Showing papers in "American Journal of Sociology in 1979"

Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure

Abstract: This essay proposes an emotion-management perspective as a lens through which to inspect the self, interaction, and structure. Emotion, it is argued, can be and ofter is subject to acts of management. The individual often works on inducing or inhibiting feelings so as to render them "appropriate" to a situation. The emotion-management perspective draws on an interactive account of emotion. It differs from the dramaturgical perspective on the one hand and the psychoanalytic perspective on the other. It allows us to inspect at closer range than either of those perspectives the relation among emotive experience, emotion management, feeling rules, and ideology. Feeling rules are seen as the side of ideology that deals with emotion and feeling. Emotion management is the type of work it takes to cope with feeling rules. Meaning-making jobs, more common in the middle class, put more premium on the individual's capacity to do emotion work. A reexamination of class differences in child rearing suggest that middle-...

The Community Question: The Intimate Networks of East Yorkers

Abstract: The Community Question has set the agenda for much or much of sociology. It is the question of how large-scale social systemic divisions of labor affect the organization and content of primary ties. Network analysis is proposed as a useful approach to the Community Question, because, by focusing on linkages, it avoids the a priori confinement of analysis to solidary groupings and territorial units. Three contentions about the Question are evaluated: arguments that Community is Lost, Saved or Liberted. Data are presented about the structure and use of the "intimate" networks of 845 adult residents of East York, Toronto. Intimate networks are found to be prevalent, composed of both kin and nonkin, nonlocal, asymmetric, and of sparse density. Help in dealing with both emergencies and everyday matters is available from almost all intimate networks, but from only a minority of intimate ties. The data provide broad support for the Liberated argument, in conjunction with some portions of the Saved argument.

Structural Position in the World System and Economic Growth, 1955-1970: A Multiple-Network Analysis of Transnational Interactions

Abstract: This paper addresses world-system/dependency theories of differential economic growth among nations. We grant that such perspectives have considerable analytic potential but have serious reservations concerning their current empirical status. Our croticisms focus particularly on the absence of evidence on the theoretically specified structural positions (core, semiperiphery, periphery) in the world system and the dynamic relations among them. After indicating why extant quantitative studies that claim to represent "position" are inadecuate, we propose that blockmodel analyses of social structure through multiple networks address world-system formulations far more appropriately. We present a blockmodel of the world system circa 1965 that is based on four types of international networks: trade flows, military interventions, diplomatic relations, and conjoint treaty memberships. While we invite replications with additional network data, this blockmodel provides strong evidence for a core-semiperiphery-periph...

Experiments on the Provision of Public Goods. I. Resources, Interest, Group Size, and the Free-Rider Problem

Abstract: For an experiment on the problem of collective action, randomly selected high school students were randomly assigned to groups which were confronted with an investment opportunity. Each subject could invest resources provided by the experimenter in either a private good, which returned a fixed amount of money to the individual per token invested, or a public good. The public good returned money to the group and, beyond a given provision point, returned much more money per token invested than did the private good. All money from the public good was divided according to a present formula. Thus, subjects could "free ride" on the public good, if other group members invested in it, by taking their share of it and keeping their own resources for themselves. Groups were randomly designated as either large or small, and unequal or equal in the distribution of interest and of resources within the group. Results indicate that the effects of free riding were much weaker than would be predicted from most economic the...

