The Promise and Perils of Applied Sociology: A Survey of Nonacademic Employers

Using data collected from sixty-five nonacademic employers, who either advertised in the ASA Employment Bulletin between January 1979 and January 1981 or who registered with the employment service at the ASA annual meetings in 1979 or 1980, we examine what nonacademic employers are looking for when they recruit sociologists, how they recruit such employees, what tasks employers assign sociologists, and what they perceive to be the major shortcomings of sociologists they have hired. Guiding the inquiry is our belief that programs and policies for expanding nonacademic job opportunities and the arguments for increasing the emphasis placed on applied sociology in graduate training have been more concerned with molding individuals to fit certain perceived occupational roles outside of academia than with training sociologists. We suggest that an uncritical acceptance of the nature of demand in the current labor market may ultimately lead to a deskilling of the sociological profession and the homogenization of the nonacademic labor markets open to social scientists.     

A critique of integration

The term ‘integration’ is a category used both in political discourse and in sociological analysis. In political discourse, in the public debate, it has become a magic word which accompanies repression when a political power is unable to deal with major difficulties, particularly in poor neighbourhoods. The so-called ‘models of integration’ are all failing, whether in the United Kingdom after the terrorist attacks of 2005, in the Netherlands after the murder of Theo Van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn, or in France after the riots of 2005. In political and social life, integration is far from able to account for realities or to implement public policies successfully. From a sociological perspective, integration is connected with approaches which are centred on society or the social system, much more than with those that deal with the subjectivity of individuals and their capacity for personal or collective action. This means that integration belongs much more to traditional sociological thinking than to the new contemporary sociological imagination.     

Sociological Theories of Poverty in Urban America

ABSTRACT

Since the 1950s, American sociologists have developed a substantial literature on poverty in urban American communities. This literature review examines some of these sociological theories of poverty and identifies four major explanations of urban poverty: social stratification, (including segregation and racism); lack of access to social capital; cultural and value norms; and social policies. The literature review concludes with a conceptual framework that focuses on multiple relationships that link theory to practice related to the reduction of poverty in inner-city communities.     

Social work and social control in the penitentiary system: an empirical study in northern Italy

In Italy there is a prison and probation system based on a rehabilitative model, which is connected with social policies and entrusts relevant tasks to the helping professions. Among these, social work is affected by changes in social policies, marked by the influence of neoliberal thought. Contemporary sociological studies highlight the transition from a model mainly focused on ensuring social welfare, to a model in which the dominant interest is to increase effective social control. In this transition there has been an impoverishment of social protection for the most vulnerable segments of the population. This article presents the results of a qualitative research study carried out in northern Italy, among professionals working in the penitentiary sector (mainly social workers). Research has focused on the representations of the respondents on specific issues, including: the relationship between the crisis of the welfare state and the penal-welfare system; the culture of control and the changes in the role of social workers. Results show, inter alia, that social workers reject punitive responses, especially those towards the most disadvantaged social groups. Moreover, in this crisis of the welfare state and the rehabilitative model, political ideals, felt by the entire professional community, seem to be lacking.     

The Sociology of Inequality and the Rise of Neo-Inequality

Sociologists’ conventional approaches to understanding inequality and poverty do not adequately capture the causes, extent, and consequences of new forms of inequality that have emerged in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Following a critique of conventional sociological theorizing on inequality and stratification, a synthesis of new sociological/social psychology thinking on inequality, and the use of case study data from Detroit, I explore, describe, and explain how neo-liberal ideology, neo-liberal systems of governance, and neo-liberal policies have created the neo-inequalities that now define our age.     

(Dis)unity and Diversity in Post-9/11 America

Drawing inspiration from the work of Robin M. Williams Jr., I map out the complexities of ethnic and racial relations in the contemporary United States by focusing on the impacts of 9/11—particularly in relation to immigration policy. Because the attackers entered the country through regular immigration channels (i.e., as foreign students) the U.S. government has introduced policies to enhance border security, restrict immigration, increase the surveillance of immigrant populations, and more actively enforce immigration policy. These national-security-related immigration policies, however, are exacerbating existing tensions and producing new sets of ethnic and racialized conflicts in the United States. In this article, I first provide an overview of the key national-security-related immigration policies that were passed in the wake of September 11, 2001. Then, I review some of the recent sociological literature, as well as draw from my own preliminary research in the State of New Jersey, to illustrate the social impacts of these policies on ethnic and racial relations. I conclude with an outline of the ways the sociology of ethnic and racial relations specifically, as well as other subfields of the discipline, might approach analyses of social conflict in the contemporary United States, post–September 11.     

The Career Path Tournament: Developing Awareness of Sociological Barriers to Career Advancement

The author of this article presents the Career Path Tournament, a game for heightening participants' awareness of sociological factors (e.g., race, gender, and discrimination in hiring) influencing career advancement and of the need to anticipate and cope with these factors. The game, which is based on Rosenbaum's (1976, 1981, 1984) Tournament Model, is intended for junior high, high school, and college students in a classroom setting. Undergraduate participants' (N = 74) quantitative and qualitative evaluations of the game are presented as evidence that the game raised awareness of sociological barriers and provided participants with helpful suggestions for adaptively coping with these barriers.     

