IDEOLOGICAL THINKING AMONG MASS PUBLICS AND POLITICAL ELITES

Although the characterization of the general public's levelof attitudinal constraint and continuity as modest has restedin part on assumed contrasts with political elites, there arescarcely any systematic, parallel studies of the two populations.This article utilizes comparable measures from cross-sectionaland panel surveys included in the National Election Studiesand in the National Convention Delegate Studies. Overall, politicalparty elites have a vastly more constrained and stable set ofpolitical preferences—in terms of the traditional liberal-conservativedimension—than does the mass public, a conclusion thatapplies whether the test is a demanding one based on opinionsabout policy issues or a less stringent one based on appraisalsof sociopolitical groups and prominent political actors. Stratifyingthe mass public according to level of political activity generatesclear, steplike differences in constraint and continuity, butideological consistency among party elites substantially exceedsthat of even the most active stratum of the mass public. Theseresults demonstrate that, however flawed the standard surveyinstrument may be as a means of ascertaining ideological thinking,it performs exceedingly well in making the kind of distinctionsto be expected on a priori grounds. The contrasts between thetwo populations have strong implications for two-way flows ofcommunication.     

POPULATION DENSITY, ELITES, AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF INFRASTRUCTURAL RESOURCES IN THAILAND

Literature on population density and infrastructure has generally used an ecological/economic model to identify the determinants of the distribution of infrastructural resources. While this approach has been fruitful, a political-economic approach suggests the importance of an alternative set of determinants of resource distribution: the needs of elites. This paper operationalizes both political-economic and ecological/economic explanations and compares their efficacy in predicting infrastructural development in the provinces of Thailand. Overall, our data suggest that the distribution of infrastructural resources is primarily a function of two ecological-economic variables—gross provincial product and density, and the political-economic factors of presence of governmental and non-governmental elites in the province.     

OLIGARCHIES AND DEVELOPMENT IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY: A TALE OF TWO ELITES

This paper studies how comparative advantage and the political elites' endowments shape long‐run performance in economies with imperfect political institutions. The trade regime interacts with industrial policy and regulations on capital mobility in governing capital accumulation. In a capital‐scarce economy, capitalist oligarchs striving for import substitution industrialization (ISI) initially shelter the economy from trade, while promoting industrial policies that promote total factor productivity growth in the manufacturing sector. This gradually shifts the comparative advantage toward manufacturing and renders the economy attractive to foreign investors. Allowing for trade and foreign capital inflows are thus complementary policies that spur growth in the capital oligarchy. By contrast, landed oligarchs in a capital‐scarce economy favor openness to trade at an early stage of development, neglect industrial policies, and block foreign capital to maximize extractable rents. The policy mix causes the economy to stagnate. Consistent with the experiences of South Korea and Argentina in the postwar era, the model predicts that the success of ISI policies depends crucially on the conditions governing the incentives for capital accumulation. (JEL F10, F20, P40, P50, O10, O24)     

COSMOPOLITAN CODIFICATIONS: ELITES,EXPATRIATES, AND DIFFERENCE IN KATHMANDU,NEPAL

Globalization has been the site of many renegotiations of identity, both at the supra- and subnational levels. Yet, there is an interstitial zone of communication between the global and the local in which distinct processes of boundary-making and translation take place. This essay examines mediators of internationalization, elite nationals and expatriate employees, as they negotiate the form that difference can take in the global marketplace. The contentious politics of Nepalese nationalism as well as South Asian colonial delineations of difference provide precedents for the current social practices of a cosmopolitan population that establishes a hierarchy of difference while also excusing themselves from demarcation and restricting the purview of the concept of culture. The result is a zone made safe for the operation of neoliberal business (a practice seen to be without history or geography) with alterity only allowed in narrowly commodifiable settings.     

AGENCY, STRUCTURE, AND JEWISH SURVIVAL OF THE HOLOCAUST:

In this article I use a life history of two brothers who survived the Holocaust to bring survivor research into the mainstream of sociological inquiry and to explore one of the central problems of general social theory: the relationship between human agency and social structure. A theory of agency and structure offers a distinctly sociological alternative in a literature that has been dominated by psychological theorizing and that has often characterized Jews in overly negative or overly heroic terms. Survivors' accounts are permeated with "epiphanies," including "crucial moments" involving the ability to make difficult choices and quick decisions that were the difference between life and death. These situations illuminate the relationship between agency and structure in instances where the tension between them is heightened. Survivors' life histories suggest ways in which Jews' ability to exercise agency to survive structural conditions of extremity was influenced by their pre-war exposure to cultural schemas and resources that they were able to transpose to the war-occupation context. Successful agency, however, was in large part a collective accomplishment and dependent on factors beyond individuals' control.     