On Pierre Bourdieu

Abstract: The encyclopedic efforts of Pierre Bourdieu, the prolific directeur d'etudes at L'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, are beginning to reach readers in the Anglo-Saxon world. Two of Bourdieu's most important works-Outline of a Theory of Practice (hereafter, Outline) and Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (hereafter, Reproduction)-have recently been translated into English; an early work, The Algerians, was published in the 1960s; and a fourth volume, The Inheritors (Bourdieu 1979), is due out soon. Add to this the availability in translation of at least 15 of his articles as well as references to his writing in a growing number of British and American works, and it is clear that American sociologists now have access to a prodigious and promising theoretical and empirical enterprise. Bourdieu is best known in this country for his work, with Jean-Claude Passeron and others, on French education, particularly higher education, and its role in the reproduction of class relations. Their argument bears a strong, if superficial, resemblance to the one that Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis have advanced about education in the United States (Bowles 1971; Bowles and Gintis 1972-73, 1976). Bourdieu's writing on education, however, is but one thrust of a larger effort-beginning with his study of the transition to modernity of Algerian peasant communities in the 1950s (Bourdieu 1962)-to delineate the mechanisms of symbolic domination and control by which the existing social order is maintained in both preindustrial and modern social systems. He has further aimed to construct a generally applicable sociological practice which unmasks the legitimations, misrecognitions of power, and \"symbolic violence\" inherent, so he believes, in the functioning of any social system. In so doing, he has outlined an elegantly systematic, if not entirely satisfactory, revisionist approach to the

Emotion and Social Life: A Symbolic Interactionist Analysis

Abstract: This paper attempts to present a largely symbolic interactionist analysis of some aspects of emotion and, in doing so, to indicate the utility of the sociological study of emotion. I begin by examining, from a general sociological perspective, the socialization of effective experience and expression. Several major symbolic interactionist propositions are then used to analyze the emergent, constructed character of the actor's experience of emotion and the importance of both definitions and internal stimuli for the construction of feelings. Finally, the manner in which role-taking emotions (feelings that presuppose role taking) facilitate social control is treated, using symbolic interactionist tenets. I conclude by arguing for the necessity of sociological investigations of emotion for a full understanding of both emotion and social life.

Rethinking Subculture: An Interactionist Analysis

Abstract: Subculture, despite the term's wide usage in sociology, has not proved to be a very satisfactory explanatory concept. Several problems in previous subculture research are discussed: (1) the confusi...

Age and Scientific Performance

Abstract: The long-standing belief that age is negatively associated with scientific productivity and creativity is shown to be based upon incorrect analysis of data. Analysis of data from a cross-section of academic scientists in six different fields indicates that age has a slight curvilinear relationship with both quality and quantity of scientific output. These results are supported by an analysis of a cohort of mathematicians who received their Ph.D.'s between 1974 and 1950. There was no decline in the quality of work produced by these mathematicians as they progressed through their careers. Both the slight decrease in productivity over the age of 50 are explained by the operation of the scientific reward system. By encouraging those scientists who produce the most favorably received work and discouraging those who produce work that is not favorably received, the reward system works to reduce the number of scientists who are actively publishing. Those who continue to publish throughout their careers are a "res...

Work Experience and Occupational Value Socialization: A Longitudinal Study.

Abstract: This research examines the effects of work experience on occupational reward values, which are of central importance in occupational choice, career development, and subjective responses to work. Whereas it is often assumed that occupational values remain fixed throughout the work history, a confirmatory factor analysis of data obtained from male college graduates over a 10-year time span demostrates that work authonomy and income influence intrinsinc, people-oriented, and extrinsic values. Rewarding occupational experiences were found to reinforce the same values that constituted the basis of earlier work selection. The findings raise several issues for the study of social in equality.

Dynamic Analysis of Event Histories

Abstract: There is wide interest among sociologists in the study of change but little reflection of this interest in sociological research methods. In this paper we consider the advantages of and procedures of dynamic analysis of event-history data-data givin the number, timing, and sequence of changes in a categorical dependent variable. We argue for grounding this analysis in a continuous-time stochastic model. This permits the data to be fully utilized; it also allows a unified treatment of the various outcomes analyzed in the many approaches that use only part of the information contained in such data. We focus on the familiar continuos-time Markov model, summarize its properties, report its implications for various outcomes, describe extensions to deal with population heterogeneity and time dependence, and outline a maximum-likelihood procedure for estimating the extended model from event-history data. The discussion in illustrated with an empirical analysis of the effects of an income-maintenance experiment o...

