Legitimations of class structure inGone With The Wind

The role of popular culture in legitimating the existing social order is examined through an analysis of the film version ofGone With The Wind. This film was selected because, judging from its immense popularity, it has had great potential as a vehicle for legitimation. The analysis reveals several ways in which the audience is brought to identify with the upper class as well as several themes which legitimate class structure. An earlier version of this paper was read at the Popular Culture Association National Meeting, 1978, Cincinnati, Ohio. I wish to thank Ava Baron, Joni Fulton, Jane Rosenbaum, and the reviewers ofQualitative Sociology for their helpful comments in preparing the final draft of this paper.     

Fuzzy choice functions

The R-greatest and maximal sets of standard choice theory are extended to fuzzy R-greatest and fuzzy maximal sets. Unlike the precise counterparts of these concepts, these two sets do not in general coincide when preferences are reflexive and connected. A stronger than usual version of connectedness under which the two sets are equal is provided. The concept of a fuzzy choice function is introduced and conditions under which a fuzzy choice function may be rationalized as a fuzzy R-greatest or a fuzzy maximal set are discussed. Rationalizability with transitive and weakly transitive fuzzy preference relations is also considered.We are indebted to Professor P. K. Pattanaik for his comments on an earlier version of this paper. We also wish to acknowledge comments made by an anonymous referee from which this paper has benefited greatly. The usual caveat about errors applies.     

The effect of unions on professors’ salaries: The evidence over twenty years

No study has recently examined how unions affect professors’ salaries. In the only studies using micro-level data, both Ashraf (1992) and Barbezat (1989) used data from 1977. I update earlier work by using data from 1988. In conjunction with data from 1969 and 1977, the effect of faculty unions over a twenty-year period is examined. While faculty at unionized colleges earned significantly less than their counterparts at nonunion institutions in 1969, they earned marginally more in 1977 and 1988. The author is currently on leave from the University of West Florida and is serving as Professor and Vice-President of the Textile University of Pakistan. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Southern Economic Association meetings in New Orleans, November 21–23, 1993. The author thanks some of the participants for very useful suggestions.     

Strategy-proofness versus efficiency in exchange economies: General domain properties and applications

We identify general domain properties that induce the non-existence of efficient, strategy-proof, and non-dictatorial rules in the 2-agent exchange economy. Applying these properties, we establish impossibility results in several restricted domains; for example, the intertemporal exchange problem (without saving technology) with preferences represented by the discounted sum of a temporal utility function, the risk sharing problem with risk averse expected utility preferences, the CES-preference domain, etc. None of the earlier studies applies to these examples. I am grateful to Professor William Thomson for helpful comments and suggestions. I also thank seminar participants in University of Rochester, John Duggan, and François Maniquet. I thank two anonymous referees for their detailed comments, which were very helpful in revising the earlier version. All remaining errors are mine.     

Statistically nonrepresentative stratified sampling: A sampling technique for qualitative studies

Summary When doing quantitative studies, we usually need a statistically representative sample. The same is often not the case with qualitative studies where we need a sample with variations along the independent variables. The technique described here is simple to use and guarantees variations. A statistically representative sample, on the other hand, if small, often gives few variations. Thus, one could say that the technique presented is a kind of statistically nonrepresentative stratified sampling useful in qualitative studies.The author wishes to thank the editors ofQualitiative Sociology for valuable comments and suggestions made on an earlier version of this note.     

The return to the veil: Individual autonomy vs. social esteem

Social status is a multidimensional concept in which individual autonomy and societal esteem may exert contrary pulls. We apply this distinction between autonomy and esteem to studies of Egyptian women who have taken up the veil. Wearing the veil is seen as a coping strategy women use to gain or maintain societal esteemand a small measure of autonomy in a patriarchal society in which opportunities for autonomy are increasingly limited. As conservative movements gain strength in a range of social settings, this theoretical distinction and case analysis assume broader sociological significance.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Eastern Sociological Society meetings, Boston, March 1990.     

