Search

Drawing upon existing theory, the current research tested whether people high on right‐wing authoritarianism were predisposed to endorse prejudice in reaction to anxiety arising from the threat posed by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic. In Study 1 (N = 3009), we found that among people high on right‐wing authoritarianism, pandemic anxiety predicted a stronger endorsement of prejudice toward Asian Americans, who had been (inaccurately) associated with the spread of COVID‐19. Preregistered Study 2 (N = 947) addressed the methodological limitations of Study 1 and replicated these findings at a later period in the pandemic. Implications and future directions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are federal prosecutors influenced by partisan political concerns? We examine that question by analyzing 40 years of federal corruption convictions at the state and federal district levels. Our key finding is that state-level federal corruption convictions fall by roughly 9% in years when a state's governor belongs to the same party as the president who appointed local US Attorneys, a measure of state-federal political alignment. The result is robust to controls for the state political environment, election cycles, party tenure in the executive branch, public sector employment, federal aid to states, a state's electoral importance, and the changes in Honest Services law, the statutory basis for many federal corruption cases. Our results are consistent with a significant level of partisan prosecutorial bias on the part of US Attorneys. In a placebo test, we find no evidence that state-federal political alignment affects the total number of federal criminal convictions. That finding provides support for the mechanism that we propose, namely the partisan exercise of prosecutorial discretion, rather than the partisan allocation of prosecutorial resources across federal districts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides an overview of the current research on the international history of the 1970s. Topics covered include the U.S. and Western Europe's experience of the 1970s, the recent trends in the literature on U.S. foreign relations, on Western Europe, and on the global political-economic transformations that started at the end of the decade.

Objectives. To evaluate whether the Operation Peacemaker Fellowship, an innovative firearm violence-prevention program implemented in Richmond, California, was associated with reductions in firearm and nonfirearm violence. Methods. We compiled city- and jurisdiction-level quarterly counts of violent firearm and nonfirearm incidents from statewide records of deaths from and hospital visits for homicide and assault (2005–2016) and from nationwide crime records of homicides and aggravated assaults (1996–2015). We applied a generalization of the synthetic control method to compare observed patterns in firearm and nonfirearm violence after implementation of the program (June 2010) to those predicted in the absence of the program, using a weighted combination of comparison cities or jurisdictions. Results. The program was associated with reductions in firearm violence (annually, 55% fewer deaths and hospital visits, 43% fewer crimes) but also unexpected increases in nonfirearm violence (annually, 16% more deaths and hospital visits, 3% more crimes). These associations were unlikely to be attributable to chance for all outcomes except nonfirearm homicides and assaults in crime data. Conclusions. The Operation Peacemaker Fellowship may have been effective in reducing firearm violence in Richmond but may have increased nonfirearm violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Years before Twitter, Fox News, or reality TV, Donald Trump became a public figure through his presence in tabloid media. Much of that focused on sex and spectacle, but early tabloid coverage of Trump was also surprisingly political, with speculation about a possible presidential campaign beginning as early as 1987. Although that coverage has been largely overlooked, this study reveals that tabloid media played a central role in building the foundations of Trump's political identity. It tracks the early articulation of the Trump character and its simultaneous politicization within a media space outside the ostensibly legitimate arena of institutional public-affairs journalism. In so doing, it reveals the deeper contours of an imagined political world in which a Trump presidency could be conceivable in the first instance—a political imaginary adjacent to the deep assumptions of liberal Democracy, and therefore long invisible to most serious observers of presidential politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social and historical contexts may influence the speed of development. In seven large, nationally representative surveys of U.S. adolescents 1976-2016 (N = 8.44 million, ages 13-19), fewer adolescents in recent years engaged in adult activities such as having sex, dating, drinking alcohol, working for pay, going out without their parents, and driving, suggesting a slow life strategy. Adult activities were less common when median income, life expectancy, college enrollment, and age at first birth were higher and family size and pathogen