Exploring Epistemologies: The Debate Continues

ABSTRACT

Stigma is a significant barrier to recovery and full community inclusion for people with mental illnesses. Social work educators can play critical roles in addressing this stigma, yet little is known about their attitudes. Social work educators were surveyed about their general attitudes about people with mental illnesses, attitudes about practice with people with mental illnesses, and attitudes about students with mental illnesses. On average, educators’ general and practice attitudes were not negative. However, respondents did view a student with a mental illness differently from a “typical social work student.” Findings suggest that we, as social work educators, must raise our awareness and address our own attitudes to support students and uphold our social work values.     

Globalisation Continues: The Maastricht Globalisation Index Revisited and Updated

Globalisation is a complex process which leads to an increasing connectedness and interrelatedness in the political, economic, social and cultural, technological, and environmental domain on many different scales. While this is a truly global phenomenon, it also has different impacts and manifestations in different geographic localities. As a result, different nations exhibit different levels of globalisation or connectedness. Further, perspectives on globalisation are manifold and change over time, therefore it is crucial to continuously reflect upon and revise existing methodologies. Composite indices are a powerful tool to capture and measure complex concepts that allow for monitoring complex systems over time and yield relative rankings and comparisons. This article presents a revised and updated Maastricht Globalisation Index for 117 countries and three points in time—2000, 2008, and 2012—including a new calculation methodology and data. Results show that globalisation still continues but has slowed down, due to the recent economic crisis.     

Challenges for Career Counseling in Asia: Variations in Cultural Accommodation

Using K. Lewin's (1938) concept of a force field analysis, a model is proposed for examining the challenges of providing career counseling in Asia in terms of prevailing and countervailing forces. The model also suggests a need to avoid a simple importation of Western models of career counseling, which may not be an optimal fit for the Asian cultural context. Instead, the cultural accommodation approach is offered as a viable alternative.     

Socioeconomic Achievement and Religion: The American Case

Religious preference at several points in the life cycle is examined with regard to its affect on socioeconomic achievement and with regard to how religious preference is influenced by education, occupation, and income. The importance of considering the several major denominations separately instead of as a single category is demonstrated. When this is done Jews, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians have above average socioeconomic achievements; Methodists and Catholics are near the mean; and Baptists are below the average. Controlling for social origins and early achievements greatly attenuates the differences, but does not remove them with regard to education and income.     

The Economic Organization of Extended Family Households by Race or Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Status

This study examines differences in the amount of economic support or mutual benefit derived from extended family living arrangements by studying differences in monetary contributions to essential household expenditures across family units in extended family households. Using the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation, multivariate regression and selection models are estimated to assess racial differences in family contributions toward household expenses in extended family households. Extended family households have very unequal monetary contributions toward household rent and utilities, although Hispanics have less unequal monetary contributions when compared with other racial groups. Hispanic and Asian extended family households experience decreasing inequality in financial contributions as the income of each family increases, whereas no relationship between financial contributions and income is found for Whites or Blacks. This suggests a different cultural orientation to extended family living arrangements for Asians and Hispanics when compared with non‐Hispanic Whites.     

Occupational Prestige Hierarchy: Methodological Artifact or Cultural Category System

Occupational prestige findings are among the most stable, replicable findings in all of sociology. Yet, the “cognitive reality” underlying these findings has never been clearly established. Based on the responses provided by students to three questionnaires and comparative data from the more recent NORC study of occupational prestige, the research described in this paper investigates two hypotheses: 1) the occupational rankings resulting from the five‐point scale used in the NORC studies reflect highly differentiated evaluations in the minds of respondents; and 2) occupational prestige rankings form a unidimensional scale. Both of these hypotheses were supported. Not only is the occupational prestige hierarchy highly differentiated in the minds of individuals, it is predominantly a single dimension about which there is substantial agreement. The implications of these findings are briefly discussed.     

Judgments of the Carter-Reagan Debate: The Eyes of the Beholders

In line with social-psychological theory and with findings fromprior analyses of the impact of televised campaign debates,the 1980 Carter-Reagan debate seems to have been interpretedlargely in light of preexisting candidate preferences. Knowledgeof whether a viewer intended to vote for Carter or Reagan and,for undecided voters, knowledge of position on the liberal-conservativecontinuum, permit accurate predictions to be made of judgmentsof who won the debate.     

