Showing papers on "Contemporary society published in 1993"

Crime and the American Dream

Abstract: The basic idea behind this book is that the American dream TTitselfTT and the normal social conditions engendered by it are deeply implicated in the problem of crime (e.g., our cultural emphasis on achievement which promotes productivity and innovation, also generates pressures to succeed at any cost). In looking at the American dream, Messner and Rosenfeld examine interconnections between culture and institutional structure in contemporary American society and explore the implications of these interconnections for levels of crime.This critical examination challenges students to question and critically analyze broadly supported cultural goals and social organization. The book's tightly crafted theoretical perspective also helps students see the application of theory to real world problems.

Class and Stratification

Abstract: Social classes are groups of people sharing a broadly similar market, or economic, situation, Class is one of the most fundamental concepts used in sociology to explain differing life chances. The idea had its origins in the classical sociology of Marx and Weber, examined in Chapter 3, and continues to be particularly relevant to areas of research considered later in the book, such as education, work and organizations, crime and deviance and health. This chapter aims to explain theories of class, the major strategies for measuring class inequalities and the debates surrounding the relevance of class in contemporary societies. It should provide understanding of: Marxian and Weberian theories of class and their legacy in modern sociology How sociologists go about measuring class inequalities and criticisms of these methodologies Changes in the class processes of modern societies Some of the major issues surrounding the ‘end of class’ debate Changing patterns of inequality in contemporary societies

Sport in contemporary society : an anthology

Abstract: This text has been renowned and widely used in courses for its accessible articles by scholars and journalists about many controversial dimensions of sport, including overzealous competition, inequalities of gender and race, the role of the media, and the influence of money in both professional and school athletics. Nearly half the articles presented here are new to this edition, reflecting the latest trends and analysis. The seventh edition is essential reading in courses on sociology of sport and on the foundations of physical education.

Definitions of Cult: From Sociological-Technical to Popular-Negative

Abstract: This chapter examines the theoretical and historical development of the term "cult," from its inception in the work of Troeltsch to more modern delineations of the term in the work of researchers studying new religious groups. It discusses the usurpation of the term by popular usage associated with strong negative connotations, along with efforts by a few contemporary scholars to salvage the term by redefining it in ways which attempt to combine traditional and popular meanings. The chapter deals with suggestions that scholars should avoid the term and that it should not be allowed to be used in legal proceedings because of its confused and negatively connoted meaning in contemporary society. Aside from the obvious negative stereotype offered by the use of such language, there are other problems with the delineation. There is little in the definition except for the "new and unfamiliar in the United States" which resembles the traditional sociological definition of the term.

Organization Theory and Consumption in a Post-Modern Era:

Abstract: In recent years, social theory has become increasingly concerned with consump tion and the changing nature of consumer society. By contrast, students of organizations have given only limited attention to the implications of consump tion and consumerism for the analysis of their subject matter. In the light of this, the paper considers the contribution that the sociology of organizations can and should make to discussions of consumption and associated debates concerning contemporary consumer society. Our argument is that since in contemporary societies, consumption is achieved through the mediation of organizations it fol lows that an adequate study of consumption can only be developed in conjunction with the sociology of organizations. However, it is also the case that the analysis of organizations must change if it is to take the issue of consumption seriously. By placing consumption more centrally in our analysis, the study of organizations is, in our view, forced to address current theoretical and empi...

Pluralisms And Horizons: An Essay In Christian Public Philosophy

Abstract: The authors say that it is not necessary for Christians to view pluralism in purely negative terms. By seriously wrestling with the types of pluralities that pervade contemporary society, Christians can better understand and appreciate the genuine challenges that pluralism poses to human social life. Mouw and Griffioen also critique the leading contributors to the pluralism debate.

