Inequality of opportunity in the land of opportunities, 1968–2001

We measure inequality of opportunity for earnings acquisition in the U.S. between 1968 and 2001. Following recent theories of social justice, earnings determinants are divided into two parts: Circumstances, which are characteristics outside individual control and effort representing factors impacting earnings but under individuals’ responsibility. Equality of opportunity requires that inequality of circumstances must be corrected while differences of effort must remain unaltered. Circumstances are represented by parental education and occupation, ethnic origin, place of birth and age. Effort is modeled with schooling choices and labour supply decisions. Using the PSID from 1968 to 2001, we provide two alternative assessments of inequality of opportunity using counterfactual distributions. The statistical framework is semi-parametric and builds on duration models. Finally, we conclude that inequality of opportunity represents between 20 and 43% of earnings inequality, but decreases all over the period reaching around 18% in 2001.     

New Ways of Life, Thinking, Cause Distress in Modern Families

THE social news that has appeared in the media comes in all forms. Some people regard an increase in the number of divorce cases brought by omen as a sign that society has advanced. Others look at the activity of selecting "model husbands" as a trend that women are prospering, while the age of male dominance is in decline. Some say that the "single child" is an expedient measure for the state population policy, while in reality, the state has reached its goal of "fewer births, but excellent child-rearing and     

'Russian love,' or, what of lesbian studies in Russia?

This piece discusses the problems attending to the development of Lesbian Studies in Russia.     

Ideology,Practice, and Process? A Review of the Concept of Managerialism in Civil Society Studies

Managerialism is today a frequently applied concept in studies of how ideas and practices related to corporate management are diffused in society. Some assert that managerialism even is what mostly affects the development of contemporary civil society organizations. It is, however, far from clear how the concept of managerialism is used and defined across interest fields. The main conclusion in the present review, involving 105 peer-reviewed articles in civil society studies published between 1990 and 2014, is that the concept of managerialism is so broadly defined that it runs the risk of losing its analytical powers. To avoid this, the paper argues for a more precise conceptual use and suggests that the concept of managerialism should be applied to denote an ideology, the concept of management to capture managerial practices, and the concept of managerialization to describe an organizational change process.     

Sexuality in the Global South: 50 Years of Published Research in the Journal of Sex Research—Inclusions,Omissions, and Future Possibilities

Sexuality researchers from a range of disciplines have called for more global inclusiveness in sexualities research, particularly in the Global South (GS). We investigated the degree to which sexuality researchers have published work focused on the GS by conducting a content analysis of 50 years of research published in the Journal of Sex Research (JSR). We examined all research articles, brief research reports, and clinical notes published in JSR from 1965 to 2014 (N = 1,626). Overall, a small percentage of articles focused on the GS with no increase over time (4.8%; N = 78). Articles in the GS focused on Asia (37.2%), Latin America (28.2%), Sub-Saharan Africa (23.1%), the Middle East (6.4%), and a mix of GS regions (5.1%). Topics related to sexual and reproductive health were most prevalent (19.2%), followed by articles on sexual risk, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) (17.9%), sexual norms, attitudes, and beliefs (16.7%), sex work (11.5%), cultural practices (10.3%), gay, lesbian, and bisexual issues (9.0%), intimate partner relationships (3.8%), and sexual violence (3.8%); the remaining categories (transgender and transsexual populations, sex research methods, sex testing, and women’s sexuality) were negligible. We conclude with recommendations for improving the quantity, quality, and scope of global sexuality research in JSR.     

The Use of the Conceptual Category of Race in American Sociology, 1937–99

We examine how mainstream sociology has used race as an explanatory factor by examining papers in the American Sociological Review between 1937 and 1999. We find a dramatic increase in the likelihood that sociologists will take race into account, and we suggest that methodological innovations are largely responsible for creating an environment in which it is taken for granted that analysts in many fields will control for race. This pattern of usage may reinforce an implicit conception of racial differences that we call broad but shallow, in that race is expected to matter almost everywhere, but its effect can be neutralized by the addition of a control.     

Autonomy,Identity, and ‘Illegal’ Logging in the Borderland of West Kalimantan,Indonesia

Borderland identity and traditional community autonomy affect the practice of ‘illegal’ logging and the impact of regional autonomy among the Iban along the upper Kapuas borderland in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. We examine these issues with attention to the historical development of the Kalimantan Iban as a border people, their struggle to maintain control over their traditional forest resources under the fluctuating power of the Indonesian state and their approaches in dealing with regional and cross-border interests in the harvesting of their forests.     

Freedom,Identity, and the Social History of Empire in Atlantic Cuba, 1795–1817

This essay examines a maritime case involving a Charleston-based French privateer in 1795 as well as members, subjects, and citizens of multiple societies from Western Africa, Cuba, Spain, and Great Britain in order to reveal the fluid legal foundations of trans-Atlantic regimes with respect to slavery and freedom. The French maritime seizure of a British slaving vessel in the Caribbean and the subsequent transfer of enslaved African peoples from British to French to Spanish authority in Cuba set the stage for nearly 40 years of litigation in both hemispheres. The case led to legal disputes in Philadelphia, Madrid, and Havana as members of this Atlantic society sought to confront the most prominent political and social issues of this era. While officials in Philadelphia sought to avoid entanglement in the imperial wars between France and Great Britain, officials in Madrid and Havana competed with each other in order to define the legal identities of a group of Carabalí-Oru peoples onboard the British vessel. For their part, this group of Carabalí-Oru peoples exploited the ambiguities created by a system of Atlantic jurisprudence while relying on their memory of the Middle Passage in order to challenge their unjust enslavement in Cuba.     

