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1.
According to a 2002 study by the U.S. Department of Education, the percentage of “traditional students” on college campuses
is declining. Students increasingly are delaying enrollment, attending college part time, working full time, financially independent,
and single parents. In this paper, we explore the extent to which sociologists are adapting their teaching to address these
shifting demographics. Based on a content analysis of articles published over a 20 year period in Teaching Sociology that suggest strategies for teaching social class inequality we find that most authors assume that their students are “traditional.”
Most often this means that students are assumed to come from a privileged, middle class background, lack direct and substantial
experience in the labor market, and enter college shortly after graduating high school. Accordingly, most articles advocate
classroom strategies of “looking down,” whereby students pretend to be in the shoes of those less fortunate. Examples include
creating household budgets based on poverty wages, playing board games, or assuming the role of the poor for a day. These
strategies run the risk of being ineffective, alienating, and potentially ethically suspect when used with non-traditional
students, whose real life experiences may resemble these simulations. We conclude with recommendations for pedagogical approaches
to teaching social class inequality that are more appropriate for, and inclusive of, students from diverse backgrounds. Our
goal in this paper is to start a discussion about pedagogy, social inequality, and the non-traditional student. 相似文献
2.
Gary Dean Jaworski 《The American Sociologist》1990,21(3):209-216
Within the context of a discussion of Robert K. Merton’s ideas on leadership in postwar America, the article examines the
nature and impact of Merton’s “sociological parables.” This term refers to short tales from social life from which sociological
lessons with moral implications can be drawn. These parables, such as the bank insolvency story told in “The Self-Fulfilling
Prophecy,” illustrate the manner in which Merton merged moral and sociological messages in his writings. Suggestions are made
along the lines that these parables, or at least the moral messages they contain, contributed to Merton’s postwar fame.
His most recent publications are “Simmel’s Contribution to Parsons’ Action Theory and Its Fate,” in Michael Kaern, ed.Georg Simmel and Contempory Sociology (Kluwer, 1990); and “Robert K. Merton’s Extension of Simmel’sUbersehbar” inSociological Theory, Spring 1990. 相似文献
3.
Natalie Boero 《Qualitative sociology》2007,30(1):41-60
In the last twenty years scientific, medical, and public health interest in obesity has skyrocketed. Increasingly the term
“epidemic” is being used in the media, medical journals, and public health policy literature to describe the current prevalence
of fatness in the U.S. Using social scientific literature on epidemics, social problems, and feminist theories of the body,
this paper traces the historical emergence of the “obesity epidemic” through an analysis of 751 articles on obesity published
in The New York Times between 1990 and 2001. Through the identification and analysis of three discursive pairings I argue that the “obesity epidemic”
is a part of a new breed of what I call “post-modern epidemics,” epidemics in which unevenly medicalized phenomena lacking
a clear pathological basis get cast in the language and moral panic of “traditional” epidemics. I show how this moral panic
together with the location of the problem within the individual precludes a more macro level approach to health and health
care delivery at a time when health care services are being dismantled or severely cut back.
相似文献
Natalie BoeroEmail: |
4.
Price is a central analytic concept in both neoclassical and old institutional economics. Combining the social network perspective
with old and new institutionalist approaches to price formation, this article examines technological, economic, institutional,
and political factors that shaped the earliest pricing systems for electricity used in the United States, between 1882 and
1910. We show that certain characteristics of electricity supply led to ambiguities in how the product should be priced, which
created a politics of pricing among electricity producers. In particular, we investigate why the “Wright system,” arguably
inferior in productive efficiency to other alternatives, was widely adopted by 1900. We argue that this outcome resulted in
part from the political and organizational clout of its supporters, as well as from their particular conceptions of the boundaries
and future of the industry itself. The Wright system best suited the “growth dynamic” strategy promoted by the managers of
large central stations in their fierce competition with smaller and more decentralized installations. Thus, even in this apparently
highly technical and mainly economic issue of how to price the product, there was ample room for social construction and political
manipulation. The outcome reached was by no means inevitable and had a highly significant impact on the shape of the American
industrial infrastructure. 相似文献
5.