prevalence were lower, consistent with life history theory. The trends are unlikely to be due to homework and extracurricular time, which stayed steady or declined, and may or may not be linked to increased Internet use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The housing boom of the mid-2000s saw the widespread popularization of non-occupant housing investment as an entrepreneurial activity within U.S. capitalism. In 2005, approximately one sixth of all mortgage-financed home purchases in the United States were for investment purposes. This article develops a sociological account that links the geographic distribution of popular investment to the social and institutional organization of communities. Regression analyses of 1,566 municipalities from 2000 to 2006 indicate that non-occupant investment (but not conventional owner-occupant investment) occurred at significantly greater rates in places where local development institutions were organized in accordance with laissez-faire principles to a greater degree, where economic activities in other domains were less locally embedded in place, and where greater residential instability produced more tenuous connections between residents and places. The magnitudes of these associations suggest that social organization and cultural-institutional conditions were at least as informative as variations in housing price appreciation in shaping the incidence of investor activity during the bubble. Social organization also moderated the behavioral effects of price appreciation. The article advances research on locally-embedded bases of economic action by examining how community environments provide more or less fertile ground for massparticipatory housing speculation and instrumental orientations toward places as exchangevalues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Previous studies have shown that cigarette smoking is associated with higher rates and severity of food insecurity but do not address how population-level smoking rates change in response to changes in food security.Design: Trend analysis of serial cross-sectional data.Setting: Data from a representative survey of US households.Participants: Adults within households participating in both the Food Security Supplement and Tobacco Use Supplement of the Current Population Survey during 5 overlapping administrations from 1998 to 2011.Measures: A "current smoker" is defined as someone who indicated that they currently smoke on "some days" or "every day." A household's food security is coded as "secure" or "insecure," according to responses to a food security scale, interpreted using a US Department of Agriculture standard.Analysis: Descriptive comparison of the roughly triennial trends in the prevalence of food insecurity and current smoking from 1998 to 2011.Results: The prevalence of food insecurity increased by 30% among adults overall versus 54% among current smokers, with most of the changes occurring following the economic recession of 2008 and 2009. Over this same period, the prevalence of current smoking declined by 33% among food-secure adults and only 14% among food-insecure adults.Conclusion: Food insecurity increased more markedly among adult smokers than nonsmokers, and the prevalence of smoking declined more slowly in food-insecure households, indicating that more low-income smokers are facing hunger, which may at least partly be due to buying cigarettes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the cultural significance of the garbage panics of the 1980s, including the voyage of the infamous Mobro 4000 “garbage barge.” The article argues that the trash at the centre of these panics is important to our understanding of both the 1980s and the present because it demanded – and still demands – that Americans see and understand it as a class of matter unmoored from temporal as well as spatial boundaries. The alarming durability of the supposedly ephemeral refuse of a culture of mass consumption invoked an “archaeological consciousness” prone to muse upon the longevity of material remains. This consciousness was expressed in various cultural and discursive arenas throughout the 1980s, revealing that durable detritus was not just a pressing public policy issue but a marker of cultural anxieties emerging out of the operations of archaeological consciousness. From concerns about contingency of the mass-consuming culture of the late twentieth-century United States to reflections on trash's own epistemological complexity, trash spoke in unexpected ways throughout the 1980s, raising important questions about the relationship between producers of culture and their audience, whose receptiveness to the urgencies of archaeological consciousness suffers from a frustrating transience as far as trash is concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objectives. To determine the number and type of US workers taking maternity or paternity leave. Methods. We created a publicly available ecological long-term series for measuring parental leave from 1994 to 2015 by using the Current Population Survey, which interviews about 60 000 randomly selected households monthly. Results. The average month from 1994 to 2015 saw 273 000 women and 13 000 men on maternity or paternity leave. Maternity leave rates per 10 000 births showed no trend over 22 years (mean = 677.6). Paternity figures increased by a factor of 3, but started from a small base (14.7-54.6).We observed no national impact on maternity or paternity leave after implementation of state laws that provided paid leave. About half (51.1%) of employees on maternity or paternity leave during 2015 received paid time off. The typical woman on maternity leave was older, more likely married, more likely non-Hispanic White, and more educated than the typical woman who gave birth. Conclusions. Although the US economy has expanded dramatically since 1994, this improvement does not appear to have translated into more women taking maternity leave. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Cancer is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States and results in a high economic burden.Objective: To estimate age-standardized mortality rates by US county from 29 cancers.Design and Setting: Deidentified death records from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and population counts from the Census Bureau, the NCHS, and the Human Mortality Database from 1980 to 2014 were used. Validated small area estimation models were used to estimate county-level mortality rates from 29 cancers: lip and oral cavity; nasopharynx; other pharynx; esophageal; stomach; colon and rectum; liver; gallbladder and biliary; pancreatic; larynx; tracheal, bronchus, and lung; malignant skin melanoma; nonmelanoma skin cancer; breast; cervical; uterine; ovarian; prostate; testicular; kidney; bladder; brain and nervous system; thyroid; mesothelioma; Hodgkin lymphoma; non-Hodgkin lymphoma; multiple myeloma; leukemia; and all other cancers combined.Exposure: County of residence.Main Outcomes and Measures: Age-standardized cancer mortality rates by county, year, sex, and cancer type.Results: A total of 19 511 910 cancer deaths were recorded in the United States between 1980 and 2014, including 5 656 423 due to tracheal, bronchus, and lung cancer; 2 484 476 due to colon and rectum cancer; 1 573 593 due to breast cancer; 1 077 030 due to prostate cancer; 1 157 878 due to pancreatic cancer; 209 314 due to uterine cancer; 421 628 due to kidney cancer; 487 518 due to liver cancer; 13 927 due to testicular cancer; and 829 396 due to non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Cancer mortality decreased by 20.1% (95% uncertainty interval [UI], 18.2%-21.4%) between 1980 and 2014, from 240.2 (95% UI, 235.8-244.1) to 192.0 (95% UI, 188.6-197.7) deaths per 100 000 population. There were large differences in the mortality rate among counties throughout the period: in 1980, cancer mortality ranged from 130.6 (95% UI, 114.7-146.0) per 100 000 population in Summit County, Colorado, to 386.9 (95% UI, 330.5-450.7) in North Slope Borough, Alaska, and in 2014 from 70.7 (95% UI, 63.2-79.0) in Summit County, Colorado, to 503.1 (95% UI, 464.9-545.4) in Union County, Florida. For many cancers, there were distinct clusters of counties with especially high mortality. The location of these clusters varied by type of cancer and were spread in different regions of the United States. Clusters of breast cancer were present in the southern belt and along the Mississippi River, while liver cancer was high along the Texas-Mexico border, and clusters of kidney cancer were observed in North and South Dakota and counties in West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, Alaska, and Illinois.Conclusions and Relevance: Cancer mortality declined overall in the United States between 1980 and 2014. Over this same period, there were important changes in trends, patterns, and differences in cancer mortality among US counties. These patterns may inform further research into improving prevention and treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the consequences of prison overcrowding litigation for U.S. prisons. We use insights derived from the endogeneity of law perspective to develop expectations about the likely impact of overcrowding litigation on five outcomes: prison admissions, prison releases, spending on prison capacity, prison crowding, and incarceration rates. Using newly available data on prison overcrowding litigation cases joined with panel data on U.S. states from 1971 to 1996, we offer a novel and comprehensive analysis of the impact that overcrowding litigation has had on U.S. prisons. We find that it had no impact on admissions or release rates and did not lead to any reduction in prison crowding. Litigation did, however, lead to an increase in spending on prison capacity and incarceration rates. We discuss the implications of these results for endogeneity of law theory, attempts to achieve reform through litigation, and the politics of prison construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a psychological profile of Elian Gonzalez, a Cuban refugee who became the center of a custody dispute between relatives living in Miami, Florida and his father in Cuba, and who in 2000 was seized by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and returned to Cuba. According to the author ,Gonzalez likely suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and is at high risk for psychiatric mind control by the Cuban government.

