STEROIDS AND HOME RUNS

There has been no change in Major League Baseball home run hitting for 45 yr, in spite of the new records. Players hit with no more power now than before. Records are the result of chance variations in at bats, home runs per hit, and other factors. The clustering of records is implied by the intermittency of the law of home runs. Home runs follow a stable Paretian distribution with infinite variance. The shape and scale of the distribution have not changed over the years. The greatest home run hitters are as rare as great scientists, artists, or composers. (JEL A10, C02, C16, C52, L51)     

"What Group?" Studying Whites and Whiteness in the Era of "Color‐Blindness"

In this article I argue that despite the claims of some, all whites in racialized societies "have race." But because of the current context of race in our society, I argue that scholars of "whiteness" face several difficult theoretical and methodological challenges. First is the problem of how to avoid essentializing race when talking about whites as a social collective. That is, scholars must contend with the challenge of how to write about what is shared by those racialized as white without implying that their experiences of racialization all will be the same. Second, within the current context of color‐blind racial discourse, researchers must confront the reality that some whites claim not to experience their whiteness at all. Third, studies of whiteness must not be conducted in a vacuum: racial discourse or "culture" cannot be separated from material realities. Only by attending to and by recognizing these challenges will empirical research on whiteness be able to push the boundaries of our understandings about the role of whites as racial actors and thereby also contribute to our understanding of how race works more generally .     

The Collaboration as Empowerment Claim: The Case of Visual Social Research

This article uses the case of visually based collaborative social science research to explore the problem of inequality between researchers and research subjects in social science research. This dilemma is ever present for social scientists researching topics where the research subject represents a group experiencing social exclusion. The paper uses the claim of those social scientists that argue that collaboration between researchers and research subjects can diminish the inequality problem by empowering research subjects. Through this interrogation of the “collaboration as empowerment claim,” as an ideal type construction the paper argues that (i) it pays insufficient attention to the knowledge frameworks and incentive structures around which research projects are carried out and disseminated, (ii) it does not interrogate the fact that the claim of empowerment as outcome is made by those in the researcher role, and (iii) it does not explicitly document the research subject's own assessment of a collaboration/empowerment link. The paper moves beyond the insights drawn from the visual case to point to their implications for other areas in which collaboration research is claimed as a means to empower research subjects and by implication to diminish researcher/research subject inequalities.     

Jews in the News – Representations of Judaism and the Jewish Minority in the Norwegian Contemporary Press

This article provides an analysis of how Jewish rituals and Jews as a minority group are represented and debated in the Norwegian press: How is “news about the Jews” framed by the media? Which discourses dominate the debates? Are notions of what it “takes to be Norwegian” put forward in these cases? The article is also an analysis of Jewish voices in the press, and based on the fact that Jewish advocates refer to minority-based legal rights suggests that the Jewish minority benefits from the use of a broader international human rights discussion in the press. I claim that a multicultural discourse provides the Jewish minority with language that makes it possible to argue for cultural rights without referring to Jewishness; offering protection against a general fear of anti-Semitism.     

Perspectives: Abortion and Genocide: The Unbridgeable Gap

This article examines The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform's claimthat abortion is genocide, assessing it against legal, trait-basedand "dynamic process" definitions of genocide. The purpose ofthis exercise is not to give credence to what many consideran outrageous claim, nor is it to merely refute this claim basedupon a close reading of existing definitions of genocide; instead,by subjecting The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform's claim to anethical and performative evaluation, our goal is to illustratehow the term genocide can be "misused." In the end, we arguethat The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform uses the term genocidefor its own totalizing and essentializing purposes, and in doingso engages in practices that share an affinity with the exclusionarydiscourses that help make genocide thinkable.     

