IDENTIFICATION AND SEPARATISM: Religious Involvement and Racial Orientations Among Black Americans

Using data from the 1979–1980 National Survey of Black Americans (NSBA), this study investigates the relationships between religious involvement and two sets of racial orientations: identification , or feelings of closeness and commonality of interests among blacks, and separatism , or support for cultural and institutional distance from whites. Both public religious participation and private religious devotion are strong positive predictors of racial identification, net of the effects of sociodemographic factors. However, the positive effects of devotion on identification are diminished sharply among blacks over 60 years of age. In addition, members of tradition black denominations (i.e., Baptists and Methodists) express substantially stronger black identity than do their unaffiliated counterparts. In contrast to models of racial identification, religious involvement bears little consistent relationship to separatism. Relatively strong separatist sentiment is found among (1) frequent churchgoers ages 30–59 and (2) adherents of nontraditional religions (e.g., Muslims). In general, these results cast doubt on the arguments of some critics of the black church, who claim that religion undermines collective identification. Mainstream black religious culture appears to encourage inclusive, but not exclusive, racial solidarity.     

Membranes, mitochondria and amoebae: shape models

Most real-world shapes and images are characterized by high variability- they are not rigid, like crystals, for example—but they are strongly structured. Therefore, a fundamental task in the understanding and analysis of such image ensembles is the construction of models that incorporate both variability and structure in a mathematically precise way. The global shape models introduced in Grenander's general pattern theory are intended to do this. In this paper, we describe the representation of two-dimensional mitochondria and membranes in electron microscope photographs, and three-dimensional amoebae in optical sectioning microscopy. There are three kinds of variability to all of these patterns, which these representations accommodate. The first is the variability in shape and viewing orientation. For this, the typical structure is represented via linear, circular and spherical templates, with the variability accomodated via the application of transformations applied to the templates. The transformations form groups: scale, rotation and translation. They are locally applied throughout the continuum and of high dimension. The second is the textural variability; the inside and outside of these basic shapes are subject to random variation, as well as sensor noise. For this, statistical sensor models and Markov random field texture models are used to connect the constituent structures of the shapes to the measured data. The third variability type is associated with the fact that each scene is made up of a variable number of shapes; this number is not assumed to be known a priori. Each scene has a variable number of parameters encoding the transformations of the templates appropriate for that scene. For this, a single posterior distribution is defined over the countable union of spaces representing models of varying numbers of shapes. Bayesian inference is performed via computation of the conditional expectation of the parametrically defined shapes under the posterior. These conditional mean estimates are generated using jump-diffusion processes. Results for membranes, mitochondria and amoebae are shown.     

Sources of drug information among adolescent students

A sample of 1023 eighth and tenth grade students in small to medium-sized central Texas school districts was assessed to determine the amount of information they receive from ten sources about six categories of drugs. The amount of information males reported receiving about each drug category was significantly greater than what females reported, and the amount of information that eighth graders reported receiving about each drug category was significantly greater than what tenth graders reported. Television was the primary source of drug information for all categories of drugs except inhalants, for which friends and television were equally important sources. Parents and printed media (magazines or newspapers) were of secondary importance, followed by friends and teachers. Adolescents were less likely to receive drug-related information from experience, siblings, church, doctors, and police. The reliance on the mass media for drug information in smaller school districts is a pattern which has been previously observed in larger urban districts. This consistency suggests that mass media approaches to drug education are likely to be as effective in rural areas and smaller towns as they are among urban adolescents. Implications for television programming are discussed.     

Increasing contraceptive use in Bangladesh: The role of demand and supply factors

This article analyzes the determinants of contraceptive use in Bangladesh, focusing on the roles of demand for additional children and of family planning service supply. Data from the Matlab Family Planning Health Services Project are used to examine the contributions of these factors to the difference in prevalence of modern contraceptive use between the project area and a control area served by the government family planning and health programs. Results of multivariate analysis deriving from the Easterlin synthesis framework show the importance of family planning supply factors in reducing psychic and resource costs of fertility regulation and in activating latent demand for contraception. Demand for birth limiting and for birth spacing emerge as important explanatory factors; demand for birth spacing is greater in the project area, and both demand measures exert a stronger effect on contraceptive behavior in that area.     

