The freedom of information act and sociological research

Passed in 1966, The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has provided nearly thirty years of access to government information virtually unmatched throughout the world. Used heavily by the media, it has been virtually ignored by sociologists. Nonetheless, it promises access to a potential wealth of data for sociological research. Following a brief discussion of the history of federal information policy and the FOIA, some suggestions for possible research applications are made. Implications for further research are presented, including the emergence of two new classes, information “haves” and information “have-nots,” indicating a new dimension for stratification research in contemporary society.     

Advocacy and the SSSP: An analysis of research articles in social problems

This study examines the extent of advocacy in the research articles appearing in the journalSocial Problems from 1953–1992. The Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) was founded in order to counter the mainstream scientism of the American Sociological Society. Becker’s presidential address to the SSSP in 1966 confronted the issue of advocacy and the consequences associated with research that does not explicitly “take sides.” The present study investigates advocacy inSocial Problems by means of a typology drawn from Becker’s address. The findings indicate that political advocacy has increased sharply over the duration ofSocial Problems. Implications of the findings are discussed in the context of value-neutrality and its relation to social problems research.     

Toward Culturally Democratic Citizens: Nongovernmental Organizations and the State

This study investigates the relationships between nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the state. It demonstrates that Colombian state institutions aim to foster “culturally democratic citizens” through decentralization initiatives and participation mechanisms at the local level. The National Culture Plan is an overarching national policy that intends to be a reference for governance and civil society participation looking particularly to the players involved in the provision and consumption of cultural activities for its implementation. It marks a change at the national level as it launches civil society into the formulation of cultural policies and political participation in general. By examining local nongovernmental organizations through document and qualitative analysis, the study identifies four types of nongovernmental organizations that self-identified as working in cultural activities in Bogotá—insiders, yearners, dismissers, and outsiders. These types of NGOs emerged in personal interviews and illustrate that NGO–state relationships vary across the sector. Participation among the nongovernmental sector is uneven despite institutional reforms and initiatives supported by national legislation. This article provides data to add to a growing and innovative body of research necessary for professionals in public policy and nongovernmental management fields.     

State and Civil Society in the Political Philosophy of Alexis de Tocqueville

Alexis de Tocqueville discusses extensively the phenomenon of civil society. He distinguishes between the competence of the state on the one hand and the proper competences of free associations on the other. Therefore, the competence of the state should be a limited one. However, since free associations can cause social struggle, the government should also have the ability to limit self-regulation of free associations. Moreover, each government needs a social basis that gives support to this policy of intervention. The central question of this article reads as follows: What method of research is Tocqueville employing to discover this social basis. The conclusion is that his method is to discover what mores form the basis needed by a democratic government to pursue its policy of intervention.     

From the culture of poverty to the underclass: An analysis of a shift in public language

This paper focuses on the emergence of the “underclass,” and the decline of the “culture of poverty,” as terminologies used in scholarly and popular analysis of certain lowincome groups in American society. It is argued that the theoretical cores of these two concepts are similar but not identical, and that a shift in “public language” has occurred. This shift represents the most recent chapter in the historical process of word substitution that Matza (1966) claims has characterized society’s response to the disreputable poor. The factors responsible for this shift are analyzed, and the consequent potential for miscommunication is highlighted. where his research interests include poverty policy and program evaluation. He is the author (with John B. Williamson) ofPoverty and Public Policy (1986). This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, August 1986. I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers ofThe American Sociologist for their thoughtful comments and suggestions.     

New places — New identities: Settings in the lives of the old

This paper addresses the relationship between meaning attached to settings by social actors and their self-identities. In the context of research on the social worlds of old widows the author identifies “ideal type” self-designated identities, namely that of “resident” vs. “newcomer” in a setting. These self-identities are considered in light of the bearing upon them of the non-human or physical aspects of settings as well as of the people who share the settings. Finally, strategies for maintaining “resident” status are shown to be more limited for the old than for the younger members of society. I would like to thank Juanita B. Wood, Stephen G. Wieting, Ellen Horgan Biddle, Harold B. Freshley, and an anonymous reviewer forQualitative Sociology for their instructive comments on earlier drafts of this paper. This research was supported in part by a grant from the Administration on Aging, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Researchers undertaking such projects are encouraged to express freely their professional judgment. Therefore, points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent the official position or policy of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.     