Women and Work: The Psychological Effects of Occupational Conditions

Abstract: For employed women, job conditions that encourage self-direction are related to effective intellectual functioning and an open, flexible orientation to others, while those that constrain opportunities for selfdirection are related to ineffective intellectual functioning and a rigid social orientation. Moreover, several types of job pressures and uncertainties are related to less effective intellectual functioning, unfavorable evaluations of self, or a rigid social orientation. These relationships do not result from social selection, pay, status, or social circumstances and personal preferences, and they are of magnitudes similar to those for men. Causal analysis demonstrates that job conditions not only correlate with but actually affect psychological functioning. For women, as for men, occupational conditions have a decided psychological impact. Paid employment is a part of the lives of a large and ever-increasing proportion of women, yet we know little about how women's work conditions affect their psychological functioning and how women's psychological functioning in turn affects their conditions of work. The purpose of this study is to examine how day-to-day job experiences relate to women's intellectual functioning, self-conceptions, and social orientations. In examining these relationships, we deal with an issue central to the field of social structure and personality-whether the conditions of adult life affect psychological functioning, and if so, how. Our hypothesis is that women's job conditions are substantially related to their psychological functioning. In particular, we hypothesize that job conditions offering challenge and opportunity for self-direction will be related to favorable self-conceptions, flexible social orientations, and effective intellectual functioning, while job conditions subjecting women to pressure or uncertainty or constraining their opportunities for self-direction will be related to less favorable self-conceptions, more rigid social orientations, and

Suicide, motor vehicle fatalities, and the mass media: evidence toward a theory of suggestion.

Abstract: Modern sociology has paid too little attention to the concepts of imitation and suggestion. This report presents new findings indicating that these concepts have a powerful impact on social behavior. Presents evidence that automobile fatalities increase several days after a publicized suicide and relates these and related findings to sociological theory.

Deterrence, Poverty, and Type of Homicide

Abstract: The assumption that homicide is a unidimensional phenomenon has rarely been questioned in empirical research. Using newly available data, this analysis classifies homicide into two types, primary and nonprimary, based on the victim/offender relationship. Two models that have appeared in the literature are replicated, utilizing this classificatory scheme. State primary-homicide rates are found to be related to poverty and to the percentage of the population aged 20-34, while nonprimary homicide rates are significantly related only to the percentage of the state living in urban areas. Replication of the original models demonstrates that the failure to classify homicides in this manner results in the incorrect assessment of the relative size and importance of the various predictors of homicide included in these models.

Public Education as Nation-Building in America: Enrollments and Bureaucratization in the American States, 1870-1930.

Abstract: Current discussions of the effects of urbanization and industrialization on the bureaucratization of American public education in the later 19th century do not offer effective explanations of the expansion of the educational system in the first place. Enrollments were high much earlier than these explanations suggest and were probably higher in rural than in urban settings. We argue that the spread of public education, especially in the North and West, took place through a series of nation-building social movements having partly religious and partly political forms. We see these movements as reflecting the involvement and success of American society in the world exchange economy and the dominance of parallel religious ideologies. State-level data are used to show both the absence of positive effects of urban industrialism on enrollments and some suggestive effects of evangelical Protestantism and 19th-century Republicanism.

Organizational Career Mobility: Promotion Chances in a Corporation During Periods of Growth and Contraction

Abstract: This study analyzes the age distribution of upward mobility in a large corporation, examining changes in the age-promotion relationship for different levels in the organizational hierarchly, for different kinds of employess, and across time periods of increasing and creasing organizational growth. Analyzing the corporation's complete personnel records over three times periods, this paper test a precipitous-decline hypothesis derived from the organizational careers literature, an exponential-decline hypothesis derived from the Markov literature on career mobility, and an increase-decrease hipothesis derived from the economic literature on life-cycle earnings patterns. Analysis finds partial support for each hypothesis for different groups of employees. It also finds remarkable stability in these patterns across periods, particularly for the most and least favored groups; the changes which do occur tend to "spillover" to specific stadby age-education groups. The age-promotion curves and the spillover patter...

