Whither the Blank Slate? A Report on the Reception of Evolutionary Biological Ideas among Sociological Theorists

Sociologists have drawn considerable criticism over the years for their failure to integrate evolutionary biological principles in their work. Critics such as Stephen Pinker (2002 Pinker , Steven. 2002 . The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature . New York : Penguin Books . [Google Scholar]) have popularized the notion that sociologists adhere dogmatically to a “blank slate” or cultural determinist view of the human mind and social behavior. This report assesses whether sociologists indeed ascribe to such a blank slate view. Drawing from a survey of 155 sociological theorists, we find the field about evenly divided over the applicability of evolutionary reasoning to a range of human tendencies. Although there are signs of a shift toward greater openness to evolutionary biological ideas, sociologists are least receptive to evolutionary accounts of human sex differences. Echoing earlier research, we find political identity to be a significant predictor of sociologists' receptiveness. We close by cautioning our colleagues against sociological reductionism and we speculate about the blank slate's political-psychological appeal to liberal-minded social scientists.     

Growth versus Distribution: Does the Pattern of Growth Matter?

Despite the fashion for pro‐poor growth, there remains no consensus as to its meaning. This article proposes three possible definitions, and examines the pattern of growth over time and in different world regions. The growth of the poor's income can be broken down into a growth effect and a distribution effect. In 143 growth episodes, it is found that the growth effect dominates. However, in over a quarter of cases changes in distribution played a stronger role than overall growth in increasing income for the poor. Econometric analysis of growth regressions for each population quintile supports the idea that openness benefits everyone, but indicates a robust perverse relationship with governance. There is also evidence of a trade‐off between growth and distribution, suggesting that attention to distribution will be better for the poor than going for growth.     

Report on a case of sadism∗

While popular and psychoanalytic explanations of extramarital relations abound, no systematic sociological theory of such involvement has been presented to date. A partial theory of extramarital involvement is advanced in this paper. Based on the findings that the probability of involvement is related to socio‐economic status, the intensity of religious devoutness, residential background, premarital experience, the duration of marriage, level of marital satisfaction, and the degree of alienation, three propositions accounting for these relationships are set forth. On the basis of the theoretical propositions, the underlying dynamics of extramarital involvement are outlined and discussed.     

“Bad Girls Rule”: An Interdisciplinary Feminist Commentary on the Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls

Feminist, critical, and postmodern scholars have long recognized sexuality as a site of power relations. The recently released Report of the APA (American Psychological Association) Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls is a welcome addition to ongoing feminist and activist conversations on how to intervene on issues of sexuality in the name of girls' and women's health. This article offers a critical interdisciplinary analysis of this influential APA report, expanding on and challenging several of its main claims. This article critiques the report as over-determining the negative impact of sexualization; offers other literatures as critical additions including feminist literature on media, consumer culture, gender, and the body, and earlier “pro-desire” feminist psychology scholarship; and critiques the task force's conflations of objectification and sexualization. The article concludes with a call for broadening feminist scholarship and activism across disciplinary boundaries to emphasize girls' and women's sexual agency and resistance, as well as sexual health and rights.     

An Examination of the Reliability of the “What If” Situations Test: A Brief Report

ABSTRACT

One of the primary barriers to evaluating child sexual abuse prevention programs is the limited availability of measurement tools with demonstrated psychometric properties. The purpose of this study was to investigate the internal and test-retest reliability of the “What If” Situations Test (WIST) to determine its utility as an evaluation tool for young children. The WIST contains six scales designed to assess children's abilities to recognize, resist, and report inappropriate touching. The WIST was administered to 406 preschoolers involved in five previous studies. Internal and test-retest reliabilities of the six scales met research standards, supporting the internal consistency and temporal stability of the WIST. Advantages and limitations of the measure are presented and validation issues are then discussed.     

Selectivity,adaptation, or disruption? A comparison of alternative hypotheses on the effects of migration on fertility: the case of Brazil

