Is a new structurally dispossessed class developing in the United States?

This study inquires whether a new structurally dispossessed class is developing in the United States. The new class proposition is derived from social theory and operationalized by two empirical characteristics: not in the labor force (NILF) and family income below poverty. The primary data source is the Current Population Survey over the years from 1968 to 2018, and threshold demographic criteria for class development is specified as increasing size and diversity. Because evidence is found to support the latter criterion but not the former, the proposition that a new class is developing is partially rejected. The analysis finds that new social components are joining the NILF/impoverished including men, Hispanics, college graduates, and young adults. Second, that the NILF/impoverished are politically active in terms of electoral participation, and no more likely than the total electorate to have voted for a populist Presidential candidate in 2016. NILF/impoverished recipiency of state transfers varies over time, increasing through the Great Recession, then receding. The implications of the investigation are discussed in terms of the likelihood that the NILF/impoverished will generate new forms of political opposition to the rule of capital.     

Is Islam in Western Europe Like Race in the United States?

Asking whether Islam in Western Europe is like race in the United States is, to a large degree, to ask whether Muslims in Europe share the same fate and face the same barriers as blacks in the United States. The article considers (1) the nature of the hostility to Islam in Western Europe and why it is a greater barrier to inclusion for immigrants and their children than in the United States; (2) the dynamics of color‐coded race in the United States, comparing, on the one hand, the severe barriers confronting individuals and groups with African ancestry in the United States with the barriers facing Muslims (as well as black immigrants) in Western Europe and, on the other hand, considering certain advantages available to immigrants of color in the United States that Muslim and other immigrants lack in Europe; and (3) whether the boundary based on religion will prove more permeable for the descendants of Muslim immigrants in Western Europe than the racial boundary in the United States for those with visible African ancestry.     

Why the hyphen? Individual and collective memories of Italianness in the United States at the intersection of class and generation

This three-generation oral history study offers insight into why descendants of Italian migrants to the United States still choose hyphenated identities today. The research project shows how the meaning of Italianness shifts among the interviewees depending on class affiliation: among the middle-class offspring the use of the hyphen can be understood mainly as a reaction to the experienced pressure to give in to Anglo conformity. Among the blue-collar, urban progeny, Italianness expresses itself as a combination of an experienced ethnic environment on the one hand and a symbolic ethnicity on the other.     

For a sociology of committed professionals: “Art Worlds” in the United States and opposing the war in Iraq

This article analyzes American artists’ opposition to the war in Iraq, emphasizing the way it was determined by their professional situations. Regardless of the networks and political organizations involved, or the ideological dimensions of the anti-war cause, individual professional identities and relationships persisted and influenced their public practices and positioning. In a first section, we compare different artistic subfields and labor configurations, to grasp what, in the participants’ own eyes, made the combination of artistic and militant identities - and, sometimes, the production of a form of “political art” - tenable. The second section concentrates on how political commitment emerged in fields of professional activity, how the functioning of artistic milieus today – that have become more autonomous, specialized and professional – tends to discourage “mixing registers”, i.e. combining aesthetic motives and political logics.     

Sexual health policies in other industrialized countries: are there lessons for the United States?

Health professionals have been concerned about the high rates of unwanted and unplanned pregnancy, teenage pregnancy, abortion, and sexually transmitted diseases in the U.S. A major concern has been why these rates in the U.S. are so much higher than in most other western industrialized countries. In this article I summarize major national and comparative studies that have attempted to understand how the U.S. can do better in providing for the sexual health of its citizens. I also discuss approaches to sexual health in countries that do substantially better on the aforementioned indicators of sexual health. This review indicates that the recommendations of health and social science experts in the U.S. are consistent with approaches in countries where programs have done a better job in meeting the sexual health needs of their populations.     

Alienation in the United States: Uniform or Group-Specific Change?

“Alienation,” in the sense of disenchantment with core institutions of society, increased after the mid-1960s. Most accounts hold that the rise in alienation was uniform across all groups. This paper evaluates the hypothesis of uniform change using data from the Harris Polls. We find evidence of both short-term and long-term shifts in patterns of alienation. Blacks and low-income people are less alienated under Democratic than under Republican administrations. Over the long term, increases in alienation have been larger among women and people without a college degree.

