualitative study stems from a larger, mixed-methods study on heterosexual and gay men's lifestyle habits. It sought to draw these contemporary attitudes from Canadian and American men and investigate how these relationships are viewed to assess men's willingness to enter them. The sample (N = 982) was drawn from the qualitative section of a questionnaire examining men's lifestyle habits and their relation to social and sexual attitudes. Participants responded to an open-ended (i.e., essay box) item asking: "Do you think it's valuable to communities for gay men and straight men to be friends? If so, why? If no, why not?." Braun and Clarke's (2006) inductive thematic analysis approach was used to develop a final thematic structure of two main themes and six subthemes with saturation of the responses. The first major theme was that cross-orientation friendship can be a vehicle for growth and social cohesion and the related subthemes were: these friendships can (a) allow for exploration of masculinity, (b) reduce stigma and homophobia, (c) show the value of diversity, and (d) offer exposure to the LGBTQ+ community. The second major theme was that all forms of friendship are valuable and the related subthemes were: (a) friendship is about personal and common interests and (b) sexual orientation should have nothing to do with friendship. The results revealed a general openness and willingness to enter these friendships, with an overall acknowledgment that these relationships are not yet normalized. Public Significance Statement: This study found that the majority of men are willing to enter a friendship with another man who is of the opposite sexual orientation than themselves. These results hold important implications for normalizing cross-orientation friendships, and suggest that current masculine sexual scripts are slowly being redefined to accommodate newer attitudes and beliefs among men surrounding masculinity, friendship, and sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an investigation of attempts at endogenization and indigenization in the history of sociology in Japan. The author begins by presenting a short history of Japanese sociology. While the issues of endogenization and indigenization had been raised in the 1910s, imperialism and the militarization of the Emperor state and society blocked this form of development. Japanese social sciences have thus mainly followed the model of Western social sciences. The issue of indigenization gained attention after World War II and especially after the late 1960s, which was a time of reflection on the extreme influence of American sociology. In this context, this paper investigates the development of Kazuko Tsurumi's sociology, which is one of the best examples of work that deals with the issue of indigenization. Tsurumi analyzes social change from pre‐World War II to post‐World War II Japan by drawing on sociological functionalism. However, Tsurumi suggests that Kunio Yanagita's theory of folklore and ethnology provides a stronger explanatory framework than functionalism, and contends that Kumagusu Minaka has developed an approach rooted in East Asia. Tsurumi advances this indigenous development theory based on the work of Yanagita and Minakata, and at the same time internationalizes this theory. This paper concludes that Tsurumi's theory is an important medium between Western sociology and Eastern sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on the career, relevance and human side of U.S. sociologist Talcott Parsons.

An introduction to a series of articles on the works of U.S. sociologist Talcott Parsons is presented.

The decline of interest among sociologists in the works of Talcott Parsons over the last several decades has been driven in substantial respects by a belief that he was personally conservative in his political views and that his theoretical formulations were rigidly tied to a conservative view of social order. The present paper reviews Parsons' major political involvements through the course of his career from his student days through the last decade of his life. The review demonstrates that Parsons was a typical academic liberal of his time and that his liberalism was expressed especially in several major applied essays. In the 1930s, he was an early and active opponent of Nazism. During World War II, he taught professionals to administer occupied territories and nations effectively. After the war, he advocated for government support of the social sciences, citing the important contributions they had made to the war effort. In the 1950s, he wrote a famous critical analysis of the Joseph McCarthy movement in American politics. In the 1960s, he contributed supportive essays to the Civil Rights movement. Later in the decade and in the 1970s, he contributed to the protection of academic freedoms while also proposing accommodations to the demands of the student movement for more "relevant" teaching and greater participation in university governance. Throughout his career, he taught and worked closely with students of various political views and sought to protect their rights of freedom of political expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides insights on the contemporary relevance of Talcott Parsons's writings by analyzing 20 textbooks from Austria, Germany, Great Britain and the United States, published in 1999–2019. Whether having knowledge of Parsons is helpful to today's students and other interested readers, and what knowledge, deserves consideration. Therefore , the paper asks: Which future gains of readers did textbook authors envision when they chose, in their own present, to discuss (or not) sociological writings from long ago? In order to understand what future opportunities authors wanted to create for readers, as well as how they chose to discuss Parsons to this end, the paper draws on Niklas Luhmann's notion of memory. The analysis reveals several key competencies that student and other interested readers might acquire through having knowledge of Parsons' writings and its critiques. These potentials would have gone unnoticed if authors had assessed Parsons's relevance only according to whether he adequately considered conflict or not, as has been done in many debates about his work until today. Moreover, through analyzing how authors remembered Parsons, I distilled two key selective criteria: First, what must be remembered in order to enable readers to acquire those competencies? Second, which memories would be impeding for readers and thus be better left out? These