PARTY IDENTIFICATION, STATUS, AND RACE IN THE SOUTH: 1952-1972

This article describes the redistributions in political partyidentifications that have taken place in the South in the lasttwenty years and analyzes the changing relationships betweenstatus, race, and party in the South compared to the rest ofthe nation.     

BEYOND THE BIBLE AND THE CROSS: A SOCIAL AND CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF CHINESE ELDERS' PARTICIPATION IN CHRISTIAN CONGREGATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES

Mainland Chinese elders constitute a unique group in popular Christian participation and conversion. This work aims to explore the social contexts and cultural facets of Mainland Chinese elders' Christian practice in the United States. Based on face-to-face, in-depth interviews with 20 Mainland Chinese elders as well as participant observation at selected congregational settings, this study suggests that the existing theories on aging and religion as well as religious practice among immigrants are inadequate to explain Chinese elderly immigrants' participation in Christian congregations in the U.S. Instead, social isolation and lack of social support system resulting from immigration and aging process serve as the major drive for the elders to pursue social and cultural recognition from Chinese Christian gatherings. Besides religious services, social service functions of churches and opportunities for fellowship are other factors that explain Chinese elders' church involvement. In conclusion, we argue that social and cultural services are needed to particularly assist Chinese seniors to adjust and adapt to their elderly lives in the host country.     

INNOCENT VIOLENCE: SOCIAL EXCLUSION,IDENTITY, AND THE PRESS IN AN AFRICAN DEMOCRACY

The violent attacks on African immigrants and refugees in marginal settlements surrounding South Africa's largest cities in May 2008 occasioned a rush of mostly well-intentioned attempts by journalists, public intellectuals, and government officials to discover the causes and find the cures for the outbreak. This article interrogates the glosses of “xenophobia” and “social deprivation” that were all too quickly applied to explain the attacks in public representations of this sorry episode in South Africa's post-apartheid history. The account of the focal events is based on a thorough sifting of press reports; victims', perpetrators', and police testimonies; government and civil society spokespersons' interventions; and field research. Rather than providing a monovocal, hierarchical argument for one or another analysis emerging from the reportage, this article juxtaposes complex and conflicting local accounts, justifications, forces, and circumstances to provide an intriguing if ultimately at this early stage irresolvable image of these tragic events. The implications for South African social identities, institutions, and democratic order, however, are at the end all too clearly illuminated.     

IMPLICATION ANALYSIS: A PRAGMATIC PROPOSAL FOR LINKING THEORY AND DATA IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Sociology and other social sciences struggle to emulate a model of scientific evidence that is often inappropriate. Not only do social researchers encounter special limits, but they are also handicapped by a distorted and idealized picture of practices in the "hard sciences." Ironically, while often obliged to use data of lower quality, sociology employs standards for evaluating a theory that are not attained in the hard sciences. After a brief review of these obstacles, we describe a set of procedures for using empirical data to rigorously evaluate theories and hypotheses without resorting to the mimicking of hard science. The interaction between theory and evidence normally involves deriving implications from the theory (usually referred to as hypotheses) and then ascertaining how closely the empirical evidence meets these implications. The appropriateness of the implications is a key factor in the entire operation, linking as they do the data and the theory. The evaluation of a theory is no better than the theory's implications (as generated by the investigator) coupled with the quality and appropriateness of the evidence. It is our impression, however, that because this step is insufficiently addressed, there are unnecessary problems in the evaluation of theories. We use the term "Implication Analysis" to describe our efforts to review and improve current procedures.     

THE IRRUPTION OF TRANCE IN CONTEMPORARY YORUBA THEATRE: THEATRE,WITCHCRAFT, AND SOCIAL FRAGMENTATION IN LAGOS,NIGERIA

The golden age of Yoruba folk opera, Yoruba travelling theatre, and Yoruba theatre is over and the brightly coloured trucks carrying the companies that cruised the Nigerian Federation up to the middle of the 1980s have certainly long since been dismantled. Although many actors, musicians, and directors have indeed moved from theatre to the flourishing home-video industry, a community of actors continues to present live performances that can be categorized as “neotraditional.” This genre of Yoruba theatre is undergoing a crisis in the context of an unrelenting economic recession in Nigeria that began in the early 1980s. This situation has released tensions that lead to a real and sadly all-too-justifiable sense of insecurity and to proliferating accounts of witchcraft attacks. The outcome has been a rise in violence manifested in the unleashing of the powers of witchcraft and enflaming relations between small rival groups hitherto unified under the sway of a salaried and—at least until the beginning of the 1980s—optimistic middle class. Yoruba neotraditional theatre that represents deities on stage that belong to “an invisible world” is playing with fire and, by conjuring up the powers of witchcraft, has in turn itself been bewitched.     

NATIVITY DIFFERENCES IN PHYSICAL HEALTH: THE ROLES OF EMOTIONAL SUPPORT,FAMILY, AND SOCIAL INTEGRATION

U.S. immigrants are a physically healthy population, but we do not understand the explanatory factors responsible for their physical health status, particularly those related to social network support. Using data from the 2001 wave of the National Health Interview Survey, we examine multiple measures of immigrant adaptation, investigating their influence on measures of physical health. In particular, we examine how well indicators of social support and integration explain the immigrant health advantage. Results show clear evidence of an immigrant paradox in physical health, but that measures of support and integration explain almost none of the immigration effect on physical health.     