THE "BANALITY OF EVIL" REFRAMED: The Social Construction of the "Final Solution" to the "Jewish Problem"

Research on the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews has arguably been dominated by historians. Yet many historians remain confounded by the Holocaust's major paradox: the "banality of evil" that occurred during the Nazi regime. In this article I argue that understanding of the "banality of evil" paradox can be advanced by reframing previously unsynthesized research in terms of a constructionist theory of social problems. I view the "Jewish problem" and its "final solution" as having a "natural history" that is characterized by the development and unfolding of claims about problems and the formulation and implementation of solutions to problems. I trace the construction of the "Jew" throughout history and as it was identified, acknowledged, and applied in a particular sociocultural and political context. By providing the first application of constructionism to a genocidal event, I show that the social processes that construct genocide parallel those that construct other social problems, and that it is precisely this correspondence that makes the construction of the "Jewish problem" and its "final solution" banal.     

May’s Theorem with an infinite population

In this paper, we investigate majority rule with an infinite number of voters. We use an axiomatic approach and attempt to extend Mays Theorem characterizing majority rule to an infinite population. The analysis hinges on correctly generalizing the anonymity condition and we consider three different versions. We settle on bounded anonymity as the appropriate form for this condition and are able to use the notion of asymptotic density to measure the size of almost all sets of voters. With this technique, we define density q-rules and show that these rules are characterized by neutrality, monotonicity, and bounded anonymity on almost all sets. Although we are unable to provide a complete characterization applying to all possible sets of voters, we construct an example showing that our result is the best possible. Finally, we show that strengthening monotonicity to density positive responsiveness characterizes density majority rule on almost all sets.My thanks to John Duggan for useful discussions. I also thank Milo Ziman and the participants of the Workshop on the Density Concept held at Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia.     

The Moral "Technologies' of Knowledge Management

This paper uses the framework of Michel Foucault to examine the mainstream discourse of "knowledge management' (KM) in organizations. In particular, we draw on the notions of reflexivity, subjectivity, power, freedom and resistance to show how Foucault's ideas challenge contemporary uses of KM including its alignment with organizational learning and strategic change. A dominant theme of KM discourse relates to what computer technology can do for storing, sorting and distributing organizational knowledge. Indeed, a central assumption of the ideology of KM is that its systems are universally desirable. KM is often presented as a common-sense way of thinking about one's organization, and having everyone "pitch-in' through sharing knowledge is meant to ensure the company's commercial future. KM is thus represented as in the fundamental interests of workers and companies alike. In this article, we jettison the idea that KM is an unquestioned good. More specifically, we are concerned with the highly instrumental ways that knowledge is being constructed and how this influences workplace subjectivities. Foucauldian theory certainly helps with an examination of KM discourse, but we do not claim it is the only theory appropriate to this subject.     

HIGH SCHOOLS AND CRIME: A REPLICATION

Using Cleveland data, we replicate Roncek and LoBosco's study of the effect of proximity to San Diego's high schools on crime in their surroundings. We also examine a major alternative hypothesis whether having other non-residential land uses in the schools' surroundings accounts for crime in these areas. Our findings closely parallel theirs. Proximity to public high schools only increases crime on city blocks which are immediately adjacent to the schools. Second, the size of a school's enrollment is not important for explaining crime in its surroundings. The analysis of non-residential effects supports Roncek and LoBosco's claim that crime effects are due solely to the presence of public high schools, although other land uses affect crime near private high schools. While there are differences in the exact magnitudes of the effects, the substance of their findings for San Diego generalizes well to a very different city. More generally, we argue that Wirth's early arguments about the effect of urbanism on impeding social control can be extended to the residential areas within the city.     

MEDIA FRAMINGS OF THE ISSUE OF TURKISH ACCESSION TO THE EU

Recent empirical research has argued that there is a movement towards a Europeanized public sphere in the European Union. Based on a representative sample from the British, French, Slovenian, Turkish, and US-American press, this article explores via a novel content analytic method that codes frames semi-automatically through keywords, in how far the discourses about the proposed accession of Turkey to the EU approximate a European public sphere. The findings show that discourses do not fulfill basic standards of democratic deliberation: Not only are there vast differences in the intensity of the debates, but the distribution of the main frames that structure the discourse – a "clash of civilizations" between "Islamic Turkey" and "Christian Europe" on the one hand versus a liberal-multiculturalist project that unifies different civilizations under one political roof on the other – are differently distributed across the countries surveyed. The actual manifestations frames vary by country. All frames employed also consider collectivities rather than individuals the major parties of the discourse, a conception that runs against the tenets of rational-democratic deliberations.     