The “hurried child”: The myth of lost childhood in contemporary American society

Abstract: The hurried child writers argue that childhood has changed fundamentally for the worse in contemporary American society. The authors assert that today's youth are too “adultlike”: they behave like adults and are treated as adults by parents, schools, the workplace, the media, and society in general. While offering some perceptive insights, the thesis poses numerous methodological, substantive, and empirical problems. These include (1) a limited historical perspective on the changing nature of American childhood, (2) a failure to identify exactly who the hurried children are, and (3) the use of a deterministic model and negative bias in their work. Our analysis indicates no large-scale destruction of childhood and adolescence hypothesized by the hurried child writers. For the vast majority of contemporary American children, the “hurried child” is more myth than reality.

Changing Views of Adolescence in Contemporary Society

Abstract: A major paradigm shift in our conception of adolescence in contemporary America may be occurring. Originating from two traditionally isolated parts of our highly specialized society professionals who have direct contact with adolescents and researchers who study their development from separate disciplines this shift reflects a growing consensus about the universal and essential requirements for healthy development during the second decade of life.’ This consensus can be simply stated. All adolescents, regardless of economic background, race and ethnicity, gender, and geographical region or country, have basic needs that must be satisfied: to experience secure relationships with a few human beings, to be a valued member of groups that provide mutual aid and caring relationships, to become a competent individual who can cope with the exigencies of everyday life, and to believe in a promising future in work, family, and citizenship. To meet these needs, all societies, including our own, must provide adolescents with an education, broadly conceived, that provides a basis for making informed and wise decisions about their futures. This learning must occur in caring communities, whether in schools or in other community organizations, where well-prepared individuals are respectful of and sensitive to adolescents’ developmental needs. Above all, social and economic policies must be coordinated to stimulate and to enhance the development of vital human resources or human capital.’ This growing consensus acknowledges that adolescents in American society grow up in diverse racial and ethnic communities with different resources and values, and that their daily experiences may differ widely.3 It also takes into account significant changes in the national economy and in the nature of family and community life, especially in the period from World War II to the present. The consensus holds that while these social transformations seriously threaten adolescents’ capacities to grow up well educated and healthy, the essential requirements of development during adolescence have remained virtually unchanged.4 What have been slow to adapt to the new

Women, Islam and modernity.

Abstract: This thesis, based on written works, is concerned with the themes of women, religion and modernity in the Middle East. Modernity, which refers to modes of social life which emerged in Europe and became influential world-wide, is being challenged by the Islamic revival. This movement, particularly, in its cultural and social aspects involves a rejection of modernist tendencies. Evidently, the topic of women is central to the antagonism between modernity and revived Islam, where the basic Islamic formulations concerning the family are re-emphasized. Part of the aim of this study is to focus on the problematic relation between Muslim women and modern ideas and practices and to understand the background of the current phenomenon of the "return" of women to Islam. As the position of Muslim women is primarily derived from the holy texts and as other related issues, e. g. sexual morality, are intimately connected with Islamic ideology, the study starts with an exploration of the religious sources. History of Muslim women's modernization is pursued and an attempt is made to place it within a wider context and to search for links between the issue of women and the overall idea of modernization which is raised by modernized groups who have attempted to accommodate Islam with modernity with the arrival of capitalism and colonial domination. The topic of women and modern nation state is also touched upon, focusing on the struggle between the modernized ruling elites and the Islamic forces in an attempt to manipulate the question of women. The final part is an attempt to understand the Muslim revivalist conflict with modernity with regard to women and the family, as expressed in their popular literature, which excoriates modern society and displays obsessive concern at the change in their position, thus revealing their agenda for women's roles in contemporary societies, an agenda which is very much contrary to what modernity is all about.

Parturition as social metaphor

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the social labour and delivery. It is informed by field work carried out between 1982 and 1987. The discussion rests on a general proposition concerning the nature of childbirth in its social context. Birth is an unique and crucial social event as well as a singularly important one for the person concerned. As a consequence of its social significance, practices related to birth reflect salient cultural conditions and values and articulate these further within their own domain of meaning and reference. Birth practices - and even more so their ideational representations or images - can be understood as rituals (or templates for rituals) and their meaning is analysed here in relation to the cultural milieu of contemporary society. It appears that birth imagery is not only a metaphor for significant cultural themes. It is also an index of effective dominance of certains ideas - and, through those ideas, a pointer to their substantive supports in the social structure.