Succession or Subversion: Professional Strategies of Soviet Cultural Revolution. The Case of Nikolai Marr

Abstract

Nikolai Marr's controversial New Teaching on Language was officially recognized as Marxism in Soviet linguistics and gained the position of the dominant scientific authority and social power in the early 1930s. Although the phenomenon of Marrism is frequently analysed from different points of view, its sociological dimension remains under-researched. Specifically, it is the role of the institutional environment and social dynamics within the discipline of linguistics that deserves particular attention. Making use of Pierre Bourdieu's theory of the scientific field and professional strategies, this paper examines the ascent of Marr's doctrine with regard to the institutional incentives and bureaucratic mechanisms employed for its promotion. Taking into account Marr's social and professional status, the article examines the ideological struggle in Soviet linguistics between Marrists and their opponents in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and argues that the succession and subversion strategies employed by the younger practitioners in the scientific field played a significant role in determining its outcome and securing the intellectual and social victory of Marrism, facilitated by the general socio-political atmosphere of Soviet Cultural Revolution.     

Race,Socioeconomic Status,and Self-Esteem: The Impact of Religiosity

This research examines two factors that have an impact on the self-esteem of African Americans and whites: religion and socioeconomic status (SES). Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households, we find that for whites, belief in the Bible (i.e., that it is the literal word of God) and self-identifying as fundamentalist were significant predictors of self-esteem. For African Americans, belief in the Bible and being Catholic were significant predictors of self-esteem. However, the association between belief in the Bible and self-esteem was stronger for African Americans than whites. SES was positively associated with self-esteem for both groups. The interactions between SES and the measures of religiosity reveal a greater impact on self-esteem for lower SES respondents. This was especially true for African Americans. These findings are discussed in light of the resource compensation hypothesis.     

The Alternative-Conventional Agriculture Debate: Where Do Agricultural Faculty Stand?1

Abstract In recent years, publicly funded agricultural science at land grant universities (LGUs) has come under increasing criticism by those who argue that LGUs have contributed to an industrial mode of agriculture that is neither ecologically nor socioeconomically sustainable. The views of critics and defenders of modern industrial agriculture reflect two competing perspectives on agriculture—an alternative and a conventional paradigm. Utilizing a 24-item alternative-conventional agriculture paradigm (ACAP) scale, this study analyzes the paradigmatic positions of faculty in the College of Agriculture and Home Economics at Washington State University. Results reveal that the faculty are slightly more conventional than are farmers statewide, slightly less conventional than proponents of conventional agriculture, and far more conventional than known alternative agriculturalists. When looking at particular elements of the agricultural debate, however, the faculty tend to be more conventional than farmers on the socioeconomic elements of the competing paradigms but considerably less conventional on elements dealing with ecological and conservation issues. Women, younger faculty, non-land grant educated faculty, and faculty not raised on farms are somewhat more likely to endorse the alternative agriculture paradigm than are their counterparts. These differences are minor, however, compared to the differences across academic disciplines. Faculty of departments oriented to the social sciences (with the exception of agricultural economics) tend to most strongly endorse the alternative paradigm, while faculty from the more production-oriented departments and agricultural economics are the most conventional. Possible implications of the findings are discussed for the future of publicly-funded agricultural science.     

Conventional versus Alternative Agriculture: The Paradigmatic Roots of the Debate*

Abstract Analysts have described conflict between the economically dominant industrial sector of society and the environmental movement as representing competition between two opposing worldviews or social paradigms. There appears to be a similar schism developing in agriculture. The conventional paradigm of large-scale, highly industrialized agriculture is being challenged by an increasingly vocal alternative agriculture movement which advocates major shifts toward a more “ecologically sustainable agriculture.” Some have suggested that alternative agriculture represents a fundamentally new paradigm for agriculture. This paper seeks to clarify and synthesize the core beliefs and values underlying these two approaches to agriculture into a “conventional agriculture paradigm” and an “alternative agriculture paradigm.” The writings of six major proponents of alternative agriculture are compared with those of six leading proponents of conventional agriculture to document the major components of the two agricultural paradigms. The two sets of writings reveal dramatically divergent perspectives on a wide range of agricultural issues. The competing paradigms can be synthesized into six major dimensions: 1) centralization vs. decentralization, 2) dependence vs. independence, 3) competition vs. community, 4) domination of nature vs. harmony with nature, 5) specialization vs. diversity, and 6) exploitation vs. restraint. The emerging controversy over “low-input, sustainable agriculture” (LISA) illustrates the paradigmatic gulf between alternative and conventional agriculture, as well as the pitfalls facing alternative agriculturalists as they attempt to replace conventional agriculture as the dominant paradigm.     

The Arab Spring and Revolutionary Theory: An Intervention in a Debate

The so-called Arab Spring of the 2010s that toppled six dictators has spurred productive debates about the character of these political happenings and their implications for revolutionary theory broadly. One such debate that appeared recently on the pages of Historical Sociology questions whether or not we are moving into a fifth-generation revolutionary theory. This essay is an attempt to partake in this conversation, not only because my work is under discussion but because I wish to engage with some of the key arguments in the debate to clarify some misunderstandings and suggest ways that the Arab Spring allows for a new thinking about revolution and revolutionary theory. Whether or not new perspectives have emerged may be contested, but there is surely a need for them.