Exploratory notes on criminality and emotional ambivalence

In most social and behavioral science theories, depictions of ordinary criminals tend to ignore the emotional states of offenders and the possible relationship between emotionality and criminal behavior. Theorists who do consider emotions tend to presume that crime is motivated by subconscious desires to remove guilt by being punished. This paper challenges this presumption using evidence from life-history data on criminal careers. We argue that the failure to consider the emotions of offenders leads to simplistic explanations of criminal behavior. Ordinary property offenders actually experience a great deal of emotional ambivalence concerning crime. By ambivalence we mean that despite appearent social and emotional satisfactions gained from crime, most offenders experience guilt or an enduring sense of shame.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual conference of Society for Life History Research in Psychopathology at Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 31–June 2, 1983. We are grateful to Donna Bishop, Pamela Richards, and three anonymous reviewers forQualitative Sociology for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Can social systems be autopoietic? Assessing Luhmann's social theory

The theory of autopoiesis, that is systems that are self‐producing or self‐constructing, was originally developed to explain the particular nature of living as opposed to non‐living entities. It was subsequently enlarged to encompass cognition and language leading to what is known as second‐order cybernetics. However, as with earlier biological theories, many authors have tried to extend the domain of the theory to encompass social systems, the most notable being Luhmann. The purpose of this article is to consider critically the extent to which the theory of autopoiesis, as originally defined, can be applied to social systems ‐ that is, whether social systems are autopoietic. And, if it cannot, whether some weaker version might be appropriate.     

The core of social choice problems with monotone preferences and a feasibility constraint

We consider collective choice with agents possessing strictly monotone, strictly convex and continuous preferences over a compact and convex constraint set contained in ₊^k . If it is non-empty the core will lie on the efficient boundary of the constraint set and any policy not in the core is beaten by some policy on the efficient boundary. It is possible to translate the collective choice problem on this efficient boundary to another social choice problem on a compact and convex subset of ₊^c (c<k) with strictly convex and continuous preferences. In this setting the dimensionality results in Banks (1995) and Saari (1997) apply to the dimensionality of the boundary of the constraint set (which is lower than the dimensionality of the choice space by at least one). If the constraint set is not convex then the translated lower dimensional problem does not necessarily involve strict convexity of preferences but the dimensionality of the problem is still lower. Broadly, the results show that the homogeneity afforded by strict monotonicity of preferences and a compact constraint set makes generic core emptyness slightly less common. One example of the results is that if preferences are strictly monotone and convex on ² then choice on a compact and convex constraint exhibits a version of the median voter theorem.I thank Donald Saari for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.     

Union-Nonunion differentials and establishment size: Evidence from the NLSY

We provide new empirical evidence on union-nonunion differentials using the 1990 wave of the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth (NLSY) data set which allows us to examine a broader set of fringe benefits than most other studies and provides a rich set of control variables. Our major finding is that the union effect decreases with establishment size for both components of the compensation structure, i.e., wages and fringe benefits. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Southern Economic Association conference in Washington, DC in 1996. We thank Tom Hyclak and other session participants. We also acknowledge the financial support from Ade Howe Kent Fund. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Swimming with sharks: Occupational mandate and the film composer in Hollywood

The role of the Hollywood film and television composervis-a-vis the client-employer illustrates some classic occupational conflicts. The composer-artist works for a businessman, who generally has no knowledge of composing. The role of each party needs to be defined and negotiated before a composition is written. The task itself, the composition, also has to be negotiated subject to many contingencies. This paper examines these points and ends with a discussion of occupational mandate. An earlier version of this paper was delivered at a conference on Social Theory and The Arts, Fredonia, New York, 1975. Some of the materials appear in “Dilemmas in Commercial Work: Hollywood Film Composers and Their Clients,” Urban Life 5 (April), 1976.     

