Showing papers in "Review of Sociology in 2006"
TL;DR: Cumulative advantage is a general mechanism for inequality across any temporal process (e.g., life course, family generations) in which a favorable relative position becomes a resource that produces further relative gains as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Although originally developed by R.K. Merton to explain advancement in scientific careers, cumulative advantage is a general mechanism for inequality across any temporal process (e.g., life course, family generations) in which a favorable relative position becomes a resource that produces further relative gains. This review shows that the term cumulative advantage has developed multiple meanings in the sociological literature. We distinguish between these alternative forms, discuss mechanisms that have been proposed in the literature that may produce cumulative advantage, and review the empirical literature in the areas of education, careers, and related life course processes.
1,401 citations
TL;DR: A comparison of these distinct approaches allows us to explain the process, both in implicit and explicit ways at different levels of analysis, through which a social object is construed as legitimate as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: To gain an in-depth understanding of legitimacy as a general social process, we review contemporary approaches to legitimacy within two areas of sociology: social psychology and organizations. A comparison of these distinct approaches allows us to explain the process, both in implicit and explicit ways at different levels of analysis, through which a social object is construed as legitimate. This comparison also suggests four stages in the process by which new social objects, both individual (worthy/unworthy individuals) and collective (organizational forms), gain legitimation: innovation, local validation, diffusion, and general validation. We then show how legitimation of the status quo—that is, the acceptance of widespread consensual schemas/beliefs in the larger society—often fosters the stability of nonoptimal actions and practices that are created as a result of these new individual and collective social objects. Finally, we discuss how consensual beliefs such as status beliefs and cultural capital ...
710 citations
TL;DR: The authors reviewed and criticised recent work on prejudice, discrimination, and racism, with an emphasis on evidence of continuing discrimination in the United States and efforts to understand its basis in prejudice, and argued that research on implicit prejudice, largely developed by psychologists, provides an important new understanding of the basis of discrimination and should be incorporated in sociological accounts.
Abstract: This chapter reviews and critiques recent work on prejudice, discrimination, and racism, with an emphasis on evidence of continuing discrimination in the United States and efforts to understand its basis in prejudice. Three lines of research are the primary subject of the review: recent work on the measurement of discrimination, especially audit methods; theories of new prejudice and new racism following the Civil Rights movement; and research on implicit prejudicial attitudes. The most sophisticated new work on prejudice and discrimination is characterized by a multidimensional understanding of prejudice and/or the use of experimental methods. This review argues that research on implicit prejudice, largely developed by psychologists, provides an important new understanding of the basis of discrimination and should be incorporated in sociological accounts.
531 citations
TL;DR: A review of the empirical literature on social capital, paying close attention to the statistical and theoretical assumptions involved, can be found in this paper, showing that there is evidence that genuine progress has been made in estimating the effect of social capital.
Abstract: Although there is a large literature on social capital, empirical estimates of the effect of social capital may be biased because of social homophily, the tendency of similar people to become friends with each other. Despite the methodological difficulties, a recent literature has emerged across several different disciplines that tries to estimate the causal effect of social capital. This paper reviews this recent empirical literature on social capital, paying close attention to the statistical and theoretical assumptions involved. Overall, there is evidence that genuine progress has been made in estimating the effect of social capital. The reviewed articles should provide useful examples for future research.
453 citations
TL;DR: In the United States, parents prefer a child of each gender, and on many dimensions parents tend to treat sons and daughters similarly as mentioned in this paper, however, fathers' investments appear to be somewhat higher in families with sons.
Abstract: In the United States, parents prefer a child of each gender, and on many dimensions parents tend to treat sons and daughters similarly. However, fathers' investments appear to be somewhat higher in families with sons. Fathers spend more time with sons than with daughters. Fathers more often marry and stay married and mothers report more marital happiness in families with sons—although associations are weakening and differentials are not large. Divorced fathers more often have custody of sons than of daughters. Daughters do more housework than sons, mirroring the gendered division of labor in adulthood. Parental support of educational activities varies, with some parental behaviors greater for sons but others higher for daughters. Whether parents encourage gender differences or whether children's gender-differentiated behaviors elicit differential parental treatment cannot be easily determined with studies to date, most of which are cross-sectional or limited in other ways that hamper conclusions about cau...