Race of the Future: Mixing of Colors in the United States Leading to One Race?

This article examines the impacts of the race of the future theory on the U.S. population. By and large, the theory posits that the mixing of different races—due to the process of miscegenation, especially in marriage, cohabitation, or sexual relations—will blend all races, so much so that, in the future, the end result of this mixing will be a panracial formation (i.e., one race). In this analysis, the authors attempt to determine whether the mixing of colors currently happening in the United States will lead to one race and what the race of the future in the United States will “look” like. One of the major conclusions is that, although the possibility of the existence of the race of the future has yet to be established, the degree of multiraciality in the U.S. population is rapidly growing (based on data and statistics from the U.S. Bureau of the Census).     

Homicide–Suicides in the United States: A Review of the Literature

Homicide–suicides are phenomena where the perpetrator kills one or more victims and subsequently kills himself/herself. The typical classification includes intimate partner homicide–suicides, familial, and extrafamilial homicide–suicides. This review examines research beginning with a 1992 seminal article by Peter Marzuk, Kenneth Tardiff, and Charles Hirsch in the Journal of the American Medical Association in which they suggested that homicide–suicides constituted a distinct domain different from homicides to suicides. This review uses the JAMA article to frame the issues and discuss homicide–suicide research in the United States from the date of that publication. In addition to discussing characteristics of homicide–suicides, this review focuses on homicide–suicides involving intimate partners and compares both to homicides without subsequent suicides and suicides without prior homicides. Suggestions for further research are given as well as research problems available to Sociology.     

Is Mothers’ Work Related to Childhood Weight Changes in the United States?

Taking family structure, father’s work intensity, and children’s developmental stages into consideration, this study examined the effect of a mother’s previous and contemporaneous work (employment and weekly work hours) on their children’s weight and their likelihood of having weight problems such as obesity, overweight, and underweight. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class of 1998–1999 (ECLS-K), this study adopted a fixed effect model and found that for 3rd to 5th graders, an increase in mothers’ previous work hours among two-parent families below the federal poverty level (FPL) increased the risk of the child being obese, while the current employment of single mothers below the FPL reduced the risk of the child being obese. Surprisingly, the employment of single mothers below the FPL increased the risk of the child being underweight, especially for 1st to 3rd graders.     

Journalistic right in the “first rough draft of history”: a comparative study of news copyright in the United States and the People's Republic of China

As more and more American media products enter the Chinese market, and vice versa, it is becoming increasingly important for legal scholars and journalists to understand how news products are regulated differently by the two countries' copyright policies. This article examines the issue of copyright protection for news in both China and the United States. The following research questions are discussed and answered in order to identify major conceptual and practical differences and similarities in the news copyright regimes of the two countries: How did the copyright law on news evolve? Is news copyrightable? Who owns news products? What rights do copyright owners have? How long is news work copyright protected? What are news work copyright restrictions? What if news copyright owners are foreign citizens? The article concludes by presenting and analyzing a hypothetical case involving both the Chinese and American copyright laws.     

Challenges for the school in a migration society – a critical incidents analysis

The large number of newly arrived people from other countries, particularly children and youth, represents a major challenge for schools and school systems in the EU-28. The present study, conducted in Germany, investigated this situation using the critical incident technique. Critical incidents were collected in group discussions with teachers and principals about challenging events in the context of growing migration. The incidents, including their perceived causes and consequences, were categorised using qualitative content analysis. Events that were frequently present in teachers’ everyday work included various types of conflicts concerning pupils, difficult cooperation between teachers and parents and parents banning their children from taking part in particular school activities. The identified causes for such events were diverse, including misunderstandings, diverging cultural and religious concepts, language barriers, structural constraints and some pupils’ traumatic experiences influencing the school community. The described incidents had far-reaching consequences, especially for parent–school cooperation and for pupils’ integration in the classroom community and academic and personal development. The final part of this article discusses and illustrates how the results can contribute to developing ideas and measures to deal with the identified challenges.     