criteria are relevant for research, as well. Looking at the future, it would be desirable that sociologists let Parsons assist them in their research in many different ways, if possible. As a result, we might see a revival of Parsons that enables genuine advancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution to consideration of "Talcott Parsons and Politics" explores the kind of optimism of sociology's "incurable theorist" that is evident in his mature view of the USA as the world's "New Lead" society. Statements related to optimism can be identified in his extensive writings and this article focuses upon its expression when as an "early career academic" in the late 1920s and 1930s he laid the foundations for his life-long work in sociology. Parsons' sociology developed as the USA's twentieth century contribution unfolded. His "moderate optimism" about the viability of the American experiment shares deeply and intimately in his claim that sociology had finally emerged as an analytical social science oriented by the theory of social action. His mature work considers the "societal community" to be the peculiar focus for sociology's special scientific attention. The USA has taken on this "New Lead" role at the same time that the societal community itself has emerged from within American experience. The discussion here is as much a personal memoire of the author, revisiting efforts to understand how the earliest stages of Parsons's sociology were maintained by him over a long career. Parsons sociological scholarship exhibited American characteristics. As sociology's "incurable theorist" he sought understanding of his own (American) situation, and its context, past and present, seeking to promote a social science that contributed positively to global society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social and built environments may influence physical activity (PA). However, evidence for South Asian Americans (SAA), a group with low PA levels and high cardiometabolic risk, is lacking. We assessed the association between five neighborhood factors and PA behaviors in a community-based cohort of SAA. Data were from the Mediators of Atherosclerosis in South Asians Living in America (MASALA) Study 2010–2013 (n = 906). Adjusted multivariable models stratified by sex regressing PA behaviors on neighborhood factors were run. Higher neighborhood social cohesion was associated with 17% more PA MET minutes/week in men (p < 0.01), but not in women. Having a park/playground near home was associated with meeting PA guidelines (odds ratio (95% CI): men: 3.14 (1.20–8.24); women: 3.67 (1.17–11.52). Neighborhood factors were associated with favorable PA behaviors in SAA. PA interventions for SAA that increase neighborhood social cohesion or focus on linking individuals with local resources may be effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decades before the publication of Victor Green's The Negro-Motorist Green-Book , Black travelers relied on word of mouth, address directories (where available), and the Black press to plan travel within the United States. The Black Protestant press provided one such source in the "Notes of Travel" column published from 1903 to 1912 in the A.M.E. Church Review , the quarterly journal of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Authored by a woman, E. Marie Carter, lecturer, evangelist, and the authorized representative of the Review , the long-running column proved to be a popular feature of the quarterly. Carter's writing displays a generic hybridity: at once travel writing, history, geography, feminized sociology, racial uplift, and homiletic. She visited over 350 discrete towns and cities during her ten years travel for the Review , and created a capacious above-ground railroad that provided readers the names and addresses of homes and businesses that served as a nexus for nodes of hospitality welcoming Black travelers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I argue that sociology programs should offer curricular opportunities for undergraduate students to study the actual mechanics of social change in the form of explicit training in the philosophies and practices of community organizing and direct action. That training, I assert, is separate from a content‐driven approach to the study of social movements, or the inclusion of community‐based research courses. Grounded in an analysis of the roots of the discipline of U.S. sociology as situated in the practice of empirically informed democratic engagement, I shift the focus away from a debate over whether or not critical pedagogy is, or should include, activism. Instead, I focus on the extent to which our students are, in practice, learning concrete organizing skills to change power relations, regardless of the content area or pedagogical style. In doing so, I bring back into the conversation a tradition that the profession seems to have forgotten, and think of ways in which contemporary sociology programs in the United States can better contribute to the advancement of a grassroots, or a humanistic public sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the literature on racism in medicine in the United States and reflects on the persistent barriers to diminishing racial biases in the U.S. health care system. Espoused strategies for decreasing racial disparities and reducing racial biases among physicians are critiqued, and recommendations are offered. Those recommendations include increasing the number of minority students in medical school, using Xavier University in New Orleans, Louisiana, as the model for medical school preparation; revamping the teaching of cultural competence; ensuring the quality of non-clinical staff; and reducing the risk of burnout among medical providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fast evolving and deadly outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has posed grand challenges to human society. To slow the spread of virus infections and better respond for community mitigation, by advancing capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) and leveraging the large-scale and up-to-date data generated from heterogeneous sources (e.g., disease related data, demographic, mobility and social media data), in this work, we propose and develop an AI-driven system (named α-Satellite), as an initial offering, to provide dynamic COVID-19 risk assessment in the United States. More specifically, given a point of interest (POI), the system will automatically provide risk indices associated with it in a