378 citations
TL;DR: Several general theoretical approaches to understand the dynamics of human emotions have emerged in sociology: dramaturgical theories, symbolic interactionist theories, interaction ritual theories, power and status theories, and exchange theories as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Over the past three decades, five general theoretical approaches to understanding the dynamics of human emotions have emerged in sociology: dramaturgical theories, symbolic interactionist theories, interaction ritual theories, power and status theories, and exchange theories. We review each of these approaches. Despite the progress made by these theories, several issues remain unresolved: the nature of emotions, feeling, and affect; the degree to which emotions are biologically based or socially constructed; the gap between social psychological theories on emotions and macrostructural theorizing; and the relatively narrow range of emotions theorized, coupled with an equally narrow focus on the structural and cultural conditions producing these emotions.
303 citations
TL;DR: This review considers literature dealing with social, moral, and technical dilemmas that physicians and patients face in primary care and the resources that they deploy in solving them and how approaches to the medical interview developing from these initiatives have a primary focus on observable features of doctor-patient interaction.
Abstract: Working within the functionalist perspective that he did so much to develop, Parsons (1951) conceptualized the physician-patient relationship according to a normative framework defined by the pattern variable scheme. As Parsons clearly recognized, this normative conceptualization was one that empirical reality at best only approximates. In the 1970s, two major studies established doctor-patient interaction as a viable research domain. In the present review, we consider approaches to the medical interview developing from these initiatives and that have a primary focus on observable features of doctor-patient interaction. Within this orientation, we consider literature dealing with social, moral, and technical dilemmas that physicians and patients face in primary care and the resources that they deploy in solving them. This literature embodies a steady evolution away from a doctor-centered emphasis toward a more balanced focus on the conduct of doctors and patients together.
282 citations
TL;DR: This article reviewed research on fundamentalist movements to learn what religious fundamentalisms are, if and why they appear to be resurging, their characteristics, their possible links to violence, and their relation to modernity.
Abstract: Religious fundamentalism has risen to worldwide prominence since the 1970s. We review research on fundamentalist movements to learn what religious fundamentalisms are, if and why they appear to be resurging, their characteristics, their possible links to violence, and their relation to modernity. Surveying work over the past two decades, we find both substantial progress in sociological research on such movements and major holes in conceptualizing and understanding religious fundamentalism. We consider these weaknesses and suggest where research might next be directed.
206 citations
TL;DR: In this article, community can be conceptualized as sets of relations between organizational forms or as places where organizations are located in resource space or in geography, and such relationships channel flows of resources, opportunities are granted or withheld from social actors depending in part on their organization connections.
Abstract: Research on organizations is increasingly informed by analysis of community context. Community can be conceptualized as sets of relations between organizational forms or as places where organizations are located in resource space or in geography. In both modes, organizations operate interdependently with social institutions and with other units of social structure. Because such relationships channel flows of resources, opportunities are granted or withheld from social actors depending in part on their organization connections. Such considerations encourage analyses of organizations in ways that spread the relevance of results beyond organizationally defined research problem areas.
200 citations
[...]
TL;DR: In this paper, a theory of the global penetration of law will require at least four elements (actors, mechanisms, power, and structures and arenas) and a comparison of four approaches to globalization and law.
Abstract: Globalization of law may be defined as the worldwide progression of transnational legal structures and discourses along the dimensions of extensity, intensity, velocity, and impact. We propose that a theory of the global penetration of law will require at least four elements—actors, mechanisms, power, and structures and arenas. A comparison of four approaches to globalization and law—world polity, world systems, postcolonial globalism, and law and economic development—indicates considerable variation in perceived outcomes and gaps in explanation, but with possible complementarities in both outcomes and explanatory factors. Research demonstrates that globalization is variably contested in several domains of research on law: (a) the construction and regulation of global markets, (b) crimes against humanity and genocide, (c) the diffusion of political liberalism and constitutionalism, and (d) the institutionalization of women's rights. We propose that the farther globalizing legal norms and practices are loc...
180 citations
TL;DR: This work reviews the research on low fertility through the predominant frameworks and theories used to explain it and focuses on the ability of theory to situate previous and future findings and concludes with directions for furthur research.
Abstract: In the past few decades, demographic concerns have shifted from rapid population growth fueled by high fertility to concerns of population decline produced by very low, sub-replacement fertility levels. Once considered a problem unique to Europe or developed nations, concerns now center on the global spread of low fertility. Nearly half of the world's population now lives in countries with fertility at or below replacement levels. Further, by the mid-twenty-first century three of four countries now described as developing are projected to reach or slip below replacement fertility. We review the research on low fertility through the predominant frameworks and theories used to explain it. These explanations range from decomposition and proximate determinant frameworks to grand theories on the fundamental causes underlying the pervasiveness and spread of low fertility. We focus on the ability of theory to situate previous and future findings and conclude with directions for furthur research.
