Contemporary Conceptions of Environmental Risk: Implications for Resource Management and Policy

Recent theoretical development in environmental sociology has focused on the concept of risk. Macro- and middle-range theoretical conceptualizations relevant to understanding environmental risk and resource depletion have emerged from Europe and the United States. We review five theoretical approaches to the environment–society relationship and identify convergent characteristics relevant for resource management in the modern world. These characteristics suggest goals for resource management should include expanded discursive systems, a more informed public and building institutional trust.     

MERGE

Computer simulations of social welfare policy processes allow us to exploit the power of learning by doing and, at the same time, avoid the ethical and practical limitations of applying the theoretical "experiments" in the field. This paper describes the application of a package of simulations, called MERGE, which simulates four different theoretical explanations of process in a scenario at the local level. MERGE is based upon a general simulation system, called EXPER SIM, available from CONDUIT, a non-profit organization dedicated to the distribution of computer-assisted instructional materials.     

Rethinking Post-Fordism: The Meaning of Workplace Flexibility

Social scientists increasingly claim that work structures based on the mass production or "Fordist" paradigm have grown obsolete, giving way to a more flexible, "post-Fordist" structure of work. These claims have been much disputed, however, giving rise to a sharply polarized debate over the outcome of workplace restructuring. I seek to reorient the debate by subjecting the post-Fordist approach to theoretical and empirical critique. Several theoretical weaknesses internal to the post-Fordist approach are identified, including its uncertain handling of "power" and "efficiency" as factors that shape work organizations; its failure to acknowledge multiple responses to the crisis of Fordism, several of which seem at odds with the post-Fordist paradigm; and its tendency to neglect the resurgence of economic dualism and disparity within organizations and industries. Review of the empirical literature suggests that, despite scattered support for the post-Fordist approach, important anomalies exist (such as the growing authority of "mental" over manual labor) that post-Fordism seems powerless to explain. In spite of its ample contributions, post-Fordist theory provides a seriously distorted guide to the nature of workplace change in the United States. Two alternative perspectives toward the restructuring of work organizations are sketched—neoinstitutionalist and "flexible accumulation" models—which seem likely to inspire more fruitful lines of research on the disparate patterns currently unfolding within American work organizations.     

After the Assault: Cognitive Trauma Therapy with a Single Event Trauma Survivor

This article explores the specific context of a single event criminal assault, (i.e., a stranger non-sexual assault that occurred during a robbery) and shares the theoretical framework that successfully guided the clinician’s assessment, treatment planning, and interventions. Based on a literature review and employing a case study, this article presents the potential norms of trauma aftermath following a single event non-sexual criminal assault. It provides an overview of those theoretical frameworks that have consistently proven effective with this population; this article shares the rationale for selecting cognitive trauma therapy and illustrates its application to an assault survivor.

Life History and the Critique of American Sociological Practice

This paper is a contribution to the uses of life histories and the dialogue regarding the "standards" for their use. Through a meta-analysis of life histories in the United States since the publication of the Polish Peasant , we develop a typology to critically evaluate their methodological/theoretical practices in sociology. We find a broad range of uses of life histories in the areas of substantive focus, analysis, relationship of oral history and the subject, relationship of oral/life history to other materials, purpose of the research, and relationship of oral/life history to other phenomena. We conclude that life history methods have not had the transformative effect on sociology that they have had in other disciplines. By and large, the actual production of life histories continues to be a historical, to be characterized by abstract empiricism, to extinguish subjects, and to ignore the link between biography and history.     

Vague Quantifiers

The responses to many survey questions are often made in termsof vague quantifiers such as "very," "pretty," or "not too."We know little about the characteristics of such quantifyingterms. This article reviews several theoretical approaches tothe problem of quantifying meaning based on studies from experimentalpsychology. It also reports data from a pilot study that triesto make more precise quantitative estimates for three commonvague quantifiers.     

Interaktion des <Emphasis Type="Italic">als ob</Emphasis>: Privatanleger und Anlageberater

Since the late nineties, stock market investments have become an attractive option for many who want to secure or improve their standard of living, although ?stocks“ are an obscure subject for most of them. They have to rely on investment consultants in banks. Until the stock market crash, there was no reason to complain about the consulting process — shares kept going up in value.But it is remarkable that following the crash, which caused many investors to lose a large amount of money, the relationship between private investors and investment consultants does not seem to have been damaged.In our paper we first show the legal requirements for investment consulting and how these requirements are implemented by banks, and we identify considerable discrepancies between the theoretical and the actual fulfillment of these legal requirements.We then show that it is impossible to meet these requirements in reality because they rely on unrealistic assumptions regarding a consulting process that both adequately covers investment options and addresses the needs of investors. We argue that both sides are more or less satisfied with the situation because they operate on an as if basis: consultant and client talk and behave as if they understood each other.As if the consultant had really informed the client and as if the client had really understood the consultant. This as if which both parties are aware of but which is not openly discussed is the condition of a successful consultancy process and for making the business happen.     

