Fifty Years of the Southern Sociological Society: Change and Continuity in a Professional Society. Methodological Perspectives on Studying the History of the Southern Sociological Society

This paper revisits research procedures used to collect and analyze data for Fifty Years of the Southern Sociological Society: Change and Continuity in a Professional Society (1988) to comment on methodological issues. The fifty years of change were conceptualized as having shifted the Southern Sociological Society from a disciplinary to a professional mode of organization. The shift occurred both from evolutionary processes and from deliberate revolutionary actions of officials and members. Data for the study came mainly from the Society’s Archives. It included personal accounts by presidents, secretary-treasurers’ and committee reports, annual programs and newsletters. Evolutionary processes of adapting the association to the growth of membership, to differentiation of fields of sociological study, along with the rationalization and formalization of the Society’s governance and operation, were extracted mainly from annual programs, the most continuous and objective body of archival information. Revolutionary changes, including adaptation to societal challenges including racial segregation, from the Society’s founding onward were inferred from personal accounts, committee reports, and newsletters, and were confirmed from interviews with long-standing members.     

Optimal voting rules for two-member tenure committees

A tenure committee first votes on whether to hire a candidate; if it does, it receives an informative performance signal, and then votes on whether to tenure the candidate; rejection at either stage returns the committee to a candidate pool, endogenising the value of the outside option. A candidate’s fate depends only on the behaviour of two ‘weather-vane’ committee members. Committee members may vote against favoured candidates if the weather-vane is opposed; enthusiastic assessments by one of these weather-vanes may harm a candidate’s chances by increasing others’ thresholds for hiring him; sunk time costs may lead voters who voted against hiring to vote for tenuring him, even after a poor probationary performance. For two member committees that are patient and perceptive, the optimal voting rule is a (weak) majority at the hiring stage and unanimity at the tenure stage; when such committees are impatient or imperceptive, the double (weak) majority rule is optimal. Perversely, the performance of a patient, imperceptive committee improves as its perceptiveness further declines. Consistent with practice, falling threshold rules are not optimal. Results on optimal voting rules are also presented in limit cases as committee members’ beliefs become more correlated. Finally, we compare the model to a discrete-time European options model.     

The Chairman’s Paradox Revisited

This paper re-examines the so-called ‘chairman’s paradox‘ that was first noticed by Farquharson in his path breaking tract on sophisticated voting, Theory of Voting (1969). The Chairman’s paradox is concerned with the case of a three member committee in which a particular player who has a regular and a tie-breaking vote – the ‘chairman’ – not only will do worse in specific instances under the plurality procedure for three alternatives than if he did not have such a vote, but will also do worse overall. That is, the chairman’s a priori probability of success (‘getting what one wants’) for all possible games with linear (strict) preference orders is lower than that of the two regular members. It is demonstrated that this result, which comes about if voters act strategically rather than sincerely, is not as robust as it has been thought to be. By merely replacing the standard assumption of linear preference orders with weak preference orders, which allow for indifference, we can escape from the paradox for the canonical case of three players and three alternatives. With weak preference orders, the a priori success of the chairman is now greater than that of the other two players. We also point to a new paradox of sophisticated voting.     

Parties with Policy Preferences and Uncertainty over Voter Behavior

The equilibrium redistributive policy proposals of two parties with policy preferences are studied. Each party’s ideal policy coincides with that of citizens having a particular income level, and the party’s utility function reflects its attitude to the trade-off between the choice of preferred policy and the likelihood of victory. When parties face uncertainty about citizens’ abstention from voting, divergent equilibrium proposals are derived which are more moderate than their contrasting ideal policies. Political equilibria under different prior beliefs on abstention are then compared. It is shown that a lower likelihood of abstention in a particular income group induces both parties to make proposals catering to that group, in equilibrium.An erratum to this article can be found at     

The organizational politics of the ASA

The American Sociological Association’s Report on Future Organizational Trends arose from worries that the ASA is disintegrating into a conglomerate of mutually oblivious specialities. The proliferation of sections was regarded as an aspect of this disintegration that the ASA might be able to control. But the committee charged with examining the problem of sections concluded that section expansion has become a major form of political mobilization within the association, and that sections act as a counterweight to the bureaucratic centralization of the ASA as a whole. On balance, the committee opted for the local vitalization going on in sections as against the more abstract concerns of the ASA central governing bodies. His books includeWeberian Sociological Theory (1986),Theoretical Sociology (1988), andSociology of Marriage and Family: Gender, Love and Property (third edition co-authored with Scott Coltrane, 1990).     