The third sector in welfare policies in Italy: the contradictions of a protected market

The paper describes how the involvement of non-profit organisations (NPOs) in welfare politics in Italy has historically developed in a mutual accommodation with the state, which has prevented the growth and the public recognition of an independent third sector. Using data from official statistics and recent research on non-profits, three analytical dimensions of the relationship between State and the third sector are considered: the resource exchange; the division of responsibility for delivering public services; and the dynamics of social policy making. The study indicates that distinctive features of the ‘welfare mix’ in Italy have been: the attribution of public status to many NPOs as a consequence of an arrangement between Church and state; the weakness of state guidance, in spite of the generous economic assistance provided to NPOs by the state; the substitutive role of NPOs in providing basic public services; and the emergence of informal arrangements between public authorities and NPOs mediated by political patronage. I thank Ralph Kramer, Ugo Ascoli, Perri 6, and three anonymous referees ofVoluntas for helpful comments they provided on an earlier draft of this paper. My research was supported by a grant from the National Council of Research of Italy, and through facilities provided by the School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley. An earlier version of this paper is published in P. 6 and I. Vidal (eds)Delivering Welfare: Re-positioning Non-profit and Co-operative Action in Western European Welfare States, CIES, Barcelona, 1994.     

Quasi-orderings and population ethics

Population ethics contains several principles that avoid the repugnant conclusion. These rules rank all possible alternatives, leaving no room for moral ambiguity. Building on a suggestion of Parfit, this paper characterizes principles that provide incomplete but ethically attractive rankings of alternatives with different population sizes. All of them rank same-number alternatives with generalized utilitarianism.This paper was presented to the conference Incommensurability and Value, Château du Baffy, Caen, April 1994, and an earlier version was presented at the Applied Ethics Centre of the University of British Columbia. We are indebted to John Broome, whose comments inspired this paper, Alan Gibbard, James Griffin, Peter Hammond, Adam Morton, Klaus Nehring, and conference and seminar participants for comments and suggestions. Financial support through a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada is gratefully acknowledged     

Three-candidate competition when candidates have valence: the base case

We study the Nash Equilibrium of three-candidate unidimensional spatial competition when candidates differ in their non-policy characteristics (valence). If the voters’ policy preferences are represented by a strictly convex loss function, and if the voter density is unimodal and symmetric, then a unique, modulo symmetry, Local Nash Equilibrium exists under fairly plausible conditions. The global Nash Equilibrium, however, exists when only one candidate has a valence advantage (or disadvantage) while the other two candidates have the same valence. An earlier version of this paper appeared as an appendix to Chap. 4 in Evrenk (2004). An erratum to this article can be found at     

The logic of labor quiescence

In 1993, the government of Alberta embarked on an ambitious plan to eliminate the provincial debt by 2010 and balance the budget within four years without raising taxes. The major vehicles to the plan’s achievement were unprecedented budget cuts and pub-lic sector restructuring. Initially, public sector union leaders were defiant, promising an allout struggle to thwart policies that jeopardized the unions’ vested interests in job security and organizational survival. More than five years later, unions have failed to influence in any significant way policy development and implementation. I explore why public sector unions did not mount any collective action to influence the political discourse in Alberta between 1993 and 1998. I am indebted to Nicole Lyotier and Nancy Cranston for their excellent research assistance, Helen Lam for comments on an earlier version of the paper, and all the interviewees for their time and willingness to share valuable information. Financial support for this study was provided by a Nova Fellowship, Faculty of Business, University of Alberta.     

Partially efficient voting by committees

On the separable preference domain, voting by committees is the only class of voting rules that satisfy strategy-proofness and unanimity, and dictatorial rules are the only ones that are strategy-proof and Pareto efficient. To fill the gap, we define a sequence of efficiency conditions. We prove that for strategy-proof rules on the separable preference domain, the various notions of efficiency reduce to three: unanimity, partial efficiency, and Pareto efficiency. We also show that on the domain, strategy-proofness and partial efficiency characterize the class of voting rules represented as simple games which are independent of objects, proper and strong. We call such rules voting by stable committee.The author is deeply indebted to William Thomson for many helpful discussions on an earlier draft. The current version is greatly benefited from detailed comments of an anonymous referee. Thanks are also due to Jeffrey Banks, Salvador Barberà, Marcus Berliant, Ryo-ichi Nagahisa, Takehiko Yamato, and participants in a seminar at Rochester in 1992, the 1992 Midwest Conference at Michigan State, and the 1993 Summer Meeting of Econometric Society at Boston University for conversations and suggestions.     

