Who Lives Near Coke Plants and Oil Refineries? An Exploration of the Environmental Inequity Hypothesis

Facility-specific information on pollution was obtained for 36 coke plants and 46 oil refineries in the United States and matched with information on populations surrounding these 82 facilities. These data were analyzed to determine whether environmental inequities were present, whether they were more economic or racial in nature, and whether the racial composition of nearby communities has changed significantly since plants began operations.The Census tracts near coke plants have a disproportionate share of poor and nonwhite residents. Multivariate analyses suggest that existing inequities are primarily economic in nature. The findings for oil refineries are not strongly supportive of the environmental inequity hypothesis. Rank ordering of facilities by race, poverty, and pollution produces limited (although not consistent) evidence that the more risky facilities tend to be operating in communities with above-median proportions of nonwhite residents (near coke plants) and Hispanic residents (near oil refineries). Over time, the racial makeup of many communities near facilities has changed significantly, particularly in the case of coke plants sited in the early 1900s. Further risk-oriented studies of multiple manufacturing facilities in various industrial sectors of the economy are recommended.The authors are all affiliated with the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis     

Mood in Daily Contexts: Relationship With Risk in Early Adolescence

Disturbances in affect have been linked to problem behavior in adolescence and future psychopathology, but little is known about how such disturbances manifest themselves in everyday contexts. This study investigated daily mood in Dutch 7th graders, aged 11–14. Cluster analysis of problem measures distinguished high-risk (n=25) and low-risk (n=106) subgroups. Participants completed experience-sampling reports of mood, social context, and location nine times daily for 5 days. Multilevel regression analyses of four mood measures confirmed higher anxiety and depressed mood in the high-risk group. Moods varied by location and social context, with significant differences between groups in two specific social contexts. First, when with family, low-risk adolescents felt less depressed than when alone, whereas high-risk adolescents felt more depressed. Second, high-risk adolescents showed more pronounced anxiety in social situations outside the network of family and friends. These findings point to everyday social contexts in which young adolescents with emotional and behavioral problems appear to be particularly vulnerable.     

“What problems do you confront?” an approach to doing qualitative research

Social life is filled with problems — situations that are perceived and defined as problems by individuals as they interact with each other. As such, these problems are often of more concern to those individuals than are other matters. The sociologist can gain insight into the structure of social relations by focusing the investigation on those problems rather than directly on the underlying structure. That is, the discussion of the problems that those being studied see in their situation or setting is revealing of the structured relations in those settings. This approach to doing social research is illustrated by two of the author's studies — one a study of an emergency department, and the second a study of how commercial art galleries affect the production and consumption of art.     

Disorganized Attachment: A Compass for Navigating the Confusing Behavior of the “Difficult-to-Treat” Patient

The concept of disorganized attachment gives a framework with which to understand patients who present a confusing pattern of relatedness. The therapist may experience feeling connected with the patient only to see a sudden retreat, expressed by silence, argumentativeness, or missed sessions. After presenting a theoretical summary of disorganized attachment, I give two clinical examples. The first illustrates the theoretical material that is presented and gives the reader an idea of what a disorganized attachment pattern looks like in the clinical setting, while the second briefly shows how use of this framework increased my comfort level.     

Can sociology be a science?: The issue of gender and sex-dimorphic characteristics

In spite of the fact that much of the work done by sociologists is of high quality, there appears to be a pervasive sense among sociologists that as a field sociology is not developing an accumulating base of knowledge that involves a combination of theory and empirical “facts.” Social constructs are a basic component of most human behavior, and such behaviors cannot be understood without attention to the nature of those social constructs. However, humans are also biological beings, their biological attributes are relatively stable, and variations in these attributes often have a strong effect on behavior. It is also the case that what persons experience and how they behave has an effect on their biological attributes. We suggest that if sociologists were attentive to the interactions of biological attributes and social constructs, sociologists would be in a position to develop a constantly expanding base of scientific social knowledge. As an illustrative example, we have focused on the issue of how gender and sex-dimorphic characteristics are intrinsically interrelated.