Competing conceptions of individualism in contemporary American AIDS policy: A re-examination of neo-institutionalist analysis

Theory and Society -     

Social Work Students' Changing Perceptions of Social Problems After a Year of Community Intervention

This paper aims to throw light on the emotional and cognitive processes of students within social change-oriented field work as they develop over a year, as described through a projective and phenomenological art medium drawn and discussed at the beginning and at the end of the year. The literature on social work points to a discrepancy between the cognitive structural explanations of social problems that are taught to social work students, and their tendency to prefer focusing on individual rather than on societal levels of intervention. The aim of this examination of the students' processes over the year is to increase our understanding of the students' experience and understanding of their social change mission, so as to better prepare them for the challenges it entails, and to see where they get ‘lost’. Findings from this paper point to the gradual internalization of social change as a complex process, combined with the reframing of this complexity into tangible results.     

Self‐Efficacy About Sexual Risk/Protective Behaviors: Intervention Impact Trajectories Among American Indian Youth

For adolescents, normative development encompasses learning to negotiate challenges of sexual situations; of special importance are skills to prevent early pregnancy, HIV, and other sexually transmitted diseases. Disparities in sexual risk among American Indian youth point to the importance of intervening to attenuate this risk. This study explored the impact of Circle of Life (COL), an HIV prevention intervention based on social cognitive theory, on trajectories of self‐efficacy (refusing sex, avoiding sexual situations) among 635 students from 13 middle schools on one American Indian reservation. COL countered a normative decline of refusal self‐efficacy among girls receiving the intervention by age 13, while girls participating at age 14 or older, girls in the comparison group, and all boys showed continuing declines.     

STIGMATIZED INDIVIDUALS AND THE PROCESS OF IDENTITY

We conducted intensive interviews with ten gays and ten lesbians drawing on research and theorizing on gay and lesbian identity, symbolic interactionism, and stigma. Key concepts from symbolic interactionism, reflected appraisals and situational identity negotiation, provide a more coherent theoretical way to examine identity development and the situated complexity of identity negotiation and disclosure among gays and lesbians. Romantic relationships are significant because they aid in identity development but also complicate social interactions by confronting many heterosexuals' "phantom acceptance" of gays and lesbians. These findings inform the literature on gay and lesbian identity by critiquing the stage models of identity and connecting this literature back to the symbolic interactionist literature on self and identity.     

Interfirm wage differentials in a local labor market: The case of the fast-food industry

We examine interfirm wage differentials among fast-food restaurants in Atlanta, Georgia to determine the degree to which these differentials correspond to the predictions of competitive theory. While no definitive test is possible, given our inability to control all sources of wage variation, the evidence nevertheless suggests that the wage structure is largely shaped by competitive forces, albeit in a relatively complex manner due to differences in a host of factors that the simple version of the theory holds constant. Evidence is also found, on the other hand, that the supply curve of labor to the individual firm slopes upward for experienced workers and that a small noncompensating wage differential may exist that is related to variation in each restaurant's ability to pay.     

The new men’s movement: Retreat and regression with America’s weekend warriors

The “new” men’s movement, signaled by the popularity of works by Robert Bly and Sam Keen, and the hundreds of weekend “mythopoetic” retreats, indicates a growing restlessness among American men. This essay examines the assumptions and political implications of the mythopoetic men’s movement and presents a feminist-inspired critique. First, we describe the movement’s essentialist assumptions about gender, stressing the ways these assumptions reproduce power inequalities between women and men. Second, we explore the psychoanalytic diagnosis of male malaise and argue that feminist psychoanalysis provides a more compelling case. Third, we explicate the celebration of anthropological initiation rituals and place these rituals within larger cultural contexts of male-female relationships. Fourth, we describe the historical antecedents for the current mythopoetic retreats, suggesting the structural conditions under which fears of feminization of manhood are likely to be expressed. Finally, we discuss the sociology of developmental regression contained within the mythopoetic vision, arguing that what is to be retrieved is not “deep manhood,” but “deep boyhood,” a playfully innocent and romanticized view of masculinity without adult responsibility of work and family. We claim that only by developing an explicitly pro-feminist politics can men’s lives be meaningfully changed. Michael Kaufman, resident fellow at the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC) at York University in Toronto, is a founder and originator of the White Ribbon Campaign against violence against women in Canada. His books includeBeyond Patriarchy: Essays by Men on Pleasure, Power and Exchange (Oxford University Press, 1987) andCracking the Armour: Power Pain and the Lives of Men (Viking Canada, 1993).Michael S. Kimmel, associate professor of sociology at SUNY at Stony Brook, is the national spokesperson for the National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS). His books includeChanging Men (Sage, 1987),Men’s Lives (Macmillan, 1989; 2nd ed. 1992),Men Confront Pornography (Crown, 1990), andAgainst the Tide: Pro-Feminist Men in the United States, 1776–1990 (Beacon, 1992).     

Housing and wealth inequality: Racial-ethnic differences in home equity in the United States

In our study, we took a first step toward broadening our understanding of the sources of both housing and wealth inequality by studying differences in housing equity among blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and non-Hispanic whites in the United States. Using data from the American Housing Survey, we found substantial and significant gaps in housing equity for blacks and Hispanics (but not for Asians) compared with whites, even after we controlled for a wide range of locational, life-cycle, socioeconomic, family, immigrant, and mortgage characteristics. Furthermore, the payoffs to many factors are notably weaker for minority than for white households. This finding is especially consistent across groups for the effects of age, socioeconomic status, and housing-market value. Blacks and Hispanics also uniformly receive less benefit from mortgage and housing characteristics than do whites. These findings lend credence to the burgeoning stratification perspective on wealth and housing inequality that acknowledges the importance of broader social and institutional processes of racial-ethnic stratification that advantage some groups, whites in this case, over others.     

The spread of primary schooling in Sub-Saharan Africa: implications for fertility change

In 1980 Caldwell hypothesized that the time of the onset of the fertility transition in developing countries would be linked with the achievement of “mass formal schooling.” This article applies Demographic and Health Survey data to assess schooling patterns and trends for 23 sub‐Saharan African countries, using the percentage of 15–19‐year olds who have completed at least four years of schooling as an indicator of progress in education. As background to that assessment, the article includes a review of the sparse literature on the links between children's schooling and fertility decline. The analysis strongly supports Caldwell's hypothesis with empirical evidence of the much stronger negative relationship between fertility decline and grade 4 attainment in those countries that have attained mass‐schooling levels than in those that have not yet achieved such levels.