American Sociological Association

About: American Sociological Association is a nonprofit organization based out in Washington D.C., District of Columbia, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Higher education & Curriculum. The organization has 54 authors who have published 72 publications receiving 1911 citations. The organization is also known as: asanet.org.

International Migration at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century: The Role of the State

Abstract: This note reviews recent theoretical and empirical work on the determinants and efficacy of state immigration policies to draw conclusions about the future direction of policy regimes throughout the globe and their likely effects. An age of increasingly restrictive immigration policies is emerging, but it is still unclear how effective these policies will be in controlling the volume and composition of international migration. States can be located along a continuum of efficacy with respect to the imposition of restrictive policies. Unfortunately virtually all research done to date has focused on the effectiveness of restrictive policies in major immigrant-receiving developed countries. More research needs to be done to determine just how effective restrictive immigration policies can be under varying degrees of state capacity.

Beyond the Binaries: Depolarizing the Categories of Sex, Sexuality, and Gender*

Abstract: Most sociological research designs assume that each person has one sex. one sexuality, and one gender, congruent with each other and fixed for life. Postmodern feminists and queer theorists have been interrogating bodies, desires, and genders, but sociology has not. Deconstructing sex, sexuality, and gender reveals many possible categories embedded in social experiences and social practices. As researchers, as theorists, and as activists, sociologists have to go beyond paying lip service to the diversity of bodies, sexualities, genders. The sociologist's task should be to deconstruct the conventional categories of sex, sexuality, and gender and build new complex, cross-cutting constructs into research designs. There are revolutionary possibilities inherent in rethinking the categories of gender, sexuality, and physiological sex. Sociological data that challenge conventional knowledge by reframing the questions could provide legitimacy for new ways of thinking. Data that undermine the supposed natural dichotomies on which the social orders of most modern societies are still based could radically alter political discourses that valorize biological causes, essential heterosexuality, and traditional gender roles in families and workplaces.

Integrating race, place and motive in social disorganization theory: lessons from a comparison of black and latino homicide types in two immigrant destination cities*

Abstract: In this paper, we examine and compare the impact of social disorganization, including recent immigration, and other predictors on community counts of black and Latino motive-specific homicides in Miami and San Diego. Homicides for 1985 to 1995 are disaggregated into escalation, intimate, robbery and drug-related motives. Negative binomial regression models with corrections for spatial autocorrelation demonstrate that there are similarities and differences in effects of social disorganization and other predictors by motive-specific outcomes, as well as for outcomes across ethnic groups within cities and within ethnic groups across cities. Recent immigration is negatively or not associated with most outcomes. Overall, the study shows the importance of disaggregating homicide data by race/ethnicity and motive and demonstrates that predictions based on existing theories are qualified on local conditions.

Media Hegemony: A Failure of Perspective

Abstract: Numerous studies of TV news have been published since Gans's (1972) call for more research on the mass media. A central issue underlying much of this research is control and dominance of the news process. This essay analyzes the logical and empirical adequacy of media hegemony as an explanation of ideological dominance. Analysis of recent research shows that some researchers have uncritically adapted the "dominant ideology thesis" of media hegemony to studies of TV news and have overlooked findings which challenge their claims about (1) the socialization and ideology of journalists, (2) whether news reports perpetuate the status quo, and (3) the nature and extent of international news coverage. Despite the shortcomings of the concept of media hegemony, efforts should continue to develop an empirically sound theoretical perspective for locating the news process in a broader societal context. David L. Altheide is Professor in the Center for the Study of Justice, Arizona State University, and Field Research Director, Center for Urban Studies. The author gratefully acknowledges the comments of John M. Johnson, Kurt Lang, and anonymous reviewers. Another version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco, September 1982. Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 48:476-490 ?) 1984 by the Trustees of Columbia University Published by Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc 0033-362X/84/0048-476/$2.50 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.117 on Sun, 23 Oct 2016 04:28:52 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms MEDIA HEGEMONY: A FAILURE OF PERSPECTIVE 477 systematically supported. Data will be presented to indicate that (1) journalists are not uniformly socialized into the dominant ideology, nor are most elite journalists supportive of conservative values and ideology; (2) journalistic reports do not routinely perpetuate the status quo, but have been agents of change in a number of instances; and (3) foreign affairs reporting on television is more extensive than has been assumed, and many of these reports are sympathetic with Third World movements as well as critical of the role the United States has played in these countries. Hegemony and Critical Theory As recently articulated by Antonio Gramsci (1971), media hegemony refers to the dominance of a certain way of life and thought and to the way in which that dominant concept of reality is diffused throughout public as 'well as private dimensions of social life. The contemporary definition of hegemony is conceptually rooted in the Marxist view of the economic foundations of a society as the most important shapers of culture, values, and ideology; the ruling classes who control the economic structures and institutions of society also control its political and primary ideological institutions (Marx and