Health-care Work in Globalization: News Reports on Care Worker Migration to Japan

Health-care worker migration has emerged as a social issue in Japan, contrary to it has in Indonesia. This article shows how national contexts affected by globalization have shaped social understandings and policies towards health-care worker migration in the two societies over time. Analyses of news coverage in the Japanese and Indonesian national media reveal a gap of social responses toward this change. The Japanese are more likely to respond negatively to health-care worker migration; yet they intend to face cross-cultural challenges, although slowly, making revisions to related policies. In contrast, in Indonesia, from where health-care workers migrate to Japan and many other countries, this tends to be understood positively, overall, as providing economic benefits and permitting Indonesian professionals to contribute to the worker shortage in Japan. I interpret these results based on the literature on health-care worker migration, emerging global norms and local changes, and comparative research on employment and care work. This study contributes to the sociological understanding of worker migration and health-care issues.     

Race scholarship “with,by, and for” children: How critical youth studies can inform research on race

Children's perspectives on race and their own racialized experiences are often overlooked in traditional social scientific race scholarship. From psychological and child development studies of racial identity formation, to social psychological survey research on children's racial attitudes, to sociological research conducted on children in order to quantify racially disproportionate child outcomes, the unique perspectives of young people are often marginalized. I explore some of the key themes in existing sociological and psychological research involving race and young people and demonstrate the important contributions of this expansive body of scholarship but also highlight limitations. I argue that when it comes specifically to the sociological study of young people and race, much can be learned from an emerging field known as “critical youth studies.” Further, I argue that more research on race that, as Kate Telleczek (2014, p. 16) describes, is “with, by, and for” young people, grounded in the epistemological and methodological tenants of critical youth studies, can lead to new sociological understandings of race and childhood, serve to inform public policies and practices intended to improve children's lives, and provide a platform for young people to express their own concerns and ideas about the racialized society in which they live.     

The place of sociology in a drug education curriculum

This article gives consideration to the part a sociological perspective can play in a drug education curriculum. Sociology's study of human behavior from the context of various social groupings is considered appropriate to any understanding of drugs and drug use, as are a number of substantive areas common to the discipline. The sociological perspective is examined from the broad foci of structure and process, and with each focus examples of a sociological approach to drug use is offered. The common concerns of these approaches, as well as their points of divergence, are discussed. A sample outline of a course in "Drugs and Society" is also presented, suggesting the ways in which the sociological issues discussed could provide an orientation to the study of drug use in a social context.     

Sociological social work: a cartoon

I trace an account of social work—and sociology—that I believe holds a promise for re-forming the relationship between the two. I develop the argument in two ways. First, taking 1920s Chicago as a case study, I will attempt ‘a history of the present’ to suggest how the relationship between sociology and social work came to be as it is. I will suggest that the practice of some (both familiar and forgotten) people in 1920s and 1930s sociology and social work is best explained as a form of ‘sociological social work’. Second, after tracking this genealogy, I suggest an agenda for sociological social work that consists of straining to enact certain kinds of inter-disciplinary relationships, developing methodological social work practice, hearing occasional sociological frontier conversations and shared theorising. I illustrate how these arguments challenge both sociology and social work and both theory and practice.     

Nocturnal Omissions: Steps Toward a Sociology of Dreams

The examination of dreams should properly be a legitimate topic of sociological investigation. We argue that there are four basic principles of dream-life that suggest that dreams are external to the individual mind and are collective enterprises: 1) dreams are not willed by the individual self; 2) dreams reflect social reality; 3) dreams are public rhetoric; and 4) dreams are collectively interpretable. With the development of sociological approaches that examine topics previously defined as psychological, such as the sociology of emotion and cognition, the seemingly idiosyncratic components of these nocturnal productions should not exclude them from social analysis.     

Sociological Social Psychology and Intersectionality: A Synergistic Relationship

Sociological social psychology developed out of interdisciplinary knowledge growth. Despite this positive progress, critics have argued that sociological social psychologists need to “step up their game”. In this paper, I review the three “faces” of sociological social psychology and propose a potential avenue to address this critique by incorporating ideas from intersectionality research into sociological social psychology's paradigms. To accomplish this integration, I also discuss the background and current debates of intersectionality research. Intersectionality scholarship originated in the gender studies area and has always been multidisciplinary. However, notions from intersectionality have not spread widely within the field of sociological social psychology. I propose a true synergy between sociological social psychology and intersectionality with the hope of advancing both fields.     

COMMUNITY COHESION,ASYLUM SEEKING AND THE QUESTION OF THE ‘STRANGER’

This paper addresses the changing governance of the social through the conjunction of international, national and local strategies where attempts to regulate migration and promote community safety meet. Migration has been increasingly subjected to processes of ‘securitization’ and ‘criminalization’ that encounter and align with new pressures in ‘domestic’ crime and safety policies. The paper offers a critical evaluation of the sociological grand narratives that frame these events, arguing instead for a more nuanced analysis of the instabilities and volatilities of governance strategies and practices – and the normative issues that they bring into view.     