From the transnational to the Sinophone: lesbian representations in Chinese-language films

This article theorizes global lesbian cinema in Chinese-language films through regionalism, diaspora studies, and Sinophone studies. Through an inter-regional analysis of Butterfly (Yan Yan Mak, 2004, Hong Kong) and diasporic and Sinophone readings of Saving Face (Alice Wu, 2005, USA), I argue that Mak's film illustrates a Hong Kong regional retranslation of a Taiwanese lesbian story, which complicates any claim to a stable "Chinese" identity. Finally, Wu's representation of lesbianism also troubles the politics of Chineseness by pointing to the ways diasporic reproduction of "community" works through the disciplining of other non-normative sexualities.     

On the Utility of Robust and Resampling Procedures1

Abstract Kassab (1990) makes an important methodological contribution by urging the use of robust regression methods in the study of community economic impacts and by indicating the utility of the bootstrap in assessing standard errors in robust regression. By introducing the notion of a contaminating distribution, we reconcile differences between her claim that ordinary least squares (OLS) regression is biased when outliers are present and standard linear model theory that does not make assumptions about the shape of the residual distribution in proving OLS an unbiased estimator. The contaminating distribution provides a framework for rural sociologists to link their statistical assumptions to a substantive understanding of the phenomena being studied. We suggest an alternative regression estimation strategy that may be more robust than the technique she uses. We also discuss an approach to bootstrapping that is more appropriate for macro-level social indicator data than the one she describes. An appendix discusses the software available for implementing these methods.     

Computer usage, destination language proficiency and the earnings of natives and immigrants

This paper uses the concept of a computer as a public good within the household to model the demand for computers at home. It also investigates the determinants, and consequences for earnings, of computer use. The equations are estimated using data on the native born and immigrants from the 2001 Census of Population and Housing in Australia. The multivariate analyses show that recent arrivals are more likely to use computers than the Australian born. The data suggests a high degree of favorable selection in migration as the level of computer use in Australia is much higher than in most of the countries that Australia’s immigrants come from. Those with a higher permanent income (education, household assets) are more likely to have a computer at home, but there is no effect of transitory income (unemployment). Immigrants who are more proficient in English are also more likely to use a computer. The relation between age and computer use is strongly influenced by cohort effects. Using a computer at home is associated with about 7% and 13% higher earnings for native-born and foreign-born men, respectively. For the immigrants, the effects of schooling and English language proficiency on earnings are greater among those who use a computer at home. This suggests complementarity in the labor market. The use of a computer is shown to be a way the foreign born can increase the international transferability of their pre-immigration skills, a finding that has implications for immigrant assimilation policies.

I am not that Caitlin: a critique of both the transphobic media reaction to Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover shoot and of passing

In this article I discuss and critique transphobic media reactions to the celebrity Caitlyn Jenner’s 2015 Vanity Fair cover shoot. I then consider these in the light of Garfinkel, H. [1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall] concept of ‘passing’ in his celebrated case story of Agnes and argue that ‘passing’ is often conflated with ‘being out’. I argue that the two are significantly different and claim that the former is implicitly based on a public lie. I use several auto-ethnographic narratives to illustrate the argument.     

