ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IN THE SOUTH: AN ANALYSIS OF THE DETERMINANTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT IN SUPERFUND

The intent of the present research is twofold. First, this study explores racial and class equity in the remediation of Superfund sites in the South (EPA Region IV) over three time periods related to reform in Superfund. Second, this research expands our conceptualization of procedural equity by assessing the impact of community involvement on site remediation and by exploring factors that predict community involvement. This research explores whether active communities realize greater rewards in terms of more desirable cleanup outcomes and a quicker pace of cleanup and examines who participates in remediation. Findings indicate that higher levels of community involvement can lengthen the remediation process as well as result in some less desirable forms of cleanup. Results also show that sites with a greater percentage of racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to participate in remediation, but the opposite is true for lower income communities. Implications of these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

TOURIST WORLDS: TOURIST ADVERTISING, RITUAL, AND AMERICAN CULTURE

Previous work on tourist advertising typically explains promotional imagery in terms of the economic interests of advertising or the social psychology of consumption. The symbolism and meaning of such material can also be interpreted through a cultural analysis of tourism as a secular ritual. If tourism is conceptualized as a social ritual that renews meaning and person through a structured, periodic break from everyday life, then tourist advertising becomes the cultural text that symbolically transforms ordinary places and times into extraordinary tourist worlds. In contemporary American culture, tourist advertising accomplishes this task by presenting tourist worlds as places of plentitude, nature, leisure, history, and paradise, thus transcending the earnest reality of urban, everyday life. This symbolic presentation is documented through a qualitative and quantitative analysis of verbal and visual imagery in the promotional literature of the 50 states.     

DEPRECIATION IN PRODUCTION ANALYSIS AND IN INCOME AND WEALTH ACCOUNTS: RESOLUTION OF AN OLD DEBATE

In this article, I propose a resolution for the long-standing controversy over depreciation. I develop, from capital theory, income and wealth accounting capital concepts and compare them with those from production analysis and productivity measurement. I conclude that depreciation in economic accounts is exactly the same measurement as in production analysis. As for empirical implications, market-based measures of depreciation are appropriate for economic accounts, provided they are appropriate empirical measures of economic depreciation.     

SEX OF CHILDREN: A COMMUNITY ANALYSIS OF PREFERENCES AND PREDETERMINATION ATTITUDES

A self-administered questionnaire concerning child sex preferences and attitudes toward the exercise of pre- and post-conception sex predetermination was distributed and retrieved from an urbanized area sample of 209 adults aged 18 to 50. A modified (i.e., truncated) version of McClelland's (1979) "stopping rule" measure method was used to assess child sex preferences. It confirmed and extended findings from earlier research in that male first children, but sex-balanced completed families, were preferred by the respondents. The use of either pre- or post-conception techniques of sex predetermination was favored by only a minority of the respondents, a very small minority when by the postconception method. Finally, it was evident that child sex preferences did not have a significant influence upon fertility intentions or upon attitudes toward the personal exercise of sex predetermination by either method.     

COMMUNITY FRAME ANALYSIS IN LOVE CANAL: UNDERSTANDING MESSAGES IN A CONTAMINATED COMMUNITY

This article addresses the development of frame analysis in understanding the environmental problems in a contaminated community. The problems at Love Canal, New York are examined through the use of local newspaper sources, government archives, and historical documents, such as activist and industry publications. Four distinct frame sources are examined at Love Canal: local newspaper coverage, community activists, government, and industry. These frames represent major differences in how the specific environmental and social problems at Love Canal were represented to the public. Specifically, contrasting opinions focus on four planks: the existence of a problem, victims of a problem, liability, and resettlement. Conclusions address the social construction of environmental problems and the dependence on direct experience when adopting frames. Understanding the messages that individuals receive in the time of environmental crisis is a critical step in understanding community response and reaction to the problem.     

FROM INEQUALITY TO DIFFERENCE: COLONIAL CONTRADICTIONS OF CLASS AND ETHNICITY IN 'SOCIALIST' CHINA

Through an historical ethnography of the imbrication of class and ethnicity in socialist China, this paper studies socialism as another kind of colonialism with its peculiar, contradictory ramifications of universalism and particularism. The ‘colonial’ cultural politics of socialism is explored in Inner Mongolia, the northern frontier of China, where the historical formation of the social and ethnic relationship defies any clear-cut dichotomy of colonizer and colonized. In the first half of the twentieth century, Inner Mongolia was colonized by Chinese warlords. Yet, at the same time, the majority of the Chinese population in Inner Mongolia were poor peasants leasing Mongol land. Nonetheless, the Mongols won a limited ethnic autonomy within China in 1947 by applying Leninist colonial liberation ideology, defining the Mongols as a collective group colonized by the Chinese. However,the socialist ideology based on class analysis of the social relationship during the land reform, effectively enabled the Chinese to designate many Mongols as class enemies, thereby justifying the redistribution of Mongol land among the Chinese who constituted the majority in Inner Mongolia. The ensuing ethnic violence forced Mongol leaders, who were both agents of the Chinese Communist Party and representatives of the Mongolian nationality, to press for an explicit nationality policy to defend the nominal ethnic autonomy of Inner Mongolia. Yet, this deployment of ethnic priniciple amid China's class struggle campaign was interpreted as betrayal of the socialist principle, thus leading to a collective Chinese violence against the Mongols during the Cultural Revolution. The paper suggests that, instead of a sterile debate of subaltern representation, which often reflects the scholars' own ‘position’ devoid of social context, an historical ethnography may better illustrate the historical contingencies in the practice of subalternity in socialist China.     