Direct,Facilitate, Enable—the Juxtaposition of the Duty of Care and the Duty of Disclosure in Social Work Field Education

This article examines the significance of field education placements within contemporary social work field education, particularly considering the increasingly complex issues of the duty of care (to student, agency and field teacher) and the duty to disclose (to student, to field teacher) which schools of social work must negotiate. The dilemmas facing schools and field educators, and the steps taken to resolve them at the University of Melbourne (Australia), are considered to highlight the ongoing liability and accountability difficulties which continue to face social work education.     

Collaboration,Co-Optation or Navigation? The Role of Civil Society in Disaster Governance in India

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Existing research on civil society organizations (CSOs) facing restricted civic space largely focuses on the crackdown on...     

Accounts of False Memory Syndrome: Parents, “Retractors,” and the Role of Institutions in Account Making

There have been two traditions of research under the concept of accounts. One tradition, the social interactionist, has focused on the interactional use of accounts by individuals to neutralize negative evaluations of questionable acts or their consequences and restore social equilibrium. The second tradition, the social psychological, has focused on the autobiographical and explanatory use of accounts to create and organize meaning for troubling or stressful life events. In both traditions, scholars have been almost exclusively concerned with the individual-level functions of accounts. Analyzing the institutional origins of false memory syndrome and the retractor account episodes in which it is used, I argue for the expansion of accounts research to include the role of institutions and collective actors in the production of new account frameworks. Further, I argue that the conceptualizations of accounts in the two traditions of research can be effectively combined in a way that is sociologically stronger than either alone.     

‘The Realm of Maiden Beauty’: Spectres of Slavery,Rebellion, and Creolisation in the Landscape of Cable’s Louisiana

Using a creative interdisciplinary method of enquiry, this article seeks to exorcise the spectres of revolutionary creolisation embedded in George Washington Cable’s 1880 novel The Grandissimes. It probes, in particular, the secreted traces of the Creole diaspora triggered by the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1804, and attempts to peel back the manifold layers of ideological occlusion embedded in the (ostensibly white, Anglo-American) narrative frame of Cable’s omniscient narrator and his protagonist Joseph Frowenfeld, which suppress the connections between inter-American identities across diverse, revolutionary, creolistic worlds in Louisiana and the Gulf South. Unlike other studies examining traces of the Haitian Revolution in The Grandissimes, which tend to focus on the parallels between fictional and historical figures in Cable’s southern romance, this article dissects the subtle allusions to the revolution and the attendant diaspora found in the plantation infrastructures and the urban landscape of Cable’s Louisiana. In so doing, it demonstrates how Saint-Domingan migrants affirmed and reinvigorated the cultural landscape of the ‘Creole’ South and ‘circumvented’ the ideological spread of ‘Americanness’ at the time of the Louisiana Purchase, and during successive moments thereafter.     

Causes of Poverty in Old Age,Not a Structural Failing?

The failures of many nations in Africa to include programs on aging into their national and developmental agendas have put more elderly people in the region at risk of poverty. Adult children are in many cases hampered from providing financial support to elderly parents due to waves of economic difficulties in many of the countries. The views of 36 elderly Nigerians were sought on causes of poverty in old age through key informant interviews. Despite awareness of structural causes, the results point to the direction of belief that individuals also have significant roles in determining their own economic fate in old age.     

Spatial inequality of rural industrial development in China, 1989–1994

Rural industry, having benefited from market oriented reforms, has surpassed state owned industry and become the largest industrial sector in China since 1993. Using multiple indicators, this study reveals a highly unbalanced spatial distribution and an increase in inequality of rural industrial development. It also classifies the level of development at the provincial level from 1989 to 1994. The relationship between rural industrial development and internal and regional characteristics is analyzed by multiple regression analysis. A very high correlation between rural industrial development and regional market indicators resulted in the conclusion that rural industry is a market economic sector and its development is driven by market forces in China's dual economy. The spatial patterns of rural industrial development reflect the viable, even optimum, location patterns created by the experience of the market economy. Although government policies attempted to reduce the inequality of rural industrial development among regions, the widened gap between rich and poor in the period 1989–1994 demonstrated the strong impacts of the concentrating effects of market forces.     

Prevalence of discomfort/pain complaints and related factors in dental professionals of the public health service in Araucária, Paraná state, Brazil

This poster presents a study about the influence of gender related factors, age, body weight, time of service in the profession and practice of physical exercise on the prevalence of discomfort/pain complaints in dental professionals. The scope of this study was limited to 123 subjects, 84.24% of professionals in the public dental clinics, who answered the multidimensional analytical work questionnaire. The data suggest that the lack postural awareness can contribute to the maintenance of painful conditions and also the low commitment to self-care can perpetuate the state of musculoskeletal discomfort/pain, justifying the application of the ergonomics concepts in the workplace and systematic guidance to professionals to adopt a healthy lifestyle.