Organizations and Alienation: The Mediation Hypothesis Revisited*

It is a widely accepted premise of mass society theory that voluntary associations play an important integrating role in modern society by mediating between the individual and the remote influences on life, work, and politics. There are two major variants of the mediation hypothesis: (1) purely social interaction within organizations lessens alienation in immediate relationships; (2) interaction accompanied by political exposures reduces alienation in the political domain. Controlling for social class, activity in instrumental, political groups is associated with significantly lower levels of political alienation. Activity in nonpolitical, social organizations is found to have more general attitudinal consequences—both for levels of social alienation and for estrangement from political processes. These patterns suggest that, despite the consistent effects of SES on nonalienative beliefs, voluntary associations provide independent settings of social and political integration.     

The role of remote sensing in habitat

The potential role of remote sensing in promoting the well-being of human settlements is identified. This was accomplished by formulating a closed loop system for habitat, wherein it requires a continuous feedback between the flow of information derived from remote sensing and the consequences of managerial decisions to control the basic characteristics of the human settlements, e.g. its environment, utilization of resources, early warning of natural hazards, etc. In addition, applications of remote sensing in both global scale and mesoscale for habitat are documented.     

Evaluating vehicle inspection/maintenance programs using on-road emissions data. The Atlanta Reference Method

On-road remote sensing data is an increasingly popular source of evaluation information for vehicle inspection/maintenance (I/M) programs. This article conducts one such remote sensing data evaluation for the Atlanta, Georgia, I/M program. The reference method involves comparing emissions differences in I/M and non-I/M fleet vehicles with those predicted by a regulatory computer model. Assuming that on-road emissions differences represent observed effectiveness and model-predicted emissions differences represent effectiveness goals, the Atlanta enhanced I/M program appears to be achieving 83% of its targeted emissions reductions. The method compares favorably with other remote sensing evaluation methods in its ability to be applied over time and its relatively small sample size requirement. The chief limitation to the approach is its reliance on a representative non-I/M fleet, which may differ in characteristics for which controls are difficult to locate. Such potential confounding factors include discrepancies in maintenance trends, socioeconomic conditions, and vehicle quality.     

Working with social complexity in a neoliberal society: challenges for social work in Estonia

This article deals with Estonian social workers' perspectives on the fundamentals of the social work profession in a society where radical social, political, and economic changes have occurred within a very short period of time. Estonia typically figures as a model country, sometimes as a positive model, sometimes as a negative one, but according to most commentators, Estonia has pursued social and economic transformations in a particularly dramatic way. Social workers have recognized that radical changes have created new types of problems and social work should deal with vulnerable people and families under uncertain and unforeseeable conditions. Estonia is a challenging example to understand social work in the context of a neoliberal market society. It is therefore necessary to find out what the new challenges for the development of social work as a profession are. This article explores a ‘direction’ toward which social work in Estonia is developing, focusing mainly on the influence of the Estonian political context. The results of the research are relevant to the entire social work profession, insomuch as they address questions about the essence of social work and the ethical principles of the social work profession in society and how they can be strongly influenced by neoliberal thinking and increasing complexity.     

Between Revolution and Defeat: Student Protest Cycles and Networks

This article reviews the literature on student protest movements, during and after the mass mobilisations of the 1960s. It considers the usefulness of the major social movement frameworks that have been applied to student protest movements. The first part of the article explains how the new social movement paradigm developed from the wave of 1960s protests in the United States and Europe. This was because of a rare conjunction of social and political structural societal changes and dynamics within the student population. The second part considers student protest movements in authoritarian regimes. In particular, how the political process approach allows for an analysis of student protests after the 1960s within and outside of the occident. The third considers the relatively recent application of social network analysis to student protests and the politicising effect of the university campus. Finally, the article concludes by arguing that student protest movements are not a homogenous phenomenon. Their dynamics and the political structures they challenge vary between countries. Furthermore, although the conditions of student life and the rapid turnover of generations suggest sustained long-term political activity is not possible, recent research drawing upon social network analysis suggests political activity across student generations may be maintained.     

