Political Economy,Ecological Modernization,and Energy Use: A Panel Analysis of State‐Level Energy Use in the United States, 1960–1990

The present study will examine energy consumption from two competing perspectives within environmental social science: political economy and ecological modernization. These frameworks will be evaluated with a fixed‐effects panel analysis of state‐level energy use between the years 1960 and 1990, based on data for 50 states plus Washington, DC, from the Energy Information Administration’s State Energy Data System. The results from the panel analysis show that the increase in total energy use between 1960 and 1990 depended on both increasing economic growth and urbanization, even after controlling for population size, industrialization, and inflation‐adjusted energy prices. The results challenge the claims of ecological modernization theory and support a political economic approach to the study of changes in energy use. In the conclusion, the study’s findings will be framed within the context of the early twenty‐first‐century economic and ecological crises. In light of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, this study can also further advance the renewable energy debate by reminding us of the social drivers of energy use.     

Toward a Social Theory of Resilience: Social Systems,Cultural Systems,and Collective Action in Transitioning Forest‐Based Communities

Impacts from post‐Fordist and poststaples economic transition in the Canadian natural resource sector have resulted in dramatic challenges to the livelihoods of many rural residents and the viability of many rural communities. This study seeks to understand community response to economic transition through a lens of social ecological resilience. This article puts forward Archer's theory of cultural morphogenesis as an analogous model of social ecological change that focuses attention on cultural systems, cultural elaboration, and collective action within an adaptive cycle of resilience. With case material from focused ethnographies of two forest‐dependent communities, we identify distinctive interactions between culture and agency over time that condition community response to change, and we make an analytical distinction between the social system and cultural system. These insights point to catalysts for collective action and adaptation within a resilient cultural realm that extend beyond institutional factors such as economic dependency or political opportunity. By integrating culture, we also deepen the social theory contribution to social‐ecological resilience.     

Community Solidarity,Political Competitiveness,and Social Rigidity: Relationships With Social and Health Services1

Previous work suggests that solidarity, political competitiveness, and rigidity influence the nature of social and economic change. Hypotheses that these three phenomena affect social well-being at the institutional level of the community beyond the effects of basic socioeconomic and population characteristics are examined in this study. Using data from a sample of North Carolina county-seat communities, a regression analysis with six controls indicates positive relationships of community solidarity and political competitiveness with social and health services. However, there is little indication that social rigidity has any effect on such services. Contrary to theories claiming the relative unimportance of communities, results indicate that community populations with high levels of solidarity and political competitiveness can have a positive influence on institutional growth and structural change.     

Extending cultural horizons: Political economy and public relations

In this article, we aim to offer a conceptual bridge between political economy and the practice of public relations, which should be helpful especially for practitioners and scholars interested in public relations at a global level. The combination of social, political, and economic forces is powerful, pervasive, and highly influential on the public relations activities of organizations, and we assert that these factors must be examined in unison. In turn, we discuss the role of political–economic relationships and the constraints they impart on the goal-seeking behavior of organizations. We conclude by offering suggestions as to how public relations practitioners and scholars can begin to think about their efforts and linkages with political economy.     

Collective Power to Create Political Change: Increasing the Political Efficacy and Engagement of Social Workers

Because social workers are called to challenge social injustices and create systemic change to support the well-being of individuals and communities, it is essential that social workers develop political efficacy: belief that the political system can work and they can influence the system. This study explored the impact of an intensive political social work curriculum on political efficacy and planned political engagement among social work students and practitioners. The findings suggest this model of delivering a political social work curriculum effectively increases internal, external, and overall political efficacy, and that increasing political efficacy has promise for increasing future political engagement.     

Political Consciousness and Resistance Among Black Antebellum Women

The socioeconomic factors that undergirded black women's political consciousness during the antebellum era were northern industrialization, social reform activity, and the emergence of black nationalism in African-American communities. As these factors converged, they stimulated black women's economic activity which, in turn, served as a springboard to black women's political consciousness and resistance. First as community activists and then as abolitionists in both the national and international spheres, black women organized and protested against slavery, racism, sexism, and its attendant ills. This study explores the materials realities that underpinned black women's political development as well as the transformative stages of their political consciousness and activity.     

Political Theories of Low-Wage Work

This article explores the concept of low-wage work in America as presented in the political science literature with the goal of developing a theoretical framework. Based on traditional political theory, contemporary political perspectives, and public opinion, a modern political conceptualization of low-wage work represents a balance between policies that promote work as virtuous and those that present it as a form of social control. This balance is informed by historical notions of work, contemporary issues of racism, the economic realities of single mothers, and public perceptions of welfare and income support measures, such as the federal Earned Income Tax Credit.     