Reconsidering the Temporal Increase in Fathers’ Time with Children

Using the 1977 Quality of Employment Survey and the 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce this study showed that the temporal increase in fathers’ time with children was three times larger on non-workdays than workdays. Multivariate analyses revealed that both work (e.g., job autonomy) and family (presence of young children, dependence on wives’ earnings) factors increased men’s time with children. A decomposition analysis showed that changes in men’s behavior accounted for 70% of the temporal increase in fathers’ time with children, and that structural change in work and family life (especially wives’ increased contributions to household income) accounted for the remaining 30%. The implications of these findings and the need for further study of these issues were briefly discussed.     

Analyzing gender in public places: Rethinking Goffman’s vision of everyday life

In this study, I discuss critically some of Goffman’s work on public places, with regard to how that work represents women’s experience in public and how women’s experience changes the notions of public places that Goffman portrayed. I draw on an eighteen-month participant observation of one small city (Santa Fe, NM) and a set of in-depth interviews done with both female and male residents of the city. Here, I concentrate on three areas: the normalized distaste for public places that is encouraged in women by their fear of crime in public and the measures they are informed they must take as crime-conscious pedestrians and shoppers; street remarks that are often difficult to manage and impossible to resolve successfully; and access information—information the woman discloses that can be used as a clue to her identity and home and, potentially at least, as ammunition for further harassment of her. I use these areas to illustrate how gender-conscious appraisal is necessary in order to appreciate the character of public places. Her book,Urban Ritual, is forthcoming from University of California Press.     

The effect of experience on faculty attitudes toward collective bargaining: A cross-temporal analysis

We used multivariate analysis to investigate the change in the attitudes and expectations of AAUP members in a Midwestern university. Two models were developed to measure faculty attitudes toward the union, at the time of the election and four years after the election. The effect of experience on faculty attitudes toward the union is captured by comparing the results of the two models. Our findings suggest major differences in faculty attitudes and expectations prior to and after the union’s arrival. The results of our study have essential policy implications for unions in formulating successful strategies and for faculty in developing realistic expectations of collective bargaining.     

Generic difference of expected vote share and probability of victory maximization in simple plurality elections with probabilistic voters

In this paper I examine single member, simple plurality elections with n ≥ 3 probabilistic voters and show that the maximization of expected vote share and maximization of probability of victory are “generically different” in a specific sense. More specifically, I first describe finite shyness (Anderson and Zame in Adv Theor Econ 1:1–62, 2000), a notion of genericity for infinite dimensional spaces. Using this notion, I show that, for any policy in the interior of the policy space and any candidate j, the set of n-dimensional profiles of twice continuously differentiable probabilistic voting functions for which simultaneously satisfies the first and second order conditions for maximization of j’s probability of victory and j’s expected vote share at is finitely shy with respect to the set of n-dimensional profiles of twice continuously differentiable probabilistic voting functions for which satisfies the first and second order conditions for maximization of j’s expected vote share.     

Talcott parsons and the “far east” at Harvard, 1941–48: Comparative institutions and national policy

This article traces the involvement of Talcott Parsons in research and teaching about Asian nations, especially China and Japan, in the period of World War II. The data indicate that, in contrast to his Eurocentric image, Parsons worked to develop a global perspective in studies on comparative institutions. This approach, inspired by the sociology of Max Weber, also addressed the practical needs of policy makers in connection with the war effort. Within Parsons’s intellectual biography, it stands between the “voluntaristic” framework of his early treatise, The Structure of Social Action (1937) and the later non-historical formalism of The Social System (1951) for which he is perhaps most famous. An understanding of this relatively unknown phase of Parsons’s work is therefore indispensable for an adequate appreciation of his career as a whole.     

