The social psychology of Adam and Eve

Conclusion I am arguing for three links between the biblical creation myth and social theory. First, I am arguing that, by exploiting the story for the social psychological ideas that can be drawn out of it, we have a rich way to appreciate the nuances of the myth. By treating Adam and Eve as a parsimonious and memorable form of sociological theorizing, we can effectively appreciate the elaborate, highly tuned, richly coherent, and subtle structure of the myth. We can answer a series of initially enigmatic questions about the logic of the story, and in the process we can bring out some of its neglected features, such as the burden in the final gift. Here empirical theory serves to clarify the hermeneutics of a powerfully appealing element of cultural life.Next, reversing the perspective, we can reveal the myth as a testable empirical theory. In this article, I can only suggest the promise of such a theory. But this operation draws out theoretical ideas about emotions - such as their dualistic and dialectical character - that are difficult to summarize elegantly without the aid of the symbolic powers of mythical narrative and that point empirical investigation in new directions.Third, there is the empirical question of the impressive resonance of the story of Adam and Eve. I am arguing that the everyday emergence and decline of emotions, in typically brief, typically inconsequential, social interactional episodes, parallels the metamorphosis described in Genesis. This parallel indicates a ground for the appeal of this creation myth wherever people structure their emotions into socially situated forms, wherever falls, literal or figurative, can lead alternatively to shame, laughter, crying, or anger. The narrative structure of everyday emotions is surely not the only nor the most important basis of the appeal of Adam and Eve, but there is a grounding for the resonance of the story, a tacit basis for its pervasive appeal, in the stories that we corporeally convey as we construct socially situated episodes of shame, laughter, anger, and crying.Something similar was argued by the English and German literary and philosophical Romantics but their claims were far more ambitious. They frequently appreciated biblical stories such as those of the Fall from paradise, the prodigal son, and the tearing of Christ from communal embrace and eventual resurrection, not as history or allegory but as proto-scientific summaries of ongoing human realities. In M. H. Abrams's review, the Romantic tendency was... to naturalize the supernatural and to humanize the divine. All the figures and events of the bible were to be seen and felt within you.My position in this essay is neither so grand nor so optimistic. I am arguing that emotions in everyday social life describe a metamorphosis of fall, chaos, and an attempt at graceful reintegration, but not that this process describes all of social life, much less all of history, nor even that it describes what is most fundamental, best, or most elevating in life, as the Romantics might have said. For Schiller, the Fall was fortunate because it led to a spiral ascent toward a paradise more grand than the one Adam lost. Our situated emotions routinely lead back to the banalities from which they emerged. Moreover, much of emotional life does not necessarily take the form of bounded narrative episodes; indeed much of what may be most important about social life, in any number of senses, is not characterized by the bouts of crying and anger, phases of shameful feeling, and moments of laughter that this essay addresses. But the story of Eden resonates elaborately in emotionally colorful moments within the mundane prose of routine interaction, just as those sensually vivid experiences are narrated in corporeally distinctive ways. Revisiting Genesis, we can grasp its wisdom reverberating through the workings of emotions in everyday social life.     

