The partisanship of silence: Symbolic politics of school desegration in Boston

This article analyzes the symbolic aspects of the school desegration controversy using disputes in Boston as a case in point. The symbolic communication between actors in the public forum contains implicit views of the rights and obligations of different participants in the controversy, and the role of various individuals and collectives in the history of the controversy. These views also provide a framework for understanding the position of specific actors, which may constrain their ability to participate effectively in the controversy. This article analyzes these constraints with respect to those actors who attempted to establish a mediator role between pro-integration and anti-busing forces.Prepared under grants from the National Institute of Education (NIE-6-00-3-0187, NIE-6-76-0038), National Institute of Mental Health, (R01-MH-27618) and the Carnegie Corporation.     

Viewing Telephone Therapy Through the Lens of Attachment Theory and Infant Research

This article discusses the use of the telephone for psychotherapy and applies basic tenets of attachment theory and research on infant development to understand the therapy process. Clinical case examples of four models of attachment (secure, insecure ambivalent, insecure avoidant, disorganized) illustrate diverse patient capacities to use the telephone during a planned 10-week break from ongoing, in-person treatment. It is suggested that telephone therapy may be variously effective based on the attachment system that becomes activated due to the separation, and patients with insecure avoidant or disorganized attachment patterns may have more difficulty managing the alternative treatment modality.     

Predatory,developmental, and other apparatuses: A comparative political economy perspective on the Third World state

Disappointment over the contributions of Third World state apparatuses to industrial transformation and the increasing intellectual dominance of neoutiliarian paradigms in the social science has made if fashionable to castigate the Third World state as predatory and rent seeking. This paper argues for a more differentiated view, one that connects differences in performance to differences in state structure. The incoherent absolutist domination of the klepto-patrimonial Zairian state are contrasted to the embedded autonomy of the East Asian developmental state. Then the internal structure and external ties of an intermediate state — Brazil — are analyzed in relation to both polar types. The comparative evidence suggests that the efficacy of the developmental state depends on a meritocratic bureaucracy with a strong sense of corporate identity and a dense set of institutionalized links to private elites.     

Theory at risk: Accounting for the excellence movement

Amidst widespread concern about educational crisis and the need for reform, the current excellence movement places a pronounced emphasis on rigor, standards, and a core curriculum of basic studies. At issue here is whether major macro-the-oretical perspectives can account for the emergence of this movement. Functional and Marxian theories do not meet this challenge well, especially insofar as they posit a tight, rational linkage between school and economy and downplay the institutional autonomy of the educational system. A status conflict approach, emphasizing middle class mobilization, offers greater insight, though it must be complemented with a recognition of constraints imposed by capitalist organization and the institutionalization of educational myths.     

Creating Accessible Queer Community: Intersections and Fractures with Dis/Ability Praxis

This article explores the intersections and fractures that disability theory and activism present to queer community. The authors begin by drawing upon a multiple axis approach from feminist theory, then discuss the problem of defining disability and queer. They then explore the intersections and fractures of these identities and theories, hoping to raise awareness among queer activists and scholars and introduce them to conceptual and practical tools. In particular, disability studies offers a way to reconceptualize and ground theory and practice in the messiness of real bodies and to make visible the mythic normate against which cultural Others are defined.     

Psychosemantics of “One-China” Conception: Fourth-Dimensional Resolution of Taiwan–Mainland Political Deadlock