MARGINALITY,ADVOCACY, AND THE AMBIGUITIES OF MULTICULTURALISM: NOTES ON ROMANI ACTIVISM IN CENTRAL EUROPE

Activists who take up the cause of marginalized and discriminated cultural groups often find themselves in an ambiguous position in relation to the very people whose interests they seek to represent. Inspired by the ideas of multiculturalism, minority advocates turn the cultural identity of marginalized and discriminated minorities into the central focus of a political struggle for recognition. By so doing, however, they construct a particular sectional minority identity that not only fails to give full expression to individual identities, but is usually also “stigmatized” in the sense that it is popularly associated with standard stereotypical images and negative characteristics. This article identifies this ambiguity in contemporary projects of minority rights advocacy aimed at redressing the social and economic grievances of the Roma in Central Europe. It shows how activists in the articulation of their claims rely on essentialist assumptions of Romani identity. While these minority rights claims resonate well in international forums, they also run the risk of reifying cultural boundaries, stimulating thinking in ethnic collectives, reinforcing stereotypes, and hampering collective action. By reviewing some of the recent literature on multiculturalism in social and political theory, this article explores ways of dealing with this ambiguity. It concludes that minority advocacy for the Roma can avoid the tacit reproduction of essential identities by contesting the essentializing categorization schemes that lie at the heart of categorized oppression and by foregrounding the structural inequality that drives political mobilization.     

EMPLOYMENT AND WELFARE PARTICIPATION AMONG WOMEN

The model makes a distinction between "voluntary" and "involuntary" welfare receipt. the findings suggest that among female heads of households, the increase in welfare receipt that occured between 1967 and 1979 was almost completely attributable to an increase in involuntary unemployment and an increase in the proportion of the population that was eligible for welfare (due to changes in program parameters). The passage of time, used as a proxy for changes in the stigma associated with receiving welfare, appears to be a secondary importance. The labor supply response to welfare programs is small, and possibly diminishing over time.     

JEWISH STUDIES IN LITHUANIA

A Massive Cover‐up

Frank Ellis, Vasiliy Grossman: The Genesis and Evolution of a Russian Heretic, Oxford/Providence, USA, Berg 1994. xiv+239pp. Index. Bibliography. £34.95. ISBN 0 85496 830 X

John Garrard and Carol Garrard, The Bones of Berdichev: The Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman, New York, The Free Press 1996. xxvi+437pp. Illustrations. Index. Bibliography. ISBN 0–684–82295–4

Living with an Open Wound

Thomas Wood and Stanislaw M. Jankowski, Karski. How One Man Tried To Stop The Holocaust. New York/ Chichester/ Brisbane/Toronto/Singapore: John Wiley and Sons 1994, xvi+316pp. Glossary of names. Bibl. Notes. Ind. Illus.

Cultural Politics of Inter‐war Romania

Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania: Regionalism, Nation Building and Ethnic Struggle, 1918–1930 (Cornell University Press: Ithaca and London 1995), 340pp. Bibliographies. Index. ISBN 0–8014–2445–3. Cloth £35.50

Files from the ‘Soviet Ministry of Truth’

Arlen V. Blum, Evreysky vopros pod sovetskoy tsenzuroy, 1917–1991 (The Jewish Question under Soviet Censorship, 1917–1991). St Petersburg: St Petersburg Jewish University 1996. 185pp.

Failure of an Ideal

Antony Polonsky, Israel Bartal, Gershon Hundert, Magdalena Opalski and Jerzy Tomaszewski (eds.), Jews, Poles, Socialists. The Failure of an Ideal. Studies in Polish Jewry. Polin, Volume Nine. London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization 1996. 346 pp.     

OPTIMAL MARGINALITY: Innovation and Orthodoxy in Fromm's Revision of Psychoanalysis

The sociological study of intellectual innovation has long been polarized between romantic notions of the creative marginal intellectual and competing accounts stressing the benefits of national, organizational and network centrality in the production of knowledge. I offer the concept of “optimal marginality’ as an attempt to move beyond this longstanding but increasingly stale debate. The relationship between a certain type of marginality and intellectual creativity is discussed in the context of a case study on innovation within psychoanalysis. German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm's contributions to the modern revision of Freudian theory is highlighted to illustrate the conditions under which marginality is likely to lead to innovations within theoretical systems and intellectual organizations. What types of marginality lead to innovation? Under what conditions does marginality lead to insight, and when does it lead to marginal ideas? Four ideal types are outlined and a research agenda is called for that operationalizes and tests these theoretical ideas in the context of comparative sociological analysis of intellectual creativity.     