Studying social capital in situ: A qualitative approach

In recent years, the concept of social capital – broadly defined as co-operative networks based on regular, personal contact and trust – has been widely applied within cross-disciplinary human science research, primarily by economists, political scientists and sociologists. In this article, I argue why and how fieldwork anthropologists should fill a gap in the social capital literature by highlighting how social capital is being built in situ. I suggest that the recent inventions of “bridging” and “bonding” social capital, e.g., inclusive and exclusive types of social capital, are fruitful concepts to apply in an anthropological fieldwork setting. Thus, my case study on the relationship between local people and newcomers in the rural Danish marginal municipality of Ravnsborg seeks to reveal processes of bridging/bonding social capital building. Such a case study at the micro level has general policy implications for a cultural clash between two different groups by demonstrating the complexity of a social capital mix where bonding social capital strongly prevails. This ultimately leads to a “social trap” (Rothstein 2005), implying widespread distrust and serious social and economic costs for a whole population. Gunnar Lind Haase Svendsen is Senior Researcher, at the Institute of Rural Research and Development, Southern University of Denmark. He is the co-author, with G. T. Svendsen, of The Creation and Destruction of Social Capital: Entrepreneurship, Co-operative Movements and Institutions (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 2004, Paperback edition, October 2005); and author of Samarbejde og konfrontation. Opbygning og nedbrydning af social kapital i de danske landdistrikter 1864–2003 [Cooperation and Confrontation. The Creation and Destruction of Social Capital in Rural Denmark 1864–2003], Ph.D. dissertation, University of Sourthern Denmark, Esbjerg, 2004: http://www.humaniora.sdu.dk/phd/dokumenter/filer/Afhandlinger-30.pdfg. Gunnar Svendsen's scholarly interests include Bourdieusian Economics (new socioeconomics), capital theory, social capital, rural civic movements, and rural discourses. He has recently finished a research project for the Danish Ministry of the Interior about the role of intangible assets (culture, networks, and historical traditions) for differences in economic performance (DEP) among four Danish local communities.     

From critique to constructive action: Concrete steps toward a more progressive SSSP

The Society for the Study of Social Problems was formed to analyze social problems, but especially to contribute to their solutions. After some recent years of drifting, a critical mass of the members has begun to construct a more progressive SSSP. One focus is how to change the annual meetings so as not to become a “junior ASA.” SSSP needs to break with the format that features isolated, professional discourse and begin to construct encounters with social practitioners and community activists. Attention to more democratic decision-making within the society and establishing a commission on grass roots organizations are other means to help re-establish the progressive character of SSSP. Currently he is on leave working as a research consultant atLa Coordinadora de Investigaciones Economicas y Sociales (CRIES) in Managua, Nicaragua.     

The use of happiness research for public policy

Research on happiness tends to follow a “benevolent dictator” approach where politicians pursue people’s happiness. This paper takes an antithetic approach based on the insights of public choice theory. First, we inquire how the results of happiness research may be used to improve the choice of institutions. Second, we show that the policy approach matters for the choice of research questions and the kind of knowledge happiness research aims to provide. Third, we emphasize that there is no shortcut to an optimal policy maximizing some happiness indicator or social welfare function since governments have an incentive to manipulate this indicator.     

