Assessing the Effect of Welfare Reforms on Public Assistance Caseloads in Four Ohio Counties

Abstract

The implementation of welfare reform at the local level is critical to assessing the effects of structural reforms initiated since the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act of 1996. Wide variations in the activities undertaken in response to national welfare reform have hindered efforts to understand the factors that have contributed to the success of welfare reform apparent in caseload reductions. This paper reviews Community Human Service Plans in four Ohio counties and examines their trends in caseloads. Two strategies emerge: “job attachment” and “human capital development.” These differences in local implementation can be related to caseload trends.     

Local Labor Markets and Caseload Decline in Louisiana in the 1990s*

Abstract Efforts to explain declines in welfare caseloads in the 1990s focus on three factors (economic opportunity, welfare policy, and demographic characteristics) and produce mixed results. Although several recent studies consider state differences, few consider local differences within states. Failure to control for caseload persistence and within‐state variation in program implementation may be one reason why studies produce contradictory results regarding the effect of economic conditions on caseload decline. Using data for Louisiana parishes from 1991 to 1998, we analyze local caseload decline. Our results support other researchers' finding of a “threat effect” before 1996 welfare reform; they indicate that, all else being equal, reducing caseloads will be most difficult in nonadjacent nonmetropolitan parishes and easiest in adjacent nonmetropolitan parishes.     

Subtle images of antigypsyism: An analysis of the visual perception of “Roma”

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the powerful stereotypical media discourse that shapes and reproduces a certain racialised and prejudiced perception of people identified as “Roma” in Germany. Using a close analysis of a single picture – appearing as harmless at first glance – and through the reconstruction of its various interpretational contexts and semantics the paper identifies mechanisms used in stereotypical media coverage of “Roma”. This qualitative analysis draws on media analysis of antigypsyism as well as on research of photographic construction of the “gypsy” in order to analyse the contemporary visual regime of “Roma” in Germany. As it portrays “the Roma” as a fundamentally different and socially deviant group, this visual stereotyping is shown to be an integral element of the persistent antigypsyist ideology, deeply embedded in German society.     

The “Un-Candidates”

Abstract

Much has been written on whether female candidates “run as women” in their campaigns. This study explores the role of gender in political advertising through a systematic analysis of campaign commercials from U.S. House, Senate, and Governor races from 1964 to 1998. I hypothesize that candidates will use “femininity” in the commercials as a marker of “outsider” status. This theory considers image differentiation and branding as they relate to gender in political advertising. Advertisers typically use branding for two reasons: (1) to manufacture illusory differences to differentiate nearly identical products (such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi); and (2) to emphasize and expand real differences (7-UP, for instance, tries to differentiate itself from both Coca-Cola and Pepsi by branding itself the “Un-Cola”). Female candidates who correlate feminine character traits and women's issues with an outsider presentation in their campaigns are trying to be the “Un-Candidates.” The data in this study reveal the importance of contextual factors in determining whether a female candidate will undertake an “un-candidate” strategy     

Financial capacity and sustainability of ordinary nonprofits

This article divides financial issues into capacity and sustainability in two time frames: long and short. Long term emphasizes maintaining services; short term emphasizes resiliency. An organization's long‐term financial capacity is sustainable if its rate of change is sufficient to maintain assets at their replacement cost. A key contribution of this study is a sustainability principle that gives managers short‐term budget surplus targets needed to achieve this objective. The formulas are applied to national data to give a picture of the sector and establish benchmarks for “normal” practice. “Ordinary nonprofits” are active public charities without endowments that are not primarily membership associations or grant makers.     

Organizational transformation of a community‐based clinic

This article reports a case study of the planned transformation of a volunteer‐run community crisis‐care center into a community clinic. The data for this study are drawn from organizational records and participant observation. During the transformation, the clinic had to plan an orderly transition from volunteer to paid staff, from paper records to an integrated management information system, from primarily crisis care to chronic care, from primarily (physical) medical care to integrated case management. Along the way, some of the planned activities proved impossible to implement, some of what turned out to be key events were completely unanticipated, and many activities were finally accomplished but in a fashion very different from what was proposed in the plan. Four lessons were drawn from this case. First, as much as the caseload increased, the need for supportive services grew at a much faster rate. Second, the case demonstrates the need to develop productivity benchmarks that are speci.c to the group being served. Third, the case demonstrates the need for .exibility to go “off plan” to accomplish a larger goal. Fourth, the case illustrates how “big money” and rapid growth can threaten the sustainability of an organization. “What we think of as idyllic only looks that way to sightseers from other places, and other times.” —Carolyn Heilbrun, The Last Gift of Time     

Varieties of Normative Inquiry: Moral Alternatives to Politicization in Sociology