The political conflicts between Taiwan and the Mainland have progressed, for over 50 years, from the historical hot civil war for the exclusive ownership of one China's territorial sovereignty to the contemporary cold rhetoric circularity around the geopolitical symbolism of the one-China principle. In the process, the United States has been intimately entangled in the disputes in terms of 3 alignment stages--from an unambiguous pro-Taiwan before the 1970s, the ambiguous neutrality in the early 1970s, to the contemporary pro-Mainland China. Despite the fact that during the past 3 decades the United States honored the arms sales and the Taiwan Relations Act commitments in Taiwan's favor, and simultaneously conferred the 3 Nos and 3 communiqués in Mainland China's favor, the cross-Strait tensions have persisted without the prospect of a definitive foreseeable resolution. Further, because of the lack of explicit conception of one China, the United States has to constantly resist the opposing persuasions of the 2 sides, and therefore must continue to rely on the ambiguous dual deterrence strategy for maintaining the dynamics balance over the Taiwan Strait. For such endeavors, the Clinton 4 frameworks and the Bush 5 Taiwan policies have proven to be very effective, but mostly to the extent of assuming a passive role in preventing military confrontations.     

GLB + T?: Gender/Sexuality Movements and Transgender Collective Identity (De)Constructions

In the United States during the 1990s, there emerged a new form of collective political organizing and action around transgender identity. In this essay, the author depicts the dynamics of transgender activism during the mid-1990s based on original research in the form of a postmodern ethnography of transgender activism. Using data from field research, interviews, and observation, the author illustrates the way that transgender activism was characterized by simultaneous claims to a shared transgender quasi-ethnic identity and the complications thereof. In particular, the author details transgender social movement processes of identity—both processes of collective identity construction and deconstruction—demonstrating that transgender politics are not simply identity politics nor deconstructive (queer) politics. Using constructionist social movement literature, the author argues that in sexuality/gender studies we must expand our understanding of identity politics in order to understand the simultaneity of constructions and deconstructions of identity and gender/sexuality movements today.     

New-class dissent among social-cultural specialists: The effects of occupational self-direction and location in the public sector

Recent research suggests that new-class dissent is concentrated among the social-cultural specialists Kristol identifies as the principal critics of a business culture. Kohn's research on the micro-foundations of authoritarian conservatism suggests a plausible explanation centered on the subjective effects of occupational self-direction, a variable curiously missing from other models of new-class dissent. An alternative explanation, derived from state-centered theories of the new class, points instead to the concentration of these social-sicence and arts-related occupations outside the commercial economy. Using covariance structure analysis of new survey data, this study finds that occupational self-direction entails a propensity to question systemic inequities and a reluctance to blame the victims of poverty and discrimination. The antibusiness animus of Kristol's counterelites, conversely, arises in spite of, not because of, their highly self-directed work, reflecting instead their concentration in the public and nonprofit sectors.     

New dimensions of social movements: The high-level waste-siting controversy

This paper argues that the widespread, irreversible, and catastrophic potentials associated with some contemporary genres of grievances make derivative social movements novel in respects different from those emphasized by French, Italian, and German analysts using the concept new social movements. This European concept distinguishes between new and old protests to emphasize significant changes in the nature of the contemporary state or the value systems of its citizens, a distinction that has not been accentuated in the United States. The argument here is that only certain contemporary technology movements are really novel—and for reasons other than those alleged by advocates of the new social movements.     

The Paradoxes of Modernity: Scientific Advances,Environmental Problems,and Risks to the Social Fabric?

Recent reviews have contrasted U.S. sociologists' empirical work on technological risks with the theoretical risk work of Giddens and Beck, but the reality is more complex. Most U.S. sociologists are less likely than Giddens or Beck to see risks as transcending socioeconomic and other divisions, but the United States–based work tends to interpret the trustworthiness of scientific–technical expertise in ways that lie between the arguments of Beck and Giddens. An examination of early nuclear technologies indicates that the United States–based perspectives provide a better fit, for theoretical as well as empirical reasons. The development of nuclear technologies was mixed, rather than high or low, in its competence and trustworthiness, and it created social and environmental risks that did not so much transcend social divisions as to reinforce them.     

“Racism” and Colonialism: Meanings of Difference and Ruling Practices in America's Pacific Empire

This article examines the meanings of race and difference in the first years of American colonialism in the Philippines, Guam, and Samoa. Moving beyond existing sociological studies of race and colonial discourse, I demonstrate that the meanings of racial difference in the U.S. Pacific empire were contemporaneously polyvalent, constituting an overarching field of multiple rather than uniform classifications. The different meanings formed the basis for intra-imperial debate among colonizing agents. They also contributed to notable variations in forms of colonial governance and policy across the empire. The implication for future study is that race should best be apprehended as a code that takes on specific meanings and obtains its social force only in particular contexts of use and utterance.     