Of pride and prejudice: the role of sociology and social networks in integrating the health sciences

Calls have been issued for understanding the "contexts" or "environment" shaping the causes and consequences of health and health care. Existing efforts raise concerns about how a panorama of influences can be considered simultaneously. Sociology's view of contexts as social network structures that shape and are shaped in social interaction offers one key to resolving this dilemma. Because social networks have become central in the social, natural, and physical sciences, this perspective provides a common platform for bringing in sociology's rich theoretical and methodological insights. Yet, to do this well, three conditions must shape our response. First, all levels relevant to health and health care must be considered, separated out, and linked by network mechanisms. The genetic-biological level, perhaps the most foreign level to sociologists, represents the greatest need and best prospect for advancing a sociologically based solution. Second, room must be made to tailor models to populations, whether defined socially or medically. Third, sociologists must find a voice within "big science " to address problems from social construction to social causation that contribute to basic social processes as well as health. I trace developments in the Network-Episode Model as one theoretical starting point.     

A HUMAN CAPITAL MODEL OF THE EFFECTS OF ABILITY AND FAMILY BACKGROUND ON OPTIMAL SCHOOLING LEVELS

This paper develops a theoretical model of optimal schooling levels where ability and family background are the central explanatory variables. We derive schooling demand and supply functions based on individual wealth maximization. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 data, we stratify our sample into 1-yr full-time equivalent (FTE) work experience cohorts for 1985–1989. The estimated Mincerian "overtaking" cohort (the years of work experience at which individuals' observed earnings approximately equal what they would have been based on schooling and ability alone) corresponds to 13 FTE years of experience, yielding on average a rate of return of 10.3% and an average (optimal) 11.4 yr of schooling. ( JEL J24, J31, J22)     

Double Advantage? Violence Against Canadian Migrant Women from “Developed” Nations

Using a theoretical synthesis based in the Nested Ecological framework, the study examines an anomaly from our previous investigation (Brownridge and Halli, 2002) in which we were surprised to find that immigrant women from "developed" nations have a lower prevalence of violence than Canadian-born women. Based on a representative sample of 6,581 women, the results of the present study show that the key variables that account for this anomalous finding are at the microsystem level. More specifically, a tendency for partners of immigrant women from "developed" nations to be highly educated, and for immigrant women from "developed" nations to have longer-term relationships and be less likely to have young children in the home, appear to account for their lower likelihood of violence. These results are placed in the context of the unique situation of immigrants from "developed" nations and a selection hypothesis is articulated as underpinning the results.     

A TEST OF THE CURVILINEAR HYPOTHESIS WITH FACES II AND III

Previous research has not supported the validity of Olson's "curvilinear hypothesis." Convergent validity studies of the FACES I and II have indicated that the "cohesion" and "adaptability" dimensions have a linear relation with healthy family functioning. It is not clear, however, whether these findings are due to the measurement of the FACES' constructs or to the curvilinear theory. This study tested the "curvilinear hypothesis" in terms of these theoretical and measurement issues. The results indicate that FACES II and III do not adequately operation-alize the "curvilinear hyothesis." However, an item consistent with the "curvilinear hypothesis" utilizing a bipolar item response format did adequately opera-tionalize the theory. The use of a bipolar item response format is suggested in the measurement of "cohesion" and "adaptability."     

The Long and Winding Road: Civil Repair of Intimate Injustice

Over the last decade, I have been trying to help fashion a new kind of critical social theory, one that can contribute to the "new theoretical reflection and interpretation of social contestation and political action" (Cohen 1982:xii) that such post-Marxist thinkers as Cohen and Seyla Benhabib (1986) called for two decades ago but that has seemed less and less ascertainable with the passing of time. Outlining a sociological approach to what I call the "civil sphere" of society, I have defined what I would like to think is a new object domain for sociology, one centering on the expansion and contraction of democratic solidarity. Through a series of conceptual elaborations and empirical investigations, I have begun to sketch out core components of this "civil sphere." These cultural and institutional components are fundamentally ambiguous, and they form contradictory relations with the "noncivil" domains that surround the civil sphere.     