PUNISHMENT AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE REVISITED: UNEMPLOYMENT AND IMPRISONMENT IN THE UNITED STATES, 1948–1984

Several recent empirical studies of imprisonment trends in the United States and Western Europe confirm Rusche and Kirchheimer's thesis that unemployment affects imprisonment directly with crime held constant. This empirical confirmation, however, remains suspect because these studies fail to address alternative explanations adequately. This article examines these alternatives more thoroughly and considers a limitation on the scope of the thesis. In particular, because the thesis concerns competitive labor markets of industrial capitalism, we reason that unemployment plays less of a role in the dynamics of imprisonment where the labor market is less freely competitive. The analysis of post-World War II trends reveals robust results for the Rusche-Kirchheimer thesis and limited empirical support for differences in labor markets.     

SCIENTOLOGY “ETHICS”: DEVIANCE,IDENTITY AND SOCIAL CONTROL IN A CULT-LIKE SOCIAL WORLD

Qualitative research at the macrosocial level can be facilitated by examining the more fully articulated social worlds existing within advanced societies. Based on the author's field research, Scientology's structure, culture, and comparability to American capitalist society are discussed and “Ethics,” its institution of social control, is shown to involve a paradigm in which conduct flows from social identity and deviance is defined in terms of a progression of stages of identity loss through reference group confusion. A hypothetical case shows how each stage is treated through specific intervention formula designed to reverse the process. “Ethics” is shown to closely parallel symbolic interactionist theories of deviance. Its differences from symbolic interactionism are ascribed to the inherent contradiction between the individualistic and system-centered orientations permeating American capitalist society.     

NOT SO FAST,MY FRIEND: SOCIAL CAPITAL AND THE RACE DISPARITY IN PROMOTIONS AMONG COLLEGE FOOTBALL COACHES

To better understand persistent racial inequality in occupational mobility, we examine the influence of race and social capital on the promotions of 320 assistant college football coaches. The results from quantitative analyses demonstrate that social capital matters a great deal for promotions, but its impact is contingent on the race of the respondent. Specifically, network connections to heterogeneous contacts (racially heterophilous ties, weak ties, and high-status ties) appear to be more effective for black coaches than for white coaches. The findings underscore the importance and complexity of the relationships between race, social capital, and occupational mobility.     

THE RISE AND FALL OF A LOCAL HERO: MEMORY,IDENTITY AND POWER IN RURAL AUSTRIA, 1945-1960

The article questions abstract concepts like lieux de mémoire, invented tradition and imagined communities linked to a concrete field of research. It reconstructs structures and practices of the cultural representation of mythical narrations in symbolic and social spaces. The case of a rural community in Austria after World War II shows that the encoding and decoding of a heroic saga is embedded both in the macro structures of the economic and political reconstruction of the Second Republic and the micro structures of the local festive culture. In the late 1940s, the supply of the narration, a variation of the German National myth of Herman the Cheruskian, met the demand of the majority of the villagers, above all the male inhabitants. In the 1950s, the market of cultural representations had changed: the hero of village memory became a relic of village history.     

CREDITS AND CRAFT PRODUCTION: FREELANCE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION IN THE HOLLYWOOD FILM INDUSTRY, 1964–1978*

This paper describes a system of work and patterns of productivity in the Hollywood film industry. Describing the social organization of the film industry entails two primary tasks. One is to describe the administration of work activities among technical specialists. The second is to investigate empirically the organization of those work activities. We argue that because of the particular needs of filmmaking, efficiency is achieved utilizing craft methods of work administration. An analysis of longitudinal data on film specialist's productivity provides some preliminary answers to Becker's theoretical idea of the recurrent nature of work activities in the production of art works. Finally, accounting for the disproportionate work contributions among specialists, some explanations are offered based upon an analysis of the process by which coalitions of specialists are joined.     

DISCOUNTING,COGNITION, AND FINANCIAL AWARENESS: NEW EVIDENCE FROM A CHANGE IN THE MILITARY RETIREMENT SYSTEM

The choice given military personnel between an immediate cash payment of $30,000 or a more generous retirement pension permits us to estimate individuals' personal discount rates (PDRs). The resulting PDRs, about 7% for enlisted personnel and 2%–4.3% for officers, are precise and are correlated with a variety of other financial behaviors. The PDR is negatively related to educational attainment and the Armed Forces Qualification Test, but cognition seems to operate through channels other than being better informed; better‐informed individuals were not always measured to be more patient. (JEL D91, D14)     

'INFORMATION SOCIETY' AS THEORY OR IDEOLOGY: A CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE IN TECHNOLOGY, EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT IN THE INFORMATION AGE

This paper argues that the concept of Information Society fails as theory because it is internally incoherent and unsupported by evidence. Its current popularity within policy discourse can only be understood ideologically. In particular it is argued that one of the drivers of current policy towards higher education is based upon the supposed growth of knowledge work linked to a theory of human capital formation as crucial to international competitiveness and to an explanation of unemployment in terms of a skills gap. The paper goes on to argue that current labour market indicators and research into the skills gap do not support this policy thrust and that a better explanation of the current push towards the creation of virtual universities is the desire to cut educational labour costs rather than to upgrade the economic status of so-called knowledge workers.