Queer Chicano Families: The Importance of Converging Literature on Queer Families,Chicano Families,and Chicano Queers

Despite growing literature on Latino families and Latino queer identities, there has been relatively little empirical research on Latino same‐sex families. Likewise, emerging empirical research on gay and lesbian couples tends to focus on the experiences of middle‐class, well‐educated, White couples. I argue that combining theoretical and empirical works on sexuality, Chicano studies, and queer studies can assuage this lack of diversity in each body of literature. This work first examines current literature on Latino families, with a focus on Latino familism. This is followed by a brief examination of current literature on queer Chicanos. Lastly, it will discuss queer families and the lack of current literature on Latino same‐sex couples, in order to present a course of action for further research on the intersectional social location of queer Chicano families.     

Raymond Williams and sociology

The purpose of this article is to recover Williams as a major theoretical inspiration for the social sciences, specifically, as the inaugurator of what might be regarded as a research paradigm, cultural materialism. In the first section, Williams's encounter with the discipline of sociology is traced and distinguished as a critical alternative to the presently ascendant – at least in the USA – neo‐Durkeimian school of ‘cultural sociology’. In the second section, his cultural‐materialist programme is proposed as a powerful analytical framework for the study of culture and society today. In the final section, a key concept of Williams's cultural materialism, mobile privatization, is selected illustratively and proposed as a powerful analytical tool for studying the production and technological mediation of typical modes of communicative sociality in the early twenty‐first century.     

Emotional impacts of environmental decline: What can Native cosmologies teach sociology about emotions and environmental justice?

This article extends analyses of environmental influences on social action by examining the emotions experienced by Karuk Tribal members in the face of environmental decline. Using interviews, public testimonies, and survey data we make two claims, one specific, the other general. We find that, for Karuk people, the natural environment is part of the stage of social interactions and a central influence on emotional experiences, including individuals’ internalization of identity, social roles, and power structures, and their resistance to racism and ongoing colonialism. We describe a unique approach to understanding the production of inequality through disruptions to relationships among nature, emotions, and society. Grief, anger, shame, and hopelessness associated with environmental decline serve as signal functions confirming structures of power. The moral battery of fear and hope underpins environmental activism and resistance. More generally, we expand this concern to argue that neglecting the natural world as a causal force for “generic” social processes has limited not only work on Native Americans, but also work sociology of emotions and theories of race and ethnicity, and has masked the theoretical significance of environmental justice. Taking seriously the experiences of Native people and the importance of the natural environment offers an opportunity to extend sociological analyses of power and to move sociology toward a more decolonized discipline.     

Racial Disparities in Hospital Length of Stay for Asthma: Implications for Economic Policies

Asthma is one of the most common health burdens on American families. An understanding of how the costs of asthma are distributed across communities is essential to realizing cost savings from preventative care. We model the household’s utilization of hospital services using Grossman’s health production framework. We then test for differences in asthma-related hospitalizations by race using inpatient records from the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance. On average black and nonwhite-Hispanic patients stayed between one-third and one-fourth of a day less than similar white patients which translates into a difference in expenditures of $8 million over 1994–2002. The difference in expenditures raises questions for market-based methodologies to value health and for policies directed at reducing inequalities in health outcomes.     

Six‐Month‐Olds' Detection of Clauses Embedded in Continuous Speech: Effects of Prosodic Well‐Formedness

Three experiments investigated the role of prosodic structure for infants' recognition of embedded word sequences. Six‐month‐olds were familiarized with 2 versions of the same sequence, 1 corresponding to a well‐formed prosodic unit and the other to a prosodically ill‐formed sequence (although a successive word series). Next, infants heard 2 test passages. One included the well‐formed unit, and the other included the ill‐formed sequence. In Experiment 1, infants listened longer to the passage containing the well‐formed unit, suggesting that such units, even when they are embedded, are better recognized. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that this better recognition does not depend on an acoustic match between the familiarized sequences and their later embeddings. This suggests that the advantage of the well‐formed unit is at least partially due to infants' use of prosody to parse continuous speech.     

Integration of migrants — an extraordinary undertaking? An analysis of Swiss policy and handling of resident immigrants; a municipal example—Bern

Migration and multiculturalism are key topics in politics, in the media, in education and in the social sciences. It is a phenomenon that has been discussed again and again during the last fifteen years with the aim to find solutions. A theoretical set of points of consideration is established in the first chapter in order to understand how migration is running counter to the ‘normal’ condition and development of society, and tends to cause problems in various contexts. Case histories in the second chapter show how communities are handling the consequences of immigration in practice and in the framework of the specific prevailing national and welfare state structures, and especially how communities are meeting the challenge politically and with their system of social services. In the final chapter the most important findings are summarized.     

Hong Kong managers' perceptions of American business values

This report describes empirical research conducted to study the research question, “To what extent do foreign managers' own cultural values influence their perceptions of the corporate values of companies in other cultures?” Using the authors' “Business Values Questionnaire,” business managers from Hong Kong gave their perceptions of publicly stated corporate values of very large U.S. service companies. A similar United States sample was used as a comparison group. Results gave partial support to the authors' hypotheses that an individual's own cultural values influence perceived values of another culture.     

On the detection of changes in autoregressive time series I. Asymptotics

Various test statistics are discussed which can be used for detecting changes in the parameters of an autoregressive time series. In this first part of our study, the limiting behavior of the test statistics is derived under the null hypothesis of no change as well as under alternatives. In a forthcoming second part of our investigation, these asymptotic results will be compared to some corresponding bootstrap procedures, and a small simulation study will be conducted.     

Engendering Inequality: Processes of Sex-Segregation on Wall Street

Women's numbers in high-paying, male-dominated occupations have risen in the past three decades, but they disproportionately hold lower-paying jobs within those occupations. A cohort sample of Wall Street securities professionals shows how sex segregation occurs over time, as men's and women's different experiences lead them to change functions, to change firms, or to leave the securities industry. While seemingly similar processes impinge on the careers of everyone in this exceptionally high-paid occupation, family constraints and gender discrimination produce differential results for similarly qualified men and women. Over time men disproportionately gain the very highest paying Wall Street jobs.