Time and environmental crisis: An exploration with special reference to pollution

The present environmental crisis is gaining prominence on the sociopolitical and scientific agenda. There is widespread consensus about what constitutes the crisis but little agreement about its causes and potential solutions: what is a solution for one person is often considered a source of the problem by another. Focusing on aspects that are normally ignored allows us to sidestep these hardening oppositions and gives us a new access to environmental issues and their analyses. While the spatial dimension has been brought to the fore in a number of disciplines, the temporal equivalent has stayed implicit. Explication of what remains invisible in conventional analyses can shed light on the familiar, agreed upon and disputed.     

People and Pixels 20 years later: the current data landscape and research trends blending population and environmental data

Population and Environment - In 1998, the National Research Council published People and Pixels: Linking Remote Sensing and Social Science. The volume focused on emerging research linking changes...     

The Origins of Charisma as Process: A Case Study of Hildegard of Bingen

A case study of the twelfth‐century visionary Hildegard of Bingen is presented to examine the process through which a charismatic relationship is constructed in interaction between an individual and significant others and more distant followers. Hildegard's identity as a charismatic prophet developed over a number of years through a process of interaction with various ecclesiastical authorities; alterations occurred in both the prophet's self‐identity and the way others viewed her, leading finally to her authorization as a prophet and visionary. The cultural context provided plausibility structures, relevant symbols, and limitations that influenced the form of Hildegard's charismatic status. This status led to unprecedented achievements for a woman of her time, but her efforts mainly supported and strengthened the institutional tradition in which she served.     

A Comparison of Visual Familiarization and Object‐Examining Measures of Categorization in 9‐Month‐Old Infants

Three studies were conducted to determine whether differential patterns of categorization observed in studies using visual familiarization and object‐examining measures hold up as procedural confounds are eliminated. In Experiment 1, we attempted as direct a comparison as possible between visual and object‐examining measures of categorization. Consistent with previous reports, 9‐month‐old infants distinguished a basic‐level contrast (dog–horse) in the visual task, but not in the examining task. Experiment 2 was designed to reduce levels of nonexploratory activity in an examining task; 9‐month‐olds again failed to distinguish categories of dogs and horses. In Experiment 3, we adopted a paired‐comparison test format in the object‐examining task. Infants did display a novel category preference under paired testing conditions. The results suggest that the different patterns of categorization often seen in looking and touching tasks are a reflection, not of different categorization processes, but of the differential sensitivity of the tasks.     

White women and affirmative action in employment in six southern cities

The purpose of this research is to examine data from 167 randomly selected businesses on the impact of affirmative action and white female employment in six representative Florida cities. OLS regression analysis was used to explore the independent effects of affirmative action among other employment-related predictors. While white women are doing relatively well in the job market, employer support for affirmative action has no significant influence on their employment, even at higher job levels.     

Aesthetes in the marketplace: Collectors in the gun business

Marketplaces can provide settings for the appreciation of beauty and the creation of community. The author examines how gun collectors who buy and sell guns continue to see themselves as aesthetes rather than dealers. Gun collector-dealers turn economic encounters at commercial gun shows into occasions for teaching others the symbolic uses of guns — as artifacts, curios, andobjets d'art. Economic relations can produce aesthetic value even when the objects exchanged are conventionally defined as symbols of violence and not beauty.     

Age Work in Organizations: Maintaining and Disrupting Institutionalized Understandings of Higher Age

Age diversity research calls for new approaches in explaining the persistence of age inequalities, which integrate different levels of analysis and display greater context sensitivity. Concurrently, neoinstitutionalist research interested in social inequalities calls for merging institutional theory with critical perspectives and to account for issues of power. In this study, we address the calls of both research streams through developing the concept of ‘age work’: the institutional work actors undertake on age as a social institution. Applying our novel concept to a multi‐actor study of four German organizations known for their age management, we come across a counterintuitive insight regarding actors’ age work: maintaining stereotypical age images can serve to counter age inequalities, whereas deconstructing age images can reinforce age inequalities. The multi‐actor perspective of our study allows us to categorize different forms of power‐laden and interest‐driven age work and to portray the reproduction of age inequalities as a result of actors’ age work, embedded in different contexts and complex power relations. Comparing employees’ forms of age work across sectors and organizations, we detail how notions of masculinity as well as income and job security shaped the categorized forms of age work.