The Myth of the Independent Variable: Reconceptualizing Class,Gender, Race,and Age as Subcultural Processes

Although social class, religion, gender, ethnicity and age are often treated as independent variables (e.g., factors, forces, structures) and invoked as causal explanations for various outcomes, this paper approaches these constructs in more distinctive, humanly-engaged terms. Rather than representing forces that almost mysteriously impose themselves on people, these constructs are to be understood more fundamentally as the products and processes of human group life. We are not denying the linkages of social categories with other aspects of community life but contend that these correlates represent comparatively superficial reflections of the much broader underlying sets of processes that characterize social life. Indeed, we argue that it is these sets of humanly engaged social processes rather than correlational research that constitute the more authentic subject matter of the social sciences.     

Age differences in IDA savings outcomes: findings from the American Dream Demonstration

This study aims to develop a greater understanding of age differences in savings outcomes within Individual Development Accounts (IDAs). Participant data from the American Dream Demonstration (ADD) are examined for age differences in accumulated net deposits, average monthly net deposits, and deposit frequency. ADDprogram data are examined for savings match rates, monthly savings targets, direct deposit, and hours of financial education offered. Results indicate that, on average, older IDA participants have better savings outcomes than younger participants. Findings from this study suggest that impoverished middleaged and older adults can save if provided an opportunity and incentives. However, success will depend on the characteristics of the programs.     

History,creativity, and value: The modern making of Gold Jun Mei tea

In the 1980s and 1990s, Chinese tea farmers struggled to make enough money to get by. But in the 21st century, tea connoisseurs began to compete for the rarest and finest teas, some of which have achieved extraordinarily high prices in the domestic market. In this paper, we focus on one of the best-known of those premium teas, Gold Jun Mei (Jin Jun Mei 金骏眉), a craft variety whose creation blends traditional techniques with innovative production methods. Gold Jun Mei was first made by tea master Liang Junde in 2005 in Tongmu village in Wuyi Mountain in Northern Fujian. Since 1987, this village has been part of the Wuyi Mountain UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, and the local government and the administrators of the Biosphere Reserve promoted the transformation of the Tongmu tea industry that resulted in Gold Jun Mei's conquest of the tea marketplace. Their strategies included a quest for the patronage of urban elites and modern marketing methods, including the creation of logos and brands. Wuyi Mountain black teas have histories that go back centuries but Gold Jun Mei is a modern creation, and demonstrates not only the reinvention of tradition, but also a modern tradition of innovation.     

Telling Tales: Genre and Narrative in Post-Soviet Poetry

Abstract

The post-Soviet revival of a group of related genres of narrative poetry is explored, focusing on the work of two poets: Mariia Stepanova, with her connections to the ballad tradition and the uncanny, and Boris Khersonskii, whose cycles and collections document the lost world of Jewish life in southern Russia. There is an exploration of the ways in which narrative poetry, which had been closely associated with official Soviet culture, has now been revitalized by the adoption of elements drawn both from the traditional epic, such as the objective, impersonal narrative voice, and from popular culture, including horror stories and urban myth.     

Disentangling the Relationship Between Age and Marital History in Age-Assortative Mating

Many scholars have noted that divorcees have age-assortative mating patterns distinct from the never-married. Similarly, comparisons between older and younger individuals indicate that hypergamy becomes increasingly likely with age. Unfortunately, prior research has not been able to disentangle the effects of age from the effect of divorce. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort (n = 12,231 for first marriage and 4,298 for remarriage) and heterogeneous choice models, this research predicted the likelihood of age homogamy and hypergamy as a function of age, marital history, and other factors. The results indicate that homogamy is largely an age-driven phenomena, where the never-married and previously married have similar patterns. However, the likelihood of hypergamy is higher for the previously married, even after accounting for the influence of age in the models.     

