THE SEX-ROLE IDEOLOGY OF WORKING CLASS GIRLS

Des filles au niveau sénior dans une école secondaire de classe ouvrière ont été soumises à des questionnaires et des entrevues. Quatre dimensions des croyances par rapport aux rôles sexuels ont été mesurées et mises en relation entre elles et à des indicateurs de classe sociale.
Questionnaires and interviews were given to the senior girls in one working class high school. Four dimensions of sex-role beliefs were measured and related to one another and to indicators of social class.     

TESTING THE THEORY OF THE NEW CLASS

This article tests the theory that a post-industrial economic order gives rise to an elite which has a class interest in the expansion of government: the New Class. Cluster analysis of large national surveys reveals the existence of such a group, identifiable by liberal policy preferences and a pattern of group identifications which clearly distinguish it from the traditional middle and working classes. This New Class is concentrated in the professions, and among those with high levels of education.     

DYNAMIC INDICATORS OF SELF-PERCEIVED CONSERVATISM

This study looks at the relationship between standard indicators of conservatism and self-labeling behavior. Many of the variables believed to be indicative of conservatism and liberalism are not the variables people use when labeling themselves conservative or liberal. It is proposed that many of the standard social and political variables tend to be period- and age-specific in terms of their relationship to self-labeling behavior. The variables are period-specific because at any point in time there are a number of issues that are particularly salient and divisive, and therefore tend to affect self-labeling behavior. The variables are age-specific because social networks greatly influence sociopolitical attitudes and affiliations and the makeup of social networks tend to vary over the course of one's life. To test for the period- and age-specific nature of selflabeling behavior the General Social Survey is used. Results suggest that some standard indicators of conservatism are strongly correlated with self-perceived conservatism but only for the youngest age group. Results also show that moral issues such as premarital sex, abortion, pornography and marijuana use are particularly strong correlates of self-labeling behavior for these respondents.     

CONSCIOUSLY WORKING AT THE UNCONSCIOUS LEVEL: PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORY IN ACTION IN A TRAINING ENVIRONMENT

The author explores methods of working with residential child care foster care agencies in developing a psychotherapeutic culture. He suggests that such a culture can only be built on the firm foundations of clear organisational boundaries and task, but that such clarity is not sufficient. In addition, senior managers must have an understanding of unconscious processes and how they affect relationships between adults and children and between colleagues within the organisational hierarchy. The process requires a range of possible interventions including organisational consultancy, practice consultancy and staff support, specialist training and explorations of team processes.     

WORKING CARERS OF OLDER ADULTS

Juggling work and care presents particular challenges to carers and employers. Employers are increasingly under pressure, both from within organizations and from recent government legislation and policy, to develop family-friendly policies to support informal carers in the workplace. Yet existing ‘family-friendly’ schemes and services are still primarily designed for working parents of young children and rarely address the needs of employees who care for older or disabled adults. This paper reports on a study which investigated how working carers and managers in two public sector organizations — a Social Services Department (SSD) and a National Health Service (NHS) Trust — combined their work and caring responsibilities. A multi-method approach was adopted consisting of five phases. First, a profile of the two organizations was established, followed by a short screening questionnaire to all employees to identify who was caring for an older adult over the age of 60. Third, a lengthier postal survey was sent to the 365 carers who had indicated a willingness to participate further. In the fourth and fifth phases, carers and managers were interviewed in depth about their experiences. This paper reports briefly on the survey, but then concentrates in particular on what was said in the interviews about what helps and hinders working carers of older adults. Despite the existence of policies to support carers, our findings suggest that these were far less important than informal support from colleagues and a sympathetic manager in the workplace. Commuting distance between work, home and the older person also posed difficulties for carers, along with inflexible schedules and work overload. Employers are urged to explore these issues further if they are serious about recruiting and retaining employees, and developing the work – life balance agenda to meet the needs of those caring for older and disabled adults.     

A TEMPLE FOR THE NATION: REDESIGNING A COMMON SYMBOLIC SPACE OF CENTRAL EUROPEAN CONSERVATISM

In the wake of ‘1989», the redefinition of a common European identity and national identities turned the symbolic representation of these identities into a major issue of political debates. Especially the construction of conservative and right-wing-populist politics in a redefined central European region relies on a symbolic redefinition of national identities in the frame of and in conflict with the design of a common European political culture. Examples are based on an analysis of the symbolic representation of politics, as the image design of the Austrian ‘Wende»-government (2000-2002), the symbolic representation of Forza Italia and the image-construction of Berlusconi, as well as the cultural representation of the former Hungarian government (1998-2002). The contribution proposes a reconstruction of a common right-wing conservative (political) culture and its representation in the region under the notion of ‘neo-patriotism».     

TARGETING WORKING PROFESSIONALS: A MASTER'S OF ARTS IN GERONTOLOGY

This overview of an online degree programme aims to develop a concrete illustration of an exploding array of courses and programmes. The approach at the Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center, at the University of Southern California, seeks to address a targeted audience and to build on the special strengths and more unique degree programmes of the University.     