The Performance of Desire: Gender and Sexual Negotiation in Long-Term Marriages

We integrate theoretical traditions on the social construction of gender, heterosexuality, and marriage with research and theory on emotion work to guide a qualitative investigation of how married people understand and experience sex in marriage. Results, based on 62 in-depth interviews, indicate that married men and women tend to believe that sex is integral to a good marriage and that men are more sexual than women. Moreover, husbands and wives commonly experience conflict around sex and undertake emotion work to manage their own and their spouse's feelings about sex. We refer to this emotion work as "performing desire" and show how it is linked to gendered experiences in marriage and to competing cultural discourses around gender, heterosexuality, and marriage.     

Toward a transdisciplinary approach of ergonomic design for sustainability

Starting from the results of a theoretical and methodological study on Ergonomic design for sustainability previously developed from the authors, this paper shows the early results of a study that tries to apply them to actual operational and conceptual apparatuses of Ergonomics. In particular, the research aims to verify the possibility for Ergonomics to initiate an update of its current theoretical and procedural tools, towards new design solutions of "sustainable well-being", trying to look for new declinations of its several fields of application. The paper identifies new paradigms and definitions for one of the central themes of ergonomic design, as well as one among the most established and investigated: the usability of products and services.     

Conceptualizing international labor migration: a structuration perspective

"This article applies the theory of structuration to international labor migration using case study material from the Philippines. It first provides a brief review of the functional and structural approaches to understanding labor migration and the theoretical impasse that has been created between them. It then reviews several attempts to resolve this impasse, including systems and networks approaches; these solutions are rejected on theoretical and empirical grounds. We suggest that migrant institutions may be a more appropriate mid-level concept than households or social networks to articulate various levels of analysis. We develop this concept in the context of the structuration theory of Anthony Giddens and attempt to apply this to the Philippines, concluding that this framework is eminently suited for further research on international labor migration."     

Migration Decisions of Dual-earner Families: An Application of Multilevel Modeling

A comprehensive framework for guiding analyses of internal migration is lacking. This study contributes to the family migration literature in three important ways. We develop a multilevel theoretical framework emphasizing an integration of individual-, family-, and neighborhood-level effects; introduce multilevel statistical modeling; and explicitly assess how effects of economic-based explanatory variables vary by gender. Our data are from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). We find that the likelihood of a family migrating is affected by economic and non-economic factors, some of which vary by gender. We add to the dual-earner migration literature by finding that wives are not likely to be tied-movers, but husbands are likely to be tied-stayers. Neighborhood factors also are important to the decision to migrate.

Do Schooling and Work Empower Women in Developing Countries? Gender and Domestic Decisions in Sri Lanka

Our work challenges and points out the limitations of the theoretical presumptions underlying the relationship between empowerment, education, and employment that have been emphasized in both the exiting literature and the current rhetoric to empower women in developing countries. We use survey, life history, and focus group data to empirically examine the relationship between schooling, paid work, and power in domestic decision making for young, married women in Sri Lanka. We argue that the relationship between education, work, and women's control of household decisions is conditioned by the larger social context, and as such, it is likely to reflect the extent to which the division of labor and access to information and economic resources are the bases of domestic power in the society under consideration. Our results make a strong case for the need to move away from broad-based conceptualizations of women's empowerment to a consideration of the specific arenas and dimensions along which women can have power. In focusing on the domestic arena alone, we find that there are important differences in both the nature and determinants of the financial as opposed to the social and organizational dimension of power in Sri Lankan households. Women who control one of these aspects of family decisions do not necessarily control the other, and while education and employment play an important role in determining women's input in financial decisions, they are largely immaterial in determining household decisions related to social and organizational matters. Our results also demonstrate the importance of going beyong simplistic and limited measures of schooling and work to consider more fundamental structural factors involving family, social, and economic organization.     

Labeling theory and community care of the mentally ill in California: the relationship of social theory and ideology to public policy

The practical merit of a labeling theory approach to mental illness is examined and assessed through an exploration of its application in terms of public policy, i.e., community mental health policy in the state of California since 1968. Primary focus is placed on the impact of the deinstitutionalization of mental health services in that state, and the release of former mental patients into the community. Similarities in the fundamental ideological underpinnings of labeling theory, an associated conspiratorial model of mental illness, and contemporary California mental health policy, are presented and examples of policy input by labeling theorists and researchers are detailed. The impact of the California policy on the mentally ill is generally negatively assessed in terms of three major criteria: (1) rehabilitation; (2) reintegration; and (3) quality and continuity of care. The "translation" of several theoretical misconceptions regarding mental illness, caused by putting labeling theory into official policy, is suggested to lie at the root of many of the policy's implementation problems. The uses of social science theory and research are discussed, and caution is advised in the translation and application of social scientific theory and research to public policy proposals and programs.