The origins of anti-Jewish policy in the Cossack regions of the Russian Empire,late nineteenth and early twentieth century

In the 1880s and 1890s several laws were issued in the Tsarist empire further restricting the rights of Jews in the Cossack regions. Consequently, the Don, Kuban and Terek regions were “closed” to permanent Jewish residence. In the early twentieth century, a similar trend occurred in relation to Ural Cossacks. On the one hand, the actions coincided chronologically with the tightening of government policy in relation to the Jewish population and, on the other, each of these areas had internal problems resulting from their specific conditions. This study attempts to find out whether this process was a simple consequence of the general restrictive policies in relation to Jews, or whether it was informed by local conditions.     

Mooring Mobilities,Fixing Flows: Towards a Global Urban History of Port Cities in the Age of Steam

This article critically surveys the current historiography of port cities, which have recently attracted a lot of interest, particularly from global historians of the 19th and early 20th century. The article contextualizes this body of scholarship within larger recent and older trends in the discipline. Recently, historians and other scholars have predominantly analyzed port cities as “nodal points” or “hubs” within global networks. The article argues that these perspectives project spatial patterns defined by the imaginary of globalization today into the past, failing to acknowledge how tightly interwoven globalization and urbanization were in port cities during the age of steam. However, port cities can provide concrete narrative focal points to develop empirically-grounded global histories, and remind us of the various efforts to control, limit, or prevent unsolicited forms of mobility and entanglement in the sites where these were moored or fixed. Finally, port cities can render the labor of the urban masses visible that facilitated the making of steam age connectivity and a globality anchored in the urban space of the ports.     

Myth,allegiances, and the study of social control

That sociology subscribes to certain popular myths and has aligned itself with the welfare of some groups over others complicates research into social control. This is especially so when the research deals with stereotypes and their effects on differential legal treatment. That the discipline has historically taken sides regarding certain commonly held stereotypes and been supportive of certain groups, means that findings that challenge those stereotypes or that are viewed as detrimental to the supported groups are brought into question. Our research on a regulatory mechanism of social control—the Black Book, a list of persons excluded from licensed gaming in Nevada because of their perceived threat to the industry—is illustrative of these complications. Our findings that the Black Book is largely symbolic and is applied discriminatorily challenge not only beliefs in its efficacy but certain myths and allegiances within sociology. That a group sociologically identified with the problem was discriminated against, and that a well-protected group elicited preferential treatment at the hands of regulators who identify with them have been particularly problematic for the acceptance of the findings. We argue here that debunking myth and value neutrality are essential to scientific endeavor and should override such disciplinary tendencies toward the tolerance and protection of some groups over others. Her research has dealt with aspects of culture, organized crime, and social elites. She is currently working on a book on high society and thoroughbred racing. His publications have dealt with issues of labeling and secondary deviation, the role of stereotypes in the legal process, and the legal reaction to corporate crime.     

Fedorovism in Early Post-Soviet Russia: The Collapse of the Meta-imperial Project

Nikolai Fedorov, the obscure librarian in late tsarist Russia, had created a grand theory. According to it, the humanities should be united under the aegis of the Tsar to engage in the complete mastery over nature, spreading all over the universe and the resurrection of the dead. This totalitarian and messianic aspect of fedorovism could be well incorporated into totalitarian messianism, the belief in the omnipotence of science and exploration of space – all the key elements of Soviet ideology. Consequently, the regime became ‘Fedorovian’ without cognizing it. While Gorbachev’s reforms made it possible for many Soviet intellectuals to be acquainted with Fedorov, the collapse of the regime and the country had led to profound implications for these Soviet intellectuals’ perception of Fedorov’s teachings and related theories. For some, it led to embracing the peculiar cocktail of mysticism and the occult. For others, the end of the USSR implied that Fedorov’s dream – humanity’s mastery over nature – would never be accomplished. It also implied that humanity is not very different from the other species and would disappear in the future.     

