What Do Movements Mean? The Value of Participant-Observation

Participant-observation can teach us much about the everyday meanings of doing social activism. I conceptualize these implicit meanings in relation to work in the sociology of culture, and social movement studies, and give examples from activists' everyday interaction. A participant-observer's forays into implicit meanings illuminate three dimensions of activists' experiences: the ways activists practice democratic citizenship in their groups, the ways they build group ties, and the ways they define the meaning of activism itself. By probing these implicit meanings, we can address questions that concern many social movement scholars. We increase our understanding of how movements grow, accomodate conflict, and build alliances, and we can specify which insights are useful in theories of contemporary or new social movements.     

De minimis and equity in risk

Indices and orderings are developed for evaluating alternative strategies in the management of risk. They reflect the goals of reducing individual and collective risks, of increasing equity, and of assigning priority to the reduction and to the equity of high risks. Individual risk is defined as the (random or non-random) level of exposure to a danger. In particular the role of a lower negligibility level is investigated. A class of indices is proposed which involves two parameters, a negligibility level and a parameter of inequality aversion, and several interpretations of the indices are discussed. We provide a set of eight axioms which are necessary and sufficient for this class of indices, and we present an approach to deal with partial information on the parameters.     

Re-Visioning Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Constructionist notions have become commonplace in theoretical discussions of the self, but are seldom translated into consideration of specific social work practice concerns such as ADHD. Explorations of ADHD, on the other hand, typically emphasize a narrow, medically-oriented symptom picture that is devoid of the psychosocial context in which the so-called symptoms emerge. A transactional approach to the understanding of ADHD is advanced. This article promotes a link between constructionism and social work's psychosocial or person-in-environment perspective. Such a perspective supports approaches to the assessment of ADHD that illuminate larger cultural messages and their constraining influence on individual meaning-making. Intervention, conducted at multiple levels, must be geared to the establishment of more hopeful and affirming narratives.     

Worldviews or Social Groups as the Source of Moral Value Attitudes: Implications for the Culture Wars Thesis

Individual moral value attitudes are typically explained by reference to social experiences as indicated by social group variables. Contrary to this view, the emergent culture wars perspective claims that two worldviews that transcend social groups are ultimately and fundamentally responsible for moral value attitudes. Although this relationship has been claimed for the general population, it has not been investigated with national representative data. This paper contrasts the worldview and social group explanations by examining the relative importance of the worldviews implicated in the culture wars literature and the social groups found to be important in previous research. I find social groups to be more important than worldviews, but that worldviews also have explanatory power. I conclude with a discussion about possible clarifications of the culture wars thesis.     

The design of organizations and the right to act

Recent innovations in the structure of formal organizations suggest possible directions for the design of schools to bring about high achievement. The structure of output-driven in contrast to administratively-driven schools is described, and designs are described which address both the goal of high achievement and the goal of reduced inequality.An earlier version of this paper was presented as the author's Sorokin Lecture at the annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society, Boston, March 1993.     

Homework and domestic work

This study assesses two competing theories about the extent to which homework—paid work in the home—helps integrate work and domestic roles for men and women. Contrasting male and female homeworkers with their counterparts working outside the home, it supports some aspects of both the resource and role overload theories, but predominantly the role overload perspective. Homeworkers, especially in the working class, experience less interference between job and family life, but perform more housework and child care. They have no more leisure time nor greater marital satisfaction than those working outside the home, but receive more family assistance with their paid jobs, suggesting that they combine tasks from their first and second shifts. Working at home does not break down gender roles in domestic life. Despite time saved from commuting, male homeworkers perform no more housework than comparable men working outside the home. Thus, the gender division of unpaid household labor is not simply a matter of resources or spatial logistics.An earlier version was presented at the meetings of the Eastern Sociological Society, Providence, Rhode Island, April 1991.     

Program analysis using the client oriented cost outcome system.

The client oriented cost outcome system has been under development in Pennsylvania community and hospital programs since 1972. The system builds upon the behavioral and decision data generated with or on behalf of consumers. Flexibility for local program system design is permitted if the procedures of consumer intake, review, and termination document each consumer's (a) problems, resources, and goals, (b) overall functioning level in their ordinary community, and (c) services intended and rendered as related to (a), above. While the system's primary application is in providing feedback for local program quality assurance and evaluation procedures, aggregation of data permits program planning and evaluation at county, state, and federal levels in terms of (a) client demographic or diagnostic characteristics, and (b) program service characteristics and objectives.     

Involving constituents in agency priority setting: a case study

Many government agencies have "constituents" who believe the agencies should hear and consider their needs and desires in establishing program priorities. This article describes how one involves interested constituents (consumers, industry, medical professionals, and state organizations) in the agency's annual priority-setting process. This participation has produced a number of beneficial results-some expected and some unexpected.     

The utilization of prevailing evaluation policy in the selection of performance measures

This study considers the problem of inferring a functional evaluation criterion from existing performance measure policies. The objective is to develop a rational basis by which to adaptively evaluate a current best set of performance measures from alternative sets. The analysis is based on a matrix approach for relating system characteristics to performance measures across a set of activities. A procedure for ranking measure combinations which are candidate implementation alternatives is devised using this matrix representation and cost information. An example illustrating the procedure is presented.