This article evaluates four different ways of relating the normative side of sociology to its empirical side. Two such ways are in existence at present. The first is “dualism,” the idea that sociology provides purely scientific results to political or moral projects that are conducted on some independent normative basis. This position is commonly invoked in the idea of “value-free sociology.” The second is “monism,” the ideas that value-freedom is impossible and that sociology is inevitably value-driven, indeed perhaps that it should be openly so driven. This position is commonly invoked in the idea of “the unity of theory and practice.” These existing approaches are complemented by two that do not yet exist in practice. Both are explicitly normative in part. The first of these is a “canonical” approach, like that of the subdiscipline of political theory, in which normative inquiry within sociology would be formally recognized within the discipline and would be organized around a classical canon of normative works. The second would be a “legalist” approach, which would grow out of new genres of writing that aimed at the systematic normative evaluation of bodies of work or literatures, thus working inductively, in contrast to the canonical approach’s deductivism. The article evaluates these four positions according to four criteria: feasibility, coherence, trajectory, and open-mindedness. It concludes that the current positions (dualism and monism) are both embarrassingly weak: typically unconscious and sometimes naïve, in many cases driven by the unacknowledged – and hence uncritical - assumption that one's particular politics are in fact universally desirable. The discipline should try to create an explicit but rigorously argued normative subdiscipline, probably combining both the canonical and legalist positions.     

The Importation Model Perspective on Inmate Social Roles: an Empirical Test*

Two theoretical models have emerged to account for variations in the response to imprisonment among inmate populations. One, the “deprivation model,” focuses attention on the pressures and deprivations which confront the inmates. The other, the “importation model,” critiques the closed-system orientation of the deprivation model and suggests that the scope of an adequate explanation must give systematic attention to factors beyond the immediate prison situation. This study provides empirical tests of several major propositions implied by the importation model. Based on the analysis of data obtained from 276 adult felons confined in a maximum security institution, the analysis clearly shows that adaptations to imprisonment are in part attributable to such extraprison influences as social class, preprison involvement in criminal behavior, frequency of contacts with individuals in the free society, and the quality of the inmates' perceptions of their postprison life-chances. These findings illustrate the necessity of broadening the scope of explanatory models in this area.     

Paternal domination and the mafia state under post-communism

This review essay discusses Bálint Magyar’s most recent book, Stubborn Structures: Conceptualizing Post-communist Regimes (Budapest: CEU Press 2019). Bálint Magyar first published in Hungarian in 2015 (published in English by CEU Press in 2016) a path-breaking book on The Post-Communist Mafia State: The Case of Hungary. This was the first major attempt to move beyond political controversies and offer a systematic critique of post-communist states. The book also went beyond the usual accusation of “corruption.” Magyar’s key point is that—at least in Hungary—a mafia style of “upper-world” was created, with a “godfather” at the top of it and an “adopted family” below it. This fascinating idea was followed by edited books that included contribution by other scholars. The latest such book is Magyar’s Stubborn Structures: Conceptualizing Post-communist Regimes (CEU Press 2019), which includes articles applying the “mafia state theory” to a great variety of post-communist countries.

     

Die „Zweite Moderne“: Realität oder Fiktion?

Ulrich Beck’s theory of reflexive modernization is based upon the assumption of an epochal change taking place since the 1970s, from the “First” toward the “Second Modernity”, and tries to explain this epochal change with the development dynamics of unbounding. The “linear” modernization of the “First Modernity” is replaced with the “reflexive” modernization of the “Second Modernity”. This essay keeps a systematic and critical view to the fundamental assumptions of the theory of reflexive modernization in view of its empirical strength. In particular, the question is being dealt with as to whether time diagnosis is suitable as a foundation of modernization theory, whether the “Second Modernity” differs in fact from the “First Modernity” by an increased risk production, namely as regards science, technology and private life, whether the “Second Modernity” is distinguished by an increased risk awareness and an increase in plurality, whether unbounding is the cause of the afore established epochal change, and whether a reliable risk control is possible on the paths of modernization or whether it requires, instead, an epochal change of institutions.     

The experiential gap in disaster research: Feminist epistemology and the contribution of local affected researchers

ABSTRACT

In this article, we make the case for a situated knowledge of disasters. By applying a feminist standpoint framework, we argue that an ethic of “objectivity” and a privileging of the unattached researcher creates an experiential gap in the disaster literature whereby researchers who themselves experience disaster are undervalued and underrepresented. We analyze reflexive accounts by disaster researchers to show what epi stemological barriers emerge from conventional processes of inquiry and the systematic disadvantaging of local, affected researchers. We also study patterns in articles by “outsider” and “insider” researchers, focusing on differences and similarities in research questions, reflexivity, relationships with and access to participants, and larger theoretical goals. This comparison reveals that the unique position of affected researchers can help to bridge formal knowledge and practical life knowledge, creating new and worthwhile paths to understanding the social effects of disaster.     