Multiplicative Models for the Analysis of Occupational Mobility Tables and Other Kinds of Cross-Classification Tables

Abstract: This note shows how some specific models proposed by Duncan (1979), Goodman (1972), Haberman (1974), and Simon (1974), which turn out to be useful for the analysis of occupational mobility tables and other kinds of cross-classification tables, are related to models obtained by applying the general formulations of multiplicative models in Goodman (1972), Darroch and Ratcliff (1972), Darroch and Ratcliff (1972), and Haberman (1974). It also shows how each model can be described in terms of its expected frequencies, or equivalently in terms of its pattern of oddsratios, or equivalently in terms of its pattern of odds. In so doing, it provides (a) further insight into the meaning of some of the specific models, (b) greater flexibility in the possible interpretations of a wide range of potentially useful specific models included within the general class of multiplicative models developed for the analysis of cross-classification tables, and (c) improved methods for estimating the expected frequencies under some...

How Destination Depends on Origin in the Occupational Mobility Table

Abstract: A reanalysis of the expanded version of the 1949 British cross-classification table of respondent's occupation by father's occupation features two models that emphasize the "achievement" rather than the "mobility" point of view hitherto taken in contingency-table analysis of such data. The new models are attractive in terms of mathematical parsimony, statistical goodness of fit, conceptual clarity, and suitability for application in comparative work. The favorable results are attributed partly to the fairly substantial degree of disaggregation of occupation categories. The models capture some of the flavor of the regression approach to mobility in that they show in straighforward manner how the destination distribution is shifted for each shift of one or more steps on the scale of occupational origins.

A Model and a Metric for the Analysis of the Intragenerational Status Attainment Process

Abstract: This paper proposes a theory of the status attainment process and specifies it in a mathematical model. The theory justifies both a transformation of the conventional status scores to a metric producing an exponential distribution of attainments and a transformation of educational attainments to a metric reflecting the competitive advantage conferred by education. The new metric produces theoretically more meaningful results than the old one when used together with the proposed model in an analysis of change in status. The metric also performs better statistically with the proposed model as well as with conventional models for the level of status. An empirical analysis demonstrates that career opportunities are less favorable for women than for men and for blacks than for whites.

Capital Punishment, Gun Ownership, and Homicide

Abstract: Several issues are examined: (1) the deterrent (or other preventive) effect of the death penalty, (2) the relationship between the level of gun ownership and the homicide rate, and (3) the incapacitative effect of imprisonment on the homicide rate. Findings consistently show a significant reciprocal relationship between gun ownership levels and the homicide rate, with crime pushing up gun ownership and gun ownership in turn pushing up the homicide rate. Greater certainty of arrest and conviction for homicide has a significant negative effect on the homicide rate, suggesting a deterrent effect of legal sanctions, while the homicide rate in turn has a negative effect on the certainty of punishment. This is consistent with a hypothesis of the strain on cirminal justice system resources resulting from increasing crime. Further, the hypothesis that the imprisonment o criminal offenders has an incapacitative effect on homicide rates independent of deterrence effects is supported. Contrary to the recent findings of Ehrlich (1975b), the analysis fails to detect consistent evidence of a deterrent effect of capital punishment on U.S. homicide rates for 1947-73. This may be because of the infrequency of executions during this period.

Black Ethnicity and the Persistence of Ethnogenesis

Abstract: Some scholars assume a radical discontinuity between the experiences of blacks in the United States and the experiences of immigrants ethnic groups in American cities. There is a tendency to see the situation of blacks in racial rather than in ethnic terms and to emphasize the conditions of racial oppresion and exploitation as exclusive sources of black sociocultural characteristics. This emphasis obscures the important role of migration, urbanization, and intergroup conflict in promoting a distinctive black ethnicity. Indeed, a review of the urban history of black populations in northern cities suggests that the phenomenon of black ethnogenesis was inspired by essentially the same structural conditions as the development of ethnic identities and communities among white ethnic populations in American cities.