Nancy A. Naples 《Qualitative sociology》1996,19(1):83-106
This article draws upon findings from an ethnographic study of two towns in rural Iowa to examine the adequacy of the insider/outsider
distinction as a guideline for evaluating and conducting ethnographic research. Utilizing feminist standpoint and materialist
feminist theories, I start with the assumption that, rather than one “insider” or “outsider” position, we all begin our work
with different relationships to shifting aspects of social life and to particular knowers in the community and this contributes
to numerous dimensions through which we can relate to residents in various communities. “Outsiderness” and “insiderness” are
not fixed or static positions, rather they are ever-shifting and permeable social locations illustrated in this case study
by the “outsider phenomenon.” Community processes that reorganize and resituate race-ethnicity, gender and class relations
form some of the most salient aspects of the “outsider phenomenon.” These dynamic processes shaped our relationships with
residents as ethnographic identities were repositioned by shifts in constructions of “community” that accompanied ongoing
social, demographic, and political changes. 相似文献
6.
This piece offers suggestions based on some things we expected to learn and from some things we did not expect to learn about
communicating research to congressional policymakers. Some of these are insider discoveries from working as a professional
staff member for a joint committee of the US Senate and the US House of Representatives. Other things we learned came largely
as surprises from attempts to provide basic information and issue awareness about socioeconomic conditions in the Southern
Black Belt directly to the Congress as well as indirectly through public interest and grassroots groups. One of the surprising
discoveries, working professionally both on the inside of Congress and on the outside as social scientists, is how well social
interaction actually works. And there were other surprises as well.
This article is based on an August 16 panel presentation by the first author at the 2003 meeting of the American Sociological
Association in Atlanta. The panel was organized by Larry Burmeister of the University of Kentucky. Material written in the
first person singular in the first section of this article, “From the Inside,” is from the first author’s experiences. Later,
portions of the text beginning with the subhead, “On the Outside,” and stated in the first person plural are by both authors. 相似文献
7.
Neil McLaughlin 《The American Sociologist》2004,35(1):80-101
In response to the recent The American Sociologist special issue on Canadian sociology, this rejoinder dialogues with some of the perspectives offered there on the discipline
north of the border with an eye towards lessons that American sociologists might learn from the Canadian experience. My reflections
build on a larger analytic piece entitled “Canada’s Impossible Science: The Historical and Institutional Origins of the Coming
Crisis of Anglo-Canadian Sociology” to be published soon in The Canadian Journal Sociology. Particular attention is paid to the different institutional arrangements of higher education in Canada and the United States,
Anglo-Canadian reliance on the particularly English “weakness as strength” strategy for sociology, tensions between the cultural
values of populism, egalitarianism, and excellence, and the trade-offs between professional and public intellectual work.
A critique is offered of the “origin myth” of Canadian sociology as a particularly vibrant “critical sociology,” with discussion
of Dorothy Smith's influence on sociology in Canada.
His research interests are in sociological theory, the sociology of culture, and the study of intellectuals from the perspective
of the sociology of organisations and professions. He is studying Edward Said as a “global public intellectual” as part of
a Canadian government-funded interdisciplinary grant on “Globalization and Autonomy” at McMaster University. He is also working
“Canadian professors as public intellectuals,” a project also funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council
of Canada. 相似文献
8.
In this article, I attempt to address some enduring problems in formulation and practical use of the notion of structure in
contemporary social science. I begin by revisiting the question of the fidelity of Anthony Giddens’ appropriation of the idea
of structure with respect to Levi-Strauss. This requires a reconsideration of Levi-Strauss’ original conceptualization of
“social structure” which I argue is a sort of “methodological structuralism” that stands sharply opposed to Giddens’ ontological
reconceptualization of the notion. I go on to show that Bourdieu’s contemporaneous critique of Levi-Strauss is best understood
as an attempt to recover rather than reject the central implication of Levi-Strauss’ methodological structuralism, which puts
Bourdieu and Giddens on clearly distinct camps in terms of their approach toward the idea of structure. To demonstrate the—insurmountable—conceptual
difficulties inherent in the ontological approach, I proceed by critically examining what I consider to be the most influential
attempt to resolve the ambiguities in Giddens structuration theory: Sewell’s argument for the “duality of structure.” I show
that by retaining Giddens’ ontological focus, Sewell ends up with a notion of structure that is at its very core “anti-structuralist”
or only structuralist in a weak sense. I close by considering the implications of the analysis for the possibility of developing
the rather neglected “methodological structuralist” legacy in contemporary social analysis. 相似文献
9.