Arrow's paradox and mathematical theory of democracy

Two measures, the weight of coalitions and the probability of situations in decision making, are used to characterize the representativeness, i.e. the capability of individuals to represent the social preference. It is proved that there always exists an individual who represents a majority on average, and an individual who represents a majority in most cases. This result is applied to Arrow's social choice model. It follows that there always exists a dictator who is a representative of the society rather than a dictator in a proper sense. After the concept of dictator has been refined to a dictator in a proper sense, Arrow's axioms become consistent. The idea of optimal representation is extended to limited groups of representatives which make decisions on behalf of the whole society. We consider the cabinet (named by analogy with the cabinet of ministers) which consists of a few representatives with delimited domains of competence, and the council which makes decisions by means of voting. It is shown that the representativeness of optimal cabinets and councils tends to 100% of maximally possible values as the number of their members increases, independently of the size of the society. We suggest a geometric interpretation of optimal representatives, cabinets, and councils, based on approximation formulas for the indicators of representativeness derived for the model with a large number of independent individuals. Finally, for cabinets and councils we establish the consistency of different concepts of optimality with respect to different indicators of representativeness. Our consideration is applicable to multicriteria decision making. An appointment of a cabinet or a council corresponds to selecting a few partial criteria. Therefore, the obtained results can be used for reducing the set of partial criteria to a certain sufficient minimum. The concepts of dictator, cabinet, and council can be understood as models of president, government, and parliament, respectively. Thus our results justify reducing social choice to individual choice or small group choice. Although it is in use in all democratic systems, its acceptability is not evident at all. In other words, we justify the demoncraticity of such forms of political power as the president, the parliament, and the government.     

Sampling Strategies for Toxic Air Contaminants

Annual concentrations of toxic air contaminants are of primary concern from the perspective of chronic human exposure assessment and risk analysis. Despite recent advances in air quality monitoring technology, resource and technical constraints often impose limitations on the availability of a sufficient number of ambient concentration measurements for performing environmental risk analysis. Therefore, sample size limitations, representativeness of data, and uncertainties in the estimated annual mean concentration must be examined before performing quantitative risk analysis. In this paper, we discuss several factors that need to be considered in designing field-sampling programs for toxic air contaminants and in verifying compliance with environmental regulations. Specifically, we examine the behavior of SO2, TSP, and CO data as surrogates for toxic air contaminants and as examples of point source, area source, and line source-dominated pollutants, respectively, from the standpoint of sampling design. We demonstrate the use of bootstrap resampling method and normal theory in estimating the annual mean concentration and its 95% confidence bounds from limited sampling data, and illustrate the application of operating characteristic (OC) curves to determine optimum sample size and other sampling strategies. We also outline a statistical procedure, based on a one-sided t-test, that utilizes the sampled concentration data for evaluating whether a sampling site is compliance with relevant ambient guideline concentrations for toxic air contaminants.     

Grounded Neural Networking: Modeling Complex Quantitative Data

The latest advances in artificial intelligence software (neural networking) have finally made it possible for qualitative researchers to apply the grounded theory method to the study of complex quantitative databases in a manner consistent with the postpositivistic, neopragmatic assumptions of most symbolic interactionists. The strength of neural networking for the study of quantitative data is twofold: it blurs the boundaries between qualitative and quantitative analysis, and it allows grounded theorists to embrace the complexity of quantitative data. The specific technique most useful to grounded theory is the Self‐Organizing Map (SOM). To demonstrate the utility of the SOM we (1) provide a brief review of grounded theory, focusing on how it was originally intended as a comparative method applicable to both quantitative and qualitative data; (2) examine how the SOM is compatible with the traditional techniques of grounded theory; and (3) demonstrate how the SOM assists grounded theory by applying it to an example based on our research.     

Stripping in the New Millennium: Thinking about Trends in Exotic Dance and Dancers' Lives

With the increasing presence of sex and sexuality in American popular culture, the stripping industry is undoubtedly undergoing important subcultural and organizational transition. What are the implications of these changes for the individuals involved? The current paper reviews much of the literature on exotic dance to consider the potential transformations in the organization of the sex industry and how these changes may impact the lives of those involved. Specifically, I note some key differences in the literature that suggest how exotic dance has shifted. I then pose some questions for empirical inquiry. I argue that transformations in the exotic industry are creating new opportunities and challenges for women, and may be particularly deleterious for poor and minority women. I call for sociologists to investigate the consequences of organizational transferal in sexual labor, reevaluate the dynamics of agency and exploitation, and consider the potential differential impact of these trends on poor women and women of color.