Children's Experience of Marital Disruption

Abstract: This paper uses life-table procedures and data from the 1973 Family Growth Survey to ask three basic question: (1) What is the cumulative probabilty that by a given age a child will have experienced a single-parent family as a consequence of marital dusruption? (2) Given a marital disruption, what is the cumulative proportion of children either experiencing parental remarriage or reaching age 18 within a given number of years following disruption? (3) What is the average duration of experience in a single-parent family? Estimates based on the early 1970s suggest that about one-third of all children will spend some time in a single-parent family before age 16 as a consequence of marital disruption (children born between marriages are included in these estimates, but those born before their mother's first marriage are not). There are very large differences by race, education, and the age of the mother at the child's birth. These differences appear in the timing as well as in the prevalence of marital disrup...

Normative Expectations and the Emergence of Meaning as Solutions to Problems: Convergence of Structural and Interactionist Views.

Abstract: Structural and interactionist approaches to role theory are often considered fundamentally incompatible. This paper argues that the two are compatible and complementary. Structural role theory has come to regard inter-and intrarole conflict as the natural state of affairs; thus conformity to internalized norms has been undermined as an explanatory device and as the image of the actor's generic orientation to the normative order. In structural theory, systematic stability and patterned conduct are explained by structural mechanisms that ameliorate the adverse consequences of conflicting expectations. The question of how the actor copes with conflicting expectations is not addressed in middle-range structural theory, although it is implied as a conceptual problem. Interactionists, have addressed the negotiation of meaning in interaction as the actor's practical solution to the problems caused by conflicting social pressures. Negotiated meanings do not replace conflicting expectations, but coexist with them ...

The Utilitarians Revisited

Abstract: For generations sociologists have attacked utilitarian social theory as inadequate theoretically. At the same time, their presentist orientation toward sociology's past has prevented a direct examination of the utilitarians in their own right. This paper rejects that orientation and investigates the social theory of the major utilitarians. David Hume, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, and John Stuart Mill. No alleged characteristic of utilitarianism-from the atomistic, rationalistic model of social action to the failure to solve the problem of order-adduced in the traditional attack upon it is actually found in the work of the utilitarians. The paper then outlines the historical process whereby the prevailing mythology concerning utilitarianism developed. The hallmark of that process is not the cumulative development of social theories but the displacement, in changing cultural and social circumstances, of the concerns of utilitarian social theory-a displacement succesively evident in the work of Spencer, early...

Socioeconomic status and mental disorder: new evidence and a sociomedical formulation.

Abstract: Despite numerous studies which show that socioeconomic status and mental illness are inversely related, it is possible that this relationship exists for some disorders but not others. Study of approximately 10,000 first admissions to state hospitals in one state covering the period 1956-65 shows an inverse relationship only for organic and schizophrenic disorders. In light of the etiological and predisposing factors that are involved in these two disorders, physical and medical factors appear to be more important than psychological (e.g., stress) factors in mediating the relationship with socioeconomic status. It is concluded, therefore, that a sociomedical formulation (in contrast to a sociopsychiatric formulation) is a plausible interpretation of the relationship between socioeconomic status and mental disorder.

The Idea of "Advancement" in Theories of Social Evolution and Development

Abstract: Implicit in most theories of social evolution, modernization, or development is the idea that systematic rank ordering of societies, on some dimension of problem-solving capacity, is feasible. This paper argues that, is our present of foreseeable state of knowledge, such rank orderings are not empirically meaningful. When the comparison is based on efficiency (the ability to solve current problems) the insuperable difficulty is similar to that encountered in what economists call "interpersonal comparison of utility." When the criterion is flexibility in dealing with possible future problems, uncertainty of prediction in system environments is a crucial obstacle which, even in principle, cannot be overcome. Evidence is cited from nonlinear models in mathematical ecology to support this argument. It is claimed that this critique is related to but independent of previous arguments against developmental theories.

Minority-group status and the fertility of black Americans, 1970: a new look.