The origins and early diffusion of “shareholder value” in the United States

The shareholder value conception of the firm and its consequences for the functioning of corporations have been studied from a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. In this article we examine in more detail than has been done sofar the origins and early adoption of this particular conception. By investigating public business sources from the perspective of field theory, we argue that the rise and early diffusion of “shareholder value” are best understood as a function of the changing power relations in the economic field during the first half of the 1980s. The deep economic recession at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s led to a crisis in the prevailing management beliefs, offering newcomers the opportunity to promote alternative business strategies, among which the shareholder value conception became dominant. The sources studied indicate that the spokespersons of the new business conception were initially wealthy outsiders, corporate “raiders,” who used the economic crisis to oppose management and acquire shares in undervalued firms with the threat of restructuring and selling parts of them in the name of shareholders’ interests. Although these hostile take-overs, or threats of take-overs, were widely contested, the Reagan administration blocked regulation and stimulated the take-over market. The rivalry between “raiders” and public pension funds over the profits of these takeovers led to the founding the Council of Institutional Investors (1985), which adopted the shareholder value doctrine inaugurating the organized activism of public pension funds with regard to the management of firms. It was thus in all likelihood the competition and conflict among different groups of shareholders, primarily corporate raiders and pension funds, that triggered the shift in the balance of power between managers and shareholders. Since managers found profitable ways to adapt to the new balance of power, the shareholder value ideology spread rapidly through the economic field, becoming the dominant business model of North American firms in the second half of the 1980s.     

Sweden and the United States: is the challenge of an aging society leading to a convergence of policy?

The aging of the population is one of many forces behind a current reconstruction of welfare benefits in both Sweden and the United States. While both countries represent ideological polarities regarding social policy, they are struggling to meet their welfare goals with limited resources, and both are adopting similar strategies, for example, decentralization, targeting, and an increased emphasis on privatization and evaluation. This paper summarizes some of the differences between Sweden and the United States and describes some of the forces at work that are lessening the differences between the two countries in strategies and policy regarding care services for elderly people.     

Is the Problem of European Citizenship a Problem of Social Citizenship? Social Policy,Federalism, and Democracy in the EU and United States*

The development of supranational (European) social rights, and therefore social citizenship, is undermined by strong, direct relationships between citizens and national welfare states. Social policies contribute to national identities because they entail direct relationships between states and citizens. In well‐developed European welfare states strong relationships between citizens and their member‐states are expected. This may prevent the development of a similar relationship at the European level. The U.S. provides a comparison case, wherein a successful transference of citizenship identity from a lower to higher level has occurred, partly as a result of the building of national‐level social citizenship, at least for certain classes of people. Revolutionary War Pensions provide an example of how social policy influences national identity. The lack of EU‐level social policy precludes the possibility of this type of identity formation. Finally, the interplay of social citizenship and democracy in both cases is explored. T.H. Marshall’s work regarding citizenship as the basis for democracy is used to understand how the inability to create a common social policy in the EU is harmful to democracy.     

'Land of the free'? Circulating human rights and narrated lives in the United States

Abstract

In the 50 years during which human rights has gained an international currency, personal narratives have become one of the most potent vehicles for advancing human rights claims. This is particularly true in the United States where personal narratives attesting to human rights violations frequently gain wide exposure through mass publication and publicity, media circulation, and global information flows. This article explores the circulation of human rights narratives in the United States, examining some of the ways that stories enter into public discourse through published life narratives, television talk shows, news reports, campus lectures and publicity tours, websites, and the like, and are taken up by popular and academic audiences, spurring debates within the fields of legal and political theory, international relations, religion, morality and ethics, often far removed from the originating event or site of human rights violation. The article considers the many intended and unintended effects of this circulation on storytellers, their audiences, and the campaigns they represent.     

After the “Great Recession”: Excluding “Able-Bodied” Adults from Food Entitlements in the United States

A little-known provision to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), excluding those who are “able-bodied adults without dependents” (ABAWDs) from accessing long-term benefits without conforming to work requirements or eligibility guidelines, was recently reinstated at federal and state levels. States have considerable discretion in implementing the ABAWD provision, resulting in differential access to SNAP benefits. This article provides an analysis of the historical and political context of the ABAWD provision and its relevance to social work. An examination of several states’ different approaches to implementing the ABAWD rule underscores the limits of this policy and the consequent need for social work engagement and advocacy.