»Globaler Protest gegen Atomkraft: Transfer und transnationaler Austausch in den 1970er und 1980er Jahren«. Protest against nuclear power plants, uranium mining and nuclear testing played a pivotal role in the rise of a mass environmental movement around the globe in the 1970s and 1980s. Nevertheless, the history of anti-nuclear activism has largely been told from a strictly national perspective. This HSR Focus approaches the phenomenon from a transnational perspective for the first time. Against the backdrop of the debate on transnational history, this article develops a framework of analysis, and contextualizes anti-nuclear protest in a broader postwar perspective. The contributions show that anti-nuclear movements across the globe were transnationally connected. First, scientific expertise and protest practices were transferred between movements, and subsequently adapted to local requirements. Secondly, transnational cooperation and networks did indeed emerge, playing an important role in taking protest to the international and European level. However, as opposed to contemporary rhetoric of grass-roots transnational solidarity, such cooperation was limited to a small, highly skilled and committed group of mediators -- often semi-professional activists -- who managed to overcome the obstacles of distance and cultural differences and had access to the necessary resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the attitudes of feminist activists, intellectuals and filmmakers to US intervention in Central America during the 1980s. It traces the development of mutual intellectual and political sustenance between feminism and anti-interventionism, arguing that as feminist thinking bred new ways of approaching US involvement in Central America, so anti-interventionist struggles bred new ways of thinking about women's activism. In making this point, the paper complicates narratives of the “age of Reagan” that overlook the persistence of left-wing politics during the 1980s. Instead, it argues that a specific form of international feminism enabled a community of activists to contribute to a vibrant culture of dissent that criticized conservative approaches to women's rights and, at the same time, vigorously contested the interventionist foreign policy of the Reagan administration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the 1980s, Carl Sagan and other scientists used the theory of nuclear winter to criticize the arms race. Historians have largely dismissed nuclear winter as a political movement. In fact, nuclear winter influenced debate over nuclear weapons in the United States, despite contentious scientific and political arguments. In addition, an analysis of nuclear winter's reception in the Soviet Union reveals that the theory resonated on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The global debate over nuclear winter shows the potency of scientific arguments against nuclear weapons during the Cold War, and demonstrates the complex relationship between science and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commercial electronic distribution of software (EDS) originated in the second half of the 1970s. By the early 1980s, several North American and European companies were already distributing software using common communications networks. However, it would take two more decades before EDS would become the foremost software delivery model. This article charts the development of the early commercial EDS industry in North America, focusing on cable television-based, direct-to-home services. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the relationship between markets, corruption and privatization in the U.S. from the 1980s through the early 2010s, with a particular focus on the role that privatization allegedly plays in increasing corruption. An overview of the U.S.'s privatization of military duties, including in regard to private military companies, is provided. An overview of the relationship between private prisons and prisons managed by the state is also provided. The corruption within public institutions, including in regard to the purposes of institutions, is discussed.

This article examines the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on the campus of the College of William and Mary in 1969 and 1970. Although the CIA operation at William and Mary was first revealed in 1980, it has not received any scholarly attention. The CIA compiled information on students and faculty who were perceived to be radical. The CIA utilized informants working in the Office of the Dean of Men. In gathering information about students and professors, CIA officials violated the law and undermined academic freedom. The surveillance serves as a reminder of how easily a secret agency can threaten civil liberties and demonstrates why Congress must be vigilant in its oversight of the intelligence establishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous reports have noted decreasing numbers of antibiotic approvals. To determine the context for this decline, we examined all new molecule entities (NMEs) and new biologic licenses (NBLs) approved by the FDA from 1980-2009, and compared approval rates of the 61 approved antibiotics to trends in other drug classes. We also tracked withdrawals of approved drugs and found more withdrawals for antibiotics than other drug classes. After adjusting for drugs subsequently withdrawn, the record for antibiotic innovation is less dire than previously reported. We also report problems with the quality of the approved antibiotics studied. Future policies providing incentives for new antibiotic development should not he based on simple numerical targets and key provisions should ensure appropriate quality as well as quantity of antibiotic