Security Sector Reform and Development Assistance: Explaining the Diffusion of Policy Priorities among Donor Agencies

This paper employs a world society theoretical framework to examine the recent trend among foreign aid donors to focus on security sector reform as an aid priority. Through a comparative qualitative case study based on interview data collected from aid officials and development workers in Canada, Sweden, and the United States (n = 41) in 2006–2007, this paper finds that the extent to which the security sector reform agenda is integrated into donor policy and programs is mediated by catalytic policy processes linked to intergovernmental organizations and the degree of donor agency autonomy from the rest of government. These findings are used to illustrate how common processes of globalization in world society shape similar approaches to foreign aid among donor agencies despite disparate domestic contexts. These processes lead to convergence of donor policy around security issues and at the same time can account for decoupling of practice from world society policy models.     

Neoliberalism and social work identity

This article considers the relationship between the identity of social work and the neoliberal political project. Reference is made to a small but carefully structured quantitative research study in Auckland, New Zealand which examined the knowledge applied and produced in the practice of social work. This study found evidence consistent with Philp’s [(1979). Notes on the form of knowledge in social work. Sociological Review, 27(1), 83–111] theorisation of a specific ‘form of knowledge’ for social work which is produced and reproduced as a function of relational engagement between social workers and those who are constructed as ‘clients’ in an unequal society. This discourse casts the ‘failing subject’ as socially located and inherently redeemable in direct contrast to populist neoliberal constructions of personal responsibility and moral deficit. With reference to dialectical theory it is suggested that this resilient discourse, embedded in ‘every-day’ practice, is inevitably a source of resistance to the imposition of neoliberal practice and policy design. This resistance provides hope for the progressive voice of social work in the current contest of ideas in relation to the future development of social work.     

The overlooked contributions of applied work in sociology: Who now reads S.A. rice?

Because so little attention is paid to the history of research methods, it easily is over-looked that so much of our current research technology originated in applied social research. Such contributions include probability sampling of human populations, many statistical techniques, and general strategies of data collection. The major reason the history of methods has been overlooked is that there are no classics in methods; we would not learn much by reading old methods texts because the newer texts clearly supersede the “classics.” Thus, the development of methods is cumulative, unlike the development of social theory. His recent publications includeEvaluation: A Systematic Approach (with H. Freeman) andArmed and Considered Dangerous (with J. Wright).     

Waiting for the revolution: The use of microcomputers by social scientists

A longitudinal analysis of one academic unit is employed to assess whether the “microcomputer revolution” has affected the work of academic social scientists. In the four years since all social scientists in the multidisciplinary unit received microcomputers, average use has increased steadily to twenty-four hours per week. There is remarkable consistency in the relative distribution of uses over time, with word-processing applications and research uses remaining dominant. The social scientists report that microcomputer use has moderately increased the quantity and especially enhanced the quality of their research and that the impacts of microcomputing on their interpersonal work environments have been very positive. The data in this analysis reveal clearly that, contrary to the rather hyperbolic claims and excited projections from some social scientists, microcomputers have had benign and incremental impacts on existing patterns of work and have not transformed the nature of social scientists’ work. His recent research has emphasized the social impacts of computing and telecommunications technologies. His most recent book (co-authored with Kenneth L. Kraemer) isPeople and Computers: The Impacts of Computing on End Users in Organizations (Columbia University Press, 1986). He currently is involved in an extensive longitudinal analysis of the uses and impacts of computing technologies in American local governments. He was honored in 1987 with UCI’s first Distinguished Faculty Lectureship Award for Teaching. The initial phase of this research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (IST 8317592).     

What About Who is Mapping and Its Implications? Comments on Brent Never’s “The Case for Better Maps of Social Service Provision”

The term “mapping” has garnered a lot of attention in civil society research and nonprofit studies. Important contributions to mapping discussions have often focused on definitional issues, what to include and not include, what the data is intended for, and measurement challenges. However, the who is undertaking the mapping is often neglected in these discussions. This short article comments on Brent Never’s recent piece in Voluntas and the mapping of civil society and nonprofit organizations in general. Never’s analysis pushes the conversation forward by recommending better maps with both supply and demand of services for funders and policymakers at the local level. However, it neglects the question of who should conduct the mapping and the implications resulting from who these mappers are.     

