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.     

MAKING OPPOSITIONAL CULTURE,MAKING STANDPOINT: A JOURNEY INTO GLORIA ANZALDÚA'S BORDERLANDS

ABSTRACT

The theory of oppositional culture, as discussed by Bonnie Mitchell and Joe Feagin (1995 Mitchell , Bonnie L. and Feagin Joe R. 1995 . “ America's Racial-Ethnic Cultures: Opposition within a Mythical Melting Pot .” Pp. 65 – 86 in Toward the Multicultural University , edited by B. Bowser , B. Bowser , T. Jones and G.A. Young . Westport , CT : Praeger . [Google Scholar]), suggests that African Americans, American Indians, and Mexican Americans draw on their own cultural resources to resist domination. Patricia Hill Collins suggests that Black women develop a unique vision of the social world based on their position within a matrix of domination that organizes intersecting oppressions of race, class, and gender, among others. Expression of this unique vision or standpoint, however, is rendered problematic within a matrix of domination organized via four domains of power—the structural, disciplinary, hegemonic, and interpersonal (Collins 2000 Collins , Patricia . 2000 . Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, , 2nd edition . New York : Routledge . [Google Scholar]). This article suggests that Gloria Anzaldúa's writing—her storytelling, narratives, and poetry—is a significant form of oppositional culture and contributes to the achievement of a Chicana feminist standpoint within a matrix of domination as Anzaldúa shares tales of living in the borderlands. The paper provides a brief analysis of Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987).     

Victims’ Retrospective Explanations of Sibling Sexual Violence

ABSTRACT

While sibling sexual abuse may be the most common form of sexual violence within the family, relatively few studies have been conducted on this topic. The current study addresses this gap in the literature through analyses of thematic categories in narratives gathered from an online survey of sibling sexual violence. Survivors were asked to report why they believed their siblings had become sexually abusive toward them. Participants believed that their abusers had learned to be abusive due to their own victimization or exposure to pornography, were abusive to establish dominance over them, or had some undisclosed mental illness. While the study does not claim to test these explanations or include abusers’ own narratives, it offers insight as to how sibling sexual violence survivors make sense of their experiences and assign blame to abusers and their families. It also offers insights into future inquiries about sibling sexual abuse.     

DOES IMMIGRATION INCREASE HOMICIDE?

Understanding the complex relationship between immigration and crime was once a core concern of American sociology. Yet the extensive post-1965 wave of immigration to the United States has done little to rekindle scholarly interest in this topic, even as politicians and other public figures advocate public policies to restrict immigration as a means of preventing crime. Although both popular accounts and sociological theory predict that immigration should increase crime in areas where immigrants settle, this study of Miami, El Paso, and San Diego neighborhoods shows that, controlling for other influences, immigration generally does not increase levels of homicide among Latinos and African Americans. Our results not only challenge stereotypes of the "criminal immigrant' but also the core criminological notion that immigration, as a social process, disorganizes communities and increases crime.     

An Economic Wellbeing Index for the Spanish Provinces: A Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

 This article presents the estimation of a synthetic economic wellbeing index using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The DEA is a multidimensional technique that has its origins in efficiency analysis, but its usage within the social indicators context is particularly appropriate. It allows the researcher to take advantage of the inherent flexibility of DEA when assigning weights to the factors. The model itself carries out the aggregation and weighting of 8 partial indicators, which attempt to describe the four components of economic wellbeing suggested by Osberg (Royal Commision on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada (University of Toronto Press, 1985)), in order to assess the economic wellbeing of the 50 Spanish provinces. By using the index obtained in the analysis a “ranking” of the provinces is obtained. This ranking proves to be relatively similar to the one that corresponds to per capita income, although there are significant differences.     

Civic Socialization in Public and Fundamentalist Schools*

Objective. Critics of schools governed by fundamentalist religions are concerned that these schools will not socialize students to the attitudes and values appropriate for citizens of a pluralistic liberal democracy. Among these values are support for democratic norms, political tolerance, moral reasoning and autonomy, duty to community, and acceptance of nontraditional lifestyles. This article examines the empirical basis for the critics' concerns. Methods. Using difference‐of‐means tests and multivariate regression, we compare students in the 10th and 12th grades attending regular public and fundamentalist Christian schools. Results. The 10th‐grade comparisons of the two sets of students confirm many of the expectations of critics of fundamentalist schools. By the 12th grade, however, the students in fundamentalist schools have surpassed students in regular public schools on many of the desired attitudes and values, but the fundamentalist school students remain less accepting of nontraditional lifestyles. Conclusion. For the most part, fundamentalist Christian high schools do as well or better than regular public schools in socializing their students to the values appropriate to citizenship in liberal democracies.     

Bridging the Gap: Conceptual and Empirical Dimensions of Child Wellbeing in Rural Mexico

While conceptualizations of child wellbeing usually include multiple dimensions and complex notions, measurements of child wellbeing often tend to be simpler. This mismatch between concepts and measurements is often rooted in a limitation in the instruments that were originally conceived to assess child wellbeing. This paper aims to help in closing this gap by proposing a model that measures child wellbeing in a multi-dimensional way. With the aid of structural equation modeling (SEM), the model examines the physical health, cognitive ability, motor co-ordination, and emotional competence of around 2,000 children aged four to 6 years in poor rural communities in Mexico. Data is extracted from the Household Evaluation Survey-2003 (Encuesta de Evaluación de Hogares, ENCEL-2003). This paper concludes that further investments in the measurement of child wellbeing are needed, particularly in relation to subjective wellbeing, time use, and the role of children within the household and in society. Nevertheless, while more data is collected, this paper also concludes that SEM appears to be a great aid in exploring multiple dimensions of child wellbeing simultaneously.     

Race and Place: Exploring the Intersection of Inequity and Volunteerism Among Older Black and White Adults

Although the historical impact of racial segregation and ongoing health and economic inequities between older Black and White adults is well documented, little is known about the relationships among race, individual- and neighborhood-resources, and formal volunteering in later life. This study explores this intersection. Individual-level data from 268 respondents aged 55+ were collected in the St. Louis metropolitan area through paper-based mail surveys. Objective neighborhood data were obtained at the zip code level from secondary sources and matched with respondents. Using exploratory factor analysis, we constructed a 14-item environmental scale with 3 neighborhood dimensions (economic, social, and built environment). Older Black adults had lower levels of education; had fewer financial assets; lived in neighborhoods with less economic resources and lower built environment scores; and fewer formally volunteered when compared to older White adults. Individual resources (financial assets, health) and neighborhood resources (social and built environment) were positively associated with formal volunteering among older Black adults. Only individual resources (age, marital status, financial assets, health) were associated with formal volunteering among older White adults. A coherent set of policies that bolsters individual and environmental capacities may increase the rate of volunteerism among older black adults.