RELIGIOSITY,PEERS, AND DELINQUENCY: DOES RELIGIOSITY REDUCE THE EFFECT OF PEERS ON DELINQUENCY?

Do peer influences have the same effect on religious and nonreligious youth, or does religiosity reduce the effect of peers on delinquency? Using data from the National Youth Survey, we examined the interaction of religiosity and peer influences on marijuana use, alcohol use, hitting, and property offenses. The results suggest that, for marijuana use and alcohol use, three measures of peer influence—peer attitudes, behaviors, and pressure—have weaker effects on religious adolescents. Thus, even when religious youth are exposed to peers who encourage substance use, religiosity may serve as a protective factor that reduces the effect of peers. In contrast, religiosity does not seem to condition the effect of peers on hitting and property offenses.     

MEASURING AGGREGATE RELIGIOSITY IN THE UNITED STATES, 1952–2005

I present a method for measuring aggregate religiosity. The method allows one to combine many indicators of religiosity, even if the indicators measure only a portion of religiosity, or if the indicators are not measured every year of the series. I demonstrate the method by measuring aggregate religiosity of the US population from 1952 through 2005. The results show the sharp rise in religiosity during the 1950s, the decline beginning in the 1960s, and the slower decline since the 1970s. I present evidence of content and convergent validity of this new index.     

ON THE COVER

Yu Meihao graduated from the Central Institute of Arts and Crafts. Over the past ten years, the young fashion designer has won awards in numerous shows and     

ON THE COVER

SHEN Peiyi entered the Beijing Institute of Dancing in 1978. She graduated in 1986, but remained as a dancer with the Youth Song and Dance Ensemble of the institute. In 1988, she was named as national first class dancer because of her outstanding artistic achievement. At that time she was the youngest dancer to achieve this honor in the Chinese dancing field.     

WINDOW ON BEIJING

.内们J以山,‘脚司,目一」~咨沉飞竹呀份咏矫子二.,州。麟二全竺宣召二窿方盛职吮析翻i乙篮只监,欲汤瓷溉丫谜,艺宁砰L孟叫手划留WINDOW ON BEIJING     

NEW ON THE SHELF

This Life Before Author: SU SU Publisher: Shanghai Far-East Publishing House (first edition of Chinese version, December, 1996 and fourth print in September, 1997) A collection of precious photos of female Shanghainese culled from books, newspapers and magazines, coupled with poetic words and beautiful stories present readers with an enduring image of the vivid life of     

NEW ON THE SHELF

Daughter of the Mountain Chief Editor: He Zhonghua Published by Guizhou Nationalities Publishing House (first edition of Chinese version, Oct, 1998) Sub-titled: "Experience, Voice and Needs", this is the South-Western volume     

NEW ON THE SHELF

An Enduring Talent Author: ZHANG YUNHE Publisher: Joint Publishing Company (first edition of Chinese version, June 1999) This is a collection of autobiographic prose. The author Zhang Yunhe was born into a large family in Hefei, Anhui Province in south China. Her father Zhang Jiyou was in education and ran the Leyi Middle     

NEW ON THE SHELF

Writer: WANG ANYI Publisher: Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House (1st edition of Chinese version, May, 1998). Wang Anyi is one of the women writers of China whose work receives close attention. Her novels have been translated into many languages. Approaching A New Century is a collection of her prose which includes works from the end of the 1980s and     

NEW ON THE SHELF

A Survivor of the Chinese Revolution Author: Zeng Zhi Published by Guangdong People's Publishing House (First edition in Chinese, December, 1999) Zeng Zhi, one of the revolutionaries in the earlier Chinese Revolution led by the Communist Party of China, began her glorious career when she was only sixteen. She has experienced many incredible historical events during the Chinese     

YOU'VE WON,NOW WHAT? THE INFLUENCE OF LEGAL CHANGE ON GAY AND LESBIAN MOBILIZATION, 1974–1999

Research on movement outcomes primarily examines the conditions under which social movements influence the law. Less attention has been given to the influence that legal change might have on the movement's subsequent development. Does the achievement of legal goals help the movement mobilize or does the movement experience decline once change occurs? Using unique measures of gay and lesbian mobilization, I investigate the influence of legal change on the number of gay and lesbian movement organizations in each state from 1974 to 1999. Results demonstrate that the impact of legal change is contingent on the type of reform achieved and the cultural context surrounding the decision.     

职场"小白们",GO ON!

刮掉胡须,扎起领带,拿出尘封已久、只在学校舞会上穿过的皮鞋,背着借来的电脑包,早早从床上爬起赶着坐公车,对着朝阳默默地说:实习了,工作了,朝着理想、向着社会又走近一步了.     

职场“小白们”，GO ON!

