The differential contributions of teen drinking homophily to new and existing friendships: An empirical assessment of assortative and proximity selection mechanisms

Alcohol use is pervasive in adolescence. Though most research is concerned with how friends influence drinking, alcohol is also important for connecting teens to one another. Prior studies have not distinguished between new friendship creation, and existing friendship durability, however. We argue that accounting for distinctions in creation–durability processes is critical for understanding the selection mechanisms drawing drinkers into homophilous friendships, and the social integration that results. In order to address these issues, we applied stochastic actor based models of network dynamics to National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health data. Adolescents only modestly prefer new friendships with others who drinker similarly, but greatly prefer friends who indirectly connect them to homophilous drinkers. These indirect homophilous drinker relationships are shorter lived, however, and suggest that drinking is a social focus that connects adolescents via proximity, rather than assortativity. These findings suggest that drinking leads to more situational and superficial social integration.     

Elder abuse in the United Kingdom

In recent years there has been an increased emphasis on violence and abuse within society generally. Following a focus in the United Kingdom (UK) on child abuse in the 1970s and domestic violence in the 1980s, in the 1990s the abuse and neglect of older people began to elicit concern. The initial focus of interest was of situations arising in the domestic setting. More recently, however, much needed attention has shifted to situations involving institutional settings. This paper will discuss abuse and neglect occurring in the UK. It aims to provide a brief overview of the status of current knowledge concerning abuse of older people followed by a discussion of some of the issues relating to the prevention of abuse and neglect from a UK perspective. An exploration of some of the issues involved will contribute to our understanding of abuse and neglect of older people in the UK.     

Are nonprofit density and nonprofit expenditures related to youth deviance?

This study explores whether neighborhoods with greater nonprofit density (nonprofits per mile) and/or larger nonprofit expenditures (nonprofit expenditures per 10,000 people) interact with social control to experience lower levels of adolescent deviancy. Data include cross-sectional surveys of 1541 youth. The data are analyzed using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM). The dependent variable is a measure of deviance that is the sum of ten items, which assess deviant behaviors. For analysis the square root of this measure is used to adjust for negatively skewed data. The sample was drawn through a two stage-geostatistical sampling procedure, with the final sample including 50 zip codes throughout California. The study finds that adolescents' deviance is not associated with an interaction between social control and either nonprofit density or nonprofit expenditures. However, the analysis found strong positive associations between being male, being older, having higher levels of mean social control and the square root of deviance.     

Relations of School Children's Comforting Behavior to Empathy-Related Reactions and Shyness

The purpose of this study was to examine empathy-related and personal correlates of children's comforting reactions. Quantity and quality of third to sixth graders' comforting of a crying infant were assessed and their relations with situational and dispositional empathy-related responding, shyness, and vagal tone were examined. Quantity and quality of boys' comforting were related to reports of sympathetic/empathic responding to an empathy-inducing film, whereas quantity of girls' comforting was associated with low facial and heart rate markers of vicarious distress in another context. Quality of comforting was associated with markers of girls' vicarious distress. Comforting was negatively related to younger children's shyness and marginally, positive correlated with girls' vagal tone. Suppression of vagal tone was associated with quantity of comforting.     

The lives we choose to remember: a quantitative analysis of newspaper obituaries

Collective memory is intertwined with remembering the dead. Systematic forgetting affects certain ethnic groups, nationalities and classes disproportionately. This study assesses whom we choose as our heroes by commemorating them in obituaries. It is the first cross‐national, historical approach to this subject. Constant structures are shown in different Western countries over time in terms of the selection of individuals for this honour. In particular, there are still a high proportion of the subjects in British newspapers who have attended private schools and Oxford and Cambridge. The impact of elite higher educational establishments is also evident, on a reduced scale, in Le Monde and The New York Times. Yet certain signs of movement within the obituary world can also be detected: women start to appear in their own right, the Third World begins to be represented and a wider array of occupations have become the source of obituary portraits.     

Writers and politics: Gisèle Sapiro’s advances within the Bourdieusian sociology of the literary field

Theory and Society - This article undertakes a critical analysis of the work of Gisèle Sapiro, with reference to sociology of literature. From 1999 (Sapiro, 2014a), Sapiro has developed the...     

Searching for the invisible woman

Natural Rebels: A Social History of Enslaved Black Women in Barbados. Hilary McD. Beckles. London: Zed Books Ltd. 1989. ix, 197pp.

Slave Women in Caribbean Society 1650–1838. Barbara bush. London: James Currey Ltd. 1990. xiii, 190pp.

Slave Women in the New World: Gender Stratification in the Caribbean. Marietta Morrissey. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. 1989. xiv, 202pp.     

The Transgenerational Consequences of Discrimination on African‐American Health Outcomes

Disparities in African American health remain pervasive and persist ransgenerationally. There is a growing consensus that both structural and interpersonal racial discrimination are key mechanisms affecting African American health. The Biopsychosocial Model of Racism as a Stressor posits that the persistent stress of experiencing discrimination take a physical toll on the health of African Americans and is ultimately manifested in the onset of illness. However, the degree to which the health consequences of racism and discrimination can be passed down from one generation to the next is an important avenue of exploration. In this review, we discuss and link literature across disciplines demonstrating the harmful impact of racism on African American physical health and the health of their offspring.