From Structure to Agency to Process: The Evolution of Charles Tilly’s Theories of Social Action as Reflected in His Analyses of Contentious Politics

Charles Tilly’s social theories shifted over the course of his career from an early focus on quantitative and macro-sociological approaches to a later focus on relations and agency. His studies of state-making also shifted, from a focus on conflict and capitalism to explorations of democracy. This paper details these shifts and places them in the context of broader trends in comparative-historical and political sociology.     

Social Support Networks and School Outcomes: The Centrality of the Teacher

This investigation compares school outcomes for students who differ in the extent to which they perceive their parents, friends, and teachers—each alone and in combination—as important sources of social support. Findings indicate that middle and high school students who perceive high supportiveness from all three sources of support, as opposed to none, one, or two, have better attendance; spend more hours studying; avoid problem behavior more; have higher school satisfaction, engagement, and self-efficacy; and obtain better grades. Positive school outcomes are promoted when teacher support is perceived in combination with perceived support from parents and friends. Implications of the results for human service providers are presented.     

Are dual and single exposures differently associated with clinical levels of trauma symptoms? Examining physical abuse and witnessing intimate partner violence among young children

A significant portion of children living in the United States have experienced trauma. Informed by the developmental traumatology model, we explored the effects of physical abuse and witnessing intimate partner violence (IPV) on childhood trauma symptoms. This study utilizes a convenience sample of 580 high‐risk children between 3 and 12 years who received services from one‐child advocacy centre during a 12‐month period. We performed a series of binary logistic regression analyses to examine if physical abuse, exposure to IPV, and dual exposure (i.e., both physical abuse and IPV) are distinctly associated with six trauma symptoms, including anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress (PTS), dissociation, anger, and sexual concerns. The results indicated that dual exposure was predictive of all trauma symptoms, except for dissociation. Additionally, physical abuse was associated with PTS, anger, and sexual concerns, whereas exposure to IPV was associated with depression, PTS, and sexual concerns. Research and implications for practitioners working with young children are discussed.     

The race relations problematic in American sociology: A case study and critique

This article reports the results of an analysis of all racial and ethnic relations articles published in the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, and Social Problems, from January 1969 through December 1995. The analysis identifies by journal: 1) major methodological orientation(s); 2) how the concepts of “race,” “ethnicity,” and racial and ethnic relations are operationalized, which is useful for examining tendencies toward, or against, reification; 3) substantive content—that is, what a sociology of racial and ethnic relations is; and 4) primary context—that is, are racial and ethnic relations treated as a substantive subdiscipline in their own right, or are they merely a topic of interest for other subdisciplines such as social psychology? In brief, although some differences exist between the journals, all four journals publish disproportionately racial and ethnic relations research that: 1) is highly quantitative as opposed to theoretical, conceptual, or sociohistorical; 2) reifies U.S. Census definitions of race and ethnicity as opposed to critically evaluating such definitions; 3) social psychologizes racial and ethnic relations, or subsumes such relations under stratification processes; and 4) subsumes the racial and ethnic relations problematic under subdiscipline rubrics other than a sociology of racial and ethnic relations. The conclusion discusses the implications of these findings; for example, by virtue of what they publish, these journals construct a paradigmatic frame that gives precedence to, or legitimizes, some views and excludes, or de-legitimizes others.     

A Formal Restatement of Durkheim's "Division of Labor" Theory

Despite frequent references in the sociological literature to Durkheim's theory about the division of labor, sociologists have made few attempts to test it. The paucity of attempts and the very debatable outcomes thereof are due largely to Durkheim's use of the traditional discursive mode of theory construction. A discursively stated theory's logical structure is likely to be obscure, and for that reason alone tests of it are difficult and controversial. Rather than perpetuate the exegetical tradition in sociological treatments of the subject, this paper restates Durkheim's theory in accordance with a particular formal mode. That restatement identifies the theory's shortcomings and problems. But the eight premises imply only one testable theorem, and the theorem's predictive accuracy appears minimal unless "population concentration" is substituted for "density" in the first axiom. Nonetheless, the restatement clearly shows how extension of the theory (additional postulates) could further its testability.     

Antiracist Education in Theory and Practice: A Critical Assessment

“Antiracist Education in Theory and Practice: A Critical Assessment” As a set of pedagogical, curricular, and organizational strategies, antiracist education claims to be the most progressive way today to understand race relations. Constructed from whiteness studies and the critique of colorblindness, its foundational core is located in approximately 160 papers published in peer-reviewed journals in the past 15 years-identified through a comprehensive search of Academic Premier Search, EBSCOMegaFile, Education Abstracts, JSTOR, and SOCIndex. A critical assessment of these papers concludes that antiracist education is not a sociologically grounded, empirically based account of the significance of race in American society. Rather, it is a morally based educational reform movement that embodies the confessional and redemptive modes common in evangelical Protestantism. Inherently problematic, whether or not antiracist education achieves broader acceptance is open to debate. Presented at the joint meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society/North Central Sociological Association, Chicago, IL, April 7, 2007     

DETECT

DETECT is an inexpensive, easy to use, general-purpose, Monte Carlo simulation program for IBM and compatible personal computers. It can be used to quickly analyze fault trees or functions of random variables. DETECT provides a wide variety of input distributions to choose from and a dependency (correlation) option. The result of the analysis is a probability distribution over the variable of interest. We look forward to further improvements (e.g., graphics, full-screen editing, ability to inspect intermediate results) that will make DETECT even more useful and attractive.