“Small,silly insults,” mutual seduction and misogyny the interpretation of Italian advertising signs

This study examines how audiences in two cultures interpret advertising messages. Using photographs of public display ads in Bologna, Italy, the authors interviewed women in the United States and Italy to elicit their interpretations of advertising signs. The study draws upon semiotics and employs photo elicitation as its principle research method.     

Father Absence and Youth Incarceration

This study measured the likelihood of youth incarceration among adolescent males from father‐absent households, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N=34,031 person‐years). At baseline, the adolescents ranged from 14 to 17 years, and the incarceration outcome measure spanned ages 15 to 30 years. This study tested whether risk factors concentrated in father‐absent households explained the apparent effects of father absence. Results from longitudinal event‐history analysis showed that although a sizable portion of the risk that appeared to be due to father absence could actually be attributed to other factors, such as teen motherhood, low parent education, racial inequalities, and poverty, adolescents in father‐absent households still faced elevated incarceration risks. The adolescents who faced the highest incarceration risks, however, were those in stepparent families, including father–stepmother families. Coresidential grandparents may help attenuate this risk, although remarriage and residential instability increased it. Social policies to support children should broaden beyond an emphasis on marriage to address the risks faced by adolescents living in stepfamilies as well.     

Gambling and Globalization: Sociological Perspectives on 'the House' and 'the Players'

In this article, we explore a few ways in which the age-old impulse to gamble has evolved into a global force. We start out by critically summarizing historical and foundational thinking on gambling in society, and then move into contemporary perspectives on the gambling act. We then focus upon two important actors in these global stages: 'the house' (the businesses that profit from gambling) and 'the players' (the individuals who, for the most part, do not). These explorations highlight the ways in which the globalization of gambling has been characterized by homogenizing trends as well as resistance to homogenization forces.     

Research note. An evaluation of motivational interviewing as a method of intervention with clients in a probation setting

Summary There have been increasing calls on the probation service todemonstrate effectiveness with the recent Evidence Based Practiceguide (Home Office, 1998) explicitly citing evaluative researchas a means of achieving this. This article describes the quantitativepart of a research project undertaken within Middlesex ProbationService to evaluate the introduction of motivational interviewingas a technique to aid probation officers in their assessmentand supervision of offenders who misuse alcohol and drugs. Resultssuggest that, irrespective of stratification, all offendersindicated an improvement in their questionnaire scores duringtheir contact with the probation service. However, there weremore statistically significant improvements in the attitudinalscales amongst offenders whose officers were trained in thetechnique compared to officers who were not trained in motivationalinterviewing.     

THE AGE ONSET OF PERSONAL AUTHORITY IN THE FAMILY SYSTEM

The present research explored Williamson's position that relational patterns indicative of Personal Authority in the Family System (PAFS) occur during the fourth and early fifth decades of life. Participants were 232 university student volunteers. Individuals age 30 and above reported less triangulation with their nuclear families and less intimidation and less intimacy with their parents than the under age 30 group. These results provide some support for the view that differentiation is more clearly discernible in the fourth and fifth decades of life than in earlier years. Canonical correlations revealed that as age increases, the amount of variance accounted for by nuclear family triangulation, intergenerational intimidation, and integenerational intimacy increases, supporting Williamson's position that age is a significant factor in achieving several relational patterns indicative of PAFS.     

Status Variation on Family Farms: Effects of Crop,Machinery, and Off-farm Work1

Abstract Uncertainties facing farm enterprises place a premium on flexibility and adaptability in the work force. A study of 695 North Carolina farm couples is used to examine the extent to which 12 tasks on a farm are shared among family members and hired workers. Using husband alone as the norm, this pattern is contrasted with husband and son, husband and wife, husband and hired help, and husband and other statuses. Production, support, and household tasks are distinguished. Type of crop and amount of machinery used make a difference to status variation in production tasks, requiring more sharing on the part of the husband, but have less impact on support and household tasks. The latter are affected more by whether the husband or wife works off the farm. Despite status variation, farm work remains highly gendered; if the husband shares production work, it is with his son or a hired worker.     

Interpretive ethnography: From ‘authentic voice’ to ‘interpretive eye’

The paper explores the use of visual sociology in the study of material culture. It is argued that visual methods are particularly useful, sometimes essential, in gathering data about social and symbolic uses of goods and objects in day‐to‐day social life. Visual methods are not only integrative, but fundamental, in the construction of sociological datum from direct observation. Recognizing the importance of visual techniques forces us to reconsider their methodological status, from the point of view of reliability and standardization. This paper analyzes problems and advantages of photographic data, and proposes a “shooting protocol” to guarantee the reliability and standardization of research images. In addition, results of a study on the social and symbolic meaning of furniture are discussed.     

Ecological Information Needs for Environmental Justice

The concept that all peoples should have their voices heard on matters that affect their well‐being is at the core of environmental justice (EJ). The inability of some people of small towns, rural areas, minority, and low‐income communities, to become involved in environmental decisions is sometimes due to a lack of information. We provide a template for the ecological information that is essential to examine environmental risks to EJ populations within average communities, using case studies from South Carolina (Savannah River, a DOE site with minority impacts), Washington (Hanford, a DOE site with Native American impacts), and New Jersey (nonpoint, urbanized community pollution). While the basic ecological and public health information needs for risk evaluations and assessments are well described, less attention has been focused on standardizing information about EJ communities or EJ populations within larger communities. We suggest that information needed about EJ communities and populations includes demographics, consumptive and nonconsumptive uses of their regional environment (for example, maintenance and cosmetic, medicinal/religious/cultural uses), eco‐dependency webs, and eco‐cultural attributes. A purely demographics approach might not even identify EJ populations or neighborhoods, much less their spatial relation to the impact source or to each other. Using information from three case studies, we illustrate that some information is readily available (e.g., consumption rates for standard items such as fish), but there is less information about medicinal, cultural, religious, eco‐cultural dependency webs, and eco‐cultural attributes, all of which depend in some way on intact, functioning, and healthy ecosystems.