Fifty Years Ago: the Curtis and Clyde Reports

Fifty years ago the Curtis and Clyde reports set out the blueprints for a new children's service. They contained an emphasis on the personal needs of deprived children, an insistence on fostering as the method of care best suited for them and the recommendation that a completely new local authority department was required. The following Children Act (1948) established the Children's Departments which soon became synonymous with enlightened child care. The origin of the reports is often attributed to the campaigns of Lady Allen in 1944 and the scandal of the death of a foster child in 1945. But the real origins stemmed from events precipitated by the Second World War, while the contents of the reports can be discerned in even earlier years.     

Fifty Years of Alcoholics Anonymous:

No abstract available for this article.     

Fifty Years of Refugee Studies: From Theory to Policy

This article reviews the growth of the field of refugee studies, focusing on its links with, and impact on, refugee policy. The last fifty years, and especially the last two decades, have witnessed both a dramatic increase in academic work on refugees and significant institutional development in the field. It is argued that these institutions have developed strong links with policymakers, although this has often failed to translate into significant policy impacts. Areas in which future policy‐orientated work might be developed are considered.     

Central City/Suburban Status Differences: Fifty Years of Change*

Changes in the relative status of central cities compared to their suburban rings are investigated for the periods 1920 to 1950, and 1950 to 1970. Longitudinal alterations in the relative statuses of the two components across metropolitan areas have primarily involved the suburban ring. Somewhat different processes of change were evident in the two time periods, particularly when metropolitan areas are distinguished by their age. In the 1920 to 1950 period, the oldest metropolitan areas evolved toward higher suburban than central city status, while newer metropolitan areas evolved toward higher central city than suburban status. In the 1950 to 1970 period, metropolitan areas generally moved toward a pattern of higher suburban than central city status, regardless of their individual characteristics such as age or period of development.     

From the ‘Double Nature’ of Cooperation to the Social Economy: Fifty Years of Associationalism1

The past 50 years or so have witnessed significant changes in the way of conceiving and practising cooperation. Three major shifts are presented here: (1) from the single to the multi-stakeholder cooperative; (2) from internal to extended mutuality in cooperatives and (3) from the historical ‘double nature’ of cooperation to the social economy. It is argued that these shifts testify of the capability of the cooperative system to adapt to such global trends as privatization, deregulation and ‘tertiarization’ that came in the wake of globalization. Moving from the traditional model of the single stakeholder cooperative based on internal homogeneity and on the identification of the notion of member and user, to a new model of multi-stakeholder organization, broadened the scope of cooperatives yet, at the same time, sharpened the socio-economic tension at the inter-cooperative level. Hence, the need, for cooperatives, to strengthen their links with similar nonprofit organizations as partners in the social economy. Our approach is grounded on a Western European interpretation of cooperatives, although the social economy is recently making strides outside Europe, especially in Canada and Latin America.     

Of Riots and Racism: Fifty Years Since the Best Laid Schemes of the Kerner Commission (1968–2018)

“What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again and again?” Voiced less that one week after the July 1967 race riots in Detroit, Michigan, Lyndon B. Johnson spoke these words as he ordered the establishment of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Seven months later, on March 1, 1968, the Commission's account—known as the Kerner Commission Report—was a scathing appraisal of riots and racism in the United States. While it included bold language about the linkage between rioting and racism, it is rife with paradoxical assumptions and findings. Moreover, the report's failure to define sociological concepts, coupled with a reliance on individualism and cognitive attitudes via psycho‐analytic and pop‐psychological conjecture, together beckon scholars to wrestle with how this state‐issued report reflected and reproduced dominant assumptions about the “race” concept, violence, and human nature. Employing a critical content analysis of the report, I ask: How does the Kerner Commission Report define and use the concept of “riots” and “racism,” and what are the logics employed in the production of that knowledge?     

Fifty Years of the Southern Sociological Society: Change and Continuity in a Professional Society. Methodological Perspectives on Studying the History of the Southern Sociological Society

This paper revisits research procedures used to collect and analyze data for Fifty Years of the Southern Sociological Society: Change and Continuity in a Professional Society (1988) to comment on methodological issues. The fifty years of change were conceptualized as having shifted the Southern Sociological Society from a disciplinary to a professional mode of organization. The shift occurred both from evolutionary processes and from deliberate revolutionary actions of officials and members. Data for the study came mainly from the Society’s Archives. It included personal accounts by presidents, secretary-treasurers’ and committee reports, annual programs and newsletters. Evolutionary processes of adapting the association to the growth of membership, to differentiation of fields of sociological study, along with the rationalization and formalization of the Society’s governance and operation, were extracted mainly from annual programs, the most continuous and objective body of archival information. Revolutionary changes, including adaptation to societal challenges including racial segregation, from the Society’s founding onward were inferred from personal accounts, committee reports, and newsletters, and were confirmed from interviews with long-standing members.     

Dimensions of Responsiveness to Women's Policies in the Fifty States

Factor analysis of the simple incidence of 88 "women's public policies" across the 50 states reveals 9 patterns of response. Each of these dimensions reflects a variety of policy concerns; but close examination suggests a range along a continuum from the maintenance of traditional roles (patriarchical protection, workplace protection, vestigial inequities) through the provision of role equity (minimal equity, political equity, credit equity, contemporary legal equity) to the promotion of role change (general sex neutrality, the partnership family).