Envisioning emerging nanotechnologies: a three-year panel study of South Carolina citizens

This article reports results from a three-year panel study of a nonrandom sample of 76 South Carolina citizens, recruited from a variety of walks of life, and their impressions of emerging nanotechnology. This discussion focuses on material from depth interviews conducted alongside a baseline opinion and awareness inventory at the beginning of the study, the most intensive data-gathering phase. These results are placed in the context of data from three additional surveys conducted at about equal intervals over the three years, plus exit interviews from 21 of the 34 individuals who completed the entire study. The results give insight into popular thinking about technology but little indication of strong emerging concerns, a trajectory of amplification of those concerns, or opinion polarization over time, despite some awareness of risks and potential ethical dimensions. Nanotechnology may stand out more as an example of risk attenuation than of risk amplification, consistent with most results from national surveys.     

Constructions of Deafness

As a social problem, deafness can be variously construed. Each of the primary constructions of deafness today - disability and linguistic minority - has its archetypes but most deaf children match neither of them. Organizations espousing each construction compete to 'own' deaf children and define their needs. As with service providers for blind people, the troubled-persons industry associated with deafness seeks conformity of the client to the underlying construction of deafness as disability. Some spokespersons in the disability rights movement have joined service providers in promoting the disability construction of all deafness. This neglects the fact that the DEAF-WORLD has a distinct culture and that deafness is constructed differently in that culture than it is in national cultures of hearing peoples. The implications of a shift toward the linguistic minority construction for deaf children and adults, the obstacles to such change, and the forces promoting change are examined.     

Adolescent Self‐Consciousness: Longitudinal Age Changes and Gender Differences in Two Cohorts

Adolescence is frequently described as a period of pervasive self‐consciousness, but an age‐related peak in adolescence is not consistently obtained, and higher self‐consciousness in girls is frequently obtained but not predicted by theoretical accounts. Two cohorts of adolescents (N=393), initially assessed at 13 and 15, completed public and private self‐consciousness measures 3 times in 4 years. They also reported social comparisons and social engagement. Public self‐consciousness decreased and private self‐consciousness increased in both cohorts, and girls scored higher on both measures, both in longitudinal and sibling replication samples (n=188). Public self‐consciousness appears to be a normative response to adolescent social challenges, with girls' higher levels largely attributable to their closer social engagement. Private self‐consciousness emerges as an individual difference in adolescence but is more likely to be salient and predictive of social behavior in adulthood.     

Anonymity, ordinal preference proximity and imposed social choices

Extending on an impossibility result by Baigent [1], it is shown that an anonymous social choice procedure which preserves preference proximity cannot satisfy the weakest possible form of non-imposition. Received: 20 September 1999/Accepted: 11 May 2001     

The transition from Encomienda to slavery in seventeenth‐century Barbacoas (Colombia)

Testing the Chains, Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies. Michael Craton. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. 1982. 389pp. £27.90.

Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867. Selected from the Holdings of the National Archives of the United States. Series II. The Black Military Experience ed. Ira Berlin, et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1983. xxx+ 852 pp. £37.50.

Slavery and Freedom (expanded edition, ed. by William W. Freehling). Willie Lee Rose. New York: Oxford University Press. 1982. xi, 254pp. £6.95.

The Plantation Mistress: Woman's World in the Old South. Catherine Clinton. New York: Pantheon. 1982. xix + 331pp. $19.95.

Gregarious Saints: Self and Community in American Abolitionism, 1830–1870. Lawrence J. Friedman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1982. xi + 344 pp. £20.00.

Immigrants, Minorities and Race Relations: A Bibliography of Theses and Dissertations Presented at British and Irish Universities, 1900–1981. Victor F. Gilbert and Darshan Singh Tatla. London: Mansell Publishing Ltd. 1984. xxxiii, 153 pp. £13.50.     

How Social Media Use Mitigates Urban Violence: Communication Visibility and Third-Party Intervention Processes in Digital Urban Contexts

Qualitative Sociology - There is growing alarm among the media and public that digital social media amplify the frequency and severity of urban violence. Contrary to popular imagination, however,...