COVARIANCE MODELS FOR LATTICE DATA

Given observations on an m × n lattice, approximate maximum likelihood estimates are derived for a family of models including direct covariance, spatial moving average, conditional autoregressive and simultaneous autoregressive models. The approach involves expressing the (approximate) covariance matrix of the observed variables in terms of a linear combination of neighbour relationship matrices, raised to a power. The structure is such that the eigenvectors of the covariance matrix are independent of the parameters of interest. This result leads to a simple Fisher scoring type algorithm for estimating the parameters. The ideas are illustrated by fitting models to some remotely sensed data.     

White Mothers,Brown Children: Ethnic Identification of Maori‐European Children in New Zealand

Studies of multiethnic families often assume the ethnic identification of children with the minority group results from the minority parent. This study examines an alternate view that mainstream parents also play an important role in transmitting minority ethnicity. It explores this argument using data from New Zealand on the ethnic labels mothers assign to their Maori‐European children. It finds that European mothers are just as disposed as Maori mothers to designate their child as Maori, either exclusively or in combination. Two explanations, grounded in ethnic awareness and gendered inheritance, are proposed. Although neither satisfactorily predicts maternal designation decisions, the readiness of European mothers to identify their child as Maori underscores their role in diffusing Maori ethnicity.     

Postdivorce Father‐Adolescent Closeness

Research indicates that closeness of the father‐child bond following parental divorce is associated with better outcomes for children and adolescents. Unlike other investigations, this study takes a long‐term developmental approach to understanding stability and change in postdivorce father‐adolescent relationship closeness. Drawing on Add Health data (n = 483), we examine factors that explain (a) why some high‐quality father‐adolescent relationships remain the same after divorce whereas others decline, and (b) why some low‐quality relationships are stable following divorce whereas others improve. High mother‐offspring relationship quality and offspring feelings of well‐being prevented close father‐offspring relationships from deteriorating. Offspring’s childbearing and cohabitation following parental divorce increase closeness in father‐offspring relationships that were not close prior to divorce. Although a majority of offspring experienced a decline in closeness following divorce, results from this study show that some very close father‐offspring relationships are maintained and some poor relationships become closer.     

SURVIVE THEN THRIVE: DETERMINANTS OF SUCCESS IN THE ECONOMICS PH.D. PROGRAM

This study investigates the completion of the Ph.D. in economics. We use ex ante information, based upon reviewing individual applications from former doctoral students. Students need different skills to succeed at each distinct stage of the doctoral program. Significant determinants for passing the comprehensive exams include Graduate Record Exam (GRE) verbal and quantitative scores, a Masters degree, and prior focus on economics. By contrast, research motivation and math preparation play significant roles in completing the dissertation. GRE scores become insignificant for completion in the generalized ordered logit estimates, which emphasize the sequential nature of the Economics Ph.D. program . ( JEL I210)     

“Every Place Has a Ghetto…”: The Significance of Whites' Social and Residential Segregation

The residential and social segregation of whites from blacks creates a socialization process we refer to as “white habitus.” This white habitus limits whites' chances for developing meaningful relationships with blacks and other minorities spatially and psychologically. Using data from the 1997 Survey of College Students' Social Attitudes and the 1998 Detroit Area Study, we show that the spatial segregation experienced by whites from blacks fosters segregated lifestyles and leads them to develop positive views about themselves and negative views about blacks. First, we document the high levels of whites' residential and social segregation. Next, we examine how whites interpret their own self‐segregation. Finally, we examine how whites' segregation shapes their racial expressions, attitudes, cognitions, and even their sense of aesthetics as illustrated by their views on the subject of interracial marriage.     

Self,Emotions, and Extreme Violence: Extending Symbolic Interactionist Theorizing

Extreme violence revolves around actions of individuals who are emotionally aroused and willing to kill themselves, if need be, to inflict harm on enemies. Terrorism, gangbanging, and genocide are conspicuous examples of extreme violence. This violence is ultimately driven by repressed negative emotions about self that are transmuted into variants of anger and combinations of anger with satisfaction‐happiness to produce emotions such as hatred, righteous anger, and vengeance. This theory combines symbolic interactionism's emphasis on identity and self with key ideas from gestalt theories, psychoanalytic theories, and interaction ritual theory as well as data from primatology, evolutionary biology, and neurology. I explain extreme violence as the outcome of several converging forces: the neurological capacity for humans as evolved apes to experience and express a large palate of high‐intensity emotions, the experience of shame in key institutional spheres, the repression of shame (and, at times, guilt and alienation as well as other highly charged negative emotions), the intensification and transmutation of these repressed emotions into variants and elaborations of anger, the making of external attributions blaming external targets for negative experiences, the portrayal of these targets in highly negative terms, and the charging up of positive emotions in interaction rituals directed at inflicting harm on external enemies.     

Boundary maintenance in support networks

Most studies of social networks, whether they are viewed as the context of stressful experiences or of supportive interactions, assume fixed network boundaries. This assumption is necessary in order to analyze structural characteristics such as network density. Actual networks, however, change over time and across situations and the assumption of fixed boundaries is inappropriate for processual questions. Examination of such changes reveals limitations in the structural analysis of social networks and points to mechanisms and strategies by which network boundaries are drawn and redrawn.     

The Social Shaping of Emotion: The Case of Grief*

This article addresses the issue of how deeply social arrangements may penetrate into private emotion, in this instance, grief. It argues that the data necessary to address the issue satisfactorily are not available and thus current assumptions in the literature about the universality of the grief experience are at least suspect. However, there are theoretical reasons, derived from interactionist thought, to suspect that if certain components of the grief experience vary, so will the experience. Four of these components are examined (level of significance of the other who dies; definition of the situation surrounding the death; character of the self experiencing a loss through death; and the interactional situation/setting in which the prior three components occur). Evidence is also presented which is suggestive of space-time variation in these components. It is concluded that an assumption of the deep social shaping and thus the variability of grief is fruitful for further empirical inquiries.