Urban congregations as incubators of service organizations

A growing body of research has begun to describe the variety and pervasiveness of community services offered by religious congregations across the United States. This study investigated the process whereby a congregation forms a new community service entity by tracing patterns in its development from formation through emancipation. Based on a sample of twenty‐three spin‐off organizations engaged in housing services in three cities (Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis), this exploratory study found that religious congregations provided very limited forms of incubation for new entities. Although the congregations exhibited considerable involvement in governance, their inability to undertake management of daily spin‐off operations notably contributed to the eventual separation between parent and organizational offspring.     

Contradictions in Agrarian Ideology: Restructuring Gender,Race-Ethnicity,and Class1

Abstract Contradictions in agrarian ideology are revealed through an analysis of social dimensions of economic restructuring in rural Iowa. Data are culled from field observations and in-depth interviews with white European American residents. How rural residents cope with and make sense of the changes within their communities are two interrelated dimensions of social restructuring. The research highlights a perception of sharpening social and economic divisions within two small communities. The social and economic changes challenged residents' self-definitions, perspectives on rural community life, and previously taken-for-granted notions of gender, racial-ethnic, and class relations. Analysis of field data demonstrates contradictory ways that discourses on agrarianism and gemeinschaft serve as resources as well as impediments to social support and community development.     

The Inseparability of “Career” and “Personal” Counseling

In this article it is argued that “career” and “personal” counseling should not be viewed as different types of counseling because: (a) the holistic philosophy of counseling emphasizes helping “whole” persons whose lives contain many important and meaningful roles; (b) recent research on the implications of gender and race for career development further demonstrates the inseparability of our career and “personal” lives; and (c) there are numerous commonalities in the “career” and “personal” counseling process.     

Skills,control, and the mass professions

Since members of the mass professions are employed mainly by large organisations in the public sector, they are increasingly ‘managed’. What is happening to their skills, their control over their own work, and their professionalism, are matters of concern as revealed by recent disputes. These are precisely questions at the heart of the labour process debate relaunched by Braverman. The insights generated by this stream of writing, already profitably applied beyond blue collar work to clerical occupations may be extended to embrace elements of the service class. There the notion of indetermination goes beyond the notion of discretion. Changes in public ideology have effects analogous to those arising from technological innovation in manufacturing. Yet professionals, whilst attending to technological aspects of their work, typically ignore the wider social issues. In this respect they are vulnerable to deskilling and erosion of control over their work.     

Striking A Balance: Female Correctional Officers,Gender Role Stereotypes,and Male Prisons*

This paper examines the strategies developed by female correctional officers to circumvent interactional and organizational barriers to advancement in the traditionally-male work organization of the men's prison. Data for the analysis are drawn from interviews with female officers and other staff in a state department of corrections located in the western United States. In a dramaturgical-like fashion, female officers seeking to advance must moderate–strike a balance–between a series of countervailing negative sex role stereotypes. However, regardless of their success in presenting a “balanced” image at work, female officers experienced stress from their responsibility of accommodating to this predominantly male work environment.