“Public Policy is Like Having a Vaudeville Act”: Languages of Duty and Difference among Think Tank-Affiliated Policy Experts

This research note uses in-depth interviews, ethnographic observations, and archival records to examine the self-understandings of think tank-affiliated policy experts. I argue that policy experts draw on a series of idioms—those of the academic scholar, the political aide, the entrepreneur, and the media specialist—to construct a unique albeit synthetic professional identity. The essence of the policy expert’s role lies in a continuous effort to balance and reconcile the contradictory imperatives associated with these idioms. An analysis of the policy expert’s mixed “professional psyche” offers a useful point of entry into the objective social structure of the think tank.     

Fieldwork in forbidden terrain: The U.S. state and the case of Cuba

This paper introduces the concept of forbidden research terrains and examines one such terrain in detail: post-revolutionary Cuba. After exploring the characteristics of this forbidden research terrain, the paper examines how it was initially created. Through an historical analysis of U.S.-Cuban relations between 1959 and mid-1960, Cuba’s forbidden designation is shown to be the result of U.S. actions prompted by the very broad conception of U.S. interests held by state decision makers. Next, the consequences of Cuba’s forbidden status are investigated and found to include heightened state power in the foreign policy arena. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of other possible forbidden research terrains which are also politically inspired. Some of her past work on the politics of workers’ control in post-revolutionary Cuba has been published inLatin American Perspectives andWorld Development. Currently she is comparing unions in Cuba with those in the GDR.     

Some startling inconsistencies when electing committees

We generalize the idea of a Condorcet winner to committee elections to select a Condorcet committee of size m. As in the case of a Condorcet winner, the Condorcet committee need not exist. We adapt two methods to measure how far a set of m candidates is from being the Condorcet committee. In particular, we generalize a procedure proposed by Lewis Carroll for selecting the candidate that is closest to being the Condorcet winner to allow the selection of a committee. We also generalize Kemenys method, which gives a complete transitive ranking, to the selection of committees and show that it is closely related to the first method.We show that these methods lead to some surprising inconsistencies. For example, the committee of size k may be disjoint from the committee of size j or they may overlap in any manner, the committee arising from Carrolls method may appear at any locations in the Kemeny ranking, and except for two highly restrictive cases, the members of the committee arising from Kemenys method may appear at any location in the Kemeny ranking. The author wishes to express his thanks to Don Saari for his conversations and suggestions for the paper and to the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences at the University of California at Irvine where the initial work for this paper took place. He also wishes to thank the anonymous reviewer whose careful reading and suggestions greatly improved the paper.     

“Why Don’t You Just Tell Me How You Feel?”: A Case Study of a Young Mother in an Attachment-Based Group Intervention

This paper describes an attachment-based parenting intervention, the Circle of Security, and presents a case study of one participant’s experience as a member of it. The Circle of Security is a group intervention for parents of young children ages 1–5 that teaches parents to recognize and respond to their children’s alternating needs for attachment and exploration. The intervention content in group sessions relies to a great extent on discussions of videotaped vignettes of each parent–child dyad. Ultimately, the intervention focuses on strengthening parents’ capacities for empathic responsiveness to their children’s needs for them. In the second part of the paper, the case study illustrates one mother’s experience in a Circle of Security group designed for parents involved with the child welfare system as a result of substantiated maltreatment. Observations of this parent indicate that her capacity for empathic understanding was greatly strengthened, which appears to be related to important behavior change.     

Trends in the Albanian Labour Market: Who are Albania’s Unemployed?