TL;DR: A review of organizational restructuring as a conceptual tool and how it has been used to alter societal definitions and interpretations of employment can be found in this article, where the main focus is a consideration of the causes and consequences of restructuring in its more recent rhetorical and structural versions.
Abstract: In this review, we examine the idea of organizational restructuring as a conceptual tool and how it has been used to alter societal definitions and interpretations of employment. Although use of the term restructuring is relatively recent, the broad issue of changing employment conditions with which it is concerned has a long history, going back to the industrial revolution. Our main focus is a consideration of the causes and consequences of restructuring, in its more recent rhetorical and structural versions. In their pursuit of greater efficiencies, organizations adapt to the demands of increasingly global markets, and these adaptations are crucial components of what is popularly referred to as the new economy. Such developments are applauded in most economic theory, but sociologists examine both sides of their social impact, including the adverse effects and implications of such externalities as the social disruptions caused by downsizing and other organizational and corporate changes. These studies pr...
TL;DR: This paper examined theoretical and empirical work on social cleavages in East European, post-communist societies and concluded that the emergence of social bases to politics that are like those in the West and that help shape variations in patterns of party competition in these societies.
Abstract: To what extent are the social bases of political divisions in former communist societies consistent with those observed in Western democracies? This review critically examines theoretical and empirical work on social cleavages in East European, post-communist societies. It considers the initial wave of hypotheses concerning the structuring of party support in the region and examines empirical evidence on the patterning of the social bases of political preferences that have accrued subsequently, as well as the somewhat sparser attempts at explaining the processes through which these patterns emerge and change. It points to the omissions and weaknesses of the analyses so far conducted and concludes that the post-communist era has seen the emergence of social bases to politics that are like those in the West and that help shape variations in patterns of party competition in these societies.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors highlight the importance of qualitative research embedded in large-scale quantitative studies of poverty and suggest new directions for research that take into account the changing contours of poverty, including the increasing diversity of poor neighborhoods (reflecting the in-migration of the foreign born) and the growth of poverty in the older suburbs surrounding the city centers.
Abstract: Focusing on the past decade, this review considers advances in the qualitative study of working poverty, welfare reform, patterns of family formation, neighborhood effects, class-based patterns of childhood socialization, and the growing European literature on social exclusion. We highlight the increasing importance of qualitative research embedded in large-scale quantitative studies of poverty. Within each of these areas, we suggest new directions for research that take into account the changing contours of poverty, including the increasing diversity of poor neighborhoods (reflecting the in-migration of the foreign born) and the growth of poverty in the older suburbs surrounding the city centers. The reintroduction of the language of class has been a hallmark of the past decade, drawing it closer to some of the original concerns of sociologists in the 1940s, contrasted with a nearly universal emphasis on race and ethnicity characteristic of more recent decades.
TL;DR: Sociology can be an important disciplinary bridge between the study of what demographers call forced migration and mortality and what legal sociologists and criminologists understand as war crimes.
Abstract: Sociology can be an important disciplinary bridge between the study of what demographers call forced migration and mortality and what legal sociologists and criminologists understand as war crimes. The challenge is to develop a critically informed sociological synthesis that joins our understanding of the frequently politicized health and violence dimensions of what are also diplomatically called “complex” humanitarian emergencies. The frequency of these emergencies is growing, and there is an increasing amount of data collected by governmental and nongovernmental organizations exposing large-scale violations of human rights and war crimes. Yet analyses of these data are often inadequate. Although the humanitarian emergency in Kosovo marked a high point in collaborative human rights research, the circumstances that allowed this collaboration are probably atypical. We consider how, in increasingly challenging circumstances such as the Darfur region of Sudan, population health and legal and criminological s...
TL;DR: The authors argue that the most significant and influential research on television over the past five decades positions the medium as a key site for addressing the complex interrelationship between culture and institutional/organizational power.
