Significance of protesters’ words during Gezi Park protests: finding implicit meanings in sticky notes and tweets

Based on archival and qualitative field research, this paper describes how the philanthropic investments of the Max L. Rosenberg Foundation contributed to the emergence of the historic California Farm Worker Movement. The author argues that foundations do not always have articulated or clear-cut political agendas to dilute organizing campaigns; instead moments of agreement (and antagonism) emerge and are fluidly negotiated as points of convergence appear and disappear. This paper reveals the three critical periods in which the Max L. Rosenberg Foundation invested in farmworker organizations in California's Central Valley: the dustbowl migrant education period of the 1930–1940s, the self-help housing projects of the 1950s, and the early leadership training campaigns of the Farm Worker Movement of the 1960s. This paper makes a significant contribution to resource mobilization theory by showing how private funding of a particular social movement (and therefore perhaps others if examined) was most aligned with the goals of the movement at the open-ended idealist beginnings. This alignment ruptured during the heat of the late 1960s when demands were made on picket lines and through international boycotts and became most problematic in the wake of significant defeats when movement organizations reshaped and professionalized themselves around foundation grants and ceased to represent their original constituents.     

Demographic influences on Latinos' political empowerment: Comparative local illustrations

Population Research and Policy Review - How do Latinos gain local political power, given their demographic proportions and characteristics in a community's population? This paper examines the...     

Persona‐based information shapes linguistic perception: Valley Girls and California vowels

This paper investigates the effect of persona‐based information on implicit linguistic perceptions of a sociolinguistic feature – the backed trap vowel. trap ‐backing is associated both with macro‐social region (California) and with a particular persona that inhabits this region (the Valley Girl). An eye‐tracking paradigm is used to examine these associations in early, automatic stages of perception. One group of listeners was told the speaker was from California, while another group was told that the speaker had been described as a Valley Girl. Findings demonstrate that both the California information and the Valley Girl information caused listeners to expect the speaker to exhibit trap ‐backing. While previous studies have highlighted the influence of macro‐sociological categories on linguistic perception, the present study suggests that persona‐based social meanings can also serve to influence perception, supporting theories that foreground personae as social constructs crucial to interaction.     

Investment priorities and income distribution: The case of Brazil in 1970

In this paper, we study the conditions (ie., social disarticulation) by which choices in government policy priorities toward sectoral production may instigate increased income inequality. A dynamic multisectoral model is proposed in which the main link that is put forward is the necessary correspondence between rapid growth of production of certain types of goods and the expansion of demand for those same goods in the internal market. Application to Brazil illustrates the possibilities of such a tool for economic analysis and shows that the regressive wage policy implemented in Brazil was indeed consistent with that country's economic priorities and policy emphases.     

A stochastic model of organizational mortality: Review and reanalysis

An effort is made to integrate the research literatures of business policy and organizational sociology as they concern organizational mortality. The previous empirical studies of organizational mortality are reviewed and considered in light of current theoretical arguments. Three stochastic models are developed to test hypotheses concerning organizational mortality: the constant rate model, the Gompertz model, and Makeham's Law. The parameters of these models are estimated for 52 sets of data on organizational mortality. The findings show that Makeham's Law is the best-fitting model, although its estimation requires data with low levels of censoring. Substantively, the findings show strong support for Stinchombe's liability-of-newness hypothesis [A. L. Stinchcombe (1965), “Organizations and social structure,” in Handbook of Organizations (J. G. March, Ed.), pp. 153–193, Rand McNally, Chicago].     

The effect of restricted and unrestricted verdict options on juror choice

Data on the effect of limiting the number of verdict options open to jurors on the probability of acquittal are reanalyzed. Strong support is found for a model which postulates that jurors' preferences are single peaked with respect to an underlying verdict severity continuum. Limited support is found for an anchoring effect in which the addition of new verdict options affects the perceived relative fairness of other verdict options. The implication of the single-peakedness model is that some jurors will refuse to vote for conviction if the verdict (punishment) is seen as too harsh even though the defendant is perceived to be guilty of committing a crime.     

Goal-oriented evaluation for program planning: A case study

Utilizing a contextual model of evaluation, a goal-oriented method was applied to the Health Psychology program, a doctoral program in its early stages at the University of California, San Francisco. There were five stages involved in implementing this method: (1) clarification of the goals and objectives of the program, (2) prioritizing the objectives, (3) judging the attainment of the objectives, (4) organization of faculty/student input, and (5) feedback to the program management. All faculty members and students were invited to participate as selfevaluators in this evaluation effort. The results indicated that there were significant differences between the faculty group and the student group on their ranking and rating of the importance of specific educational and resource objectives. A one year follow-up was obtained by interviewing the director of the program to assess the impact of the project on program planning. The advantages and disadvantages of the approach were discussed in light of this attempt to analyze a new educational program.     

Balanced designs for triads tests: Two examples from English

In this paper we study two semantic domains in English, kinship and vegetables, using a new procedure for triads testing, the balanced incomplete block design. This procedure allows the use of triads tests on larger sets of words than had previously been possible. Included is a table of balanced incomplete block designs for the use of interested researchers.