Two main problems in the sociology of morality 总被引:1,自引:0,他引:1
Gabriel Abend 《Theory and Society》2008,37(2):87-125
Sociologists often ask why particular groups of people have the moral views that they do. I argue that sociology’s empirical
research on morality relies, implicitly or explicitly, on unsophisticated and even obsolete ethical theories, and thus is
based on inadequate conceptions of the ontology, epistemology, and semantics of morality. In this article I address the two
main problems in the sociology of morality: (1) the problem of moral truth, and (2) the problem of value freedom. I identify
two ideal–typical approaches. While the Weberian paradigm rejects the concept of moral truth, the Durkheimian paradigm accepts
it. By contrast, I argue that sociology should be metaphysically agnostic, yet in practice it should proceed as though there
were no moral truths. The Weberians claim that the sociology of morality can and should be value free; the Durkheimians claim
that it cannot and it should not. My argument is that, while it is true that factual statements presuppose value judgments,
it does not follow that sociologists are moral philosophers in disguise. Finally, I contend that in order for sociology to
improve its understanding of morality, better conceptual, epistemological, and methodological foundations are needed.
Gabriel Abend is a PhD candidate in sociology at Northwestern University. He works in the fields of economic sociology, culture and morality, theory, comparative and historical sociology, and the sociology of science and knowledge. In his dissertation, he investigates the social, cultural, and institutional history of business ethics since the late eighteenth century. In particular, he examines historical variations in conceptions of business ethics, and, more generally, in the boundary between “the economic” and “the moral.” His publications include: “Styles of Sociological Thought: Sociologies, Epistemologies, and the Mexican and US Quests for Truth” (Sociological Theory 24(1):1–41 March 2006); and “The Meaning of ‘Theory’” (Sociological Theory, forthcoming). 相似文献
Gabriel AbendEmail: |
Gabriel Abend is a PhD candidate in sociology at Northwestern University. He works in the fields of economic sociology, culture and morality, theory, comparative and historical sociology, and the sociology of science and knowledge. In his dissertation, he investigates the social, cultural, and institutional history of business ethics since the late eighteenth century. In particular, he examines historical variations in conceptions of business ethics, and, more generally, in the boundary between “the economic” and “the moral.” His publications include: “Styles of Sociological Thought: Sociologies, Epistemologies, and the Mexican and US Quests for Truth” (Sociological Theory 24(1):1–41 March 2006); and “The Meaning of ‘Theory’” (Sociological Theory, forthcoming). 相似文献
10.
Choosing subsets: a size-independent probabilistic model and the quest for a social welfare ordering
“Subset voting” denotes a choice situation where one fixed set of choice alternatives (candidates, products) is offered to
a group of decision makers, each of whom is requested to pick a subset containing any number of alternatives. In the context
of subset voting we merge three choice paradigms, “approval voting“ from political science, the “weak utility model” from
mathematical psychology, and “social welfare orderings” from social choice theory. We use a probabilistic choice model proposed
by Falmagne and Regenwetter (1996) built upon the notion that each voter has a personal ranking of the alternatives and chooses
a subset at the top of the ranking. Using an extension of Sen's (1966) theorem about value restriction, we provide necessary
and sufficient conditions for this empirically testable choice model to yield a social welfare ordering. Furthermore, we develop
a method to compute Borda scores and Condorcet winners from subset choice probabilities. The technique is illustrated on an
election of the Mathematical Association of America (Brams, 1988).
Received: 18 August 1995 / Accepted: 13 February 1997 相似文献
11.
In a social choice model with an infinite number of agents, there may occur “equal size” coalitions that a preference aggregation
rule should treat in the same manner. We introduce an axiom of equal treatment with respect to a measure of coalition size
and explore its interaction with common axioms of social choice. We show that, provided the measure space is sufficiently
rich in coalitions of the same measure, the new axiom is the natural extension of the concept of anonymity, and in particular
plays a similar role in the characterization of preference aggregation rules. 相似文献
12.