Status Attainment and Social Mobility

This paper discusses why and how the consideration of inter-individual genetic variation can enhance the explanatory power of sociological inquiries of status attainment and social stratification. We argue that accounting for genetic variation may help to address longstanding and in some cases overlooked causality problems in explaining the emergence of social inequalities—problems which may interfere with both implicit and explicit interpretations of a society as “open” or “closed,” as meritocratic or non-meritocratic. We discuss the basic methodological tenets of genetically informative research (Sect. 2) and provide empirical examples and theoretical conceptualizations on how genetic variation contributes to status attainment (Sect. 3). This is followed by a discussion of gene-environment interplay in relation to more abstract ideas about social mechanisms that generate inequality, touching on normative implications of these ideas as well as considerations from a social justice perspective (Sect. 4). Finally, we briefly review the potential benefits as well as pitfalls of incorporating genetic influences into sociological explanations of status attainment. As we will argue, understanding how social influences impinge on the individual and how genes influence our lives requires sophisticated research designs based on sound sociological theory and methodology (Sect. 5).     

Family Genealogy: A Sociological Imagination Reveals Intersectional Relations

This article depicts everyday family genealogy as a vehicle for the sociological imagination that links personal biography to social–historical contexts across generations. As genealogists construct current from past identities, they engage a sociological imagination that potentially enables them to grasp how intersectionality – gender, race, ethnic, sexuality, nation, class, and age relations – is articulated through history. The key aims here are: (1) to provide background conditions behind the growth of genealogy; (2) to reveal how doing and studying family genealogy engages a sociological imagination that can be a vehicle for perceiving the intersectional underpinnings of social memories. Genealogy can be seen as a political practice where race-class-gender within social memories can contribute to diverse stories from new standpoints in American history.     

Personal Trouble or Public Issue? Towards a Model of Policy for People with Physical and Mental Disabilities

For many years, community solutions have been the favoured response to physical and mental disability, but theoretical frameworks to guide these policies have not developed alongside the rhetoric. This paper attempts to fill the gap with one possible sociological model. We begin by distinguishing the dominant individualistic or 'personal trouble' perspective from the more controversial social or 'public issue' approach which, whether it takes an interpretative or a structural form, acknowledges the role of society in causing disabilities and shaping economic and social strategies. A model of policy is then drawn up for each viewpoint, bearing in mind the implications for public expenditure, state intervention, family and community support, and service organisation. Finally, it is argued that since help in the individualistic mould cannot cope with disability, an alternative response is required, which tackles economic, social and political institutions or structures while at the same time recognising the resistance to change in an industrial society.     

URBAN RENEWAL IN FRANCE

The aim of this article is to deliver a sociological analysis on what is going on in the so called ‘sensitive neighbourhoods’. From at least the last three decades, different policies have tried to improve ‘social cohesion’ which is considered not to be produced ‘naturally’ anymore. As the policies are mainly targeting territorial actions on the housing market structures, we will begin trying to delineate the French housing ‘crisis’. In the second part, we will summarize the urban development policies implemented over time. In the third part we will give an analysis about the stakes social housing sector has to face. Finally, we will discuss how social difficulties can be solved with spatial actions – or not - through resident satisfaction levels. One of the main conclusion is that stakeholders should invest more in dealing with the people already living in the neighbourhoods. Moreover, an excessive faith in the virtues of social mix and local intervention could lead to an aggravation of social exclusion.     

Interaction Ritual Theory and Structural Symbolic Interactionism

This article develops a comparison between structural approaches to symbolic interaction, as described by Sheldon Stryker (1968, 1980, 2008) , and interaction ritual theory, elaborated by Randall Collins (1981, 1998, 2004) . The value of this comparison lies in both the similarities and differences between the perspectives: each is committed to developing empirically grounded, general knowledge and emphasizes interaction as an emergent unit of sociological analysis. However, their disparate intellectual heritages lead them to stake out different positions regarding the nature of interaction, the self, and social structure. We suggest that the differences between structural symbolic interaction and interaction ritual theory offer important areas for theoretical innovation, and we highlight a few directions that seem especially promising.     

Bargaining policies and social exchange: Review of a neglected concept

Social exchange is distinguished from the “economic” through restriction of inquiry to the universe of nonpecuniary counters, chief among which are inclusion, position, and exclusion—in and from enduring groups. Explicitly or implicitly, sociological exchange theorists accept Edgeworth's neoclassical model as settled social scientific knowledge that can be explained and further elaborated in terms of institutionalized norms. Blau's elaborated neoclassical model of bilateral exchange is compared to Shackle's “action” model. Shackle allows actors a choice of bargaining policies, whereas Blau, following Edgeworth, arbitrarily imposes a single policy to objectify indifference curves and enable “outside observers” to test hypotheses relating the terms of exchange to the differentiation of power in enduring groups. Were the imposition unwarranted, such “empirical” claims would vanish. The neoclassical restriction also prevents actors from conceiving “investment opportunities” in bilateral exchange, thus defeating the sociological objective of deriving power from social exchange. Three figures illustrating Edgeworthian indifference curves are provided along with an appendix to clarify the distinction between objective and subjective theory.