Myth,identity, and social interaction: Encountering Santa Claus at the mall

Each year during the Christmas season Santa Claus appears at shopping malls across the country. This qualitative study shows how Santa actors and the public respond to the typification of the Santa myth. Using the dramaturgical approach, the authors examine the meanings that people of various age and gender identities attribute to the mall environment, and how these understandings influence their interactions with Santa. Behaviors are analyzed in age cohorts ranging from infancy to the elderly. Gender strongly influenced people's interactions with Santa across all age cohorts. Adult behaviors varied widely, but in the presence of children, both males and females promoted the Santa Claus fantasy. In the mall setting, where one's social identity is subject to public scrutiny, interactions with Santa help define, reinforce, and confirm one's sense of self.     

The Myth of Silent Authorship: Self,Substance, and Style in Ethnographic Writing

Voice, the animus of storytelling, the author's presence in written works, concerns both sides of the modernist fence. Authors are urged to restrain and regulate their voices in deference to disciplinary expectations. We advocate developing an audible writer's voice that reflects our empirical experiences. Voice ranges from the evocative to the analytic and varies according to: (a) the freshness of the inquiry, (b) relationships with respondents, and (c) the place of the studied phenomena in larger systems of meaning and practice. Two different examples of our writing illustrate how fieldwork influenced the emergence of evocative and analytic voices.     

Subordinating Myth: Latino/a Immigration,Crime, and Exclusion

Rhetoric about “crime‐prone immigrants” has contributed to increased enforcement of the U.S.‐Mexico border, the passage of punitive immigration laws, and state and local efforts to make life difficult for new arrivals. Yet scholarly research refutes the notion that immigrants commit more crime. How do we explain this glaring contradiction? By reviewing recent research on immigration, crime, and social control in the context of racial stratification, this article describes the criminalization of Latino/a immigrants in the U.S. as a subordinating myth; that is, a falsity used as part of a larger effort to misallocate material, political, and cultural resources. Four ways in which the criminalization of immigrants contributes to racial exclusion are discussed: the profiting from immigration detention; the political scapegoating of racialized immigrants; the degrading of racialized bodies in enforcement efforts; and the literal control of exploitable populations. The article concludes with a call to develop further our understanding of the relationship between immigration and crime from this critical perspective in order to subordinate the myth of immigrant criminality.     

Emotion Work,Shame, and Post-Soviet Women Entrepreneurs: Negotiating Ideals of Gender and Labor in a Global Economy

Drawing on ethnographic research among Russian women traders or “shuttle traders” (chelnoki), I examine discourses on shame as a type of emotion work and consider links to ideal gender roles among Russian women entrepreneurs. In a post-Soviet era increasingly shaped by transnational mobility, as well as by a persistent legacy of Soviet sensibilities, a focus on emotion among women traders provides an ideal lens for considering what travels between eras marked by distinct ideologies, between nation-states, and between public and domestic spaces. A discourse of shame links Soviet sensibilities of proper labor and contemporary gender sensibilities that continue to elevate men as breadwinners; thus, a focus on shame enables us to see the contradictory ways in which women are positioned in local and global economies in the 2000s. This case shows how Russian women's insertion into the global economy beginning in the early 1990s has required emotion work that is similar to that required in other locations where global capitalism has brought about reconfigurations of work lives and required people to renegotiate gender roles, expressions of power, and the meaning of labor in their lives.     

Post-Soviet Demographic Paradoxes: Ethnic Differences in Marriage and Fertility in Kazakhstan

The dramatic and generalized socioeconomic and political crisis that followed the collapse of the socialist system has produced unique demographic responses in the former Soviet Union. This study addresses the differences in nuptiality and early fertility before and after the onset of the crisis and between the indigenous and European-origin population in Kazakhstan. Drawing on data from the 1995 Kazakhstan Demographic and Health Survey, this study finds that, contrary to the logical expectation, European-origin women are significantly more likely to marry earlier than indigenous women, and this difference has become even more pronounced during the crisis. However, the crisis is also associated with a longer interval between first marriage and first birth among European-origin women. The analysis shows that European-origin women prolong this interval through increasing use of contraception and abortion. The study attempts to link these findings to the sociopolitical and ethnic climate in Kazakhstan and to changing meanings of and attitudes toward marriage and childbearing.