Ideology,cultural frameworks,and the process of revolution

Conclusions: The varying role of culture The English and French revolutions were not the product of uniquely Western crises of capitalism or absolutism. They shared many elements with profoundly similar crises in the Eastern states of the Ottoman Empire and China. The divergence of Eastern and Western civilizations after the mid-seventeenth century thus cannot be simply attributed to a structural difference between Western revolutions and Eastern peasant rebellions or dynastic crises. In terms of institutional changes, particularly changes in local class structure, more extensive changes followed the seventeenth-century crises in Ottoman Turkey and Ming China than followed the English Revolution. The entire question of the divergence of Eastern and Western economic and political development, of Western dynamism and Eastern stagnation in the early modern period, therefore needs reexamination. In particular, the manner in which Western Europe forged ahead of the advanced Eastern civilizations of Islam and China needs to be explained in a way that accommodates the similarities of the seventeenth-century crises in each.Focusing on cultural frameworks and how they governed reactions to state crises and shaped state reconstruction provides an entry point for such an explanation. Different ideological legacies, embedded in state reconstruction after the seventeenth-century crises, profoundly influenced the later divergence of East and West.Discussions of culture and revolutions have been obfuscated by arguments over whether material or cultural and ideological factors are the primary agents of change. Clearly this false dilemma — asking whether history is governed by Marxist materialism or Hegelian idealism — fails to capture historical reality. A number of scholars have tried to overcome this dichotomy. Clifford Geertz, Natalie Davis, and Robert Darnton have turned to deep analysis of texts or events, analysis designed to illustrate the creativity of individuals and groups in producing symbols and actions that both express and shape their material conditions. Other authors — Giddens and Bourdieu — have put forth general theories of culture that stress the ability of individuals to appropriate cultural elements and use them to reconstruct or reinforce material and institutional structures. All of these approaches attempt to free individuals from the determinism of materialist constraints, and also from the mechanical reproduction of a dominant culture. These approaches therefore have the virtue of avoiding either a simple socioeconomic or cultural determination of individual action. Yet they also are almost useless for long-term, causal historical explanation, for they tend to reduce to a halfway house between materialism and idealism, blandly asserting that, in general, individuals respond to both their material and their cultural environments with (more or less) creative responses that both reproduce and alter those environments.But as we have just observed, the creative response to a changing environment is not constant. These theories of culture fail to appreciate temporal variation, that the role of culture may be quite different in particular concrete historical settings. At some times, as in politically stable periods, the level of cultural innovation may be low; at other times, as in prerevolutionary periods, ideological innovation may increase, but chiefly in response to material forces that create a social crisis. At still other times, as during state breakdown and the ensuing struggle for power, ideological creativity may rise to great heights and develop its own dynamics. And in the restabilization of authority after a breakdown, as the ideological creations of the power struggle become embedded in the postrevolutionary cultural framework, cultural patterns and ideologies may dominate the future possibilities for material as well as cultural change.Interestingly, it was precisely those revolutions that failed to overcome traditional rule fully but did experience a phase of creative, tradition-repudating ideology, namely England and France, that left a legacy of fruitful and dynamic tension in postbreakdown society. Although the Puritans and Jacobins faded after the revolutions, a part of their views remained in a rich stock of antitraditional symbols, institutions, and ideals. State reconstructions in those countries thus were continually challenged by claims to principles that hedged absolute authority. In contrast, the ideological response that occurred in tradition-reinforcing cases of state breakdown — as in the Ottoman Empire, China, and Hapsburg Spain — sought to purify and reaffirm traditional institutions. In these cases, the crisis was blamed on deviation from orthodoxy, and the new regimes sought to strip away variety in the extant cultural framework, purging elements perceived as heterodox. The reconstruction of state and social institutions allowed a recovery of traditional prosperity; but the impoverishing of the cultural framework of post-breakdown society reduced the basis for future dynamism and fundamental change. Meiji Japan was a hybrid case, as marginal elites did sweep away certain aspects of the traditional government and its status system, releasing resources for development and imperial expansion. But the Meiji Restoration still was framed in traditional and conservative ideology, which left a legacy of conservative and traditonal emphasis that continued to dominate much of political and social life.In short, theories of culture that simply describe the interaction of individuals with cultural elements in general terms are gravely incomplete. Cultural frameworks act with particular power at the times when states are rebuilt or revised in times of state breakdown or crisis. A more complete theory of culture — whose development has begun in the works of Wuthnow and Swidler — thus must recognize that cultural dynamics vary over time, becoming more fluid and more creative at some times, more rigid and more limiting at others.But in addition, these diverse outcomes suggest that macrosociology has unduly neglected the role of culture in constraining state structure and dynamics, particularly during periods of state crisis and reconstruction. Theories of social change must recognize that at some concrete historical junctures it is material forces, while at other such junctures it is cultural frameworks and ideologies, that play the dominant role in causing and directing change.This essay is an elaboration of chapter 5 of J. Goldstone's Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991).

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Gender differences in union membership,preferences, and beliefs

This study uses moderated regression analysis and two major sources of individual data to examine gender differences in union membership, pro-union voting intent, union instrumentality, and relative confidence in union leaders. Some specific male-female differences are noted, particularly involving union-related variables. Overall, however, the authors report a minimal role for gender as a determinant of the alternative union-related measures examined. The authors acknowledge the research assistance of Marlene Wechselblatt. Jack Fiorito also acknowledges support for this research from the University of Iowa’s Old Gold Summer Fellowship program. Helpful comments on an earlier draft were provided by William N. Cooke, John A. Fossum, Daniel G. Gallagher, Cynthia L. Gramm, and Ronald L. Seeber.     