Double disenchantment of politics: A systems theory approach to post‐socialist transformation

Many social scientists argue that the precarious future of post‐socialist societies is determined by cultural constraints to which the actors of transformation are exposed. In contrast to this approach, the paper focuses on those developmental obstacles which are inherent to the structure of post‐socialist societies. The analysis draws primarily on social systems theory, especially on the theory of functional differentiation. In the first part, the changing role of political actors is dealt with. The competitive nature of the democratic political process have forced the new and old political actors to adopt a pragmatic and professional attitude towards their activity. Not all of them, however, have been able to adapt to the new rules of the political game. Adaptation problems are mostly faced by those political actors who played a decisive role in the initial stages of democratization on the basis of their informal political influence. The second part of the paper focuses on the changes related to the societal functions of the democratic political system. Irrespective of the ambitions of political actors, democratic politics is inherently ‘unsuitable’ for the extensive regulation of society. A democratic political system presupposes a relatively high ability of other societal subsystems to rely on self‐regulation. The absence of this ability is an important source of systemic tensions in post‐socialist societies. These two sets of changes can be characterized as the double disenchantment of politics. Both on the systemic level and on the level of actors politics has lost many attributes of a ‘privileged’ societal activity. But the process of disenchantment can give rise to demands for a revival of the politics of ‘great deeds’.     

An Age–Period–Cohort Analysis of Political Tolerance in the United States

We employ hierarchical age–period–cohort models and the 1974–2010 General Social Survey data to examine changes in the political tolerance of gays and lesbians, communists, racists, and anti‐religionists. Results show period‐based growth in political tolerance, cohort‐based growth in tolerance of anti‐religionists, baby boomers are particularly tolerant, and political tolerance is associated with changes in college education. The findings suggest that liberalizing trends in political tolerance are largely motivated by changes among Americans as a whole, not cohort replacement, that baby boomers are unique in their social and political perspectives, and that aggregate changes in higher education are correlated with changes in political tolerance.     

State ideology and the status of Iranian war widows

Imbedded in widowhood are emotional loss and change in personal life. For women, depending on social constructions of gender relations, widowhood can also lead to identity change, role adjustment and change in social status. Socio-economic and emotional supports rendered by family, community and society at large can highly impact widows in coping with change and making adjustments. These changes and the corresponding societal supports find new dimensions for ‘war widows’. The political nature of their widowhood may provide them with some benefits not enjoyed by non-war widows. As a token of public gratitude, political regimes compensate war widows and their children for their losses. Some political regimes weave political ideology into their compensatory programs, and through these programs they simultaneously raise widows' self-sufficiency and control their lives and thoughts. The specific case of the Islamic Republic of Iran will be examined here.     

Crafting social change: former global factory workers negotiating new identities in Sri Lanka’s villages

This article explores how former factory workers negotiate new identities in villages, as new brides, mothers and daughters-in-law, after 5–6 years of employment in an urban Free Trade Zone. I argue that their performances of self-discipline and disavowal of transgressive knowledges allow them to make use of the limited social, economic and political spaces available while gradually reshaping local understandings about the good daughter-in-law. Former workers’ strategic deployment of social conformity represents the foundation on which their entry into village social, economic, political spaces is based on. Although individual social conformity would conventionally be identified as everyday politics, I argue that former workers’ performance of self-discipline and social conformity is strategic and leads to changes in gender norms and village social hierarchies and thus represents a form of politics that is in between everyday and transformative politics – politics that creates conditions of possibility for social transformations.     