On the Determinants of Class Legislation: an Ecological Study of Political Struggles Between Workers and Management*

The state controls many matters of conflict between labor and management. This study attempts to identify the social conditions that lead to laws which favor either side in their ongoing struggle for influence. Using a cross-sectional ecological design I found that political systems with more blacks were least likely to have public policies in the interest of the working class. Other relevant factors which had less consistent effects were the type of enterprise and the level of resources in an area. Generally, the results are consistent with theories that racial antagonisms undermine the political efforts of workers.     

What's left in the community? Oppositional politics in contemporary practice

The growth of community-based not-for-profits in the Anglo-Americanworld has been mirrored by weakened political demands and adiminished set of critical political perspectives. Nevertheless,significant efforts in Anglo-American communities still existand provide examples of community-based organizing that havenot lost sight of the goals of social and economic justice.This article explores practice examples that demonstrate theexistence and possibilities of politically oppositional communityorganizing in the current difficult and complex political economy.These examples present effective, if imperfect, community initiatives.The three discussed – The Fifth Avenue Committee, ACORN,and Immigrant Worker Centres – offer alternatives to contemporaryforms of community practice moderated by economic globalizationand the policies of neo-liberalism. The article ends by drawinglessons from these experiences and their potential in the contemporarypolitical economy.     

Economy “versus” Environment: The Influence of Economic Ideology and Political Identity on Perceived Threat of Eco‐Catastrophe

Using data from a national survey of American adults, we examine the relationships between economic, political, sociodemographic, and religious characteristics with perception of the potential for eco‐catastrophe. We employ the treadmill of production theory to frame our understanding of views about ecological concerns, arguing that the treadmill discourse associated with economic development is hegemonic and fundamentally shapes public views of eco‐catastrophe. In line with this approach, economic ideology is the strongest predictor of attitudes about eco‐catastrophe, and its influence is conditioned by political identity. There is also significant patterning in these perceptions based on gender, race, education, and religion, but the influence of social characteristics is primarily indirect—mediated by economic ideology and political identity. These results provide useful information for addressing environmental problems in public discourse and bridging policy divides.     

Political culture and monopoly price determination

In this paper we study the endogenous determination of monopoly price. Our proposed game of endogenous monopoly-price setting extends the literature on monopoly-price, monopoly rent-seeking contests and monopoly rent-seeking rent-avoidance contests by (i) determining the monopoly price such that it maximizes a composite utility function that depends on two components: expected social welfare and lobbying efforts. The welfare component has a positive or no effect on the utility while the lobbying efforts have a positive, negative or no effect on the utility (ii) introducing the political culture of the government and clarifying its role in the endogenous determination of monopoly price. In the proposed model the single parameter representing political culture is the weight assigned to the enhancement of social welfare. Our main concern is with the study of the relationship between this parameter and the proposed monopoly price and, in turn, the rent-seeking rent-avoidance efforts of the potential monopoly and the consumers and their aggregate expected benefit. We are grateful to the referees for their constructive and helpful comments.     

Hierarchy and Partnership in New Orleans

Recently, increasing numbers of partnerships have emerged in which universities work to address economic, social, and political problems within troubled communities. Such experiences have led to careful discussion of the model such efforts should follow, and a literature which has assessed such activity as overwhelmingly positive. Based on team ethnographic research, this case study discusses the emergence of one such partnership that was forged at high levels of government and university administration. Such an emergence, we argue, impacted the partnership in such a way that the interests of more powerful members outweighed those of members with less power. Unequal interests influenced the structure of the partnership, its ability to carry out its mission, the participation of community residents, and intentions for the future of the partnership.     

The Political Economy of Social Science Funding

This article examines recent economic and political trends constraining the production of social science knowledge. Particular attention is given to the Reagan Administration's attempt to contract public sector programs and curtail financial support for social science research. Trends in the private economy, especially within the publishing industry, that affect the production of social science knowledge are also discussed. Over the past few years, the market for social science knowledge has seriously eroded. The erosion of this market is examined within the larger framework of a shift in public policy from legitimation to capital accumulation, a shift that has accompanied right-wing ascendancy in American politics. This shift has created political and economic incentives encouraging the social science community to align more closely with conservatives.     

