Field research and word processor files: A technical note

Doing field research means storing and sorting great volumes of fieldnotes. A micro word processor (WP) can reduce all of this paper to a few disks. The process of setting up files, marking subfiles, listing files in a directory, and calling up files in old and new arrangements requires some knowledge of WP limits and techniques. This note outlines the process, the limits, and the questions one must ask about how to run a specific WP system in order to use it fully. The note ends with two cautions. The cost of computer supplies may deter unfunded workers, especially those with access to free typing materials or labor. More crucial, planning for files may tempt an over-hasty researcher to define theory categories prematurely.     

Participatory research: Three models and an analysis

This article examines three models of participatory research: what we call the parallel process model, the mutual engagement model, and the University of Central America (UCA) model. These models represent successively greater degrees of academic engagement with outside communities—from complementary, though not necessarily uncommitted, engagement by academic(s); to compromised full engagement between the academic(s) and the community; to institutional engagement between the entire university and the community. Our analysis outlines the tensions that may arise within participatory research between service and scholarship. We conclude that for participatory research to capture the attention and involvement of the broader discipline, it must provide a spectrum of theory, methods, and substance that sociologists find of importance independent of the participatory way in which such contributions are generated. This article is based on a paper presented at the 87th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, D.L. Lawrence Convention Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, August 20–24, 1992.     

Planning responses to voluntary sector crises

Planning in voluntary organizations is examined as a response to external crises that jeopardize organizational survival. The voluntary sector in London was investigated in order to understand the extent, nature, and rationale of planning in response to an extreme change in the political and funding context of voluntary action during the mid 1980s. Planning and the ability to plan may be the benchmark of organizational survival in the future, as pressure to plan increases from many arenas and statutory penetration of voluntary organizations deepens. The dilemma this poses for voluntary organizations is discussed, and alternative planning approaches are proposed.     

An Analysis of Damage to U.S. Soybean Yields from 1982 Acid Deposition Levels

Experimental data were compiled for seven soybean varieties studied at four different locations in the U.S. for a period of one to three years. Three dose–response functions (linear, quadratic, and Weibull) were fitted, as appropriate, to the experimental data. Effects of acid deposition on soybean yields were estimated by combining variety-specific dose–response and production data. These calculations suggest that U.S. soybean production (2.2 billion bushels in 1982) would increase by 3.2 million bushels with a 10% reduction in 1982 hydrogen ion concentration levels in all counties where soybeans were grown, and by almost 70 million bushels with uniform improvement to pH 5.2. These estimates are based on many simplifying assumptions and are subject to several important sources of uncertainty explored in this study. The calculated changes are small in comparison with effects from other natural and anthropogenic stresses.     

Assessing clinical progress: A case study of Daryl

In this single case study, the authors conceptually framed their understanding of dissociation and splitting as defensive/adaptive coping mechanisms through which children respond to abusive/neglectful environments and the developmental deficits of abused/neglected children as related to failure in separation/individuation. Case study methodology with a nested experimental research design employed content analysis of process recordings to identify targeted defenses and developmental themes and then to assess therapeutic effectiveness during the first six months of psychodynamic play therapy with Daryl. In-session cliniial progress was assessed through charting changes in defenses and developmental themes, identifying degree of goal achievement, and clinically observing treatment stage progression. Visual analysis of the frequency charts identified a slight cyclical decline in use of splitting and guarding against dissociation and a somewhat uneven increase in the developmental theme of coexistence/integration. While these changes in targeted outcome variables were not statistically significant, the amount of change did exceed the predetermined outcome goals for decreased splitting and increased coexistence but not the goal of decreased guarding against dissociation. Review of the process recordings also identified clear markers of treatment progression through two therapeutic stages in the first six months of long term psychodynamic play therapy and further supported the clinical meaningfulness of the observed changes.     

The Sale of Two Cities: A Semiotic Comparison of Disneyland with Marriott's Great America

Much is revealed through the contrast of two related but divergent forms. In this essay, Elizabeth Mechlingand Jay Mechlingcontrast Disneyland with a later but more loosely themed park, Marriott's Great America in Santa Clara, California. Using the perspectives and methods of semiotics in Louis Marin's Marxist reading, this essay asks, “What are the stories that Disneyland and Marriott's Great America tell?…the ways in which popular culture both teaches and evokes stories that ‘think themselves’ in our minds.” These two parks, though allied in the theme format and rooted in a common bourgeois capitalist culture, are found to promote very different attitudes and values.     

Child Abuse and Family Stress

Child abuse is one example of violence in the family. This paper reviews sources of stress on the family, and especially considers infants as specific sources of stress within the family system. The problems of unrealistic expectations, use of physical punishment for child training and discipline, and the escalation from punishment to abuse are explored. Abuse cases are currently managed through mandatory reporting, official investigation, and disposition by authoritative bodies. This system of management appears both inadequate and inappropriate. Effective prevention programs are needed. This paper reviews current prevention efforts using three criteria of assessment. The mass media are presented as an important untapped resource for prevention efforts. Attractive media programs can address parents' feelings as well as provide information and advice.     

Gender, home and family in cultural capital theory

The paper argues that Bourdieu's stress on early familiarization for the highest value of cultural capital is closely linked to his idea, strongly emphasized in Distinction, about the role of family and domestic life for individual development and social positions. The role of women, as mothers and homemakers, is crucial in this process. Yet, Bourdieu defines social origin as deriving from the father. The centrality to Bourdieu's thinking of a resilient traditional pattern of masculine domination and feminine submission constitutive of the Western gender habitus explains both his stress on ‘normalcy’ for the production of legitimate dispositions, and his resistance to incorporating into his thinking the implications of recent transformations in home family living, which have destabilized the gender order. It is thus important to consider contemporary feminist analyses of the family and home life and their significance for a renewed theory of cultural capital. The paper considers two sets of literature. Firstly, it addresses the manners in which home and family are conceptualized in Bourdieu's key texts where these issues were prominent in the development of his thinking on cultural capital. The second set of literature includes texts by feminist academics in the fields of family, gender and the body, which analyse the destabilizing of the gender order and everyday family living in contemporary society. Two questions are addressed on the basis of these reflections: (1) Is cultural capital an individual or a household resource? (2) How does cultural capital relate to personal interdependencies at the level of family and households?