Muddying the Waters Does Not Have to Entail Erosion: Ecological Feminist Concerns with Purity

Ecofeminists call attention to the associations that have been made between woman and nature, which can operate as a source of both subjugation and resistance, exploitation, and inspiration. This paper expands upon feminist critiques of purity by phrasing these concerns in an ecological feminist perspective. This theoretical exercise of problematizing the ideal of purity sheds light upon the intersections of human and nonhuman oppression. Preservationist work has tended to employ the logic of purity by focusing on protection of the purity of the wild regions of the earth from the polluting forces of humanity. However, such approaches retain the troublesome nature/culture dualism. The author illustrates how attempts to fragment and radically separate people from the environment can prove to be highly dangerous. She connects the theoretical resistance to purity to the important activist work that is being done to expose environmental racism. Finally, she discusses how muddying the waters and resisting the logic of purity can offer a promising approach to pressing problems revolving around the intersections of human and nonhuman oppression.     

The Impact of Assessment Procedures on the Relationship between Paper and Pencil and Behavioral Indicators of Social Skill

This study investigated the relationship between paper and pencil measures and molecular behavioral indicators of social skills in three widely used assessment options. A total of 221 students engaged in either a get acquainted or role play interaction, in which they were given instructions and knew they were being observed. A third group engaged in a waiting period interaction, in which they were given no instructions to interact and had no knowledge of being observed. Results showed that subjects in the get acquainted and role play situations scored higher on several measures of social skills than those in the waiting period situation. In addition, there was most variability in the measures of social skills in the waiting period situation. In general, trait measures exhibited poor correspondence with behavioral measures of social skills in all situations. However, state paper and pencil measures of social skills exhibited strong correspondence with behaviors in the waiting period, but not in the get acquainted or role play situations. Implications for the assessment of social communication skills through commonly used assessment procedures are discussed.     

“FOB” and “Whitewashed”: Identity and Internalized Racism Among Second Generation Asian Americans

An analysis of 184 in-depth interviews with grown children of Korean and Vietnamese immigrants finds that the racial beliefs, meanings, and stereotypes of the mainstream society shape how they think about coethnics, generate local identities, and deflect stigma from themselves. We examine the terms FOB (Fresh Off the Boat) and whitewashed that were commonly deployed to denigrate coethnic others as too ethnic or too assimilated while casting those at the bicultural middle as the normals. We describe how this system of intraethnic othering serves as a basis for sub-ethnic identities, intraethnic social boundaries, and the monitoring and control of social behavior. We draw on the concept of internalized racial oppression in framing our findings.     

Snarls,Quacks, and Quarrels: Culture and Structure in Political Process Theory

Political process theories of social movements have relied on a set of oppositions between culture and structure that has limited their capacity to capture the supraindividual, durable, and constraining dimensions of culture. The solution is not to abandon an emphasis on objective political structures in favor of potential insurgents' subjective perceptions of political opportunities, but rather to probe the (objective) resources and constraints generated by the cultural dimensions of political structures. Such a perspective would pay closer attention to the cultural traditions, ideological principles, institutional memories, and political taboos that create and limit political opportunities; and would link the master frames that animate protest to dominant political structures and processes.     

Queering Identities: The Roles of Integrity and Belonging in Becoming Ourselves

This article presents a picture of the complexities and contradictions in the daily lives of people in the Seacoast area of New Hampshire who identify as, or are identified as, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender queer, questioning, and allied people (LGBTQQA). In this study, the author uses a grounded theory approach to focus on the Create Our Destiny conference. Clear patterns emerged, such as the importance of coming out, labels, and gender identity. A common theme underlying these areas was the tension people experienced between seeking a sense of belonging and maintaining their personal sense of integrity. This study shows that people in the Seacoast want to be fully and wholly themselves, or as the author represents their interests, to strive toward singularity. The author argues that striving towards singularity requires people to grapple with their unexamined codes and principles, such as those pertaining to compulsory heterosexuality and gender duality, by increasing and valuing self-awareness and reflexivity.     