CROSS-CLASS PERCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL CLASS

This article explores how members of the American middle and working classes perceive themselves and each other's lives. The data offer an opportunity to address the relevance of social class as a concept for understanding American society while at the same time helping to clarify the debate over the question of whether the working class is integrated into American society or angry, alienated, and resistant to mainstream goals and institutions. The data reported here suggest that the attitudes held by many members of the middle class, which members of the working class perceive during social interaction, have an impact on the self-confidence of working-class individuals, causing some of them to experience self-doubt, pain, and hidden injuries. Social class as defined by education, occupational prestige, and income still matters in the United States. The American working class may not be class conscious in the classic Marxian sense of the concept - a class for itself - but it does have a deep understanding of the inequalities between "us" and "them". The respondents in this study do not yet know they live in a postmodern world. The attitudes and actions of members of the middle class toward working-class culture help (re) create the American working class.     

TWO CONCEPTIONS OF THE SOCIAL SITUATION:

This article appraises two images of the social situation: Blumer's symbolic interactionism and Goffman's microstructuralism. Blumer stresses the improvisational and consequently unpredictable character of social interaction, while Goffman emphasizes situational determinism along with mutual predictability through self-abnegation. The evaluation of their respective positions is based upon their relative efficacy in the analysis of data drawn from an ethnographic study of jocularity in everyday life. The results indicate more utility for Blumer's than for Goffman's image of the situation.     

WORKING FOR TELEVISION: THE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION OF TV DRAMA*

Data collected in a case study of a British TV play provide the basis for an analysis of the social organization of TV drama production. The perceived needs of mass audiences and the ways in which the technical requirements of television are interpreted and acted upon set the preconditions for the ongoing interaction between actors, directors and technicians. The conventions of TV production are upheld and reinforced by continued use, though subject to renegotiation by all participants.     

WORKING "OVER-TIME":

This article examines the reasons working-class retirees give for their continued labor activity and discusses these in relation to the present socioeconomic situation. Through the use of primary qualitative data supplemented by others' empirical work, it is argued that working-class retirees engage in labor because they lack the economic resources to survive, desire to maintain their previous status, and experience threats to the status of their families and communities. Their experience differs from that commonly anticipated by society. Their labor is an important component of the U.S. economic recovery in recent years. Working-class retirees' labor involvement thus is not a solution, but a problem.     

THE DECOMPOSITION OF INEQUALITY BY CLASS AND BY OCCUPATION:

Sociological research on earnings and income has focused on predicting individual income. Analyses most often use occupational status or class, along with other economically relevant variables, to explain earnings or income variations among individuals (income determination). Aggregate inequality (income distribution) has received considerably less attention, except in cross-national research. This especially holds for applying central concepts of stratification to the analysis of inequality. That is, class and occupation differences in economic rewards are rarely used to investigate aggregate earnings or income inequality. This study, using 1976 and 1977 Panel Study of Income Dynamics survey data, estimates the proportion of total earnings/income inequality accounted for by class and by occupation. Theil's index is used to measure earnings and income inequality and thus decompose total inequality into between-and within-group components. Wright's five-category schema is replicated for decomposition of inequality by class and a traditional four-category ordinal typology for decomposition by occupation. The two schemas show similar results: both class and occupation respectively account for between one-fifth and one-fourth of total earnings and income inequality. The results show the relevance of these central stratification typologies for the analysis of aggregate inequality.     

THE EMERGENCE OF BANDWAGON EFFECTS: A THEORY

Previous explanations of bandwagons from election polls have exclusively emphasized conformity causes. We propose, in addition, "indirect' causes, in which election predictions first affect key actors, influencing their decisions concerning financial support, volunteer work, or endorsements. These decisions then produce major campaign alterations that influence the voters and alter the election outcome. Our addition clarifies anomalous bandwagon research findings and directs attention to the possibility of bandwagon feedback on subsequent elections. If the same forecasters create frequent bandwagon effects, their credibility should increase as a result of enhanced accuracy. But increased credibility should in turn increase the self-fulfilling tendency of their subsequent forecasts. Such deviation-amplifying feedback would permit polls to produce a highly significant, and expanding, influence on elections.     

THE EXPERIMENTS OF REDUCED WORKING HOURS IN FINLAND

This paper examines experiments of shorter working hours in Finnish municipalities between 1996 and 1998 in terms of the effects of the experiments on work–family interaction and which of the ways of reducing working time had the most positive effect. We analyse the experiment in respect of the Finnish working time regime, and in addition, from the perspective of community time. The analysis combines questionnaire and interview data. The results indicated that the experiment had a positive effect on work–family interaction. Six-hour shifts, in comparison to other forms of working time reductions, had the strongest impact on the decrease in conflict arising from work and affecting family. The interviews demonstrated various effects of the working time experiment on family, including the negative effects caused by unsocial working hours and the loss of time autonomy at work among the highly educated. Furthermore, reduced working hours in a culture based on the principle of full-time work caused some negative effects, such as feelings of guilt. The impact of the experiment on community time depended on the way the experiment was implemented.