Social Work with Rural Peoples (3rd ed.), Ken Collier,Vancouver, BC: New Star Books, 2006, Paper

This qualitative study explored how White parents who identify as antiracist apply antiracism principles to parenting their White children. Participants discussed how they attempt to incorporate antiracism values into their parenting, their children’s racial awareness, and the impact of race and racism on their children. Our findings indicate significant inconsistencies between antiracist values and parenting practices. The main difference between antiracist White parents and nonantiracist-identified White parents was awareness. Although antiracist White parents overall conveyed an awareness of racism as a system of unearned privileges, there was minimal modeling of antiracist action.     

The critique of intelligent design: Epicurus,Marx, Darwin,and Freud and the materialist defense of science

A new version of the age-old controversy between religion and science has been launched by today’s intelligent design movement. Although ostensibly concerned simply with combating Darwinism, this new creationism seeks to drive a “wedge” into the materialist view of the world, originating with the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus and manifested in modern times by Darwin, Marx, and Freud. Intelligent design proponents thus can be seen as challenging not only natural and physical science but social science as well. In this article, we attempt to explain the long history of this controversy, stretching over millennia, and to defend science (especially social science) against the criticisms of intelligent design proponents – by defending science’s materialist roots.

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Book reviews

Books reviewed in this article: Essays on the History of British Sociological Research, M. Bulmer (ed.) Three Sociological Traditions, Randall Collins Macro Sociological Theory: Perspectives on Sociological Theory Vol. I, H.J. Helle and S.N. Eisenstadt (eds) Micro Sociological theory: Perspectives on Sociological Theory Vol. II, H.J. Helle and S.N. Eisenstadt (eds) Powers and Liberties: The Causes and Consequences of the Rise of the West, John A. Hall Talcott Parsons and the Capitalist Nation-State, William Buxton G.H. Mead. A Contemporary Re-Examination of his Thought, Hans Joas Language, Structure and Reproduction. An Introduction to the Sociology of Basil Bernstein, Paul Atkinson Measuring Culture: A Paradigm for the Analysis of Social Organisation, Jonathan L. Gross and Steve Rayner Food in the Social Order, Mary Douglas (ed.) Classes, Erik Olin Wright Annals of the Labouring Poor, K.D.M. Snell Beyond Employment: Household, Gender and Subsistence, Nanneke Redclift and Enzo Mingione (eds.) Women's Working Lives: Patterns and Strategies, Susan Yeandle On Women, Sexuality and Love, Georg Simmel, translated and with an introduction by Guy Oakes A Woman's Place, An Oral History of Working-Class Women 1890–1940, Elizabeth Roberts The Autobiography of the Working Class: An Annotated, Critical Bibliography. Volume 1: 1790–1900, John Burnett, David Vincent and David Mayall (eds) The Sociology of Law, Roman Tomasic Legal Systems and Social Systems, Adam Podgorecki, Christopher J. Whelan and Dinesh Khosla The Politics of the Police, Robert Reiner European Immigration Policy: A Comparative Study, Tomas Hammar (ed.) The Elementary Forms of the New Religious Life, Roy Wallis The Need for Religious Certainty: A Sociological Study of Conventional Religion, Robert Towler No Pope of Rome: Militant Protestantism in Modern Scotland, Steve Bruce American Journal of Islamic Studies, Volume 1, No 1, 1984, S.S. Nyang (ed.) The Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem, V. Azarya Islamic Sociology, I. Ba-Yunus and F. Ahmad Categories of Medieval Culture, A. J. Gurevich (translated by G.L. Campbell) Science for Social Scientists, John Law and Peter Lodge The Intellectual and Social Organization of the Sciences, Richard Whitley Framing Science: The Making of a BBC Documentary, Roger Silverstone     

It's the Message,Not the Messenger: The Declining Significance of Black–White Contact in a “Colorblind” Society*

We argue that due to the modern‐day prevalence of colorblind racism, the impact of interracial contact on whites’ racial consciousness is limited. By comparing two qualitative data sets of white antiracists and whites who have a close black friend, we find there are a good number of whites for whom relationships with people of color are not the prime impetus for becoming antiracist. Whites often bracket out their black friends from their limited understandings of racism, and white antiracists often adopt progressive ideologies from other whites. Even when interracial contact is part of white antiracists’ experiences, it often is but one small step in a process of sensitization to an antiracist counterideology. The bearers of this antiracist ideology (the “message”) may or may not be persons of color (the assumed “messengers”) so we explore a variety of ways that this “message” takes hold (or not) among whites. While not discounting contact theory altogether, we make plain that colorblindness is a major factor limiting its explanatory power. We conclude by discussing the methodological and theoretical implications of our findings for sociological race relations research.     