Albania’s experience with transition is unlike most Eastern European countries. In particular, transition started from a deeply impoverished state, proceeded faster than other countries in the region, and was disrupted by financial sector crises. In addition, Albania experienced extreme population movements both abroad (to as many as twenty different countries) and within the country (from rural areas to major cities). All these changes combined have altered the composition of the local labour force in unknown ways. Understanding who Albania’s unemployed are at present is important for policy decisions, especially given the double-digit unemployment rates of the last decade. In addition, employment stabilization policies in Albania are important from an international perspective, since Albania exports about 15–20% of its labour force to neighbouring countries. This paper uses administrative data from one of the largest, recently established labour offices, to gain insights into the composition and characteristics of Albania’s unemployed.     

A theory of voting patterns and performance in private and public committees

We compare play in private and public committees when insiders care both about how well the committee decision serves organizational goals, and about the rewards which outsiders give for representing their interests. We show that a private committee reaches decisions which better serve organizational goals than either a public committee or the median insider choosing alone; and that a committee can only exhibit a norm of consensus if insiders vote in private. Finally, any insider who does not vote for a private committee’s decision must vote for a decision which better serves organizational goals; whereas a dissident in a public committee votes for a decision which worse serves organizational goals.     

Potential and Possibility: Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and Social Change with Incarcerated Patients

In the present paper, Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power is used to illustrate how the practice of psychodynamic psychotherapy in a prison-based mental health treatment program constitutes both a psychological and sociological intervention, congruent with clinical needs of this particular population. The author draws from psychodynamic theory, Bourdieu’s framework and her experience as a clinical social worker with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.     

The spatial model with non-policy factors: a theory of policy-motivated candidates

The theoretical literature on two candidate elections is dominated by symmetric contests and vote-maximizing candidates. These models fail to capture two important features of real elections. First, most elections pit a stronger candidate against a weaker one. Second, candidates care not only about holding office, but also about policy outcomes. Ignoring any one of these features means we will fail to capture an important dynamic—strong candidates must balance their desire to change policy with their need to win the election. We provide conditions for the existence of an equilibrium in the spatial model with non-policy factors, when candidates are policy motivated. We provide a characterization of ‘regular’ equilibria and show that there exists at most one regular equilibrium. We provide conditions that guarantee that all equilibria are regular. We derive comparative statics for the model and show that increasing a candidate’s non-policy advantage causes that candidate to move towards his ideal point.     

Robert K. Merton as postwar prophet

Within the context of a discussion of Robert K. Merton’s ideas on leadership in postwar America, the article examines the nature and impact of Merton’s “sociological parables.” This term refers to short tales from social life from which sociological lessons with moral implications can be drawn. These parables, such as the bank insolvency story told in “The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy,” illustrate the manner in which Merton merged moral and sociological messages in his writings. Suggestions are made along the lines that these parables, or at least the moral messages they contain, contributed to Merton’s postwar fame. His most recent publications are “Simmel’s Contribution to Parsons’ Action Theory and Its Fate,” in Michael Kaern, ed.Georg Simmel and Contempory Sociology (Kluwer, 1990); and “Robert K. Merton’s Extension of Simmel’sUbersehbar” inSociological Theory, Spring 1990.     

Experts,ideas, and policy change: the Russell Sage Foundation and small loan reform, 1909–1941

Between 1909 and 1941, the Russell Sage Foundation (RSF) was actively involved in crafting and lobbying for policy solutions to the pervasive problem of predatory lending. Using a rich assortment of archival records, I build upon political learning theory by demonstrating how institutional conditions and political pressures – in addition to new knowledge gained through scientific study and practical experience – all contributed to the emergence and development of RSF experts’ policy ideas over the course of this 30-year period. In light of these findings, I suggest that policy ideas and political interests are mutually constitutive, and that the notion that ideas must be shown to operate independent of interests in order to “prove” that they matter in policymaking is misguided. Furthermore, I discuss the implications of the remarkable success of RSF’s policy proposals for current understandings of institutional change. In particular, I argue that the passage of RSF’s controversial Uniform Small Loan Law in 34 states suggests that political actors’ collective agency can produce significant policy reforms in a context of normal policymaking without the intervention of major destabilizing events.

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