Abstract: We argue that the most significant and influential research on television over the past five decades positions the medium as a key site for addressing the complex interrelationship between culture and institutional/organizational power. Granting that such work is theoretically and methodologically diverse, we employ an organizational frame that groups political-economic approaches on the one hand and cultural approaches on the other. Political-economic approaches largely attend to issues of power at a macro level, focusing on how ownership and control of television along with the organization of television production practices shape and influence content; cultural approaches focus more on the expressive and symbolic dimensions of television programming and reception. At the same time, contemporary changes in the medium threaten to make past research on television appear quaint and anachronistic. The industry's transformation of television into continually emerging sets of multifaceted digital-interactive ...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that law and courts are most absent or play negative roles in studies of the growth of the national administrative welfare state and highlight new studies in this area that show the American state as a legal state and surveys growing numbers of historical institutionalist and APD studies of state and economic and social regulation.
Abstract: Although classical theories of the state and key texts of historical institutionalism and American political development (APD) defined the American state as a fundamentally legal entity, contemporary studies of the American state show a range of roles for law and courts, from no role at all, to a constraint or obstacle, to a positive force for state development. This review maps these varying roles, showing that law and courts are most absent or play negative roles in studies of the growth of the national administrative welfare state. It highlights new studies in this area that show the American state as a legal state and surveys growing numbers of historical institutionalist and APD studies of the state and economic and social regulation, where law and courts are more prominent. It points to the important but mostly neglected subjects of criminal and tort law as areas for future study that unite law and the state. Finally, it concludes by showing how concepts from the sociology of law—legal mobilization,...
TL;DR: The authors discuss several new research programs that have begun to advance scholarly understanding of political linkages and discuss the potential for advancing empirical democratic theory and the study of linkages between voting behavior and other political processes.
Abstract: Elections matter for democratic polities, creating linkages between voters, elected officials, and policymaking. These linkages have often been challenging to study empirically owing to the limited availability of suitable data with which to link individual-level voting to aggregate-level policymaking, and also to enduring controversies in the study of mass political behavior. I discuss several new research programs that have begun to advance scholarly understanding of these political linkages. Underlying this work is progress in understanding the microfoundations of voting behavior, coupled with new analytical models of aggregate preferences. Following a discussion of these issues, I consider several innovative strains of research on opinion-policy linkages. This scholarship has significant potential for advancing empirical democratic theory and the study of linkages between voting behavior and other political processes.
TL;DR: In this paper, the impact of the family institution on the performance of the most important task of youth socialization leading to cases of what have been described as child abuse, urban violence, working children and, even, sexually deteriorating/ transmitted infections as a result of irresponsible sexual behavior among the youth.
Abstract: Since the incorporation of the Nigerian economy into the World Capitalist System, the indigenous social structure was fundamentally restructured. This restructuring was (and is still) affecting the family institution in its performance of the most important task of youth socialization leading to cases of what have been described as child abuse, urban violence, working children and, even, sexually deteriorating/ transmitted infections as a result of irresponsible sexual behavior among the youth. If the situation persists, what are the implications for the future of the individual youth and the family? How can the transition being experienced by the family be controlled to positively influence the future of the youth and, by implication, the society as a whole? This paper attempts to provide answers to these questions.
[...]
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the effect of economic structural changes on the spatial location of the Roma population in the Hungarian microregion of Szegedy, and argued that socio-economic transformation created such changes in spatial structure, which generated a fundamentally new pattern of spatial segregation.
Abstract: The object of my paper is an area with small villages, largely over-represented by Roma population. In the middle of the 1980s there were one or two small villages becoming ghettos, at present 17 ethnically segregated settlements can be found in the micro-region besides dozens of other villages approaching towards the state of ethnic segregation. As a result of massive unemployment and the demographic changes brought about by the exchange of population, not only more and more villages have become ghettos in the area, but the structure of local society has also changed. In each settlement either the majority of the inhabitants or, in more serious cases, the whole village community is excluded from the labour force market as well as from the education system, which could offer them social mobility. This article intends to present to what extent the new poverty formed under the effect of the economic structural shift after the political transition in 1990 changed the spatial location of the Roma population, which is otherwise strongly over-represented among poor people. I investigate ethnical segregation not in itself, but with regard to the determinant social changes, primarily the shift in the economic structure and the accompanying unequal spatial distribution. I am going to argue that socio-economic transformation created such changes in spatial structure, which generated a fundamentally new pattern of spatial segregation: the regional ghetto. The relevance of the study is reinforced by the fact that nowadays researchers belonging to various workshops of social sciences have also called attention to a similar phenomenon: they report on the unequal spatial representation of the Roma population and the regional processes of ghetto-formation (Kocsis and Kovacs 1999: 19), the increase of seclusion ratio and the changes in the forms of segregation (Janky and Kemeny 2004b: 100). These studies describe the various types of the segregated areas (Bihari and Kovacs 2004: 21), and urge the rehabilitation of those ghettoised areas where the disadvantagon population is concentrated (Ladanyi 2004). In the 1990s in the Hungarian society a new social group emerged, whose members can be characterised with low qualifications and transitional or permanent exclusion from the labour market. In this group, where Roma people are over-represented, people are exluded from the majority of the society; they do not have the least opportunity to have regular income, adequate housing conditions, social insurance,
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors introduce a global perspective on national minorities, specifically on Hungarians in Central Europe, where, instead of concentrating on the respective countries separately, it adopts a comparative approach.