Turmoil in Command of Politics: Organizing the Poor

How might poor people today best improve their situation in life? What is the most effective path open to them? An answer that has received much attention in recent years is Piven and Cloward's proposal that poor people mobilize independently and engage in disruptive tactics. Their proposal is grounded in an historical analysis of the successes and failures of past movements of the poor. The core of our paper is a critique of their historical appraisal. We contend that their analysis and the implications they draw from it do not support and, in some ways, contradict the strategy they advocate. Our conclusion is that independent mobilization of poor people aimed at improving their status is of dubious merit. The possibility of substantial improvement in the lot of the poor would be best realized, we argue, through activists' working within organized labor. We provide a brief discussion of the nature of this work and its rationale.     

Spatial weighting improves accuracy in small-area demographic forecasts of urban census tract populations

Existing research in small-area demographic forecasting suffers from two important limitations: (1) a paucity of studies that quantify patterns of error in either total or age/sex-specific estimates and (2) limited methodological innovation aimed specifically at improving the accuracy of such forecasts. This paper attempts to fill, in part, these gaps in existing research by presenting a comparative evaluation of the accuracy of standard and spatially-weighted Hamilton–Perry forecasts for urbanized census tracts within incorporated New Mexico municipalities. These comparative forecasts are constructed for a 10-year horizon (base 1 April 2000 and target 1 April 2010), then compared to the results of the 2010 Census in an ex post facto evaluation. Results are presented for the standard Hamilton–Perry forecasts as well as two sets that incorporate two common variants of spatial weights to improve forecast accuracy. Findings are discussed in the context of what is currently known about error in small-area demographic forecasts and with an eye toward continued innovations.     

Characterizing the Noncancer Toxicity of Mixtures Using Concepts from the TTC and Quantitative Models of Uncertainty in Mixture Toxicity

This article explores the use of an approach for setting default values for the noncancer toxicity, developed as part of the Threshold of Toxicological Concern (TTC), for the evaluation of the chronic noncarcinogenic effects of certain chemical mixtures. Individuals are exposed to many mixtures where there are little or no toxicological data on some or all of the mixture components. The approach developed in the TTC can provide a basis for conservative estimates of the toxicity of the mixture components when compound-specific data are not available. The application of this approach to multiple chemicals in a mixture, however, has implications for the statistical assumptions made in developing component-based estimates of mixtures. Specifically, conservative assumptions that are appropriate for one compound may become overly conservative when applied to all components of a mixture. This overestimation can be investigated by modeling the uncertainty in toxicity standards. In this article the approach is applied to both hypothetical and actual examples of chemical mixtures and the potential for overestimation is investigated. The results indicate that the use of the approach leads to conservative estimates of mixture toxicity and therefore its use is most appropriate for screening assessments of mixtures.     

透视毛泽东

毛泽东的经济思想异常平实,经济战略注重实用.在社会主义世界里,毛泽东对斯大林主义的批评是最全面和最深刻的,他不止干批判而且着手创造不同干苏联式的社会主义."大跃进"与"文革"一样,长远来看,也有一些积极的结果.毛泽东"造反有理"的断言结合文革的经验使中国人相信要让党内官僚真正负责就必须建立起民主制度.毛泽东的"群众路线"不仅与他的认识论紧密联系,而且还表现在通过实践而发现真理,又通过实践证实真理和发展真理.他本质上倾向民主,但是由于环境所迫不得不大权独揽,他这么做正是为了捍卫民主的价值.     

Solidarity Revisited: Group-level Effects on Individual-level Union Voting

Rooted in the theory of planned behavior, our empirical reinvestigation of archived union certification election data provided strong evidence that workgroup solidarity was a significant predictor of individual voting behavior. Specifically, group-level attitudes toward unions accounted for individual voting behaviors beyond the individual-level attitudes toward unions. This study offers a meaningful increment to our knowledge as it provides a quantification of the extent that employees are willing to, and actually, comply with subjective norms. Important practical implications for both unions and employers as well as directions for future research are discussed.