The Past in Contemporary Society: Then, Now.

Abstract: In the beginning... preservation to re-creation pasts with people living with the past celebrating the past a day in the life of the past days-out in the past past workings managing the past past practicalities using the past touring the past exploiting the past past projections then, now and future.

Entrepreneurship and envy

Abstract: This paper is a critical evaluation of Hayek's “Atavism of social justice” thesis, suggesting an alternative explanation of the widespread demands for social justice in contemporary society. It is based on the analysis of the nature of entrepreneurship and its tendency to incite envy. The advantages of the proposed explanation include a better understanding of the persistent hostility against commerce and the market system and the possibility of a systematic exploration of the factors which make the demand for social justice stronger or weaker.

The Freedom Train: Citizenship and Postwar Political Culture 1946-1949

Abstract: phrases. The Foundation selected some of the most historically rich artifacts from the American past and shaped their presentation to confirm project goals. Compiling and presenting the nation's material culture, which allowed millions of Americans to see the Constitution or the Emancipation Proclamation, was surely a valuable public service. Historian Eric F. Goldman in 1948 called the documents a "semi-official definition of American liberty," but taken as a whole their presentation in the campaign materials avoided areas of conflict and historical inequality. Although religious and political freedom and the Second World War comprised more than seventy percent of the exhibit, which Brophy defended by arguing that they were "universally accepted," the Foundation made no attempt to discuss the Civil War, minority rights, economic rights, or social legislation in the twentieth century.23 The documents stood alone and open to interpretation, proffered as icons contributing to an ethos of nationalism and justification for status quo domestic political, social and economic relationships. The Advertising Council created a variety of published materials expressing the Foundation's unified themes. Among the movies, radio programs and cartoons were two "official" books: Our American Heritage: Documents of Freedom and Good Citizen.24 Our American Heritage, compiled by the editors of Life, related the American past via the Freedom Train documents to a contemporary society in white middle-class themes, images and language. The editors reproduced thirty-two key Freedom Train documents with related contemporary photographs and accompanying text. The book illustrated the inevitable perseverance of American values and the American Way of Life despite the challenge of international communism, internal subversion, or curtailed individualism. Individualism and personal freedoms within appropriate gender and racial boundaries were presented as critical areas of agreement and national unity. For example, the Mayflower Compact appeared opposite a photograph of a town meeting the idyllic symbol of democratic participation where a group of white citizens listen intently to a speaker in a cramped church basement The four women out of twenty-odd persons in the picture are discreetly seated in the fourth and final row of chairs.25 Issues of free speech and religion appeared with similar documents and thematic photographs satisfying the Foundation's notions of community, gender, race, and class. Good Citizen, with prescribed duties for good Americans, expressed business and advertising leaders' values and attitudes toward social and economic relationships (Fig. 4). With only a few exceptions in Good Citizen and in advertisements, a white male professional, businessman or civil servant in a suit was the ideal citizen to emulate; the materials did not depict working class, ethnic or racial diversity. The visual dominance of white males and white-collar types appeared because of basic assumptions advertisers and businessmen made about society at large. The language was colloquial and quaint, appealing to middle America, while the visual symbols of the ideal citizen were urban, sophisticated,

Cultura corporal e cultura esportiva

Abstract: This paper has the objective of presenting an argument for sport being a part of body culture in contemporary society. Included in this paper a brief history of the origins and difusion of modern sport and some examples of the introduction and development of soccer in Brazil. The conclusion was that the sport spetacle represents a hegemonic form of the contemporary body culture and that Physical Education cannot be retricted to only one dimension of the sportive culture in order to accomplish its social-pedagogical role