RELIGIOUS PARTICIPATION, ETHNIC IDENTIFICATION, AND ADAPTATION OF VIETNAMESE ADOLESCENTS IN AN IMMIGRANT COMMUNITY

This article addresses the role of religion in immigrant adaptation through the case of Vietnamese adolescents. Our results show that religious participation consistently makes a significant contribution to ethnic identification, which, in turn, facilitates positive adaptation of immigrant adolescents to American society by increasing the probability that adolescents will do well in school, set their sights on future education, and avoid some of the dangers that confront contemporary young people. These results suggest that an immigrant congregation does not function simply as a means of maintaining a psychologically comforting sense of ethnicity while group members drop ethnic traits in their day-to-day lives. Nor does identification with an ethnic group appear to limit life chances by binding group members to ethnic traits. On the contrary, the ethnic religious participation examined here, to a large extent, facilitates adjustment to the host society precisely because it promotes the cultivation of a distinctive ethnicity, that, in turn, helps young people to reach higher levels of academic achievement and to avoid dangerous and destructive forms of behavior.     

GOVERNING A GROUNDWATER COMMONS: A STRATEGIC AND LABORATORY ANALYSIS OF WESTERN WATER LAW

We examine strategic behavior in groundwater depletion within the setting of state governance of groundwater resources in the American West. Solving a dynamic common-pool resource model for its optimal solution and its subgame perfect equilibrium provides benchmarks for behavior observed in laboratory experiments. Three forms of legal rules—common-pool depletion with a "rule-of-capture" to establish ownership (absolute ownership doctrine), entry restrictions (prior appropriation doctrine), and stock quotas (correlative rights doctrine—are examined in terms of their impact on individual strategic behavior in laboratory experiments.     

SOCIAL DENSITY AND PUBLIC RITUAL IN NON-INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITIES

An implication of Durkheimian theory—that different types of rites and the elaborateness of public rituals are determined by social density—is empirically tested, using data available for 183 non-industrial communities derived from Murdock's Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. Support for the hypothesis is sustained even when alternative predicting variables are added. Contrary to social evolutionist theory, an increase in the division of labor does not appear to suppress ritual activity. This reaffirms the interest of some contemporary sociologists in ferreting out the forms and functions of ritual in modern societies.     

ESTIMATING COMMUNITY STANDARDS: THE USE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE EVIDENCE IN AN OBSCENITY PROSECUTION

Elements of the legal test for obscenity of sexually explicitmaterial indicted in a criminal case are examined. A cross-sectionof residents of Mecklenburg County (Charlotte, NC) were randomlyassigned to view either one of the sexually explicit films andthe sexually explicit magazine charged in the criminal case,or a control film. Before and after the viewing, residents judgedthe materials' appeal to a prurient interest (a shameful, morbid,unhealthy interest in sex) and patent offen siveness (communitytolerance for such material). The results indicated that therespondents felt that the films and magazine did not appealto a shameful, morbid, or unhealthy interest in sex, nor didthey perceive these materials as going beyond the level of toleranceregarding depictions of sexual conduct for the average adultin that community. A lower percentage of subjects thought thecommunity tolerated the materials they had just viewed thanwhen they were asked to report on what they personally tolerated.Fewer people felt the films appealed to a shameful, morbid,or unhealthy interest in sex after they had an opportunity tosee them than before viewing. The advantages of providing jurorsin obscenity cases with information about community standardsbased on summations of personal tolerance for materials actuallycharged in these cases, rather than hypothetical judgments aboutthe community and obscenity, is discussed.     

LOCAL SPORTS TEAMS AND CELEBRATION OF COMMUNITY: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE HOME ADVANTAGE

In major sports events between representatives of different cities, the home team has been known to have a major advantage over the visiting team. Drawing on Durkheim, Schwartz and Barsky (1977) have demonstrated that the social support of the audience is the main determinant of this advantage. In their conclusion, Schwartz and Barsky characterize sports events as a "celebration of local community"(p. 658). This article tests the celebration of community thesis by comparing the relative home advantage among 23 professional basketball teams during the 1981–82 season. Three broad variables are hypothesized to affect a team's home court advantage: (1) provincialism and stability of the city; (2) uniqueness of the home arena; and (3) the tradition of the team. Support is found for all three variables. Not only is there a home advantage in organized sports, but the magnitude of the advantage is itself bound by the social context within which the team performs.     

THE STATE OF COLLECTIVE RELIGIOSITY IN CANADA: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

On affirme que la spécialisation institutionnelle qui caractérise l'industrialisation est concomitante du déclin de la présence répandue de la religion. Soutenant de plus que les collectivités sont essentielles à la sustentation idéationnelle, l'auteur explore l'état du judéo-cristianisme dans un Canada s'industrialisant par un examen de la participation à la religion formelle. En se servant d'un cadre démographique de base, et de données de recensement et d'enquêtes, l'auteur commence par un apery général de la participation actuelle et ensuite examine les tendances à l'engagement. On constate que la religion formelle éprouve une baisse de participation que l'on trouve peu probable de s'inverser à l'avenir prévisible. L'auteur termine avec une discussion de la portée des constatations de ce genre pour la religion traditionnelle dans la société canadienne.
It is asserted that the institutional specialization which characterizes industrialization knows the concomitant of a decline in the pervasiveness of religion. Maintaining further that collectivities are essential to ideational sustenance, the author explores the state of Judaic-Christianity in an industrializing Canada through an examination of participation in organized religion. Using a basic demographic framework and census and survey data, he begins with an overview of current participation and then examines involvement trends. It is found that organized religion is experiencing a participation decline which is unlikely to reverse itself in the forseeable future. The author concludes with a discussion of the implications of such findings for traditional religion in Canadian society.