Prayer in Public Schools: When Church and State Collide

Prayer and Bible reading in public schools have led to threemajor Supreme Court decisions and the introduction of numerousconstitutional amendments in the U.S. Congress which would permitvoluntary prayer in public schools or limit federal court jurisdiction.Public opinion polls beginning in 1964 have suggested widespreadsupport among the American public for prayer in public schools.Little is known, however, concerning the characteristics ofthose supporting and opposing prayer in public schools. Thisarticle addresses the school prayer issue through an analysisof three national surveys which were conducted in 1974. 1980.and 1982. Those favoring school prayer were found to be older,less educated, and socially, politically, and religiously conservative.Multivariate analysis revealed that the key predictor variableswere religious orthodoxy and religious salience, a finding whichmay stem from the observation that school prayer is both a politicaland a religious issue. Issue salience, congressional votingdecisions, and demographic characteristics of school prayeradvocates are considered as possible explanations for the failureof Congress to act in accord with public opinion.     

Totem poles and tricycle races: the certainties and uncertainties of Native village life, Coastal Alaska 1878–1930

Abstract Anthropological and ethnohistorical accounts of the Northwest Coast and Southeast Alaska have underemphasized the early and thorough industrialization of the area. This paper describes the transformation of Native families and community forms by small scale salmon-canning firms in the late 19th and early 20th century, beginning with the building of the first salmon cannery in Klawock, Alaska, in 1878. Attention to the unmaking of past forms of obligation and expectation leads to an understanding of the volatility of specifically local histories in Native villages. Totem poles and tricycle races are both locations of ambiguous cultural production that are tied to these histories in overlapping and complex ways, and as such, they serve as metaphors for the larger processes at work in these towns.     

Performance measurement systems and time-based manufacturing

Today's production environment is often undermined by control mechanisms that were designed for another era. Specifically, most organizations control manufacturing wholly or in part using cost-based performance measurement systems. Depending upon the firm's objectives and key manufacturing task(s), too much attention upon cost considerations can have devastating effects upon overall performance. This paper discusses this issue in the context of corporations that increasingly find themselves competing for business on the dimension of time. A case study is presented to illustrate how time-based companies can be adversely affected by an overemphasis upon cost.     

Rethinking Modernity and the Holocaust: The Application of Zygmunt Bauman's Thesis to the Jewish Council of Lodz, 1940–1944*

When Zygmunt Bauman first published Modernity and the Holocaust (1989) it elicited a variety of reactions among historians and sociologists. In his work, Bauman sought to address the Holocaust, a topic that he argued sociologists hitherto neglected, and to provide an alternative theoretical explanation for why the Holocaust occurred. Although historians have accused Bauman of having “no clear idea what genocide is,” historians have not fully assessed the validity of his work. This essay suggests that despite aversion to incorporating sociological and anthropological theories to historical studies of the Holocaust, they remain valuable in helping scholars understand the multivalent nature and complexity of the Holocaust. Using unprinted ghetto documents, this paper evaluates Bauman's work by placing it in the historical context of the Lodz ghetto administration from 1940 to 1944.