Francesco De Sinopoli 《Social Choice and Welfare》2000,17(4):655-672
In this paper we show in the context of voting games with plurality rule that the “perfect” equilibrium concept does not
appear restrictive enough, since, independently of preferences, it can exclude at most the election of only one candidate.
Furthermore, some examples show that there are “perfect” equilibria that are not “proper”. However, also some “proper” outcome
is eliminated by sophisticated voting, while Mertens' stable set fully satisfies such criterium, for generic plurality games.
Moreover, we highlight a weakness of the simple sophisticated voting principle. Finally, we find that, for some games, sophisticated
voting (and strategic stability) does not elect the Condorcet winner, neither it respects Duverger's law, even with a large
number of voters.
Received: 16 March 1999/Accepted: 25 September 1999 相似文献
13.
Tanya Jakimow 《Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations》2010,21(4):546-568
Values are an essential part of the identity of non-government organizations (NGOs), distinguishing them from other sectors
and contributing to their legitimacy. Values are neither uncontested nor wholly self-determined, but rather are products of
the broader social and political environment. The meaning of values must be negotiated with multiple actors, such as funding
agencies, the state, and the general public including their “clients.” This paper looks at the ways that the meaning of a
particular NGO value—voluntarism—is negotiated and contested in India. I argue that conceptualizations of voluntarism are
neither singular, nor static, and that NGOs draw on these to claim legitimacy, or contest them through counter-narratives.
These struggles over the meaning of voluntarism are in themselves productive, shaping organizational identity, and functioning.
Values can thereby be a useful analytical tool to understanding NGOs. 相似文献
14.
Amin Ghaziani 《Theory and Society》2009,38(6):581-612
Sociological studies of culture have made significant progress on conceptual clarification of the concept, while remaining
comparatively quiescent on questions of measurement. This study empirically examines internal conflicts (or “infighting”),
a ubiquitous phenomenon in political organizing, to propose a “resinous culture framework” that holds promise for redirection.
The data comprise 674 newspaper articles and more than 100 archival documents that compare internal dissent across two previously
unstudied lesbian and gay Marches on Washington. Analyses reveal that activists use infighting as a vehicle to engage in otherwise
abstract definitional debates that provide concrete answers to questions such as who are we and what do we want. The mechanism
that enables infighting to concretize these cultural concerns is its coupling with fairly mundane and routine organizational
tasks. This mechanism affords one way to release the culture concept, understood here as collective self-definitions, from
being “an amorphous, indescribable mist which swirls around society members,” as it was once provocatively described. 相似文献
15.
Aggregation of binary evaluations for truth-functional agendas 总被引:1,自引:1,他引:0
In the problem of judgment aggregation, a panel of judges has to evaluate each proposition in a given agenda as true or false,
based on their individual evaluations and subject to the constraint of logical consistency. We elaborate on the relation between
this and the problem of aggregating abstract binary evaluations. For the special case of truth-functional agendas we have
the following main contributions: (1) a syntactical characterization of agendas for which the analogs of Arrow’s aggregation
conditions force dictatorship; (2) a complete classification of all aggregators that satisfy those conditions; (3) an analysis
of the effect of weakening the Pareto condition to surjectivity.
This is a sequel to the paper “Aggregation of binary evaluations.” The contents of both papers were presented, under the title
“An Arrovian impossibility theorem for social truth functions,” at the Second World Congress of the Game Theory Society, Marseille,
July 2004. The first version of “Aggregation of binary evaluations” was completed in June 2005. That working paper was subsequently
split into two parts, of which this is the second. The comments of an anonymous referee are gratefully acknowledged. Part
of R. Holzman’s work was done while he was a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. 相似文献
16.
Ruth Simpson 《Sociological Forum》1996,11(3):549-562
Perceptions of safety and danger are “intersubjective”—products of social construction, collective agreement, and socialization.
While objective danger certainly exists, perceptions of danger do not derive directly from observation of the empirical world.
The objective environment provides only inconsistent and ambiguous information, permitting ample room for socially constructed
beliefs. Three cognitive frameworks—the Cautious, Confident, and Neutral frameworks—organize perceptions of safety and danger.
Each framework begins with a default assumption about safety and danger and “marks” certain items as different from this default.