Abstract: The aim of this study is to draw attention to national minorities as a group distinct from immigrants. Additionally, it attempts to introduce a global perspective on national minorities, specifically on Hungarians in Central Europe, where, instead of concentrating on the respective countries separately, it adopts a comparative approach. As there are no specific theories addressing the issue of national minorities from the educational point of view, immigrant theories might be a useful starting point. For example, Ogbu's categorization of minorities on the basis of voluntariness (free will) allows us to distinguish between immigrants and national minorities as two distinct categories. The applicability of Ogbu's theory on national minorities gives us a good opportunity to test the utility of his thesis in European context. Using empirical evidence from a nationally representative survey carried out in the Carpathian Basin I find little support for Ogbu's thesis. According to the data, there is a high discr...
TL;DR: The authors draw on a professional life history to suggest how sociological knowledge is generated by encounters with changing research opportunities, here called targets of opportunity, and offer critical reflections on recurrent issues and chronic controversies in American sociology.
Abstract: In this essay, I draw on a professional life history to suggest how sociological knowledge is generated by encounters with changing research opportunities, here called targets of opportunity. In my case, a study of rural communities led to unanticipated conclusions concerning buffering mechanisms that protected authorities by absorbing dissatisfactions and rebellions. Wartime research in a military setting identified sources of group solidarity and effective performance under stress. Major societal changes in racial/ethnic relations provided opportunities to develop new concepts and empirical findings. Synoptic studies of post–World War II American society led to extensive research on values and institutions. These macrosociological analyses of ethnicity and social systems, in turn, led me to a new sociology of war and interstate relations. I also offer here some critical reflections on recurrent issues and chronic controversies in American sociology. Final sections of the review deal with the continuing ...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present the findings of a qualitative research project which aimed to map out the political evaluations and the social effects of the changing concept of family and the changing forms of family life.
Abstract: This article presents the findings of a qualitative research project which aimed to map out the political evaluations and the social effects of the changing concept of family and the changing forms of family life. By interviewing political and economic decision-makers we intended to highlight the goals and the motives of the differenct family policy approaches, the characteristic features of the family concepts reflected by the policy-makers' decisions, as well as the relationship between state family policies and labor market policies on the one hand, and equal treatment expectations concerning both genders, on the other. On the basis of interviews conducted with ordinary people we examined how much people's lives are practically infuenced by the family policy measures introduced by the political and the economic decision makers. According to our findings the two different categories of respondents saw specific family policy issues in different ways - however, their interpretations of family policy as a whole were rather convergent. The importance of providing equality of opportunity for men and women, increasing the female employment rate, acknowledging the plurality of family lifestyles, reconciling work and family life - being European expectations as well as conditions of a worthy life - seemed to be overshadowed by the demographic issues of fertility and procreation.
TL;DR: Sorokin's Social and Cultural Mobility by Pitirim Sorokin was published in 1927 as mentioned in this paper, which gave in many respects a new direction to scientific thinking about social structure and gave a new paradigm was then born: the idea of equality that curtailed performance and effectively made progress impossible was replaced by the notion of equality of opportunity.
Abstract: Almost eighty years have passed since the book Social and Cultural Mobility by Pitirim Sorokin was published in 1927. It gave in many respects a new direction to scientific thinking about social structure. The central thesis of the work was that a society is primarily characterised not by the extent of social inequality or by the distribution of social positions, but by a measure of how open it is, what the chances for different people are of filling any position regardless of their origin. Although people around the world continued to initiate political movements, fight revolutions and even kill under the banner of equality for a further fifty years, a new paradigm was then born: the idea of equality that curtailed performance and effectively made progress impossible was replaced by the notion of equality of opportunity.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present an overview and a coherent theoretical framework of the existing literature explaining how people select partners and the special differences among men and women, and what is the difference in the case of dating and marital relationships.