Post-mass culture

Abstract: H 'ave the mass media rendered us more or less .similar over time? The answers to this question betray deep divisions among intellectuals. Some point up the homogenizing influence of the mass media, which are conceived as a cultural furnace into which individual social elements are shoveled to become fused, alloyed. Others argue that by opening up new vistas, by offering new styles and an expanded range of alternatives, the media's multifarious offerings render us increasingly diverse in thought and action. To determine which assessment of the media's influence on contemporary American society is correct, we turn first to the historical circumstances out of which the present situation developed. In the late nineteenth century social scientists noted that as societies modernized and advanced institutionally, the roles individuals played became increasingly specialized and differentiated. They recognized modernization as a centrifugal force that weakened local ties and rendered beliefs and behaviors increasingly dissimilar. Paradoxically, modernization created new centripetal tendencies as well, attended by an expanding web of functional interdependencies that enhanced social solidarity. Modernizing societies remained intact, but for different reasons. Out of this sociological framework came the idea of mass society. While it was most prominent in the 1920s and 1930s, it still enjoys some currency today. The theory of mass society generally holds that modernization produces a mass of people, functionally linked, but socially and emotionally isolated. Lacking the psychic sanctuary and larger sense of purpose that membership in cohesive social groups provides, members of a mass society are susceptible to media persuasion and influence. Highly purposive, the media were presumed to be capable of creating a new, pervasive normative order. Thus by the 1920s, Harold Lasswell could call the mass media and their most manipulative issue, propaganda, the "new hammer and anvil of social solidarity."

World peace and the human family

Abstract: Modern coverage of world events suggest that war and violence are key to contemporary society. History can convince us that it has ever been so, and many theorist of international relations argue that nothing is likely to change. Roy Weatherford argues that a profound change in social relations is imminent as national sovereignty yields to a democratic world culture, speaking a world language and living as a world wide family - the human family. For too long world peace has seemed a noble but unattainable ideal. Weatherford shows that it is now both economically and politically possible and is therefore our moral duty.

Rediscovering the Sacred: Perspectives on Religion in Contemporary Society, by Robert Wuthnow. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1992, 178 pp. $28.99; $18.99 (paper)

Abstract: (ENTIRE BOOK) Wuthnow proposes that the term \"rediscovery\" rather than \"revival\" clarifies what is happening in religion today. He provides personal background which informs this choice, then outlines his case using insights from other sociologists as well as social commentators. This volume offers a contemporary survey of sociology of religion, as well as challenging suggestions for further work.

Gordimer’s rendition of the picaresque in A Sport of Nature

Abstract: The aim of this article is twofold: firstly, to explore the picaresque elements present in Nadine Gordimer’s A Sport of Nature and secondly, to relate them to her more pronounced stance on feminism which has evolved since the 1980s. I suggest that an appropriate reading strategy would not only foreground these issues but also highlight A Sport of Nature as one of her most underrated novels. Following the example of the Latin American authors Isabel Allende and Elena Poniatowska, Cordimer has appropriated the picaresque tradition as an ideal vehicle to depict the elements of social critique and feminist assertion which characterize A Sport of Nature. The ironic retrospective stance on society, conventionally represented by a picaro as a social outcast, is reinforced by the introduction of a picara, thereby underlining the double marginalization of women as subjects and sexual objects. I propose that a feminist-oriented reading of the text which recognizes this subversive quality, would lend a different dimension to its interpretation. The character of Hillela serves as an implicit example of female ingenuity which attains political equality through devious means despite, and as a result of, the constraints of a hypocritical society and an entrenched patriarchal system. Seen from this perspective, the seemingly disparate elements of the novel coalesce to present a damning picture of contemporary society.