Towards a Philosophy of Containment: Reading Goffman in the 21st Century

On the occasion of the re-publication of Erving Goffman’s Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order, including the remarkable appendix, “Insanity of Place,” the authors propose new ways of reading Goffman’s work in order to highlight his attention to havoc and containment. Goffman’s “Insanity of Place,” explores the phenomenon of mental illness by asserting that it is an instance of havoc, a symbolic and practical condition that disrupts the social order of life, and one that must be contained. By situating this essay at the center of Goffman’s oeuvre they examine Goffman’s “philosophy of containment,” and trace its trajectory from Asylums, Stigma and “The Insanity of Place” to its full crystallization in Frame Analysis. The authors offer a generative reading of havoc and containment in order to understand the incoherence, irrationality, unreason, incomprehensibility and unbearableness of social life and the imperative to preserve social order from collapsing, dissolving or imploding. This reading enables us to see the cracks in the social order and understand containment as the constant effort exerted to recuperate transgressions and deviations back into that order. Goffman’s analysis becomes an opening into engagements with the work of Judith Butler and Michel Foucault around the notion of the normative order and the issues of containment and transgression. Thinking through Goffman’s philosophy of containment as the framework for an analysis of socialization, normalization, and social ordering affords an approach to thinking macro-micro linkages of order and instability that confront both our contemporary society and the discipline of sociology.     

Informing family policies: The uses of social research

Like the topic of family policy itself, research informing family policies is difficult to characterize. This article discusses how ideology and values influence research agendas and then describes three types of studies informing family policies: research defining social issues, evaluation research, and research about the policy-making process. Two case studies illustrate how social research informs family policy: in promoting gender equality in Scandinavia and in reforming child support in the United States. Values of individualism and the sanctity of the family have traditionally focused policy makers' and, hence, researchers' attention on individuals, not families, as the units of analysis. But dramatic shifts in family structure and functioning along with renewed public concern about family disintegration are placing families high on the policy agenda. Both “basic” and “applied” family scholars can contribute to a research agenda examining the factors promoting strong, effective families. She conducts research on gender and the life course, as well as on aging, families, and social policy. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Minnesota. Her research interests in stratification, social policy, gender, and the life course include sex segregation in occupations, fertility, and work decisions and family policy.     

Metabolism, energy, and entropy in Marx's critique of political economy: Beyond the Podolinsky myth

Until recently, most commentators, including ecological Marxists, have assumed that Marx's historical materialism was only marginally ecologically sensitive at best, or even that it was explicitly anti-ecological. However, research over the last decade has demonstrated not only that Marx deemed ecological materialism essential to the critique of political economy and to investigations into socialism, but also that his treatment of the coevolution of nature and society was in many ways the most sophisticated to be put forth by any social theorist prior to the late twentieth century. Still, criticisms continue to be leveled at Marx and Engels for their understanding of thermodynamics and the extent to which their work is said to conflict with the core tenets of ecological economics. In this respect, the rejection by Marx and Engels of the pioneering contributions of the Ukrainian socialist Sergei Podolinsky, one of the founders of energetics, has been frequently offered as the chief ecological case against them. Building on an earlier analysis of Marx's and Engels's response to Podolinsky, this article shows that they relied on an open-system, metabolic-energetic model that adhered to all of the main strictures of ecological economics – but one that also (unlike ecological economics) rooted the violation of solar and other environmental-sustainability conditions in the class relations of capitalist society. The result is to generate a deeper understanding of classical historical materialism's ecological approach to economy and society – providing an ecological-materialist critique that can help uncover the systemic roots of today's “treadmill of production” and global environmental crisis. Paul Burkett is Professor of Economics at Indiana State University, Terre Haute. He is the author of Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective (1999), and the co-author, with Martin Hart-Landsberg, of China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle (2005). John Bellamy Foster is Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, and co-editor of Monthly Review (New York). He is the author of The Vulnerable Planet (1994, 1999); “Marx's Theory of Metabolic Rift: Classical Foundations for Environmental Sociology,” American Journal of Sociology (September 1999); Marx's Ecology (2000); Ecology Against Capitalism (2002); and Naked Imperialism (2005).     