Intellectual property and industrialization: legalizing hope in economic growth

This article draws on theoretical resources from economic sociology and sociology of law to intervene in economic debates about the relationship between intellectual property and industrialization. Utilizing historical evidence from the earliest period of American intellectual property law and from a formative company in the New England textile industry, I propose a social process of influence that connects intellectual property law to industrialization. I argue that, consistent with the findings of New Economic Sociology, social relationship structures and social capital are the proximate influential force in industrialization. However, I also argue that transformative changes in those social relationship structures are rooted in the emergence of a particular type of political culture: what I call here, borrowing from Hannah Arendt and Frank Dobbin, a “Natal-Industrial Culture.” A Natal-Industrial Culture, as I propose it here, is a political culture in which collective hopes for the future are placed in new technologies and new cultural products, as means for achieving economic growth. Intellectual property law contributed to the emergence of this new type of political culture by holding out the promise of property, as a reward for the provision of new technologies or new cultural products. Because of the way that hope works on motivation—through cognitive pre-rehearsals of future attainment, which involve semantically-meaningful propositions and contribute to positive emotional experience—the promise of property provided a powerful stimulant to social capital formation. Working through the semantic resonances of property, intellectual property law contributed to a political culture in which invention and creativity were expected to secure a future of growth within the political community, both for particular members and for the political community, as a whole. By fostering a Natal-Industrial Culture, intellectual property law contributed to systematic invention and social capital-formation, leading, in turn, to the transformative changes in working and material provisioning that constitute industrialization.     

The Implications for Participatory Fisheries Management of Intensified Commercialization on Lake Victoria

ABSTRACT Participation by stakeholders in fisheries management has become widely accepted. It is held that it increases both the effectiveness and the legitimacy of management. Many empirical studies of fisheries management, however, have found that political struggles over the profits from fishing drive management decisions. The present paper looks to sociological debates about agency, structure, and embeddedness for guidance in theorizing about the social dimensions of fisheries management in a way that considers both the need for participation and the political economy of the fishery. It argues that focusing on the effect that economic and political structures have on communications between stakeholder groups is one way to link participation and political economy, and we present the management of the Nile perch on Lake Victoria in Tanzania as a case study. The paper evaluates potentials for participatory management by asking how changes in economic and political realities affect stakeholders'claims about the resource, create social distances that affect communications, and privilege particular claims and perspectives. The paper concludes that management measures are undercut when they ignore the needs of groups excluded from the resource. Effective management of the Nile perch fishery is possible, but would require changes in the approaches of the responsible agencies.     

The Historical Political Ecological and Political Economic Context of Mohawk Efforts at Land Reclamation in the Mohawk Valley

The purpose of this article is to elaborate on the history of the relationship between the political ecological and political economic changes occurring in the Mohawk communities in the Saint Lawrence river valley during the Twentieth Century with three Mohawk efforts at land reclamation in Upstate New York and the reestablishment of a Mohawk residential community in the ancestral homelands of the Mohawk river valley. I demonstrate how each of these efforts is conceptualized and should be understood in historical materialist terms as a social response to the changing social, economic, ecological, and political conditions in those communities and the processes involved in the reshaping and remaking of those communities.     

Extending the local: activist types and forms of social media use in the case of an anti-mining struggle

As political activists increasingly use social media in local protests, scholars must redirect attention from large-scale campaigns to scrutinize the ways in which geographically confined actors use social media to engage in protests. This paper analyses how a 2013 anti-mining campaign in Kallak, Sweden, combined on-site resistance with social media strategies via Facebook pages. The study examines which activist roles and forms of social media use that emerged and aims to explore what larger practical and theoretical implications one can derive from this specific case of place-based struggles. Results show that three typologically distinct activist roles emerged during the protests: local activists, digital movement intellectuals and digital distributors. These different types of actors were involved in four different forms of social media use: mobilization, construction of the physical space, extension of the local and augmentation of local and translocal bonds. Based on our findings, we argue that the coming together of these different activist roles and the different uses of social media added a translocal dimension to the peripheral and physically remote political conflict in Kallak. Media users were able to extend a locally and physically situated protest by linking it to a global contentious issue such as the mining boom and its consequences for indigenous populations.     

Status Discrepancy,Political Behavior,and Ethno-Religious Factionalism of Immigrants

Abstract

The kind and direction of reactions of status discrepant persons to their social position are conditioned by their self-perception which reflects the effects of background factors prior to the changes in their social standing. The greater the awareness of status discrepancy the greater the probability that status discrepant persons will intensify their social activities. Depending upon their self-perception and prospects for the realization of their aspirations, status discrepant persons may become attracted to either political liberalism or political conservativism. The negative status discrepancy which has resulted under the pressure of forces outside the control of status discrepant persons will most probably lead to political conservativism. If status discrepancy is accompanied by status ambiguity and role confusion of a significant number of members of a group anomic factionalism may ensue.     