Strategy-proof Cardinal Decision Schemes

This paper analyses strategy-proof mechanisms or decision schemes which map profiles of cardinal utility functions to lotteries over a finite set of outcomes. We provide a new proof of Hylland’s theorem which shows that the only strategy-proof cardinal decision scheme satisfying a weak unanimity property is the random dictatorship. Our proof technique assumes a framework where individuals can discern utility differences only if the difference is at least some fixed number which we call the grid size. We also prove a limit random dictatorship result which shows that any sequence of strategy-proof and unanimous decision schemes defined on a sequence of decreasing grid sizes approaching zero must converge to a random dictatorship. We are most grateful to an Associate Editor and two referees for very helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper. An erratum to this article can be found at     

The End(s) of Ethnomethodology

From the outset, Melvin Pollner tried to come to grips with ethnomethodology, especially Harold Garfinkel’s contributions. In recent years he was especially concerned with where ethnomethodology had gone and where it was headed. In Garfinkel’s recent book, Ethnomethodology’s Program (2002), and other writings, Pollner saw a distinctly different version of ethnomethodology in contrast with Garfinkel’s (and others’) earlier work. “The End(s) of Ethnomethodology” represents Pollner’s most polished, if still incomplete, reflection upon the state of ethnomethodology in the early 21^st century. This article is published posthumously. Robert M. Emerson and James A Holstein assembled and edited the final text.     

Egalitarian-equivalence and the Pareto principle for social preferences

The Pareto principle is often in conflict with the equity criteria in construction of social preferences: there exist two allocations x and y such that x Pareto dominates y, but y is an equitable allocation whereas x is not. The efficiency-first principle requires to rank an allocation x higher than y if (i) x Pareto dominates y or (ii) x and y are Pareto-noncomparable and x is equitable whereas y is not. The equity-first principle reverses the order of application of the two criteria. Adopting egalitarian-equivalence as the notion of equity, we examine rationality of the social preference functions based on the efficiency-first or the equity-first principle. The degrees of rationality vary widely depending on which principle is adopted, and depending on the range of egalitarian-reference bundles. We show several impossibility and possibility results as well as a characterization of the social preference function introduced by Pazner and Schmeidler (1978). We also identify the sets of maximal elements of the social preference relations in the set of feasible allocations. The results are contrasted with those in the case where no-envy is the notion of equity.This paper is a much extended version of a part of Tadenuma (1998). The author is grateful to Marc Fleurbaey, Serge-Chiristophe Kolm, Kotaro Suzumura, and William Thomson for helpful comments on the earlier version of the paper. ‘‘Financial support from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan for the 21st Century Center of Excellence Project on the Normative Evaluation and Social Choice of Contemporary Economic Systems is gratefully acknowledged’’.     

Treatment of a Traumatized Adolescent Mother and her Two-Year Old Son

This paper will describe selected aspects of the treatment of a traumatized adolescent mother and her two-year old son to illustrate how strengthening secure attachment, response flexibility, stress regulation and reflective function can be used therapeutically, to intervene in intergenerational cycles of despair and dysfunction. This strengths-based intervention makes use of videotapes, and individual and dyadic therapies in the context of the Chances for Children Teen Parent Infant Project, a collaboration between a local Department of Education infant-care program and a psychoanalytic training institute, the Institute for Child, Adolescent and Family Studies (ICAFS). An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the 2004 NMCOP Conference in New York. The Chances for Children Teen Parent–Infant Project has been made possible by funding from the Pinkerton Foundation, Guttman Foundation, Far Fund, World Childhood Foundation, van Ameringen Foundation, Viola W. Bernard Foundation, Dammann Fund, Hedge Funds Care, The Philanthropic Initiative, New York Community Trust, The Cummings Memorial Fund.