Contrast Effects in Estimating Policies of the Federal Government

This article reports analyses of the relation between respondents'attitudes and what they estimated to be the policies of thefederal government on three scales using the 1980 NORC GeneralSocial Survey. Although previous articles have reported theassimilation tendency as stronger than contrast, the resultin the present case was a pervasive contrast effect. The moreconservative the respondents' attitudes, the more liberal thepolicies attributed to the federal government. The effect occurredamong people selected with regard to confidence in the government,party affiliation and prior voting behavior, and various statusand demographic characteristics.     

DIRECT THREAT AND POLITICAL TOLERANCE AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF THE TOLERANCE OF BLACKS TOWARD RACISTS

Using the NORC General Social Surveys from 1972 to 1984, weconstruct a question wording experiment that tests whether questionsconcerning the rights of a threatening group affect a respondent'swillingness to extend the same rights to other unrelated groups.Our findings suggest that a threatening stimulus in fact reducesa respondent's tolerance toward unrelated groups to a considerabledegree, although the effect is smaller for more highly educatedrespondents. We conclude by discussing some potential explanationsfor this interaction effect.     

Continental European immigrant workers in Canada 1896–1919: from ‘stalwart peasants' to radical proletariat*

Les intérpretations traditionnelles de l'immigration européenne au Canada entre 1896 et 1919 et de l'expérience de ces immigrants au Canada durant cette période sont mises en question. L'auteur écarte l'idée que la plupart des immigrants se sont établis sur des terres et conclut plutôt que beaucoup d'entre eux sont devenus des travailleurs industriels non spécialisés. L'auteur fait également ressortir les tensions ethniques et de classes sérieuses qui se sont développées entre le travailleur «étranger» et la communauté d'affaires anglocanadienne, surtout durant la première guerre mondiale et le «Red Scare’ de 1919. En effet, c'est en réaction au radicalisme apparent de plusieurs travailleurs immigrès que le Bill sur l'immigration fut amendé de façon dramatique au printemps de 1919. Les immigrants qui pronaient des idées bolchéviques ont été non seulement exclus du pays mais furent aussi déportés en vitesse. Pour un temps, la politique d'immigration canadienne fut défini davantage en fonction de critères ethniques, culturels et idéologiques qu'en fonction des critères de valeur économique. This paper challenges the traditional interpretation of European immigration to Canada between 1896 and 1919 and the Canadian experience of these immigrants in this period. The author rejects the view that most of the European immigrants settled on the land; instead, he concludes that large numbers became unskilled industrial workers. The author also emphasizes the serious class and ethnic tension which developed between the ‘foreign’ worker and the Anglo-Canadian business community, especially during the First World War and the ‘Red Scare’ of 1919. Indeed, in response to the apparent radicalism of many immigrant workers the Immigration Act was dramatically altered in the spring of 1919. Immigrants who advocated Bolshevist ideas were not only excluded from the country, but were also subject to rapid deportation. Ethnic, cultural, and ideological acceptability became temporarily a more important factor than economic utility in determining Canadian immigration policy.     

Femininity, Sexuality and Professionalism in the Children's Departments

Correspondence to ReadingLasses, Wigtown, Galloway, DG8 9EH. Summary Noting the significance of women in management in the localauthority children's departments (1948–72) and the preoccupationwith women in management during the 1990s, the authors comparethese two periods. In particular, they focus upon the discoursesof femininity which shape the ways in which women as managersand as professionals are talked about, understood and analysed.The argument, presented from a feminist post-structuralist perspective,is based on an analysis of data generated through interviewswith women who were significant in the children's departments(as children's officers or members of the children's committees)between 1948 and 1972. The paper shows that the ways in whichfemininity is constructed, socially and through women's subjectivities,act as powerful mechanisms through which women are controlled,but also present opportunities to women for resistance and change.     

AN EMPIRICAL EXAMINATION OF THE UNDERLYING DIMENSIONS OF PURCHASING COMPETENCE

The importance of evaluating the effectiveness of the purchasing function in firms along multiple criteria has attracted considerable attention. However, few studies have identified the defining elements that constitute purchasing competence. This paper introduces the construct of purchasing competence using a second‐order factor structure derived from purchasing practices identified from the literature. The validity of the construct (purchasing competence) is tested using data from a sample of 179 firms. The results indicate (1) the construct validity of purchasing competence and (2) the predictive validity of purchasing competence, which has a significant positive influence on total quality management performance and customer satisfaction. The implications of these findings for additional research are discussed.     

The Art of the State: Difference and other Abstractions

Abstract This article explores the role of othering and the social sciences in Italian State formation through a historical sociology of the state. The mapping of particular forms of others in popular imagination including 'vagrants','beggars', and 'gypsies', in the nineteenth century resonates with contemporary state projects which seek to document and identify new "alien" newcomer groups. The official document, an integral part of a technology of state power constitutes a kind of "cosmology", with whole social orders, classes and others codified in each line entry. The state designates absolute definitions of places, bodies and things. In 1885 the first medical survey of Italy sought to map out the "medical geography" of the nation, such practices laid the ground work for conceptions of normalcy and difference. The definition of the 'average citizen' is an integral part of the construction of State as Cosmos. Difference and its mapping in its interplay with "normalcy" defines in many ways, the State. yet there can be no taken-for-granted submission of the subaltern classes to this state cosmos, nor to the practices of the social sciences complicit in its construction.     

Not Thinking Ethnicity: A Critique of the Ethnicity Paradigm in an Over-Ethnicised Sociology

The many critical approaches to an 'ethnicity framework' have fallen short of a very possible conclusion—that the language of ethnicity provides, for the most part, a poor paradigm with which to work. In the present paper we seek not only to re-state some key weaknesses of this paradigm but also to suggest that these weaknesses are more general in an over-ethnicised sociology. There are numerous critiques of particular models or elements of ethnicity thinking, including critiques of primordialist approaches (Fenton 2003), of multiculturalism ( Barry 2000 ), and of the over-objectification of groups (Brubaker 2004; see also Jenkins 2008). The major critiques constitute a strong case against 'thinking with ethnicity'; the broader weaknesses are more general in contemporary 'identitarian' sociology. From this position we turn to the question of offering an alternative approach in a sociology which emphasizes agency, and is grounded in an analysis of actors in material situations. This is allied to the concept of ideational resources, social categories and identities upon which actors draw, and a middle-range view of causality and tendency in social change. Ideas of ancestral belonging are among those ideational resources, and these ideas and assumptions are played out in a context of material and political change. The subject of study is not ethnicity, but power, resources, social relations and institutions (which may and may not be) informed by cultural identities and ideas of ancestry. The strategy of the paper will be first to re-state the deficiencies of 'ethnicity thinking' and second to offer an alternative framework for thinking about social action and social structure.     

PARENTAL ALTRUISM AND SELF-INTEREST: CHILD LABOR AMONG LATE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN FAMILIES

Intergenerational relationships within late nineteenth-century industrial families are analyzed using several large-scale, contemporary household surveys. Nonaltruistic behavior by parents was pervasive. Even among families with positive assets, child labor was common in certain industrial settings, suggesting that child labor (or nonschooling) did not simply reflect parental borrowing constraints. Neither did physical asset transfers offset human capital losses among working youth. A quantitative estimate of parental nonaltruism is derived from an equilibrium labor market model: approximately 90 percent of all child earnings was implicitly competed away through lower adult wages as families migrated to areas with abundant child labor opportunities.