The Use of the Conceptual Category of Race in American Sociology, 1937–99

We examine how mainstream sociology has used race as an explanatory factor by examining papers in the American Sociological Review between 1937 and 1999. We find a dramatic increase in the likelihood that sociologists will take race into account, and we suggest that methodological innovations are largely responsible for creating an environment in which it is taken for granted that analysts in many fields will control for race. This pattern of usage may reinforce an implicit conception of racial differences that we call broad but shallow, in that race is expected to matter almost everywhere, but its effect can be neutralized by the addition of a control.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: The Uneasy Equilibrium. By Odin W. Andkrson . The Nature of Social Science. By George C. Romans . Social Class, Race, and Psychological Development. Edited by Martin Deutsch , Irwin Katz , and Arthur Jensen . Ideology and the Development of Sociological Theory, by Irving M. Zeitlin The Logic of Collective Action, by Mancur Olson, Jr. Comparative Perspectives on Marriage and the Family, edited by H. Kent Geiger Fatherhood: A Sociological Perspective, by Leonard Benson Psychology and Social Problems, by Michael Argyle     

The isolation of crime,law, and deviance from the core of sociology

The study of crime, law, and deviance is considered to be an isolated subarea of sociology that draws upon but does not contribute to the core of the discipline. Subareas, the specific and substantive topics of sociology, may be expected to make less obvious and direct contributions to the core than do theory, methodology, social organization, and social psychology as the major areas of sociology. And within subareas, studies that are readily applied may be considered less integrated and contributory to the discipline than the more “pure” or basic science subareas. This analysis examines the relationships between areas, subareas, and the core of sociology; the subject matter of sociological subareas; the actual versus perceptual isolation of crime, law, and deviance studies from the core; and the meaning of contribution. Measurement of contribution is limited to a survey ofSociological Abstracts, theCumulative Index of Sociology Journals, and the 1993 program for the American Sociological Association annual meetings. Comparing area and subarea publications and conference sessions suggests that, contrary to expectations, crime, law, and deviance research constitutes a significant portion of the available knowledge base. The perceived isolation of crime, law, and deviance from sociology may be explained by professional bias against applied studies of stigmatized populations. An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the 1992 American Sociological Association Annual Meetings.     

The “Peculiar Eclipsing” of Women in Sociological Theory: Moving from Nearly Total to Partial

This paper revisits the observation made by Ward and Grant (Current Perspective in Social Theory 11:117–140, 1991) that there had been a “peculiar eclipsing” of women in sociological theory. It provides longitudinal studies of women’s participation and recognition in three conventional outlets for sociological theorizing: the theory section of the American Sociological Association (ASA); sociological theory textbooks; and sociological theory journals. It finds that the percentage of ASA Theory Section members who were women increased from 12% in 1982 to 31% in 2008, but is not nearly as high as the 53% in all ASA sections taken together; that women’s recognition in sociological theory textbooks grew, more between the 1980s and the 2000s than between the 1960s and the 1980s, undoubtedly reflecting the increasing respectability of feminist theory within the profession; and that women’s relative participation as authors in sociology theory journals increased from the 1980s to the 2000s by about 33%, but nowhere near as much as their participation as authors in the American Sociological Review, where their relative participation in the 2000s was more than three times what it had been in the 1980s. We speculate that, given women’s increasing leadership roles in both the Theory section and the theory journals, women may be using less conventional outlets for their theorizing than is offered by either the section or the journals.     