hierarchical manner (e.g., state, county, POI) to enable people to select appropriate actions for protection while minimizing disruptions to daily life. To comprehensively evaluate our system for dynamic COVID-19 risk assessment, we first conduct a set of empirical studies; and then we validate it based on a real-world dataset consisting of 5,060 annotated POIs, which achieves the area of under curve (AUC) of 0.9202. As of June 18, 2020, α-Satellite has had 56,980 users. Based on the feedback from its large-scale users, we perform further analysis and have three key findings: i) people from more severe regions (i.e., with larger numbers of COVID-19 cases) have stronger interests using our system to assist with actionable information; ii) users are more concerned about their nearby areas in terms of COVID-19 risks; iii) the user feedback about their perceptions towards COVID-19 risks of their query POIs indicate the challenge of public concerns about the safety versus its negative effects on society and the economy. Our system and generated datasets have been made publicly accessible via our website. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the fall of 1888, Willie Windle was the fastest amateur bicyclist in the US, having won all the major tournaments that season, including the annual championship races of the League of American Wheelmen (LAW). He was also one of the most popular racers in the country. As soon as he reached the pinnacle of the racing world, however, he was forced to spend the next two years fighting simply to remain part of it, repeatedly having to defend himself against charges of violating LAW's strict "amateur rule." LAW's enforcement of its amateur rule may have quashed the racing careers of many cyclists, but Windle, the biggest name to be caught up in a professionalism scandal at that time, refused to go away, nor would his fans allow it. LAW wrestled with variations of its amateur rule for years, ostensibly in an attempt to keep cycling free of the stigma of professionalism. This article examines the underlying issues of class and status at play in these debates, using Windle's experiences as a case study for understanding social mobility, exclusion, and how the "leisure class" policed its boundaries in the late-nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the Colombian Army's military doctrine and its relationship with practices during the internal armed conflict from 1995-1998. First, the development of the Colombian military doctrine in that period and the United States and other countries' influence on it, as well as its eclectic combining with the national doctrine in the face of the irregular conflict, was addressed through qualitative analysis. Then, the practices and their relationship with the doctrine were analyzed in a sample of 180 then active Army officers participating in surveys, interviews and a focus group, based on four operational setbacks suffered at the time. It was found that, although the officers recognized and valued the doctrine, they faced complex situations that led them to take initiatives with varying results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Review of Black Political Economy has been a leader on issues of race and economics, politics, sociology and area studies. After half a century of shaping minds, critical ideas and arguments, the time has come to look back and ask the editors of the Review what they saw when they were at the helm, and what they see ahead. While all their views are different, common themes emerged: 1. The need to embrace new technologies, 2. Making the Review the first pick for top scholars, 3. Relevancy in the post-civil rights era, and 4. Finance for the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of American architecture includes many examples of activists and reformers who sought to make the profession more inclusive, just, and socially engaged. This article provides a review of the academic literature discussing the efforts of such architects in order to identify historic trends in the study of activist architects in the United States—this paper's focus. After an initial period of growth and consolidation in the profession, contemporary forms of social engagement emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Subsequent decades have seen many of these efforts continue, or be revived, alongside increased academic interest in these same efforts. The article then reviews three areas of sociological research pertinent to the scholarship on socially engaged design. These focus on institutional change within the profession, the "logics" that guide architectural work, and the relationship between the profession and the academy. This article explores these institutional perspectives for their potential to complement frameworks for analyzing dissent in design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asian older adults are a fast-growing population in the United States. Because Asian older adults are a largely immigrant population, acculturation has an impact on their perceived discrimination, which is negatively associated with health and mental health. Discrimination can be overt , characterized by distrust and direct messages that are hostile and exclusionary, or covert , characterized by unfair treatment and messages that are negative and degrading. This study investigates the association of acculturation with perceived overt and covert discrimination, measured by the Everyday Discrimination Scale, with a sample of 348 foreign-born older Asian Americans from the National Latino and Asian American Study. Acculturation was measured by English-speaking ability, immigration-related variables, and ethnic identity. Results indicated that perceived covert discrimination was more prevalent than overt discrimination among older Asians. Among acculturation variables, only citizenship was associated with higher perceived covert and overt discrimination. Identifying with the same race was associated with higher covert discrimination. Findings suggest that higher acculturation is associated with greater exposure to discrimination for Asian older adults. Efforts to increase access and utilization of social and health-related services should consider the context of older Asians' experiences as a discriminated immigrant group in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study advances a tri-dimensional model of multiculturalism that highlights the importance of perceived societal norms, i.e., the extent to which one's society is perceived as characterized