The state and the economy in late imperial China

Conclusions Non-development of a modern economy, the failure to begin modern economic growth, I am prepared to argue but that would require another article- is over-determined. It's not a particularly interesting theoretical question any more. Proponents of economic, political, cultural, social structural, demographic and other explanations have each adduced overwhelming arguments and evidence for their favored explanations. In fact, any one - or two - is a sufficiently mortal debility for the premodern economies and societies that they have studied. More is merely overkill. What we really don't know for sure yet is how modern economic growth begins - even in the case of Western Europe whose economic history has been minutely examined for more than a century. The common fate of most of mankind before the very recent past - slow and uncertain premodern growth of population and output where it occurred, stagnation or decline otherwise - has not (by historians at least) received attention comparable to the more fashionable problem of modern development, whether that be phrased as the Marxist transition from feudalism to capitalism, the neo-classical growth model, or the perhaps now somewhat faded study of modernization.Late imperial China - from the tenth century to the nineteenth - experienced in world perspective a remarkable millennium of premodern economic growth (see table 1). Population and total grain output each increased by a factor of five or six over these centuries, in contrast to the first millennium of the imperial era - from the Qin (221–206 B.C.) through the Tang (618–906) during which, with often sharp fluctuations, a sort of plateau seems have been reached early and never overcome. (Europe's population growth was comparable - the estimates of course, like those for China, are sometimes more testimony to our faith than to our science. There were perhaps 39 million inhabitants in about 1000, 74 million before the demographically disastrous fourteenth century, a recovery to 50 million by 1450,105 million in about 1600, 115 million about 1700, and a total of possibly 190 million inhabitants in 1800.) While overall impressive, the growth of people and production in late imperial China was uneven in both rate and locale, and punctuated by severe fluctuations due to both natural and manmade disasters.Neither the direct nor the indirect influences of the state on the economy were major factors determining the nature and rate of this premodern economic growth. That was largely decided by the dynamics of the dominant private sector of the economy. So far as they affected premodern growth the policies and actions of China's imperial government do not seem to have differed greatly in range or quality from those of the emerging national states of early modern Europe before, let us say, the seventeenth century. Certainly the acceleration of traditional growth in seventeenth- and especially eighteenth-century China argues against the view that the late imperial feudal autocracy was a major obstacle to economic performance in the Ming and Qing periods. On balance, the actions of the state probably helped rather than hindered the long-term growth of population and total output. The state's control of or influence over only a very low percentage of gross national product at the very least limited negative interference with the private sector where the most remarkable Ming-Qing achievements originated.Toward modern economic growth, on the other hand, the Chinese state contributed little if anything, in contrast to the history of early modern Europe. I have already suggested that this conclusion should not be surprising. It, rather than the still only partially understood European experience, represents the mode in world history. The fact that state policies and performance might have lubricated late imperial economic expansion does not imply any necessary forward linkages to the much different and much more difficult task of expanding not just total output but output per capita. The experience of the past is surely not irrelevant, but it may not all be positive for the goal of achieving economic growth in the modern epoch. Thus the Chinese experience of managing and participating in complex bureaucratic organizations may have left a positive legacy for the twentieth century. And similarly, the much higher degree of male literacy in Qing China than we have hitherto assumed, demonstrated in the admirable work of Evelyn S. Rawski, would presumably be conducive to the later achievement of modern economic growth. But the distancing - whether by cultural choice or due to political weakness - of the state from the private economy, while it may have facilitated premodern growth, could be a negative rather than a positive asset for a backward country seeking economic growth in the twentieth century, as Professor Gerschenkron has shown us. Does the contrast between late imperial China and early modern Europe derive, after all, mainly from the greater relative success of the Chinese experience under conditions of premodern economic growth? I refer of course to the achievement of a unified and integrated polity with an adequate customary standard of living for most of the population (in normal times), which was spared (or deprived of?) disquieting church-state conflicts and international wars (for the most part), where one found no Sunday Confucians and no domestic modernist challenge to a deeply rooted and genuine conservatism before the twentieth century. There was little reason for the Qing emperors and the bureaucratic elite who served them, while they still had the power to do so before the shameful nineteenth century, to follow the path of the Houses of Stuart, Bourbon, and Hapsburg and their bureaucratic administrators who built the modern European nation-states and purveyed some of the critical abstractions and institutions of law and property that unwittingly perhaps facilitated Europe's modern economic growth. The Chinese rulers already possessed all under heaven (tianxia), and they could hardly foresee how parochial that universal conceit would become.