Body culture and sportive: culture

Abstract: This paper has the objective of presenting an argument for sport being a part of body culture in contemporary society. Included in this paper a brief history of the origins and difusion of modern sport and some examples of the introduction and development of soccer in Brazil. The conclusion was that the sport spetacle represents a hegemonic form of the contemporary body culture and that Physical Education cannot be retricted to only one dimension of the sportive culture in order to accomplish its social-pedagogical role

The development of a literate society: A case study: Western Australia 1850-1910

Abstract: Literacy, the ability to read and write, is now considered an essential social skill and the right of individuals. Yet, this was not always so. A ‘literate society’, where the expectation that essential day-to-day communications between its members can be conducted solely through print, belongs to the twentieth century. It is a very different environment from a society where literacy is significant yet it is socially acceptable, indeed socially demanded, for elements of the society to remain illiterate. Such was the historical experience when to be literate meant to possess power and high social status. A contemporary society which has become print-dependent expects its members to be literate and makes literacy acquisition by children compulsory. Negative social judgements are made about those who are not functional in literacy. More importantly, social disadvantage accrues to those who cannot adequately participate in activity requiring literacy. So how, when and why did such a fundamental change in attitudes and experience occur? The thesis explores the experience of one small, isolated English-speaking colonial settlement mapping the intrusion of literacy into all levels of that society and the responses of people traditionally non-literate. It seeks to explain why reading and writing tuition was given to the ‘lower orders’ and why literacy was ultimately accepted universally by Western Australians. It seeks to understand what value was placed on literacy by the illiterate and less literate, how well these people could read and write and the degree of their participation in literacy exchanges. It hypothesises that social acceptance and participation depended on the recipients of instruction recognising that a personal need could be met, not the perceptions or stated reasons of the providers who endeavoured to instruct through a range of institutions throughout the period. It concludes that, in Western Australia, those needs were not religious, not political or judicial, not educational as may have been the case elsewhere, but primarily commercial and functional. When shopping in expanded and flourishing communities stimulated by the discovery of gold, adults needed to respond to the print (and associated graphics) identifying essential and desirable commodities and services. Adult awareness and skill development led to wider commercial usage and encouraged parents to ensure children attended school regularly and stayed longer, thus providing the context for greater social usage as reflected in advertising and the environment. Western Australia became a literate society between 1895 and 1905 when the social barriers erected on both sides that had prevented earlier participation finally gave way. The thesis recognises, however, that in a literate society literacy and its uses are still social markers that lead to inequality and disadvantage. A detailed examination of data uses accepted literacy measures, such as statistical registers, education reports and signatures, explores the less frequently utilised measure of environmental print and draws on the researcher’s experience as a reading educator and researcher to make assessments about nineteenth century literacy and literacy education.

Ethnicity and Class Structure in the Contemporary U.S. : Micro and Macro Perspectives

Abstract: William Wilson pointed out in his book : The Declining Significance of Race, that studies of Blacks in the U.S. have placed too much emphasis on the micro perspective, and that the micro analysis loses its grip on reality when it has little reference to the macro social structure. Wilson's point is well taken, but my research leads me to believe that he has gone too far in discounting the importance of the micro perspective. The aim of my paper is to describe how the characteristics of racial and ethnic group relations in the contemporary U.S. society are rooted in the macro structure. My conclusions are based on my field study in the Samoan community in San Francisco 1990-92. The macro structure of contemporary American society is best characterized in socio-political terms as liberal pluralist system ; it is not a racist system ; it has a large degree of inequality. The lower class, excluded from resources as well as from the opportunity for upward mobility, seeks security by organizing into ethnic or racial groups. The lower class ethnicity is very different from that of middle class. It is based on the strategy of the “have-nots” who organize such resources as they have-fellowship, mutual trust- so that they can compete with the “haves”. In contrast, middle class ethnicity is individual ; it does not depend on group affiliation. This difference in life-style creates another source of conflict between the two classes. The lower class tend to fall into a hard-to-understand, sometimes even hostile way of life in the eyes of the middle class. This often gives the middle class a good reason for prejudice against the lower class. It is another aspect of Myrdal's “accumulation of discrimination” which makes upward mobility more difficult for the lower class.

Race, Culture and Social Change

Abstract: According to one recent commentator modern nation states seem to offer minorities the status of (a) complete assimilation or (b) despised difference or exclusion (Asad, 1990b). While this argument may seem somewhat overstated it is also reflective of an on-going struggle in contemporary societies, including Britain, over the definition of who belongs and who does not.