Public relations practice and political change in South Africa

South Africa has undergone one of the most drastic political changes of the late 20th century. Its 45-year tradition of public relations practice and education allows for the study of change on practice. Results indicate public relations becomes more important and strategic during times of change, and while affecting change it is also affected by change. Practitioners felt they made an important contribution to social upliftment and black economic empowerment. The more democratic political environment forced practitioners to be more aware of important political constituencies, particularly community and grassroots publics who hold high symbolic value. Cross-cultural communication became more important but also problematic.     

Neighborhood Organization and Local Social Action:

This case study examines the history, structure and social, economic, and political changes of an urban neighborhood in Ohio, and how local social actors and organizations affect those changes. The data are based on personal interviews, meeting minutes, newsletters, newspaper articles, and other documentation and materials. The analysis shows that (1) individual social actors are the most important factors in bringing about change consistent with the local social action system, (2) there is a significant and positive relationship between the economic condition of the neighborhood and the success of the changes in the neighborhood, (3) changes consistent with the local social action system are most effectively induced when various organizations and social groups are organized independently of each other but at the same time associated through coalition activities, and (4) the larger urban system (both political and economic systems) in which the neighborhood is located can have strong influence on the neighborhood change.     

IT'S ALL ABOUT POWER:

What happens to rural communities in remote raw materials-rich regions when their definitions of the region's natural resources are confronted with competing and incompatible definitions presented and enforced by external actors? The social constructionist approach in environmental sociology provides an essential counterbalance to environmental determinism, but this article argues that in many contexts social construction is actually a process of the imposition of external actors' material interests over the objections of local groups. New historical materialism, via an interdisciplinary and multimethod research strategy, analyzes the changing definitions and uses of the Brazilian Amazon as a revelatory case study of the political economy and ecology of this process and its consequences for nature, rural communities, and indigenous peoples.     

The impact of globalization on social work in the UK

Since the late 1980s social work in the UK has undergone a period of unremitting change affecting its organizational structure, value-base, and service users. There has been a regrettable narrowness of scope in the social work literature on such changes, as analysis has been limited to policy and service delivery issues, which treat such changes as if they were simply new technical responses to the problems of reorganizing social services. We argue that such analyses do not engage sufficiently with the complex dynamics driving these changes and that there is a need to contextualize change in social work against the wider political and economic context. The transformative nature of the contemporary period is posited with reference to the impact of global macro-level forces and the ways that these interact with national and political variables on micro-level forms of social work practice. This paper reviews selective literature on globalization and draws linkages with changes in social services at the agency and practitioner level in the UK.     

Les professionnels du droit comme acteurs du politique : revue critique de la littérature nord-américaine et enjeux pour une importation en Europe continentale

For many years, North-American social sciences have been analyzing legal professionals as political actors, while in Continental Europe the relationship among law, politics, and society has remained under-examined. At the moment, a central project for US sociolegal studies is exporting to other political and legal contexts hypotheses previously tested inside US borders, raising the question of the generalizability and/or the globalization of US socio-legal analyses. After briefly describing why social sciences have been focusing on law and social changes in the United States, this article aims to determine what prerequisites are necessary for exporting sociolegal studies outside the US, devoting particular attention to historically contingent —and nationally-distinct— relations between law, political power and the social sciences.     

Women's Suffrage and Political Culture:

This article addresses a recent Swiss example of the lengthy process by which women were included in state politics. It is argued that this inclusion was delayed through a complex array of sociopolitical factors, including federal pressure and hesitation, changes in the state's demography and political culture, and an issue displacement from what should have been a case of women's rights to a threat to an old, male-dominated sovereign political institution. The case illustrates successful conservative political activism among women and, hence, challenges the assumption that change can only be accomplished through radical social transformation.