刮掉胡须，扎起领带，拿出尘封已久、只在学校舞会上穿过的皮鞋，背着借来的电脑包，早早从床上爬起赶着坐公车，对着朝阳默默地说：实习了，工作了，朝着理想、向着社会又走近一步了。     

THE SITES OF THE FOURTH WORLD CONFERENCE ON WOMEN

The Beijing International Convention Center will be the conference hall for government delegations of the Fourth World Conference on Women. The Beijing International Convention Center was built in 1990. With advanced facilities, Chinese and Western-style cuisine, and comfortable surroundings, it is an ideal venue for     

DOES CORRUPTION ATTENUATE THE EFFECT OF RED TAPE ON EXPORTS?

I use firm ‐level data to examine whether corruption attenuates the adverse effects of red tape on exports. I find that, conditional on there being customs‐related red tape, a firm is better off if it can use bribes to lower the delay that it faces. However, I also find that corruption has a negative overall effect on a firm's decision to export. That is, corruption prevents some firms from entering the export market. These results suggest that to gauge the overall effect of corruption, we must compare its red‐tape attenuating effect with its adverse effect on a firm's decision to export. (JEL F10, F14, K42)     

COMMUNITY INFLUENCES ON WHITE RACIAL ATTITUDES: What Matters and Why?

Tracing the roots of racial attitudes in historical events and individual biographies has been a long-standing goal of race relations scholars. Recent years have seen a new development in racial attitude research: Local community context has entered the spotlight as a potential influence on racial views. The race composition of the locality has been the most common focus; evidence from earlier decades suggests that white Americans are more likely to hold anti-black attitudes if they live in areas where the African-American population is relatively large. However, an influential 2000 article argued that the socioeconomic composition of the white community is a more powerful influence on white attitudes: In low-socioeconomic status (SES) locales, “stress-inducing” deprivations and hardships in whites' own lives purportedly lead them to disparage blacks. The study reported here reassesses this “scapegoating” claim, using data from the 1998 to 2002 General Social Surveys linked to 2000 census information about communities. Across many dimensions of racial attitudes, there is pronounced influence of both local racial proportions and college completion rates among white residents. However, the economic dimension of SES exerts negligible influence on white racial attitudes, suggesting that local processes other than scapegoating must be at work.     

Soziologische Theorie,Handlungstheorie, Methoden,Familiensoziologie, Sozialstrukturanalyse,Raumsoziologie, Stadtsoziologie,Gedächtnissoziologie,Religionssoziologie

Literaturbesprechungen

Soziologische Theorie, Handlungstheorie, Methoden, Familiensoziologie, Sozialstrukturanalyse, Raumsoziologie, Stadtsoziologie, Ged?chtnissoziologie, Religionssoziologie     

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THE IMPACT OF FINANCIAL DEEPENING ON ECONOMIC GROWTH?

Although the finance‐growth relationship is now firmly entrenched in the empirical literature, we show that it is not as strong in more recent data as it was in the original studies with data for the period from 1960 to 1989. We consider several explanations. First, we find that the incidence of financial crises is related to the dampening of the effect of financial deepening on growth. Excessive financial deepening or too rapid a growth of credit may have led to both inflation and weakened banking systems which in turn gave rise to growth‐inhibiting financial crises. Excessive financial deepening may also be a result of widespread financial liberalizations in the late 1980s and early 1990s in countries that lacked the legal or regulatory infrastructure to exploit financial development successfully. However, we find little indication that liberalizations played an important direct role in reducing the effect of finance. Similarly, there is little evidence that the growth of equity markets in recent years has substituted for debt financing and led to a reduced role of financial deepening on growth. (JEL E44, G10, O40)     

ON THE NATURE OF FUTURE WORLDS? - CONSIDERATIONS OF VIRTUALITY AND UTOPIAS

It has been a widespread belief that computers can create viable utopias, design the future and plan and co-ordinate things such that the world can be born anew. The exponential increase in computing power has allowed for interaction in imaginary places - utopian spaces - and the endless re-configuration of those places. There are then good reasons to make links between the realm of the virtual and the creation of utopian and future worlds. We explore some of these links in this article. Having offered a preliminary discussion of the nature of traditional utopian and future world thinking, we then draw a distinction between stable state and flexible utopias, the former characterized by structurally fixed blueprints, the latter by the possibilities of virtual technologies which allow us endlessly to re-configure virtual spaces. This distinction leads us on to a debate that is implicit in the writings of Sherry Turkle and Richard Coyne, namely the analysis of the virtual from a Husserlian, as opposed to the dominant Heideggerian view. We defend a Husserlian analysis which, it is shown, better satisfies the concept of 'flexible utopias'. The totalizing existential experience by a Heideggerian analysis corresponds well to 'immersion' technologies e.g. games and VR, utopias as ready-mades but, a Husserlian approach allows us to account for the creative process of making utopian or future worlds using software such as interior design when one changes items ad infinitum as part of the normal practices of being a designer. In the conclusion we will pull together the strands of the article and, end by noting how the contemporary theorist, Robert Nozick complements our arguments when he offers a version of utopia as a meta-utopia of flexible utopias or future worlds!