Strange Bedfellows: Deafness,Language, and the Sociology of Knowledge

Most deaf children lack mundane knowledge of the world because of language deprivation and, sometimes, social isolation. Most of these children acquire language late and, therefore, remain longer in the Unwelt (the world of stimuli and physical objects) along with non-symboling animals. This ethnographic study of a State School for the Deaf (SSD) presents a picture of a relatively closed linguistic community and its limited fund of knowledge. Wittgenstein's (1973) aphorism, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”, is perfectly realized and illustrated at SSD. Some high school students did not know names for parts of a human face. The findings indicate that deaf children live in a world of “gaps” and “blanks” as they maneuver among a disproportionate number of physical (as opposed to social) objects. Their multiple sign language systems and funds of knowledge are relatively more holistic, concrete, and context-bound than are the language and knowledge systems of their English-speaking counterparts. Education at SSD is more a preparation for life at SSD than it is for life in the outlying economic and high-tech society.     

Gambling in children and adolescents

The topic of adolescent gambling is attracting growing interest, but there has still been little controlled or systematic research into the area, and much of what has been written would best be described as “armchair theorizing.” The literature concerning pre-adult gambling behavior falls into three general categories: (a) direct and indirect studies concerning adolescent gambling; (b) studies of the economic socialization of children, and (c) consideration of gambling as play and games as precursors to gambling. This paper presents an overview of the literature examining each of these three categories. Special emphasis is placed upon the playing of fruit machines, as it is this activity which is currently regarded as the biggest problem concerning young gamblers, particularly in the U.K. Recommendations for future research are discussed, particularly for work using a functional/behavioral analysis model to determine the variables which influence how adolescents “learn” to gamble.     

Psychopathology of transvestism and transsexualism

Vaginismus being a reaction of avoidance of an anxiety‐producing situation, is readily amenable to treatment by systematic desensitization. This may proceed in two main ways: “in vitro” or “in vivo”. In order to strengthen and speed‐up the desensitization process, we used hypnotic techniques in a dynamic approach.

The first session of both methods is dedicated to building an adequate doctor‐couple relationship, careful history‐taking and dissipation of myths and fallacies regarding sexuality or hypnosis. Any attempts at sexual intercourse are forbidden at this stage.

The “in vitro” treatment proceeds with the imagery, under hypnosis, of an “anxiety hierarchy” of increasingly erotic and sexually intimate situations, which will be reproduced at home with the partner, until sexual intercourse is achieved. In the “in vivo” method the patient learns self‐hypnosis and then inserts into her vagina first her finger, then Hegar dilators of gradually increasing size. The partner, the patient and the physician will then successively proceed to the insertion, forming a team work situation. This continues until the “female superior position”, practiced first with the largest dilator, is reproduced at home by intercourse.     

Where are you from? A case of rural residential identification

This study analyzes the way people identify where they live in a rural midwestern area. This geographic area was chosen because it lacks a single name and includes sections of two states. One year of participant observation and intensive interviews with 45 prominent residents provided the data. Respondents gave a variety of answers to the question, “Where are you from?” These answers utilized (1) governmental district; (2) proximity to a place of concentration; (3) proximity to a famous place or person; (4) mailing address; (5) political location; (6) location of telephone exchange. Different residential identifications are evoked by different activities: negotiating with bureaucracies, traveling, financial transacting, giving directions for residence location, and joining local organizations. This study was conducted in the frameworks of “locating activities” (Psathas and Henslin, 1967) and “cognitive perspectives on community” (Moore and Golledge, 1976). The data suggest that residential identification can be problematic, rather than simple, as has been assumed in previous community research. By examining how people identify their residences, we gain insight into the microdynamics of communities.     

The Legacy of Leaving Home: Long‐Term Effects of Coresidence on Parent – Child Relationships

This study investigated how early, “on‐time,” and late home leavers differed in their relations to parents in later life. A life course perspective suggested different pathways by which the time spent in the parental home may set the stage for intergenerational solidarity in aging families. Using fixed‐effects models with data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (N = 14,739 parent – child dyads), the author assessed the effects of previous coresidence on intergenerational proximity, contact frequency, and support exchange more than 5 years after children had left home. The results indicated that, compared with siblings who moved out “on time,” late home leavers lived closer to their aging parents, maintained more frequent contact, and were more likely to be providers as well as receivers of intergenerational support. Overall, this evidence paints a positive picture of extended coresidence, revealing its potential to promote intergenerational solidarity across the life course.