IS WORK THE NEW NEIGHBORHOOD? Social Ties in the Workplace,Family, and Neighborhood

The work–family literature emphasizes how work intrudes into family life, and some scholars suggest that social ties based in the workplace may be replacing ties to family or neighbors. Using data from the Ecology of Careers Panel Study, we describe the prevalence of strong ties with family, coworkers, and neighbors in a dual‐earner, middle‐class sample. We also examine which respondents are more likely to have strong ties in the workplace. We find that most respondents do not have any strong ties with coworkers; however, coworker ties are much more common than ties to neighbors. Additionally, there are gender differences in network ties and these differences may have important consequences for social support.     

Working Group on Ethical Considerations in Science and Scholarship∗

Persons can be subject to involuntary treatment for mental illness or substance abuse in a variety of circumstances. The ability of such persons to give a valid informed consent for research often has been called into question, because the coercive nature of the treatment is thought to impair the voluntariness of their decision making. A careful consideration of the nature of coercion from a “moralized”; perspective focuses attention on two elements that determine the acceptability of consent: the fairness of the proposal to which consent is sought, and the moral baseline from which the proposal is made. Even when coercion is not present, disproportionate rewards offered for participation in research can impair the voluntariness of consent, as can the unintended effects of the social structure of the system in which the research is taking place. When coercion, defined as a moralized concept, is not present, however, and other conditions do not substantially impair voluntariness, consent to research legitimately may be sought from involuntarily treated populations.     

Chaos and the rationality proposition

Recent research in distributed artificial intelligence may give an analytical model for exchange theory. These researchers have used techniques to control chaotic behavior that correspond to the rationality proposition and may, therefore, give a new avenue of sociological research in exchange theory. This article gives an overview of the research and comments on its potential use in sociology.     

Partitioning Pearson's chi-squared statistic for a partially ordered three-way contingency table

This paper presents a generalization of the partition of the chi-squared statistic presented in Beh & Davy (1998). For a three-way contingency table with one or two sets of ordered categories, the chi-squared statistic partition is defined using orthogonal polynomials. Using this partition, information about the relationship between the variables can be obtained by identifying important associations in terms of the location (linear), dispersion (quadratic) and higher order components. The paper compares these partitions with log-linear models for ordinal data.     

The Impact of the First Term of the New Labour Government on Social Work in Britain: The Interface between Education Policy and Social Work

Summary This paper considers how far the New Labour educational policyrepresents a clear shift in focus from the policies of the Conservativeadministrations of the 1980s and 1990s. As in other areas ofsocial policy, the paper concludes that current government policyowes as much—if not more—to ‘New Right’ideology than to that of the ‘Old Left’. With anew emphasis on social inclusion, the paper considers the contributionof, and implications for, contemporary developments in educationpolicy and practice for child and family social work in general,and education social work in particular.     

Political Participation and Cumulative Disadvantage: The Impact of Economic and Social Hardship on Young Citizens

In this article, we seek to provide the most comprehensive exploration to date of the effects of economic and social disadvantage on young citizens' voter turnout. We look at four overlapping domains of hardship—those rooted in (a) the family context, (b) the community context, (c) the school context, and (d) major events and life transitions. Our conceptual model of cumulative advantage/disadvantage identifies the different ways in which disadvantages can have cumulative effects on social outcomes generally and on civic participation in particular. Our framework also suggests how patterns of advantage and disadvantage may be mediated by social institutions. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey, we show that disadvantages rooted in the family have major impact on all groups of young citizens and that family disadvantage interacts with school disadvantage for whites. We also show that the effects of early parenthood, being arrested, and dropping out of school have differential effects depending on race. We also show that community colleges function as civic leveling institutions—especially for African American youth.     

The ISEW -- not an Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare

Social Indicators Research -     

The problems of the Spanish nation‐building process around 1900

Most historians acknowledge that the Spanish nation‐building process started late and was neither very profound nor successful. In general, they point to the slow modernisation process or the unwillingness of the elite to explain the weakness of Spanish nationalism in the decades around 1900. However, there are a number of factors that hampered the nation‐building process in Spain that have not received the attention they deserve. In the first instance, the effects of the loss of the last remnants of the Spanish colonial empire in 1898 have generally been underestimated. Another item is the political clientelism that seriously hindered nation‐building activities. A last observation concerns the role of ideology. Nationalism is not a uniform body of thought. In fact, both the right and the left had their own nationalising strategies, resulting in increasing polarisation.