Sociology at UCLA

In a discipline in which departments are often characterized by irreconcilable controversies and factional disputes, UCLA’s department stands out as a pluralistic community that fosters interaction, communication, and mutual understanding. At UCLA the micro and macro meet: leading ethnographers and survey researchers work side by side; noted Marxists, functionalists and phenomenologists participate in the same colloquia, and persons with a variety of outlooks share membership on the same student committees. Ambitious students committed to obtaining the Ph.D. experience a stimulating educational career in a department that prides itself on diversity, but whose faculty understands that its program must be structured and coherent. He has writtenTheoretical Logic in Sociology (4 volumes).Twenty Lectures: Sociological Theory Since World War II, andStructure and Meaning: Essays in Sociological Theory. His most recent books includeEvaluation: A Systematic Approach (3rd edition, with Peter K. Rossi), and the forthcomingHandbook of Medical Sociology (4th edition) edited with Sol Levine.     

Two main problems in the sociology of morality

Sociologists often ask why particular groups of people have the moral views that they do. I argue that sociology’s empirical research on morality relies, implicitly or explicitly, on unsophisticated and even obsolete ethical theories, and thus is based on inadequate conceptions of the ontology, epistemology, and semantics of morality. In this article I address the two main problems in the sociology of morality: (1) the problem of moral truth, and (2) the problem of value freedom. I identify two ideal–typical approaches. While the Weberian paradigm rejects the concept of moral truth, the Durkheimian paradigm accepts it. By contrast, I argue that sociology should be metaphysically agnostic, yet in practice it should proceed as though there were no moral truths. The Weberians claim that the sociology of morality can and should be value free; the Durkheimians claim that it cannot and it should not. My argument is that, while it is true that factual statements presuppose value judgments, it does not follow that sociologists are moral philosophers in disguise. Finally, I contend that in order for sociology to improve its understanding of morality, better conceptual, epistemological, and methodological foundations are needed.

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Curriculum Policy Dilemmas in Field Instruction

The increased interest in empirical research over the last few years has produced a severe problem with applied statistical misuse in social work research efforts that incorporate advanced analytical techniques. A recent article in the Journal of Education for Social Work purporting to assess admissions criteria is presented as a primary example of such misuse and provides the basis for a discussion of general methodological issues of particular importance to social work education research. Specific issues discussed include the truncation of range, dummy coding, identifying race and sex bias, measuring professional potential, and the generalization of findings.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: The Applicability of Organisational Sociology by Chris Argyris. Youth in Modern Society edited by Shirley M. Clark and John P. Clark. The Evangelistic Bureaucrat: A Study of a Planning Exercise in Newcastle upon Tyne by Jon Gower Davies. For Marx by L. Althusser. The Sociology of Marx by H. Lefebvre. Two Worlds of Childhood: U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. by Urie Bronfen-brenner. Women at Work by Beatrice Musgrave and Joan Wheeler-Bennett. A History of the Mental Health Services by Kathleen Jones. New Directions in Sociological Theory by Paul Filmer et al. The Sociology of Education by P. W. Musgrave. and The Sociology of Education: An Introduction by I. Morrish. Language and Social Behaviour by W. P. Robinson. Political Sociology by Robert E. Dowse and John A. Hughes. Suburbia by David C. Thorns. Sociological Analysis by A. Sahay. Sentencing the Motoring Offender by Roger Hood.     

Trends in sociology titles

Recent reflections on the state of publications in sociology (Becker, 2003) suggest that article titles are getting longer. I test this hypothesis with data from ASR since inception and a wider sample of papers from Sociological Abstracts between 1963 and 1999. My results indicate a rapid and widespread increase in title length. Further analyses suggest that title length does not predict citation, suggesting that long titles are not an avenue for getting more readers. Thanks to Randy Hodson, Joan Huber, David Jacobs, Lisa Keister, Ryan Light, Betty Menaghan, and members of the Social Structure Reading Group for comments on earlier drafts of this paper.     

An unprincipled ethics?: The missing morality of the ASA code

It is argued that the present incarnation of the American Sociological Association’s “Code of Professional Ethics” supplants moral precepts of sociological practice with particularistic procedures and restrictions. This drift from moral reflection to intraprofessional control mechanisms is compared with various ethical theories applicable to social sciences, and explained in terms of perceived structural conditions within and external to the discipline. Richard G. Mitchell, Jr. is an ethnographer whose interest in ethics grew out of fieldwork experience as a participant and observer among mountain climbers (Mountain Experience, University of Chicago Press, 1983), and recently, among American survivalists and related right-wing paramilitary groups (forthcoming).     