This study, based on Brazilian data from 1976, compared the fertility of migrants and stayers at both origin and destination areas. Observed patterns of fertility differentials were then analyzed in terms of 4 hypotheses of fertility behavior focused on processes of socialization, adaptation, selectivity, and disruption. In the study sample, 31% of migrants moved from rural to urban areas, 45% of moves were between urban areas, and 20% of moves were between rural areas. Among rural-to-urban migrants, only 1/3 moved from traditional to modern regions. To uncover the main patterns of migrant and stayer fertility differentials in the study population, the major flows of migrants by origin and destination were disaggregated by recency of migration, education, and age. The overall conclusions were as follows: 1) rural-urban migration flows need to be disaggregated into various modern/traditional cross-classifications (e.g., modern-rural, traditional-urban, frontier-urban) and greater emphasis needs to be placed on rural-urban, urban-urban, and rural-rural flows; 2) no robust quantitative measures of migrant-stayer fertility differentials held across migrant groups, implying that migrants differing in terms of age, education, origin, and destination are likely to behave in significantly variable fashion with regard to stayer standards of fertility behavior; 3) migrant groups with overall lower fertility levels, such as the young and better educated, are less likely to experience significant fertility reduction to bridge the origin/destination fertility gap; 4) rural-to-rural migrants do not appear to experience any lasting fertility reduction even when they move to areas with lower overall fertility rates; 5) urban-to-rural migrants tend to bridge a larger fraction of the uphill fertility gap than rural-to-urban migrants; and 6) there was evidence of partial adaptation for most migrant categories once disruption effects disappear and evidence consistent with the socialization hypothesis (no fertility reduction for at least 1 generation) was apparent for migrants originating in the least developed parts of Brazil, the frontier region, and the traditional-rural region.     

A Feminist Trade Union Agenda? The Continued Significance of Class,Gender and Race

During the 1990s attempts to identify a feminist trade union agenda have focused on both the content and process of such a potential agenda. In a period in which trade unions have changed significantly, the general national agenda appears to be changing, acknowledging issues of importance to women. UNISON, Britain's largest trade union, has enshrined proportionality and fair representation in its constitution, developing national initiatives aimed at improving opportunities in work and in the union for women, black workers, manual workers, disabled workers, etc. who traditionally have been less well represented. Many issues affecting women generally have moved to centre stage, yet issues affecting women ancillary workers seem as excluded as ever. Through a study of cleaners in the National Health Service this article argues that workplace interests reflect wider social divisions, but in a variety of patterns depending on the social organization of work. Despite thewidening trade union agenda, particular interests — more specifically the workplace interests of working‐class women and black women — continue to be neglected.     

Participation as a means of enhancing the legitimacy of decisions on technology? A sceptical analysis

The legitimacy of technology as a whole, of individual fields of technology, and of concrete decisions on technology has become problematic. Traditional methods and elements for the legitimization of technological development and of the application of technology have been increasingly called into question since the 1980s. There are great expectations in participatory procedures to improving the legitimization of technology decisions. Those expectations, however, might not be justified. In the paper, the hypothesis is proposed that legitimacy can be brought about through participation only under conditions that require the fulfillment of a number of preconditions, which often cannot be regarded as fulfilled. The unavoidable separation between internal communication among the participants and external communication with the nonparticipants turns out to be the fundamental structural characteristic hindering naïve expectations of improving legitimacy by participation.

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Zusammenfassung Die Legitimität von Technik als Ganzem, von einzelnen Technikfeldern und von konkreten Technikentscheidungen ist heute problematisch. Traditionelle Methoden und Elemente für die Legitimierung technischer Entwicklungen und der Anwendung von Technik werden seit den Achtzigerjahren immer mehr in Frage gestellt. Nun setzt man große Erwartungen in partizipatorische Prozeduren, die die Legitimierung von Technikentscheidungen verbessern sollen, Erwartungen, die jedoch möglicherweise nicht gerechtfertigt sind. In diesem Beitrag stellen wir die Hypothese zur Diskussion, dass Partizipation nur unter Umständen zu Legitimität führen kann, die voraussetzen, dass bestimmte Vorbedingungen erfüllt sind, was jedoch oft nicht der Fall ist. Die unvermeidliche Trennung zwischen interner Kommunikation unter den Teilnehmern und externer Kommunikation mit den Nichtteilnehmern erweist sich als das grundlegende strukturelle Merkmal, das der Erfüllung naiver Erwartungen hinsichtlich einer erhöhten Legitimität durch Partizipation im Weg steht.

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Résumé La légitimité de la technologie en tant que tout, de domaines technologiques particuliers et de décisions technologiques concrètes est aujourdhui problématique. Les méthodes et les éléments traditionnels de légitimation des développements technologiques sont depuis les années quatre-vingts de plus en plus remis en question. On fonde à présent de grands espoirs dans les procédures participatives, qui doivent améliorer la légitimation des décisions technologiques, un espoir qui nest cependant peut-être pas justifié. Dans cet article, nous discutons lhypothèse selon laquelle la participation ne peut mener à la légitimité que dans des conditions impliquant à leur tour que certains préalables soient remplis, ce qui nest souvent pas le cas. La séparation inévitable entre la communication interne entre participants et la communication externe avec les nonparticipants savère une caractéristique structurelle fondamentale faisant obstacle à laccomplissement dattentes naïves pour ce qui est dune légitimité accrue par la participation.