Unifying and Decomposing Building Types: How to Analyze the Change of Use of Sacred Buildings

What do churches do? What do mosques do? Constructivist sociology has usually argued that buildings do not do anything, but are enacted by users. Conversely, actor-network theory has interpreted buildings as actants that are stabilized by architect-controlled networks. In this article, I argue for a differential theory of objects, which conceives of the specific agency of different kinds of objects. Buildings can be understood as mutable immobiles, objects that are immovable and thus likely to be changed on the level of their social classification, or in architectural terms, their building type. Drawing on fieldwork in and around Berlin, Germany, I use two different kinds of change of use to show the agency of buildings as mutable immobiles. First, I show that in the case of churches that are changed to other uses, the church attempts to discursively associate the buildings to religion primarily and then uses large scale interventions to preserve the unity of the church if change of use cannot be avoided. Second, I show that in the case of factories that are turned into mosques, very small material interventions with furniture change the buildings.     

Grieving for mestizaje: alternative approaches to Maya identity in Yucatan,Mexico

This article takes as its point of departure the highly contested theoretical terrain of ‘Maya’ identity in Yucatan, Mexico. Set in the physical terrain of a state psychiatric hospital, this article uses a framework of identity culled from the narrative of a young woman, ‘Claudina’, committed to its wards, to argue that being ‘in-between’ categories of ethnic identity, an experience she characterises as a painful sense of ambiguous loss, can be fruitfully analysed using an analytical framework of ethnic identity introduced by Claudina herself. Specifically, I argue that categories of identity culled from Claudina's story – mestizaje and elegancia – represent a valuable opportunity to think about how power dynamics and relationships operate in situations of ambivalent identities and social suffering. To this end, I use Claudina's language as a point of departure for understanding the lived experience of everyday life in Yucatan today.     

Multiculturalism and political integration in Birmingham and Bradford

The article discusses multiculturalism and political integration in Birmingham and Bradford, two cities that are amongst the main urban areas of immigrant settlement in England outside London. The article focuses especially on the subject of ethnic mobilization, and describes for each ethnic community in each of the two cities the type and character of their organizations and their role in multi‐culturalist politics. On the basis of the evidence presented for each city it is concluded that despite some negative indications about the success of multiculturalism, there are also very many positive signs which speak in favour of a limited claim for multiculturalism, as delineating the creation of a political situation in which relatively new ethnic minorities are able to have the protection of a cultural home and the resource of ethnic culture to provide solidarity as they fight for their rights. This limited claim for multiculturalism is far from being incompatible with democracy. It may even serve to strengthen it     

Fake Passports and Appointed Communities: Nation and Transnationalism in the Danish Asylum System

Nationality underwrites a great deal of the Danish asylum process, and of the refugee regime as a whole. The housing and care of asylum seekers, handled by the Danish Red Cross, is based on classifications by nationality. Bending a phrase from Benedict Anderson, these might be called 'appointed communities'. While the Danish asylum system in principle performs individual determination procedures for asylum seekers, granting refugee status on a case-by-case basis, in practice those identified as Iraqi or Afghani have had a very high acceptance rate. However, it is clearly the case that not all asylum seekers have citizenship of the countries they claim to come from, or indeed feel they come from the countries of which they have citizenship. In this context, we must enquire about the mechanics of determining nationality and about how asylum seekers themselves relate to national identities. I argue that although the social networks that are significant to asylum seekers at times may be composed mainly of individuals from a single nation, they are also thoroughly transnational, and embody a sense of home not necessarily so tightly bound to place, as the asylum process presumes.     

Real estate in the home country: Why Polish migrants keep properties in Poland

Real estate is often the most visible contribution that emigrants add to their home country's landscape. Such properties serve different functions, from rental investments, through migrant families' homes, to holiday homes or empty spaces. Economists often view real estate through financial lens, frowning upon vacant houses. I argue that keeping vacant houses is often caused by social and emotional factors rather than financial ones. This article uses data from 120 qualitative interviews with Polish EU migrants and juxtaposes them with the typology of remittance houses proposed by Boccagni and Erdal. The data, combined with the theoretical perspective of Neoclassical Economics, New Economics of Labour Migration, and Grzymała-Kazłowska's concept of social anchoring, allow me to improve the typology. The updated typology systematises the functions of and reasons why migrants keep properties in their home countries and provides a sound frame for future research and policymaking.