Abstract: In this paper I attempt to present an overview and a coherent theoretical framework of the existing literature explaining how people select partners. Of course, the answer depends on what kind of partner is considered. Is it marital spouse? Cohabiting partner? Dating partner? Friend? The main focus of this study is on marital and dating partner selection. However, many of the theories explain the selection of friends as well; therefore this question will also be touched upon in the overview at some point. After making an overview and a general theoretical framework, the special differences will be considered. These are the questions of how partner selection is different among men and women, and what is the difference in the case of dating and marital relationships? Originally, this summary of literature was prepared for my research about on-line dating as a theoretical framework. When I studied how people select partners on-line, first I had to know, how they do it in the “general” case. Having made this overview, I have seen that it may be interesting for other researchers, especially for those who just begin to approach this topic. Additionally, creating a systematic description could be interesting, since the theories considered seem to have some imperfections: it is not clear, how they work together, and in what cases are they relevant? Moreover, partner selection is the subject of more disciplines, which reflect the results of each other to a surprisingly limited extent. Therefore, one aim of the study is to include the social psychological results beside the sociological theories. Finally, although considerable amount of research has been done on this subject, there are till many challenging questions, which are open to future research.
TL;DR: It is found that social service providers' preferences are not evident for GPs; therefore their willingness to signal depends on their opportunity of obtaining information.
Abstract: Public health and social welfare subsystems are principally linked together by mutual interest in the basic care of elderly people. General practitioner (GP) services are parts of the social signaling system that promotes revealing unprovided needs. On the other hand, taking indigents into social care would make considerably easier the work of GPs. As a consequence, GPs' signaling should be a general practice everywhere. But social specialists experience the contrary. In order to explain the difference between the unity of interest in principle, and weak collaboration in reality, a theoretical model was elaborated and tested empirically. We have found that social service providers' preferences are not evident for GPs; therefore their willingness to signal depends on their opportunity of obtaining information.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors introduced a simulation, which was developed by Michael Krassa, to model the opinion contagion and applied it to two cases, the parliamentary elections of 2002 and the EU-parliamentary elections of 2004 in Hungary.
Abstract: The paper introduces a simulation, which was developed by Michael Krassa to model the opinion contagion. Krassa developed his model by using the theory of the spiral of silence that says that the perception of the public opinion influences the opinion assertion of the people and the threshold models that show how much support one person needs for the public assertion of his opinion. With the help of these relationships Krassa integrated the social networks in his model. We applied Krassa's mathematical model to two cases, the parliamentary elections of 2002 and the EU-parliamentary elections of 2004 in Hungary. We used hypothetical thresholds to examine the data because the actual threshold values are not known. The results of the simulation show that it can happen that we measure the minority opinion to be higher than the real distribution of the opinions as a consequence of the different distribution of the threshold values of the opinion assertion. This can be one explanation of the wrong electoral for...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the patterns of organization and communication in the urban space formed by street fashion in Tokyo, and apply a dramaturgical approach to examine the center of post-1980s' fashion.
Abstract: From the mid 1990s, a new form of fashion has occupied part of the urban space of Japan: “street fashion”. What are the patterns of organization and communication in the urban space formed by “street fashion”? This paper attempts to examine “Ura-Harajuku”, the center of post 1980s' fashion in Tokyo, applying a dramaturgical approach. After that, the range of the approach itself and its limits are considered.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined how the Hungarian media reacted to the announcement made at Christmas in 2003 in the radio channel called "Radio Tilos" where one of participant declared that he would liquidate all Christians.
Abstract: The logistical function has been known and used by scientist more than hundred years for mathematical description of progresses. Different diffusion processes, such as the spread of contagious diseases or innovations show logistical growth as well. On basis of these, we targeted to reveal the signs of logistical growth on some specific area of the daily newspapers. For this purpose first we have chosen the recently most spectacular and well-defined public discussions in Hungary. We examined how the press reacted to the announcement made at Christmas in 2003 in the radio channel called “Radio Tilos”, where one of participant declared that he “would liquidate all Christians”. The evolution in time of the number of articles published reminds us strongly of to typical S curve of the logistic growth. It turned out that publishing occurred in several waves, mainly in three well-differentiated categories. We try to apply the logistic function on these categories. By using the logistic fit we could measure the st...