和谐社会视域下的高校思想政治教育

高校思想政治教育在构建和谐社会中起着重要的作用,但是当前我国高校思想政治教育面临社会经济生活多样化、大学生思想观念的复杂多元化、网络新技术、西方思潮等方面带来的挑战,因此必须用社会主义和谐社会理论来指导思想政治教育的改革创新。具体讲就是：以社会主义核心价值体系为引领,提高大学生的思想道德素质;以人为本,尊重大学生的主体地位、重视学生个性的全面和谐发展;重视网络建设,抵御渗透,营造良好的思想舆论环境;加强生态文明教育,培养大学生良好的生态道德索养,实现人与自然和谐。     

A Note on Animal and Political Economy in Quesnay

In this article, I argue that François Quesnay’s physiocratic writings on economics entail the working through not only of formal principles of circulatory flow developed in his earlier physiological writings on “animal economy” but also the construction of a model of political economy that depends directly on an animal economy understood as the efficient administration of animal labor. Although the contradictions of this model already foreshadow those of today’s dominant model of economic administration, I argue that Quesnay’s economic writings nonetheless contain an invitation for us to rethink the connection between the economic and the ecological domains.     

The Perennial Nature of the Catholic Worker Farms: A Reconsideration of Failure

Contemporary challenges in rural and environmental politics hinge on understanding what success and failure mean. One avenue of studying success and failure of political and social change efforts is to study social movements and intentional communities often equated with how many years such efforts persisted. The Catholic Worker movement's combination of a vision of radical social change, religion, nonviolence, hospitality, activism, and agrarianism involve publications, urban houses, and farms that constitute a movement and a network of autonomous intentional communities. The Catholic Worker movement's communal farms began in 1933 and at various points those efforts were deemed failures. Thus, the story of the Catholic Worker farms is one of impermanence and struggle for a desired ideal. However, what we are missing in condemning the farms to failure is the utter success since the 1970s of a strong agrarian and environmental strain of the Catholic Worker movement based on farm activity, activism, and cooperative economics. This study reconceptualizes failure in the language of process and context. The Catholic Worker farms case study refigures failure such that we can articulate a politics of possibility related to the dramatic challenges not only of society but also of the environment.     

Religious Culture and Political Action

Recent work by political sociologists and social movement theorists extend our understanding of how religious institutions contribute to expanding democracy, but nearly all analyze religious institutions as institutions; few focus directly on what religion qua religion might contribute. This article strives to illuminate the impact of religious culture per se, extending recent work on religion and democratic life by a small group of social movement scholars trained also in the sociology of religion. In examining religion's democratic impact, an explicitly cultural analysis inspired by the new approach to political culture developed by historical sociologists and cultural analysts of democracy is used to show the power of this approach and to provide a fuller theoretical account of how cultural dynamics shape political outcomes. The article examines religious institutions as generators of religious culture, presents a theoretical model of how religious cultural elements are incorporated into social movements and so shape their internal political cultures, and discusses how this in turn shapes their impact in the public realm. This model is then applied to a key site of democratic struggle: four efforts to promote social justice among low-income urban residents of the United States, including the most widespread such effort—faith-based community organizing.     

Political education in post-Second World War Germany and the American South

Abstract

Both American and European adult educationalists saw the Danish folk high school as a model for how to educate citizens for more active involvement in their communities. This article examines the experience of Wislade Folk School in Germany and the Highlander Folk School in the United States after the Second World War. In the German case, Wislade was unable to persuade local people to confront the evils of Nazism, but did facilitate the practical tackling of pressing social and economic problems. Highlander struggled to retain support from white Southerners as the School increasingly addressed the evils of segregation, but developed one of its most effective programmes in conjunction with African Americans as part of the emerging civil rights movement. The study concludes that political education is most effective when it addresses people's aspirations, and builds upon existing social capital.     

The Decline of Barriers to Immigrant Economic and Political Rights in the American States: 1977–20011

State governments exercise significant powers to regulate the economic and social activities of resident aliens. We review the laws of the six leading states of immigrant settlement regulating access of noncitizens to 23 occupations, updating existing studies from 1946–77. Citizenship requirements for these occupations have plummeted, a change we attribute to federal court decisions, advisory opinions of state attorneys general, and state legislative and administrative action. There are numerous additional citizenship requirements in the statutes of the six states, although these appear to be poorly enforced. The authority of states to regulate their political communities is the most important remaining constitutionally valid basis of citizenship requirements. States define their political community broadly, leading to questionable exclusions of noncitizens from important activities.     

Reassessing Welfare Capitalism:

This paper develops the argument that a communitarian regime of capitalism might contribute to a society in which economic power is democratically controlled and where full participation is guaranteed, especially for those social groups lacking access to jobs and/or sufficient income. The paper analyzes community- based approaches to social policy in Switzerland and the United States, two western countries with a federalistic political system relying on local and functional communities. It explains the role played by municipalities and trade unions in improving the performance of welfare capitalism when dealing with unemployment and poverty. The examples of community-based approaches to social policy lead to the conclusion that both in addition and complementary to government intervention, modern capitalist societies have to rely on strong local communities and functional associations in order to establish a just social order and to ensure full employment and income security for all.