drug innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen a revival of discussions on American decline. This paper intervenes in this debate by suggesting that there is a tendency towards partial conceptualisations of US power. It suggests a new historical materialist perspective that makes it possible to theorise American Empire as a relational social totality embedded within global capitalism. The paper then analyses the social limits of China’s rise and the integration of East Asian regionalisation into American Empire, suggesting the extent to which world power has shifted east has tended to be overestimated. It also analyses the emergence of Brazil, India, and the BRICS meetings, suggesting these developments have a limited, but overstated, capacity to challenge American Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Mother Goddess in Caodaism has emerged in an American context as a focus for tracing the centralization and transnational development of the Tay Ninh Caodai community, specifically in exchanges with coreligionists in Vietnam. This religious group has bifurcated into two distinct strands since its arrival to the US in 1975. The nondenominational branch has strategically erased the Mother Goddess in an effort to build a cross-sectarian base. It has aimed at universalizing Caodaism by de-emphasizing the significance of the Tay Ninh Holy See. In contrast, the other group has institutionalized itself around the Mother Goddess in order to assert the significance of the Tay Ninh Holy See. Paradoxically, the latter but not the former strand has become increasingly transnational despite its non-universal aspirations. This is precisely because the organization's centralization around the Mother Goddess reorients believers to their homeland and reactivates their ethnic identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The ambiguous material identity of nanotechnology is a minor mystery of the history of contemporary science. This paper argues that nanotechnology functioned primarily in discourses of social, not physical or biological science, the problematic knowledge at stake concerning the economic value of state-supported basic science. The politics of taxonomy in the United States Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences in the 1990s reveals how scientists invoked the term as one of several competing and equally valid candidates for reframing materials sciences in ways believed consonant with the political tenor of the time. The resulting loss of conceptual clarity in the sociology of science traces ultimately to the struggle to bridge the disjunction between the promissory economy of federal basic science and the industrial economy, manifested in attempts to reconcile the precepts of linearity and interdisciplinarity in changing socio-economic conditions over a half century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1974, Brown University’s Department of Anthropology denied tenure to assistant professor Louise Lamphere. Convinced that her dismissal was the product of sex discrimination, Lamphere filed suit against Brown. Lamphere and three other female scholars who joined her suit successfully pressed Brown into an out-of-court settlement in 1977. Significantly, the settlement required Brown not only to provide redress to the plaintiffs but also to take sweeping action in rectifying its faculty’s inequitable gender ratio. While Lamphere’s case marked a rare victory for academic women in the male preserve of the Ivy League, this study concerns the bearing of the lawsuit on academic freedom. It argues that academic freedom entails two interlocking principles: freedom of inquiry and departmental autonomy. Lamphere emphasised the former while Brown advocated the latter. Ultimately, the Lamphere case illustrates how academic freedom loses its efficacy when freedom of inquiry and departmental autonomy are decoupled. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a history of the group of men known as the Morenci Nine, who left their copper mining town of Morenci, Arizona in 1966 to train as Marines and ultimately to serve in the Vietnam War. The author explores how the men, only three of whom returned to Arizona alive, came to represent the effects of the Vietnam War not only on Morenci but on the American Southwest as a region. Particular attention is given to the memorial rituals and remembrances enacted by the Morenci community and how those efforts to honor and remember the fallen soldiers were eventually reflected in the country's need to address the trauma and loss inflicted on the nation as a result of the war.

The article shows how domestic aspects influence the United States national and international climate policy. To accomplish the task, the authors analyzes the discussions when Bill Clinton was ruling the country, a time during which global discussions were forwarded. The paper recalls the debate in the Bush administration and the growing polarization since Barack Obama took office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many recent studies of the judiciary and public opinion adopt a model that views court decisions as aggravating division within the public. The authors question the image of Court as polarizer, arguing that the persuading influence of the U.S. Supreme Court is broader than contemporary authors acknowledge. Using a potential outcomes framework, the authors analyze public attitudes in response to the decision in Roe v. Wade, the original test case in Franklin and Kosaki’s seminal article. The authors’ evidence suggests that members of diverse groups who were aware of the Roe decision were more supportive of abortion than their decision-unaware counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]