THE HOLOCAUST AS RECURRING REALITY: VICTIMIZATION THEMES AND JEWISH AMERICAN ETHNIC IDENTITY FORMATION

Drawing on sociological studies that document the regularity through which marginalized ethnic groups construct an ethnic identity, this article examines identity formation in the Jewish American context. A content analysis of 100 short stories written between 1946 and 1995 demonstrates how victim-oriented identities are created out of the more mundane experiences of everyday life. These stories, which were intended for consumption by Jewish American readers, describe daily life within the Jewish American community and, with surprising regularity, bring issues of victimization into the imagined experience for their readers. In addition, the analysis shows how Jewish American short story writers present the Holocaust, victimization, and anti-Semitism as contributing heavily to the processes of identity formation within the community. The discussion of the data concludes by arguing that, as the Jewish American community becomes further removed from the events of World War II, the Holocaust is becoming a more salient recurrent reality in the formation of a Jewish American identity that is increasingly tied to issues of victimization.     

GENDER ROLE ATTITUDES AND MARRIAGE AMONG YOUNG WOMEN

Although sociological research on family change has emphasized the importance of gender role attitudes for decades, relatively few empirical studies have demonstrated behavioral consequences of these attitudes. We formulate hypotheses predicting both an impact of gender role attitudes on early marriage behavior and a reciprocal impact of early marriage behavior on changes in gender role attitudes. We also investigate the role of cohabitation in these relationships. While previous research has found that women who believe that wives should be homemakers enter marriage more quickly, we find that under some conditions these attitudes delay marriage. We use multiwave panel data to show that the behavioral impact of gender role attitudes on early marriage depends on plans for attending school. Among young women who expect to complete a four-year college degree or more, believing that wives should be homemakers leads to lower rates of marriage; however, among young women with low educational expectations, believing that wives should be homemakers leads to higher rates of marriage. In addition, we show that experiencing a marriage in early adulthood leads to more agreement that wives should be homemakers.     

RELATIVE WELL-BEING AMONG CHILDREN AND THE ELDERLY:

While recent decades have witnessed sharply divergent trajectories in the well-being of children and the elderly, little research explores the social-structural forces behind these trends. This study examines several key elements of Preston's theory relating relative age group size to the well-being of children and the elderly. First considered is the degree to which membership in a relatively large age group enhances well-being; second, the role of family structure in promoting well-being: third, differences between these processes for children and the elderly. An analysis of three indicators of group well-being—poverty, mortality, and suicide rates—for U.S. states provides mixed support for Preston's theory. Among the elderly, group size is inversely related to suicide and mortality, but unrelated to poverty. Contrary to Preston's view, larger group size diminishes the well-being of children. However. consistent with Preston's theory, family structure is substantially more important for the well-being of children than for the elderly.     

DO RACE AND ETHNICITY MATTER AMONG FRIENDS?

Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (or Add Health), a nationally representative sample of adolescents in 1994–1995, we examine if and how friendship activities differ among interracial, interethnic, and interethnic friendships of white, black, Hispanic, and Asian youths. We find that best friends are more likely than higher-order friends to be from the same ethnic group and that best friends report more shared activities during the past week than do their higher-order friendship counterparts. Hence, we argue that shared activities is a useful indicator of friendship intimacy. In general, interracial friends report fewer shared activities than do intraracial friends, although this difference is strongest for white respondents. Moreover, we find that white, Asian, and Hispanic youths all report fewer activities with their black friends. We find little difference in friendship activities between interethnic and intraethnic friendships. Our findings suggest that, even when youths manage to break racial boundaries in friendship selection, these friendships face greater challenges than do those between individuals of the same race.     

NEIGHBORHOOD DISADVANTAGE AMONG RACIAL AND ETHNIC GROUPS:

We compare the neighborhood characteristics of native- and foreign-born blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians in 1970 and 1980. We broaden the locational attainment literature by emphasizing three contrasts: between black and nonblack groups, between native black and nonblack immigrant groups, and among black groups. Consistent with previous evidence, we find a clear spatial disadvantage for black groups relative to nonblack groups, and for native blacks compared to nonblack immigrant groups, in both years. However, our study reveals a slight advantage for foreign nonHispanic blacks (e.g., Afro-Caribbean immigrants) among the black groups throughout the time period. Our results break new ground by extending the analysis of racial and ethnic variation in residential attainment back to 1970, providing an earlier benchmark against which current patterns of residential attainment can be compared.     

PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENTS AND GENDER DIFFERENCES AMONG ACADEMIC ECONOMISTS

This paper tests for gender differences in remuneration and professional achievement among academic economists using data on grants and grant applications to the National Science Foundation. A simultaneous equations model is used to examine the determinants of salary, rank, department affiliation and research output. In addition to confirming some long-standing folklore about the composition of faculty in research-oriented institutions, significant gender differences were found among older cohorts. Although the signs of the gender coefficients are consistent with a discrimination hypothesis for the sample of assistant professors, the results were not statistically significant.