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“Anonymity is part of the magic”: Individual manipulation of computer-mediated communication contexts

This study looks at the behavior of self-selected users of an electronic bulletin board system (BBS). Its goal is to investigate the reported lack of social context cues in computer mediated communication contexts. Using participant observation methods, the study demonstrates how BBS users establish online identities. The study also identifies communication leaders who maintain their identities and leadership roles through manipulation of the BBS social context. These findings appear to contradict perspectives that characterize computer-mediated communications as deindividuated (Kiesler et al, 1984).     

Why fewer women become physicians: Explaining the premed persistence gap

Previous research indicates that the answer to the question of why fewer women become physicians lies in the premed persistence gap. Women are no less likely than men to enter undergraduate premed programs, but they are less likely to complete the program and apply to medical school. This article presents data from a study designed to test four plausible explanations of the persistence gap that are consistent with the structural barriers, normative barriers, and cognitive differences theories of gender inequality. The findings do not support the perception of discrimination hypothesis, the discouragement hypothesis, the self-derogation hypothesis, and the anticipated role conflict hypothesis. Rather, the evidence suggests another explanation — the normative alternatives approach. This approach holds that contemporary gender norms offer women fewer disincentives to changing or lowering their high-status career goals when encountering hardship, self-doubt, and the possibility of failure.An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, Atlanta, August 1988.     

Toward a political economy of crime

Summary As Gouldner and Fredrichs have recently pointed out, social science generally, and sociology in particular is in the throes of a paradigm revolution. Predictably, criminology is both a reflection of and a force behind this revolution.The energing paradigm in criminology is one which emphasizes social conflict-particularly conflicts of social class interests and values. The paradigm which is being replaced is one where the primary emphasis was on consensus, and within which deviance or crime was viewed as an aberration shared by some minority. This group had failed to be properly socialized or adequately integrated into society or, more generally, had suffered from social disorganization.The shift in paradigm means more than simply a shift from explaining the same facts with new causal models. It means that we stretch our conceptual framework and look to different facets of social experience. Specifically, instead of resorting inevitably to the normative system, to culture or to socio-psychological experiences of individuals, we look instead to the social relations created by the political and economic structure. Rather than treating society as a full-blown reality (reifying it into an entity with its own life), we seek to understand the present as a reflection of the economic and political history that has created the social relations which dominate the moment we have selected to study.The shift means that crime becomes a rational response of some social classes to the realities of their lives. The state becomes an instrument of the ruling class enforcing laws here but not there, according to the realities of political power and economic conditions.There is much to be gained from this re-focusing of criminological and sociological inquiry. However, if the paradigmatic revolution is to be more than a mere fad, we must be able to show that the new paradigm is in fact superior to its predecessor. In this paper I have tried to develop the theoretical implications of a Marxian model of crime and criminal law, and to assess the merits of this paradigm by looking at some empirical data. The general conclusion is that the Marian paradigm provides a long neglected but fruitful approach to the study of crime and criminal law.