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Statements by politicians and pundits around the world suggest that terrorism uniquely threatens social order. Unfortunately, our knowledge about how terrorism affects generalized trust and social capital, which many view as foundations of civil society, is quite limited. In this paper we theorize that terrorism damages generalized social trust via its pernicious influence on the perceptions of safety and security in urban public spaces, particularly in those urban places that are the most socially salient to national identity and the most connected to global society (i.e., primate capitals). Using aggregated survey data from European countries in the European Social Survey (Waves 1–6), we find that terrorism, whether committed in urban or rural areas, has no direct effect on social trust. Nonetheless, urban terrorism interacts with urban primacy to arrest the development of generalized social trust. We conclude that the effects of chronic terrorism likely go beyond economics and politics, perhaps damaging the fabric of society itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We evaluate the argument that Islamist terrorist attacks represent a distinctive "4th wave" of transnational terrorism that has supplanted Leftist terrorism. Drawing on ITERATE data for 1968-2003, the annual count of Leftist attacks has declined since the end of the Cold War while Islamist attacks have persisted and spiked upward in 2002-03. Pooled cross-sectional time-series regression demonstrates that the generation of Islamist terrorism is more deeply rooted in the social strains created by modernization, the competition between Islam and other religions, and the growth of secular government. Leftist terrorism was uniquely stimulated by Cold War rivalry (and subsequently declined thereafter). Both forms of transnational terrorism display a kindred nature, however, in that both are encouraged by the social strains of transitional development and the political opportunities created by increasing political rights. Moreover, foreign direct investment is associated with reduced transnational terrorism over time, calling into question theories that stress global order and anti-systemic violence against international capitalism.

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-682X.2009.00315.x Byline: Kristopher K. Robison (1), Edward M. Crenshaw (2) Abstract: The Global Digital Divide (GDD) in Internet and related forms of information technologies has gained some press and scholarly attention in recent years. Although the contours and causes of Internet diffusion around the globe are now better understood, a number of questions and avenues remain unanswered or unexplored, particularly concerning the role of socio-demographic structures and even conflict processes on Internet diffusion. This study addresses the current state of the digital divide and sheds new light on the barriers that continue to inhibit developing nations' lag with the West in Internet connectivity. Focusing on a large sample of the world's developing nations, this project finds that although the GDD is narrowing, the gap is still large and that specific demographic properties (high fertility) and conflict processes threaten to keep many societies in the periphery of cyberspace. The authors also find that urban agglomerations work to amplify Internet demand over time and that maturing economies may no longer require democratization as a pathway to Internet development. Implications of these findings and future directions of research are briefly discussed. Author Affiliation: (1)Northern Illinois University (2)Ohio State University

Sex differentials in infant mortality vary widely across nations. Because newborn girls are biologically advantaged in surviving to their first birthday, sex differentials in infant mortality typically arise from genetic factors that result in higher male infant mortality rates. Nonetheless, there are cases where mortality differentials arise from social or behavioral factors reflecting deliberate discrimination by adults in favor of boys over girls, resulting in atypical male to female infant mortality ratios. This cross-national study of 93 developed and developing countries uses such macro-social theories as modernization theory, gender perspectives, human ecology, and sociobiology/evolutionary psychology to predict gender differentials in infant mortality. We find strong evidence for modernization theory, human ecology, and the evolutionary psychology of group process, but mixed evidence for gender perspectives. Keywords: Infanticide; Gender; Status of women; Infant mortality; Cross-national

Deforestation is a global environmental problem, yet there is evidence suggesting self-corrective modernization and ecological processes that mitigate the environmental impact of economic development. Urbanization levels, rural-to-urban migration, services-dominated urban economies, and strong democratic states are the most significant factors in this area.

At century's end, a combination of telecommunications and computer technologies has resulted in the creation of the Internet, a global network of computers that has been growing at an exponential rate. Although the Internet/World Wide Web combination is widely hailed as a new, powerful engine of global social and economic change, there has been very little sociological theorizing and even less sociological research on the globalization of the Internet. Using classical macrosocial theories of development as a springboard, we hypothesize that the level of development, political openness/democracy, mass education, the presence of a sizeable tertiary/services sector, and interactions between some of these variables will drive the Internet's growth and spread around the globe. In our cross-national analysis of approximately 74 developed and developing countries, we find that Internet capacity is not in fact a simple linear function of economic and political development, but rather has been driven by complex interactions that could aptly be termed "post-industrialism." Uncovering some of these structural preconditions and determinants of Internet diffusion provides a first step toward providing a theoretical and empirical sociology of this "third technological revolution." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]