Ensemble instruction: A note on communicating sociology via computers

Computer software can manage intricate operations and complex data in order to make sociological ideas and methods concrete, animated, and relevant event to novices. This note describes how an approach called “ensemble instruction” makes use of such software in classrooms with personal computers for each student and a central projection system. A former editor ofSociological Methodology and ofSociological Methods & Research His current work focuses on the analysis of social interaction within the framework of affect control theory. Additionally he is developing methods for studying the logical structure of events in interaction sequences.     

Intellectual Integration and Articles in Core Sociology Journals, 1960–2000

This study builds on and extends two studies by Oromaner (J Am Soc Inf Sci, 28:34–37, 1977; Int J Inf Manage, 6:29–35, 1986) in which he examined the integrating role of sociology’s three core general journals (American Journal of Sociology (AJS), American Sociological Review (ASR), Social Forces (SF)) among both core (N = 3) and specialty (N = 7) journals. In each study he traced the number of citations received by full-length articles published in the core journals (1960, 1973) during the first 10 years after publication. The present study replicates this methodology for articles published in 1990. In addition, the present study looks at the relationship between each of the core journals and each of the ten citing journals. The percent of core articles cited has increased from 67 to 84, however, the percent cited in five or more journals has remained quite stable and low (13%, 10%, 12%). Core journal articles are more likely to be cited in core journals than they are in specialty journals, and there appears to be some relationship between specific core journals and certain specialty journals. More in depth analysis is presented for the 1990 cohort.     

Was there a “golden past” for the introductory sociology textbook? A citation analysis of leading journals

Much debate over the years has centered around whether there was ever a “golden past” for the introductory sociology textbook, when high quality books influenced the development of scholarship and thinking. Some empirical evidence is added to this debate through an analysis of the citations to introductory sociology textbooks in all the articles and research notes appearing in theAmerican Journal of Sociology, theAmerican Sociological Review, andSocial Forces from 1960 to 1969 and from 1984 to 1993. The data show that, although seldom cited in recent journals, introductory sociology textbooks were often cited in the earlier period. The article concludes with some thoughts about why introductory sociology textbooks have had a declining influence on scholarship.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: The Research Act in Sociology: A Theoretical Introduction to Socio-logical Methods by Norman K. Denzin. Sociological Methods: A Source-book by Norman K. Denzin. The Sociology of Sport: A Selection of Readings edited by Eric Dunning. Status Passage by Barney G. Glaser and A. L. Strauss. Prices, Markets and Welfare by David CoUard. A Family Business: Kinship and Social Control in Organized Crime by F. A. J. and E. R. Ianni. Cave Dwellers and Citrus Growers: A Jewish Community in Libya and Israel by Harvey E. Goldberg. The English Prison Officer Since 1850: A Study in Conflict by J. E. Thomas. Concepts and Society by Ian C. Jarvie. The Sociology of Art by Jean Duvignaud, translated by Timothy Wilson. Medicine Takers, Prescribers and Hoarders by Karen Dunnell and Ann Cartwright. Civilisation and Science: In Conflict or Collaboration? by H. Bloch et al. Welfare versus Freedom by Evan Bitsaxis. Interpreting Education: A Sociological Approach edited by Lawrence W. Drabick. Motherless Families by Victor George and Paul Wilding.     

Integrating feminist and sociological thought: The life and work of helena Znaniecka Lopata

This work is a biographical essay on the academic career of Helena Znaniecka Lopata, a noted sociologist in her own right and the daughter of Florian Znaniecki, a principal contributor to qualitative and humanistic sociology. Lopata’s story documents the difficulties of establishing a career in a social climate that did not place high value on women beyond their wife and mothering roles. Once she defied her cultural expectations, she also had to overcome the shadow of her father’s legacy and, finally, she had to find acceptance for doing research on women’s everyday life experiences. Lopata’s work provides important insights into the sociological study of social roles and of gender as a structural component of stratified social systems. She has published articles on the women’s movement, politics and the family, and the abortion controversy. Her book,Feminism and the Women’s Movement: Dynamics of Change in Social Movement Ideology and Activism, is forthcoming from Unwin Hyman. A version of this paper was presented at the 1989 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco, CA.