     

What Accounts for the Variations in Nonprofit Growth? A Cross-National Panel Study

Previous studies of nonprofit growth have lamented the lack of cross-national longitudinal data measuring the size of the nonprofit sector across countries, which has made it difficult to assess the current state of knowledge about the nonprofit sector beyond national boundaries. Recent progress in measuring nonprofit growth using panel studies or cross-national data has compensated for the limitations of the existing research, but even the recent data are either country specific or cross sectional in nature. This study takes on the challenge of supplementing the current research by measuring nonprofit growth using internationally comparable longitudinal data. Specifically, this study focuses on whether certain key indicators of the overall state of the economy can be used to predict and explain the size of nonprofit sectors cross-nationally. The overall state of the economy has considerable relevance for nonprofit growth, as it influences the levels of government funding and private philanthropy that benefit the nonprofit sector. The results indicate that the existing theories about the nonprofit sector account for variations in nonprofit growth but are limited in their explanations of the underlying dynamics of such variations beyond national boundaries. Social origins theory is a useful addition that helps to explain cross-national variations in nonprofit growth. Importantly, the interplay among the government, private philanthropy, and the nonprofit sector is dynamic, and its effect on economic indicators varies across nonprofit regime types when sociodemographic variables are controlled.     

Is the Grass Greener on the Other Side of the River?

No abstract available for this article.     

Integrating or Setting the Agenda? Gender Mainstreaming in the European Constitution-Making Process

The European Union (EU) constitution-making process has adoptedan "integrating" rather than an "agenda-setting" approach togender mainstreaming. This argument draws on analysis of boththe European Constitutional Convention and its product—theConstitutional Treaty. Five indicators of application of mainstreamingserve as reference points for exploring how it has been appliedin the EU Constitutional Convention: a broader concept of genderequality, the incorporation of a gender perspective into themainstream, equal representation of women, the prioritizationof gender policy objectives, and a shift in institutional andorganizational culture. The article provides a tentative explanationfor the failure of the EU constitution-making process to adoptan "agenda-setting" approach to gender mainstreaming.     

Do the Health Benefits of Marriage Depend on the Likelihood of Marriage?

Marriage promotion initiatives presume substantial health benefits of marriage. Current literature, however, has provided inconsistent results on whether these benefits would be shared by people unlikely to marry. We investigate whether the physical and mental health benefits of marriage depend on the likelihood of marriage. Whereas prior studies have compared health benefits of marriage across a single predictor of marriage chances, we define the likelihood of marriage as a composite of demographic, economic, and health characteristics. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we find that married adults are only modestly healthier than unmarried adults in both physical and mental dimensions. People with a higher likelihood of marriage generally do not reap greater health benefits from marriage than their counterparts. The only exception is that continuous marriage is more strongly associated with improved mental health among men who are more likely to be married.     

Is the Audience the Message? A Note on LBJ's Vietnam Statements

Do politicians still tailor their messages for specific audiences,or has mass media coverage led them to homogenize their messages?Contentanalysis of 77 of Lyndon B. Johnson's public statements aboutVietnam showed that, depending on the audience, he did varythe content—which suggests that to some extentthe audienceis the message.     

Does satisfaction matter? A microeconomic empirical analysis of the effect of social relations on economic welfare

The paper studies the effect of social relations on individual economic welfare by explicitly considering the qualitative aspect of relations that characterize the social structure of personal contacts. It argues that important information is lost if only the density of the social network is considered. This proposition is tested using microdata representative of the entire Italian population. Two proxies for interpersonal relations at an individual level are considered: the number of voluntary associations joined and the satisfaction gained from relationships with friends. Both seem to have a positive effect on two indices of household economic welfare: a subjective index and an objective one. The subjective index is based on both the subjects’ personal assessment of their household general economic situation and financial difficulties in meeting certain expenditures. The objective index is calculated from objective data on the household's economic situation. The empirical results prove robust on considering a variety of control variables and using different econometric methods.     

Necessary Disruptions: A Discussion of Daniel Butler’s “Racialized Bodies and the Violence of the Setting”

This discussion of Daniel Butler’s article “Racialized Bodies and the Violence of the Setting” takes up the importance of the concept of place, largely through the lens of Frantz Fanon. It argues that being is best understood as being placed, emphasizing the necessity of material and historical setting for any ontological formation. Very tentatively, it advances a fragile hope that Whiteness is currently being placed in a way that can no longer be regarded as something universalized and invisible.     

Is the Fountain of Youth on Niujie Street?

NIUJIE Street, Beijingers all know, is a neighborhood populated by the Hui nationality people south Beijing. Along this one-kilometer street that is nearly 700 years old are numerous traditional, single-storey houses and courtyards made of gray brick and tile, which form a sharp contrast with the modern skyscrapers not far away. The mosque at the center of the street is