Antipolitics and Counterpolitics in Nepal’s Civil Society: The Case of Nepal’s Citizens’ Movement

This article considers the relationship of civil society to the domain of the political from the actors’ perspectives. It explores the attempt by a citizens’ movement (CMDP) in Nepal to construct new political realities in the context of the autocratic regime of king Gyanendra and then during the democratic transition. This was, paradoxically, to be achieved through the construction of an apolitical space. Theoretically, this production of apoliticality by civil society actors shows that civil society is not only implicated in the expansion of what is understood as ‘political’ but also in setting its boundaries. The broader aims of the article are to contribute to the ethnography of civil society and to add to current understandings of the relationship of actually existing civil societies to the political domain. Practically, it argues that debates over whether civil society is or is not political in the Nepal case and normative positions within development circles that it should not be political are misconceived since civil society is a site for the production of both politicality and apoliticality.     

The making of US monetary policy: Central bank transparency and the neoliberal dilemma

This article explores the implications of the Federal Reserve’s shift to transparency for recent debates about neoliberalism and neoliberal policymaking. I argue that the evolution of US monetary policy represents a specific instance of what I term the “neoliberal dilemma.” In the context of generally deteriorating economic conditions, policymakers are anxious to escape responsibility for economic outcomes, and yet markets require regulation to function in capitalist economies (Polanyi 2001). How policymakers negotiate these contradictory imperatives involves a continual process of institutional innovation in which functions are transferred to markets, but under the close control of the state. Thus, under transparency, Federal Reserve officials discovered innovations in the policy process that enabled “markets to do the Fed’s work for it.” These innovations enlisted market mechanisms, but did not represent a retreat from the state’s active role in managing the economy.

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Sociology and the environment: An analysis of journal coverage

Many sociologists have suggested that the dominant paradigm in sociology ignores the environment, which accounts for the fact that environmental sociology is poorly represented in sociology’s mainstream journals. The purpose of this article is to test this assumption empirically by examining the coverage of environmental sociology in nine mainstream sociology journals from 1969 through 1994. The nine journals are separated into two tiers, representing higher and lower prestige journals. Each environmental article is categorized by its area (attitudes and behaviors, environmental movement, political economy, risk, and “new human ecology”) and whether it involves “sociology of the environmental issues” (the application of standard sociological perspectives to environmental issues) or “core environmental sociology” (the examination of societal-environmental relationships). We find that less than two percent of all articles published in the sampled journals in the twenty-five-year period of study were environmental, and that the higher tier journals were less likely to publish environmental articles than were the lower tier journals. Environmental articles were more likely to be part of “core environmental sociology” after 1981 than they were “sociology of the environmental issues,” which suggests a greater recognition among both environmental sociologists and journal reviewers that human societies are ecosystem-dependent. The number of environmental articles increased in the 1990s, portending a fruitful period for sociologists specializing on the environment. We argue that the broader field of sociology can benefit by recognizing the linkages environmental sociology has to other sociological specializations and that, ultimately, sociology needs to be able to address environmental variables in order to understand society. Naomi T. Krogman’s primary interest is in stakeholder framing of environmental disputes and natural resource policy change. She is currently a research sociologist at the Center for Socioeconomic Research at the University of Southwestern Louisiana and adjunct faculty in the Department of Sociology, University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, LA 70504-0198. JoAnne DeRouen Darlington is a research sociologist focusing on social change and community sustainability emerging from the disastrous interactions between society and the environment. She is currently employed with the Natural Hazards Research Center, Campus Box 482, Boulder, CO 80309.