Abstract: The minority-status theory of Goldscheider and Uhlenberg predicts that a significant interactive relaitonship among race, education, and fertility arises partially from differences in black and white mean fertility among the highly educated. Using black and white women surveyed by the 1970 National Fertility Study, I completely decomposed the variance in fertility jointly explained by race and education to examine the from of the interactive relationship among the three variables. No support for the minority-status theory was found. The implications for future research are explored.

A Social Behaviorist Interpretation of the Meadian "I"'

Abstract: The concept "I" in George Herbert Mead's theory of social self has been an object of considerable discussion and dispute. This paper argues that the two most common interpretations of the Meadian "I" misconstrue Mead's intent by failing to place the concept within the context of Mead's philosophy of social behaviorism. Consequently, these interpreters have criticized positions that are attributed to Mead but which he did not propose. The social behaviorist interpretation of the "I" is more consistent with the textual evidence. By extending and slightly reformulating Mead's theory, the latter part of the paper aims to show that the social behaviorist interpretation is also more theoretically fertile and methodologically applicable. Communication is essential for establishing and maintaining any form of social organization, but it is equally true that the communicative act itself is supported by an even more fundamental level of social organization. Garfinkel (1967) and other ethnomethodologists justifiably charge that this level is frequently neglected in sociological inquiries. As a result, these inquiries are weakened theoretically and methodologically by taking for granted what should be treated as problematic in its own right. We begin to appreciate this problem when we ask such basic questions as, How is symbolic communication possible? or, stated slightly differently, What are the fundamental mechanisms of signification? The social behaviorism of George H. Mead provides valuable insights regarding these questions by recognizing that the communicative act cannot be analyzed adequately at the level of the individual organism, inasmuch as overt verbal behavior by one organism affects both speaker and hearer in qualitatively similar ways. Accordingly, the generalized effect of a significant symbol is not subjective but intersubjective; however, this intersubjectivity is not usually recognizable if we attend merely to the overt

Social Origins, Parental Values, and the Transmission of Inequality

Abstract: Consensus exist among social scientists on the importance of the family of oring for a multitude of individual outcomes, but a complete understanding of the mechanisms producing these parental-filial linkages is lacking. This paper explores the interpretation of the connection between parental socioeconomic origins and adolescent schooling experiences using Melvin Kohn's concept of parental self-direction/conformity values. Using data from public school students in Louisville, Kentucky, and their mothers, we examine the role of maternal self-direction/conformity values in transmiting the effects of parental social position on a variety of schooling variables.Our results replicate the persistent relationship between father's occupational position and parental values (measured here as maternal values), and they indicate limited support for the sensitivity of adolescent school experiences to parental values for white (but not black) students.

Education and Occupational Mobility: A Comparison of Polish and American Men.

Abstract: We use recent survey data to compare intergenerational mobility of Polish and American men. Father-to-son occupational mobility is considerably lower in Poland than in the United States, mainly because Poland has a large, traditional agricultural sector with high occupational inheritance. Furthermore, education, which is substantially affected by father's occupation in both countries, has a much larger effect on occupational attainment in Poland. This striking difference is not so surprising when one considers that the Polish educational system has stronger allocative powers, is more highly selective, and is differentiated laterally (into types) as well as vertically (into levels). When farmer's sons are excluded, the overall rate of mobility in Poland is similar to that in the United States. However, within the urban sector the direct effect of father's occupation on son's occupation almost disappears, while educational effects remain strong. So Polish urban mobility is almost completely filtered by the ...

Darwinism and the Behavioral Theory of Sociocultural Evolution: An Analysis'

Abstract: This paper challenges the widely held view that the social sciences are theoretically impoverished disciplines which have failed to develop anything comparable to the paradigms used in the natural sciences. More precisely, the aim is to demonstrate that the synthesis of an abstract, Darwinian model of systematic adaptation and the bahavioral principles of social learning produces a theory of sociocultural evolution having the logical structure and explanatory power of the theory of natural selection presented in On the Origin of Species.