Resisting Institutionalization: Religious Professionals in the Emerging Church*

This article discusses how organizations can resist normative institutional pressures associated with the use of formally trained and credentialed professionals. This research draws on neoinstitutional theories of isomorphism and utilizes a framework of religious training developed by Finke and Dougherty (2002) , which emphasizes both the social and religious capital gained during professionalization, to show that resistance to normative institutional pressures is possible. The data demonstrate that organizations which act to reformulate the role of religious professionals in a way which limits both the opportunities and ability of clergy to implement and maintain organizational routines and processes can successfully avoid normative institutional forces. This research draws on over 50 interviews and 100 hours of fieldwork with people in the Emerging Church, a religious movement that has arisen in the last 25 years as a response to increasing distrust of institutional authority. This study helps to close the gap between institutional studies of organizations and the sociology of religion by suggesting that some, currently overlooked, organizational activities can be more accurately understood as deliberate attempts to resist institutionalizing forces.     

Cultural history analysis and professional humility: historical context and social work practice

This article explores the importance of history context to the cultural humility of the social work profession. Four graduate student reflections on history context using simplified cultural history method are used to illustrate how important it is to take a critical approach to social work policy and macro practice history. An important element of cultural humility is becoming conscious of social work blind spots on an interpersonal and professional level. Social workers have been involved in institutional practices in the past that are now considered insensitive to cultural difference. The profession has, at times, supported practices of discrimination. Thoughtful history analysis allows social work students and educators to begin to reveal blindness in the past that could help provide insight into current implicit bias and unintentional injustice.     

Mistreatment and Self-Reported Emotional Symptoms: Results From the National Elder Mistreatment Study

Many community-residing older adults in the United States report past year mistreatment; however, little is known about mental health correlates of abuse. This study investigated whether a recent history of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse is associated with self-reported emotional symptoms (e.g., anxiety, depression) among a representative sample of older adults. Results demonstrated that each abuse type increased likelihood of reporting emotional symptoms; when other known correlates were controlled, only emotional abuse remained a significant predictor. Additional study of mistreatment-related correlates of depression and anxiety is needed, with a focus on the often overlooked category of emotional mistreatment.     

Design,Utility, and History of the Colorado Adoption Project: Examples Involving Adjustment Interactions

This article describes the Colorado Adoption Project (CAP), a longitudinal study in behavioral development, and discusses how adoption studies may be used to assess genetic and environmental etiologies of individual differences for important developmental outcomes. Previous CAP research on adjustment outcomes in childhood and adolescence—which found significant interactions, including gene-environment interactions—is reviewed. New research suggests mediating effects of menarche and religiosity on age at first sex in this predominantly middle-class, Caucasian sample.     

Middle Class Identity in the Modern World: How Politics and Economics Matter

It is widely accepted that people tend to identify with the middle classes regardless of their social class position. Nevertheless, this “middle class identity bias” is not equally prominent in all western democracies. The goal of this article is to assess the role of political and economic conditions in shaping this phenomenon. By exploring the relationship between class identity and national context in 15 modern societies, I address two main questions: (1) how individual‐level income affects where people place themselves in the class system, and (2) how national political and economic context affects this relationship. In doing so, I offer several important findings. First, although there is a positive relationship between income and class identification in all 15 societies, middle class identification is weakest when income inequality is high. Consistent with previous findings, the results suggest that economic development has a positive impact on class identity. The results also uncover a role for political ideology by suggesting a lingering affect of Communist rule. Even after controlling for economic development and income inequality, respondents in former Communist countries are more likely than others to identify as belonging to a low social class.     

The Use of Social Surveys to Measure Drought and the Impact of Drought

Although the term drought is widely used, defining it is conceptually and technically difficult and there is no generally accepted definition. This article uses data from an Australian social survey of people living in agricultural areas to test the validity of using general social surveys to ask respondents whether they are living in an area that is drought affected. Strong evidence is found that the survey based self-report measure of drought is both internally consistent and correlated with the standard Australian meteorological (rainfall deficit) measures of drought and thus provides a valid measure of whether individuals are experiencing the drought. The relationship between self-report drought and the standard meteorological measure of drought and financial hardship and changes in financial position is estimated. While a negative association between drought and financial position is found for both measures, the relationship is stronger for the self-report than the meteorological definition. The self-report measure is more closely linked to the economic, social and community impacts of low rainfall and provides greater flexibility in the geographic area over which drought is measured—thus survey data about drought allows respondents to define the area in way which is meteorologically, topographically or agriculturally meaningful.     

Narratives and self-identity in later life: Two rural American older women

Older adults often draw on memories to construct stories about themselves that help them to retain and validate their self-identities, doing this within the cultural contexts that have shaped their lives. In this paper, we examine the life history narratives of two working class, rural American older women and the ways in which those narratives are similar despite one major difference: one has dementia. In both cases, major themes that are consistent with gender-based, working class, rural American cultural values are dominant, including closeness of family, hard work, ties to the land, and religious faith. In the first case, she reconstructs memories of her life in accordance with dominant cultural and personal values, downplaying the ways in which her experiences were “out of step” with these values. In the second case, her sense of identity remains and is expressed through her co-constructed memories although she is experiencing cognitive loss.     

Residential Segregation by Race and the Black Merchants of Northern Cities During the Early Twentieth Century

During the early 20th century, many Blacks in northern cities entered the retail trade, supposedly because residential segregation was advantageous to Black merchants. Building upon historical studies of Blacks in the urban North and upon the sociological literature on Black business enterprise, I use census data to analyze the relationship between (1) the spatial isolation of Blacks and (2) the representation of Blacks in the retail trade. I find that between 1900 and 1930 the association between these two variables became significantly positive. This finding corroborates historical case studies, and I conclude that after segregated Black communities emerged in northern cities at the end of the study period, spatial isolation did increase the participation of Blacks in the retail trade.     

Black business transformation,black well-being,and public policy

This article examines public policy and social welfare issues related to a recent trend in black business ownership: the decline of black-owned businesses in ‘traditional’ personal services serving a predominantly black clientele, and the corresponding increase of black-owned businesses in ‘emerging’ capital- and knowledge-intensive fields. It is argued that, while the growth of black business ownership in emerging fields is a sign of black economic progress, overall trends in black business ownership are not entirely positive. For one thing, the divergent trends in traditional and emerging black-owned firms reflect widening socioeconomic disparities within black communities. Moreover, the decline of traditional black-owned firms bodes ill for disadvantaged blacks in inner-cities. After reviewing the development of black business enterprise in the United States, trends in black business ownership since the 1970s are examined. Patterns of change in traditional personal services and emerging business services are then linked to social and economic transformations that have enabled many blacks to participate in the larger national economy. The article concludes by discussing the implications of declines in traditional black businesses for black well-being and for public policy.