by culturally diverse groups in contact with one another (Multicultural Contact, MC), a widespread appreciation of cultural diversity (Multicultural Ideology, MI), and multicultural policies and practices (MPP) to support and accommodate that diversity. A community sample of 143 Hispanics and 141 non-Hispanic Whites in the United States completed an online survey that examined perceptions of normative MC, MI and MPP as predictors of trust and national attachment, key indicators of social cohesion. The results indicated that MI, MC and MPP predict greater national attachment and that MI predicts greater trust; however, the positive effects of MI are limited to Hispanics and not found for Whites. The findings point to the conclusion that normative multiculturalism is more likely to foster than to threaten social cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists have shown that the relationships people establish between moral orientations and market practices vary considerably across historical, geographic, and institutional contexts. Less attention has been paid to situational variation in how the same actors moralize different economic goals, especially in their workplace. This article offers an account of situational variation by theorizing the implications of the ambiguity of moral values for economic activity. I draw on the case of a post-acute care unit, where reimbursement policies create the contradictory demands of discharging elderly patients quickly while ensuring their safety to avoid re-hospitalization. Using ethnography and interviews, I show that the same actors switched between different normative evaluations of "independent aging" to legitimize divergent organizational goals. A shared understanding of autonomy as synonymous with "home" moralized the organizational mission of discharging patients off the unit. Expectations that elderly people attain independence by acknowledging need for assistance moralized the extension of services. Conversely, interpreting independence as a constellation of duties to be self-reliant moralized practices that lead to fast discharge. Based on these findings, I develop a framework of moral polysemy to analyze ambiguity as a resource for cooperation in organizations and a tool to expand understanding of moral economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the body of criticism around Don DeLillo's work, his short fiction has tended to be either overlooked or relegated to the category of precursor to the longer novels. This essay parts from the premise that the work DeLillo publishes in the short form deserves more focused critical attention, as its altered narrative mode opens up new avenues of expression which permit DeLillo to map out different approaches to the same broader issues his novels explore. The 1988 short story "The Ivory Acrobat," included in the 2011 collection The Angel Esmerelda, is a text which exemplifies this essential difference, broaching in advance even of its theorization the contemporary problem of compressed or accelerated space-time, an issue which is most often associated with DeLillo in the context of 2003's Cosmopolis. DeLillo's later emphasis on embodiment and the significance of place from The Body Artist to Zero K is here dealt with earlier and in a distinct way, depicting through a highly spatial representation an alternative response to the altered experience of time and space in the modern era, a response based in a reaffirmation of the body as the seat of being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The clinical symptoms of dementia include difficulty with speech, poor short-term memory, and changes in behavior. These symptoms can affect how the person with dementia understands and performs in social interactions. This qualitative review investigated how people with mild to moderate dementia managed social connections. A systematic search of social science databases retrieved 13 articles; data were synthesized using thematic analysis. Results established the work undertaken by people with dementia to maintain and present a social persona seen as socially acceptable. Interpretations are contextualized within Goffman and Sabat's theories on "self." People with dementia were agentic in impression management: undertaking work to maintain recognized social roles, while being aware of when their illness led to others discrediting them. Wider recognition of strategies used to maintain a social self could inform interventions designed to increase capability and confidence in co-managing social connections following dementia diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This study examines the multilevel relationship between functional limitations and depressive symptoms among community-dwelling US older adults, and how it is moderated by community environmental characteristics (neighborhood fear, social cohesion, structural disadvantage and residential stability). Method: Data come from two waves of National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (NSHAP) collected in 2005/2006 and 2010/2011, consisting of 2,261 individuals aged 57–85 (mean = 68.5; SD = 7.5) nested in 100 regional areas. Two-level hierarchical linear models are fitted to test if and to what extent limited physical capacity and neighborhood measures are interactively related to depressive symptoms. Results: Adjusting for confounders (e.g. age, gender, education, employment status, social support), we find a significant positive relationship between functional limitations and depressive symptoms. At the aggregate level, socially cohesive neighborhoods are negatively related to depression. Several cross-level interactions are also observed. First, the association between poor functional health and depression is greater in neighborhoods perceived to be less safe. It is also stronger in places with more structural disadvantages. Lastly, the physical impairment-depression link is more pronounced where there is higher residential stability, i.e., greater proportion of long-term residents. Conclusion: Our study bridges an important empirical gap in the literature. Prior studies have rarely investigated how the connection between functional limitations and depressive symptoms among older adults is conditioned by neighborhood characteristics. By using multilevel analysis of population-based longitudinal data, we show that physical space (neighborhood community) plays a critical role in understanding this important, yet understudied, relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]