State of the unions: Assessment by elite American labor leaders

One hundred and sixty-four elite union leaders in the United States completed a survey to assess the condition of the American labor movement and the factors affecting it. The respondents included high-level international union and state federation officers, central labor presidents, and 58 shop stewards. This study compares the responses of these labor officials and finds that they have similar, negative assessments of the condition of the American labor movement. The study also finds that these leaders agree that the most important factors affecting the labor movement are collective bargaining rights, union leadership, union member solidarity, and the NLRB.     

Naturally occurring play patterns in groups of latency aged children

This study examines the influence of the socialization of aggression among different gender and social class groupings and the influence of psychosocial stage on cognitive developmental play preferences among groups of school aged children. Observations of 143 play groups were coded for play preference (symbolic play, practice play, games with rules) and play performance (cooperative or competitive). Findings of the log-linear data analysis suggest a middle class and masculine bias in Piaget's cognitive model (i.e., that as age increases children prefer more games with rules). This model held only for middle class and affluent boys. Girls (both latency and prepubertal) and lower socioeconomic groups tended to prefer practice play. Girls were more likely to play cooperatively; boys more likely to play competitively. Implications for theory development and clinical practice are explored.     

The Dialectic of Technology: Commentary on Warner and England1

Abstract Warner and England (1995) make a welcome argument for a technological science perspective for sociology based on a theory of humans as technological agents and an epistemology that includes ethical values. As with any sociological perspective, however, Warner and England's comments help to focus on and understand some aspects of social life and not others. This commentary provides a complementary focus by emphasizing the dialectical relationship between human agency and technological agency. Furthermore, I argue that a dialectical view is necessary for grounding Warner and England's theoretical argument and for acting on their ethical argument. Implications of a dialectical perspective for the meaning and politics of technology are explored. The paper concludes with a discussion of the suitability of “science” as a metaphor for sociology.     

Community involvement in land regularization for informal settlements in Tanzania: A strategy for enhancing security of tenure in residential neighborhoods

This paper documents and analyzes how landholders managed to uplift status of their neighborhood from hazard land as designated by the 1978 master plan to a regularized residential settlement through land regularization in Dar es Salaam city. Specifically, explores policy framework governing land regularization and how the local community explored the opportunities it offers. Documents the local community planning and land regularization processes undertaken focusing on land use planning, drainage construction, and cadastral survey and discuses how financial resources were raised, trust was built as well as factors which sustained community involvement towards meeting their interests of securing tenure. The paper also, draws challenges facing land regularization policy and recommends areas for further interventions commensurate with the human dimension challenges in securing tenure.Underlying community involvement, those aspects of community, which have been connected to the idea of social capital namely existence of committed leadership in land development matters, embracing mechanism for participatory decision making process and educational background to local leaders were particularly important in determining success for the case. Others include economic ability to contribute, high proportion of landholder settlers, land conflict task force formulation, local consensus to solve commonly felt problems, existence of strong community organization, and unwritten norms put in place to regulate individual behavior in building construction. Weak legal recognition of informal settlement, lengthy and bureaucratic procedures in planning and approval of regularization plans, weak knowledge on land management matters, short-term title deeds with low financial betterments, political popularity are identified critical challenges.Some of recommendations put forward include formalization of the grass-roots role in decision-making, decentralizing some of land development control functions to sub-ward leaders and training the same in basic land management matters. Others include definition of norms; by-laws and government facilitation of informal land parceling. Besides community support should be sought so as to create partnership in the promotion of security of tenure in informal areas. The study concludes that, unless land development activities ongoing in informal settlements are closely monitored and regulated as the settlement grow, it will be too costly socially and economically to retrofit once the settlement have identified.     

Determinants and Consequences of Social Trust*

This article provides an overview of social trust, examining its various aspects and components. Trust is best understood in a sociological sense by focusing on its important relational characteristic. Following this lead, the article discusses briefly how social trust relates to social capital and examines factors that shape the development of social trust, along with outcomes related to variations in trust, classifying them by analytical level (i.e., individual, community, group, organizational, and societal). The article concludes by assessing the strengths and weaknesses of existing research and by identifying some important questions that have not yet been adequately addressed.     

Assimilation as multiracialism: The case of Singapore's Malays

The myths of meritocracy and multiracialism ‘explain’ between them both the ‘fairness’ of the Singapore system and the subordinate role of the non-Chinese minority races. They also purport to assure the minorities that they enjoy full status as members of the nation-building project and that their cultural and religious mores are embraced and protected within its framework. Using the Malay minority as its case study, and arguing from archival, oral, official government and secondary sources, this paper argues that the Singapore systems of meritocracy and multiracialism have not been concerned primarily with intercommunal tolerance since the 1970s, but are now programmes of assimilation of the racial minorities into a Chinese-dominated society.     

Culturalising the Abject: Islam,Law and Moral Panic in the West

This paper explores the construction of Islam as abject and the symbolic positioning of Muslims as being outside secular modernity in Australia through an analysis of the way the criminal legal process and perceptions of criminality are culturalised. The empirical focus is gang rape and the trials of Muslim youth on gang rape charges in Sydney between 2000–2003 which quickly became culturally inflected as ‘Muslim’ and ‘Lebanese’ by media reporting of the criminal trials and moral panic about them as source of social menace. Three dimensions of culturalisation of crime and the criminalisation of culture are identified in the criminal legal process and media reporting of it; firstly the cultural inflection of new laws against gang rape by their association with particular events and trials; secondly the introduction of ‘cultural defence’ by the accused as a mitigating factor in the criminal legal process; thirdly, media reporting and commentary on criminal cases which emphasize cultural explanations for individual criminal behaviour.