The Environmental Justice Debate: A Commentary on Methodological Issues and Practical Concerns

Over the last decade, environmental sociology has produced a tremendous stream of research pertaining to environmental justice issues. In general, we now know that low income groups and communities of color are disproportionately exposed to toxic wastes. In this paper, I argue that future research requires a shift in methodological approach. Learning how groups come to be exposed to toxic wastes requires an understanding of the organizational processes that shape decisions regarding production practices and regulatory enforcement strategies. I conclude by making three claims: (1) Documenting that disempowered groups are exposed to toxic wastes more than other groups is important. Disentangling whether race or class matters more is more dubious. (2) If we want to make claims about process, we should study process and not outcomes. (3) Insofar as we have to study outcomes, we should be more aware of which outcomes we want to study and what types of inferences we are able to draw from outcomes.     

Ambiguous carcinogens and their regulation

Examination of five animal and one human studies suggest that certain agents increase the incidence of some cancers but simultaneously reduce the incidence of other cancers. Yellow die #3, for example, sharply increases the incidence of liver tumors but practically eliminates naturally occurring leukemia/lymphoma in F-344 male rates. Such ambiguity in the action of presumed carcinogens suggests that caution must be used by regulatory bodies in proscribing suspected carcinogens, or even in recommending changes in lifestyle or dietary habits as a means of reducing incidence of cancer.     

Disabled academics: a case study in Canadian universities

Though Canadian universities are legally required to accommodate disabled employees, disabled faculty still experience difficulties navigating neoliberal performance standards and medicalized conceptualizations of disability. Drawing on data from a qualitative study with Canadian university faculty, this paper explores the experiences of five disabled academics. Our analysis draws on post-structural understandings of neoliberalism, discourse, disciplinary power, and governmentality, as well as Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s concepts of the fit and misfit. Though the sample is small, this analysis suggests universities pose disabling contexts for academics. Disability is cast as individual responsibility, leaving disabled academics navigating accommodations without institutional support. The normative academic constructed through a discourse of efficiency and productivity is the measure against which disabled academics are evaluated, requiring self-governance to produce themselves as ‘good enough’ academics. Although higher education environments are increasingly diverse, disabled academics are still having to prove their right to exist in academia, hindering their abilities to participate fully.     

The Social Construction of Self Knowledge: A Commentary on the Legacy of Melvin Pollner

Like other approaches in the social sciences, social constructionist studies have too often construed the self as some manner of mental image, or representation, we privately carry of our own identity. While socially shaped, this image is understood as an essentially personal possession about which its possessor can legitimately claim a categorically privileged form of knowledge. This residual commitment to theoretically privileging the first person perspective on the self inhibits our appreciation for the extent to which the validity of self-knowledge is a dynamic and ongoing collective accomplishment rather than a strictly private personal assessment. This essay briefly reviews a selection of canonical contributions to the social constructionist literature on the self, demonstrating specifically how they theoretically privilege the first person perspective. It then demonstrates how the work of Melvin Pollner provides conceptual resources for effectively overcoming this unfortunate tendency.     

Sadomasochism and the social sciences: a review of the sociological and social psychological literature

Recent literature about sadomasochism in Sociology and Social Psychology is reviewed. Studies include survey research and questionnaire studies, content analyses, ethnographic research, and critical essays. The current state of our knowledge of sadomasochism, including its defining characteristics, sadomasochistic identities, and sadomasochistic subcultures is briefly summarized.     

“We're Supposed to Look Like Girls,But Act Like Boys”: Adolescent Girls’ Adherence to Masculinity Norms

In the ecological systems perspective, gender ideologies are part of the macrosystem that shapes human development. A growing literature indicates that youth accommodate and resist such ideologies, with adherence to masculinity norms being linked with negative adjustment. Most masculinity research focuses on boys’ adherence to masculinity, but girls are also pressured to uphold masculinity norms. Using mixed modeling, we examined girls’ adherence to masculinity and psychological (self‐esteem, depressive symptoms) and social (peer support and conflict) well‐being in the United States (N = 407; M_age = 12.28) and China (N = 356; M_age = 12.41). In both countries, adherence to masculinity was negatively associated with psychosocial well‐being. Chinese girls reported greater masculinity adherence, but associations with psychosocial well‐being were not moderated by nationality.     

Testing for violations of the homogeneity needed for conditional logistic regression

In epidemiologic studies where the outcome is binary, the data often arise as clusters, as when siblings, friends or neighbors are used as matched controls in a case-control study. Conditional logistic regression (CLR) is typically used for such studies to estimate the odds ratio for an exposure of interest. However, CLR assumes the exposure coefficient is the same in every cluster, and CLR-based inference can be badly biased when homogeneity is violated. Existing methods for testing goodness-of-fit for CLR are not designed to detect such violations. Good alternative methods of analysis exist if one suspects there is heterogeneity across clusters. However, routine use of alternative robust approaches when there is no appreciable heterogeneity could cause loss of precision and be computationally difficult, particularly if the clusters are small. We propose a simple non-parametric test, the test of heterogeneous susceptibility (THS), to assess the assumption of homogeneity of a coefficient across clusters. The test is easy to apply and provides guidance as to the appropriate method of analysis. Simulations demonstrate that the THS has reasonable power to reveal violations of homogeneity. We illustrate by applying the THS to a study of periodontal disease.     

Editor's Note: Symposium on the University as an Agent of Social Change

Editorial Introduction

Editor's Note: Symposium on the University as an Agent of Social Change