In shaping expectations, these frameworks also contribute to perceptions of horror, humor, excitement, and fear. Finally,
I use these frameworks to analyze the psychological concept “phobia” as a sociological phenomenon. 相似文献
17.
Best known as the first woman graduate from MIT, and the founder of Home Economics, Ellen Swallow Richards was a Progressive
Era reformer who applied social science research techniques to problems of concern to early sociologists. As a mentor to many
women who joined the “Cultural” and “Pragmatic” feminists of Hull House, her secular theories of “Oekology” and “Euthenics”
challenged many of the models of social change prevalent in the Cambridge and Chicago academic communities. Her most radical
contribution as a feminist was her assertion that women’s unpaid labor in the home played a vital economic role in maintaining
capitalism and was the ultimate source of their second-class citizenship. She shared a belief in democracy and education as
a feminist “Pragmatist,” and laid the groundwork for the contemporary “Ecofeminist” movement. Although she was a biochemist
by training, she engaged several genera-tions of women in the application of scientific methods to the solution of contemporary
social problems. As a political organizer, much of her legacy is reflected in the accomplishments of the reform organizations
she was instrumental in founding. 相似文献
18.
In this article, we provide a general model of “quaternary” dichotomous voting rules (QVRs), namely, voting rules for making
collective dichotomous decisions (to accept or reject a proposal), based on vote profiles in which four options are available
to each voter: voting (“yes”, “no”, or “abstaining”) or staying home and not turning out. The model covers most of actual
real-world dichotomus rules, where quorums are often required, and some of the extensions considered in the literature. In
particular, we address and solve the question of the representability of QVRs by means of weighted rules and extend the notion
of “dimension” of a rule. 相似文献
19.
Lars Skov Henriksen Steven Rathgeb Smith Annette Zimmer 《Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations》2012,23(2):458-501
Increasing societal heterogeneity, changing demographics, and increasing public debt and fiscal constraints have recently
challenged traditional “regime” approaches to welfare state development. Some scholars argue, against this background, that
welfare states might plausibly move out of their “regime container” by opting in favor of similar solutions and responses.
This potential trend toward “convergence” might, furthermore, be facilitated by the widespread use of new public management
ideas and techniques for “reinventing government” by adopting market solutions to public problems. This article investigates
whether such trends of convergence can be identified by comparing three different countries each traditionally looked upon
as belonging to different welfare state regimes: Denmark, Germany, and the United States. More specifically the article looks
at one important segment of welfare state activity, namely social services and related health care. To further focus the analysis,
special attention is devoted to the changing role played by the third sector in delivering services. The research design,
thus, differs from most comparative welfare state research. Instead of analyzing a broad set of quantitative indicators in
a large number of countries, it is scrutinized how some of the same problem pressures and policy ideas are being interpreted
and implemented in a small number of countries within one policy area. The analysis reveals that trends of convergence—conceptualized
along four dimensions: ideas, regulation, mix of providers, and revenue mix—can be identified across the three cases, though
this does not mean that the market share of nonprofit providers becomes the same. The study also reveals that fundamental
aspects of state–nonprofit relations persist despite trends of convergence. 相似文献
20.
Shigehiro Serizawa 《Social Choice and Welfare》2006,26(2):305-331
“Strategy-proofness” is one of the axioms that are most frequently used in the recent literature on social choice theory. It requires that by misrepresenting his preferences, no agent can manipulate the outcome of the social choice rule in his favor. The stronger requirement of “group strategy-proofness” is also often employed to obtain clear characterization results of social choice rules. Group strategy-proofness requires that no group of agents can manipulate the outcome in their favors. In this paper, we advocate “effective pairwise strategy-proofness.” It is the requirement that the social choice rule should be immune to unilateral manipulation and “self-enforcing” pairwise manipulation in the sense that no agent of a pair has the incentive to betray his partner. We apply the axiom of effective pairwise strategy-proofness to three types of economies: public good economy, pure exchange economy, and allotment economy. Although effective pairwise strategy-proofness is seemingly a much weaker axiom than group strategy-proofness, effective pairwise strategy-proofness characterizes social choice rules that are analyzed by using different axioms in the literature. 相似文献